Dota 2 Hero Guide: How to spearhead your team to victory with Mars

Mars was the highest picked offlaner in the Dota 2 WePlay AniMajor.

This probably has to do with the midgame momentum-oriented tournament meta. Mars combos well with ganking heroes like Puck, Snapfire, Phoenix, and Apparition because he can hold multiple opponents in one place. But even other than that, Mars in Dota 2 7.29 is an extremely flexible offlaner. So much so that he is only countered by some specific escape heroes.

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Which Dota 2 heroes are good against Mars?

Mars can be picked against almost any enemy lineup, except for heroes that can get out of his Arena easily. The current Dota 2 hero pool only has a handful of these. Blink heroes can immediately get out of Mars’ gank with good reaction time.

This leaves out heroes like Anti-Mage and Queen of Pain, and by extension, also PA and Riki. Furthermore, most mobility spells that render the target magic immune/untargetable during animation also render Arena a non-factor. This includes: Puck, Morphling, Sand King, Mirana, Slark, Techies, Clockwerk, Phoenix, Timbersaw, and all four ‘Spirit’ heroes.

Naturally, heroes with innate magic immunity methods can also just waddle out of it. Thankfully, there are only two such heroes in Dota 2 - Juggernaut and Life Stealer.

Game Plan

Mars presents good gank potential with just two spells, so his first power spike is lvl 2. Laning with mars is not different from any other Dota 2 offlaner. Instead, it is better to talk in detail about his spells.

Spear of Mars (Q) is the bread-and-butter spell that enables the rest of the kit. On its own, a successful Q onto a tree is a 1.6 second stun and 175 damage in lvl 1. However, it is also a skillshot with an obvious tell.

Mars can do well with a set-up for the Q. God’s Rebuke (W) provides a slow that can work in the absence of additional help. If the target is not particularly high-HP, a Q-W combo with a nuking position will often result in an easy kill.

With Arena of Blood (R), the combo is to impale them into the walls with Q. Locked in place, the target takes an additional 200-300 magic damage from it, even furthering Mars’ threat level.

Other than aforementioned escape heroes, any hero without a BKB is an easy target when Mars opens a gank with Arena. Arena is also lower in cooldown than the big teamfighting Dota 2 spells like Ravage or Black Hole. Even though Blinking and Spearing the target into a tree does just as well, it is best to use Arena off cooldown even for random pickoffs.

For all his strengths, the one weakness for Mars is that his Arena potentially only disables a single target. If Mars misses his Spear, the target could just kite Mars for the duration of Arena.

This is why Mars synergizes well with other teamfighting Dota 2 heroes like Dark Seer or Earthshaker. For these, Arena can serve as a great set-up.

Itemization

Mars has three active spells, and a rather low mana pool. Soul Ring is a must for sustaining, considering Mars is naturally tanky with his E.

Like most Dota 2 initiators, Blink dagger is also a core item to get the drop on the opponents.

Euls of Scepter is also a good set-up for Spear without Arena. For this combo, Mars blinks onto the target, casts Euls on them, repositions and Spears them into a tree when they come down.

A lifesteal item like Vladimir’s Offering is also a good purchase, since Mars can practically get to full health with a W on a full creepwave.

From Dota 2 7.28, Shard upgrade allows Mars to Spear two targets together, making him a better initiator.

Patch 7.28 also reworked the Aghanim’s Upgrade, and the current one allows for certain madcap but fun shenanigans in pubs.

As expected of Dota 2, the item build is situational outside of Blink and Soul Ring. Mars can pick up:

• Heaven’s Halberd
• Desolator
• Satanic
• Assault Cuirass
• Shiva’s Guard
• Overwhelming Blink
• Black King Bar
• Lotus Orb
• Abyssal Blade
• Blademail