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Hero guide-Pudge
🕑 Added 2025-02-16 16:25:00 +0000 UTC
Pudge, the Butcher, is a melee strength hero and the most popular hero in dota 2, Pudge is easily one of the most fun heroes to play in the entire Dota 2, being famous by his his risky but potentially rewarding playstyle as well as his tankiness and disables which makes him a good ganker, teamfighter, frontliner and initiator.
Launches a bloody hook toward a unit or location. The hook will snag the first unit it encounters, dragging the unit back to Pudge and dealing damage if it is an enemy.
Cast Animation: 0.3+0.59
Cast Range: 1300
Max Travel Distance: 1300
Hook Search Radius: 100
Damage: 150/220/290/360
Cooldown: 27/22/17/12 Mana: 125/130/135/140
This skill has an incredibly high amount of pure damage, although it's an unreliable skill since it's a Target point skill. You shoudn't necessarely rely on this skill to play Pudge because you are not going to hit it everytime, you should treat this more as a possibility than a garanteed thing.
Also consider 
Meat Hook for:
Saving allies(You can hook enemies or allies)Dealing extra damage at short rangeChasingInitiation - sometimes initiating with a hook and placing an enemy on a bad position will be the only way to win a fight, be calm and wait for the right moment, try unexpected positions, hooks from the fog, don't be afraid to bait your enemies into thinking you're not going for a hook when you actually are. EX: Walking sideways without looking to the place you're going to hook.Ganking - although it it's an unreliable skill it is certainly good for ganking and can be made into an reliable skill if you have some sort of stun or disable, such as: 
Rod of Atos, 
Clumsy Net, 
Scythe of Vyse or even a stun from your team.Hooking runes - Pudge can hook runes, this will help securing runes for your team or for you(if you are playing midlane).
Pro tip: you can cancel an enemy
Town Portal ScrollwithMeat Hook, unless the target has a
Black King Baractivated, then you will need to get a perfect timingMeat Hookand as soon as hisTown Portal Scrollis ending, it will not cancel theTown Portal Scrollbut the targeted enemy will be brought to you as soon as hisTown Portal Scrollends, you can also do this to allies to bring items or reffil a bottle from fountain.
as core, Pretty much never, if you are going for a kill you can consider leveling it but it's still bad, you will be sitting with a 140 mana unreliable nuke wich can't go trough creeps, doesn't help your laning, if you do this mistake you will soon regret it.
as a support, i personally don't like it but it's doable, you can try hooking heroes from the fog, combining with your team's stuns or nuking from short range, consider this only if you have a very clear kill potential or if your team has a very good hook setup early on into the game, otherwise it's gonna be bad since you will have low armor, low regen and you will not be able to harass your enemies if you miss the hook.
When to skill Meat Hook on LEVEL 2?
Since it's a high burst of pure damage early on into the game( 150 pure damage ) It pays up for being unreliable if you manage to hit it, if you have a good kill potential or a good setup for harassing with hook you can consider it, it's not bad as a level 1 Meat Hook since the lane will be in a slightly different position and at this point you will have a higher kill potential. I would think alot before skilling this level 2 tho, you need to make sure 
Rot isn't a better choice.
When to skill Meat Hook on levels 3 and 4?
Pretty much always you'll want to have this skill by level 3 or 4, combined with your Rot harass and 
Flesh Heap regen outsustaining your enemies, you can certainly open a window to punish your enemies by this point, it really depends on the matchup you're against, which we will talk about further into this guide.
Soo... Level 3 or 4 ? Depends wether you can actually kill with Meat Hook at this levels or if would rather just harass more with Rot and keep farming (Keep in mind you can still kill people without Meat Hook and just with Rot).
There will be situations where not leveling Meat Hook at level 3 or 4 will be the best choice, those situations being: You have low kill potential on the enemy, then you would rather just slowly harass with Rot. also use Rot to help your last hitting, focusing on farming and sustaining with Flesh Heap and 
Tango.
