Pudge


 * Difficulty: High
 * Skill Curve: Medium/High

Pudge is a high-health tank, most commonly played as a ganker or an initiator.

Gameplay
Pudge is a high health destructive tank that can finish off lone heroes easily and quickly. His first and trademark skill, Meat Hook, allows him to grab a solitary target, dragging it off to meet it's doom in the ravenous form of the Butcher. One of the most iconic skills of DotA, Meat Hook takes a vast amount of practice to perfect. It is also a hard skill to master due to it's high versatility, like hooking for units hidden in the fog, hooking enemies with different movement speeds or pulling allied heroes out of potentially fatal situations. Pudge's second skill Rot is his primary source of damage over time, dishing out large amounts every second. Due to the first and second skills, Pudge is a constant threat and distraction in the early levels, possessing one of the highest short term damage outputs in the game. Pudge's ultimate, Dismember, allows him to grasp a unit tightly and devour it, holding it within range of the noxious fumes of Rot. In mid to late game, Pudge's trademark combination includes Hooking a foe away from its allies, Rotting and Dismembering. Pudge also has a passive Flesh Heap, which grants him both magic resistance to complement Rot and strength gain which is achieved passively upon enemy hero deaths in his vicinity. This hulking monstrosity is a force of gargantuan destruction in the hands of a competent player, and enemies may soon find themselves unable to take on the behemoth with his enormous potential for vitality.

Basic Strategy

 * Blink Dagger cannot be bought on Pudge.
 * Meat Hook to Rot to Dismember is the standard combo.
 * Meat hook is hard to master but extremely versatile; it can be used to:
 * Pull a fleeing enemy into a gank, or back into one if they blinked away.
 * Pull a lone hero into your team to make any resulting teamfight 4v5.
 * Pull an allied hero out of an dangerous situation.
 * Vanguard and Hood of Defiance are commonly built items.

Trivia

 * Pudge's voice actor, John Patrick Lowrie, also voiced characters in other Valve titles, such as Colonel Odessa Cubbage and several civilians in Half-Life 2, and the Sniper class of Team Fortress 2.
 * Pudge references Team Fortress 2's Heavy's "Om Nom Nom" Sound when Dismembering an enemy.
 * Pudge references Mortal Kombat's Scorpion's "Get over here" when successfully grappling an enemy with Meat Hook.