Pudge

Pudge the Butcher is a melee strength hero who typically uses his abilities to gank heroes or initiate battles, which can lead up to him becoming a late-game tank. His signature ability, Meat Hook, arms Pudge with a hook that pulls important or weak targets out of the enemy team to upend an impending clash or finish off fleeing heroes. He is usually built as a ganker due to his passive that increases his Strength for every kill he has accumulated or been in vicinity of for the entire game. He is also equipped with various debuffs that make his job easier, such as a slow and a channeled stun. With the need for good positioning and good prioritization, as well as deft reactions, Pudge is recommended for Intermediate to Advanced players.

Gameplay
Pudge is a high health destructive tank that can finish off lone heroes easily and quickly. His first and trademark ability, Meat Hook, allows him to grab a solitary target, dragging it off to meet its 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 ability to master due to its 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 ability 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 quickly find themselves unable to take on the behemoth with his enormously high health potential.

Tips

 * 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 a dangerous situation.
 * However, in case the enemy has some sort of game-breaking skill (Echo Slam, Epicenter, Requiem of Souls, Sanity's Eclipse etc.), it's usually better to avoid hooking at all to start teamfight, lets you set up a perfect initiation for the other team. The reason is after you hook someone and your team converge on you to kill the target, you will act as a beacon for those skills, especially if they have a Blink Dagger.
 * An easy way to land a Meat Hook is to walk up to your enemy slow him with Rot and finish him off with a Meat hook, while they are slowed.
 * Hiding spots and hooking positions:.
 * Don't be afraid to use Rot to escape from a chasing melee hero. Toggle it quickly on and off to apply the speed debuff to them, with minimal damage to yourself.
 * If you are Dismembering and have not used Meat Hook, make sure to not shift queue it because it can easily be dodged by running to the left or right.
 * If you have Aghanim's Scepter and are low on health you can Dismember a creep to quickly restore a lot of HP.
 * Blink Dagger cannot be bought on Pudge. If it could be, Pudge would be able to blink to an enclosed area, pull enemies(or allies) to him with Meat Hook, then blink out, leaving his foe potentially trapped. However, he can still do that with Force Staff. Force staff breaks trees. But you can still go to an enclosed space such as a high cliff and hook an enemy there. The main reason Blink Dagger is not allowed is because you can hook then blink, pulling the target who's hooked 2500 units back.
 * Pudge can do a fountain hook (hook the target to the fountain) with the help of Chen's Test of Faith, Wisp's Relocate, or Keeper of the Light's Recall if Pudge's timing of hook was correct, added by Dismember to prevent the target escapes from fountain attacks if the target has high HP.
 * Pudge can use Rot to deny himself, committing suicide and preventing the other team from receiving gold and experience for his death; killing himself in this way does not, however, reset his killing spree, resulting in the other team receiving more gold for killing him if he continues his spree.

Trivia

 * In DotA, if Pudge was invisible, Rot would not do any damage nor slow, and also would not affect paused units (such as those that were under the affects of Chronosphere).
 * Pudge references Scorpion from the Mortal Kombat series in two of his Meat Hook lines ("Get over here!").
 * Pudge's DotA character is based of off the Butcher, an infamous dungeon boss in the game Diablo. The most notable similarity is that the Pudge from DotA gets the exact same "Fresh meat!" sound file as the Butcher from Diablo, which was the only line uttered by him. As such, the Pudge of Dota 2 acquired a few similarities with the Diablo Butcher.
 * Pudge's line "Keep calm and carrion!" is a play on the World War 2 British Propaganda phrase "Keep calm and carry on".