Broodmother

Black Arachnia the Broodmother is a melee agility hero who is a notably powerful pusher. Her trademark spiderlings, as both an asset and a liability, define her play style. While a possible additional source of income, experience and lane pushes, spiderlings can easily feed opponents when not handled with deft micro and great awareness. Broodmother's abilities allow her to summon those spiderlings to do her bidding, to conceal herself and her spiderlings in an area, and to slow and kill heroes with relative ease if caught off guard, all while staying as elusive as possible with her webs and passives. She spends most of the early game pressuring a lane with little concern, due to her spiderlings and her invisibility/added HP regeneration, but she can also transition into a difficult to kill melee carry, which can dive in on and rapidly kill lone enemies with the right items later on. Although, Broodmother's stat gain is very low, so she sometimes gets most her kills early game and later turns into a support.

Tips

 * Spin Web and Spawn Spiderlings should almost always be maxed first, before points are put into any other ability. Both Incapacitating Bite and Insatiable Hunger are only useful once Broodmother has gotten her farm.
 * Going into a solo lane is a viable option for Broodmother as webs give her the survivability and the pushing power from the spiderlings can overwhelm a lane without need of her being babysat by an additional hero.
 * Spawn Spiderlings acts as a ranged nuke, and is very useful for killing weak enemies that are fleeing.
 * Soul Ring is a great item to have on her as the instant mana boost gives her the ability to spawn more spiderlings and the HP regen from the webs can cover for the loss of HP from the Soul ring
 * Going right into a Black King Bar is a good choice as the combination of magic immunity and the powerful lifesteal from Insatiable Hunger makes the Broodmother a very difficult opponent to kill.
 * Casting Spin Web on top of an enemy tower makes it easy to dive in on weak heroes. The regen and movespeed bonus combined with Broodmother's slow is very effective for diving on heroes with no reliable escape or stun.
 * Broodmother is very effective against solitary targets, but against multiple enemies she suffers; as her lifesteal can generally only replenish the damage taken from a solitary foe.
 * A quick Yasha will give her more movement speed to evade ganks and remain a threat for that lane. Then this can be made into a Manta Style which will give her a way to remove dust and confuse the enemy to escape ganks and waste their crowd control spells.
 * Be cautious when the enemy has picked an Earthshaker as Echo Slam will annihilate her if multiple spiderlings are present.
 * Legion Commander's first ability, Overwhelming Odds, scales off how many units are in the AoE. It will destroy her spiderlings and do a huge amount of damage to Broodmother.

Trivia

 * In her DotA biography, Broodmother's spiderlings originated from her relationship with Anub'arak, the Nerubian Assassin. In Dota 2, such tie between the two heroes does not exist.
 * Broodmother's Fun/Alternate name was Broodmama.
 * Broodmother's rarer response Broo rare 02.mp3 "some pig." is a reference to the children's novel Charlotte's Web.