In Defense of Pudge

I’ve seen a lot of posts and comments lately hating on my boy, and I wanna set the record straight that Pudge isn’t bad, YOUR Pudge is bad.

First of all, this sexy sack of meat has BKB piercing forced movement and lockdown. Something only otherwise achieved by Batrider and (maybe technically with shard?) Enigma. That alone starts putting Pudgy-Wudgy in a class by himself. Couple this with Flesh Heap which makes you seriously chunky if you do your job right, and you’re a mean green hooking machine that can take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.

Now to get beyond the obvious mechanical benefits to the hero that are evident even if you’ve never played the God-King. Pudge has amazing potential to soak damage in fights if your opponents are bad at delegating their damage and stuns. Dismember heals based off damage dealt, which scales with strength, which scales with kills. The more you kill, the more your ulti hurts, and the more it takes to kill you if they cannot stop Dismember. Obviously positive feedback loops like this are not always game breaking, but sometimes they can be and I live for those matches as Pudge.

Even beyond the meme-build potential of “carry” Pudge, the potential of the hero as a position 4 is pretty crazy. With a total of 10 runes (bounty and river) that spawn BY FIVE MINUTES into the game, there’s almost always a chance that whenever you feel “lost” as a Pudge in the beginning stages of the lane, you can just go fight for/ grab runes that are likely either just sitting there or spawning soon. Moreover, Pudge is one of the quintessential “ganking” heroes, and I feel I don’t really have to get into why given his spell kit. His shard gives considerable CD reduction to his ultimate and gives Pudge access to a phenomenal save spell for allies.

The final part to why I think Pudge is low key super strong is that I really believe the item and gold meta favors supports and poorer heroes in general. Arcanes -> Aether is cheap as hell, wards keep getting cheaper, neutral items are just free benefits for you, etc. And while all of that is not “Pudge specific”, Pudge is in one of the best spots to take advantage of that fact. The hero can build pretty much ANYTHING if it works for the matchups. Short of lightning, Pudge can utilize almost any item that is built by a position 3, 4, or 5.

So yeah, git gud and stop blaming the hero for your losses when you just have bad teammates/don’t know how to play with a Pudge on your team. Obviously your mileage may vary and Pudge is not good in every game and every role, but the hero is by no means bad.