Aghanim's Scepter Tier List
Over the last year more and more Aghanim’s upgrades have appeared in the game and it can get tricky to keep track of all of them. More importantly, evaluating them is intimidatingly tricky with a game as complex as Dota. Not all Scepter Ugrades are equally important—some of them are almost mandatory, while some offer very little and can even be downright detrimental to the natural progression of the hero.
This Tier List is designed to highlight the relative strengths of the upgrades taking into account the opportunity cost of an item slot and 4200 gold. Some of the upgrades are in fact much stronger than they would appear in the tier list, however in a real-world scenario there will usually be better alternatives. The most interesting and the more controversial tier placements will be discussed in greater detail.
Tier 1—consistently game-changing
Invoker, 
Keeper of the Light, 
Meepo, 
Mirana, 
Night Stalker, 
Pudge, 
Tiny, 
Windranger
Most of the upgrades in this tier require no explanation—the vision granted with upgrades for both Keeper of the Light and Night Stalker is a huge game-changer. The latter is slightly better in terms of providing said vision on-demand, the former has an added strong burst heal.
Pudge has been slowly buffed from patch to patch to a point where he was even deemed a TI-worthy hero by the champions themselves. Granted, it didn’t quite work out as planned, but the upgrade itself is definitely game-changing—it turns an unreliable initiation tool on a 12s cooldown into a similarly unreliable initiation tool, but on a 4s cooldown.
For Tiny it gets slightly more complicated—there is a working build for the hero which doesn’t involve flash-farming, but rather concentrates on constant ganking and pick-offs. Regardless, however, at some point the upgrade will come in handy—it increases the nuke burst of the hero and, more importantly, makes him a very scary objective-taking machine. With enough AS buffs from teammates or items, Tiny can easily take down anything even through the backdoor protection.
Tier 2—consistently strong or situationally game-changing
Ancient Apparition, 
Batrider, 
Chen, 
Clockwerk, 
Disruptor, 
Drow Ranger, 
Enchantress, 
Lina, 
Necrophos, 
Nyx Assassin, 
Pugna, 
Sand King, 
Rubick, 
Shadow Demon, 
Shadow Shaman, 
Timbersaw, 
Tinker, 
Treant Protector, 
Ursa, 
Venomancer, 
Visage, 
Witch Doctor
The most controversial upgrade in this tier is the Batrider one—heroes are frequently spread out enough for it to usually have no effect. However, an often underlooked part of the upgrade is the fact that it allows Batrider to grab enemies who have a 
Linken's Sphere by targeting a nearby creep. This, on top of potential multi-hero Lassos make it a very worthwhile purchase, especially given how it fits the natural requirements of the hero for some extra survivability and mana.
Necrophos’ upgrade could potentially be in a tier higher, however with so many options available, some of them will frequently be superior to the upgrade. Or at least have higher priority in timings—
Octarine Core, 
Shiva's Guard, 
Scythe of Vyse can all be more necessary at a given time, compared to the ability to delete the hero from the game. More importantly, with a heavy focus on defensive supports, the ultimate itself becomes rather unreliable—
Glimmer Cape or Shadow Demon’s Disruption, as well as several other abilities, can render the Reaper’s Scythe almost useless.
Drow Ranger is a weird one, since it is consistently weak, frequently tampering with the natural damage-dealing progression of the hero. It can be situationally game-changing though. In a game where you are facing a push with a lot of summoned units and/or illusions heroes the 
Mjollnir+Aghs build is the absolute best option. In other games, going for stats, survivability and mobility is generally a better alternative.
Tier 3—consistently mediocre or situationally strong
Abaddon, 
Centaur Warrunner, 
Dark Seer, 
Dazzle, 
Doom, 
Earth Spirit, 
Elder Titan, 
Faceless Void, 
Jakiro, 
Legion Commander, 
Naga Siren, 
Nature's Prophet, 
Ogre Magi, 
Omniknight, 
Oracle, 
Puck, 
Queen of Pain, 
Razor, 
Shadow Fiend, 
Skywrath Mage, 
Storm Spirit, 
Techies, 
Undying, 
Vengeful Spirit, 
Viper, 
Weaver
Abaddon and Centaur ultimates fall into roughly the same category—they are a very strong damage-mitigation tools. The problem is, it only works when your team has enough damage themselves, to actually use this extra time. Otherwise, it will quickly turn into a scenario where your team still dies, but in a much slower, more painful way. With some glass-cannons in your lineup, however, these upgrades truly shine.
Legion Commander’s upgrade, with the most recent rework, can actually be very strong. The hero excels in 1v1 scenarios, with potential high damage and a strong passive lifesteal. With the upgrade, she can jump in and focus down almost any target, given her early game wasn’t completely awful. It will either force the enemy to commit disables on the LC or, alternatively, start the engagement as 4v5. Either way, the team with the initiating Legion Commander will likely have a better starting position. It is still very situational, since you need to be sure LC will be able to actually kill the target, but when it works, it works really well.
Storm Spirit is another controversial choice for the third tier, but very much like with Batrider it is the ability to ignore an enemy’s Linken’s what takes the cake. Sometimes it is necessary and can have a high impact on the game. The reason it is a tier lower, however, is because the Aghanim’s Scepter itself doesn’t really fit all too well in Storm’s items—extra mana and health are nice, but it is mana regeneration, damage and disables what Storm is usually after.
Tier 4—consistently weak or situationally mediocre
Axe, 
Bane, 
Beastmaster, 
Bloodseeker, 
Brewmaster, 
Bristleback, 
Crystal Maiden, 
Earthshaker, 
Huskar, 
Juggernaut, 
Leshrac, 
Lich, 
Lion, 
Warlock, 
Magnus, 
Phoenix
On paper both Lich and Warlock upgrades seem incredibly strong, but for the most part both of these abilities should be used as BKB-piercing interrupts, rather than for direct damage. In the later stages of the game, both the extra golem and “infinite” Chain Frost jumps become quite inconsequential, while the ability to interrupt an enemy Black Hole, for example, becomes a lot more important. In either case, there are sometimes better alternatives. In fact, in case of Warlock, Necronomicon II (roughly the same price as Aghs) will offer a significantly higher DPS as well as strong auras and mana burn abilities.
The Juggernaut upgrade fell strongly out of favor ever since the hero was buffed with reduced BAT, which allowed him to scale much better and become a decent hard-carry in the late-game. It can still be ok-ish in certain scenarios, but for the most part the farming-right-clicking Juggernaut is currently much stronger. As such, the Scepter is rarely worth a slot.
Leshrac is roughly in the same boat as Necrophos—there are just too many other items which will work better in the majority of scenarios. A 500 gold more expensive Shiva’s Guard will offer roughly the same benefits in terms of damage against squishier targets, who Leshrac should prey on anyways. It will also immensely boost the hero’s survivability as well as provide a very strong aura and AoE slow on-demand.
Phoenix is an interesting one, but it is too gimmicky to work too well. It can be very useful coupled with certain heroes, such as Terrorblade, Undying or even Invoker, but will frequently fall into the “win-more” category. Refreshing abilities on the hero is nice, but in the meantime your team will have to fight 3v5 and you will risk losing both your Phoenix and the hero inside the Supernova.
Tier 5—inconsequential or situationally weak
Enigma, 
Kunkka, 
Lone Druid, 
Luna, 
Morphling, [missing hero: outworld-devourer], 
Silencer, 
Spirit Breaker, 
Tidehunter, 
Tusk, 
Winter Wyvern, 
Wraith King, 
Zeus
Most of the upgrades in this tier are just straight-up weak. They are inconsequential, gimmicky and rarely worth the price. Three of them however, are a question of opportunity cost and slot-efficiency.
Enigma’s upgrade is a great late-game addition. The problem is, between the usual Mekansms, Black-King-Bars, Blinks and Refreshers, there is rarely a slot for this item. All of the previous items, with the exception of maybe Mekansm are non-negotiable—you absolutely need them as Enigma in 99% of the games. And you need them as fast as possible. If later in the game there is an opening for an Aghs upgrade and Shiva’s Guard is already built or a better fit for a teammate—go for the upgrade, otherwise sticking with the regular path is a more consistent alternative.
Luna and Morphling upgrades, on the other hand, are quite strong in a vacuum. The problem is, they are quite bad on the heroes themselves—when played as cores, both of these heroes should opt for stats, damage or survivability items, which are more cost-efficient.
On the other hand, an offlane or support Morphling, who managed to get their hands on the upgrade, is actually not too bad in certain situations. It requires very specific line-ups, but can work very well in the later stages of the game.
Luna can also be ok with an Aghs if your team has a farming mid. As an off-carry, there might be a way for her to squeeze in this upgrade. It works especially well with mobile teammates, since they can jump in with the Eclipse cast on them, obliterating the enemy team, while staying relatively safe. The concept is definitely worth exploring, but as of now, there hasn’t been a successful lineup with and Aghs Luna.
Tier 6—Alchemist’s Gifts
Alchemist, 
Gyrocopter, 
Lifestealer, 
Sven
Three of these upgrades are a joke—they offer almost no value and are probably the last priority even when gifted by an Alchemist. Gyrocopter and Lifestealer ones are almost completely useless, aside from some cheesy shenanigans which only work in lower-MMR games. The Sven one is good when built on a support Sven. The support Sven himself, however, is pretty bad—he can be a situational fit vs. Death Prophet, but otherwise the hero should always be played as a core.
To be clear—gifting yourself an Aghs is usually the last priority, hence the upgrade is in the 6th Tier, but the Alchemist upgrade concept, overall, is actually quite strong. It allows your supports to have a sudden power spike and in certain cases even completely change the flow of the team-fights. Heroes like Disruptor and Shadow Demon can suddenly become the destroyers of the enemy cores, while Invoker or Tiny can greatly benefit from an extra item slot. In this sense, this upgrade can be consistently strong or situationally game-changing.
Closing Thoughts
Currently, 89 heroes have an Aghanim's Scepter upgrade and the figure will most likely keep on rising. Moreover, it is quite probable that some of the weaker ones will get buffed or reworked, since they simply never have an impact on the game. With the next update scheduled for fall, there is still quite a bit of time to play with the current iterations though.
Which upgrades do you think were misplaced in the tier list? Share your own experience with the community—there is always a lot of room for discussion when it comes to Dota.
For all the complaints, those are FINE. Just please keep in mind, how will you fit that aghs into your build?
Will you get the farm for it in time for the upgrade to be worth it?
Aghs LC needs to block disables being used in the Duel otherwise it's a waste of gold
Batrider tier 2 while Abaddon and FV tier 3 and Tide tier 5? I'm done.
Because it's written by an average player. Hopefully average.
yo yo yo you just triggered all of dotabuff. honestly there was like 6 that i strongly disagree wih otherwise i liked the article. especially since 3 (luna enigma morphling) you talked about how they could be good.
Aghs on enigma is just pointless now
Sven support<Vengeful Spirit
@DropDead.EXE You're so wrong
I though Juggernaut must be in Tier 3
Lul OD agh is like the worst thing ever
I'd rather have an AM rushing blink dagger and buying wards instead of an OD buying aghs
Blink dagger on AM can be good
Luna aghs is definitely legit
I agree this is garbage.
i think the article has to go in depth on each and every Agh's, to clarify why they are in each tier list. I agree with most of the list though, I would just like to see full justifications for some tier placements, like Mirana or Spirit Breaker.
Great.
Necrophos should definitely be top tier. A game-winning item if used correctly. I also think the Phoenix and Wraith King aghs can be broken in certain situations, despite being trash most of the time!
Phoenix's Aghs could work well with heroes with very long cooldown non-ultimate abilities - aka Terrorblade and metamorphosis (it means when the enemy thinks it is on cooldown suddenly you turn around and destroy them).
Blog posts like this make me think whether we are playing the same game.
Oh theres no rubick in here
@ ArcticWP unfortunately that whole reaper's scyth spell is trash tier in competitive play. Countered by grave, glimmer, disruption, false promise, etc etc
Hey KawaiiSocks and Dotabuff... I really like the structure of this article. Putting some questions at the end is a great addition to engage the reader.
A lot of people are knocking your list but... its just a list! and your opinion (with some valid points)! You even ask everyone to give their own opinions which turns this into a discussion rather just a bulletin. I think some people are confused about the purpose of these posts.
Great job and keep 'em coming! It is a great way to start the day.
Earthshaker is tier 4, WUUUUUT? He must be tier 2 at least.
Druid on tier 5?! Are you serious? This is stupid you know? Letting the bear go and push by itself is very strong and won't put the hero on danger. I would rate him on at least tier 3 if not lower.
"with and Aghs Luna" should be 'with an Aghs Luna'
First of all, LC aghs is actually awfull if the enemy have a lot of disables and your team like to do constant gank (causing their attack or even spell to be wasted)
Next is Lone Druid. His aghs is very good for split-pushing and farming. Most people tend to target the hero instead of the bear because once the hero is dead, they don't have much problem. But once Druid get his aghs, the bear become a very large threat to anyone who tend to ignore the bear.
And then Enigma. Enigma aghs is very good causing the black hole to scale well into the late game by adding midnight pulse damage (which is using percentage). Moreover his midnight pulse and black hole cause PURE damage and ignore BKB. The only thing that matter is pre-actived-blade mail
Moving on to Bara, which is under rated. However the 20 sec cd and Aoe bash can make you a very constant ganker and your participation on teamfight will be larger. And just like batrider, this ability can bypass linken sphere by striking a creep or other hero without Linken. Watchout for the linken's by pass though.
Next up is weaver. Weaver is an annoying carry/escape alien bug who love killing people from distance and invisiblity and before he die just straight use his ulti to go back in fight. And the aghs upgrade is as useless as carry sven aghs. This is making weaver a very bad decision for making aghs. Just buy a simple ultimate orb and the price is better and upgrade it into linken. Not even a support weaver recommended for that thing.
On the other hand, LS aghs must be at least tier 5.However this only apply if u have a constant ganker long range ganker (Storm Spirit/Bara) and paired with a powerfull but short range and low mobility initiator (Tidehunter/Axe/Earthshaker). This make an excellent combo with an extra damage from Consume and Eject. (Well its actually situational weak, but not actually useless)
Most of tier 4 hero is actually consist under rated support that their ultimate can be scaled a little bit by Aghs. But the major of this example is Warlock. His massive teamfight contribution and pushing is the main thing of the warlock's golem in midgame. But once his refresher is buit(especially alcemist free aghanim), you will watch enemy crying to their main carries to farm faster and kill 4 ANNOYING HELL GOLEM. Just by hanging around with them then you will see the enemy type "GGWP, Report our midlane, Core, Support, Jungle, etc"
Last and actually the least is OD. OD is MASSIVELY NERFED. This cause his Aghs become even useless than weaver's. Not only the intelligence steal is gone, the damage of Astral Imprisonment DO NOT SCALE. You don't even deserve alce's aghanim. The 4 sec time is considered very bad because its too long for the enemy and they will consider where they will run or counter-initiate. And the only good thing about it is cancel tp and disable Blink dagger (But not force staff, blink from qop or am, Leap or any natural escape mechanics)
scepter wich only upgrade ultimate magic dmg are garbage (zeuz), the ones wich upgrade any ability in dmg and cooldown are niche, the ones wich upgrade hero qualities, reduces cooldown, increase dmg etc are the best ex: invoker- tinker, and.. tiny who sadly is right now a VERY VERY VEEERY weak hero IMO
how the hell is dooms aghs upgrade only tier 3 lmao
LC and Elder titan has better aghs upgrade than lion's 20 cd 1k dmg aoe nuke and tide's 7 cd slow/armor reduction tsunami.
Seems legit.
This post is as much of a joke as ODs scepter 'upgrade'
Everyone here has a shit opinion and mine is the only one that isn't. Why? Because I'm wearing sunglasses, bitch.
Tiny and WR are tier 2 at best, tier 1 should be must-buys, and aghs isn't a 100% buy on these
Also pugna's is dogshit, his aghs is a reason his WR is not higher, people mindlessly buy it on him but it's absolute garbage
ld aghanims really underrated.
To be honest this list doesn't really make masses of sense, but that's because it's a non objective, opinion based list (at least it seems to be). For a lot of people the usefulness of the Aghs upgrade comes down to how well it feels when they run it on one of their heroes. For me I've found the Tide Aghs to be amazing whenever I use it and I wouldn't have it down in the trash tiers. However that's just me and other people's experiences may differ.
Alternatively maybe the list suffers in response because it's possibly too objective and looks only at the specific value that each hero acquires from the upgrade rather than how well it factors into individual players/plays.
What the fuck? How is Warlock aghs "situationally mediocre" or "consistently weak"? How the hell do you put Puck's aghs above Warlock's? You'll barely be able to farm an aghs on KoTL most of the time too, definitely should not be a tier 1 aghs. Lich's aghs is also extremely powerful in the right situation, if the enemy has a ton of illusions or summons, it'll be almost impossible to disjoint in a huge teamfight.
Templar Assassin Aghanim Upgrade
Maximum Traps: 5/8/11
Upgrade: 7/11/15
Min Move Speed Slow: 30%
Max Move Speed Slow: 60%
Upgrade: additional 10%
Slow Duration: 5 seconds
Vision Range: 400 (day) - 400 (night)
Trap Mana Cost: 15
Cool down: 11/8/5 seconds
Trap Duration: Permanent
TA can Blink to nearby trap location within 800 radius
Blink Mana Cost: 50
Cool down: 11/8/5 seconds
Commands on Trap (if you select a trap)
Q: Spring trap (slowing enemies)
W: Blink to the trap (can access command only if TA is within 800 radius around trap)
note: trap will not activate or disappear when TA blink to it
Aghanim Bonus:
+10 Strength
+10 Agility
+10 Intelligence
+175 Health
+175 Mana
I wanna see a TA aghs that adds damage to her traps. like 50/100/150 or something like that.
you are so wrong if you think that bats aghs is better than bloodseekers
A matrice pointed out, I was also baffled. I think this list is quite a bit off.
Just because nobody said it, Ags on SB has a 64% win rate. BKB piercing aoe stun on a 20 sec cd. SBs job is to be tanky and disrupt fights vlads ags GG.
I like dotabuff articles that are based on numbers and stats not opinions.
With a lot of inspiration from this blog post, here is my own list. There's ofc some mistake, but much less. Trying to refer to the tier name of the blog post made it easy for a lot of heroes, but for some, its just not fitting; some other heroes are also so much on the line between two tier. Harder than what i thought in first place :
Tier 1—consistently game-changing (get it)
Invoker, kotl, meepo, night stalker, tiny, windranger, techies
Tier 2—consistently strong or situationally game-changing (get it at some point)
mirana, aa, clock, disruptor, ench, lina, necro, nyx, pugna, rubick, sandking, sd, shadow shaman, timber, tinker, venom, witch doctor, doom, earth spirit, ogre, puck, visage, weaver, warlock
Tier 3—consistently mediocre or situationally strong (luxury/if you play the hero differently)
pudge, chen, drow, ursa, abaddon, centaur, ds, dazzle, void, naga, omniknight, oracle, qop, sf, storm, venge, viper, bloodseeker, bristle, huskar, phoenix, enigma, ld, luna, morphling, tusk, wraith king, spirit breaker, tide
Tier 4—consistently weak or situationally mediocre (avoid / ask alchemist)
bat, titan, jakiro, legion, razor, sky, axe, bane, brew, maiden, earth shaker, jug, leshrac, lion, silencer
Tier Alchemist— (ask alchemist when everyone else got his agahs)
alchemist, gyro, lifestealer, sven, zeus
Tier 5— (don’t even ask alchemist for that)
beast, lich, magnus, kunka, winter wyvern
Tier never— (You should hang yourself if you think it’s worth paying even one gold for this -not even mention item slot-)
od
Special tier : either game changing or useless.
furion, treant , undying
>literally the most essential item on techies
>tier 3
Probably the worst article I've ever seen on this site. Shameful.
How has nobody pointed out yet how awesome aghs on tide is? Low cooldown, insane range group slow?
PLS GIVE PA AGHS UPGRADE. Will make her evasion ignore mkb's and BM's cant reflect her crits.
@Mupf, cause this agahs is bad on tide. if you had this effect on poke heroes, then yeah, it would be awesome, but on tide ...
It's basically a give me a poke spell, that you can dodge in fight. While tide is all about a big bursty fight, and then tanking like a boss, reducing damage of the remnant of opponent's team.
However you are true, its more of a tier3 than tier4 as i putted it. So i will correct it
Warlock should be in tier 3.
It's kind of hilarious how bad Zeus Aghs is when you consider Mirana's Aghs is in the game.
Mirana gets a free 300 damage nuke every 8 seconds on everything in a 650 range.
Zeus gets 215 damage on every hero on a 90 second cooldown spell.
Imo a decent upgrade would be for it add a weaker AoE follow up spell to anyone hit - ie the hero releases a chain lightning effect against enemies nearby from the affected hero as well so you would still get +145 damage on the enemy hero (down from +215) but have up to +5 chain lightings bouncing around various heroes and creeps.
the aghs is depend on what type of player you are,
for me, i like pudge with aghs now and then, but 4 second on hook make it more IMBA,
for those that know how to hook properly, like ME.
zeus with aghs? i think it's good, imagine team fight , aghs, refresher, veil on ur zeus,.,
win situation if u do it right.
A lot of hate for Aghs on OD and generally I would agree, not worth spending money on. However if you have a moneybags alch then it can be situationally ok. It is less about the damage and more about using it as a crowd control tool that allows you to isolate players and deal with them in a favourable way. Of course it is situational depending on when you get it, enemy bkb activation timings and duration.
In a fight the opposition may for example have aghs on the cores only so using the ult to take his supports out of the game for 4s can often be enough time for team to right click the cores down as 5 v 2 or similar. Then the supports after the duration are left outnumbered with reduced mana and some damage from the ult. If you get it late game (which is much more likely as there are much better items for OD force staff, atos, shiva, Scythe etc), and they all have BKBs (then you're a screwed OD!) you can use it to catch those late activators, or wait to take out those whose duration is down to 5s when others have longer; or if you get the jump then isolate those you choose.
Yes it isnt a priority for OD but it can still be effective and is not detrimental to the team if used correctly. As with many things its more about the wizard than the wand.
Hah, you'd have to be from SEA to think Aghs is good on Zeus.
He needs boots - boots of travel
He needs extra range and damage on his spells - aether lens
He needs magic amplification - veil
He needs a positioning item - blink if you need to go offensive, force staff if you need to go defensive.
He needs Octarine core because the more spells he gets off in a fight the more static field hp removal he procs.
He needs refresher because refresher allows two lightning bolts and gods wrath in quick sucession which with static field do more damage than the 215 damage from Aghs.
Even if you can go without one of those items (eg if someone else on the team builds veil) then there are still items which are better for him than Aghs. Euls gives extra mana, regen and movespeed. Scythe of Vyse gives him additional lockdown. Ghost Sceptre->EBlade is sometimes needed against carries who can blink on you like PA/Riki. Bloodstone is better because the reduced death timer and gold saved and the bloodstone heal on death etc. Even a Rod of Atos would be more useful if your team lacks slows.
That's why his aghs is one of the most useless in the game and even if you can be gifted one by Alchemist you shouldn't get it until every other hero with an Aghs upgrade has received theirs from him first.