Is Undying Worth Considering in Pubs?
Undying was one of the most popular support in the recent qualifiers, which raised a lot of questions. Is this hero actually good in the professional scene? Does he do anything past the laning stage? Is it worth picking him in pubs? We will attempt to answer those questions.
Hero Stats
It is hard to call the hero successful with 66 picks and 48.48% win rate. When looking at the regions separately, however, we can see that in the EU and CIS the hero was actually above 50%, while the NA qualifiers were the biggest culprit for poor overall stats on the hero with a 23% win rate.
The pub stats for the hero are also nothing special, but he holds his own with a 50%+ win rate in the highest level bracket and pretty disgusting 57%+ in Ancient games.
That answers most of our questions—the hero is not a misguided professional pick, at least not for the CIS and EU teams and neither is he bad in pubs. So now we would like to think about why.
Beyond Lane Support
Pretty much everyone knows that Undying is one of the most annoying supports to lane against. By continuously stacking 
Decay on the enemy, he greatly shifts the HP balance in lane, creating opportunities where there otherwise would be none.
In a meta filled with hybrid damage cores that are capable of fighting early on this can quickly allow the lane to snowball and give a massive advantage.
There are two main skillbuilds for the hero, but both start the same: by level three almost every Undying takes one point in Decay and two points in 
Soul Rip. Level two Soul Rip, given enough surrounding units, is comparable to pretty much any level four nuke or heal, while having a relatively low mana cost.
After that, most professional players either start maxing out 
Tombstone or go for extra levels in Soul Rip. The end result is a strong healer and a potential nuker who is extremely survivable, and has massive teamfight presence under the right conditions.
Understanding Tombstone
Tombstone is the de facto ultimate of the hero. It is game-changing in the early game, but gets progressively weaker as the enemy gets more items. Good Tombstone placement, so that it is out of immediate reach of the enemy, but still captures them in its AoE, is hard to pull off, but is possible.
Look for highgrounds and impassable terrains to make Tombstone a non-target for enemy melee heroes and possibly focus on enemy ranged heroes during the fight to ensure there is a healthy amount of zombies on each enemy. These zombies pack quite a bit of punch, especially with the level 15 talent, but they also have one of the most underrated, spell immunity-piercing slows in the game. If the Tombstone survives for at least ten seconds, your team is almost guaranteed either a good chase or a clean escape. The fact that they provide vision on the enemy targets is just a cherry on top.
Understanding Flesh Golem
Flesh Golem was changed so many times it is still a bit confusing to many players. In its current form it is pretty much an amped up 
Heartstopper Aura with a slow in a much smaller AoE. It doesn’t work nearly as well on targets below 50% HP, but can be massive at the start of the fight and, perhaps more importantly, makes Undying a target that is hard to ignore and not so easy to burst down.
We’ve said time and time again how the current offlane is a place for tanky heroes who go for sustainability first and initiation second and Undying, while not being played in the offlane too often, fulfills a similar role. He can walk in, use Tombstone, pop Flesh Golem and suddenly a position five support creates two unignorable targets for the enemy, while his team can fight with relative ease.
Naturally, it is a lot harder to pull off in practice than in theory, but that is what the hero is supposed to do. Given how he can also secure himself a decent start in the majority of games, some survivability and utility items are not out of the question either.
Closing Thoughts
Undying is absolutely worth exploring in the current meta. Given how the meta has shifted towards more aggressive and fight-ready position once cores in the safelane, Undying can truly shine in lane and that will allow him to transition into the midgame even better.
There are some attempts to make this hero a position three right now, with a varying degree of success. We’ve mentioned how in an ideal scenario the hero is played pretty much in the same manner as the offlaners, being a frontline for his team, but Undying doesn’t farm nearly as fast to justify such an approach in our opinion and the draft should heavily favor aggression and kills for him to actually accomplish his goals.
First comment haha
this hero is dogshit in pups .
tusker or mirana are better pup pos 4
Bombo bhai please take notice
One of my favorites.
As a 5 yes, as a 3 or 4 only effective until mid game, unless ur snowballing hard
Nice as 5, no reason to pick it for different roles.
Strong laner, can pressure, can heal, can tank - such versatility is pretty non-existent on other supports.
On weak part are cooldowns are rather big.
And talents are freaking weird. They look strong on paper, but don't feel the same in a game. Lack of any kind of XP gain or GPM talent is what holds Undying from being top notch support.
position 1 undying let's get it
Undying skill combo and build is actually fit to be a pos 3, but he lacks what pos 3 needs most, ability to farm fast so he can catch up after getting zoned if enemy picks strong laner.
Buff it with a +60 gold talent at level 10, then Undying will be a good pick in pubs.
Thoughts on this hero as a pos 4? I see him mentioned mainly as a 5 in this blog post but surely he would do well in the offlane support role?
This post could be resumed to one word: NO
"получается получить"
ok
tomstone on cliff
???
PROFIT!
It's impossible to recover by farming from a bad laning stage with Undying decay, so the pick would be a huge gamble if teammates can play around the aggressive style or not. If they could it would payoff well, but if they can't, the pick becomes a total dipshit. An underfarmed Undying in late game is totally useless.
Decay is one hell of a skill! And spamming it makes it impossible to stay on the lane. And you need to get levels to spam it, the cooldown gets shorter quite well... The problem with this hero is that basically none of the general metrics really show his effect at all. He doesn't do hero damage, he is not good at hitting towers and he is an average healer, but his effect in the game is massive.
Undying 5 broken against strenght heros
This hero is cancer if you don't know that his tomb can easily be destroyed by illusions
Has any one tried to go meme hammer On pos3 dirge? Able to farm waves/push towers, I haven’t tried it myself yet however
Your TI9 predict sucks
I think if icefrog reworks his aghs then undying might have a big impact on late game, if done right, that is
Decent lane dominating pos 5 support but his earyl game impact realy depends on save lance carry
With undying you must play him in aggressive manner as early as possible. If not, the hero will suffer from the ability to gain more items coming from mid to late game
Undying might be a good candidate for perma-steal, similar to slark or silencer. Maybe a movement speed buff too? He isn't slow but he isn't fast either. Really though, my biggest problem with the hero is how despite being able to create good opportunities, he always feels like he needs conditions to be just right. You gotta manage that lane well without draining your mana pool too far, and there have to be enough targets for soul rip, and you have to make sure there is a stun ready to go blah blah blah he just has a lot of caveats but not necessarily any 100% reliable spells. It's hard to complain about too much since you still can get everything to work once you get the hang of it, but it never *doesn't* feel like walking a tightrope while someone is sawing at one end, even when it's going fairly decent.
Ващет гор в доте не много, а деревья томба ломает, а ульта не позволяет зомби нормально танковать. Поэтому лучшая позиция для зомби это 3: фарм позволяет выфармить аганим с которым действительно можно врубить ульту и пойти танковать в замесе
1k+ игр на нем,макшу дикей и соул рип, томбу беру чтобы просто была, играть через томбу такоооое,(начинайте поливать говном) мне нравится делать импакт в замесе через спеллы,а не просто поставил камень и смотришь, да в начале игры это сильно, но мне скучно. Попробуйте играть через 1.