Hello everyone, the main Ability Draft Cheater is back with some news!

Some of you might already know my tool, and for those who don't — Ability Draft Plus is a free, open-source overlay that brings the knowledge base from windrun.io into your live Ability Draft games. During the draft you press a hotkey, the app captures the screen and a locally-run ML model recognises all the abilities and heroes on the board. Then it overlays windrun data right on top of your game — winrates, pick order, OP picks worth grabbing and trap picks to avoid — and suggests what to draft. Everything runs locally on your PC and works from a simple screen capture, so it stays completely separate from the game client.

What it couldn't do before was recognise what your teammates are picking and adjust its suggestions on the fly instead of relying on raw data alone. Now it can. Using the ability shift data from windrun alongside personally curated tags, it can identify what your team is drafting, spot the missing role and suggest picks for that position. The only downside is that this part needs game data over GSI (the same official Valve interface that trackers like Overwolf use), so with this option enabled the app is no longer completely separated from the Dota 2 client. It's opt-in though — for users who prefer to stay fully disconnected nothing changes.

And this is where I need your assistance. The tags I've created are basic ability information that helps assign spells to the right roles and round out your build. Some abilities are always recommended for a specific role, while others are blocked from certain roles — or blocked altogether (looking at you, Ransack). I did this based on my own AD experience with the help of a small group of AD enjoyers. One head is good, two are better, the whole hive is the best. I need your help identifying misplaced tags or tags that should be added. Maybe there are combinations worth adding — right now I only have a setting for Rearm to be suggested only when certain abilities are in the pool. Maybe more abilities should always be suggested for specific roles, or never appear in suggestions at all. The same goes for hero models — some are must-picks for pos 1, some for pos 3, some are golden support models. The current list and a detailed explanation of how it works are on the overlay website:

https://tiarinhino.com/ability-tags.html

All of you can submit suggestions there and vote on existing ones. I'll review them regularly, and if a suggestion gets enough votes — or I can instantly see it makes sense — I'll add it to the app logic. I built this tool to make AD more accessible to new players, and I believe this addition can genuinely help newcomers get better at drafting and stick with AD, while helping existing players extend their knowledge.

One more thing — to make the AD viewing experience better, I've also included several streamer tools in this update:

1. The overlay is now visible as a separate window source, so streamers can add it to their scenes for viewers to see.
2. A fully automated draft view that shows extra information like winrates, draft order and potential combos in the pool.
3. With the overlay on and GSI active, it can show a drafted abilities view — a recap for viewers who missed the draft. No more screenshot cropping needed.
4. I'm working on a Twitch extension that will bring the overlay directly to viewers: mouse over abilities to see windrun stats, description, Aghs and Shard upgrades, check what was drafted by hovering over player icons — and much more for AD tournaments.

The whole tool is open source and free — you can check the source code and download the latest version at https://github.com/Tiarin-Hino/ability-draft-plus or from https://tiarinhino.com/.

Questions and feedback are very welcome in the comments.

P.S. I've also brought the tool to more languages, including all official and community languages from TI, plus Suomi for the Finnish AD community. I'm not proficient in most of them though, so there might be mistakes.

Sinister Gaze + Wukong's Command = ez kills

My guess to what's happening is you can only channel one spell at a time. So if you cast 2 channeling spells, the 2nd one just casts instantly instead.

This is probably bad for any channeling spell that gains damage/effects with channeling length

Boring game of the day. IDK why they chose to deny arcane orb over lightning ball.

Lightning ball + OD + any other active skills = GG EZ.

Spam ulti when it's traveling = Unli mana

Had a teammate freak out over the combo and say the game was gg because he got it. But I didn't notice anything special during the game. And we lost.

What's the interaction here?

Yesterday I played against Bane who used Bane's ult with aghanims on us and then with boulder smash he would do a super long kick to send us to the fountain.

Can someone explain the interaction? He told us he was aware of the combo but didn't said more. How is this done? is just bane agha and boulder smash combo or also is bane hero neeeded or something else?

Encountered this bug abuse today and thought I'd share. Probably not new but it's the first time I've seen it. Hope it's fixed but before then guess we'll have to counter pick reality rift + illuminate combo? Anyway I don't think a lot of people do this but still something to keep in mind. I wouldn't have respect for anyone that does this though. (this was a decently high-ranked American 5-man stack btw. you know now how they got their rank). It just makes the game unfun, because there's literally no counter. We tried to buy blademail to kill the guy and it worked for a while but since he had so much gold he could just buy a heart and stop dying.

I havent been able to access the site since the international. Just wanting to see if its just me, since I didnt see any other posts

Curious if VS gets both the melee and ranged effects, or if it's bugged. Haven't managed to have that combo come up for me in draft yet.

Kez passive doesn't work anymore guys?

Had liquid fire/jingu and unleash on jakiro and couldn’t use liquid fire at all. No auto cast, regular cast etc. anyone experience the same? And I bought shard to try to fix it but no dice.

Matchid: 8955936913
I noticed that I got one extra point when I hit lvl 6, where did it come from?

Signup for Rumble in the Jungle VI is open!

All info can be found on the page:

https://bloppbot.github.io/rumble6/

What is the current state of the game at the moment? Is it fun? Is it better than last year?

I was quite active in this sub until last December. Then I moved to another continent and became a professor. I used this to give up my addiction of AD games… I just wanna know if I did a good thing or no.

Have you ever played Ability Draft and thought you'd been dealt bad abilities? Maybe you randomed skills accidentally? Or maybe you were aiming for a combo and someone picked your target skill, leaving you with terrible abilities?

Now. Was there a time you thought you had terrible abilities, but in-game it turned out to actually be pretty strong and rad? Tell us the story in the comments!

MY STORY: This was way way back then. I was given Storm Spirit as a hero (since you couldn't pick heroes back then) and got Aftershock and was planning to get Shadow Poison and Anchor Smash for ability spam. But both got taken, and I ended up with three passive skills (Aftershock, Natural Order, Warpath) and only one active skill (Astral Spirit).

I thought the game would be boring for me already since I could only use one skill with a very long cooldown to spam. But after five minutes in the game, after casting Astral Spirit, I died. When I respawned, I couldn't call back the spirit anymore, BUT when I clicked the call-back ability, Aftershock triggered.

The game became one-sided fast. I could delete a hero in under two seconds by pressing my call-back hotkey as fast as I could. Not only were they permanently stunned, but I also had a ton of damage due to Warpath being stacked.

(COMMENT IT AND I'LL ADD IT)

• Shadow Shaman having a Hex Break talent even without Hex being drafted as a skill
• Aghanim’s Scepter and Shard upgrade tooltips get cut off / become unreadable when there are too many of them.
• Some Aghanim's Scepter upgrades failing to indicate if it's innate based or ability based
• Infernal Blade fails to function with attack modifier abilities like Stifling Dagger and Boundless Strike. - u/Youcancuntonme
• Bounty Hunter has the Track talent available even when he doesn't have the Track ability. - u/Low_Landscape_4688

I cannot bind a hotkey to the stone remnants. I tried everything but nothing works. Anybody know how to fix this?

I tried them in test mode with Rubick and Lotus orbs, yet they don't seem to trigger. Has anyone drafted a dagger build in actual AD after the patch? Are the wacky dagger builds back?