Sand King + Venomancer

Why this works

Pairing these two often leaves your team feeling short on the resources needed to close out a game. Sand King and Venomancer both specialize in large-scale, area-of-effect damage over time. After a Burrowstrike initiation into an Epicenter, the ideal follow-up is burst damage to eliminate a key hero. Venomancer instead adds more slows and damage over time with Poison Nova, which is a similar effect. This redundancy means enemies frequently survive the initial combo, allowing them to disengage or turn the fight around.

This dynamic can put both heroes in an awkward spot. Sand King wants to hit his Blink Dagger timing and start making aggressive plays, but Venomancer's game plan is often slower, focused on pushing out lanes with Plague Wards. In teamfights, they can apply immense pressure to an entire enemy lineup, but without a source of concentrated damage, they struggle to secure the actual kills needed to win. Your team ends up doing a lot of damage but has trouble finishing the job, letting opponents escape.