How to counter Earth Spirit

Question

I would like to know which heroes, items and gameplay decisions counter Earth Spirit

As far as i am concerned good counter are silence and Disruptor but since Earth Spirit can silence himself he counters Disruptor too

Answer 1

Earth Spirits (which I'm going to call ES in this post) is in the current meta game one of the strongest hero. However he suffers some weaknesses that can be exploited to your advantage and help you deal with him.

• ES is a "skillshots" based hero : Both Boulder Smash and Rolling Boulder require good positioning and good aiming skills. When facing an ES that you feel want to initiate, imagine you are playing versus a Pudge or a Mirana so you wont get silenced by the Smash or initiated on with the Boulder. Low skilled ES' players tend to spam their remnant making their initation very limited and quite obvious. High skilled players of ES tend to keep their remnants for teamfight. If you are familiar with keeping timing for roshan or big ultimate (Ravage, Black Hole, Reverse Polarity etc.), try to keep count of the ES' remnants aswell. Those things have a 25 sec cd for 1 restock which makes ES after a teamfight quite useless.

• His ult deals a lot of damage if not taken seriously. Its kind of a mix between Lich's ult (which spreads between heroes) and Venomancer's ult which deals a incredible amount of damage over time. Once magnetize has been casted, have your bkb ready and spread like you would spread versus Chainfrost.

• When considering fighting an ES, remember that with magnetic grip and a remnant, he's got kind of an instant AOE Roar (BeastMaster). However the timing of the spells allow a really small margin for error when pulling a combo off (THe most common Being : Stun > Rolling Boulder > Smash back). If he hesistates too long to Boulder into you, you can avoid it. Especially in early game when cooldowns are high and stuns' durations low. You can even bait a Rolling Boulder in order to force him to get out of position and kill him.

• Rolling Boulder stop on collision : to avoid him escaping that way, stand in his way.

• As you mentioned silences and all sort of insta disables helps a lot (Orchid and Hex to be agressive and a defensive Euls/Forcestaff will help you dodge a lots of spells). On the same note, any mana bruning spells or diffusal blades on your carry can really kill his gameplay.

• ES is more of a teamfight controller (like clockwerk), if he manages to spread the teamfight in several direction : just ditch and limit the loss. If the fight spread and you try to gather, you're likely to get wiped since his cooldown allows him to control your team very efficiently.

If ES is picked against you, consider counter-picking : Nyx (manaburn + carapace), lion (mana drain + 2 disable), Rhasta (2 strong disables), pugna (ward), silencer (mana draining spell + global silence) or KOTL (Manaleak before Rolling boulder). In any case a Pipe is strongly recommended to fight in his ult and a mek on top of it allows you to negate almost all the damage if you learn to position correctly.