Talk:Karthus/@comment-9132387-20140708124011/@comment-10428734-20140715125246

Because in DotA you can:


 * Buy a Pipe of Insight (30% magic damage reduction for yourself and 400 spell damage shield for your entire team) and make his ult virtuallly useless.


 * Buy a BKB and be totally immune to anything he can do for up to 10 seconds.


 * Abuse the fact that he is super squishy and has absolutely no innate CC or mobility to gank him over and over and over again. (Requires decent supports though)


 * Play Huskar (a gap closer that slows and up to 98% free magic damage reduction when he is low) and kill him every time you see him.


 * Play Doom and ult him. No spells for 15 seconds. Easy kill. Hue hue hue.


 * In pubs: Most Zeus will (at least try to, since they lose gold every time you kill them) go straight double-ult-bot "carry" build (Agh+Refresher), ignoring utility/survability items like Blink/Force/Ghost/Hex. They will not be very useful late game (the passive % health damage upon spell casts is the only part of his kit that scales).


 * In organized play: Zeus has no Karth passive, so if you lock him down before he can ult, he won't do anything. With the amount of CC and burst damage in DotA, focusing an enemy before they can even cast a spell is fairly common for an organized team.

Zeus (like any magic damage dealer) needs to make plays before the enemies have their Pipe/BKB online. This means that he has to gank and get kills to snowball and slow down his enemies' BKB timing. However, there are much better/safer gankers available (QoP, TA, Puck...).