Help me pls mr.lizard

Keeping in mind this is for situations where you are the guy whose pick has to counter the invoker, and that you don't have to counter the enemy mid with every single position...

midlane: templar, nyx, death prophet are three piss easy matchups. clinkz and sniper aren't bad either in the right circumstances. (don't pick them when the other team is stronger early, they'll be poised to gank mid) batrider is brilliant if you know how to manage tower aggro and have good map awareness when you dive.

there are more matchups you're already aware of, but AVOID most of them. traditionally decent matchups like viper, windranger, qop, tinker, PA, lina and storm spirit... at least for now. even though they should spank invoker, they either can't due to invoker balance/style or they have other weaknesses in the meta in addition to the rule of thumb which goes for all mids right now, which is this: winning a lane does not mean you carry the game.

pugna, skywrath, and puck, are highly situational but they will do the job of keeping invoker from snowballing out of control in the right circumstances. they all have different niches which might not actually pan out in the game at hand and they are readily countered... if you don't handle them well, they're food.

i feel that weaver is a rare free radical in the meta right now, very underrated and he can be played almost anywhere on the map, although if teammates won't pool sentries for him, your weaver won't have a good time laning against invoker.

offlane: earth spirit is a powerful hero, if you're ready to get to know him. Way more effective than any hero farming an orchid in most cases. faceless void is the new goldenboy, make sure to put one point in timelock, but after that you want to max your Q and your W and spam them as much as you can while building up your strength. the new W is extra bad for invoker. nyx again, but with added assurance that this won't be anything even close to a deathball push game. legion commander is one of the riskier picks, but she has great lockdown for invoker, and she's strong against summons and illusion carries, so she's able to handle all sorts of situations which are otherwise hard to deal with in disorganized pubs.

carry: spectre, lifestealer, naga. It's hard to say whether your carry should address invoker directly, but these heroes are able to get around him even if he has the advantage and get fat anyways. juggernaut is a panic option if you're afraid you might wind up laning alone. if you play slark just ask yourself 'what would bananaslamjamma do in this situation'

jungle: chen or d00m you should have a good time if you can play ganker junglers. I'm otherwise biased against jungling.

support: silencer, rubick if you're feeling it, disruptor, shadow demon, oracle (oracle can save a core by making them magic immune, purge deafening blast, etc.)

roamer: mirana, bounty, bara. pretty much all the standard roamers.

wherever they fit on the map: If you are good at lone druid, prophet or magnus and you have space for them, these heroes have tools to deal with an invoker's style of play, and might turn the game around. They're about as 'immune' to invoker as one can get, but they aren't casual picks and require some experience.

When all else fails, pick the pubstompers: zeus, abaddon, spectre, medusa, omniknight, etc. even though invoker may technically have an advantage over you, there's nothing which says everyone on the other team will play their hand perfectly and you might not have to worry about invoker too much.

/r/DotA2 Thread