Welcome ladies and gentlemen to my very first guide that does not revolve on a certain hero and his playstyle but rather on the general mindset that you should put in your game to become a better Dota player. As we all know 99% of our casual Dota players are safelane carries, and if they are not, well they go jungle with Legion Commander. Or they overpick mid and you're forced to play position 4 Storm Spirit (I'm pretty sure we've all been through these kind of things). In my opinion, the by far worst thing in Dota are players not playing their role as it is supposed to be played. I will exactly show you why this is the case and what to do to improve your mindset on how to approach the game according to what you want to do in every single game anyways.
What is your motivation to play Dota?
Obviously, Dota 2 is a highly complex game that does require a lot of background knowledge on mechanics, the map, items and heroes. Regardless though people have a certain playstyle no matter what they play. As you might know from first person shooters, there's basically two types of players: The Camper and the Leroy Jenkins. Dota almost exactly translates these two types of players into the Farmer and the Killer. You will recognize people playing Dota usually running around trying to kill people (which is kinda good) or actually trying to win the game by taking objectives and pushing towers (which is definitely good). I don't want to directly incline towards the second because you will obviously need both types of players to win a game of Dota. So firstly, you will have to make up your mind and realize what your own playstyle is about. Are you the kind of player trying to always get kills, creating space and giving your lanes a headstart? Or are you rather the kind of player trying to maximize your effort by constantly forcing the enemy to spread out and just basically being more efficient with what is available on the entire map?
> If you are constantly searching for opportunities to kill or teamfight, you should play support or utility: Try to count how many Anti-Mages with Brown Boots and Battle Fury you had in your games going like "I'm strong now, let's go kill bitches!" and then instantly dying to two supports because there's just no way an Anti-Mage can actually contribute something more than a Mana Void 15 minutes into the game. Basically, they get a great start, maybe grabbing one or two kills on the enemy offlaner and then instantly feeding away that edge your team created. This is a classic sign of a player that has the mindset of a support or utility role but plays carry every fucking game and is highly likely to throw away a ton of matches by repeatingly going for the wrong decisions. If you want to constantly kill heroes, this is absolutely fine and you should definitely play a lot of roaming support or offlane to emphasize your mindset by picking heroes accordingly. Just imagine how easy it is to kill a ton of heroes by just picking Lion and fingering down enemy heroes every once in a while. It really is not difficult if you have some experience in positioning and know when you have to be where. It is though extremely hard to be that aggressive if you pick Medusa because before you get four items you cannot contribute to more than defending towers and farming, farming, farming. Furthermore, you have to get rid of the idea that supports do not win games. If you want to see why supports win games, just watch the best support duos in the world (like Fly and Crit- on OG or Fy and Fenrir when they used to play together for Vici Gaming). The fact players like Miracle- or Arteezy shine is not only because they belong to the best in the game but to the fact their supports set them up to win a game. If you imprint the idea of picking heroes that fit your mindset you will win a lot more games. Obviously, the "Killer" mindset is great for roaming, supporting, and going offlane as these roles are all about outplaying your opponent, setting up good scenarios for your team to abuse and then take big objectives off of that. Also, you can certainly make more high risk - high reward plays without throwing away a game. I believe 60-80% of carry players in the normal and high bracket, even a good amount of very high bracket carry players would do way better by picking heroes like Clockwerk, Bounty Hunter, Vengeful Spirit etc. One of my favourite examples in professional gaming would be Xboct, as I remember him doing a ton of weird things because he has the killer mindset and I always wanted to see him rather play the offlane than safelane.
> If you are constantly trying to force objectives, dodging opponents and maximizing your own efficiency on the map, you should play farming roles: I remember some games where the exact opposite of that Anti-Mage scenario happened as I even caught myself going "My Slark fed three kills within five minutes, fuck that guy I'm going to farm myself now." This is due to my personal mindset of seeing Dota as basically an economy simulator. My idea of Dota is is all about the classic TI3 Alliance playstyle: Kills mean nothing, throne means everything. If I have the chance to trying to not kill a single hero in a game and still win, I will gladly take it. You will always find a player like me pushing out lanes as much as I can creating space and moving around the enemy heroes as they can't group up to push when their buildings are being taken away. Especially pushing out lanes is heavily underrated for carry players because they have the "Killer" mindset and don't care about pushing out lanes to keep their buildings alive. When I play support, a lot of times I will have to tell my teams' farming roles to go push that tower or cut that creepwave to apply pressure on the map distantly. As they always look to help their teammates in a straight engagement or skirmish they lose track of what's really important to do to keep a balance in creep equilibrium and give their teams a huge chunk of gold by getting rid of towers. If you are among the kind of player that I am aswell, you should always pick appropriately to your "Farmer" mindset. Pick heroes like Anti-Mage, Ember Spirit, Spectre, Nature's Prophet or Alchemist. Once you realized that you have the mindset of playing an economy simulator take advantage of it and pick accordingly. The "Farmer" mindset doesn't revolve around killing heroes, it's the exact opposite: You want to maximize your efficiency, play as safe as possible because you know that you will not farm anything while being dead. Every once in a while though you will realize that you have an edge by picking up a major item that helps you contribute in a teamfight or taking a big objective like Roshan or enemy structures. A lot of bad games occur because the player with the "Farmer" mindset is getting overpicked by his teammate that doesn't know how to play as a farming role and then says something like "I'm not gonna solo support here". If you want to improve on how to emphasize your farming playstyle you should definitely watch replays of players like AdmiralBulldog or Hao as these players tend to always be amongst the top 3 networth while you don't see them contributing a lot for kills. I do want to mention though, that the "Farmer" mindset does include a lot of a lane-supports' or junglers' playstyle. Professionals like Aui_2000 or Puppey are great examples of the "greedy" support player trying to maximize efficiency by playing safely, picking greedily and bruteforcing objectives.
> If you don't really feel like a good killer or farmer but have a lot of fun playing with your opponents and moving them through the map: I do want to point out that there is a pseudo-type of player that suites best to what I'd call the "Jester" mindset. These players bring a lot of value to their team not by being most efficient or killing a lot of heroes rather than just having fun playing with their opponents. They are good at triggering (tilting) their opponents, making three enemy heroes chase them for what feels like eternity and then just teleporting out of trouble. They get intel by putting themselves in the spotlight tanking the gank, revealing Smoke of Deceit and denying creeps to the enemy farmer. I'd say that offlane and midlane mostly fit this kind of playstyle and certainly does roaming around. If you want to improve on just being a nuisance to your opponents, play heroes like Pudge, Nyx Assassin or even Puck. You should almost certainly have a look into how players like Iceiceice, Pieliedie or Synderen approach the game as they bring a lot of value to their team by dying a lot (which sounds absurd but if done correctly can win you games).
Finding the right balance
Obviously, no human being will fit exactly into one category or type of person or player. Nevertheless most players have a tendency to what they like to do mostly and finding the right balance on what your playstyle actually is opens up for which heroes suit you the best. For example, heroes like Gyrocopter, Slark or Templar Assassin are definitely considered as farming roles, but they still want to get active on the map a lot to win games (usually when they get their ultimate or e.g. when Lanaya gets her Blink Dagger). So if you like to play creeps aswell as enemy heroes, go play heroes that bring in some tempo control aspect like the ones mentioned. If you don't ever feel like you want to fight at all, play Medusa or Naga Siren. If you feel like you're leaning mostly towards the killer mindset but still like to be efficient, go play Chen, Windranger or Timbersaw as these heroes want to get items but mostly like to have an impact on skirmishes. Once you've actually thought about how you approach the game you will likely pick heroes that suit your personal playstyle and having over a hundred heroes in the game you can be sure that you will find at least one or two of those in most positions available. For example, I do play every role once in a while - from position 1 to 5 - nevertheless I do have a tendency to play safelane and mid more often. I also happened to play a lot more position 3 lately as patch changes could favour offlane heroes that suit my playstyle.
If you want to add anything or have questions, feel free to comment to this post!
Hi there, it's me, mightymouse! I'm a passionate dota 2 player and have just recently started to write guides for dota 2. This blog will give newbies basic ideas on how to approach the game.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Monday, June 27, 2016
Hero guide: Furion, the Nature's Prophet
Welcome ladies and gentlemen to my third hero guide. As three is my favourite number, I thought I'd make a guide to my favourite and most-played hero in dota: Furion, the Nature's Prophet. As always, a hero guide with preferred item and skill builds is available following the link.
Hero general information:
Furion is a ranged intelligence hero and likely to be the best split-pusher and amongst the best gankers in dota overall. His skillset makes him one of the best multi-dimensional heroes because dependant on his opponents he will just pickup whatever item he needs for the matchup to succeed. Nature's Prophet is a real lane dominator because of his treants and long range right clicks that help him crush dual lanes. He works best as an offlaner and it is his most-played position, but he can work from the jungle and I've even seen him being played as a safelane or midlane every once in a while - but I only suggest playing him as position 3 and if you're forced to, fall back to the jungle. Since the hero fits several different playstyles, I will offer two different early game gameplans on how to approach the offlane and the greedy jungle position 4.
Favourable / unfavourable matchups:
Favourable matchups:
vs Luna: Luna is a great hero to play against since your range is superior to hers', so you can easily work through her regeneration and get a lot of farm. Be aware that Luna has potential to setup kills because of Lucent Beam, so if any support rotates in from the sidelines you're likely to die. Again, treants keeping up vision help you avoid these rotations. Also, if Luna gets her ultimate online you can always cast treants to soak up the Eclipse damage and just run away or even catch her for a turnover.
vs Slark: Slark is another weak laner, but like a Spectre becomes really scary as the game progresses. Use your early advantage to harass him in lane, since his level 6 turns the tide into his favour. He is really squishy in the early stages and you're likely to keep him from farming for almost 8-10 minutes delaying his first item by a lot, maybe even forcing him to buy a Midas just to keep himself viable. Again, it is really important to notice where supports are since Nature's Prophet is really squishy and one single pounce onto you can setup for a kill. As the game progresses, scouting an area with treants before going to farm there becomes more and more important as Slark can pop you really fast if you don't pay attention. Getting lockdown for him (Orchid Malevolence into Bloodthorn or picking up a Scythe of Vyse) will help your team dealing with him, but be sure to not cast it into the Dark Pact as it negates the debuffs applied onto him.
vs Sven: Peeeeduuur, they sprouted me again! One of my favourite memes really describes the relationship between Sven and Nature's Prophet. Since Sven has an inbuilt cleave he will never buy a Battle Fury to chop through trees when he gets sprouted. He might have a Quelling Blade in the laning stage and has a stun aswell, so just make sure to use your advantage as a ranged hero and chip him a little. You cannot really kill him because he can cleave your treants (don't feed treants!) and Warcry makes him insanely tanky, but you can usually farm, work through the supports' regeneration and keep an eye on other lanes to gank onto. Sprout is one of the best late game counters against Sven because as mentioned, he can't chop treants and you can negate a full 10 second Black King Bar by basically just sprouting him (Sprout cannot be cast onto a hero while BKB'd, but you can manually trap people nevertheless). If Sven isn't able to close the gap and hit, there's no way your team gets killed by him.
50/50 matchups:
vs Terrorblade: Terrorblade is a hero that can basically only die from burst damage, since he's starting the game with 10 base armor making it impossible for you to kill him off at all, as Furion does not provide that burst. It's not worth touching him, but keeping the supports busy with your treants gives you free reign to farm creeps and get a fast level 6 to impact the game. Be aware that Reflection has a higher radius than your attack range, so getting caught by the slow easily sets up for a kill onto you. Always have your teleportation or a teleport scroll at the ready to head back to your offlane tower and deal with the Metamorphosis push. As usual, picking up a Mjollnir does help a lot to deal with illusion-based heroes like Terrorblade and gives you a slight edge when it comes to splitpushing, so take advantage of being able to pressure two lanes at once when Terrorblade's team groups up for pushing towers with Metamorphosis.
vs Sniper: Watching this matchup can be very interesting as both heroes have ways to deal with each other. Sniper can keep vision when you hide inside your Sprout by casting his Shrapnel, but you can always jump behind enemy lines in a fight and catch Sniper by surprise. Sniper can cancel you teleporting out because of Headshot's ministun, but you can sprout him making him unable to chase you down since he's unlikely to grab a Quelling Blade against the trees. He does hit harder and further than you can, but in the laning stage treants do hurt him quite a lot and you can likely kill him if unprotected. However, one support with a stun can be enough to counter any aggression from you. Sniper might be one of the very few heroes to consider getting a Dagon against. Relying on standing far away from anyone makes him susceptible to just jumping onto him, casting Wraith of Nature and zapping him down to 0 with your Dagon (if you go for Dagon, definitely skip Midas since a Dagon's value does fall off quite heavily on Furion if acquired too late).
vs Ember Spirit: People think this matchup heavily favours Ember Spirit, but that's just partially true. In the laning stage, Ember does have ways to deal with you: He always buys a Battle Fury sooner or later, so he will have a Quelling Blade to deal with Sprout. Also, his heavy burst with Searing Chains and especially Flame Guard does hurt you a lot - and Nature's Prophet has no way to deal with Magic Damage. Treants might help you escape though by soaking up the Searing Chains with some luck in RNG, however you can never go aggressive on him by your own. Later on Ember Spirit and Nature's Prophet just battle out their own little splitpush game. Be aware to keep your treants far away from the creep waves as Ember Spirit is just gonna cleave through them with Battle Fury and earn extra gold to get his items up faster (even before Battle Fury his Flame Guard lets him easily kill off treants for extra cash). Nevertheless, Ember's natural advantage does get negated because you will have to pick up an Orchid Malevolence and later on a Scythe of Vyse to kite and kill him. During the mid and late game it basically comes down to who's getting the jump on whom. If Ember catches you off-guard you just die, if you catch him off-guard he'll likely die aswell. Positioning and map awareness are your best friends in this matchup.
Unfavourable matchups:
vs Timbersaw: Furion's best friends are trees, and guess what - Timbersaw cuts trees. You don't ever wanna play this matchup if you can avoid it, since Timbersaw can quickly burst you down and you can't. Even with lockdown you're just gonna stack up his Reactive Armor making it impossible to right-click him down. Timbersaw wins the matchup in every stage of the game and only heavy outplay can turn the tide into your favour if at all. Again, do not feed your treants since Timbersaw can slice them down by hitting two buttons. Silver Edge might be useful for negating his passive or to escape from him. Also Orchid Malevolence can give you a chance to escape Timbersaw. Don't ever try to manfight him, just try to splitpush by sneaking through the map and keeping your opponents moving from lane to lane.
vs Spirit Breaker: Spirit Breaker is a high value pick against splitpush in general, but especially against Nature's Prophet. His charge doesn't care about Sprout if it's already cast as he just sprints through trees. When Spirit Breaker is level 6 he can burst you down by basically just charging into you and casting an ultimate afterwards. You will basically never have a chance to jump away so your only chance to keep up the splitpush is by farming the jungle or ancient area and sending out trees to push waves with yourself staying off the map at all stages of the game. There are a few itemizations that work really good against Spirit Breaker though, which are Guardian Greaves, Blademail and Linken's Sphere. Check your teams' items and go for whatever of those three items is available for you. Also, as soon as you have at least one damage item plus a Scythe of Vyse you do have ways to kill him off, but make sure to bring friends to help you out. In the very late stages of the game Nature's Prophet does have a slight edge because he just scales way harder than the space cow. Just stay off the map for as long as possible and stop him from snowballing by killing you over and over again and your team is gonna be fine.
vs Broodmother: Broodmother is really good against Nature's Prophet, especially in the laning phase and when she has a better early game than you have. If you try to escape from her she will drop a web and just walk through trees. A good Broodmother player will always pick up that Orchid Malevolence to kill you off easily. Mjollnir is a great item against the broodlings. Also, Broodmother is a very stationary hero that doesn't really want to leave her lane at all. How about you just avoid her lane completely and farm the ancient area until you feel comfortable to push and fight with your team. Furion does have that global teleportation to help his teammates whilst Broodmother does not. Use your mobility against her!
vs Riki/Bounty Hunter/Clinkz: Invisible heroes are a huge problem for splitpushers since they can always catch you off-guard. Jungling against Riki (or the others mentioned) is very risky, so try to avoid it in general. If you have to face this matchup, make sure to stay off the map and close to your towers, always have detection at the ready and play as safe as possible. Giving them one kill makes it even easier to get the next one, so if you can avoid their snowball you're usually fine. Against invisible heroes your playstyle has to change since you can't just go on a lane by yourself and splitpush, so just gather your teammates and push together - because Riki, Bounty Hunter aswell as Clinkz do not work best against five man pushes (especially early in the game, when Furion is strongest). Take advantage of that fact and get your team grouped to push the Tier 1 towers early and gain gold stacking up your teams' momentum. Furthermore, going for Necronomicon as your first item is huge in this matchup as Necronomicon 3 does provide True Sight and heavier push potential - usually it's a must-buy for this scenario. Again, if you go for Necronomicon first just skip the Midas you'd usually get.
Gameplan:
Nature's Prophet is a fast-paced push hero that wants to win the game in the first 30 minutes. He needs to take advantage of his push potential to take fast towers and gain map control to secure Roshan. If you don't claim at least one set of barracks before your opponents get their first major item it becomes way harder to push highground. Getting wiped in a single fight can completely turn the tide into your opponents' favour and force you into splitpushing to even stay in the game.
> Playing the offlane: Your aim in the laning stage is to manipulate the creep equilibrium with your treants to create double creep waves that will push into your tower so you can claim free experience safely and possibly also work through a lot of regeneration on the enemy safelane by using that extra damage provided by your treants. Therefore, stay in the fountain and cast treants at ca. 12 seconds before the 0:00 mark since having three units helps you get off a superb block. Once you reach your Tier 1 tower you have Nature's Call off cooldown to cast it again. Starting the lane with four treants can completely shutdown any enemy aggression. You don't need a lane ward at all since you can always send a treant to block the pull camps. If you can't avoid a creep pull you don't care at all. Just fall back to your secret shop and farm that camp instead. Nature's Prophet can always fall back to this option and get a fast level 6 and Hand of Midas online without ever entering a lane. Since you have this option available dying in the laning stage is an absolute no-go. As soon as you see a creep wave approaching your tower you just teleport back to it and push it back out. Your aim is to always go back to the tower to prevent it from being taken quickly. Oftentimes I will keep my Tier 1 tower up to 20-25 minutes into the game (which is really useful on Dire since they have the Roshan advantage) if my enemy team doesn't force it down. And if they do force it down, you teleport to your own safelane and take their tower as a trade. When it comes to items, you usually want to start off with Boots, a Clarity and a set of tangoes or you go for a Wind Lace alongside a Blight Stone and any regeneration affordable to contest the enemy safelane. If you're forced to stay back against a trilane, anticipate it properly by checking the enemy lineup and grab an Iron Talon to jungle faster.
> Playing from the jungle: Unlike the offlane (where you usually play very stationary around the enemy safelane and your ancient area) playing from the jungle is way harder to play properly. Many Furion's just sit there for 20 minutes not providing any help for their team and when asked will answer with their usual phrase "I will help when I'm ready". YOU'RE THE BEST LEVEL 2 GANKER IN THE GAME SO JUST FREAKING HELP YOUR GODDAMN TEAM!!! When the enemy midlaner is grabbing a bottle (only Huskar, Invoker and Outworld Devourer usually don't get one) you start the game by buying one ward, one teleport scroll, a clarity and some stats. Cast treants at 15 seconds before the 0:00 mark and start off the jungle with four treants to clear the camp and get level 2 before 1 minute into the game. Always check the enemy midlaners' items to anticipate his bottle timing. As you have your global teleportation up, teleport onto the enemy Tier 2 tower area. There is a stairway to use the highground from: Place your ward right there and wait for the courier. As it comes to deliver the bottle, snipe the courier, get out of vision and use the teleport scroll to teleport back to the fountain. The ward can oftentimes provide another courier snipe, but getting it once usually wins your midlane by delaying the opponents' bottle by default. Afterwards. you will want to keep farming the jungle for your boots and Hand of Midas (or rarely Dagon or Necronomicon as mentioned before). While doing so, just keep watching every lane to anticipate where to get involved for kills. Usually, you will be able to setup or help a kill once you get your level 4 and first level in Sprout. If possible aim for the enemy midlaner or offlaner as it sets up for easy damage onto those Tier 1 towers. It's likely to be able to push the enemy offlane tower at 8 minutes into the game and just keep rolling from that point.
> Pushing with or without the team: After the laning stage you're ready to go. You'll have level 6 and your ultimate up, so when to use it? Early on, you always want to use your ultimate for engagements. Never just pop it to farm as it pushes creep waves when your safelaner wants to farm under his tower and also denies last hits to your team when they desperately need their first item to get online. When you see an engagement, always hit your ultimate on the opposite site of the map as the bounces' damage is increasing up until the last one. Hitting the ultimate on bottom when there's an engagement top usually ensures huge damage output with the last bounces. When your team gets such an advantageous fight, go push the tower with your friends. Just keep farming and wait for a good engagement to take to clear all outer towers just like said. Taking out 2-3 heroes usually is more than enough to push a tower and safely retreat. Make sure to also not take your teams' farm in your own jungle or by pushing lanes that could safely be farmed by your hard carry. Instead go to your ancient area and clear these camps instead. Scout the enemy jungle using your treants to take advantage of available farming spots within your enemies' side of the map. This will not only guarantee farm on your teams' core heroes but also starve out the opponents'. Sometimes, your team will have a harder time to stay in the game and is gonna be pressured into your own side of the map. That's when Furion wants to splitpush instead of grouping up for towers. Send treants to scout the enemy jungle and stay off the map farming the enemies' jungle camps while pushing with your zoo. As soon as you see the enemy team pressure your side of the map you can always fall back to splitpushing your offlane to force them back. Sometimes, your team can capitalize on the enemy retreating and get exit kills enabling an easy tower push. Also, don't forget to send a creep to Roshan every once in a while to scout what's going on there and make use of Furion's strong Roshan killing potential. If your team gets an Aegis, it usually ends up in getting a set of barracks.
> Your team didn't break highground, welcome to split push hell: If you have to read this part of the guide - and yes you will encounter several matches when your team doesn't close the game - you will have to go for the good ol' Alliance rat style play. Mostly you will have to slightly adjust but play the same game that I have mentioned in the passage before. The main difference is that you will not push with your team anymore as you couldn't close the game on a five man push and at that point (if you don't have something like a Spectre to just go and try again) will have to go for split push only. Disrupt the enemy teams' movements with yourself pushing the offlane over and over again. If you don't feel safe, just send your trees and farm out of sight. If you see a lot of heroes on the map and feel safe go push with your hero to be that little bit faster, but fall back off the map quickly. As you reach your six slots, you can enforce your push power by getting your own courier and equipping it with a Necronomicon 3 and Manta Style (which you usually wouldn't get most of the games). Park it somewhere around the Tinker ward spots and hide it within the trees. As you see a chance to push heavily you swap your items to cast the Necronomicons aswell as Manta illusions and send them into the enemy base. It's a little gimmicky, but your teammates can use Boots of Travel (Level 2) to jump in and go for a base race. The hero generally gives you lots of options with this. Most importantly though you will have to focus on two things in the late game: Buy wards and get vision out on the spots you want to be able to teleport onto since the game might just end with you being dead. Being alive on Furion is almost equal to not losing in many scenarios. Secondly, keep the enemy team moving! If you reached this late part of the game and missed your timing, you just have to keep the enemy moving to split up and push out lanes avoiding them to group up and get into your base or claim the Aegis. If you follow these steps and make sure to play really safe, you will have a lot of fun late game matches where you can completely outplay enemy teams by basically just good decision making. Don't forget, this hero is in my humble opinion one of the top 5 hardest heroes to play in all of Dota (amongst Chen, Earth Spirit, Invoker and Meepo).
If you have further questions on Furion, the Nature's Prophet feel free to leave comments to this post!
Hero general information:
Furion is a ranged intelligence hero and likely to be the best split-pusher and amongst the best gankers in dota overall. His skillset makes him one of the best multi-dimensional heroes because dependant on his opponents he will just pickup whatever item he needs for the matchup to succeed. Nature's Prophet is a real lane dominator because of his treants and long range right clicks that help him crush dual lanes. He works best as an offlaner and it is his most-played position, but he can work from the jungle and I've even seen him being played as a safelane or midlane every once in a while - but I only suggest playing him as position 3 and if you're forced to, fall back to the jungle. Since the hero fits several different playstyles, I will offer two different early game gameplans on how to approach the offlane and the greedy jungle position 4.
Favourable / unfavourable matchups:
Favourable matchups:
vs Luna: Luna is a great hero to play against since your range is superior to hers', so you can easily work through her regeneration and get a lot of farm. Be aware that Luna has potential to setup kills because of Lucent Beam, so if any support rotates in from the sidelines you're likely to die. Again, treants keeping up vision help you avoid these rotations. Also, if Luna gets her ultimate online you can always cast treants to soak up the Eclipse damage and just run away or even catch her for a turnover.
vs Slark: Slark is another weak laner, but like a Spectre becomes really scary as the game progresses. Use your early advantage to harass him in lane, since his level 6 turns the tide into his favour. He is really squishy in the early stages and you're likely to keep him from farming for almost 8-10 minutes delaying his first item by a lot, maybe even forcing him to buy a Midas just to keep himself viable. Again, it is really important to notice where supports are since Nature's Prophet is really squishy and one single pounce onto you can setup for a kill. As the game progresses, scouting an area with treants before going to farm there becomes more and more important as Slark can pop you really fast if you don't pay attention. Getting lockdown for him (Orchid Malevolence into Bloodthorn or picking up a Scythe of Vyse) will help your team dealing with him, but be sure to not cast it into the Dark Pact as it negates the debuffs applied onto him.
vs Sven: Peeeeduuur, they sprouted me again! One of my favourite memes really describes the relationship between Sven and Nature's Prophet. Since Sven has an inbuilt cleave he will never buy a Battle Fury to chop through trees when he gets sprouted. He might have a Quelling Blade in the laning stage and has a stun aswell, so just make sure to use your advantage as a ranged hero and chip him a little. You cannot really kill him because he can cleave your treants (don't feed treants!) and Warcry makes him insanely tanky, but you can usually farm, work through the supports' regeneration and keep an eye on other lanes to gank onto. Sprout is one of the best late game counters against Sven because as mentioned, he can't chop treants and you can negate a full 10 second Black King Bar by basically just sprouting him (Sprout cannot be cast onto a hero while BKB'd, but you can manually trap people nevertheless). If Sven isn't able to close the gap and hit, there's no way your team gets killed by him.
50/50 matchups:
vs Terrorblade: Terrorblade is a hero that can basically only die from burst damage, since he's starting the game with 10 base armor making it impossible for you to kill him off at all, as Furion does not provide that burst. It's not worth touching him, but keeping the supports busy with your treants gives you free reign to farm creeps and get a fast level 6 to impact the game. Be aware that Reflection has a higher radius than your attack range, so getting caught by the slow easily sets up for a kill onto you. Always have your teleportation or a teleport scroll at the ready to head back to your offlane tower and deal with the Metamorphosis push. As usual, picking up a Mjollnir does help a lot to deal with illusion-based heroes like Terrorblade and gives you a slight edge when it comes to splitpushing, so take advantage of being able to pressure two lanes at once when Terrorblade's team groups up for pushing towers with Metamorphosis.
vs Sniper: Watching this matchup can be very interesting as both heroes have ways to deal with each other. Sniper can keep vision when you hide inside your Sprout by casting his Shrapnel, but you can always jump behind enemy lines in a fight and catch Sniper by surprise. Sniper can cancel you teleporting out because of Headshot's ministun, but you can sprout him making him unable to chase you down since he's unlikely to grab a Quelling Blade against the trees. He does hit harder and further than you can, but in the laning stage treants do hurt him quite a lot and you can likely kill him if unprotected. However, one support with a stun can be enough to counter any aggression from you. Sniper might be one of the very few heroes to consider getting a Dagon against. Relying on standing far away from anyone makes him susceptible to just jumping onto him, casting Wraith of Nature and zapping him down to 0 with your Dagon (if you go for Dagon, definitely skip Midas since a Dagon's value does fall off quite heavily on Furion if acquired too late).
vs Ember Spirit: People think this matchup heavily favours Ember Spirit, but that's just partially true. In the laning stage, Ember does have ways to deal with you: He always buys a Battle Fury sooner or later, so he will have a Quelling Blade to deal with Sprout. Also, his heavy burst with Searing Chains and especially Flame Guard does hurt you a lot - and Nature's Prophet has no way to deal with Magic Damage. Treants might help you escape though by soaking up the Searing Chains with some luck in RNG, however you can never go aggressive on him by your own. Later on Ember Spirit and Nature's Prophet just battle out their own little splitpush game. Be aware to keep your treants far away from the creep waves as Ember Spirit is just gonna cleave through them with Battle Fury and earn extra gold to get his items up faster (even before Battle Fury his Flame Guard lets him easily kill off treants for extra cash). Nevertheless, Ember's natural advantage does get negated because you will have to pick up an Orchid Malevolence and later on a Scythe of Vyse to kite and kill him. During the mid and late game it basically comes down to who's getting the jump on whom. If Ember catches you off-guard you just die, if you catch him off-guard he'll likely die aswell. Positioning and map awareness are your best friends in this matchup.
Unfavourable matchups:
vs Timbersaw: Furion's best friends are trees, and guess what - Timbersaw cuts trees. You don't ever wanna play this matchup if you can avoid it, since Timbersaw can quickly burst you down and you can't. Even with lockdown you're just gonna stack up his Reactive Armor making it impossible to right-click him down. Timbersaw wins the matchup in every stage of the game and only heavy outplay can turn the tide into your favour if at all. Again, do not feed your treants since Timbersaw can slice them down by hitting two buttons. Silver Edge might be useful for negating his passive or to escape from him. Also Orchid Malevolence can give you a chance to escape Timbersaw. Don't ever try to manfight him, just try to splitpush by sneaking through the map and keeping your opponents moving from lane to lane.
vs Spirit Breaker: Spirit Breaker is a high value pick against splitpush in general, but especially against Nature's Prophet. His charge doesn't care about Sprout if it's already cast as he just sprints through trees. When Spirit Breaker is level 6 he can burst you down by basically just charging into you and casting an ultimate afterwards. You will basically never have a chance to jump away so your only chance to keep up the splitpush is by farming the jungle or ancient area and sending out trees to push waves with yourself staying off the map at all stages of the game. There are a few itemizations that work really good against Spirit Breaker though, which are Guardian Greaves, Blademail and Linken's Sphere. Check your teams' items and go for whatever of those three items is available for you. Also, as soon as you have at least one damage item plus a Scythe of Vyse you do have ways to kill him off, but make sure to bring friends to help you out. In the very late stages of the game Nature's Prophet does have a slight edge because he just scales way harder than the space cow. Just stay off the map for as long as possible and stop him from snowballing by killing you over and over again and your team is gonna be fine.
vs Broodmother: Broodmother is really good against Nature's Prophet, especially in the laning phase and when she has a better early game than you have. If you try to escape from her she will drop a web and just walk through trees. A good Broodmother player will always pick up that Orchid Malevolence to kill you off easily. Mjollnir is a great item against the broodlings. Also, Broodmother is a very stationary hero that doesn't really want to leave her lane at all. How about you just avoid her lane completely and farm the ancient area until you feel comfortable to push and fight with your team. Furion does have that global teleportation to help his teammates whilst Broodmother does not. Use your mobility against her!
vs Riki/Bounty Hunter/Clinkz: Invisible heroes are a huge problem for splitpushers since they can always catch you off-guard. Jungling against Riki (or the others mentioned) is very risky, so try to avoid it in general. If you have to face this matchup, make sure to stay off the map and close to your towers, always have detection at the ready and play as safe as possible. Giving them one kill makes it even easier to get the next one, so if you can avoid their snowball you're usually fine. Against invisible heroes your playstyle has to change since you can't just go on a lane by yourself and splitpush, so just gather your teammates and push together - because Riki, Bounty Hunter aswell as Clinkz do not work best against five man pushes (especially early in the game, when Furion is strongest). Take advantage of that fact and get your team grouped to push the Tier 1 towers early and gain gold stacking up your teams' momentum. Furthermore, going for Necronomicon as your first item is huge in this matchup as Necronomicon 3 does provide True Sight and heavier push potential - usually it's a must-buy for this scenario. Again, if you go for Necronomicon first just skip the Midas you'd usually get.
Gameplan:
Nature's Prophet is a fast-paced push hero that wants to win the game in the first 30 minutes. He needs to take advantage of his push potential to take fast towers and gain map control to secure Roshan. If you don't claim at least one set of barracks before your opponents get their first major item it becomes way harder to push highground. Getting wiped in a single fight can completely turn the tide into your opponents' favour and force you into splitpushing to even stay in the game.
> Playing the offlane: Your aim in the laning stage is to manipulate the creep equilibrium with your treants to create double creep waves that will push into your tower so you can claim free experience safely and possibly also work through a lot of regeneration on the enemy safelane by using that extra damage provided by your treants. Therefore, stay in the fountain and cast treants at ca. 12 seconds before the 0:00 mark since having three units helps you get off a superb block. Once you reach your Tier 1 tower you have Nature's Call off cooldown to cast it again. Starting the lane with four treants can completely shutdown any enemy aggression. You don't need a lane ward at all since you can always send a treant to block the pull camps. If you can't avoid a creep pull you don't care at all. Just fall back to your secret shop and farm that camp instead. Nature's Prophet can always fall back to this option and get a fast level 6 and Hand of Midas online without ever entering a lane. Since you have this option available dying in the laning stage is an absolute no-go. As soon as you see a creep wave approaching your tower you just teleport back to it and push it back out. Your aim is to always go back to the tower to prevent it from being taken quickly. Oftentimes I will keep my Tier 1 tower up to 20-25 minutes into the game (which is really useful on Dire since they have the Roshan advantage) if my enemy team doesn't force it down. And if they do force it down, you teleport to your own safelane and take their tower as a trade. When it comes to items, you usually want to start off with Boots, a Clarity and a set of tangoes or you go for a Wind Lace alongside a Blight Stone and any regeneration affordable to contest the enemy safelane. If you're forced to stay back against a trilane, anticipate it properly by checking the enemy lineup and grab an Iron Talon to jungle faster.
> Playing from the jungle: Unlike the offlane (where you usually play very stationary around the enemy safelane and your ancient area) playing from the jungle is way harder to play properly. Many Furion's just sit there for 20 minutes not providing any help for their team and when asked will answer with their usual phrase "I will help when I'm ready". YOU'RE THE BEST LEVEL 2 GANKER IN THE GAME SO JUST FREAKING HELP YOUR GODDAMN TEAM!!! When the enemy midlaner is grabbing a bottle (only Huskar, Invoker and Outworld Devourer usually don't get one) you start the game by buying one ward, one teleport scroll, a clarity and some stats. Cast treants at 15 seconds before the 0:00 mark and start off the jungle with four treants to clear the camp and get level 2 before 1 minute into the game. Always check the enemy midlaners' items to anticipate his bottle timing. As you have your global teleportation up, teleport onto the enemy Tier 2 tower area. There is a stairway to use the highground from: Place your ward right there and wait for the courier. As it comes to deliver the bottle, snipe the courier, get out of vision and use the teleport scroll to teleport back to the fountain. The ward can oftentimes provide another courier snipe, but getting it once usually wins your midlane by delaying the opponents' bottle by default. Afterwards. you will want to keep farming the jungle for your boots and Hand of Midas (or rarely Dagon or Necronomicon as mentioned before). While doing so, just keep watching every lane to anticipate where to get involved for kills. Usually, you will be able to setup or help a kill once you get your level 4 and first level in Sprout. If possible aim for the enemy midlaner or offlaner as it sets up for easy damage onto those Tier 1 towers. It's likely to be able to push the enemy offlane tower at 8 minutes into the game and just keep rolling from that point.
> Pushing with or without the team: After the laning stage you're ready to go. You'll have level 6 and your ultimate up, so when to use it? Early on, you always want to use your ultimate for engagements. Never just pop it to farm as it pushes creep waves when your safelaner wants to farm under his tower and also denies last hits to your team when they desperately need their first item to get online. When you see an engagement, always hit your ultimate on the opposite site of the map as the bounces' damage is increasing up until the last one. Hitting the ultimate on bottom when there's an engagement top usually ensures huge damage output with the last bounces. When your team gets such an advantageous fight, go push the tower with your friends. Just keep farming and wait for a good engagement to take to clear all outer towers just like said. Taking out 2-3 heroes usually is more than enough to push a tower and safely retreat. Make sure to also not take your teams' farm in your own jungle or by pushing lanes that could safely be farmed by your hard carry. Instead go to your ancient area and clear these camps instead. Scout the enemy jungle using your treants to take advantage of available farming spots within your enemies' side of the map. This will not only guarantee farm on your teams' core heroes but also starve out the opponents'. Sometimes, your team will have a harder time to stay in the game and is gonna be pressured into your own side of the map. That's when Furion wants to splitpush instead of grouping up for towers. Send treants to scout the enemy jungle and stay off the map farming the enemies' jungle camps while pushing with your zoo. As soon as you see the enemy team pressure your side of the map you can always fall back to splitpushing your offlane to force them back. Sometimes, your team can capitalize on the enemy retreating and get exit kills enabling an easy tower push. Also, don't forget to send a creep to Roshan every once in a while to scout what's going on there and make use of Furion's strong Roshan killing potential. If your team gets an Aegis, it usually ends up in getting a set of barracks.
> Your team didn't break highground, welcome to split push hell: If you have to read this part of the guide - and yes you will encounter several matches when your team doesn't close the game - you will have to go for the good ol' Alliance rat style play. Mostly you will have to slightly adjust but play the same game that I have mentioned in the passage before. The main difference is that you will not push with your team anymore as you couldn't close the game on a five man push and at that point (if you don't have something like a Spectre to just go and try again) will have to go for split push only. Disrupt the enemy teams' movements with yourself pushing the offlane over and over again. If you don't feel safe, just send your trees and farm out of sight. If you see a lot of heroes on the map and feel safe go push with your hero to be that little bit faster, but fall back off the map quickly. As you reach your six slots, you can enforce your push power by getting your own courier and equipping it with a Necronomicon 3 and Manta Style (which you usually wouldn't get most of the games). Park it somewhere around the Tinker ward spots and hide it within the trees. As you see a chance to push heavily you swap your items to cast the Necronomicons aswell as Manta illusions and send them into the enemy base. It's a little gimmicky, but your teammates can use Boots of Travel (Level 2) to jump in and go for a base race. The hero generally gives you lots of options with this. Most importantly though you will have to focus on two things in the late game: Buy wards and get vision out on the spots you want to be able to teleport onto since the game might just end with you being dead. Being alive on Furion is almost equal to not losing in many scenarios. Secondly, keep the enemy team moving! If you reached this late part of the game and missed your timing, you just have to keep the enemy moving to split up and push out lanes avoiding them to group up and get into your base or claim the Aegis. If you follow these steps and make sure to play really safe, you will have a lot of fun late game matches where you can completely outplay enemy teams by basically just good decision making. Don't forget, this hero is in my humble opinion one of the top 5 hardest heroes to play in all of Dota (amongst Chen, Earth Spirit, Invoker and Meepo).
If you have further questions on Furion, the Nature's Prophet feel free to leave comments to this post!
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Hero guide: Mercurial, the Spectre
Welcome to my second hero guide! This time it's about to get as late as possible with one of the best carries in dota overall: Mercurial, the Spectre. A hero guide for your skill build and preferred items is available aswell.
Hero general information:
The Spectre is an agility hero and amongst the best AoE damage dealers in the game due to her teamfight ultimate Haunt. She works great if you want to go greedy and is one of the global strat heroes (amongst Zeus, Nature's Prophet, etc. pp.). She is only viable as a safelane carry and does need a trilane to fully protect her since she is amongst the very weakest laners in the entire hero pool. Her lack of basically everything in the early game though becomes more and more irrelevant as the game progresses, since she naturally becomes insanely tanky towards the later stages due to Dispersion. If the game progresses up to 45 minutes and a Spectre did not get raxed, she basically won the game already - at least in 95% of the cases. There is - in my humble opinion - no harder carry, no later lategamer than a Spectre.
Favourable / Unfavourable matchups:
Favourable matchups:
> vs Bounty Hunter: Though Bounty Hunter has fallen off the radar for offlane heroes, you occasionally see him played as that position 3 once a month. If he's played as a position 4, he might still rotate to your safelane to setup a kill. A single level in Spectral Dagger can completely stop him from getting into experience range since the threat of getting killed is too high with something like a Lion to setup a kill. Your dagger does not reveal invisible heroes but you can see a shadow projection until the Dagger debuff runs out, so you can setup a blind stun into Dust / Sentry reveal and kill him off easily.
> vs Riki: The same counts for Riki, since you can semi-reveal him with your Spectral Dagger aswell. Also, a single point in Dispersion already lets you manfight him very easily. Just never ever turn your back and you're gonna be fine. Later on in the game, you can also reveal the position of invisible, smoked and off-the-map heroes by haunting so take use of the fact.
vs Puck: Puck is common on the solo midlane, but can surely be played as a solo offlane since her illusive skillset makes it difficult to kill her off. Spectre cannot shutdown Puck's experience on the offlane, but if Puck gets stunned by your support Desolate hits will kick in really hard. Also, Puck does not have the damage output to kill a Spectre no matter how squishy she is in the lane. A value point in Dispersion should usually do it.
> vs Nature's Prophet: Again, Spectral Dagger is an underestimated skill. Usually, if Furion gets scared he just sprouts himself and teleports out. Dagger though just goes through trees and gives you a path to walk through and kill off the Prophet before he's gone - or gives vision to setup for a stun. I though have to point out that "favourable matchup" for a Spectre does not mean that you can kill anyone by yourself or outlane someone, it just means she is unlikely to die to those heroes and get levels for free. Furion does indeed have the damage to kill you off with his range and treants, so make sure to not get permanently right-clicked and your tangoes burned.
50/50 matchups:
> vs Faceless Void: Void is kind of the flavour of the meta offlaner and really common nowadays. He is a strong laner and hard to shut down completely, but Spectre does just fine staying alive since Void is lacking the damage output. On the other hand, Time Walk is enough to negate any damage Spectre can put out so usually he is gonna burn your regen and both get a decent amount of last hits. As soon as Chronosphere is up, just make sure to watch the minimap because Chronosphere + a single rotation is usually more than enough for a kill.
> vs Beastmaster: Beastmaster is amongst the top 5 heroes of 6.87 and always has been a go-to-pick for the offlane. His boars do a lot of damage and their slow is really dangerous for you, but usually you can kill off the boars with a few Desolate hits and earn extra cash. Spectre will get levels for free usually, but if not protected will have a very hard time finding any last hits. Make sure to stay far away from your opponent and especially his boars and you're usually gonna be fine. As soon as Beastmaster's Roar is online he just straight up kills you though, so keep watching the levels.
> vs Centaur Warrunner: Centaur's strength in lane is that he barely dies from anything since he brings in a lot of HP to work with alongside his Return Damage. Guess what: Spectre doesn't wanna hit heroes anyways, so even a value point in Return Damage isn't gonna scare you off. In this kind of matchup, make sure to get extra levels in Dispersion since the nukes are gonna kill you sooner or later. Kite his double edge (if he is going to dish it out into the creepwave) and you're gonna be completely fine.
Unfavourable matchups:
> vs Timbersaw: Basically any strong laner makes life hard for a Spectre, but I feel like Timbersaw is just on another level. He is insanely mobile with his Chains and he will just cut through trees in case you try to dagger into them to get out of sight, so you can never just run away from him. He is gonna kill you with his burst damage since you have no health at all and no way to protect yourself. Your only tool against Timbersaw is the mobility gain on the Spectral Dagger to try to juke out his spells. Having a Dazzle does help too.
> vs Bristleback: This matchup is an absolute horror to play against (I have played this matchup a lot). You can never get anywhere close to the lane because Bristleback is gonna keep spamming those Quill Spray's and you are eventually gonna die to it. If Bristleback plays properly you just straight up get no more than 10 last hits in 10 minutes, but sometimes Bristleback feels a little too confident trying to dive your tower when you get those Quill Spray's stacked up on yourself. Sometimes I was able to get a kill on a diving Bristleback by just basically juking him through the tree lines using the Dagger. Though you might think that maxing Dispersion is good here, you're wrong! If you want to get any influence on this lane you just straight up max Desolate as fast as possible (you always get one value point on Dagger and Dispersion though!) and have to stay out of Quill Spray range. You cannot get last hits once you're out of regen so just hope for a double rotation since with 2 supports going in hard you might get the kill with some Desolate right clicks.
> vs Windranger: Any ranged hero will make Spectre struggle quite hard, as I've mentioned that even a Nature's Prophet might be able to kill you in lane. Windranger though is just straight up better. She can dodge any right clicks by windrunning (don't forget, Desolate is pure damage and does indeed go through Windrun), she has a stun to work with and a great nuke to spam onto you. Also, same as for Timbersaw, her Powershot does negate your potential to hide in trees by daggering into them, but you might be able to juke it out if she misses to hit the right trees. As soon as Windranger gets her ultimate online you have to become way defensive. If she hits a Shackleshot onto you and starts to focus fire, no matter the Dispersion you might still just die.
> vs Broodmother: Just don't. Just really don't. She's gonna kill you several times without any effort, she's gonna take your tower, you're gonna start farming in front of your Tier 2 tower and she is gonna come, kill you again and take that tower aswell. Broodmother is the kind of hero that straight up counters the clock a Spectre sets up for a game by just taking your barracks within the first 20 minutes of the game. And guess what, you cannot kill her Broodlings easily and neither hide in trees because she is just gonna setup a new web and follow you through anyways. Sure, you can kill Broodlings with a Radiance, but good luck farming that!
Gameplan:
Spectre is the lategame hero in dota and as I said picking her automatically sets up a countdown for your enemy team to convert into barracks before your farm gets ouf of hand. Your goal primarily is to drag out the game for as long as possible until you feel strong enough to stop the push your opponents bring up.
> Laning Phase: Your aim in the laning phase is really simple - do not die. A level 1 Spectre barely does anything except being there, so take use of the insane experience range and just try to live until you reach level 6. It's really just that. What hurts a Spectre most is not having too few last hits (like e.g. on a Sven that just needs to stack up the last hits forever to feel useful), but being killed off over and over again not reaching your levels to actually make an impact on the game. It is crucial to hit a fast level 6 and make your first rotation using Haunt to get a kill with a teammate basically anywhere on the map. If you can snack a few last hits here and there, even better, but having a Spectre sitting on 20 last hits at 10 minutes into the game is absolutely normal in pubs so don't feel to rush in for extra last hits risking your life, it ain't worth the threat of giving your opponent an extra edge going into the midgame. To fullfill your aim of staying alive always make sure to bring in enough regeneration. If I see a Spectre without Stout Shield, a Healing Salve and a set of Tangoes, it really triggers me! If you're playing in a five stack and actually manage to put up a trilane to protect you, you can usually swap out the Stout Shield for a Quelling Blade to have an easier time last hitting. Always make sure to max your Desolate up to Level 7 and get those Phase Boots up so your first rotation is gonna ensure a kill. Maxed Desolate plus the chase potential and extra damage from Phase Boots are ridiculous at 10 minutes into the game.
> Getting online: I remember SirActionSlacks saying that a Spectre does nothing for the first 20 minutes in a game and actually that's mostly true. Spectre doesn't want to get involved and rather just farm, farm, farm. So after you've got your Haunt online you want to just keep farming forever. Everytime your Haunt is off cooldown you wanna instantly check if a play is possible and get involved, then teleport back to a lane to farm safely on. That's why so many people tend to buy Urn of Shadows (if no one else gets it instead) because it gives you that little extra sustain and kill potential getting the charges with Haunt kills. Make sure to itemize towards exactly that: Diffusal Blade e.g. helps you chase down heroes you haunt onto, Drums of Endurance give you a little bit of everything and extra chasing power aswell. I would not recommend to buy all those small items, but you definitely need some smaller items to not fall behind in farm quickly. Do never attempt to rush that Radiance with brown boots and a magic stick, because you are gonna be killed before you reach those 3.800 gold for sure. Passively farm towards one or two smaller items like the ones mentioned, but usually if I get a decent game I'll always go Phase Boots into Aquila into Radiance (maybe work in an Urn or Magic Wand, depending on heroes on either team). Farming passively until you get a chance to snatch one or two kills helps you reach those major items you really want to get and any kill just adds to that. After you found your first few items and successfully get something done in the early midgame you should usually end up getting a Radiance at latest on minute 25. If your earlygame is good, you can get it at around 16-18 minutes, but it still crushes enemies getting it a few minutes later. Make sure to check whether you have a chance to grab the Sacred Relic before minute 20, else you gotta go for something else to keep up. If your earlygame is really bad, you might need a Blademail or Vanguard just to tank up and stay alive. Another decent build can be to instead grab the early Diffusal Blade alongside a Manta Style as your first major item. As you can see, it heavily depends on your earlygame so keep track of how the game is developing in the first 15 minutes and adjust to what you need and what you can afford.
> Taking control of the map and Roshan area: Once you found yourself in the late stage of the midgame you start to pick up anything to tank up with, may it be a Heart of Tarrasque, Eye of Skadi or even an Abyssal Blade (usually you go for the Heart, but sometimes Skadi can be good aswell). As soon as you get to the point when your HP start stacking up into the 2-3k territory you want to be that durable frontliner. Don't forget that Dispersion is basically an inbuilt Blade Mail that even extends your durability and makes it almost impossible to kill off a Spectre if the enemy doesn't get the jump onto you. And this is exactly the crucial point here: You want to be splitpushing because you can always join fights with your global Haunt but the enemy team is gonna try to jump you whenever you push out too far over that river area. Make sure to dodge those ganks, since if a fight breaks out and you're at full HP you can usually clean up everything and get a ton of triple kills within a single game. However if you're getting ganked and just die before anything happens, towers are gonna drop - and by that time of the game usually it's the last Tier 2 tower or even the first Tier 3 tower that starts falling. Around this time it becomes more and more necessary to always have Buyback gold up. Don't ever buyout on a Spectre if you could have a Buyback ready to Haunt into an engagement. Spectre is probably the best hero in dota to have a buyback on because no matter where the enemy is fighting your team, you just Haunt in and are instantly where the action is. Therefore if you fear dying keep that ultimate off-cooldown to ensure you have this option available. Also, when you reach the lategame stage slowly, you want to always keep track of Roshan. Spectre is a great fighter at the Roshan area since your Haunt can not only scout enemies but also disable Blink Daggers on anyone on the enemy team preventing surprise jumps etc. If your team is able to get the Aegis, make sure to always take it for yourself at that point of the game. Spectre is the best Aegis carrier in dota. Period. Once you have that Aegis going, your team can usually clean up all outer towers left on the enemy side of the map and start preparing for the base ambush.
> Lategame decision making: As mentioned before, you are the highest priority target on your team and are likely to be smoke ganked or just roamed onto by your enemies - especially, since you want to keep away from your team until you Haunt into a fight. Therefore, vision is extremely useful. If no one buys wards, you should by now have the money so just spend it for whatever your team needs - may it be Observer wards, Sentry wards or a Gem of true sight. If you cannot see attacks coming, there is no chance of avoiding them anyways! Also, do not splitpush over the river area. You may send your Manta illusions to keep pushing out, but after you reach that Side Shop area just fall back into the jungle and keep farming where you can feel safe. As long as you are alive it's almost impossible for any team to get objectives around the map so take use of that advantage. For the high ground ambush you will want to have an Aegis of the Immortal, since at that point your opponents are likely to be five or six slotted aswell and can certainly handle a farmed Spectre decently. With an Aegis however you can usually take down a set of barracks, retreat and wait for the next Aegis. Don't rush things on this hero ever, because the clock is always ticking in your favour! Also, often times a Spectre lineup does lose a set of barracks early in the game, but keep your teammates motivated to keep going - it would not be the first time that a Spectre comes back from a huge deficit!
If you have further questions on the Spectre, feel free to leave comments to this post!
Hero general information:
The Spectre is an agility hero and amongst the best AoE damage dealers in the game due to her teamfight ultimate Haunt. She works great if you want to go greedy and is one of the global strat heroes (amongst Zeus, Nature's Prophet, etc. pp.). She is only viable as a safelane carry and does need a trilane to fully protect her since she is amongst the very weakest laners in the entire hero pool. Her lack of basically everything in the early game though becomes more and more irrelevant as the game progresses, since she naturally becomes insanely tanky towards the later stages due to Dispersion. If the game progresses up to 45 minutes and a Spectre did not get raxed, she basically won the game already - at least in 95% of the cases. There is - in my humble opinion - no harder carry, no later lategamer than a Spectre.
Favourable / Unfavourable matchups:
Favourable matchups:
> vs Bounty Hunter: Though Bounty Hunter has fallen off the radar for offlane heroes, you occasionally see him played as that position 3 once a month. If he's played as a position 4, he might still rotate to your safelane to setup a kill. A single level in Spectral Dagger can completely stop him from getting into experience range since the threat of getting killed is too high with something like a Lion to setup a kill. Your dagger does not reveal invisible heroes but you can see a shadow projection until the Dagger debuff runs out, so you can setup a blind stun into Dust / Sentry reveal and kill him off easily.
> vs Riki: The same counts for Riki, since you can semi-reveal him with your Spectral Dagger aswell. Also, a single point in Dispersion already lets you manfight him very easily. Just never ever turn your back and you're gonna be fine. Later on in the game, you can also reveal the position of invisible, smoked and off-the-map heroes by haunting so take use of the fact.
vs Puck: Puck is common on the solo midlane, but can surely be played as a solo offlane since her illusive skillset makes it difficult to kill her off. Spectre cannot shutdown Puck's experience on the offlane, but if Puck gets stunned by your support Desolate hits will kick in really hard. Also, Puck does not have the damage output to kill a Spectre no matter how squishy she is in the lane. A value point in Dispersion should usually do it.
> vs Nature's Prophet: Again, Spectral Dagger is an underestimated skill. Usually, if Furion gets scared he just sprouts himself and teleports out. Dagger though just goes through trees and gives you a path to walk through and kill off the Prophet before he's gone - or gives vision to setup for a stun. I though have to point out that "favourable matchup" for a Spectre does not mean that you can kill anyone by yourself or outlane someone, it just means she is unlikely to die to those heroes and get levels for free. Furion does indeed have the damage to kill you off with his range and treants, so make sure to not get permanently right-clicked and your tangoes burned.
50/50 matchups:
> vs Faceless Void: Void is kind of the flavour of the meta offlaner and really common nowadays. He is a strong laner and hard to shut down completely, but Spectre does just fine staying alive since Void is lacking the damage output. On the other hand, Time Walk is enough to negate any damage Spectre can put out so usually he is gonna burn your regen and both get a decent amount of last hits. As soon as Chronosphere is up, just make sure to watch the minimap because Chronosphere + a single rotation is usually more than enough for a kill.
> vs Beastmaster: Beastmaster is amongst the top 5 heroes of 6.87 and always has been a go-to-pick for the offlane. His boars do a lot of damage and their slow is really dangerous for you, but usually you can kill off the boars with a few Desolate hits and earn extra cash. Spectre will get levels for free usually, but if not protected will have a very hard time finding any last hits. Make sure to stay far away from your opponent and especially his boars and you're usually gonna be fine. As soon as Beastmaster's Roar is online he just straight up kills you though, so keep watching the levels.
> vs Centaur Warrunner: Centaur's strength in lane is that he barely dies from anything since he brings in a lot of HP to work with alongside his Return Damage. Guess what: Spectre doesn't wanna hit heroes anyways, so even a value point in Return Damage isn't gonna scare you off. In this kind of matchup, make sure to get extra levels in Dispersion since the nukes are gonna kill you sooner or later. Kite his double edge (if he is going to dish it out into the creepwave) and you're gonna be completely fine.
Unfavourable matchups:
> vs Timbersaw: Basically any strong laner makes life hard for a Spectre, but I feel like Timbersaw is just on another level. He is insanely mobile with his Chains and he will just cut through trees in case you try to dagger into them to get out of sight, so you can never just run away from him. He is gonna kill you with his burst damage since you have no health at all and no way to protect yourself. Your only tool against Timbersaw is the mobility gain on the Spectral Dagger to try to juke out his spells. Having a Dazzle does help too.
> vs Bristleback: This matchup is an absolute horror to play against (I have played this matchup a lot). You can never get anywhere close to the lane because Bristleback is gonna keep spamming those Quill Spray's and you are eventually gonna die to it. If Bristleback plays properly you just straight up get no more than 10 last hits in 10 minutes, but sometimes Bristleback feels a little too confident trying to dive your tower when you get those Quill Spray's stacked up on yourself. Sometimes I was able to get a kill on a diving Bristleback by just basically juking him through the tree lines using the Dagger. Though you might think that maxing Dispersion is good here, you're wrong! If you want to get any influence on this lane you just straight up max Desolate as fast as possible (you always get one value point on Dagger and Dispersion though!) and have to stay out of Quill Spray range. You cannot get last hits once you're out of regen so just hope for a double rotation since with 2 supports going in hard you might get the kill with some Desolate right clicks.
> vs Windranger: Any ranged hero will make Spectre struggle quite hard, as I've mentioned that even a Nature's Prophet might be able to kill you in lane. Windranger though is just straight up better. She can dodge any right clicks by windrunning (don't forget, Desolate is pure damage and does indeed go through Windrun), she has a stun to work with and a great nuke to spam onto you. Also, same as for Timbersaw, her Powershot does negate your potential to hide in trees by daggering into them, but you might be able to juke it out if she misses to hit the right trees. As soon as Windranger gets her ultimate online you have to become way defensive. If she hits a Shackleshot onto you and starts to focus fire, no matter the Dispersion you might still just die.
> vs Broodmother: Just don't. Just really don't. She's gonna kill you several times without any effort, she's gonna take your tower, you're gonna start farming in front of your Tier 2 tower and she is gonna come, kill you again and take that tower aswell. Broodmother is the kind of hero that straight up counters the clock a Spectre sets up for a game by just taking your barracks within the first 20 minutes of the game. And guess what, you cannot kill her Broodlings easily and neither hide in trees because she is just gonna setup a new web and follow you through anyways. Sure, you can kill Broodlings with a Radiance, but good luck farming that!
Gameplan:
Spectre is the lategame hero in dota and as I said picking her automatically sets up a countdown for your enemy team to convert into barracks before your farm gets ouf of hand. Your goal primarily is to drag out the game for as long as possible until you feel strong enough to stop the push your opponents bring up.
> Laning Phase: Your aim in the laning phase is really simple - do not die. A level 1 Spectre barely does anything except being there, so take use of the insane experience range and just try to live until you reach level 6. It's really just that. What hurts a Spectre most is not having too few last hits (like e.g. on a Sven that just needs to stack up the last hits forever to feel useful), but being killed off over and over again not reaching your levels to actually make an impact on the game. It is crucial to hit a fast level 6 and make your first rotation using Haunt to get a kill with a teammate basically anywhere on the map. If you can snack a few last hits here and there, even better, but having a Spectre sitting on 20 last hits at 10 minutes into the game is absolutely normal in pubs so don't feel to rush in for extra last hits risking your life, it ain't worth the threat of giving your opponent an extra edge going into the midgame. To fullfill your aim of staying alive always make sure to bring in enough regeneration. If I see a Spectre without Stout Shield, a Healing Salve and a set of Tangoes, it really triggers me! If you're playing in a five stack and actually manage to put up a trilane to protect you, you can usually swap out the Stout Shield for a Quelling Blade to have an easier time last hitting. Always make sure to max your Desolate up to Level 7 and get those Phase Boots up so your first rotation is gonna ensure a kill. Maxed Desolate plus the chase potential and extra damage from Phase Boots are ridiculous at 10 minutes into the game.
> Getting online: I remember SirActionSlacks saying that a Spectre does nothing for the first 20 minutes in a game and actually that's mostly true. Spectre doesn't want to get involved and rather just farm, farm, farm. So after you've got your Haunt online you want to just keep farming forever. Everytime your Haunt is off cooldown you wanna instantly check if a play is possible and get involved, then teleport back to a lane to farm safely on. That's why so many people tend to buy Urn of Shadows (if no one else gets it instead) because it gives you that little extra sustain and kill potential getting the charges with Haunt kills. Make sure to itemize towards exactly that: Diffusal Blade e.g. helps you chase down heroes you haunt onto, Drums of Endurance give you a little bit of everything and extra chasing power aswell. I would not recommend to buy all those small items, but you definitely need some smaller items to not fall behind in farm quickly. Do never attempt to rush that Radiance with brown boots and a magic stick, because you are gonna be killed before you reach those 3.800 gold for sure. Passively farm towards one or two smaller items like the ones mentioned, but usually if I get a decent game I'll always go Phase Boots into Aquila into Radiance (maybe work in an Urn or Magic Wand, depending on heroes on either team). Farming passively until you get a chance to snatch one or two kills helps you reach those major items you really want to get and any kill just adds to that. After you found your first few items and successfully get something done in the early midgame you should usually end up getting a Radiance at latest on minute 25. If your earlygame is good, you can get it at around 16-18 minutes, but it still crushes enemies getting it a few minutes later. Make sure to check whether you have a chance to grab the Sacred Relic before minute 20, else you gotta go for something else to keep up. If your earlygame is really bad, you might need a Blademail or Vanguard just to tank up and stay alive. Another decent build can be to instead grab the early Diffusal Blade alongside a Manta Style as your first major item. As you can see, it heavily depends on your earlygame so keep track of how the game is developing in the first 15 minutes and adjust to what you need and what you can afford.
> Taking control of the map and Roshan area: Once you found yourself in the late stage of the midgame you start to pick up anything to tank up with, may it be a Heart of Tarrasque, Eye of Skadi or even an Abyssal Blade (usually you go for the Heart, but sometimes Skadi can be good aswell). As soon as you get to the point when your HP start stacking up into the 2-3k territory you want to be that durable frontliner. Don't forget that Dispersion is basically an inbuilt Blade Mail that even extends your durability and makes it almost impossible to kill off a Spectre if the enemy doesn't get the jump onto you. And this is exactly the crucial point here: You want to be splitpushing because you can always join fights with your global Haunt but the enemy team is gonna try to jump you whenever you push out too far over that river area. Make sure to dodge those ganks, since if a fight breaks out and you're at full HP you can usually clean up everything and get a ton of triple kills within a single game. However if you're getting ganked and just die before anything happens, towers are gonna drop - and by that time of the game usually it's the last Tier 2 tower or even the first Tier 3 tower that starts falling. Around this time it becomes more and more necessary to always have Buyback gold up. Don't ever buyout on a Spectre if you could have a Buyback ready to Haunt into an engagement. Spectre is probably the best hero in dota to have a buyback on because no matter where the enemy is fighting your team, you just Haunt in and are instantly where the action is. Therefore if you fear dying keep that ultimate off-cooldown to ensure you have this option available. Also, when you reach the lategame stage slowly, you want to always keep track of Roshan. Spectre is a great fighter at the Roshan area since your Haunt can not only scout enemies but also disable Blink Daggers on anyone on the enemy team preventing surprise jumps etc. If your team is able to get the Aegis, make sure to always take it for yourself at that point of the game. Spectre is the best Aegis carrier in dota. Period. Once you have that Aegis going, your team can usually clean up all outer towers left on the enemy side of the map and start preparing for the base ambush.
> Lategame decision making: As mentioned before, you are the highest priority target on your team and are likely to be smoke ganked or just roamed onto by your enemies - especially, since you want to keep away from your team until you Haunt into a fight. Therefore, vision is extremely useful. If no one buys wards, you should by now have the money so just spend it for whatever your team needs - may it be Observer wards, Sentry wards or a Gem of true sight. If you cannot see attacks coming, there is no chance of avoiding them anyways! Also, do not splitpush over the river area. You may send your Manta illusions to keep pushing out, but after you reach that Side Shop area just fall back into the jungle and keep farming where you can feel safe. As long as you are alive it's almost impossible for any team to get objectives around the map so take use of that advantage. For the high ground ambush you will want to have an Aegis of the Immortal, since at that point your opponents are likely to be five or six slotted aswell and can certainly handle a farmed Spectre decently. With an Aegis however you can usually take down a set of barracks, retreat and wait for the next Aegis. Don't rush things on this hero ever, because the clock is always ticking in your favour! Also, often times a Spectre lineup does lose a set of barracks early in the game, but keep your teammates motivated to keep going - it would not be the first time that a Spectre comes back from a huge deficit!
If you have further questions on the Spectre, feel free to leave comments to this post!
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