General DiscussionItem choice questions

NP without boots is insanely useless.

I prefer Deso on ember over battlefury, because battlefurys only pay off if you have lots of damage already and the desolator debuff applies on ever target, imagine it like an AOE medallion

Also diffu on wr is nice, especially if you opponents have a hex so you can unhex your allies

Well, if you so reach, you can sell boots and buy Sange&Yasha, your speed will be about the same, S&Y gives more stats and useful slow.

I like soul ring on heroes that have spells with ~150 mana cost. Why not.

Can't say anything about Ember Spirit.

Diffusal is ok on Windranger only if your team needs dispel badly. AgS situational too.

For ember, it all depends on lineup you face. If you play agaist big chabby tanks, getting deso before bf is way better. Altought never skip bf, you won't be able to get full potentional of hero.

First of all I actually had a NP on my team that didn't buy boots and he was the cause of us losing. Not necessarily because he didn't buy the boots but because he was garbage. I don't think its coincidence that a shitty player is the only person I've seen do that.

IMO the only support i find getting soul ring on worthwhile is Bane or Omniknight since they have heal nukes. Basically every support is too incredibly squishy to afford that hp cost.

On Ember I prefer getting a Battlefury over any other item. It's a core item the same reason its a core item on Juggernaut, and you rarely see a Jugg getting a deso. The most ridiculous Ember Spirit I've gone against bought only 3 Battlefurys and a Daedalus and he was 1 hitting our supports in team fights just from all that ridiculous splash.

And concerning WR, I've never found getting an item that is dependent on her getting Scepter worthwhile. For one its rare that she gets to just stand still and put her ult on a hero in a team fight. She normally gets squished by nukes or the enemy carry if she just stands completely still. Also the 4200 gold that you spend on the scepter after the diffusal really isn't worth it for the few times she can use her ult properly.

(Realize this is only my personal opinion and/or haven't worked for me in the past. If you're succesful with any of these build go right ahead and ignore me.)

As Prophet you should have boots so that you can chase if your teleport location isn't ideal (when tping in to assist in a gank). if you can't cast sprout then your gank that could've easily been successful was prevented by a 450 gold item which basically pays itself after one gank (team gold and making the enemy lose gold).

Also looking at the game you linked, some of your build people would disagree with. People like the escaping and chasing power of phase boots, and treads aren't as good anymore since you used to have +90 attack speed from treads, midas and shadow blade but people don't get shadow blade nearly as often anymore, so phase gives you similar mobility to SB.

Also you want to get sprout at 4 so you can gank much earlier. Try this skill build : E-W-E-Q-E-R-W-W-W-E-R. You can even switch Sprout at 4 and Treant at 3 in some situations. If it gets you a kill, it gives XP and that'll make getting level 4 quicker to make up for the fact you only have 2 trees to jungle with. Between level 1 and 6, more levels in W won't help you jungle nor gank, 2 points in teleport has no noticable difference from 1 point in it. Level 7-11, you won't be jungling as often, you'll either be ganking or split pushing, and you should have enough items to have good global map presence, though a low level in teleport. if you get treants at 7 it means teleport is maxed one level later.

Also +1 tree per level gets less effective the more trees you have (+1 tree when you only have 2 is a 50% total dps increase, +1 when you have 4 is only a 25% increase). Level 12 onwards, you can choose between Sprout or stat levels. I personally like 2 points into sprout so i can tp out safely, due to cast frontswing, 3 seconds duration sprout has a short duration where the trees disappear but you haven't teleported out yet.

Soul Ring for supports will give them more mana regen than Arcanes will but it will hurt the team's mana regeneration. Depends on the support, but some heroes you're basically making an already squishy hero easier to kill.

• ES will mostly be casting Fissure from max range, so he won't be taking much damage. Also had a recent +10 MS buff so now browns have the same MS as an ES with arcanes pre patch.
• Wisp can give your tether target an instant 225 mana, plus it drops him from full HP so passive HP regen now affects your tethered partner. Will still give the target 225 mana even if Wisp's mana pool is currently full.
• Nyx has high starting HP regen so combined with Soul Ring's passive regen it can fully counteract the health loss. Soul Ring on it's own only gives 90HP in 30s, but it's HP cost is 150, plus Nyx has strong defensive abilities.
• Ogre Magi is tanky, has high starting armour and strength gain, 150 HP isn't a big deal to him.
• Dazzle heals himself to counteract the HP loss, + Omni and Bane like Bazoozoo said.

BF is core when it is late and you have lots of damage on Ember, not as a first item. By getting it as a first item in the mid game you're making your mid game worse, and that might mean that you never even make it late game when it becomes useful. You don't see people getting Divine on Medusa as a first item before getting tank items, just like you shouldn't see people building BF first on Ember. It does increase the damage of Sleight of Fist, but so do other items, and they don't require enemies to be positioned in a specific way (Desolator, Crit, Maelstrom). So generally Desolator over BF, as it'll help your team do more damage too.

It's not core on Juggernaut though despite what Bazoozoo says, Juggernaut has strong early game power and doesn't farm as fast as Anti-Mage so getting it to farm is stupid, since Jugg can't take the game as late as other carries. Desolator is far better and synergises with Jugg as a pusher and physical damage ultimate. Regen from BF means squat when you're dead, stat items for survivability is more helpful.

Aghs is legit on WR but don't rush it (since you won't even have Focus Fire early on anyways). Helps in late game when you want to transition into damage if your team lacks it. Diffusal can act as a support item as you can remove many debuffs on teammates (i.e. disables). I don't know about using it to drain mana, but it's definitely not as quick as multiple illusions hitting one person. You're probably better off getting crit instead.

Windranger doesn't have to stand still when using Focus Fire. She can do anything.

Yeah WR with diffusal is actually really good.

Heres another unusual pick on wind ranger early: Orb of venom. Great harass if you are assisting a carry. Sounds corny but it's not bad! Give it a whirl! I may do more range/harass with orb of venom. Typically I would get it only on a melee hero due to the dmg. being reduced for ranged. Not the case anymore! Must try out more orb of venom ranged harass heros! :O

Yes I think it is worth getting soul ring/arcane boots on heros you mentioned, bane for sure, earth shaker yes. Dazzle/omni yes. The ability to spam spells is huge. I die a little bit inside when I see people go this route then don't cast as much as possible.

@Androgynous I agree about jugger, I think its the really bad since Juggernaut is not a lategame carry desolator is by far superior to the bf.
I have to disagree on the sprout however, there are several ways to destroy the trees thusly I think stats is much better because NP is extremly squsishy. I was mostly wondering because I got a 21 min hex which really felt gamechanging.

I get battlefury on Ember mostly to avoid the mana problems. If you are getting deso I dont really know a way to balance the mana issue as I dont think that magic stick + ring of basilius would suffice.

its not the damage thats reduced on range, it's the slow. it goes from a noticable 12% on melees to 4% on ranged. It's not much but in the early game when no one has boots it can help get more auto attacks in.

As for sprout, it's one extra level in it. if sprout gets destroyed, the +2 stats won't save you either. If trees expire and your tp gets cancelled, stats wont save you. I get that stats are useful, but getting stats from items is far cheaper than getting disables from items. Most spells have their biggest increase from level 1 to 2, especially percentage-wise.

And mana problems on ember, mana regen is less effective when your intelligence is low. It's better to increase your pool and go to base during downtime. maybe you won't be able to stay on the map 24/7 but you'll be stronger in fights because you went stats and not regen. It's the same reason people hate BF on bounty, both heroes are squishy without their defensive abilities, strong in the midgame, and regen doesn't help you survive, stats do. Better to walk back to base than to respawn there.

Items that can mitigate some of his mana problems are arcanes, vlads, drum, and bottle, but even with these items that doesn't mean you can spam sleight on every creep wave 30 minutes in. If you don't need to use mana to get that last hit, then don't. Bottle's far cheaper than Perseverance and is also more effective on lower pools, so consider bottle crowing and/or combining fire remnants with teleports to base, and bottle to regenerate quicker.

If you aren't mid, ask the mid player to drop his bottle in the fountain if s/he isn't using it for faster fountain regen for the entire team.

^ Big take away here folks:

Having the mid bottle hero drop bottle after they achieved acceptable farm to let someone else use.

Game example: http://dotabuff.com/matches/546066883

I went DP mid (somehow other team didn't ban it.... i hate being dirty but damn i like winning)

I secured a bottle and didn't buy anything start of game until my 25 gp was there to make bottle. After grabbing bloodstone my mana problems were gone so faceless void was having big mana issues (as usual..... he plays in 1.8k mmr on my friend list) so I gave it to him and told him to keep it.

That is a HUGE deal here folks. Notice he didn't go battle fury like a typical faceless void and still achieved big items with pt's deso and a MoM/ RoA. Giving the team your bottle is underrated. I used to sell but next time i have no use for it i'm giving it up to someone. No use selling it for 262 gold thats stupid now i realize.

Also if your carry has free item slots, give him your bottle if there's a DD rune. It's basically a free 5k damage item, if not more. Assuming you only go stats for damage, a dd rune increases your damage by 100%. A daedelus with 240% crit damage and 25% chance "only" increases your DPS by 35%.