Nothing is known of Enigma's background. There are only stories and legends, most of them apocryphal, passed down through the ages. In truth, Enigma is a mystery for whom the only true biography is description: he is a universal force, a consumer of worlds. He is a being of the void, at times corporeal, other times ethereal. A beast between the planes.
There are stories that say he was once a great alchemist who tried to unlock the secrets of the universe and was cursed for his arrogance. Other legends tell that he is an ancient being of strange gravity, the abyss personified-a twisted voice from out the original darkness, before the first light in the universe. And there are older legends that say he is the first collapsed star, a black hole grown complicated and sentient-his motivations unknowable, his power inexorable, a force of destruction unleashed upon existence itself.
Aghs is a good luxury item, but you have more important items to get first. Mek, BKB, blink...
I went aghs once on Enigma when I was far ahead, but in some situations I'd prefer a sheep stick, a refresher, a necro 3 if we need to deal with invis... It's still a great item.
I'd never go Agh's first (for one, I'd be finishing it before I have high levels of Midnight Pulse). My build is pretty much always Soul Ring, Midas if I think I can afford to be that greedy, brown boots. I get Mek if no one else is going it, Blink, BKB if game demands it, and Agh/BoTs. Refresher and Sheep as luxury items. With Midas it's not hard to get six slotted (although half of them are utility items that are like 2500 gold on average)
The odd thing about Enigma is I feel he's really good, but I almost never see anyone but me playing him.
I feel uncomfortable with Enigma after the jungle changes which is why I don't play him. Pub players seem unlikely to give him a lane, and the jungle seems like it will be slower for him than before. Then on top of that I know he can gank from jungle well, but he's also somewhat GPM reliant (depending on team comps) and if your ganks don't work you're behind for a while.
My rotations before always involved using weakend eidolons on the easy camp or getting eidolons to split on the easy camp then doing a hard one.
If your mid is going bottle-rush like 3 branches + 1 tango you go: Courier 2 mana pots 1 branch (can use it in the mek later anyway)
If your mid is is not going bottle-rush like Talisman + tango you go: Courier 3 mana pots.
The mid's bottle is very important so you don't want the courier to be out of position because you wanted your soulring. Try to let him get his bottle. If you need your soulring and he is far away from bottle you can send the courier. Just be aware of how much gold your mid has.
I think it's better to deny a creep in the middle-lane. However, the mid creeps on Dire spawns really far out so you don't have time to run to the pool. That's why you deny an offlane creep instead.
Deny a creep and then run to the pool quickly, regen back up and go to the closest hardcamp. You should send your minions to the camp in the meantime. Make sure you don't block the camp though. Try to put them outside the tree-lines. So put them like this: Radiant: + Show Spoiler +
Your creep-deny minions will be able to hit 1-2 times before they die so try to actually use them. The little bit of extra damage helps. Then kill the bigcamp, run back so the hardcamp respawns at 1.00 and kill it again. You will have to spawn 2nd minions here probably. Use the 2nd minions to also kill a medium camp on the side. Then back to the hardcamp. You should now be lvl 3 before 2minutes and have 2lvl in minions before the 2minute spawn. + Show Spoiler +
Always make sure you kill the hardcamp. That's the important one. You should be able to consistantly hit lvl 6 before 5minutes. Enigma jungles really fast. Also if your first 0.30 camp is trolls you lost the jungle and might as well just leave the game.
I disagree about trolls, you just need to aggro them away from the spawn a bit more so that when you eat one of the small creeps the big troll doesn't summon skeletons right on top of you. You can also afford to tank the camp with your hero more since the trolls don't do that much damage
That sounds like too much effort and slow to be fair, I just tank the DMG of skeletons with Enigma himself if I have to eat of his mates. Sure it might postpone or put me at risk when I help lanes but hey all I do is press Q and I'd more than risk it if I was going Mek.
I don't really like Tranqs that much, at least in a pub setting. Your jungle speed is more limited by getting your eidolons places (and they're slow as balls), and I don't feel like the stats help much. You generally don't need the HP regen, so I'd only get them if I really wanted tons of armor. The movespeed can be nice if you play like Puppey and just run in and threaten to Black Hole which forces people to scatter, but I feel like in pubs that isn't really effective because people generally don't think about Enigma so it's really easy to get 3+ people in your ult with a blink dagger.
What I love about Enigma when you get to farm the forest is that your ganking power in early game is enormous and using blackhole on a single hero as soon as you turn level 6 is ok. You can shut down the enemy carry early and you also play a huge role later in the game. Enigma is one the most entertaining heroes to play!
On April 30 2014 19:47 DrPandaPhD wrote: Your creep-deny minions will be able to hit 1-2 times before they die so try to actually use them. The little bit of extra damage helps. Then kill the bigcamp, run back so the hardcamp respawns at 1.00 and kill it again. You will have to spawn 2nd minions here probably. Use the 2nd minions to also kill a medium camp on the side. Then back to the hardcamp. You should now be lvl 3 before 2minutes and have 2lvl in minions before the 2minute spawn. + Show Spoiler +
Always make sure you kill the hardcamp. That's the important one. You should be able to consistantly hit lvl 6 before 5minutes. Enigma jungles really fast. Also if your first 0.30 camp is trolls you lost the jungle and might as well just leave the game.
I just wanted to highlight this section after watching Zai play Enigma at The Summit. I usually went to ~3 camps as Enigma, but it really is faster to just clear your hardcamp + the nearest medium every minute. So many little things you can learn watching pros (or reading the forums :p)!
There's something I do with Enigma, I don't think this is the best way to do it, but I think it's fine.
What I do is this: I deny a creep mid when they are at the T1, then I eat one of my clarities and go to the medium camp with them. I am assured to get the full camp with no issues, regarding of the fact that I'm not doing shit with my eidolon micro.
Going back to base might make you a bit late on your timings, depending of certain SMALL factors (fountain position, etc...).
The deny creep mid is actually super complicated to do, when you're thinking about this :D
Soul ring, boots, meka, blink in 15 minutes, best start ever btw
So after repeatedly seeing Zai achieve absurd efficiency with Enigma (Hitting level 7 before 6 mins, sometimes even out-leveling mid), I began my quest to figure out how this was done. Unfortunately I was unable to find any in-game replays where Zai's jungle doesn't get blocked in some way, but after a great deal of searching I was able to find this video, which showcases a similar rate of power leveling.
In short, your goal should be to stack a camp every single minute for the first 5 minutes. Pay close attention to when he pops his clarities, which neutrals he targets first, and how he kites larger stacks with his eidolons.
Please ignore the fact that he goes for a naked mek; I wouldn't recommend that at all. The most common item choices I've seen are soul ring -> boots -> mek (or other team-oriented item). I have also seen Puppey get extra clarities, skip Soul Ring, and go straight for mana boots. This would make sense if your team does not have any other 'natural' mana boot-carriers.
I personally like to start with 3 clarity and a set of tangoes. I'll spend the rest of my gold on wards and courier, because pubs. You don't really *need* more items at the start, but they don't hurt :D. Learning to make do with this bare-bones setup provides a lot more flexibility, as you're not reliant on a 2nd player being gracious enough to buy all of the support items. Alternatively, purchasing wards + courier opens up the possibility of boots-first on your second support. With extra money, I'd prioritize 1-2 GG branches and an extra clarity (3 is enough to last you till the soul ring, but if one gets canceled accidentally you could be slowed down substantially)
Concerning the malefice vs. midnight pulse decision: I was under the (incorrect) impression that midnight pulse was necessary to achieve maximum farm efficiency, but as the above video shows, you can manage without midnight pulse - at least on the dire side. That being said, due to the geography of the radiant jungle, I find midnight pulse to be extremely helpful for jungle stacking as a radiant Enigma. Just be aware that going for an early point in midnight pulse will reduce your early ganking potential - as you will be lacking a lvl 2 malefice when you hit lvl 6, and will also be more mana starved.
I hope this helps my fellow aspiring Enigma noobs. Happy farming!
In my experience, if you don't screw up your micro, you can achieve 8-8:30 soul ring + brown boots + mek consistently while buying courier and 1 set of sentries at beginning of game (assuming you have the space to just afk-farm). Personally, I struggle when the 0:30 camp is wildkins or hill trolls to clear it, stack the medium camp, and get my eidolons out of the large camp by the 1:00 mark. I can do it 100% of the time with the other camps though.
Agreed. If you check out the end of the video, he showcases clearing the first hard camp and stacking the medium with every possible type of hard camp spawn. For the birdies, he sends an eidolon (after they split) up to the medium camp and uses it to stack (~8:05). A bit taxing on the micro, but oh so useful if you can get it down
On October 20 2014 00:04 Frogstomp wrote: So after repeatedly seeing Zai achieve absurd efficiency with Enigma (Hitting level 7 before 6 mins, sometimes even out-leveling mid), I began my quest to figure out how this was done. Unfortunately I was unable to find any in-game replays where Zai's jungle doesn't get blocked in some way, but after a great deal of searching I was able to find this video, which showcases a similar rate of power leveling.
In short, your goal should be to stack a camp every single minute for the first 5 minutes. Pay close attention to when he pops his clarities, which neutrals he targets first, and how he kites larger stacks with his eidolons.
Please ignore the fact that he goes for a naked mek; I wouldn't recommend that at all. The most common item choices I've seen are soul ring -> boots -> mek (or other team-oriented item). I have also seen Puppey get extra clarities, skip Soul Ring, and go straight for mana boots. This would make sense if your team does not have any other 'natural' mana boot-carriers.
I personally like to start with 3 clarity and a set of tangoes. I'll spend the rest of my gold on wards and courier, because pubs. You don't really *need* more items at the start, but they don't hurt :D. Learning to make do with this bare-bones setup provides a lot more flexibility, as you're not reliant on a 2nd player being gracious enough to buy all of the support items. Alternatively, purchasing wards + courier opens up the possibility of boots-first on your second support. With extra money, I'd prioritize 1-2 GG branches and an extra clarity (3 is enough to last you till the soul ring, but if one gets canceled accidentally you could be slowed down substantially)
Concerning the malefice vs. midnight pulse decision: I was under the (incorrect) impression that midnight pulse was necessary to achieve maximum farm efficiency, but as the above video shows, you can manage without midnight pulse - at least on the dire side. That being said, due to the geography of the radiant jungle, I find midnight pulse to be extremely helpful for jungle stacking as a radiant Enigma. Just be aware that going for an early point in midnight pulse will reduce your early ganking potential - as you will be lacking a lvl 2 malefice when you hit lvl 6, and will also be more mana starved.
I hope this helps my fellow aspiring Enigma noobs. Happy farming!
He gets a bit lucky with satyrs in the first medium spawn. If you get cents+wolves or something it's really difficult to keep level 1 eidolons alive, and stuff like cents+ogres take way longer and you can miss the next stack. Or I can anyway.
Maybe I'm just bad at micro, but that's the trickiest camp in the sequence for me and he gets the easiest possible stack. I also find trolls+anything as a hard stack to be extremely nasty.
Also I don't think his 1:00 timings work for wildkin and trolls if you're also denying a 0:00 lane creep, which I think is pretty important to do.
EPT
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