I dont like the skillbuild in the guide. I -- and most pros who I've seen play DP -- go something like 4-0-3-1 before taking silence, sometimes even 4-0-4-1 it really depends on how badly you need it, but you want to avoid taking it for as long as possible to make your ultimate stronger...
Edit: I also think Rod of Atos is the second item you should get after Drums and then into Euls unless theres a specific reason to go Euls (long silences, orchid heroes like clinkz, etc.) You really need the HP and the ability is imbalanced on that hero
If you're an advanced player who can make educated adjustments based on the situation, then delaying that point in silence for more points in witchcraft may be feasible. However for the average guide-needing player, that early point in silence is far more likely to save your life/get you kills than the smaller advantages that more points in witchcraft give you.
Regarding Euls vs Atos, Atos gives you hp and a more offensive ability while Euls gives you movespeed, mana regen, some offensive and defensive ability, and a crucial interrupt that DP lacks. While I think Atos can be amazing on DP, I'd still rush Euls first in most games.
On November 08 2013 21:52 Firebolt145 wrote: If you're an advanced player who can make educated adjustments based on the situation, then delaying that point in silence for more points in witchcraft may be feasible. However for the average guide-needing player, that early point in silence is far more likely to save your life/get you kills than the smaller advantages that more points in witchcraft give you.
Regarding Euls vs Atos, Atos gives you hp and a more offensive ability while Euls gives you movespeed, mana regen, some offensive and defensive ability, and a crucial interrupt that DP lacks. While I think Atos can be amazing on DP, I'd still rush Euls first in most games.
I don't agree with this, her Silence actually has considerable animation and getting a new player to cast it properly (to cast it and squash the backswing animation) isn't easy. I would rather give them more passive advantages to work with.
Now if there was a blink hero like QoP or w/e then the Silence is necessary, if not, I don't see the point making someone take a pretty average spell (at level 1).
Whats the actual trade off anyways? Level 1 Silence's aoe is pretty small iirc. The opportunity cost of delaying your 3rd and 4th level of Witchcraft is pretty significant since you are going 4-1-1-1, so you'll be maxing witchcraft at 10? Seems pretty costly.
I almost never get a point in silence before lvl 9 unless I'm in danger of getting dived in mid / need to interrupt some bit channeling spell: (3/0/4/1), then maybe silence. The cast animation is so long that it becomes relatively useless offensively until you have some kind of disable / have finished your racecar build. The extra spirits seem to help a lot with taking early towers (since lvl 1 ult has so few spirits to begin with), the extra movespeed helps with rune control / rotations.
@Firebolt, I think Judicator meant that the rank 1 silence is pretty average. @Judicator, the AoE is the same at all ranks now (I think it was 6.77 or 6.78 that changed this).
On November 08 2013 21:52 Firebolt145 wrote: If you're an advanced player who can make educated adjustments based on the situation, then delaying that point in silence for more points in witchcraft may be feasible. However for the average guide-needing player, that early point in silence is far more likely to save your life/get you kills than the smaller advantages that more points in witchcraft give you.
There's not much foresight in deciding when you need the first Silence rank. It's mostly just "take it when you're about to teamfight". Outside of that, the silence's usefulness outside of teamfights is fairly mixed, depending on what heroes are in the enemy lineup and how hard silence hits their effectiveness.
This just seems like one of those scenarios where you could provide a cookie-cutter build, but at a basic level, the decision-making required to decide when to take the 1st rank of silence is straightforward enough that there's no point in vacillating over whether the cookie-cutter build should be 4-1-1-1- or 4-0-2-1.
It's a crushing teamfight skill, though. If you're level 8 and have 4-0-3-1 and your team is going to push/5-man soon, I would get that 1st rank silence when you ding 9 and not the 4th point of Witchcraft.
Is a newbie going to realise 'oh there are going to be teamfights soon'? I guess you could counter argue that early teamfights aren't prevalent at lower mmr, meh.
This build is like a really mainstreamed build, made to be able to be viable every single game you play. It's not going to be the most effective build you can go for every game, but it's going to be viable. And since I wrote this guide for newer people (why would you read a guide if you know what you are doing anyway?) I tried to make it as un-situational as possible.
Sometimes it's even better to skip the ulti at level 6, but it's not the point of my guide. Feel free to discuss your opinions on situational builds in this thread, that's what it is here for. But just wanted to clearify that I don't think this build is the perfect build. It's just a very mainstreamed build so it will work fine every game you play, which is a good start for newer players.
On November 09 2013 04:18 DrPandaPhD wrote: Note that there is no "perfect build".
This build is like a really mainstreamed build, made to be able to be viable every single game you play. It's not going to be the most effective build you can go for every game, but it's going to be viable. And since I wrote this guide for newer people (why would you read a guide if you know what you are doing anyway?) I tried to make it as un-situational as possible.
Sometimes it's even better to skip the ulti at level 6, but it's not the point of my guide. Feel free to discuss your opinions on situational builds in this thread, that's what it is here for. But just wanted to clearify that I don't think this build is the perfect build. It's just a very mainstreamed build so it will work fine every game you play, which is a good start for newer players.
What I am trying to tell you is that 4-1-1-1 is not the best mainstreamed build. At least not in my opinion. Rod of Atos before Euls is also a better item build than what in the guide
And no, there's never a time where you would skip ulti at level 6.
I've seen Scandal delay Ulti til lvl 8. Similar to how you would do it on Queen of Pain. There are certainly times where not going for ult at lvl 6 is the right choice.
The entire point of the build is the 521 movespeed you get with phase drums euls. It synergizes ridiculously well with her ult and makes it so you can come in and get out of fights easy. Euls is also very good defensively and gives you mana regen (something she desperately needs if you're farming properly). Also there is no good reason to skip silence till 9 because if you're not forcing fights and engaging the enemy early with her you're wasting her potential.
Pretty much the whole point of the hero is forcing your opponents to react to you and fight you. why you'd skip an aoe silence for more ghosts especially after the buffs to the silence and the buffs to her is debateable at best and bad at worst. Especially with a hero that if you do get a good silence can kill off at least one support in the duration of level 1 silence.
As far as the pros comment. Pros still go bloodstone on her and pretend she's timber sometimes. I'm pretty sure we can safely say that isn't the best build though.
Are you serious? Have you actually watched any DOTA recently? Almost every single pro skips it until lvl 8,9 or 10. I have yet to see a 4-1-1 build in a pro game. Your ulti becomes infinitely stronger with more points in your E and is in almost every scenario better than silence. If you play against a Storm, Puck or QOP (or similarly to these so I dont run down the list) I can see it being decent at lvl 8 or 9. But 4-1-1 is just not good. It's not terrible, it is just a very suboptimal build where you don't get the full potential out of your hero.
Also I disagree it's like similar to Queen of Pain. QOP is very different and there's an obvious benefit to it. I don't know where you've seen Scandal do it but sometimes even pros get ridiculous ideas, or is just trolling.
Euls can work before Rod of Atos, but not as a general build. You very much need HP and you get a greater manapool from Rod of Atos than Euls. You get less regen, but that's what you have runes and a bottle for. The 60 % slow on like a million cast range is just outright imbalanced on that hero; the earlier, the better.
And yes, Bloodstone can be an okay item but we're talking mainstream and not situational stuff. Getting Silence early is the situational build.
Edit: And just to make sure, the entire point of the build is _NOT_ the movement speed from Euls. It's the Cyclone effect. The extra movement speed is great, but the reason you build it is for defensive Cyclones when you're in big fights to dodge spells and have your ulti doing even more damage and you can control fights way better.
2009 video of DP. The video is somewhat outdated and Atos hasn't even been introduced yet I think, but he explains about what makes DP powerful and how Eul's synergizes so well with her. It's actually very informative, although the only two games he had available to cast were one-sided stomps, so he couldn't show a game where the DP was actually stressed going into the mid-late game.
I don't see how Atos is better than Eul's. Euls gives you both the killing/chasing power and the survivability, but with mana regen and movespeed as well. The slow is okay but it is a single target slow that does pretty much nothing in teamfights (you aren't a ganker anyway) and you can just pick up drum/vit booster for hp anyway. You also don't particularly need a huge mana pool compared to regen, you're spamming cheap nukes throughout a fight mostly. I also think ult at 6 is completely fine - you can push the mid tower if your lane opponent leaves to gank, you can kill people if they try to gank you / discourage ganks, it just opens up a lot of possibilities that you didn't have before. Sure in terms of straight 1v1 laning presence its not needed but you are gonna be more flexible by taking ult at 6. It's obviously stronger with more points in E but it still is a reasonable pushing tool with level 2 witchcraft. The one point I do agree with Bumblebee on is that getting more points in E rather than taking silence is often preferable. Silence is mostly a defensive tool on DP at that point and you can get away without it with solid game knowledge/map awareness. However taking a point in silence is probably fine and won't kill your DP play..
On November 10 2013 16:49 Pokebunny wrote: I don't see how Atos is better than Eul's. Euls gives you both the killing/chasing power and the survivability, but with mana regen and movespeed as well. The slow is okay but it is a single target slow that does pretty much nothing in teamfights (you aren't a ganker anyway) and you can just pick up drum/vit booster for hp anyway. You also don't particularly need a huge mana pool compared to regen, you're spamming cheap nukes throughout a fight mostly. I also think ult at 6 is completely fine - you can push the mid tower if your lane opponent leaves to gank, you can kill people if they try to gank you / discourage ganks, it just opens up a lot of possibilities that you didn't have before. Sure in terms of straight 1v1 laning presence its not needed but you are gonna be more flexible by taking ult at 6. It's obviously stronger with more points in E but it still is a reasonable pushing tool with level 2 witchcraft. The one point I do agree with Bumblebee on is that getting more points in E rather than taking silence is often preferable. Silence is mostly a defensive tool on DP at that point and you can get away without it with solid game knowledge/map awareness. However taking a point in silence is probably fine and won't kill your DP play..
^ Agreed.
Imo, Atos gives you hp & a cripple. Yes its useful, but a Euls gives you a controlling mechanism that works with your Ultimate and gives you mana regen/movement speed. It's been discussed to death, but movement speed can take the place of HP. Positioning is key in dota. If your positioned well,you dont need the extra HP. The mana regen is extremely useful too imo,that regen is more than enough to solve DP's mana requirement(along side a bottle/wand) making you have enough mana pool to use your stuff without a Atos anyway.
Atos is more of a ganking item imo...while DP by skillset is meant to be a teamfight/pusher. Euls also gives you opportunities to do things like Dodge stuns etc. The main focus of this guide is on the mobility teamfighting aspect of a DP, which it does quite well.
As for Silence or Witchcraft...yes more points into Witchcraft is good. But a point into Silence is definitely worth it as a Utility tool. There's plenty of situations at level 6 to justify the 4-1-1 build most of the time. I've definitely preferred the 1point into Silence over an extra point into Witchcraft.
All-in-one early/mid-game item, I don't see the problem in it if you're going for the pushy game for a hero limited to her spells for farm/gank/siege. I read some weird thread on Reddit (...) today that was calling for other alternatives (Eul's can be great and what I build if I don't see an early bloodstone, but seen people asking for a rush to Heart before Eul's, why?) and people seem to not look at the whole picture or her item progression, especially LD who had regurgitated the nonsense. I mean, it's about the time you get the item, it isn't bad, it's okay (good at best) on her but people are pretending it is the holocaust to build Bloodstone.
What do you think about going travels first in response to having a walkover lane? I've thought about doing it in the past, but 24 damage and phase active have always been really important for actually doing well early game.
Seems like there are three options if you want to snowball an early lead harder:
Same core items, faster
Midas
Boots of Travel
The same core but with earlier push is probably the best alternative, but requires some team coordination. I don't like midas because here as it costs a slot, and getting reliable gold (towers) and levels (kills) when you're ahead as DP is going to happen anyway. With travels, you get the basically same speed as perma-phase, have an extra slot, and can counter-gank more effectively when T1 towers are down. Not having to juggle bottle/wand when you require wards or dust is probably just a convenience, but being able to hang onto both when you have the vit booster is still useful.
Did try this out in a game laning vs a Bat recently. No way I was getting denied farm, but also couldn't push him out, due to some bronze-level issues. Got near 2000 gold after he gave up first blood trying to dive me, so progression was bottle, boots, wand, travels (drum, euls, heart). Didn't seem to have that big of an impact on the game either way - apart from maybe making me play better by being more willing to tp versus pressure in other lanes.
On January 19 2014 01:06 lzma wrote: What do you think about going travels first in response to having a walkover lane? I've thought about doing it in the past, but 24 damage and phase active have always been really important for actually doing well early game.
Seems like there are three options if you want to snowball an early lead harder:
Same core items, faster
Midas
Boots of Travel
The same core but with earlier push is probably the best alternative, but requires some team coordination. I don't like midas because here as it costs a slot, and getting reliable gold (towers) and levels (kills) when you're ahead as DP is going to happen anyway. With travels, you get the basically same speed as perma-phase, have an extra slot, and can counter-gank more effectively when T1 towers are down. Not having to juggle bottle/wand when you require wards or dust is probably just a convenience, but being able to hang onto both when you have the vit booster is still useful.
Did try this out in a game laning vs a Bat recently. No way I was getting denied farm, but also couldn't push him out, due to some bronze-level issues. Got near 2000 gold after he gave up first blood trying to dive me, so progression was bottle, boots, wand, travels (drum, euls, heart). Didn't seem to have that big of an impact on the game either way - apart from maybe making me play better by being more willing to tp versus pressure in other lanes.
DP snowballs by getting tower kills for the most part, so she's not really supposed to TP everywhere to counter gank (her toolset is quite bad for counterganking as well). Of course it can work but I don't really see any situation where it would be the better choice.