On August 11 2016 02:08 FFGenerations wrote: well the point is in (pro games) that if you don't come online quick enough then you will outright lose in 15 minutes and that is a mistake you can't afford to make. very often i am seeing it. a first item blink dagger (or maybe drums) is more often necessary than people seem to realise , i feel . it lets you make 1 or 2 plays that keep your team in a game where midas is demonstrably a death sentence
With low levels, how do you intend to do Invoker things with early Blink? Your main arsenal is Forge Snap Sun Icewall, and the occasional team-set-up Meteor. Your Invoke is probably at rank 1. You don't even have the mana pool to support your spell usage. There's like very little plays you can do with early Blink.
blink is for positional tempo-changing plays that in higher MMR would be to help your team around the 10-20 min mark when the opponent is playing a high tempo aggressive game . you only need to do 1 or 2 things but these are 1 or 2 things you can't usually do with midas (without a great deal of game-losing risk) .
landing a key cold snap and essential rightclicks without getting yourself killed is usually enough to reset the tempo of the game. your spells are incredibly strong early and positional playmaking with 2 or 3 spells without killing yourself is monumentally higher impact than an early midas (especially if it saves you 1 or 2 towers i.e. map control)
having early game impact by using your spells with great positional advantage (and without dying) >>> having a few higher levels in your spells mid/late
o/c in a low tempo game midas is much better but how often are you seeing low tempo games atm?
its a judgement call and depends on lineups and how the teams are playing/opponent timings and how well your lanes are doing. that w33 g1 two days ago is a classic example of how midas lost him the game where blink would have enabled him. and yesterday's w33 g1 was a classic example of midas being the better choice (actually it was a close call at around 15 mins when opponent was wrapping round the radiant mid tier 2 but they got buttfucked with a positional disadvantage without voker having to do anything to attain it)
The thing is you cant really predict when midas is going to lose you the game because so much situations can be overcome through postioning, and in the instances where they are able to facerush you with no consequences from your team suggests something else went wrong.
In hindsight getting a blink over a midas may have not lose them the game at the time they did, but it slows down invoker so much so that at another timing point he would be even weaker and unable to compete. You require levels, for spells to have impact 4q4e earlier gives you insane killing power and farming options like ancients
Joining for a kill sometimes isnt even as good as farming even if u are the one to get the kill. Plus u already have sunstrike open, to impact a kill that needs ur help.
The often progression is midas, euls/drum, (bots if the game is going fine) nd aghs then blink
Your trying throw the blink in first which go against the idea of getting blink which is u have high impact skills now u need positioning to land them.
it wasnt really amazing, it was absolutely solid, but his team done most of the work. i'm fully expecting EG to take advantage of him next series ... or go home
you can honestly make the same argument for blink on most mid heroes
"if you play a tempo game and get early kills then blink > midas"
which is kinda like no shit obviously but in 100 games how frequently will blink plays win you the game vs midas outfarming/leveling win you the game? midas is just way more stable
arguably , since you scale linearly , having an extra tool/ability is going to be more powerful (or should i say game-changing) than having +X levels/+%dmg on your abilities.
in reality i don't know how much + midas gets you compared to going blink, maybe its 600 dmg in midgame with +5 mins aghs timing on average. it'd be cool if someone could quantify it
i've been going midas instead of blink recently and haven't been missing blink as much as i thought i would. but really i'm gonna drop out of this coz i don't play enough to make an assessment anymore i feel. i would like it if more people tried practicing with blink though because it is like adding another octave to the piano i feel
homies explain why drums over dragon lance i feel like the latter is 10x better at the same price point unless you're getting a specific timing for ur 5stack
Dragon Lance doesn't seem very good on Invoker; unlike a STR or AGI hero you don't get any damage from it, so all you're getting over Drums is a little more effective HP and the range bonus (which isn't meaningless on Invoker, but nor does it seem like any more of a game changer than Drums active) at the cost of 9 int, 3 damage and the attack/move speed bonus.
The other redeeming feature is that you can make Dragon Lance into a Hurricane Pike later, though I don't know how much an Invoker actually wants one of those over other items.
Depending on the game Veil could be better than either of the above (even if it's a little more expensive).
Pike sucks because force accomplishes what you need against most heroes (clock, riki) and the extra gold to upgrade can be used towards bkb/ghost/aghs/whatever you need. Best use of pikes are against melee heroes without gapclosers and by the time they are so big a threat to you they will likely have bkbs and if they don't, your spell usage + force should be able to let you deal with them.
I think that if you have a Dragon Lance and a Forcestaff already it's definitely worth the 250 gold to combine them into one slot, get +1 str, +6 agi, and the active... but I don't see a compelling case for why Invoker wants the Dragon Lance in the first place. As you say, Pike isn't so much better than Forcestaff that it greatly incentivises you to build a Lance.
(That being said, if you're in the super-lategame with money to spare and a Force Staff you can't afford to replace because of Riki/Clock/etc. you might as well buy the Lance and upgrade to a Pike, but that's not really what we're talking about here.)
Yeah I feel like the major point against dlance is just that he's not an agi/str hero. Its cost-effectiveness takes a pretty big nosedive if you don't get damage from the stats.
He also doesn't use the range particularly well because he has good range already, and also has lots of ways of controlling what gets near him, unlike drow etc. that just want to be as far away from everything as possible.
I don't think Pike is a ever good pick unless you're just trolling around.
I get that a force staff is situational when the opponents can just go up your face like clockwerk. What exactly are you getting out of a Dragon Lance btw? That's 2k that could have gone to your BoT or half of your scepter If you're talking about late game then it's probably time to drop the entire force staff because you should be 6-slotted with more valuable items anyway. It should be the support's responsibility to get a force staff and help you out anyway.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/UJZ78p1.jpg)
