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On July 15 2015 12:04 DucK- wrote:
Aquila is 1k. Ask yourself if you really need that item. Do you really need the stats or mana regen, especially when your nuke has very mediocre damage that you won't be using it to farm.
I dagger to farm a lot before Radiance once I've maxed it, depending on my proximity to ult coming off cd. Hell, I'll use it after radiance to get to my next creep wave or camp even sooner. The damage is not at all negligible in jungle if you hit the camp you're working on in addition to the next camp simultaneously, especially if one or both camps are stacked. Just never use it on a single unstacked camp unless you need to path through it after finishing it, such as the far right medium camp on radiant if you want to snag a rune after you kill the camp (ideally near the neutral respawn time).
And that 1k gives you 18 damage, 9 attack speed, 3 + 9/7 armour, 57 hp, and 0.65 mana regen/s. When you can farm lane the armour aura buff helps passively push the lane away giving you vision of that lane which lets you jump into jungle more safely.
It's actually a pretty sick item. Now it still may be that it's worth skipping it, but I can't say right now whether that's most of the time or infrequently or scenario-specific.
I've gotten a chance to try it once so far, but the game didn't really count because they had a Medusa so I went diffusal after yasha which completely changed the game's tempo and my farm rate. They also had a Silencer so I would have spent a lot of time without mana no matter what, so it was just impossible to accurately judge how skipping aquila felt. I'll keep trying it and see if I can identify some trends.
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Would you mind linking to your dotabuff? I would love to watch a few of your replays, in particular I'm interested to see how you use your dagger while farming. Curious about item timings as well.
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http://www.dotabuff.com/players/22924819
I make no promises as to the actual overall quality of my games. Could be for sure that whatever I'm doing doesn't work at higher level, I dunno. I just know it works consistently through low 4k. A lot of my games nowadays are with friends who are worse than me, but my style of spectre worked just as well as when I did solo queue.
The most recent two Spectre games on there aren't typical of most of my games. I think the rest are too old to still have public replays unfortunately.
The most recent one I was getting free-farm in lane and tried to see how fast a naked relic I could build, and while I did get the radiance sooner than normal the timing wasn't to my satisfaction and further supported my normal build. The enemy Clinkz got pretty big early while I was afk lane farming, and I lazily fed him a couple times later since I knew we couldn't lose since they didn't give Naga farm priority. I never normally make blademail on Spectre, but it was an attempt to counter the glass cannon Clinkz and PA. It worked on PA a few times, but Clinkz ended up grabbing a well-timed BKB and all I did was trade feeds for bkb charges after I bought it.
The second to most recent game was me trying the no-aquila build, but with diffusal manta progression because they had a Medusa. There was a clear skill discrepancy between the two teams so I was never really on the backfoot farming terrifiedly in the jungle hoping I can clear a wave before ulting the way spectre games usually feel, so I don't think I used dagger too much in the jungle as result.
You're welcome to look through any replays I do have up though; and let me know if you can find some consistent mistakes or trends or bad habits I can work on. I can answer any questions you have regarding anything too.
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I was pretty surprised how much farm you got against that Centaur+CM lane in that replay from 8 days ago. I've been trying to pick Spectre more in ranked games, but if the support in my duo-lane isn't a strong laner the early game can be a disaster.
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![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/j0yW2/c472b4228c.png)
This is my Spectre stats in this patch. This hero is really powerful, easy to stomp people with since Radiance is so good now, All you need is good drafting and a good eye to catch things happening on the map. My typical build is Treads+MoM+Yasha into Radiance, it has insane DPS against heroes when I Haunt someone, but even if there are few openings for kills I can still disappear from the map and rice in jungle. My Radiance will complete somewhere between 25-28 minutes. If I feel MoM is unsafe in a game I leave the Morbid Mask unupgraded. Of course I can't expect to get that kind of farm every game, but that's where drafting plays a key role. I pick Spectre if the other team has low magic damage threat and I can expect the team to provide me support against a solo offlaner.
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Spectre has been my go-to pub-stomp hero for a long time now. I'm willing to pick her in all drafts. I always play her safelane, but honestly the way I have to play her sometimes suggests she could run mid or offlane too. As long as you can get levels you're fine. I've had games where I'm sitting on boots, quelling blade, poor man's shield at 10 minutes, and the end-game stats makes it look like the game was easy. You really don't need farm on her early. You need to get your ult and you need to use it well. Shit support? No problem. Terrible aggro lane? No problem-- they can't kill you if you watch their movements and use dagger appropriately in conjunction with maintaining good positioning.
However even in the worst lanes you can usually get some farm by stacking and pulling, controlling creep aggro correctly, or even by just using dagger (if they cannot possibly kill you during the cd/mana defecit and if you can get at least 2 lasthits simultaneously with one dagger).
The scariest thing is really strong ganking heroes who can kill you despite dagger phasing through terrain, and even then only if your team is completely incapable of keeping them busy (while you fight every ult cd). That's tough, because then you have to push with team which means you probably aren't getting farm, you're splitting xp too hard, and you aren't a surprise factor in fights anymore. However if your team can take good engagements and you play well during fights to pick off back-line heroes and slow targets to help your team nab them you can recover.
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So spectre has a 57.45% winrate on dotabuff right now (last month), 4th behind omni/abba/ursa. Any idea why?
I've played her a couple times in pubs and it'll always be some awful dual lane vs dual lane situation, and some axe/undying offlane or something will just shit on my face. How the hell is this hero doing so well right now in pubs? It's so hard to get a team coordinated around it as well.
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On September 06 2015 10:13 Aerisky wrote:
So spectre has a 57.45% winrate on dotabuff right now (last month), 4th behind omni/abba/ursa. Any idea why?
I've played her a couple times in pubs and it'll always be some awful dual lane vs dual lane situation, and some axe/undying offlane or something will just shit on my face. How the hell is this hero doing so well right now in pubs? It's so hard to get a team coordinated around it as well.
People tend to not finish games giving you time to catch up? Honestly though, if you get even decent support this hero is so hard for supports to fight against. You literally kill the back line with your ult while fighting everyone else. She's really strong, just gotta get your team to not be complete morons about it.
They can be stupid, like most are, but not too stupid.
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yea i dunno you can get shat on in lane and get like a 16 minute vanguard and a 27 minute radiance or something awful and still win, lotta pub games just go late and after radiance it feels easy to farm up all your other slots at a steady pace and just win
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On September 06 2015 10:50 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:
yea i dunno you can get shat on in lane and get like a 16 minute vanguard and a 27 minute radiance or something awful and still win, lotta pub games just go late and after radiance it feels easy to farm up all your other slots at a steady pace and just win
Hao got a 30 minute radiance on spectre at TI and he went from useless to eventually a farmed beast. Sure his supports were a huge factor in making him space, but it shows even a late radiance is good on her.
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I don't quite understand the power spike too when spectre gets his radiance. Suddenly so strong despite it being late :O
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i think hp having extra value due to dispersion has something to do with it, the value vit booster you generally get after radiance (if you didn't go vanguard before) makes you feel pretty unkillable, and after radiance you can reliably kill supports and threaten carries while usually not being at risk of dying because you saw where everyone was when you used haunt and your dagger is like a free getaway from anything but a targeted gank with chainstuns
On September 06 2015 13:07 the bear jew wrote:Show nested quote +On September 06 2015 10:50 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:
yea i dunno you can get shat on in lane and get like a 16 minute vanguard and a 27 minute radiance or something awful and still win, lotta pub games just go late and after radiance it feels easy to farm up all your other slots at a steady pace and just win Hao got a 30 minute radiance on spectre at TI and he went from useless to eventually a farmed beast. Sure his supports were a huge factor in making him space, but it shows even a late radiance is good on her.
not sure about that game though, cloud 9 kind of mentally gave up after that one bad fight where rubick got supernova and they never actually forced anything again
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I don't know why pubs are suddenly able to win more on her than before, but the strength of Spectre Radiance is obvious.
Unlike all other heroes in the game, when Spectre finishes Radiance, she is almost guaranteed to kill any one hero on the map every two minutes. Using her ult with Radiance guarantees either a kill or freedom of movement (to take a tower or kill Roshan, etc). Assuming she has level 2 ult and level 4 Dagger, Spectre can Radiance burn someone for 18 seconds by jumping on them and using Dagger. The movement speed differential means unless they TP out, they will take burn damage for 18 seconds (6 seconds of ult, 12 seconds of Dagger slow).
After 25% magic reduction that's 675 damage from Radiance, 150 damage from Dagger, and inevitably at least a couple 65 pure damage Desolate procs unless the enemy team are hugging each other. Call it 3 Desolate procs, not even accounting for auto attack physical damage (maybe your target is a PA who dodged all 3 attacks-- the Desolate lands anyway), and you're up to a minimum of 1020 damage.
Running the build I've described in the past in this thread, which doesn't even try and rush out Radiance ASAP, I can for sure have Radiance by 24 minutes in ~90% of games in pubs. It's quite conceivable that there is at least one hero on the enemy team 24 minutes in who doesn't have more than 1000 hp. Even if an enemy has 2000 hp, it's quite conceivable that Spectre herself or with the help of her teammates can do the other half before the enemy can move to the Reality target, barring the target TPing out first. And thanks to the global vision of the enemy Spectre's team always knows whether or not they can kill the target.
So barring exceptionally strong escape spells (or a blink dagger-- it doesn't go on until the first haunt's desolate proc) the enemy only has a few options: instant TP by the Reality target can work, but they might just die to Desolate procs anyway. Once Spectre finishes Manta probably only their 1 and 2 farm priority heroes are actually surviving the TP channel duration.
They can try and blow up the Haunt before Reality, but assuming Spectre herself has at least 1000 hp at this point, there are few heroes in the game who can very rapidly do 500 burst damage, so that probably won't work.
They can cluster with teammates to prevent Desolate procs, but then the damage done by Haunt is the knowledge of the exact position of the entire enemy team-- Spectre's team knows they can take an objective if they're in position or can move to outmaneuver the enemy team. Anyone who isn't in the cluster can easily get picked off, and if a pick-off is impossible the complete information on the enemy's disposition is a very powerful tool as is.
The best way to ensure survival is to activate a BKB, but 1. that requires having built one, which isn't possible or viable depending on the enemy's hero and role, 2. trades a BKB charge for a Haunt that still gave her team complete information on the enemy, 3. if they're alone and TP'd it blows a TP scroll and cd unless they have bots, and likely puts them in a non-ideal position where they can't accomplish anything, 4. even a 10s BKB charge without a TP isn't a guaranteed survival if Spectre doesn't mind using Reality after 6s and just waiting 4s to use Dagger to catch up and do horrible things to the target, and lastly 5. just because they used BKB doesn't mean the rest of their team is good, since she can just Reality somewhere else if she already picked a target to Reality on at all.
Furthermore, because Haunt gives you perfect information Spectre is never using Reality on a target she doesn't already know is a guaranteed pick-off, whether it requires additional help or not to secure.
Next, because of Dagger terrain-phase, Dagger movement speed increase, and innate increased EHP from Dispersion, Spectre can maintain dps from all sources on heroes more reliably and for a longer duration than any other hero, so all items have a disproportionate increase in her ability to kill the enemy. Being able to Radiance burn longer means she maintains inducing miss-chance on the enemy for longer, which decreases their capacity to hurt the rest of Spectre's team as well.
Also having Haunt in the first place means Spectre can more safely split push or afk-farm away from her team over any other hero in the game, so she gets more out of Radiance as a farming tool than any other hero in the game as well.
Lastly, even in scenarios where Spectre's Radiance is very late and her team is crumbling, it can be difficult to actually break highground against a farmless Spectre since she's durable, can slow multiple enemy heroes simultaneously, can put blink daggers on cd from a long distance, and can provide that perfect information making clutch plays and outmaneuvers easier to execute to comeback with, making it very likely Spectre will inevitably finish the Radiance.
Even when badly behind, if she can get that Radiance, because it is so disproportionately strong on her it's extremely difficult to actually end the game regardless of the size of her enemy's lead. And the longer the game goes on the stronger Spectre gets, forever. All items that provide hp and attack speed have a disproportionate increase in her capacity to survive and deal damage because of the strength of Desolate and Dispersion. The former is the single greatest on-hit damage buff in the game, stronger than Manaburn, more average damage than Minibash, Greater Bash, or even Time Lock inside Chrono, it doesn't go on cd, its effect isn't reduced by anything other than magical immunity, and it isn't a conditional percent chance hit. The latter doesn't go away when she's out of mana, and while Backtrack provides more protection, Dispersion is the only damage-reduction skill that also does damage, turning her hp into a weapon against non-magic-immune targets, a resource no other hero in the game has, except situationally Terrorblade.
Because of the nature of her illusion-based carry potential she also can gain more extra slots than any hero other than Sylla. She can swap out all of the following items before using Reality and joining the fight from fountain: Radiance, Diffusal Blade 2, Refresher Orb, Eye of Skadi, and if you're really fast, even Manta Style (if you want to replace the Manta slot you can ult, reality, manta once, tp, refresh, ult, and then replace the Manta, along with the other ult-only items). That means with level 3 ult, she can Skadi-ms/ias-slow, manaburn, and Radiance burn the entire enemy team, while her illusions hit the enemy with skadi, diffusal, refresher, radiance, and either manta+bots or bfly + daedalus/mkb for not quite 14 full seconds (the Skadi slow goes through BKB, but that's ~4 seconds of everything else even against a 10s BKB charge) before popping into the fight with Bots, Bfly, MKB/Silver Edge, Abyssal, Daedalus/Manta, Heart, and of course half a Moon Shard-- a devastating perfect 6slot if obtainable.
Because of her carry potential from passives and illusion-synergy, her suriveability, her gank capacity from level 6 on, her ability to safely farm/push away from her team, her ability to get complete knowledge over the enemy team every 2 minutes, her strength increasing so much from each successive item, and her ability to be above 6-slotted makes her just a stupid strong hero across the board. She has 3 main weaknesses: while she's hard to kill she's easy to zone or deny in weak lanes, she farms very slowly before Radiance, and magic immunity does greatly reduce her damage output before a 4th major item. Overcoming the first requires consistently making really good decisions or by having good supports, overcoming the second requires good global awareness and fight selection, and overcoming the third requires not losing the game before finishing a 4th item. If you can pull that off, you win. Now I will also say she is vulnerable to Silver Edge, but she can remove the Break with both Manta and Diffusal Blade, which she's comfortable building. I dunno what changed to allow the average pub to suddenly be able to turn these facts into wins, but Spectre's been in a really strong place for quite some time now.
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It is also very easy to play good dota when you have a Sepctre on your team. Most pub players just love suiciding in small squads without ensuring that their carry can/will join in the fight, but Spectre always has your back. Most supports also spend way too much time around their carry and completely ignores helping out other lanes. With Spectre this is not as much of a mistake as it is with other carries (though you still prefer getting solo exp and winning the other lanes if they contest you with a too strong lane).
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Lots of people playing carry don't know when to fight, when to farm. So lots of times you have fights when you would win but your carry is no where to be seen.
But this isn't the case with spectre, you can farm, jungle, split push to your heart's content and as long as your ult up, still be in every fight.
So you can maximize your farm efficiency and still be very active on map.
Once you get your basic items, get your radiance, you can easily just jungle, have your team either take free lane, or let them go as four and join in whenever. It's really strong.
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I attribute the high pub win rate to the fact that she requires very little know how to play. Am and pl for example are probably much stronger heroes but they require their player to be at least a little smart or know how the hero is played in general. That is to say, being a retarded pubber is not punished as hard as on most other heroes. Spectre is throw dagger, a click and press r, not even in any particular order. Even if u die your opponents will still take damage from dispersion and radiance , so it's near impossible to do -nothing- on the hero. A lot like how necro is a good pub hero despite being pretty bad hero overall
Spectre is also easy in the sense of balancing farm and fighting because you can just ult in when your team initiates/gets initiated on. U don't need a tp scroll for this, which eliminates another thing pubbers are chronically terrible at doing
This combined with the fact that most pubs will not do anything to shut down a farming hero after lanes end, and are generally bad at ending games, means spectre almost always get some items
Edit: also spectre has always had a high winrate because all of the above have been true for a long time. What's pushed her into the kind of crazy territory she's in right now is just power creep. She's had numerous buffs both directly and indirectly - comeback mechs, radiance buffs, haunt changes, post ti4 push strat nerfs, introductions of items like glimmer and solar crest - as well as nerfs to many of the previously strong pub heroes like wk, Zeus, and necro (through glimmer) pushing her up to 4th place. Another big thing about this patch in particular are the aoe gold changes because she is a hero that can be at many fights without issue
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What to do if my early laning is going trainwreck? I mean, when I can't farm shit safely and my team won't give a single fuck. I've seen people buying vanguard and blademail but that seems like a waste of gold, specially vanguard since it won't take me anywhere later. Should I just get some str and get a delayed rad or going for diffusal/yasha and try to legitimately ks using the ult?
I noticed that most of my shitty early are fixed with a well won teamfight with haunt, which literally turns the whole game in my favour instantly. If it doesn' happen I'm a burden until I finish get my stuff, and then proceed to stomp everything.
I'm at 3.2k MMR if it makes any difference.
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Seems quite powerful right now, the radiance buff really made spectre a lot better, before that you needed at least 30 minutes to get involved at all, but right now with the radiance giving you evasion, it helps against right clickers who would otherwise just crush you.
There are several build you can go on her, all depending on the situation, if they have a lot of early game, a lot of ganking type heroes, I suggest going Vanguard, I know the item is not good, but its good enough for spectre and for you to farm safely. Sometimes having only 700HP while farming on boots only for radiance is mentally restricting, you are so scared when someone is missing, because one spell and you are dead. So go for Vanguard if they have early game ganking heroes, otherwise just try and rush radiance.
I've seen people go for the S&Y build, I think its okay if you can get it really fast, like 14-16min S&Y is really good, but otherwise I'd avoid it, it makes you powerful mid game, but you lose out in the late game against other carries.
It also good to go for difusal first as well, sometimes you are just pressured too much, so rather than farming for 25 minutes for radiance, just go for diffusal, it gives you early fighting power, the damage is quite nice from it as well, that is 50 damage from the agility and feedback, plus you mana drain and have purge.
But yeah, it seems to be a very strong pick right now, big win rate in pubs. You really need to shut her down early to basically delay the radiance for as long as possible, if she gets radiance at 24-26 minutes, that is actually pretty late, so you have good chance of winning.
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United States2186 Posts
Any item gotten pre-radiance should be gotten with the expectation that it speeds up your radiance timing or barely delays it while preventing your team from collapsing (often the same thing). Whether this be urn, aquila, drums, yasha or vit booster really depends on the game/lineups. But your entire mentality should revolve around radiance or bust. This item has seriously gotten way too many buffs.
Really the only major skill on this hero outside of situations where you need multiple haunts is reading ganks and not dying at all costs. The opportunity cost on spectre's farm time pre-radiance is not very high since she farms so slowly anyway (unlike say AM where a minute spent not farming post bfury/vlads could have cost you 750-1000+ gold) and if you don't die farming opportunities will inevitably arise. What you have to avoid at all costs are chain death sequences - continuous combos of getting ganked and going too far in fights and dying pre-radi. It is okay to just haunt and not show up if a fight doesn't look good either, or just hide and wait for the enemy to reveal themselves instead of recklessly farming.
If you ever go sny on this hero where manta explodes your damage only counting desolate (let alone all the other bonuses) you should ban yourself from having any opinion on item builds. Mediocre convenience isn't a price you need to pay on spectre.
Spectre is super strong since rubberband is still very very powerful and after the nerfs people and even "good players" play super yolo when ahead and you can often engineer 5v(<5) fights when way behind. I almost think rubberband is stronger now than in 6.83 outside of bb since at least then everyone was aware of it and super scared to take risks, but now people act like they won't be brutally brutally punished for losing a single fight when ahead. Watching fight recaps is so scary; the xp/gold swing is far different than what so many previous versions might lead you to expect.
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yea when im at risk of dying a lot and the other team is quite early-game focused, i go vanguard when it's the item that will help me never die and sometimes vit booster or drums + cloak. every gank you can dagger tp away from is wasted time for the enemies and surviving is everything
I've seen people buying vanguard and blademail but that seems like a waste of gold, specially vanguard since it won't take me anywhere later.
the entire purpose of vanguard is to take you later (i.e. help you not lose gold to dying over and over again so you can get your expensive radi). the item sucking lategame isn't really of concern, especially because the types of games where you want it are the games where the enemy team has stacked earlygame (and thus presumably weaker lategame)
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EPT
