Leshrac 101

Leshrac

Leshrac is a ranged intelligence hero who is very versatile and is an excellent ganker, pusher and support. He has great burst potential and is useful at all parts of the game and can do massive AOE damage with the right items.

Leshrac's advantages :

• An AOE stun/skillshot
• Great anti-push in lightning storm
• One of the faster tower killers with edict
• Above average MS
• Good int gain
• Scales pretty well with items
• Low CD, rather spammable skills
• Can farm creep waves very fast and catch up in farm

Leshrac's disadvantagese:

• Needs survivability
• Despite large mana pool, you will run out of mana
• Relatively level dependant
• Its annoying to play him without farm

Laning

• Leshrac is an excellent laner having both 600 attack range, MS of 315, good attack animation and well scaling base damage making him very good at harass.

• Leshrac hence, can be played on any lane. As always, buy wards if going offlane to prevent pulls.

• In lane, try to get autoattacks off whenever the melee hero tries to last hit. With right timing, you can even land a split earth and get a few extra autoattacks off.

• If you play him mid, get a bottle and control the runes. Lesh is frankly an excellent mid but isn't often put mid in competitive because other heroes can make better use of the gold.

• If laned with a guaranteed stun like CM/SD, hitting split earth should be really easy and hence significantly increase kill potential

• I personally don't like to play Lesh as a hard support. But he can be played as one. Remember that besides diabolic edict and pulse nova, all other skills have a long cast range. Make use of this and stay back so you can contribute stuns and damage without getting focused.

About Split Earth

• There is 0.35 second delay from cast and the stun popping. This doesn't include the time taken for the hefty animation Leshrac does. The best way to get used to this is to play him more, no way around that.

• You can use the animation for mind games. Use stop button to cancel split earth before Lesh casts it. The cast animation should make an intelligent opponent be fearful of coming in close to last hit.

• Split earth's AOE increases quite a bit upon levelling it making it easier to get 2-man split earths with leshrac.

• The best part about split earth is that the stun is 2seconds at all levels. This makes it an excellent skill for level 1 kills. It just needs some proper support. This is partly what makes Lesh strong in trilanes.

• Split earth kills trees

About Diabolic Edict

• Possible the best pushing skill in the game. Its damage is spread out amongst nearby enemies. Hence, to maximise damage use it against solitary enemies/towers with no enemy creeps.

• At level 1, it does 400 damage to a single target. And at level 4, it does a massive 1600 damage to a single target.

• The damage occurs over 8 seconds and is in a 500 AOE surrounding leshrac.

• If Lesh dies before 8 seconds, the edict will persist in the area, similar to SK's epicenter.

• Post-nerf in 6.75, edict has cast time, making it less useful in chasing situations. However, if close to your enemy, the extra damage you get when you chase with edict may be enough for a kill.

• Edict does mixed damage, similar to Beastmaster's axes. It will hence do damage to ancients and BKBed units.

• Edict does do damage to invisible heroes. Take that TA!

About lightning storm

• At level 4, this skill does 265 damage to 8 targets, on a 5.5 second cooldown making it an excellent anti-push ability.

• Since the jump range from the initial target is 600, you can use it to harass enemy heroes in lane without risking yourself.

• When playing mid, Lightning storm is the ability of choice for pushing the lane to get rune control.

• Lightning storm if directly targetted is blocked by Linken's sphere. However, it will not be blocked if the Linken's target is a victim of the bounce.

• Lightning storm can be used to snipe targets out of range. Have a low HP hero running away 1200 range away from you? No worries, cast the skill on the creep nearest to the hero and lightning storm will hit.

About pulse nova

• Pulse Nova is very powerful. It does magical damage per second in a small 450 radius around Leshrac.

• Its power is most pronounced in the mid game when you have the mana to support the high mana cost and it does 100 damage per seconds.

• Pulse Nova has 2 weakness. Firstly, the mana drain is very intensive and when you turn it on, ask yourself, would it have been more useful if that mana were put in split earth/lightning storm. Secondly, it needs Lesh to be in the center of the frying pan for it to be effective. So, ask yourself, will I get out of this alive if I stand in the middle of the fight.

General tips

• The key to playing Lesh well is positioning, positioning and positioning. You have to stay behind to get stuns off at key moments without getting yourself killed.

• Skilling Leshrac is flexible but there are a few pointers.

• I find that levelling up Split Earth is key. The larger AOE allows you to hit more people more often. The only situation to not level the skill early is if dual roaming with Shadow Demon or other set-up heroes.

• Lightning storm is an excellent ability on a low cooldown. In most cases, it is my second skill to max. It is versatile enough to be used to counter pushes, harass and farm.

• Edict does massive damage but in the early game it isn't a good idea to be in the middle of fights. You are way too squishy and you will die. Still, 2 points in edict are sufficient to do massive early game damage to towers. If your hitting a solo tower with edict, in most cases, it will force out a glyph or said tower will fall. Edict has lost some utility as a chasing ability since the nerf to its cast animation.

• Pulse nova should not be taken at 6 in most cases. Again, your too squishy to stand in the middle of fights to get the damage off. Also, 110 mana to turn it on + the constant mana drain has a great opportunity cost in the early game. You won't have the mana to use more split earths. However, in the mid game, that pulse nova is a great way to spend that excess mana.

• With this in mind, I usually level up lightning storm first if I'm playing mid and split earth first if I'm dual laning. I take edict whenever I feel like we are about to push. When exactly this happens is very flexible, so go with the flow. I don't take pulse nova until 10/11.

• Stats are important on leshrac. In the early game, you need his skills up to maximise the burst but as you reach midgame and have skilled pulse nova, get a few points in stats. It will greatly increase your survivability and how long you can keep your ult up and burning.

• There is a build where you max split earth and edict and then completely skip lightning storm. The rational was that having 3 skills will tax too heavily on Lesh and Lesh needs the stats anyway. This is still a viable build and you should also try it. But I find the long range guaranteed nuke damage from lightning too good to pass on

• Leshrac does really well with farm he gets. And he farms fast. Hence, whenever there is a lull in the action, farm. But please don't do it at the expense of stealing your carries' farm and pushing the lane. It is a very easy bad habit to have, especially when playing Leshrac and Lina.

• Items for Lesh solve 3 key needs of his - survivability, positioning tools and mana.

• The single biggest pure survivability item for Lesh is a BKB. It allows him to stand in the middle of team fight with that beautiful crimson glow that is Pulse Nova, burning everything around him.

• For positioning, I like to start with Phase boots. Phase boots really allows you to effectively get split earth off, especially when chasing. I like a force staff with phase. It allows you to both chase and lets you and your allies escape from positioning mistakes. A blink dagger may be a good pickup but I don't like the difficult buildup and the fact that it is a terrible escape tool.

• For mana, there are many items to go for. The best one would be a Bloodstone. If your doing well, Bloodstone lets you snowball like nothing else. At 15 charges, you can leave pulse nova on permanently. Other good items include Guinsoo and Shiva's guard.

• For heaven's sake, do not build a Bloodstone if you are not doing well. Firstly, a late bloodstone is a lot less effective when your mana pool's a lot bigger anyway. Secondly, if your doing badly as Lesh, you will die often. And if you die often Bloodstone is useless. It is easy to get fixated on trying to finish an item once you have one components. Remember that having a raw point booster for example is still good.

• Eul's is a cheap and easy item to get. It increases MS and allows you to setup your own Split Earth. However, I find a force staff to have more utility in most cases.

• Rod of Atos is excellent. It is very cost efficient HP. The huge cast range of the slow makes it extra effective.

• Necro 3 is another item to be considered. It makes Leshrac's pushes even stronger and the Melee warriors Last Will will serious hurt any counter push attempts by heroes.

• If your playing support Lesh, please buy wards and mekansm. An early Mek exponentially potentiates early pushes and gives you good survivability. More so than a bloodstone that you can barely build up.

• Aghanim's increases Pulse Nova's damage with no increase in mana cost. I personally rarely build it because there always seems to be better items for Lesh.

Closing Thoughts

One of the most powerful heroes in Dota, one that used to be seen in every competitive game in the past. While he is squishy, he more than makes up for it with his excellent utility and damage output. He may a tough hero to use but oh so satisfying to master.

Pick Leshrac more often!