[Daily Hero tl;dr #31] Anti-Mage

Our favorite carry is here today!

TL;DR

• Skills - Blink (1,8,9,10) Burn (2,3,5,7) Shield (4,12,13,14) Ult (6,11,16)
• Items (lane) - stout, quelling (if needed), regen, rush RoH
• Items (early) - Phase Boots, Vanguard, Manta
• Items (later) - Butterfly, Heart, BKB
• Tips - save Blink (you might not need it!), farm fast - win early
• Counters - shut down early, slows/stuns

Straight into the skill build, you might find that sometimes you want more shield early if you have a tough lane or even another level of blink if you are getting ganked constantly. It's not set in stone, but that is probably one of the more aggressive builds. Replace blink at 8/9/10 with shield if necessary.

And now I will go into why there is no Battlefury. "Wilco! The pros get Treads BFury all the time!" Well that is true, because they are pros and are required to farm to get more items faster. You are not pro and your opponents are not pro so you can win without BFury. Basically, professionals get Treads BFury and then farm up Manta. You can easily skip over the BFury and go straight Manta and still be just as powerful.

Why Phase? Well, this is probably a bit more controversial now because of the recent attack speed nerf, but you end up getting the same amount of hits off - while chasing - as you would with Treads. Not only you run faster and can keep up with heroes, but it will save you precious mana because you don't need to blink as often, which could even save you if you go too far.

Playstyle: get a nice lane, farm up Phase Vanguard, go kill some silly mages, get Manta, win game. Manta is the obvious choice because not only it increases your DPS by about 100% but then you get three times mana burn. And you can push towers faster. And it's awesome. Be aggressive, you are very spell resistant and have blink, so you can run in, deal some damage, and gtfo quite easily.

So basically, Battlefury is probably not necessary. You can get a Battlefury and delay Manta 10 minutes and win in 50, or you can not get a Battlefury, get Manta 10 minutes earlier, and win in 40. I prefer the latter.

// I'll answer questions in the comments and take suggestions for tomorrow's write up.

/// I am compiling a list of my threads (until something better comes up) on my profile at GG.net