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- Rocket Barrage is incredibly powerful against a single enemy,
but its damage falls off dramatically if there are multiple targets.
Position yourself to make the best use of it.
- Homing Missile is a great harassment tool. Place it behind your
allies to prevent the enemy from destroying it before it starts moving.
- Flak Cannon allows you to harass enemy heroes from a great
distance, or force them away from the creeps. An early point should be
considered if you are taking the solo mid-lane. However, it does push
the lane and may open yourself to ganks.
- Using Flak Cannon early (before you use the attacks) will lessen the cooldown on your next cast.
- For maximum effect, cast Call Down in conjunction with your Homing Missile's impact or an allied disable.
- Aghanim's Scepter will allow you to snipe fleeing enemy heroes with Call Down. It can also be used to assist or deter pushing.
source:
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Gyrocopter
- When being pursued by numerous heroes, you can cast Ice Shards
toward them to hinder their movement, as the barrier forces them to
break up and even come to a slight halt. It is ideal to cast Ice Shards
when your pursuers are in a small choke-point, as the barrier will most
likely block their way, or at least make it even more difficult for them
to move forward.
- Ice Shards' missile cast is delayed; keep this in mind when you are targeting distant, fleeing heroes.
- When pushing, defending, or farming, Ice Shards is an
effective area-of-effect skill you can use to damage multiple creeps in a
straight path; unlike target heroes, Ice Shards doesn't create a
barrier when it contacts creeps.
- Aid your team's initiator by pairing up with him/her and
casting Snowball on the group of enemies; the movement makes both Tusk
and his teammate invulnerable, and any target that is hit by it gets
stunned for a brief second, giving the initiator some time to act.
- Be careful when using Frozen Sigil, as it gives a large bounty
when destroyed. Only direct it toward enemy heroes when they are too
busy to pay attention to it (i.e. when being pursued by your allies). It
has a relatively fast speed and can catch up to most enemies.
- Purchase mana boosting items to supplement all of your four active spells, since Tusk is incredibly skill-dependent.
- Walrus Punch deals 4x critical damage when enemies are 50% below their maximum health. Similar to
Bounty Hunter's
Jinada, it also maims the target to a crawl, so use this to knock out
an enemy before they can retaliate. However, this move can accidentally
steal the kill due to its potential critical damage, but nevertheless it
is acceptable, since Tusk benefits from additional items.
- If you managed to get quite some gold from ganks early on, you could consider going for armor-reducing items like Medallion of Courage or Desolator:
they give amplified damage for a reasonable price. Just be sure to use
your Medallion on the enemy before utilizing your ultimate on him.
- If you find yourself without mana too often, you could consider going for Arcane Boots or Intelligence-boosting items like Drum of Endurance or Force Staff,
which also come with nice abilities. Alternatively, you could buy items
that increase your mana regeneration such as Medallion of Courage and Perseverance (which can also be turned into a Battle Fury, should you get other damage-increasing items before finishing the whole item).
source:
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Tusk
- Crystal Nova
is a large area of effect nuke that also slows your enemies. You can
hit enemies from 1100 units away with it (700 casting range + 400
radius).
- Frostbite
is a great disable which prevents the target from moving or attacking.
It also interrupts channelling spells and teleports. Unfortunately, it
does not prevent enemy heroes from casting spells.
- Arcane Aura
used to be prioritized as it benefits the whole team greatly,
especially one with a strong caster/ganker line-up. But the introduction
of Arcane Boots has made this skill somewhat less useful.
- Since 6.76 this bonus is doubled on Rylai herself, granting a whopping +5 bonus mana/s.
- Freezing Field is an incredibly strong spell. However, it can be unpredictable and usually gets interrupted by your enemies very quickly. Freezing Field consumes a lot of mana, so use it sparingly.
- Many players choose not to skill Freezing Field until quite
late in the game, as it is a situational spell that is most effective in
large clashes; and its use consumes a huge amount of mana. However, its
slow and gigantic (if unpredictable) damage can be very useful in early
game, especially against enemies that lack the means to interrupt it.
Let your decision be informed by enemy lineup as well as laning
composition.
- Items like Black King Bar and Shadow Blade
are viable options to prevent your opponents from cancelling your
ultimate, but Crystal Maiden usually won't have that much gold to spend.
- Crystal Maiden can either babysit her team's carry on dual/triple lanes, or roam between the lanes to gank enemies.
- Always ward the woods. Wards should be bought over and over again to provide map control through the whole game.
- There is a temptation to use Crystal Nova to push lanes, but owing to its mana cost and long cooldown this isn't a good idea.
- If you have a few coins to spare - always buy items that boost
your survivability, or get yourself an escape/positioning mechanism
like Blink Dagger or Force Staff.
- Freezing Field must be used at the right time to avoid
interruption and being focused. Generally speaking, in an encounter it
is best used after the initial nuking phase; when the enemy's stuns are
on cooldown (building a Black King Bar
will provide immunity to stuns; but Crystal Maiden does not typically
get much gold and this can be very difficult to build in a game where
your team is not getting a lot of kills). If your team has an initiator
with the capability to disable a group of enemies, such as Tidehunter or Enigma,
Freezing Field should be used in synchronisation with their mass
disable. Using Freezing Field very often results in Rylai's death, and
she rarely is able to channel it for its full duration, but if she can
maintain it even for a few seconds it will be useful for her team.
- Although Freezing Field's damage can be upgraded with Aghanim's Scepter,
its primary use is its slow rather than its damage and considering
Rylai's low gold income, building Scepter is typically not a good idea;
her ult would be more useful if instead she built Black King Bar and/or
Blink Dagger and typically of a support hero she normally must choose
only a couple of luxury items.
source:
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Crystal_Maiden
- Luna and Night Stalker complement each other well; as Eclipse causes day to become night and Darkness gives both of them a very long vision range.
- Early points in Lunar Blessing will make last-hitting creeps
easier. At any rate, make sure you have a single point in it before the
first night as only one point is needed for the full amount of vision it
bestows.
- Early points in Moon Glaives will push the lane. Moon Glaives
is commonly not skilled at all until the laning phase has concluded.
- Extremely unusually for a hard carry, Luna gains significant
killing power with a level advantage, owing to Lucent Beam and by
extension Eclipse.
- Lucent Beam's cast range is gigantic. Use it to pick off fleeing heroes.
- Bear in mind Eclipse's range is much smaller than Lucent Beam's.
- Under almost all circumstances Luna should be paired with a
disabler for her laning phase; as aside from her high movement speed she
has absolutely nothing to help her avoid ganks or kill attempts.
- It takes significant skill and knowledge of the game to solo a
lane with Luna. Her very small attack range and purely damage-oriented
skillset mean she is extremely easy to kill. Even then, it is
recommended to have ward vision and easy access to team backup for her
to be successful in a solo lane. The advantage of running a solo Luna is
that it is essentially high-risk high-reward. A Luna with level
advantage doing well can easily set the momentum of the game in her
team's favor.
source:
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Luna
- Between levels 6-12 Bane is comparatively a very powerful hero,
and assuming you maxed his Brain Sap (as you should under all
circumstances) you will be able to solo most heroes by means of Fiend's
Grip followed by Brain Sap. It is necessary to get kills during this
phase of the game; as if Bane is not well-geared and leveled up later in
the game, he will be relegated to a support unit.
- It is important for the player to judge when to change roles;
as mentioned above, Bane should gank constantly in the middle of the
game to gain a gold advantage and avoid getting shut down or subjugated
to a conservative support role. A well-managed Bane can change the
outcome of a team fight in the late game with effective use of items
such as Necronomicon, Scythe of Vyse, and Aghanim's Scepter.
- New or unseasoned players have a tendency to attack targets
under Nightmare. Before the game starts, make sure to warn them about
it.
- Bane is not an initiator; despite having two disables,
he is far too delicate to withstand the initial retaliation. Instead, he
should hide until such time as his abilities become crucial when the
team fight has ensued(preventing escapes, finishing off enemy heroes
with Brain Sap, etc.).
- Avoid heroes with stuns, as they can interrupt Fiend's Grip. If you must deal with them, incapacitate them via Nightmare, a Scythe of Vyse, or Fiend's Grip itself. Picking Bane in a match against several heroes with disables is unwise. Black King Bar
is typically an effective first major item to build on Bane if you need
to help your team disable someone before they retaliate.
- If the enemy team lack area-of-effect stuns or interrupts, a Shadow Blade
can make your ultimate harder to stop, since your opponents must first
reveal you and then interrupt you. As with all similar abilities, you
can activate invisibility without breaking your channel. While Shadow
Blade is also effective for ganking solo heroes and escaping, you should
still get Black King Bar instead if the enemy team have ranged AoE
interrupts such as those possessed by Lina, Drow, Dark Seer, Death Prophet etcetera.
source:
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Bane
- Mask of Madness will allow Faceless Void better to utilize Chronosphere
throughout game, as does almost any item that gives attack speed or
damage. A BKB is usually a good choice after getting a MoM as nukers
outside the chronosphere can be ignored, while they otherwise burst the
fragile Void very easily.
- When using Chronosphere it's important that you prioritize the targets to deal maximum damage. Important targets include carries and spellcasters.
- If you want to play your lane aggressively rank up Time Lock first, conversely if you need to play defensively rank up Backtrack after getting at least one rank of Time Walk as it is still your primary escape mechanism, while also having some offensive potential.
- Chronosphere
will pause friendly units (exception : units under control of Faceless
Void) and heroes as well as foes. Try to position it so enemies are
within the sphere and allies are outside and can reach enemies inside
without having to enter Chronosphere itself.
- Although Faceless Void is a hard carry hero, he is extremely supportive when using his Chronosphere
as it has the potential to trap the entire enemy team in place for many
seconds, allowing easy use of several ranged ultimates altogether for
massive damage. Example: Lich, Jakiro, Witch Doctor and Gyrocopter
ultimates.
- If you are trying to decide on what item build is best for
Faceless Void remember that his main goal is to do the most damage and
hopefully kill at least one key enemy hero inside his Chronosphere where he has a 5 second free reign to attack a target without any chance of retaliation.
- While Aghanim's Scepter
may diminish your carry potential sometimes it might come in handy as
it increases your Chronosphere duration to 6 seconds and reduces its
cooldown to only 60 seconds, allowing your ultimate to be ready in
almost any team fight and while it may not contribute to your damage
output very much it does increase your survivability by granting you
stats and HP.
source:
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Faceless_Void
- One of the best skills to use early game is Decay: it's quite spammable, and will make ganking easier. You can easily get first blood if you're laning with a good partner.
- Decay
is very useful even if left at level 1. Max it when team battles begin
to start: you can spam it even more and make enemies squishier.
- Undying can be played in many ways: if you're going for a more supportive role, use your Tombstone and your Flesh Golem to slow the enemies while spamming Decay, then let your lane partner get the kill. Otherwise, use Soul Rip to finish a Hero while there are many creeps nearby: this way it will deal more damage.
- Don't use Soul Rip
to harass, but use it to heal a friendly hero or to finish off enemies.
This is more effective if there are many units nearby, such as creeps
if you're laning, or heroes if you're initiating.
- Remember that Soul Rip can be used to heal your tombstone.
- Though his spells are individually quite cheap, you will
almost always have mana problems since both Soul Rip and especially
Decay are very spammable. Consider getting Arcane Boots during the laning phase, then disassembling it once you have enough to buy the remaining pieces of a Bloodstone. You can then convert your standard boots to Phase Boots allowing you the mobility and chase power to keep Flesh Golem's powerful aura on the right targets during a teamfight.
- Another good item for Undying in the early game is Soul Ring. After using Soul Ring, you can cast decay for free. If you hit 2 or more Heros with this spell, you make up for the HP cost for Soul Ring.
- If you don't have enough money to buy a Bloodstone
in time or you'd prefer cheaper items, try to make yourself as tanky as
possible: if you're initiating, enemies will target you first. That's
why you need an early Vanguard and/or a Hood of Defiance if the opposing team has a lot of nukers. Other useful items that increase your HP are Rod of Atos, which will probably solve most of your mana problems too, and Heart of Tarrasque.
- Should the enemy team have an Earthshaker,
it is unwise to place a tombstone at the beginning of a teamfight. Each
zombie will cause the echo to deal extra damage, likely obliterating
your entire team (or at the very least severely injuring them).
- Zombies are magic immune, but will take full damage from AoE
physical abilities. Be aware of heroes with these abilities that can
easily deal with your Tombstone zombies, such as Gyrocopter's flak cannon, Axe's counter helix or Bristleback's quill spray.
- If Naga Siren
is on your team, be aware that Tombstone will summon zombies even when
the enemy targets are sleeping and untargetable. This can be used to
your advantage
source:
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Undying