Hero discussion #4 Magine the Anti-mage

Magina, the Anti-Mage

thou and I must have a frank discussion

, hopefully

Once a peaceful pilgrim visiting a monastery, searching for inner peace and wisdom, now executing his vows to destroy all sorcery. The monastery was attacked by the Deaths God’s Legions but the monks kept meditating since the invasion was just seen as disruption. When Magina saw these horrors he escaped and vowed that he shall destroy all magic.

I think we can all admit that Anti-Mage is a carry player his wet dream. He offers everything a carry has the offer: fast farming acceleration, escape mechanisms, tons of damage, split push and annoying as hell during the laningstage with Mana Break. If one wants to learn the principles of carry there is no hero better defining its definition than Anti-Mage.

As he is the wet dream of a carry player he is the nightmare for any other player. Draining mana is for every hero painful, except for Huskar maybe, but he also gets owned by Anti-Mage. He kills supports like they were never there, intelligence mid heroes kill their own team thanks to Mana Void. Other types of mid heroes just get bursted down by his right clicks combined with the best damage amplification item for him Manta Style. Oflaners just get bullied out of the lane when their mana is helplessly low and the carry in the enemy team eats purified **** when Anti-Mage overwhelms him with Abyssal Blade.

Often called Hentai-Mage by me, but for that content I would refer to another site, which we all know ;)

Anti-Mage his abilities

At first, for people who aren’t confident with Anti-Mage I will shortly explain his abilities, which makes a lot of sense for the hero concept.

mana break, this spell is the reason Anti-Mage does so much damage, especially when he purchases Manta Style. This burns mana and 60% of the mana burned becomes extra damage. The damage can be lifestealed upon, from non-unique attack modifier lifesteal, so vladmir’s offering and vampiric aura. The damage is added by the base damage, so illusions benefit from it but cannot be multiplied by crit, dd rune or cleaved upon. Also This is a unique attack modifier so no Satanic, Eye of Skadi or Desolator should be purchased. The spell also doesn’t stack with Diffusal Blade.

, Yes it is qop's blink, don't know how to get anti-mage's. Just an ordinary blink skil, which blinks range increases by leveling up as well the cooldown. It’s because of this spell that Anti-Mage farms so fast. He can jump from camp to camp, from creepwave to creepwave while he can also escape from enemies, or blink upon them.

spell shieldspell shield, this passive heavily increases the durability of a hero with below average strength gain. An unlike null field this passive actually makes a big difference. On max level this spell grant Anti-Mage with a total of 62% magical damage resistance!

Mana void, simply, big blue explosion of death! This is just the best lategame scaling nuke in the game. Where all nukes fall into oblivion during the later game, Mana Void rises in power. Together with reaper scythe, it is a percentage based nuke, so not a number based damage nuke. This way they are allowed to do impressive amounts of damage. While reaper scythe is based on missing healthpoints, Mana Void is based on missing manapoints. They also have a short mini stun. reaper scythe and Mana Void go hand in hand, as Jin and jang, only is reaper scythe an abomination of magic and Mana Void a clearer of dark conspiracy.

Potential topics
As an experienced Anti-Mage player I still have questions, or just topics I would really like to see a discussion evolved around.

1) Item wise, since the Abyssal Blade change is isn’t really self-explaining which item you purchase in which order. After finishing a Manta Style previously most of the Anti-Mage players would go Abyssal Blade, since it gave lockdown and damage. Now it doesn’t give damage. You still do already a lot of damage with only Manta Style Abyssal Blade, but not enough for more tankier enemies, and guess which heroes are meta now. So I mostly go Butterfly after Manta Style and then an Abyssal Blade.

So shortly, which item do you guys purchase after Manta Style

2) Skill wise, I do the good old stat build. That means getting one level in every spell, however sometimes you can skip the level in spell shield, and then maxing Blink. Mostly that means 3-4 points in stats. However I have seen arteezy doing the max Mana Break build and some others would do a max Blink build.

Which skillbuild do you guys prefer, and why and when?

3) Recently I often see the Vanguard first Anti-Mage. Since the meta requires fast online coming heroes I understand the reason for this. However since I’m the hardcore afk farmer type of carry I don’t like that item.

What are your thoughts on Vanguard, should it be bought? Should you then still buy a Battle Fury?

4) What are you guys average creepscore on Anti-Mage, what is your average g/m and x/m? According to dotabuff, what is his rank on “farm” compared to the other heroes?

Just to create a little carry competition around here.


5) Who is your favorite support to play with when playing Anti-Mage?

6) Which hero do you hate the most playing against as Anti-Mage, or which one do you choose to counter an Anti-Mage?

7) What about Vladmir’s offering on Anti-Mage. Personally, I never liked the item to buy it. In my experience it was just useless. You don’t lose health when farming with a battlefury and you also don’t lose mana. The item also gets easily replaced by a hearth of tarrasque later on. I can get it if you like to fight a lot with him that you build it, but it seems odd. Also especially now there is Vanguard, so vladmir’s offering seems really silly to buy on him.

Would you still buy vladmir’s offering on him?

8) Do you like the way Anti-Mage speaks? I think it is amazing that he speaks that Victorian English. And what is your favorite response? Mine is “Thou seest me not”

i like anti-mage so much yet i am not that good am (tryhard mode:on)



1)So shortly, which item do you guys purchase after Manta Style?

i still prefer going abyssal blade after manta and focus only squishy/int targets until i get butterfly cause i just think that my hp is kinda of low to survive at this stage of the game.

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2)Which skill build do you guys prefer, and why and when?

i like arteezy max Q build cause it deal a bit higher damage early game.

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3)What are your thoughts on Vanguard, should it be bought? Should you then still buy a Battle Fury?

if i go vanguard then my plan is to participate every single teamfight early cause am is super tankey early-mid with vanguard so i don't go BF then and instead i go Vlad/Aquila then manta and rely on snowball and lane creeps to get gold, but i still prefer going BF and afk farm cause this vanguard style sees to risky if the enemy team have hard carry that is better than am (spectre-ck-terrorblade)

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4) What are you guys average creepscore on Anti-Mage, what is your average g/m and x/m? According to dotabuff, what is his rank on “farm” compared to the other heroes?

CENSORED :V
seriously for some reason whenever i go am i forced out of lane but some nice dual offlane (solo lane vs slark-silencer/ursa-undying normal pub things) so my average gpm around 500 usually.

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5) Who is your favorite support to play with when playing Anti-Mage?

sure lion the lane become super easy with 0 mana offlane and lvl 6 ez kill mana void.

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6) Which hero do you hate the most playing against as Anti-Mage, or which one do you choose to counter an Anti-Mage?

the manly woman with the duel thing xD , also hate playing againest a good faceless void so i pick him to counter am.

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7) What about Vladmir’s offering on Anti-Mage. Personally, I never liked the item to buy it. In my experience it was just useless. You don’t lose health when farming with a battlefury and you also don’t lose mana. The item also gets easily replaced by a hearth of tarrasque later on. I can get it if you like to fight a lot with him that you build it, but it seems odd. Also especially now there is Vanguard, so vladmir’s offering seems really silly to buy on him.

glad to see that i am not the only one who think vlad is useless on am
i think somebody in my team shall get it instead like slarder/doom/void/venge then i get my precious heart/Daedalus.

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8) Do you like the way Anti-Mage speaks? I think it is amazing that he speaks that Victorian English. And what is your favorite response? Mine is “Thou seest me not”

pretty sure the coolest voice is am
my most favorite is ("I deliver thee unto death") when killing and ("The stout heart knows no fear!"),("is not magic brings me back, but purity of will!") when respawning
he really have a lot of baddass responses so i cant choose only one xD.

My favorite lines are the ones he doesn't use:
"Bark on *****, I hear thee not." and "Hello, Brother" as a reminder that we could have had an interesting and not 1 dimensional character for Terrorblade.

As for AM, I don't play him, but my friend Ghost plays him a lot, so I have a lot of experience playing with him and against him.

When I play with him on AM, my support is usually not important, at least, not as much as with other carries. Ideally, ones that will win the lane are preferred, heroes like Warlock and Skywrath Mage are quite nice. I also like to pair Oracle since I can cast Purifying Flames directly on AM and false promise is one of the best "single core" abilities, where AM is one of the few heroes where Single Coring is viable.

He is really weak to aggressive dual offlanes especially with physical/pure damage dealers, especially since trilanes are not that common at whatever level it is I play at. I can pick a Warlock or Lich support, and we will not get good farm in our lane against a Kunkka/ Silencer or Axe/ Omniknight will make his life really miserable, since his laning against any number greater than 1 is really poor.

From what I see, you can't skip Battle Fury, because you need it to spam blink, which is not only how you farm, but also how you get around the map. Vanguard can be fine if it will win you the lane against whoever it is you're against (Ex: Timbersaw, Brood).

AM owns heroes that are weak to mana burn: Medusa, Wraith King, Slark, Morphling, Abaddon, Faceless Void, Weaver, Clockwerk, and Timbersaw. He is also especially good against intelligence core heroes that expend a lot of their own mana: Queen of Pain, Zeus, Tinker, Leshrac, Pugna and Storm Spirit. Picking him against such heroes is ideal.

When it comes to countering AM, he is unique in that he is not really countered by most Pos 1 heroes, he has an approach similar to Boxer from Animal Farm, "I will work harder / farm faster". Notable exceptions are Phantom Assassin (until MKB), Legion Commander (Until Basher), Outworld Devourer (often forces him to buy BKB), and Sven (good luck with this one).

Quick stuns will take care of him, since he is not hard to chainstun if you get a quick strong stun on him. Heroes like Lion, Slardar, Axe, and Earthshaker are good. Really, most AM's will take the maximum amount of effort to not buy BKB so if you draft plenty of stuns (and have some physical damage) then it will work out.
Bloodseeker is especially good because blinking with a high level Rupture on him will deal a ton of pure damage to him.

Insinuating any heroes in Dota have dimensions, Cuttle. I think it's nice that we can have an evil character who's evil just for the sake of it. Makes a nice change from everywhere else.

So I am a highly reliable AM player, pretty much always coming out with a 12-14 minute Battle Fury. As such, I average a 656 GPM with him over 24 games with a sadly low 62.50% winrate. One thing I've noticed about AM is that you do very much rely on your team to give you 20 minutes of space in order to get at least Fury and Vanguard, and preferably Manta Style as well because without them your fighting is subpar and you're too weak to do anything.

I like the stats build to, going 1/1/1 and then getting 4-5 levels in stats, but I'll vary it depending on lane and overall game. If against lots of nukers, I'll max Spell Shield very early, but usually stats is definitely the go just to fill out your HP pool.

Speaking of item progression, it's always for me Battle Fury > Vanguard > Manta. You previously got Vladmir's Offering for jungle sustain, but now Vanguard fills that role perfectly, and builds into Abyssal Blade which is as we all know a very good item on him. After all of that, I'll start looking at Butterfly, Monkey King Bar or Boots of Travel, but of course an AM's primary goal with his three main items is to start looking to close the game. I don't see Vlads as having a place in your item progression now that Vanguard is just flat-out better (and gives raw HP, which given 1.2 Strength gain is actually better than 5 armour!)

One thing you didn't mention is that, despite not being a particularly hard carry in and of himself, Anti-Mage is really good at beating hard carries because of his timing window. Heroes like Morphling, Spectre and even Terrorblade to some extent can struggle against a good Anti-Mage because they just don't have the tools to deal with him during his peak. Additionally, the only hero that can potentially outstrip him in farm on that list is Terrorblade and even he really struggles. To beat AM, you need lots of hard lockdown and burst physical/pure damage to kill him before he can blink away,and you need to have that without having to purchase numerous 5k gold items.

I've found Troll Warlord actually does very well against him, because Whirling Axes blind utterly ruins him and they both have similar timing windows - not to mention Troll scaling better into the lategame.

That said, AM drops off lategame as supports get better tools to deal with him and carries start being able to beat him down. Now, the carries he dumped on in the midgame will generally beat him very hard unless you already have a huge advantage - especially Terrorblade, who really doesn't care about your 60% magic resistance and more so about your low armour and the fact that Reflection isn't much fun for an AM to play against.

Nice post!

My build is slightly weird:

Boots > Urn > Yasha > Vanguard > Manta > BoTs > Moon Shard > Abyssal > Butterfly > Heart

Is that weird?

Skill build is 4/1/1/1 into 4/4/1/2.

If you're going bfury, any zoning support is good. If you're going Slahser style fighting AM, lion, rubick, etc are pretty nice as well.

I hate Silencer as AM.
AM counters storm though.

Great post Frosto! The effort is obvious, congrats :D

Anti-Mage is one of my most-used carry (since I hate Spectre and Medusa is kinda weak lately), but I'm not really that good with him. Although I usually get my Battle Fury before the 15 mins mark, I tend to join fight too much after that (I guess I'm not suited for afk farming), and end up having only five slots at most.

My build is usually Battle Fury -> Vanguard -> Power Treads -> Manta Style -> Heart of Tarrasque -> Abyssal Blade and the game usually ends here, if not, I get Boots of Travel -> Butterfly

Skill build... same like Sofa I guess, 4-1-1-1 to 4-4-1-2.

I'm wondering though, as Anti-Mage how do you really end the game and what time? I mean, his ratting power is great, but not that great. His fighting potential is actually really good, but even with manta his damage is not too high. Is it just my fault in focusing too much in durability, since I tend to find it hard to really end the game. What do you guys think about Heart of Tarrasque in AM?

Heart on AM is to help your illusions. Also, AM has the capability of blinking out of a fight, regen up, then come back in.

Heart isn't awful but there are better things to get. Usually, you buy Heart on a hero to mitigate a low HP pool ie vulnerability to nukes. AM has Spell Shield so he doesn't *really* need it, and mostly I'd get Butterfly instead because that makes you much more durable against physical.

With AM, you end the game through brute force mainly - you reach a point where they can't deal with you in fights, and then you just force your way into their base and destroy buildings. His rat is also good, because Blink is a very reliable escape and his building damage is pretty good due to a 1.45 BAT.

ANTI-FUN

that's all I have to say

I think that you have a skillbuild order mistake for why you can't end. I think you should really get the Abyssal Blade before the hearth of tarrasque. This way you can really kill someone. Blink on their biggest threat overwhelm him and "Big blue exlopsion of death".

About hearth of tarrasge- Butterfly my rule is the same as with Terrorblade's Eye of Skadi or Butterfly problem. When facing a lot of rightclick Butterfly when not hearth of tarrasque os Eye of Skadi by Terrorblade, i'm not that kind of pleb...