Dealing with a late game Slark

Any tips on how to deal with a late game Slark?

Slark is a really strong pub-stomper hero which is a pain to deal with throughout the game. The one that makes me ask this is this one.
No matter what we did, Slark would most likely escape fights with low HP and then either come back into the fight with full HP after 12 seconds, or he would simply survive. The obvious answer might be "Disable and nuke him down", which we tried to do but perhaps didn't have the damage for. Regardless, any general tips?

early game the easiest way is something quite simple.

dont stun him silence him disable him while he is dark pacting.

simple. or as i like to put it. DONT PANIC

or ... just tp out?


the way to deal with late game slark is all about being able to survive his onslaught.

Tiny is very strong since he can stun and toss and he has craggy. plus late game he can survive the damage and once slark is out of dark pact you can beat his face in quite easily.

slark is a slippery bugger but he cant sustain. and unless he has been fed to stupidity levels of farm he just cant man fight a proper carry. thats why he jumps in and out of fights.

pounce hit hit hit dark pact hit hit ULTI hit hit hit pounce hit hit hit dark pact RUN AWAYYYYYY hide hide hide RUN INNNN pounce hit hit dark pact RUN AWAAAYYYYYYY.

^ thats how slark plays. if you can survive that and take objectives he is quite weak. also sven is good and spectre oh and PL PL PL is stronk because you can doppel out of pounce and once you get mana he is useless and dies like a fish on land. :)

A few ideas:

• AOE, target ground stuns
• Early game power
• Don't feed him early game
• Steal his stolen stats (his stats are terrible)

The easiest way to deal with Slark is to not let him snowball. Very importantly, protect your T1 towers so he can't hunt you relentlessly with that massive space loss. Keeper is really good, since he can defend T1s, and once Slark has pulled out his initial Dark Pact, Mana Leak prevents his mad manuvers and Blinding Light high reduces his damage, so it is really good.

For late game, AOE stuns are good. Sand King, Lion, Earthshaker, Earth Spirit. Some of the harder ones to aim like Leshrac, Titan, and Lina, not so much, since he's too fast. You want to waste his ult duration, since its functional invulerability against most opponents. Siren is especially good, since Song will completely waste his ultimate, removing his ace in the hole.

Ancient Apparition takes care of him well, Ice Blast prevents regeneration, since a major power of shadow dance is the ~30% health healing he gets in the duration.

My favorite way to deal with him late game: Necrophos. Slarks do not build BKB by default, as it can gimp their mid-late potential (like a Lifestealer), and it has a low winrate on the hero. A Scythe will prevent him from narrowly escaping as he often does and coming back with 50 stolen agi.

You can also beat him by being more mobile than him. He may have many escapes, and that's a free pass to do lots of reckless stuff and get away. On dotabuff, all the counters to him are able to prevent him from escaping and coming back as a demi-god of stolen agi. The heroes are Storm, Timber, Anti-Mage, Puck, Earth Spirit, Riki.

He's not impossible to overpower either. Illusion Carries can take him a lot easier, since he doesn't really make battlefury or Maelstrom, he tanks up so he can keep stealing AGI and if he goes the AOE path, he'll be really squishy. Chaos Knight, Lancer, Siren all can take him due to them being great chasers and disablers too. Terrorblade, not unfortunately.

- wards everywhere
- halberd
- Tp scroll
- prayers to RNGesus
- silences
- deso

Thanks for the relies. As I understand it, to deal with Slark you have to, summarized: Counter-pick him, prevent snowball.

Yeah, all right. That's not really what I was looking for however. Considering the game I linked for example, what should our strategy have been to avoid being stomped by Slark every team fight? Notice I have more farm on him with Gyro, still he wrecks me 1v1 and in team fights.

The one thing i could see in your lineup that was really lacking is a blink on shaman. He has a ****ton of farm yet he cant do **** against slark. You need quick initiation against slark, and SS could have brought exactly that.

Apart from that check his datk pact, if he uses it to farm creeps then call it out and instantly jump him if you can. Also remember when he tends to use it, if he always instantly uses it after pounce then get ready to stun him instantly after.

For counterpicks you can go for the obvious stuff with silences like distuptor or buret with zeus, but it can be unreliable if he is ahead and on the offensive. So i prefer to counter him with strategy altogether.
Tanky heroes who cant get solokilled along with heavy pressure either in lane or just early. Dark seer, tide or an agressive axe lane to punish him. Consider getting a mek instead of blink on both DS and tide so you can prevent slark burst.
Early pushers like DK so you can take his towers and get map control.
DK is one of my faves because slark cant do anything to him early, and with a BKB you extend that time even further.

I also like the necrophos suggestion, havent seen it in action but he fits the early agression, pushing, and surviving the burst and then slamming him down.

I don't see a Blink Dagger on your Shadow Shaman, while I see useless Eul's on him, also zero Ghost Scepters also you should have ganked the **** out of them and finished TI4-style, you have 4/5 heroes for that, and they too got 4/5 heroes who are easily ganked with only SF having some counterpush and Slark having an escape, dunno what weet wrong or what you did wrong(the latter is more likely judging by exp difference graph).

So the game went late enough for SF, Warlock and Slark to screw you over. If I was Gyro, I would sell Manta for a Divine, and maybe even exchange one more slot for Blink.

Oh, you want to know the worst case scenario, late game?

First of all, if he has a significant gold lead, just kiss your chances goodbye.

In General:
Keep Vision of him. Mobility Items: Blink, Force, Gem. Don't let him get his bonus 40% movespeed and bonus 7% health regen. Carries and Gankers can get Silver Edge to disable to passive part of Shadow Dance.

Supports:

Ghost Scepter. Solid way of self defense, can be paired with tp scroll so he can't pick you off unless he has abyssal blade.

Halberd. Great item for playing from behind. He can't dark pact it. Can also be bought on cores if needed. Forcing him to buy BKB is generally good too.

Subtract his armor. He takes a while to build it up, so Solar Crest is also really good against him.

Carries:

Evasion Items: Butterfly, Halberd, Casual Talisman. Prevents stat stealing. If you force him to buy MKB, he's a lot less tank, which is what you want.

Silver Edge: Disables his Essence Shift and Shadow Dance Passives. Keep vision of him.

Manta Style: He probably got Silver Edge, this will dispel it, and disorient him so you can often outfight him.

I've played Slark quite a bit in pubs so I'll list out some of the things that really annoy me when playing a Slark.

1. One obvious counter to his regen is Bloodseeker. With Thirst on him, Slark doesn't have the luxury of sneaking away from a teamfight to heal up to full HP and return to the fight to cleanup.

2. Slark hates being locked down or silenced, post Dark Pact. For this reason, it is very important to have more than one lockdown, or use your lockdown when his Dark Pact is on cooldown. Your Shadow Shaman was a great counter to Slark if played right. However, he lacked a Blink Dagger which threw the instant blink- Hex out of the window. That would have been a great tool to shut Slark down. The shaman build really ticks me off - I mean, he build a Eul's, Aghs and even a refresher, when his most important contribution could have been a blink-hex.

If I were the Gyrocopter in that game, I'd probably have considered building an Abyssal Blade and lose the Manta Style just to get the lockdown on Slark. Sometimes, unconventional items are needed to counter specific heroes.

3. Slark hates burst damage. His Pounce and Shadow Dance are great tools to escape, regen and get back into a fight when he gets low, but if he is chain stunned and burst down, he cannot do anything about it. For this reason, I love picking (and hate playing against a good) Lion. Lion is a fantastic counter to Slark in my eyes, because every single ability of Lion counters Slark in a way. Earth Spike and Hex provide the lockdown that Slark hates. When stunned, Mana Drain ensures that Slark's (early game) pathetic mana pool doesn't let him Pounce or Shadow Dance away. Finger of Death is a great burst damage tool against Slark.

4. Pushing as a team really shuts down a snowballing Slark. When I play Slark, I am looking for pick offs on lone heroes that are caught off guard, farming their jungle, ancients or a lane without support. I trigger my Shadow Blade, run into your jungle and look for heroes that I can burst down with Pounce and Dark Pact. If your team is 5 manning my towers, I'm a very sad Slark.

5. Against the bad Slarks, a Leshrac with a Ghost Scepter can be a hilarious counter. The way most Slarks fight you, they initiate with a Shadow Blade hit, then Pounce you and use Dark Pact, then trade hits with you. When both of you are low, they Shadow Dance, and use the few seconds of "un-target-ability" to finish you. Leshrac can counter the bad Slarks by triggering his Ghost Scepter when the Slark goes into Shadow Dance/ Pounce and turning on Diabolic Edict and Pulse Nova. Both these spells damage Slark through his Shadow Dance which leaves a dead slark on the ground. Before Slark gets his Eye of Skadi, he is really squishy, which means it's very likely he'll die to the huge damage of Edict + Pulse Nova. WARNING: However, Leshrac is an incredibly squishy hero himself, so this can often backfire. Just gauge the position of the game (slark's farm vs your farm, his items, your items, etc) before taking this fight.