In depth guide to CORE lina

Thanks. I do agree with you though. I've messed around a little with going full rightclick, and it doesn't work very well. I only think it works very well agains Huskar. In general, Lina is just to squishy to be an effective carry, especially when Fiery Soul is the only thing to help her carry. I agree that you should try and help your team by creating space on the map and finding pickoffs. You can then turn those pickoffs into a push and take barracks. Aghanim's Scepter, Shadow Blade, and Eul's Scepter or Orchid Malevolence are the best items to do that with. Becoming a position 1 doesn't really work, because she has a tendency to just get blown up before she can do much DPS. You would have to build a BKB, a Skadi, and a Deadalus before you could do anything at all, and at that point you'd be unable to pick people off.

And so, thank you.

@apaz, if there's one thing I like in DotA guides it is when they prove things with maths, which is what you have most definitely just done. In light of this being shown to me I will change orchid from rejected to possible items. The reason I will leave it in possibles (at least for the moment) only is that part of the motivation for writing this guide is that I find it very frustrating trying to kill carries with BKB and lifesteal; it is just such a mission even when they are on low health. As mentioned by someone previously though I may start writing an alternative build for Lina when facing heroes that you don't encounter this problem against, in order to fully reflect her versatility.

In saying that though, I still think that Lina should be played to maximize how much she can support the team rather than as a right clicker as there are other heroes who do this better such as weaver, sniper, drow, and S, which is why I still don't think she should be built with items such as daedalus, satanic and skadi. I dabbled in building her as such a while ago but in the time it takes you to cast dragon slave and light strike away you are dead. She is too dependant on getting stacks up on fiery soul to be played as a right clicker. The enemy can worry about all the magic you are throwing out while your hard carry right clicks them.

Thanks for your input- I will get around to changing orchid a bit later on.

Basically, here is a little bit of math:

Aghanim's Scepter Laguna Blade vs. normal hero - 950 damage (no reductions)
(950) * 1

Orchid Malevolence Laguna Blade vs. normal hero - 872.8125 damage (after reductions, orchid burn, and reductions on the burn)
(950)*.75) + (((950)*.75)*.3)*.75)

Orchid Malevolence Aghanim's Scepter Laguna Blade vs. normal hero - 1163.75 damage (after orchid burn and it's reduction)
(950) + ((950*.3)*.75)


If you factor in that you are probably going to hit them with all of your OTHER nukes during the burn as well, Orchid Malevolence actually gives more damage than Aghanim's Scepter. Orchid Malevolence is antiem famously good on INT cores that do a lot of burst damage, like rightclick, and need mana regen, like Queen of Pain and Storm Spirit. Lina also matches all of these criteria. During the late game, your rightclicks end up being substantial, as a side effect of the items that Lina buys. I would say that, unless they have BKB-dependant heroes, Orchid Malevolence is awesome.

Due to her insane attack speed, ( Fiery Soul is the equivalent of 4.6 Hyperstones) +Damage items are very, very efficient and lead to some crazy DPS, right-click carry or not. Her attack range is also so high that you can get away with it, too. That crazy DPS, combined with a crit, which then multiplies that DPS, means that it is a very efficient item to go into as an extension in the late game, although probably best paired with an Eye of Skadi and/or Satanic, if you want to build into DPS in the late game.

The good part about the two cores that I am describing is that they both build straight out of Orchid Malevolence. You don't even need to decide which to go into until the 30 minute mark. You could go the Aghanim's Scepter Refresher Orb Octarine Core route if you want, and you can also go with the DPS route.

And so, Orchid Malevolence is good, a id Daedalus. Blink Dagger isn't very good on her in particular, and the other items I believe should be rejected and your reasonings are correct.

Beleive it or not, I think that Shadow Blade should be mentioned, as it allows you to better put pressure on the map, making space for your carry to farm. MABYE Silver Edge, if you want to spend money on more HP and invis uptime.




Other than some weird item rejections, great guide, and I can see that you understand how to play the hero.

Hey patneze- thanks for your support in that Lina is a core. You are bang on the money with the problem o this build in that it does cost a ****load! The thing with Lina thy I find is that once you have euls and ages you do get quite a lt of money as you are so good at hunting heroes, and getting the creeps with your spells. If I can avoid having to support I will quite often have euls, BoT, and aghs by 25 min and when I manage this I normally end up owning. Even without the full 6 every item after these 3 is like icing on the cake.

However, Ido disagree with your building of a deso, the reason being that by the sound of it you don't get BoTsz after selling your phase they are half as cheap as deso and I would say you get more pushing ability from BoTs. They allow you to tp to anywhere your team is pushing, especially after pushing your own lane to the enemy tower and lettin your team do the work. Also, you get the added bonus of being able to provide to support to the team at large.

Also, by the sounds of it you build orchid pretty late. At that point in the game carries will either have/almost have bkb, manta, an supports may have euls, all of which stop orchid. At this point of the game scythe which is only 1700ish more wouldn't be too hard to save up for. Further, if you have got BoTs instead of deso getting scythe afterwards is basically th same price as deso into orchid. You have also saved money by not having to buy however many TP scrolls. Does thy make sense?

If it's nt rude of me, I wold suggest you try building BoTs instead of deso and then into a scythe, octarine, or BKB. You may be surprised at how quickly you farm being able to tp about everywhere

Thanks for your guide. I completly agree with you when saying that Lina is a core hero and not a semi-carry. But you are a pusher hero. And I think Desolator is a cheap and pretty good item for pushing creep and tower especially.
Then I use Octarine only during late game due to its high price. I prefer Orchid/Refresher. The main drawback of your build is the price of items. Octarine, Scythe are very expensive item. And you are not a carry. So you have to steal farm to your carry for building these items.

My preferred build is: TB, Eul, Agha, Deso, Orchid

Those are actually both really good points. The stun especially would be more useful if you are laning with someone else as then you both get extra attacks in.

I added clarity to starting items. When I play Lina I try and get void stone as fast as possible as this will be used to not only last hit but harass, especially when like you said your right click and attack animation are both bad. Especially when you're solo offlane you really need to have a lot of mana to keep them off you otherwise, like kmelkon pointed out, you will just get owned.

Don't necessarily have a problem with you going so heavy on magic damage (although there are other legit ways to build her), but I think you need to tweak a few things.

E.g. 1 point in Fiery Soul, then max your stun second after Dragon Slave - that burst damage and stun time is more important than a little attack speed when your right click is so weak early on.

Also, not sure about those starting items, she may have good range but Lina has a terrible attack animation and you need plenty of damage to make you competitive when last hitting/denying. Sage's Mask offers you no stats, and only brings in about 30 extra mana per minute at the start.

Thanks a lot for not only reading my guide, but also for leaving some comments.
Kmelkon:
I should have mentioned that you are fast after a couple of fiery soul stacks. With phase and euls alone your MS is going to be 285 before phasing, which is faster than a luna with treads, and then when you get a couple of stacks on fiery soul you are even faster.

I wondered if someone was going to bring in the "your right click is important comment lol. Part of the reason I wrote this guide was to emphasize that there are much better right click heros, and hopefully your team has them. If you are building deso, daedalus, mj, etc then you either arent going to have the set up for your stun, not going to have aghs, not have BKB, not have a decreased c/d on stun/hex. When you have a hard carry, as your team should, I think being able to increase your disable time and have the hard carry deal the right click is much more important. BUT, like I said if you are constantly missing all of your right clicks, especially when you have a heap of intel items, you're missing out on a lot of damage.

Orchid isn't a bad item, and I will consider moving it to possibles rather. Like I said, its more that buying it will slow down other items. In the game I just played against storm for instance I wish I had just gone BKB before BoTs. Also, the rod is actually one I haven't seen/tried on Lina, so thanks for the suggestion.

It most definitely was supposed to be the stun not like strike array! Mucking up so close to the end.

Perhaps I should elaborate more on the solo offlane in the guide. Once I have void stone I just throw down dragon slave to make sure I get 2 creeps and hit as many of the enemy as I can. If you do this a lot you keep the enemy low enough that they just can't go on(especially seeing as you can also deal damage quick).

You have given me a lot of things to consider changing/elaborating on-thanks!

Gotta land those passives.

Lina is not a fast hero she has a base MS of 295 iirc, she's only fast after a couple of stack of fiery souls, that's why in some games you will need a blink/Shadow blade to cut the distance in a chase or when landing the eul's combo.




dude.... make up your mind.

you're saying Lina is a versatile hero and then you reject a lot of items that can be good on her, every game is different and your build should adapt to the situation.

against Storm Spirit if you're not able to land your eul's combo, an orchid is great, he wont be able to run away for 5 seconds and if you still cant land your stun, then rod of atos after the silence is great too.

in your #6 point I think you're talking about dragon slave not her passive.

how can you run Lina as a solo offlaner? she's too squishy with a slow MS and no escape, one stun and she'll be dead.

all in all a good guide, but I think you should include more scenarios/different build for her and easy on the rejections.

Once I figure out how I will post some replays as well as short notes on what went good and bad at certain times.