TormentorMaN's Guide to Ember Spirit

@Metalpii the early finish build i think is more or less if you are behind. If you're behind and can't farm up manta, eul's is also a good choice.
You're 100% right about lategame build. I just prefer phase for raw damage.
Try to use the combo sleight into chains in teamfights. Disabling and damaging someone from a very far range is very useful for yourself and allies. You can join teamfights whenever you want even without items, just know when to initiate with Fire Remnant.

Even in safelane, bottle is very useful to sustain you whenever you want with the bottle refill.

Against drow, if you can't farm up manta just try to get eul's against her. Always have a remnant up, and when she jumps on you, purge the silence and immediately jump to the remnant. Early game however she is very squishy and she has **** attack speed so you can try to screw her up at that stage.

Antimage isn't as hard of a counter as you think. He needs items (abyssal, manta) to lock you down and effectively burn all your mana so you can't get away. And even then, all his damage is physical except for mana void so you can soak most of that damage up.

Queen of Pain can however easily take you down as long as she and her teammates can burn away your flame guard. And even when you do still have it up, she can pierce it with Sonic Wave

Storm deals a lot of magic damage, and you can get away with a remnant easily after you've soaked up all that magic damage.

Troll and Slardar a problem if you can't take him down in fights. They have good lockdown and your only hope is chaining them and getting away with remnant if he did not slow you.

Riki? Get away with a remnant. He purged you with Diffusal and you don't have one up? Just chain him and if you have truesight manfight him, it's your only chance against him.

Faceless Void can lock you down and screw you up. You just have to hope he can't kill you in chronosphere. If he can't you can just jump to your remnant. He won't slow you, he already used that for his initiation. You won't be caught if you travel through chronosphere with remnant by the way.

But a lot of carries can usually outclass ember when they are ahead of him.

General counters are lockdown, so he can't do ****, and silence, forcing him to buy manta or eul's so he can fall behind. Ember's teamfighting is pretty good. He can initiate and deal a lot of magic damage early, mostly AoE, and then later he hits enemies multiple times with a BF+SoF.

Any other questions?

I read the whole guide, seems legit. General questions since Ember is probably the only hero I still can't play properly:

Against what carries can't ember compete / you shouldn't pick him?
I actually thought of Drow when she gets Blink Dagger / Shadow Blade. Once she can initiate on you and silence you, how are you going to fight her? You'll probably not have Manta / Linkens by then so she can easily melt you, no?

And carries like:
AM, Void, Troll, Riki, Storm, QoP, Slardar?

Where do you lane? It seems bottle is a bit off on safelane and for midlane, there are many heroes that will make it very hard to bring up that Bfurry in time.

When do you start to teamfight with Ember? In the matches I played, I hardly had Bfurry, Drums and Treads when I had to join fights. At that point I can land 1-2 SoF and then the fight is over - not really an impact and mostly I ended up dead because I got focused w/o Manta or any other defense against silences / stuns. I'd rather farm up a Deso or crits meanwhile and join them some minutes later with higher impact and w/o the high risk of setting me back for like 5 minutes.

I saw a build with Arcanes and Maelstrom, I guess more midgame orientated for when you have a high push lineup / the enemy is especially strong in lategame.

I guess this can be said in General:

- Treads, Bfury, daeds if you want to hit lategame
- Arcanes, Maelstrom, Deso for an early finish

@Jonetti I'm not really into leaving the Boots Brown until my core items.
Eul's? Sure, very cheap and cost-effective item. Also, the mana regen is pretty nice.
I already included BoT's.

Thanks for sharing thoughts.

you should add Euls for defensive item. It's great against silence, it's cheap and it's build-up constist of low cost items.

I prefer to play Ember with Bottle - Phase - Drums - BF - Daedalus - Travels/BF - Daedalus - Rapier.
Why I build TP boots after the Daedalus is because it allows you to split push hard with remnant. It increases your farm potential a lot and your map presence also with 45 seconds on a global tp. Of course if we are under siege you go naturally for more damage, but if the game is even I always go for the Travels after BF/Daedalus.

@apaz You have to pick either one depending on the situation. I'd like Aghanim's for Ember, just not sure what it should be, maybe a new ability... 1 major buff to int and/or agi would do it.

I can get my chains/sleight combo off quite often. You just have to have quick fingers. Just train on it.

@Pillow3636 i like myself going 1 BF then either Daedalus and Desolator, it relies on the situation which goes first and then other situational or more BF's. If i had to choose from your 2 builds i'd say the Battlefury one.

Sorry for the late answer, I was on vacation.

JUGGERNAUT BUILD COMING S00N

What do you think is better to go for after a bottle-phasee-wand-drum: desolator-daedalus(maybe stack?)-other situational OR 2x bfury (70% cleave which is pretty good)-daedalus(the crits are AMAZING!)(maybe stack)-other situational. Please help me find out which item builds are best for ember spirit. Thanks!

I think the choice between Phase Boots + Drum of Endurance / Arcane Boots is situational, and I play both ways. If they have carries that are easily kiteable, I might go phase, and if they're more mobile and more squishy, I might go the Arcane Boots build.

The thing that I don't like about Ember is that you can't even fight before you have a manapool item. He needs major buffs before the hero will be viable again. Perhaps a big buff to his base INT and AGI growth. Now that Quelling Blade is in Battle Fury, an AGI buff would help a lot. It would fit in with the hero well. It would also (Sort of) fix the problem with his **** armor. It would also be cool if he got some weird other buff, like a cool Agh's. Not that it would be a good item on him, but still. Icefrog/Icefraud likes Aghanim's Scepter.


Edit: I forgot this earlier, but you don't have to have Phase Boots to chase people because of the Sleight of Fist/ Searing Chains combo. You can just chain them from 1250 range. You kind of have to have really good timing, sort of like Manta splitting an Assassinate. Once you chain them, you can remnant on top of them, travel to it, and activate Flame Guard as you're flying to the remnant. So, forget about what I said earlier about not being able to chase as well. Unless your spells are on cooldown. Then, you're ****ed. It takes a lot of practice to do all of these combos. But, that's Ember for you. He rewards patience.

@apaz i'm thinking of adding as an extra build. Should i adjust on arcanes (other than removing the Drums) and should i call it early fights? Honestly arcanes isn't so bad, i just like chasing.

@famasofwar the first skill point on ember is more or less situational. Soaking up a Powershot that would otherwise kill you is very handy. If there's noone else but 1 enemy at the rune and you want to take it just skill chains. If you want to kill at level 1 you can take both. If you have let's say a long disable Flame Guard gives much more damage output. If you don't have a good disable then even a 1 second Searing Chains can help bodyblocking.

I disagree with your skill build in terms of where to put the first point. Searing chains can be much more reliable in terms of grabbing a rune or securing a kill early game. You also pretty much always want to get your disable encase for some freak reason you start getting chased/in a bad position. Flame guard might have higher possible damage output, but it is also extremely easily removed. One powershot from WR from far away could knock it off no problem for example and while that is slight damage reduced that you were possibly going to take, it isn't much and your armor and HP are so low that if you are taking damage, you are probably not playing well at that time to begin with. Not to mention you have a 16 second smaller cooldown for searching chains that would let you have a higher chance of reusing it, upping your possible damage output and survivability.

The guide is excellent, +1.

I play a lot of Ember, and I have a very unorthodox suggestion, Arcane Boots. The reason that people buy a Drum of Endurance is for the maximum mana pool that it gives. At levels 6-16, Ember doesn't have enough maximum mana to combo someone. The extra HP that it gives is quite inefficient because you have very low armor, and it doesn't give much armor or damage. The attack and movement speed from the active and the passive aren't really doing much for you either. Possibly the worst things to build on ember, because attack speed is useless and you can already get away with your ult. It is a very, very inefficient Item that you need to build if you go Phase Boots, because of the hero's **** INT and high cost spells. However, Arcane Boots, once you factor in the active, is the most efficient manapool item in the game. Even more than Iron Branch. Because you are forgoing phase boots, it is a bit harder to chase people down with Flame Gaurd, so it is probably better to just get the 2 points in it so you have some survivability, then get more in Searing Chains. Not only will it help you chase, but it will give you a secondary source of damage and make you better at ganking. Once you have 3 points in searing chains, it usually isn't worth it to get level 4, since the damage scaling sucks so badly. From level 2 to 3, the damage of a respectable nuke gets doubled. Level 4, almost nothing happens as far as damage goes. So, If buying Arcanes, I would recommend going 31311433(Stats)2422214. This build is much better at taking early fights, but it loses out on a bit of solo kill potential, because you can't chase people down very well. The +24 damage on phase boots isn't going to make a huge difference, and if It means you can get away with not buying a Drum, I think that Arcanes is a good way of playing Ember. I too doubted it in the beginning, but after seeing several pro players buy almost them every Ember game, I began to investigate why they might be good. There you go.

GL, HF.

@caine1232 Ring of Aquila will be added, i was doubting about it a bit.
I do consider drums a core item because it just adds the bonuses.
I used to like the BoT's, i'll add that as a bonus build. I do like the cheapness of TP's though. And yes, i have done the BoT's/Aquila build in-game alot (mostly together)
I'll include the lanes and once again, my thanks for the feedback. Would you like a guide for a specific hero?

Good guide once again.

A little input from me:
I think that you didn't mention to which lane you should go as ember (middle or safe, I prefer safe).
Ring of aquila is a really good item for ember early on, lots of dmg and mana regen, even some nice stats.
Some games, I think you can avoid getting drums and go full glass cannon. If you are sure, you can escape every single time, there is no point in buying drums.
Also, my preferd build (if I have enough space, if I don't I use this build pretty much) is rushing boots of travel into battelfury and then everything else you need.
This way you can easily abuse going back to base, teleporting to other lanes if you are getting ganked (you can also leave a remnant and come back once the threat is gone). TPing to ganks is also easy. Cooldown on BOT is 45 sec, which is ridiculously love (20 sec cd lower than tp scroll!!!).
With this build, your uptime doing stuff (farming, ganking) is almost 100% and that's why I really love it.

+1