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In my personal opinion, Aganhims is not a viable item for lion. the bonus from it gives your ult about 100 extra damamage, 5 seconds less cooldown, and 25 less manacost. the stats give you 290 life and 280 mana. There are way better items that you could spend 4200 gold on. For 1100 less gold, Atos gives you more hp/mana pool and a useful slow.
Check your math again, Scepter gives you 390 health, 65 more than a Rod. You also get about a point and a half of armor from a scepter, and, likely not that useful, 10% IAS. Plus, you get a tiny bit of health regen (which probably will very seldom make a difference, but sometimes things come down to a point or two of health), although less mana regen than a Rod. I'd also add that Scepter has a nicer build up; you can get that early point booster which helps a lot with mana AND health (lion especially doesn't need the mana regen nearly so much as he needs a bigger pool), while with a Rod you have to choose one or the other first when building it up. Rod is quite a bit less though, so it should be a good viable choice, but not as clearly as your case made it out to be. It just depends on how well your team can utilize that slow. Does your team have Warlock, or Viper, or Drow, or to be generic, enough slow already? Does your team benefit a lot from a(nother) slow? Is the enemy team unslowable (Lycan, Darkseer, Windrunner, Nightstalker...kind of)? I'm sure there's lots of other factors you can come up with (against OD Rod will help with more Int, against NA, Scepter will help with LESS int, etc.) that all sound intelligent, but in reality it's too much to compute in the midst of the game anyway. If only DOTA were as easy to play is it is to plan...
Anyway, I confess I've become something of a Scepter apologist though; it's a much better item than only the ult improvements. On some heroes like Veno or Meepo if it was garbage you'd still get it for the ult factor, but people underestimate how much else you get out of it, especially on a hero that can utilize all 3 stats (veno again for example, which is why it's so mandatory for him) and need a big mana pool. Every hero can use some health, and 390 is nothing to sneeze at. Add it's an easy and very useful build up (you can get the 390 health and 150 mana with just the point booster and the ogre axe for 2200) and I think it's a much underrated item. If you only get a marginal ult improvement, and Lion's is quite marginal indeed, I think it's still a decent item for its cost, largely because it helps him SO much before its even complete. Even that naked point booster can make a lot of difference to a squishy hero like lion with huge mana costs.
40% DMG boost, initial burst and invulnerability to non-spells.
EVERYTHING drops.
(Of course, Dagon5-Agha's-Etherial is a pure funburst build. They won't live, but with more than 1 enemy/stun you won' too ;))
The only problem with not getting Arcane boots is that you'll constantly have to stop to drin mana, potentially leaving you in danger of ganking enemies.
Anyway, nice job on writing the guide, you explain everything quite well.
+1 :)
Why
A nice guide though, +1.
I usually find that by the time you can get Dagon late game that you've leveled by so much at this point along with mana drain and your base int stats being so high you don't really need it. The minor mana gane from these boots is negligible the Tranquil Boots provides move speed and an armor bonus as well as a free potion so i'd much favor that over arcane boots. Plus the Aghanim scepter provides a big boost to int as well as Dagon.
A nice guide though, +1.