Anti-Mage

Excuse me if my wording was somewhat aggressive – it was not meant to be a necropost at all. While I do agree that Battle Fury is core for AM, it’s never a good idea to blindly rush towards an item and disregard your circumstances. If you’re being dominated and cannot farm properly, you should always consider an alternative approach.
While Heart of Tarrasque is certainly nice, I don’t feel it should be compared with Linken's Sphere, because the provided utility is quite different. HoT is a frontline assault tool that lets you soak tons of damage, while Linken gives you all round stats boost and lets you avoid a single spell, which is often the escape mechanism for many a backup caster. It’s an excellent item if you‘d like to avoid frontal confrontation and prefer a more Weaver-like approach.

After having read some of your posts Sp12. I have found we are extremely like-minded. I've found that an Anti-Mage without Battle Fury cannot really produce the results needed. The Battle Fury is ideal for Magina,because, with it you can clear your entire jungle AND the enemies ancients within a minute. This allows you to constantly blink from camp to camp and gain 900-1100 gold per minute. It's insanity.

It's just not scary. Anti-mage is pretty much only viable as a split push and timing carry since his steroids aren't *that* good and are blocked by BKB. Not getting battlefury defeats both of those roles. No one is going to be scared of a non-battlefury AM pushing top while they're trying to fight mid, nor will they be afraid of his mid or late-game potential. Sure he still takes a lot of resources to gank, but he won't carry without battlefury unless you make big mistakes in midgame map movement.

True that, you always have to rush it if you have the opportunity.

But, let's say you're getting shut down and you have just 3000 gold after 20-30 minutes: in this case a pair of Power Treads and a Yasha or Drum of Endurance can really help your team; if you manage to win a teamfight then you can push down one or maybe two towers, an impossible thing to do with a Battle Fury.
After that, start farming and get cost-efficient or survivability items ( Vladmir's Offering, Manta Style, Talisman of Evasion...) until you reach a GPM high enough to afford a BF in a small amount of time, normally as soon as you push down a pair of towers.