Tenshi'N's guide to Drow-nage

Stats first? I disagree but you made your point and I appreciate the reasons you have for all of the decisions in your guide.

Shadow Blade, for the reason you mentioned, is exactly why I consider it situational. If you have an invis hero on your team, it is worse than Yasha since your enemies will already be expending their funds to get detection.

(and they won't be spending their farm, they will have their support heros do so, who don't live to do anything else but ward and cast spells in fights to make the carries life easier)

As to the Helm: A common mistake is to believe that lifesteal is the answer to recovering from low health. In reality, lifesteal is based on the damage you deal, so in order of lifesteal to be a worthy buy, you would want to get more damage first.

You can A) Get a Morbid Mask for 900 gold and then restore about 9 HP an attack for the next... well for a while... on Jungle creeps. A just cause since you get gold and experience still

OR

B) Buy a salve and use the courior. Early to mid game it's not that bad, and you save yourself a lot of money in the long run (and time I might add) while also still going jungling to farm like a good carry.

If we are in the late game stage of the game, I don't mind Helm of the Dominator, but I never consider lifesteal core.

AND HEY, if you are at half health, you can just stay out of fights for a minute and watch as your natural HP regen does the trick. Just play it safe and farm for a while, which again is what carries should be doing. Farming until they 6 item and win.

Thanks for the input! Getting a point of Silence on lv4 is certainly a good idea, i agree, just never thought about it this way. The point of Helm of Dominator as core is not to lifesteal directly in-fight, but being able to recover after it without running back to base. Just imagine you are pushing, you killed a wave of enemy heroes, but you have like 300 HP left. Instead of using up your TP scroll or just running back, you can just get in jungle for a few seconds and recover to the full HP, therefore, continuing the push where you left it off. Other then that, you can get a nifty 30% damage increase for your team by controlling an Alpha Wolf by the Dominator's active.
An early Shadow Blade, other from making your enemies spend their precious farm on wards, dusts and Gems, can drastically boost your survivability, and prevent most of the ganks being made on you. And as a much-feared infinite-agility hard-carry OP Drow Ranger, you will be the primary object of 80% of ganks. Not to mention all the other stuff you can do with the speedboost it provides. And build 2, i agree, won't work with higher-skill players, but can be good, as the opponents usually don't expect you to deal that damage so early in the game. Turned a couple of chases around and got me some Firstblood's too, so decided to share it.

That was a stupid statement...

Stats are fantastic. Stats make it easier to last hit. And in real games, you also deny. And when your opponents knows how to last hit and deny, your best chance is having more damage (aka stats). Putting points in stats is buying a Circlet for the cost of an ability that doesn't do anything early game (which is basically every hard carry in the game)

Getting aura later than the silence would be a better choice because you get stats (which buffs the aura) and allows you to kill support heroes (or at least keep them out of the fight)



"Skip stats and learn to last hit" LOL! Yes! and never buy a quelling blade. No matter how low your base damage is. Just learn to last hit past your base damage.

Why on earth would you pick up silence so late in the game. Skip lvl 2 stats and learn how to last hit.

I disagree with much of this guide in terms of items and skill build (though the skill build doesn't hurt too bad)

Items:
All of the builds suggest to take a single set of tangos. Any hero with a nuke or even 2 passive heros that just harass, will make it very hard for you to farm in most cases. The only time a single tango is relitively okay is when you are bottle rushing. (Similarly, souble tango is really okay only for supports so they can double pull)

Build 1 goes for very high rates of damage... at the cost of... well... money.

How do I mean? I see 4 slots being used. Realistically, you are only going to make 1 wrathband (and potentially turn it into a ring... maybe) spending 9 gold, you gain access to 3 Ironwood branches, which give you 39 more mana, 54 more HP and the same exact agaility as a single slippers. The ironwoods can then be made into a wand later on to save space and even get some burst HP.

More likely than not, Wrathband is going to do very little for you and you will sell it.

Now... "core" Shadow Blade is where... *sigh* if you are on low level pubs you bet that invis is OP (as is Rikki, I hear a lot). In reality, Shadow Blade should only be taken if you need the escape mechinism and your allies consist of NO other heros that utilize invisibility. One of the great things about invisibility si that it forces funds into anti- invis items. Once the opponent has a Gem/ carries dust/ Puts up sentury wards, I assure you will wish that first buy was a Yasha (and you saved a lot of gold in making it)

Yasha, however, is never "core". Manta Style is "core". Sange and Yasha is "core" (though also not very effective). Butterfly is lategame, but still worth mentioning. Yasha is a "medium" item. As is the Crystalys.

PLEASE finish Daedalus/ Manta Style BEFORE you get lifesteal. Lifesteal is % based and contrary to many players belief, is NOT a good way to get health when you are low and does NOT allow you to just dive in and watch as your opponent can't kill you. For lifesteal to work you need damage. So get damage first. And don't say "well I have a Yasha and a Crystalus already, that is enough damage at level 10. I am drow ranger! I am OP broken and no one can touch me!"

The only drows that are broken are those that get fed by bad decicions from enemy heros or those who know how to play the game as a carry.

As for the second and 3rd item build... there are no words.

Skill build
Early stat point, good. Ice arrows good... Percicion aura level 4 over silence? ... Again, just as lifesteal, percicion aura is % based and more crittically is based on drows level. Silence, however, can easilly shut down ganks or enemy support heros... and in teamfights is a very powerful weapon.

And this goes for both skillbuilds: The aura pushes the lane that drow is in. Getting it early is a bad idea. ESPECIALLY skill build 2, where you are spending all of your points adding 1 damage to your friendly ranged heros that will eventually go up as your levels do... assuming you live that long with no silence and an inability to orb walk.


That is my rant. Take from it what you will

Heya magicmerl, and thanks for the feedback!

When it comes to a Poor Man's Shield, i tend to build it sometimes when going to a sidelane instead of solo mid, just for the sake of minimizing any harassment i get.

About the skill order: I max the Frost Arrows first, as it opens so much possibilities for sidelane ganks. Usually, if the opponents stray even a bit too far from their tower, and your mates ar not running away in fear, you will most probably get a kill or two. And about a point in stats - i just found it more useful in the beginning in my personal experience, as Trueshot only shines in the later-game... We still get all the skills maxed by lv16 anyway. And as a huge Shadow Blade fan, i often lack enough mana to use Manta Style when i really need it, as i give priority on having enough mana to Shadow Walk myself and throw in a Silence or even two in the teamfight.
And why even get illusions when you kill most enemies with like 4-5 crit-imbued shots anyway? :)
I well see your point though, will add another build for early Trueshot Aura.

Solid guide. +1 from me.

I generally agree pretty much with everything you have written, although I have minor differences to my build, since I have this item build progression: Poor Man's Shield, Power Treads, Helm of the Dominator, Shadow Blade, Manta Style, Butterfly.

Because I don't build a wraith band, so I have slightly different Starting Items: Tango, Healing Salve, 2 Slippers of Agility, 2 Iron Branch. The extra salve gives me a little more in lane sustainability.

The thing I find most interesting about your build is how you rush Shadow Blade before boots even. I'll have to try that, since going invisible is definitely helpful in avoiding ganks, and we are only talking about low level pub play here.

I disagree with Daedalus before Manta Style, since I find that manta basically just equals win and anything after that is win-more.

I definitely think that Trueshot Aura should be maxed first, interspersed with frost arrows. It gives you more early damage than the point in stats.