Why Anti-Mage isn't the best hard carry.

My friends are arguing with me, because they think that Anti-Mage is the best hard carry, while I am pretty sure that he is not. My arguments aren't good enough, so I thought I can use your help and show them this thread.

I will state my arguments why Anti-Mage can be considered a better carry than other carries:

• He has one of the best (if not the best) escape/chasing skills, due to the low cooldown and low mana cost. Compared to Time Walk range is slightly worse, but cooldown is 8 seconds in advantage of Blink and mana cost is 30 MP better (considering maxed skills). Spectral Dagger has 16 seconds cooldown and very high mana cost and isn't an instant working ability.
• Unlike Backtrack, Spell Shield cannot be reduced. To counter Backtrack you need to buy Monkey King Bar and this ability is countered. You can't reduce magic damage resistance. EDIT: I am not sure how this ability works with magic damage amplification like Decrepify, Ancient Seal or Ice Vortex.
• He has 2nd best Base Attack Time (1.45), so last-hitting is quite easy.
• He can burn mana, so heroes like Wraith King will have a bad time, but even Facelss Void without mana is much less effective.

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Have you got more ideas with explanations? Can you counter mine and their arguments why there are much better carries than Anti-Mage?

define 'best'?

is he the hardest carry? no.
does he counter some hard carries? yes.
does he GET countered by some hard carries? yes.
does he peak at a time where the late game starts? yes.
does he usually finish the game at that time? hell yes.
does he fall off after that time? yes.

anti mage's speciality is completely outfarming the enemy, and ending it before they get 6 slotted.
against a strong dual or even tri core that gets enough farm he is really going to struggle.

he is also strong against teams with a lack of initiation becouse of blink, that is why he wrecks pubs so much IF he is being played by a good player and gets his farm.

anti-mage is a top tier carry that like every other carry requires a lot of gold however, if you think about this a little, faceless void for example, he can jump in and chronosphere you before you can do ****, , you can't blink, your squishy so he can destroy you, and from memory chrono guarantees you to hit enemies in chrono despite evasion, or just buy mkb, void has a low mana pool so even if he ahs no mana and anti uses ult jack **** will happen


WOA MATE CRITICAL ERROR MKB DOESN'T STOP BACKTRACK THATS WHY HE IS COOL
oh and magic resistance....just buy that thingo thats purple and amps magic damage, besides late game is all about disables and right click, carry is late game, late game is right click, not magic....see the point here

dammit I wrote a guide on this: http://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/guide/hero-hierarchy-8901

as for medusa, it can be considered a counter with mana burn, however due to being squishy you really can't stay around long enough to kill her, manta deosn't do **** with split shot, and if you want to fight medusa and she stone gazes...and you don't blink away your ****ed, 50% more damage will screw you, also as linkens is a popular item no ulti for you as you can't break it without a sheep stick or something.

Hope this helped
Fleet

BTW your friends are fools kinda, carries are all situational, last hitting is skill not attack times really. If your playing captains mode and you first pick anti-mage you will probably lose as he can be picked around.

edit: why does someone always get there before me...you people need to type more at slower speeds so I am THE ONE...dammit tim

Anti-Mage is a hard carry - he needs plenty of farm and levels to be effective. However, he isn't usually the best in a high farm vs high farm situation, a hero like Faceless Void has much stronger passives and scaling.

Basically Backtrack and Time Lock scale fantastically - the more farm and levels you have, the more effective they are (permabash from attack speed, more chances for both to proc as you scale up your HP/armour etc). Never mind Chronosphere.

Spell Shield and Mana Break don't scale particularly well - nukes aren't that important 90% of the time in late game, and while break is helped by attack speed, it doesn't really scale. (e.g. if it gave him 5% mana burn on hit rather than a fixed number, it would scale).

Blink is a great ability - better than Time Walk generally (although that has a slow that can be useful for early kills). You can use it to farm very efficiently, plus it's not that obvious which direction you've blinked in.

Anti-Mage's real strength is HOW QUICKLY he can get his farm together - with an early Battle Fury he can outfarm anyone. That means he can be hitting his big items much sooner than other heroes, and has a window of opportunity where he's massively OP compared to others. He can wreck the other team and end the game before the enemy hard carry has the chance to catch up.

All carries are situational, Faceless Void is picked a lot because of Chronosphere, compared to any other hard carry, he offers a massive aoe disable that can be combo'd with so many heavy hitting spells, his passive ability to negate anything pretty much backtrack. The difference is void can make an impact earlier than most hard carries if you have a team that can take advantage of Chronosphere. Anti-Mage is not a top tier anything, great situational carry like all of them, but won't come online fast enough to deal with the abundant aggressive lineups currently popular.
Anti-Mage also excels in split pushing because of how hard he is to gank.

Also, you're thinking too much of carry on carry, the truth is, it's the supporting cast that makes or breaks a carry, hell an AM can blink all he wants, even if you're 6 slotted, what will you do against Fiend's Grip, Doom, Hex, shackle? Need to consider these things, especially if you first pick Anti-Mage, guarantee the other team will take a good deal of lockdown and ban out an good supports that would aid him.

Also your friends think AM would get the jump on Faceless Void]..ok he jumps in and..chrono, or hell he gets time locked to death

Or AM uses Abyssal Blade . It's all about the circumstances. Generally, given the same farm, Faceless Void will shine while Anti-Mage would not.

Oh, well, how foolish was I when I thought that Backtrack is useless against Monkey King Bar? Thanks, Fleet.

Nobody mentioned Spectre?

I think what makes Faceless Void, Medusa and Spectre a "better" overall carry than Anti-Mage is team-fight presence. Even if AM can farm somewhat better, what he can do is auto-attack someone to death/use Mana Void on supports/high mana pool heroes (like Outworld Devourer, Skywrath Mage). Because most builds does not consider Black King Bar on this hero, he can have some protection with Manta Style, but right, chain-stuns is almost a guaranteed kill.

I do agree, Wulfstan, Faceless Void with the same farm or even quite worse on minute 40 should get rid of Anti-Mage.

I think your friends need some sense knocked into them ;)

All heroes have a counter hero, and have strong points and weak points. This is how Dota 2 works. AM is not the best carry, nor is he the worst. In Dota you can't say that this hero is the best, because it's all based on preference. I might like AM better than Medusa, but that doesn't mean he is the best. So if your friends won't believe that AM isn't the best carry, show them. Invite them to a server and 1v1. Pick a good counter hero and prove them wrong :)

This ^

The "best" Hard Carry is Situational, and sometimes the answer is "None, you fool!" because you're trying to end the game before these kinds of Heroes come online.

Monkey King Bar counters Evasion, not Backtrack, the only way to remove Backtrack is Doom, which does not remove Spell Shield.

As for Spell Shield and Magic Damage Amplification (such as Decrepify), it goes like this:-

W/out Spell Shield:- (1 - 0.25) * (1 + 0.5) == 1.125 == 0.375 increase in Magic Damage
After Spell Shield:- (1 - 0.25) * (1 - 0.5) * (1 + 0.5) == 0.5625 == 0.1875 increase in Magic Damage.

So it does damp the effect of Magical Damage Amplification, but other forms of Amplification, e.g. Mask of Madness, Maledict, etc. are unaffected.

Every carry is situational, Anti Mage and Lycanthrope are great mobile rats with high single target damage, Faceless Void goes offlane for fast lvl 6 and gets gold from Chronosphere ganks, while Medusa and Ember Spirit farm 1 rapier and attack whole enemy team at once for sick damage.