Phantom Lancer: Why no PL in TI?

Mm. Do you want to be spending gold on dust every time though? That means even if he dies, that's still gold from his enemy's pocket

Even still the swing in the gold differences is in your favour, actually, just the kill gives you more gold than the 180 for two dust charges. And killing a carry can result in a tower or some other important objective to be taken.

I guess, but at least PL can help his teammates by reducing the feed power he might give to the enemy

PL needs a lot of expensive items to come online, keywords: alot, expensive. If you're going radiance, you gotta survive early-game aggression and then get a heart. If not then you'll need Diffusal AND a heart or the risky route, Diffusal > Manta for stronger split-push but still easy to kill with Gem.

So basically if you pick PL, you're banking on that you get freefarm and that your team will be able to do 4v5s until you get big or you split-push to victory.

Not all of his items are expensive really, it's situational

What items were you thinking about?

For a Phantom Lancer to be the effective split pushing carry that he is, he needs at least his Diffusal Blade, Manta Style and one more item, either a Heart of Tarrasque or Butterfly, otherwise the illusions are just too easy to clean up..

It's about the thing that he is forgotten. It's the meta. The game changed from the farming +30 min to 20 push and end game. That's why farming hero's here cannot shine. And I dislike the current meta it's really awful.

There are also heroes that does everything PL does, but better. Naga and Terrorblade come to mind. All three are hard carries with illusions and pushing power, but PL needs lots of items while Naga is rampantly disgusting and Terrorblade has immense early kill and push potential with Metamorphosis.

That and Earthshaker is a popular support in the meta, and is also a big fan of ruining Phantom Lancer's day. Echo Slam anyone?