Basic Items that is actually useful

Best gold efficiency stat item....worst inventory efficiency stat item.

[Longest dotafire post of my life]

I will only discuss the four actually listed IN the poll. I put other because I agree with all of them. This really depends on what stage of the game and under what circumstances you wish to purchase each item.

Chainmail:
Chainmail is an extremely cost effective way to reduce the damage done to your hero. I play core Tidehunter quite often, and I usually purchase an arbitrary Chainmail for the armor. If the game goes long, I build this into an AC. However, the merits of this item are good for all heroes. It reduces physical damage done (I believe I did this math right) by 23.08%. This is extremely useful on all heroes, especially those without incredible tankability to start with. However (according to the wiki), it is only 60.6% cost effective (for whatever reason).

Javelin:
As I said above, I sometime purchase an arbitrary Chainmail. However, this is not the case for Javelin, and I'm not sure why. It is only ever purchased to be built into Skull Basher or Monkey King Bar. This does not make it a worthless item, however. Let's assume you spend all of your starting money on tangoes. If you farm at around 500 gold per minute (doable), you could have a 3 or 4 minute Javelin. This means, that at 3 minutes, every 5 hits, you will do an additional 40 damage. For heroes with low damage and high alike, this is a great boost early game. However, since Javelin is not an early game pickup for anybody, it's usefulness simply becomes the fact that you can built into basher and Mkb.

Helm of Iron Will:
This item is INCREDIBLY useful. The armor and HP regen grants survivability you wouldn't believe (I'm thinking of a certain 1 on 1 match between Singsing and Merlini). Again, however, this item is never a standalone pickup. But, it is still useful on ALL heroes. It grants survivability on squishier heroes, as previously stated. You can pick it up on strength heroes to build into an Armlet of Mordiggian, on Intelligence heroes to build into Veil of Discord or on any hero to build into Helm of the Dominator and later Satanic. This is it's usefulness, similar to Javelin.

Quarterstaff:
This item is incredibly useful, even with the intention of simply buying it arbitrarily. The damage is significant to most heroes that usually pick this item up ( Storm Spirit for example), and the attack speed even more so (I just love when you can get off those thousand hits in two seconds, don't you?). However, once again, I would argue that this is never a standalone purchase, like Chainmail has the potential to be. It's price makes it this way.

So? Closing thoughts? I would say the best of these to buy ignoring their upgrades would be Quarterstaff. Despite, Chainmail's incredible survivability boon, Quarterstaff improves your farming time, and your ability to gank, in some cases. However, all four items are useful, and I encourage you to explore them all.

[/Longest dotafire post of my life]

How has nobody (That I've seen) mentioned Observer Ward? It's like the best value item in the game (Aside from a GG Branch), and do just win games at times.

Assuming that you've got supports who place them in smart positions, and not really **** ones like in the middle of tree's.

I'd take a ward over gg branches any day :P

Gratz :)



Not entirely accurate - the % reduction it gives you depends on your existing armour rating. If you already have high armour it could be as low as 5.5%, or as high as 25% with a little negative armour.

It is actually quite useful early on most of the time, and has a few useful items you can build into - Blade Mail, Assault Cuirass, Medallion of Courage or Buckler. I actually really like the Buckler, it's so spammable. I'm sometimes a little upset when I upgrade it to a Mekansm.



It's a bit expensive for a "cheap pickup for later" - neither Monkey King Bar or Skull Basher are that useful early on, because pretty much everyone lacks the mobility/attack speed/everything else they need to really make proper use of them. And it does tie in to them only - a Mithril Hammer is about the same price and builds into more useful things - Desolator, Maelstrom, Black King Bar, etc.



I do like this item a lot, it can actually be a better pickup for farming sustain/survivability than Morbid Mask if you don't have enough damage to lifesteal well yet. Builds into lots of nice things. However, 5 armour Chain Mail is only 550, it's kinda expensive for what it is, on it's own.



On paper it's pretty nice for the cost, but again you'd never really buy it without another item in mind. This is kinda the issue with this whole discussion - most "basic" items only make sense when you consider what you can make them into. If you can make a Bracer directly from the main shop, is it really that different from an Ogre Axe aside from the price and what you can make it into?

Thank you for imparting your infinite wisdom Sando :)

Of the items you posted, I'd have to say the Quarterstaff. I think it provides the most calculable return and is a useful inventory slot that can be built into 3 different important items. i.e: Grab it on Razor if you want to eventually build a Refresher... or Butterfly.

What about the following:\


Orb of Venom

GIMME YOUR BOOTS

Boots of Speed

Here, have them!

Ring of Protection

Some Jakiros get 2 of these...

Smoke of Deceit

DAMNIT I WAS THE FIRST ONE TO SAY SMOKE AND QUELLING BLADE!!!
YOU ALL EDITED YOUR PREVIOUS POSTS!!!!

NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I think Quarterstaff is complete garbage and there is no point whatsoever to even hold this in your inventory. Oblivion Staff is one of these items you assemble starting from cheapest components because more expensive ones are useless. The only point of buying Quarterstaff is either to finally get your item, or when you are not sure that in some close point of the game you'll have 2.5k gold to finish Orchid at once so you need these Oblivion Staff stats.

Same goes for Javelin. I would vote for Chainmail because it can be built into many useful items later so you can just pick it up for armor without any particular item in your mind at that moment.