Oi career Spectre players :3 - Unorthodox Early/Mid Game Builds and playstyles?

Hi.

I'm not a newbie when it comes to Dota2 (Did not play vanilla Dota though), but considering this the first time actually being a fan of a particular hero, I've come to the point that I'd want to discuss about it. Using Steam's forums doesn't help much, for obvious reasons.

I know question like these are asked a lot, but I have a few particular ones.

I'll skip the pre-blathering for these questions.
Note that I'm going from a PUB standpoint, not pro-Gaming/5man team situation.
So yes, I'm talking about that particular nightmare mode of having Four Rather Not Useful Buddies in your pub team.

Please don't just say "build drums" ;). I'm even more so interested in unorthodox builds that can confuse the enemy more so.



Say you can't farm the lane with Spectre like everybody keeps talking like. How do you break even this particular situation of falling behind in gold farm?

With all that said, what speaks against:
- Maelstrom?
One way to avoid lane ganking is to jungle (and then getting ganked there :P).
Of course, Spectre can't jungle at the start of the match until she has a few items - like Morbid Mask to begin with. Say you built PThreads, Thor Jr's hammer does proc reliably to farm lane/jungle creeps.
Is this really such a bad item for Spectre early/mid game?
Okay, if you're in a lane, it will push the lane out fast, but then again, every hit you and creeps can make on enemy towers is just as well.

- Helm of the Dominator/Mask of Madness
(Vlads really isn't that great and really more for Support)
As Morbid Mask builds into these, how does the Dominator Mask help Spectre farm?

- BattleFury
This one's been in my head in various matches. We all know Radiance is core, but there are times where I have feeling BF could do so much more. Can anybody give me more insight on this item with Spectre?

- Crysalis
I never got this, but maybe I should?
I'm not sure. How does this fair with Spectre Early/Mid game?

I've played Spectre a lot, and if anything, I can frequently see that Desolate is unreliable since enemy players these days are rarely stupid and will stick with other heroes. Somewhere, I'm starting to actually consider using items that literally don't stack with Desolate... for that particular situation when it won't proc anyways due to two heroes being next to each other. But maybe I'm jumping the gun.

Do any of you take Crysalis or is this really a waste?


In fact, I think even a lousy Techies can do a lot more in early/mid games. Okay, that's going over the top a bit, but comparing her to other Carries (excluding Techies, duh), they are quite easymode in my eyes compared to her.
Plus, Spectre could easily be called "Farming Simulator with Problems".

Anyways. Gratitude to those who can fill me in on these questions.

Ok, if you do have a feasible unorthodox (non-Radiance) build/items to suggest, please go ahead - but no 6x GG branches **** please :3!
Really would love to figure some builds that somewhere make Spectre actually surprise the frakk out of the enemy team.

I see that building Mek can be feasible path just as well.

Build mek vanguard mask of madness vlads and boots.
Sell vanguard for heart.
Sell mek when you get heart and get an eagle song.
Sell vlads for yasha
Sell mask or don't.

With spectre you can build anything and it won't be completely wrong. Some things work better than others so it is all about getting your late game items.
Build whatever the situation demands.
Blade mail
Halberd
SnY.
Diffusal
Mask of madness
Basher (provided you buff yourself and not your illusions).
Assault cuirass
Sheepstick
Anything that helps you reach the late game.
Spectre goes well with anything. Believe it or not.

You can go all agility and become a team fight specialist or go for armor AS raw damage items for becoming a manfighter. Decide what you want and progress from there.

The best advice anyone can give you is to farm your buyback money as spectre. It is legit to die as spectre leaving the enemies on low health then buying back, using haunt to clean up all of them.

Just dont go battlefury.
You will have to farm items to farm a battle fury and then farm some more. The way i see is you are someone that likes to use spectre early and gank using haunt or assist the team.

Thanks. Hmm okay, I will consider not taking Battlefury. I read somewhere that it would be viable versus illusion-spammers like Mr. Lancer, but I'll take that advice after all.


Hehe, I can hear Guile's Theme goes with anything in my head just now.

I'm still confused about the "Vanguard situation" though, likewise with Vlads, but Vanguard on Spectre has been such a big deal in the community.

Can you give more insight on that (and Crysalis - or is that utter **** after all?)

the thing with spectre is, that her attack steroid Desolate does not directly improve her attackdamage but rather deals damage as a seperate source. Also, her Illusions dont profit from any dmg items except base dmg ones (=agility). This means that building items like Daedalus is about as effective as if you would get it on something like Crystal Maiden.

Because of that the best thing you can do, is get attackspeed (preferably Stat-based ones because of Haunt). Mask of Madness seems a bit gimmicky to me, but i have seen it work surprisingly well a few times. Maelstrom could also work i recon, but since you dont get any stats out of it and the proc doesnt occure on illusions, Diffusal Blade usually is the supperior choice (together with Desolate thats 90 Bonus dmg per hit ....even from illusions).

Battle Furry: see the Daedalus part :3

Spectre, unfortunately, is a rather unflexible hero in term of itemization. With Desolate being a seperate dmg source and by wanting to get the maximum usefullness out of her ult, there seems to be little space for "alternative" builds

If you can't get a good amount of farm as Spectre, a viable and still extremely effective alternative is the Diffusal-Manta build and forget about Radiance. Once you get that, you go a-ganking and feed on their supports to try and come back.

If you can't even get that, then go for extremely cost-efficient items, like Blade Mail and Yasha. I've seen a lot of pros go blademail Spectre if they can't get a lot of farm, and it works wonders with Dispersion.

Thanks guys :). So life isn't that bad for Lady purple.

Get drums

Kappa.

With lancer, you are better off not utilizing your haunt to initiate.
Once he uses his doppleganger, using Haunt will find out the real lancer and you can for sure disable or have the whole team on him for atleast 8 seconds.

Spectre's Dispersion scales with health, you know that right!?
Early game 250 HP and a single point in dispersion will increase the EHP to 275 hp. Add to that, vanguard blocks the incoming damage. So this 275 will actually scale even more(well your whole HP pool scales more).
Hence it is a viable option. However, if you are rushing eye of skadi, you can easily substitute this for a Point Booster and a poor man's sheild.

See, SEA pro players in pubs go for a fun build where they build both lifesteal and Vlads Aura, so they stack and becomes insanely rewarding with a snowball. But you can fall hard if you dont get kills.

Crystalys is certainly not viable unless you went for manfight builds with enough AS, armor items. And you shouldnt leave it be; upgrade it to Daedalus.

Battle Furry is one of the poorest choices to get rid of illusions. Maelstrom and Mjollnir are far more reliable in that matter. Also - as already said - any bonus dmg you get from Desolate has NO effect on BFs cleave, making the actual cleave damage rather negligible.

Vanguard (as much as i personally dont like it) is a - thanks to its interaction with Disspersion - somewhat viable item on spectre. However, i would only get it, if i really want to join teamfights asap. And even then it heavily competes with other ~2k gold value-items, like Blade Mail or Drums of Endurance.

Yeah, I've been quite temted lately to stick with Vanguard after all.

In another match, I went for RoH > Refresher (also had Radiance), but it didn't really had that OMPF effect as heard in other guides.

I think my main issue with Spectre is the fact that in various cases of mine, Desolate is not available. Enemy Supports have been quite smart these days not to wander around and it's been very risky (eh, or just stupid xD) to manfight Lion without Blademail or anything to survive his stun/finger.

Desolate is a bit more of an icing on the cake when people do happen to move solo.
I guess I need to focus more on stat-items or anything that bolsters dmg when Desolate is not available.

I think I will go for Maelstrom as the early/mid farming game. Somewhat, Gloves of Haste could be saved to see if a Midas is possible. If not -> Mael (or Brown Boots).

I'll consider Crys/Daed too :3.
Thanks a lot!