New meta Anti-mage item build (no Kappa)

If you want attack speed and Mana Burn hits, rush a Manta Style instead. Maelstrom is poor-man's BF.

My favorite AM build is Poor Man's Shield > Bottle > Power Treads > Yasha > Talisman of Evasion > Manta Style > Butterfly

Why Bottle?

bottle is because in the absence of battlefury, anti mage is not able to spam blink to farm with effeciency.

Well my question is, why the heck do you want to reduce your chance of getting a Mana Burn, in exchange for some meager farming capability when Battle Fury provides him with great farm, and great regen and damage?

Cleave is what you get Battle Fury for on Anti-Mage. Without it, his farm sucks. With it, you can get lots of farm, really quickly. It allows him to push very effectively, and destroy creep stacks. Thanks to the crazy farming capability with Battle Fury, you can then get items to increase attack speed on Anti-Mage. Items like Manta Style and Butterfly. Maelstrom is really situational, and only something I would get if the enemy is destroying you and you need some DPS sooner than later.

But it's not just that. It's that Battle-Fury provides Anti-Mage with regen in one item slot. Along with that, you can recover from a teamfight with the HP regen, and keep your mana up as well. You don't need to be killing something to regenerate like you would with Vladimir's Offerin.

How is it a meagre farming item? It increases your damage and attack speed, and the lightning proc happens about once every 4 hits, so with your increased attack speed, it procs often enough to be equal or better than a Battle fury. Assuming you get Battle fury at level 10, you'll have around 150 damage per hit. This makes the cleave damage around 52.5. Remember this is reduced by creep armour, while the lightning proc from Maelstrom is not. So, if you hit a creep 3 times with Battle Fury, you deal around 157.5 cleave damage (assuming no reductions to the original target). BUT you attack faster with Maelstrom, so it's only a bit worse than BF.

If you wanna continue arguing, I'll have to mention Maelstrom's cheap cost. Unlike the 4350 gold cost of BF, Maelstrom only costs 2800. In return, BF can scale to much later on. BUT WAIT! Maelstrom is not a standalone item, it can still be upgraded into a Mjollnir. I assure you, Maelstrom + Hyperstone definitely let's AM farm faster than with only a BF (for little for than 350 gold). All this attack speed is really useful in a fight. It destroys someone's mana in less than a second. Couple this with with some form of disable (I honestly think Scythe of Vyse is also viable, but screw me if it isn't) and it's a guaranteed kill.



EDIT:
Forgot to mention that even though Mana Break is overridden by the chain lightning whenever it procs, it still happens more often thanks to the attack speed bonus.

SoV is viable on every hero in the game.

That passive is a huge turn off.

Anti-Mage's entire gameplay style is built on...well...being Anti-Mage. His ultimate's damage depends largely on Mana Break. The bonus damage from Mana Break is quite considerable. You reduce your chance of procing Mana Break with Maelstrom and Mjolnir. So, in reality Battlefury will farm more than marginally better than Maelstrom, assuming you've been leveling Mana Break.

I'd much rather just proc Mana Break more often than not, and then deal big damage with Mana Void in a teamfight. You keep forgetting about Mana Break. It is in my opinion, Anti-Mage's core ability. With the Maelstrom + Hyperstone, you don't have any regen. Anti-Mage is a squishy guy. So you spend an extra load of gold on a Vlad's or HoT. Not ideal, as it delays your timing on Manta Style. Later on, when I get Butterfly I wont need a Mjolnir. At all.

but this discussion till this point has been focussed around his farming capabilities haven't they?

Kody boy double posting to give double weight to his arguments.

Ok now coming to the point, Mjollnir/ Maelstrom might just be an alternative build for antimage. However, i have some qualms about it. What do you get from this item that will help you spam blink or be mobile for that matter? Nothing. You build vlads for that aura and some meagre regen ( about 3/sec if i am not wrong). You get a bottle, which gives you mana for 3.75 blinks. You also get tied down to taking runes which is never bad but for me it puts into aspect one thing that is totally different fro AFK farming. Runes, for me, are reserved for gankers. Sure you can pick up an ocassional regeneration rune but i wont think of buying bottle on AM. I tried mjollnir against unfair bots; i won just at the brink of loss.

I must put forth one more argument: Pros must have thought of something when they equipped battlefury of anti-mage, didnt they? they must have tried mjollnir!( i hope so at the very least). You might say that vlads is anyways good on AM but think of this: vlads +bfury> vlads+mjollnir on antimage in the early stages of the game where he aint fighting.

Now to alternative build suggestion, i think vanguard vlads into manta is a nice option. You can even ditch vanguard and just a buy a vitality booster for your heart of tarrasque
which you will build later ito the game. This build as you see lacks mana regen for him to spam blink. What it gives you however, is some fighting power as you are not that squishy with a vanguard and have enough attack speed and chasability with yasha(401ms) that you can catch up to any hero after strategically using your blink.

All your builds are workable and a skilful antimage will be able to fight just with vlads yasha and treads, i cant advise for new players or even myself to rush the builds that you talk of.

At these times, i reminisce why eye of skadi is a unique attack modifier. It would have worked wonders on him.