Puck was intimidating for me to use because I know he's a speedy character and I'm not into speedy heroes. Then again, it was a welcome change from Tiny who is slow as molasses. I started tinkering around with him on solo and the first thing I noticed was that he had fairly high damage starting out as well as a good mana pool. I practiced the concept of teleporting through the glowy ball, and it seemed simple enough until I had to use it properly in combat. Since I could never position myself very well and using it to run away was counter productive in the way I used it, I simply didn't use that aspect of Puck. He was a lot easier to last hit with than Lich and I thought he was just an adorable character.
... Then I learned how to farm with this monster. A fully-loaded glowey ball with his silence attack will two shot a normal creep wave very quickly. When I have items which grant me the ability to not care about my mana, the little punk tends to snowball when I push the lane. At first I gave him mana boots so he can keep giving himself more glowey balls, but I watched a pro play on You Tube and I noticed he used travel boots...
OMG... TRAVEL BOOTS! It was GLORIOUS!
Being able to bamph to my own creep waves and just farm the hell out of myself with a Dagon in one hand and a that tornado staff in the other was just ... WOW! And I thought Sniper was just awesome to play! It was like BAMPH! Kill creeps dead. Oh look! Axe is out to get me! Catch meeee if you caaaaaaaaan! 100 move speed on top of the 20 I have with that cheap 250 gold trinket and Puck's already high speed... I almost didn't need a blink dagger... until I started playing against humans.
So it was Travel boots, Dagon, Tornado staff... thingie... (forgot the name), BD, and scythe of Vyse.
Now, for the pub match.
Everyone else chooses a carry. I am the only nuker on the team. They ask me to play mid. Now... this is only the third time I've ever played mid lane. I've only had two games playing Puck and they give me the most important role in the match. I say... fine. And guess who is on the lane opposite me? A damn Sniper. Now... at first I was like "Give me a @#$%ing break", but after awhile I realized... wait... he doesn't outrange me until about level 4 and that's if he pumps all of his stats into his e skill. I know that I out damage him and though he has the faster attack animation, he still has a lower time block to deny a creep than I do by about 20 points of damage. So I crack my knuckles and the stand off begins. I deny him as hard as I can. We were about equal on trading last hits and denies, but I always managed to pull him to my tower. Sure, he can shoot for the tower, but the more he shoots at the tower with his ****py damage until level 6, the more I get to mow down his creeps. The problem with my playing mid lane is that I don't know when to go for items, so I didn't have my boors and bottle until level 9 or so. I couldn't leave Sniper unattended.
... Then Pudge got an illusion rune and sent his toadies to mid lane to harass me. I called the cavalry in chat and in two blinks, our PA jumps in and wrecks before TPing out. At this point, I'm feeling very good about this game.
We start getting wrecked at about level 15-17. They have a balanced team with a Shadow Shaman support, Pudge, Sniper, Slark and... I forget the last one. Our PA rage quitted and it was 4 on 5, yet somehow when all of us were dead, our creeps managed to take the top t2 tower. By some miracle, our PA decided to come back and finish the game, and we noticed that we had previously wrecked the mid lane in our opponents base. We were all about level 20 except for pa who was 25, and we respawned and made a hail mary charge. PA wrecked the respawning heroes while the rest of us just charged the ancient. We made a come back and I was like WHOOOOOO!
And that was the story of Puck.
Next up is Ursa. I've played Ursa before and was the first Melee I practiced with so I see no problems ahead.
Peace!
Ursula
The tornado staff thingy is called