Battle Fury Rush?

I think Anti-Mage is horrible, so I looked up some guides in order to see if I am playing him wrong. I read about Battle Fury Rush.

The items required are more expensive for each (starting with ring of health at 875), so my question is - How is he supposed to rush to Battle Fury if he dies in 3 hits while trying to get the last hit in the beginning of the game? Should I just not play him unless I have a baby sitter friend online?

My second question is - Couldn't I apply the same Battle Fury Rush concept to Life Stealer in the jungle? There I don't have to worry about last hits and could farm all that much faster. In addition, I've noticed that when I play him, the other team loves to pile on me in order to bring me down late game. Would the cleave Life Steal from everyone and damage everyone? Wouldn't that be more effective than my normal crit weapon build?

No, life steal steals life only from the target you hit, not from all the targets you cleave. Also, people don't pick up Battle Fury on Lifestealer because he doesn't really need it, there are more important items that he should rush.

Also, you have to play safe with Anti-Mage and also have some supports taking care of you. So, if you know you're going to have a horrible lane, picking him is not very smart.

Trust me, as a support, there are good Am's and bad ones. A good anti mage time line looks something like this.

First 10 minutes - All the last hits. Let support harrass
10-20 minutes - Still farming - 4v5 teamfights while he isn't included
20-30 minutes - BF finished, Building vlads, BKB and manta while blink jungling.
31 minute - win game but killing whole team and destroying base in 3 seconds.

GG WP

The trick with Anti mage is you really need a good support (or 2) who can and will harass the enemy out of lane. A mid player who will regularly rotate down to get ganks and no one feeding.

I played a game the other day where we went 20 minutes scrapping through team fights (even losses or they took an extra support) then AM came in and just destroyed.

Battlefury is good on AM since his BAT is lower than the standard (1.35?) and with it, he can clear the whole jungle easily. Many players that rush BF go for the Burning(best AM player in the world) build which is 1,1,1 and stats and once they are close to BF, they max blink.

Game two of DK vs Aliance will show you what AM can do.

The problem with Anti-Mage is he needs a team built around him. The meta game has also chanced away from the hard carry meta.

The biggest way to get good at him is last hit drills. Try doing last hits in a bot match. On average you should get 60 lat hits by 10 minute. Carries like AM need gold so being good at last hitting is a must.

You should definitely not play Anti-Mage if you don't have a decent Support, without someone to Harass and drive your opponenets back, AM is extremely easy to shut down. Whenever I lane against an AM with a Ranged Support, I focus entirely on hitting him with Auto-Attacks, and they usually end up hiding behind their Tower not getting any Farm or they come out to get a Last Hit on low HP, get Stunned, then killed.




^ This, with Lifestealer, you want to try getting a Hand of Midas within 8 minutes for Farming, so you can rush Power Treads and Armlet of Mordiggian by 20 minutes.

Also, Jungling is slower than Laning, since you get less Gold and Exp from it. You should only Jungle as a Carry if you have lost your Lane completely.

I'd honestly reccomend an easier carry to learn the 1 spot on the roster, Anti-Mage is damn near unkillable with his skillset, and generally takes a lot of resources in a gank to bring him down because of his blink, and I guess spell shield a bit too.
Battlefury pays for itself once you farm it, and the components are very important for am in lane, try starting with 4 branches and a quelling blade with some tangos to help give you a bit more early damage to creeps, although most people start with a buckler..AM doesn't really need boots so much as he does the rest of his core, and simply put battlefury makes him one of the fastest farmers in the game, and it's damage scales well with his atk speed.

Get a health ring, magic wand, poor mans shield, and you'll have stats, regen, and a block chance, and than finish perseverance, eventually finishing the rest of BF. Midas can sometimes help if you fall behind a bit, it'll be a slower start but can pay off big later, although its a big risk if your team doesn't have any vision or map control.
Get the wand and shield for boosted damage and more regen obviously, simply put you'll stay in lane a little longer, make sure you have a solid babysitter, and don't always go vlads, sometimes it better suited as a support item than if you picked it up, as there are some heroes that can get better use out of it (especially I'm pubs where you'll have multiple carries, so it your team has an Ursa for example, don't buy vlads, hell have one)

Save your blink for the right timing, and blinking away to a pulled stack while perseverance regents your health and mana is a a good way to recover, while still farming, but obviously you playing am relies on how good your support is, and please don't do the derp "all mid" in pubs when it's 15 min into the game

BF rush on AM is a great game plan. Shouldnt take too long if your last hitting like you should.Then hit BKB or manta. BF rush works well on many heroes.

Anti-Mage and Lifestealer are not even comparable to each other: both might be carries, but the similarities end here.

AM is a hard carry that can't do much without items (like Faceless Void, Phantom Assassin, Medusa and Spectre), so getting a Battle Fury, that also has a huge impact in teamfights, makes farming super fast and adds lane sustainability ( Perseverance) for the early game. Normally, an Anti-Mage player should have BF at 15 minutes and Manta Style at 25-30 minutes: they are enough to make him a great split pusher and a good teamfighter.

Lifestealer, on the other hand, is devastating even with little items, so getting something cost-efficient ( Drum of Endurance and Armlet of Mordiggian, in this order, are the most common choices) and something that helps in chasing ( Phase Boots, Sange and Yasha and Skull Basher) is much more useful. Also, Battle Fury is a waste because, other than not needing all the extra farming and split pushing capabilities, N'aix doesn't need the HP ( Feast) and mana (his skills don't use much mana) regen from Perseverance either.
PS: if you play Lifestealer in jungle, getting a Hand of Midas in ~7-8 minutes can help in getting more gold and rising the DPS if you need to.


TL;DR: Anti-Mage needs Battle Fury to farm more quickly, split push and have some sustain in lane; Lifestealer and all the other non-hard carries should prioritize Black King Bar (unless they have a built-in magic immunity) and cost-efficient items.

I echo Peppo here, only adding that Hand of Midas is also very useful on the hard carries as well in order to minimize the time needed for afk farming.

For example, on Faceless Void you could choose between a Battle Fury rush build, or farm an early Hand of Midas if you wanted to focus on a Maelstrom, Skull Basher or Manta Style as your first big pick up.