Mirana Early Aghs

Recently I saw my friend played Mirana and rushed Aghs as is first item. He was top with a Crystal Maiden. When I asked why did he do this, he told me it increases her farming speed as well as provide some stats to survive the early game. Does this logic hold? Should you be rushing Aghs as Mirana's first major pickup?

Yasutsuna! SO good to see you around again :)

It's only good on offlane mirana, #3 or so...

It's legit on core Mirana, even carry Mirana when that comes out. Relative to all of the other farming items, it actually accelerates your farm rate so much. You become a very evasive split-pusher with Blink Dagger and ulti (Because Ag's and regular Starstorm clears waves by itself), it gives you desperately needed HP, and in early fights the burst damage is pretty fearsome. Or you know, the fact it can trigger multiple times in a fight.

Even makes you scarier in arrow ganks, because between Arrow and double Starstorm you can deal a maximum of 1510 magical damage to an isolated target.

And on a hero who when in a core role needs to be an item or two up, a farm accelerator like this is fantastic.

The real question becomes though how viable are core Mirana's?

I actually think that the Aghanim's Scepter is more suited for a support Mirana, to be perfectly honest. Mirana's always seemed to me this weird hero that doesn't have any sort of natural item progression. Sure you can get a Desolator and a Manta Style and play her as a split pushing carry, but... why? There's no ability she has that takes advantage of those items except Leap, arguably, which gives a good attack speed boost for a few seconds but also requires you to position yourself awkwardly.

So you see that she doesn't scale well as a core and decide to build her as a support. Sure. Except... why would you play support Mirana instead of basically anything else? Her stun is amazing, but requires some setup to really get the most out of, and she doesn't have the mana pool to sustain both her spells and a Mekansm in the early game. She's decent at pushing with Star Storm, but it's nothing anyone else can't do better.

An Agh's though... it gives a support Mirana a lot of good things. More split push power, tankability, and mana pool like has been mentioned, and all the ability to burst heroes down as has been mentioned. These things can make her a high-damage support with an ultimate that lessens the need for smokes and that has her own Force Staff to escape from danger. Sounds pretty good on paper.

I don't think you should play Mirana as a #1/#2 nor build Aghs either, but as a #3 she becomes quite the beast, specially if you itemize accordingly. What Sanvitch said.

I had been doing experiments with it then I saw Sumail's build and tried it also: it's super legit. Brow boots --> Aquila --> Hand of Midas --> Aghs --> Blink Dagger --> Whatever utility/damage/survivibility you need

Without the Midas Aghs takes too long and its build up is akward. After Aghs you take waves in "one hit" because of double start storm and if you arrow someone for enough time and he's not super tanky, he's dead.

See here my experiments: http://www.dotabuff.com/players/175327573/matches?hero=mirana

Note that even in the last game yesterday, when I was alone with my muted 1k russians and having to offlane with a feeding tony I did well on my own, because of the build (sold the Midas late because slots). Imagine this in an organized team.