My Dark Seer Replay

It's not a matter of me simply saying you're wrong.

MoM Cost - $1900
Dagon (lvl1) - $2800
Tranquil Boots - $975

Total Cost - $5675

This is my build I use regularly
Boots - $450 (no upgrade)
Mek - $2306
Soul Ring - $800

Total Cost - $3556

So Assuming we are getting equal farm (which trust me, I can farm extremely quickly from about level 3) I have all my "core items" $2000 gold quicker then you. Then I go into my luxury items (scepter/refresher) or additional team fight (pipe, Euls, Force staff etc).
This means that even though I don't have my full vac/wall combo going (level 16), I am able to help in team fights earlier. Ion Shells on it's own is a great team fight spell. Mek gives me some team regen. Vacuum, even at low level is great fun. And surge on anyone is great.

The big thing you as a player need to look at, especially after reading other posts of yours is not how you can be great, but how you can make your team great.

To give perspective, I played a game the other night with bane and ended up with arcane boots, soul ring and wards. Thats all I had in a 45 minute game. We won because thanks to vision from me, the other team couldn't free farm. Did I wrack up 30+ kills? hell no, I had no items. Did I help setup kills, allow carries to escape and stop bounty hunter and rikki from going invis? Yes and this won us the game and commendations from the team we beat. This is what Dota is about. 5 guys working together towards a common goal, not 5 guys all being awesome on their own.

You must understand that it doesn't say that dark seer is a support, nor does it say he is a carry. That's where the problem with this mess lies.

I actually had this idea once that characters that are not described as supports, nor carries, can actually become carries with the right lane partner.

For example... Centaur could actually become a carry if Dark Seer used surge with him effectively because he has TWO area of effect melee attacks...

If he can reliably initiate with surge, it almost guaruntees that two opponents will be stomped and double edged which is a straight path to gold, levels that he can use for strength with his passive, etc...

Following the offensive area of effect theme, I think dischord and shifas guard, are again the right choices, and he could carry with those...

Radiance and Blade mail also... support that sort of direction.



Imagine starting with a force staff AND dark seer....


If you can force staff to the other side of opponent, may it cause him to engage you, and if you suspected this, would you pop blade mail?

This could potentially cause him to run the OTHER direction in to your team.

I think that you need to be able to slow the enemy down to force the engagment from a force staff... so that's where I think SGuard and Fstaff work together with Blade Mail

I LOLed at this pretty hard. Vac+wall is good by mid game once he hits 11. Its relevent anytime during the teamfight. Its not good only if the DS cant get enough heros in it.

Why not build centaur a blink for initiation, its so much easier and more reliable. Surge is used as an escape and to run into the middle. Thats why you see late game dark seers possibly get blinks.

Then there's no point in making a thread, you'd be better off making a blog.

Other than that, all I can say as a Moderator is that you need to play more, learn the vanilla builds and then and only then should you start theorycrafting. You have proven to me and the other moderating authorities on this site as well as moderation on other sites that you can not handle the ability to freely speak openly in a community about gameplay.

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On a personal note, Dark Seer is my most played and understanded hero, and I can tell you right now that you're not even close to grasping the concept of the hero's design. He's not labeled as a support or a carry because he's neither. He's a caster, a hero that relies on the utility of his spells to be effective.

Your skill build will most oftenly be to level Ion Shell whenever possible, have a point in each of Surge or Vacuum and max one or the other depending on what the situation calls for. You will often be leveling your ultimate at level 10,11, and 16.

Your lane will be a solo lane. Mid if the enemy mid is a solo melee unit susceptible to damage over time such as Templar Assassin, Treant Protector, possibly Pudge, and so on. Otherwise you'll often be in a the off-lane soloing against the enemy carry and support or a trilane. Your goal as mid is to win the lane, and as an off laner your job is to interrupt the enemy's carry from farming with Ion Shell and ruining the pulls/stacking of the camps that the enemy support is trying to stack or pull, ultimately as an off laner your job is to defend the tower and not die.

As a mid your starting items are situational and as an off laner you should have Sage's Mask, Soul Ring Recipe, and Observer Wards (One to block the enemy's main pull camp and another to ward the ruin). Your core items are an option of Pipe of Insight (Counter spell heavy teams) or a Mekanism (Counter physical damage teams), a Soul Ring, and Boots of Speed. Your extension is a choice of Aghanim's/Arcane Boots and a choice of Scythe of Vyse or Refresher Orb to counter a team of caries or AoE carries like Tiny, or to counter spell casters you can build survival items like Shiva's Guard, Heart of Tarrasque, or Bloodstone. You should not be buying a Vanguard, a Mekanism is superior and is only counterable to enemies with very low attack damage like a Broodmother's Spiderlings or Undying's Tombstone zombies. Upgrading your boots is a luxury and often isn't done, but in the event that you buy tier 2 boots then you have an option of Arcanes or Boots of Travel.

Throughout the game your job is to push the lanes and be ready for teamfights, you'll often go negative with Dark Seer but have an extremely high amount assists and push a lot of towers down. You are there is teamfights to make sure either you use your Vacuum to setup a teammate's ability or use it to drag as many heroes through your wall with the priority of getting the enemy's hard carry through it. Make sure you have an Ion Shell on an ally that will be in melee range and is somewhat tanky, you should also be Surging allies to catch up to enemies in a chase or Surging them to escape a gank or a fight when they are low on health.

An ordinary game for me is to pick Dark Seer, get my starting items as quick as possible and head to my lane to ward the enemy camp. I leave everything unskilled until I am out of the enemy jungle as to give myself the option to level surge in case I get trapped or if I do successfully return to lane with no interruption I will have my first point in Ion and begin to push the lane. I often hug behind the tree in the secret shop so as to be in range of XP but be out of sight of the enemy. I then purchase Soul Ring's last component (Ring of Regen) in the side shop and activate it right before every time I use Ion Shell as to have an infinite source of mana, the cost is counteracted by Soul Ring's regen. I make sure that if I don't get Surge at level one that I get it next as to have a means of escape. Ultimately I try to stay in lane as long as possible without going back, making sure there is an Ion Shell on the lane constantly. If the enemy is killing your creep that has Ion Shell on it, you can throw it on the enemy's creep. You should not be having contact with the enemy heroes, keep your distance, especially if they have stuns. Dark Seer is great against any heroes that rely on slows as their disable. If your tower is up at mid game and you have not died at all then your lane was relatively successful. If you're underleveled, don't worry about it, its very easy to catch up in XP as you'll be pushing different lanes almost constantly throughout the mid and late game. To effectively push lanes without retaliation and getting ganked you'll apply an Ion Shell to the second or third melee creep in your lane and immediately Surge over to another lane and continue rotating this way. He's a great response to an enemy Tinker or Nature's Prophet because they'll be unable to fully push like they'd like to. When it comes to extremely late game then the key is to survive and make sure you properly land your Wall, keep your team alive, and occasionally Ward if your support isn't mobile or safe enough to place them.

Read what I typed, grasp it, try it out, and when you have successfully understood Dark Seer you'll realize that your current playstyle is very inefficient and even game throwing.

Tried all that, and I really couldn't disagree more...

His ulti is weird and is always useful no matter if late late game or what.

Scepter with L3 maybe L2 ulti is really where the wall makes more of a difference then ion shell does....

Despite this, you're still using illusions collectively to try and pick off the weaker heroes around... the stronger ones just aren't effected much at all by them.

Yeah with refresher and scepter, it's powerful, ridiculous mana cost is because the end result of 2 walls under scepter is so powerful. But that's scepter and refresher orb....

Wall of Replica is not weird, its straight forward, its purely anti-carry and scales as the enemy scales. Early game his wall is useless, and Ion Shell is the equivalent DPS of two stacking Radiances, its extremely powerful and its usefulness is early game but never really falls over unless directly countered by magic resistance. I'm not using my illusions to pick off "the weaker heroes around" I'm using them to focus the enemy unit that is doing the most damage since you are effectively outputting more DPS than the enemy's own carry due to Aghanim's effect.

I'd like you to show me a replay of you using the playstyle I've provided in a game rated in the high or very high bracket. Honestly what you agree with or disagree with is completely irrelevant because this is play-tested material and competitively used.

Normally I would not bring up someone's Dotabuff ratings. Usually its irrelevant, but unless you play alot of Warcraft 3 and have games played as Dark Seer that I cannot comment on, I can safely say that you have not properly played Dark Seer as of yet. Read my entire last comment and then evaluate your builds.

This is what I'm using as a reference, if this account is a smurf then please link your main with the proper Dark Seer games to be evaluated.

Your Dotabuff

Truth doesn't always get long term results, especially in the lower league. You can't look at a win/loss history and make a reasonable judgement at all.

If a team starts losing, it's not like you can always pull off good stats, especially when you are not a carry... This is logical.

A lot of who wins/losses is determined by the luck of the snow ball effect and the tipping point where it starts to go out of control.

This is the thing that people must accept about games in general, they are far from perfect, intended with chaos as the base for the greatest appeal, entertainment, sale.


I make my points around extreme situations, the example from the replay in the post is one of dominating a lane against 2 players at once, 1 against 2. I couple this with reasoning through evaluating what steps in order help get a person to his ultimate goal, regardless of what those steps must be and that is to become progressively effective in a thematic direction which is usually composed of miminal 3 to 4 general directions that you can take a character in.

You must always be weighing and evaluating the micro situation to the macro thematic of a character in order to make the best choice.

And Einstein was right.

"It appears that our main problem is a perfection of means, and a confusion of aims"

When you start to reason through the divine dichotomy, taking in to consideration the micro AND the macro at all times... if it can achieve some kind of progression, then you realize you are starting to taste Reality and Truth, but the fact is, it may only be for the strong minded as most would be driven insane until mental breakdown.

That's pretty much the breaking point Kyfoid, I'm locking this thread and putting your account under investigation. I just gave you plenty of information to play a specific hero properly under most conditions and once again you have gone off and completely changed the thread topic to irrelevant nonsense.

There is no chaos effect, there's only variables and strategy.