New Alchemist build.

I love the way you guys answered me, you are so kind.
I still don't understand 1 thing:
You said that you don't go for a battlefury build because you don't have any built in mobility, unlike AM.
But radiance needs illusions and you don't have a built in illusion spawner... unlike naga siren.
And anyway the blink is kinda better than manta on alch i think because it gives you initiation with your W, some escape potential if you're splitpushing and i think i never saw a manta style on a strength hero... maybe tiny only

Tiny, Lycan, Dragon Knight, Chaos Knight. All of these are more than decent candidates for Manta Style. First one is obvious, the next two is because manta transfers their transformation state over to the illusions (so DK illusions will be dragons, lycan will be a... well wolf) and CK just has incredible synergy with illusions in general.

It used to be super OP on Alchemist a couple patches before (a lot of time ago, think version 6.66) because his ult used to give him raw HP (1k at level 16) and his illusions used to truck through everything with 5k HP. Think Tiny on a roid rage (literally, that's what Chemical Rage is).


Now, the problem with Alchemist not having an innate illusion skill is that he can just farm himself one. There's literally no bad item on the hero, since the timing on the item itself will be much faster than usual anyway. Brings a bit of extra momentum to the teamfights in general. (but this depends a lot on the item choices you make).

Actually Alchemist's role is neither teamfighter nor rat. It's a mix between ganker and pusher.

The whole point of Chemical Rage is the ability to hit buildings really fast. That's why every single Alchemist during the TI3 times used to go Assault Cuirass and Black King Bar in every single game, becaue the whole point of Alch is to go high ground at the 30-35 min mark (before the hero drops off).

Of course you can compare the Blink Dagger + Battle Fury/ Mjollnir build and the Radiance/ Manta Style build, but even if you think the blink build is better (which I do, since I've seen videos that show it farms faster, while also being better in fights), you can't deny that the radiance/manta build makes perfect sense and is at least viable. Yes, Alch is a fairly bad radiance carrier because he's not tanky anymore since his ult no longer gives HP and he has no armor, but he can have one at 10 minutes so why the hell not. And manta is good on every hero, manta illusions even get the full effect from his ult so there's some legit synergy.

But now this still leaves some questions :

- Why do people go Octarine Core, this item on Alch is literally dog poop and does absolutely nothing useful. Alch doesn't have Mirror Image to justify cooldown reduction doing anything, and increasing the uptime on Chemical Rage does literally nothing if you don't have damage items like Abyssal Blade or similar to take advantage of the BAT from your ult in the first place. In the illusion build the only thing you get from your ult is regen, that's it. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Octarine on Alch is literally just a 6K gold Vanguard. Gives a bit of HP, everything else is wasted.

- Why do people not go Assault Cuirass and Black King Bar and aim to go high ground and end the game before 35 minutes, and why do people play Alchemist as a hard carry with an AFK ricing buid, while it's been known since the TI3 times that Alch's late game is literally inexistent and he's one of the worst scaling cores in dota (and it only got worse since that time with the nerfs). Why the hell does every single Alch let the game go past 35 minutes while it's the hero's massive weakness??

BTW, if you want additional proof that the blink build farms faster than the radiance build, consider this. Compare an Anti-Mage with Battle Fury, and a Spectre with Radiance/ Manta Style. Who farms faster?
For Alchemist, that's exactly the same, just add the accelerated farming speed.
(and yes I'm comparing AM with Spectre and not with Naga because Alch doesn't have Mirror Image, which is what allows Naga to farm so fast with a radiance only. Alch has nothing in common with Naga, and Spectre is the only hero that goes for a Naga-like build without a spammable illusion skill.)

People go octocore on Alch because it reduces manta cooldown. Literally the only reason. Smaller cooldown, more illusions, more Greevil's Greed, more gold. Plus it's cutsie in a way that it compliments your ult regen because you lifesteal with Radiance.

Ofc it does but paying 6k gold for this makes an already ****ty build even worse. Like do they really think that if Naga gets Octarine for illusions uptime then Alch should too, completely ignoring the fact Naga's Q is 10 times better than Manta Style and it also lets her splitppush non-stop with reduced song and BoT CD?

So you guys are telling me that the build is legit but we should change Octacore with AC?

The reason to go Manta after radiance is that your farming rate is so high it doesn't really matter what your next item is. If you can play the passive game of course you want to go farm oriented and increase your gold advantage over the enemy team. Manta is the best item to do so. You get to farm multiple places easily and keep gaining ridiculous money due to Greevil's Greed.

If the games go into fighting mode... Manta is still the best option. You spread the radiance aura, dispell silences that keep you from activating your ult and at that point are close to unkillable. Only very specific lineups are actually able to burst alchemist when his ult is active and those are squishy caster lineups that can easily be killed if your team can stall them even a little.

So why not go for BF/Maelstrom into blink for farm? Again radiance allows you to farm multiple stacked camps from a distance and allows you to keep your ultimate up. While BF/Maelstrom blink combo has a similar farm rate you have a decrease in survivability, because you need to use your ultimate to farm.
In most pub matches this won't matter, because sub 4/5k people rarely gank the enemy jungle, but in pro games it's the best build you can go.

Maybe the radiance/manta build allows you to stay behind, but if you get ganked you're still a free kill. Because you're not naga so you don't have naga song :)

Blink Dagger is an escape mechanism, because you can stun and blink out. Radiance is not.

Also... Eye of Skadi is cheaper than Octarine Core, gives 275 additional HP, 3.5 additional armor, 25 additional damage, 25 additional attack speed, and a 35% slow that solves most of Alchemist's massive kiting issues.
Is it really worth trading all that for a reduction of manta cooldown from 30 to 22.5 seconds? Keepo.

Because at that point you could justify any poop tier item. Like hey you should always go Bloodstone on a position 1 Alchemist because Bloodstone gives the ability to get charges off kills and use these charges to respawn faster when you die, and respawning faster can be completely game changing in late game situations where the game can depend on you. So you need bloodstone on him every game because it clearly gives lots of things to the hero and if you don't you're just a low MMR scrub that doesn't understand the clearly overpowered current meta build. XD

the difference hamster is in WHAT you prioritize. you think its horrible cause it

- too expensive for what you get
- manta is useless
- radiance gives you nothing

example time.

radiant jungle with radiance and manta.

19:05 - aggro hard camp 1
19:09 - aggro hard camp 2
19:11 - acid spray in the center make sure you get pull camp in the spray.
19:12 - manta send illusions to the 2 other camps near mid lane (camps 4 and 5)
19:15 - clear both hard camps
19:25 - all jungle camps are cleared.
19:35 - clear lane at tower
19:45 - push lane to tower
19:50 - manta again send 1 illusion to cut wave behind enemy tower and one to rune high ground enemy side
20:00 - get rune.
20:05 - rinse repeat

i just cleared our WHOLE jungle and 3 waves of creeps AND put damage on tower AND got the rune. if i went blink or anything else that whole process would take me 2 minutes maybe 3. purely because of the time it take for you to move through the camps and the time it takes to clear things.

Now people at my level and in my games they prioritise farm speed and efficiency because honestly you should have wards and some form of map awareness to deal with ganks.

i can see though that playing at a lower level this build would be a WHOLE lot harder to do as you wont have the team skill level to be able to utilise it to the max potential of the build.

You don't even know Hamster's MMR to begin with.

And to finish, taking a part in an amateur tournament and smurfing yourself to 4k doesn't give you any reason to fire shots and say "at my/your level"(especially since everyone knows that upper half of 4k is a ****ing dumpster with every 2nd account being boosted/bought/smurfed).

So pls.