A "Fun" way to play Anti-Fun?

Yes, yes, it's been awhile I know, I've been making my rounds visiting family members from Atlanta, Philadelphia and Omaha during the holidays, but things should begin to settle down for me as this week winds down. So I've goofed around in bot matches to shake off the rust and what better hero to shake the rust off with than Anti-Mage?

And goodness is he boring! Mostly because his item build just seems so... linear. Get battlefury in 13 or so minutes, clear jungle camps for another 20 minutes, getting Manta, Abyssal, the works before the 25 minute mark. So, I've been wondering, is there any "exciting" or "fun" way to play Anti-Mage? Maybe it's just that I'm used to playing heroes who are bit more... flexible when it comes to item builds and the like, but I just can't seem bring myself build up to the same item over and over.

Is Maelstrom a possible alternative? Perhaps a midas? Or could you go for some early fighting builds? Or is the BF build simply the most feasible way to go about Anti-Fun?

It's one of the best suited builds. The traditional fighting am involved vanguard as the first item. Then manta, abyssal, butterfly etc.

Ofc you can try the blink-slammmin antimage (eblade-dagon rush)

The fun way to play Anti-Mage is the "**** magic" way. The way where you concentrate on hunting down wizards, burning their mana, and blowing them up with Mana Void to sunder cabals. There are several ways of doing that but they all rely on going Manta Style *first* item, and adding a disable item + a regen item to the mix.

Slahser's way is to go Urn of Shadows, Magic Wand (yes you'll have to lower yourself to this item), Manta Style and Skull Basher. That's not a lot of farm, you can get that stuff early by 15-20 mins, and then go hunt magic users like you're supposed to.

You can replace the urn with a Vanguard/ Crimson Guard or a Vladmir's Offering if you want.

Another fun way to play him is Rod of Atos (yes, I'm serious) into Manta Style. Again, AM needs a disable to be able to lock on targets and right-click them with Mana Break and atos gives him exactly that.

Of course the manly AM goes for the 4/4/1 skill build, and they don't skill stats because stats are for *******.

Midas...please no, battlefury if you want to farm, otherwise straight up manta/basher.

Maelstrom is not bad but AM really needs the regen from bfury.

BTW the fighting AM builds got much better with the manta buff that reduced the mana cost. Now you don't have big mana issues anymore.

I forgot about the manta buff. Gotta try fighting am. Although the last time I tried it, I invariably ended up getting a bf (19 mins in) but still, I did get it.

Nice build by hamster, i played antimage and i feel rod of athos can be a real thing, because you wont need mkb or early vanguard right?
Other cool aditions are moon shard so you can atack faster
Refresher for double the fun
Aether lens can be super fun as you will have more magic resistance ( stacks fully as it is your only magical resistance item) gives you regen, and more efective blink and ult
***ualt is ok, bkb/ linkens if lots of disable
Mid game you should have

Isn't Battlefury into Vladamr's Offering into Manta Style a really good fighting build anyway? Transitioning then into either Basher or BKB as needed.

Like, you jump on a target, sic him with Manta illusions, and blow him up. You can basically do this to any hero pre BKB's, and your illusions are terrifying. Trying to build AM item progression without the farming item sounds bad because you **** up your potential timing windows and you are just a poor anti mage late game.

Unless you want to build like the old school Crimson Guard first. But then you have the smallest timing window on earth because BKB cripples you.

Let's be honest, the build that everybody goes for these days is nothing but an AFK jungling build with zero impact in fights before ~26 minutes. And even then you have to wait until basher to not get kited.

It's a super greed build where you're useless before 26 minutes and 6-slotted at 40. First off, some people don't like to play dota like this. Second, pubs being pubs, your team will feed before that point, so you'd have to accept that there are more than 1/3 of games that you just cannot win no matter how well you play. A good carry in pubs is a carry that's useful at any stage of the game and scales well into late game, not a carry that's useless for 26 mins and gets super farmed at 40.

Bfury and vlads are 6K gold of items that give zero HP. So even the vlads aura is useless in fights because AM has to sit back or die, his team doesn't even benefit from it.

Not to mention it's extremely weak to silence because you buy vlads before manta, since orchids come online much earlier than 26 mins.

AM only needs two items to be a good fighter : manta, and basher. So why not rush them? That's what Slahser says.

Also to push it even further I think you can compare Skull Basher and Rod of Atos, since both cost the same amount of gold and do a similar thing (but maybe I'm just kyfoiding at that point XD)

BKB is not that much of a problem for AM because he focuses INT cores and supports, and these kind of heroes don't go early BKB.

Of course any fighting AM build has the limitation that it's only good against high mana pool enemies.

Another point is that the manta/basher AM is actually better at split pushing (in some way) than the bfury/vlads AM because manta/basher AM can solo kill defending heroes really effectively while bfury/vlads can only push out lanes. So manta/basher AM is actually a threat and can make his own space in a way, while bfury/vlads AM will just push out a lane and back off, and hope to not feed.

Has anyone tried the Vlad's before boots and then Maelstrom Kuro build?