Lina: Aghanims or Ethereal Blade

As the title suggests, I would like your opinion on the aforementioned builds of lina. One with aghs and the other which has an ethereal blade (replacing the aghs). Do you think the second build is even viable? Have you ever used the e-blade build after lina's aghs update?

The pure damage upgrade is much better. Piercing BKB is invaluable.

But in a game with no natural BKB carriers, wouldn't the e-blade build have even a shred of validity?

Eblade is better against tough STR rightclickers who do not care that much about 950 damage nuke and hit hard. You can just focus another hero and Eblade yourself, and Eblade actually improves your burst way more, so if you want to deal as much damage as possible to important heroes that do not get BKB often, Eblade is better.

The thing with Lina is, her Aghs is really good. Don't forget that some time ago it didn't pierce BKB...it was still bought by every Lina ever.
Lina Aghs increases her ult damage from 950 to 1266 magic damage equivalent, makes it pierce BKB, and gives really good stats in terms of HP and mana. EBlade increases her ult damage from 960 at 1330 magic damage equivalent thanks to the ethereal form, adds an extra ~300 damage nuke on top of it, gives low HP, and actually DEPLETES your mana since it gives garbage INT and costs 150 mana to cast.

For me, the mana cost is the downfall of Eblade on Lina. It's true that technically it gives you about 300 more burst damage than Aghs which can be awesome, but the hero has huge mana problems even by going Euls/Aghs which are two mana items. You can't afford to make it worse.


This is very different on Lion however, who has a pretty trash-tier Aghs. Lion's Aghs increases his ult damage from 850 to 1025 (+175) which is *pathetic*, while Eblade increases his ult damage from 850 to 1190 and adds a ~300 damage nuke on top of it, amplifies Earth Spike damage, and Lion has no mana issues whatsoever.

So yeah, Lina has a really good aghs, so buy it. Lion has a terrible Aghs and Eblade is better. IMO.

I think just the flat out 950 pure damage is better in most games; In games with BKB's it is flat out better because you just pop it when they pop BKB and they have to back-up. Like you can just waste a BKB with that. Plus it's a great tank tool, and it's a huge damage steriod.

Besides, there are other better items than E-Blade on Lina. Like Bloodstone. Bloodstone is absurd on Lina.

If there's no natural BKB builders, I'd rather just go Eul's into Blink Bloodstone, BoT's. And by then, you'll probably need something more than a E-Blade, or late game BKB pick-ups will be a thing.

Aghs-refresher. And yeah e-blade can have some viability but that's not what the question asked so everyone is gonna say Aghs because its better in most situations.

Alright guys, thanks for the response.

Really, most games are going to have a hero that Aghanim's Scepter is good for. It goes through BKB, Eblade does not. If they're a carry without a BKB, then Eblade is great. If they have one though, your investment is useless. Mostly. I think Agh's with Eblade was the build before the Laguna Blade was pure.

^yes it was. And it was epic!