Blitzkrieg with Traxxex

Introduction

Hello, wellcome.

This is my guide to Traxxex, the Drow Ranger and the way I use to play her. Drow is one of my favourite heroes and I have quite a succes with her in pubs between 3-4k MMR. So everything written here applies to this level of gameplay and may not be accurate and/or working in higher tiers such as 5k+.

Traxxex is known as notorious pub stomper and as a niche pich in high rated scene, commonly used as definition of hero with low skill cap (toggle q on = profit?). While I agree that Traxex can be devastating in hands of even bad player, it is more caused by bad players against Traxex.
In reality, Drow needs lots of positiong skill, map awareness and sense for game flow to be succesful above 2k.

In recent competitive games, there was HUGE rise of Drow popularity, so read carefuly, you are going to see MANY drows being picked up once pubs start to copy pros (and it only took small buff to frost arrows :-) )

My way of playing her relies on her massive damage boost in early-mid game for her and her allies from Marksmanship and Precision Aura and utilising Dragon Lance into her itembuild - this item lets you outrange towers.
In my way of playing her you want to end game before 35min and items and timings are chosen accordingly.
Traxxex is really good to punnish extremely greedy lineup.

While Traxx scales pretty well into late game and can two-shot almost any squishy hero when farmed up, it's better to avoid such situation because Traxx would eventually get destroyed by some stuns paired with rightclicks from enemy carry.

If you disagree with something or have some questions, don't be afraid to leave a comment.

Pros / Cons

+Great sieging power
+great rightclick steroids
+ Aura for ranged allies
+Long lasting silence and built-in skadi orb

-Squishy
-her agility steroid doesn't work when enemy is near
-no escape/positioning mechanism but she relies on positioning in fights
-doesn't want to go late

What matters the most, YOU have to accept the fact that you are going to play #1 position. This puts LOTS of responsibility on your shoulders! You need to be abble to get your items in reasonable timings, you need to be okay with creep equillibrium control and other laning skills and furthermore, be confident in your skills to outfight enemy carry/cores. If you have ANY doubts that you may be doing bad in this specific game, don't pick carry (for example, when you have the lowest mmr from your team and lower than enemy team avg). You need to admit that people on your team (especially supports) will prioritize YOUR life instead of their life (which usually happens when carry is too greedy and mispositions himself) in hope that you will be abble to carry the game later so if YOU make them die while they protect you and then you fail them in carrying - it will be your fault the game was lost.
If you want to be carry and pick drow, who is pretty unique one, you rely on your team even more due to your timings. Don't pick her if you have the "1v9 mute all attitude" or "I will carry your feeding useless ****s kind of attitude".
So TL,DR: It's YOUR burden to carry the game, do your best, stay positive and try to cooperate with your team as much as possible

Laning stage

Drow feels great in safe lane but can be played as mid, if there is noone who suits better in this position or enemy picks strange midlaner such as Juggernaut. Playing Trax as solo offlaner isn't really possible (you would feed against any decent safe lane or not get enough farm which delays your items) and Trax doesn't really suits in agressive duo offlane role (but can work), didn't try aggro trilane but in theory it can be pretty good. She can go jungle but it's more like a troll build.

In safe lane, your primary concern is to get as many lasthits as you can - practise it because Drow has pretty bad attack animation, bare minimum is 60cs at 10min mark (you can have much more). Don't focus on harrass, but don't neglect help to your support when he is trading hits with offlaner(s) or there's good possibility for a kill. With your orb and aura steroid for both of you (or all 3 when trilane or rotation - when all ranged ofc), it can easily be a kill. Learn how to controll creep equilibrium, call for pulls when it's needed and if you are pretty much freefarming, it's ok to tell your support to rotate into different line/do stacks. If your supports are on another "quests", you need to play bit safer in case a gank attempt occurs but with all those juking paths into jungle, slow from you orb with tower nearby and some helps, you can easily turn it around. Just pay attention to map (I usually ask to place some defensive wards before the supports leave my lane).

When going mid, your primary concern remains same. If someone rotates, you can easily kill enemy mid but be careful, same thing can happen to you - so be careful, everyone knows how squishy you are.
Try to convince your supports to plant a highground ward on mid, even sentry if there's invis hero on enemy team.
Control runes, harrass enemy mid and get cs - dailly bread of midlaner. When you hit LvL6, you can start to rotate and drag another kills (by that time you will have significantly more rightclick damage than everyone else and almost perma slow to secure kills) and of course, continue farming to get your items as early as possible.

You are propably going to lose mid against any decent midlaner with wave-clearing capability and positioning skill - Puck, Windranger and Queen of Pain have high advantage against Drow, Dragon Knight and Death Prophet will cause lots of problems for drow early game since they can harras Drow out of lane with their nukes pretty easily (while drow only has her right clicks that are not terryfying at that time), control runes better etc. So your main objective is to stay in lane, not get harrass out (consider more regen) and turn the tables once you hit lvl 6 when your ulti gives you huge boost (but lots of midlaners have great ulties as well so it's double edged to rely on hitting 6 and try to do something in lane). Drow is in fact pretty situational midlaner and only wins mid against other situational midlaners.

Your laning stage ends once you have brown boots, aquilla and ulti (and Infused Raindrops ready in inventory). With these items you can easily push all T1 towers and perhaps win first teamfight, if enemy tries to defend (remember what I've written about that dmg).

At this stage of game, it's ok to leave your ez lane to one of supports if he rushes Mekansm because early mek works astoundingly in early-mid game clashes and skirmishes. If the enemy tower in that lane is pushed and that support has TP ready, just let them farm a bit, they will be grateful for it and you can find your farm somewhere else.

Sometimes, sh*t happens and your lane gets destroyed (like lich+doom offlane against your drow+venge safe lane). In this case your items will be delayed and your main goal is to recover - try to defend your t1 safe lane tower and do several jungle->line rotations, that should be enough for you to get your dragon lance at reasonable time and then you can proceed - your whole team should turtle and focus on slowing the tempo so all cores can recover without risk of enemy snowballing hard. It's ok that your team opts for some cost effective utility items so you can fight them back (usually good start encourages people to go the greedier way so try to punish that). When enemy is confident enough, they will try to contest your jungle, if they are confident and greedy they will split up (so some of them farm in their jungle, some of them in your jungle, some of them lanes), if this happens, you need to make call to 5man doto and try to drag some kills.

Sometimes, enemy draft is focued on early gank and other enemies just go on with the flow and noone takes advantage of the space they have. While this may be frustrating getting 5manned all the time, remember that they sacrifice lot of time into hunting you so you eventually should be abble to turn the tables when your team gets farm. The safest place in such situation is enemy jungle B-).

Middle game

You should aim to have Dragon Lance by 12minute (this is usuall timer, if you get lucky and score somthing like triple kill in lane, you can have it at 8-9min, if you get ganked several times you will be happy about 15min lance - slower than usuall alche radi) and start to pressure T2 as soon as possible, but do not overextend.

Best time to push t2 or to take early roshan is when enemy team is weakened and you or some of your teammates managed to kill one of their key hero or you are sure that enemy can't defend/contest (when all enemies used TPs just few seconds ago and are on different side of map). Another nice time to force pushes and fights is when enemy is closing up to some expensive core item (such as Naga Siren and her Radiance because that enemy usually doesn't want to risk delay of his item. This strategy is high risk/high reward because if you overextend yourself you just give that hero farm boost that helps them complete that item but should you succeed, their timing is completely broken. Your rightclick at this stage of game is still much higher than most of enemies have (only a Sven with ulti God's Strength up can do same amount of dmg as you) and you should take advantage of this. Remember to scout inventories of your enemies so you don't get suprised by sudden blink inniciation by Slardar or Axe - mid game is the time when all cores try to rush their core items so Traxxex's main goal is to delay them as much as possible.

You need to keep lanes pushed into your enemy territory, so enemies are kept busy by depushing them and are visible on minimap while doing so. This allows your team to spread bit more and be more farm effective. If couple of enemies are missing from map (especially those with good kill potencial), your team should either hide into woods near tower or stick together. Safety first. It's good if you have chatwheel commands for "split up and farm" and "stick together". And hopefully your team will listen to them. With correct reading of map and good estimation of what can enemy actually do, you should be pretty safe.
You should defenitely call shots for your team (like we push this tower, we defend our bot tower, we try to gank that alch etc) because you should know what you are capable off and use it to your advantage.

Push T2 towers to deny enemy cores safe farming space (when there are no towers near, noone can TP and help, unless they have BoTs which is unlikely at this stage of game unless they are ahead and they should not).
Go for pickoffs if there's chance to get some but don't just chase that Crystal Maiden across whole map, that's just you being uneffective with added risk you being ganked while doing so.
General idea is that you should turn kills into taking objectives or it's wasted time.

Aim for objectives. Lots of objectives taken = lots of team shared gold = rich supports and farm boost for other cores and higher advantage above enemy team.

Sadly, despite your great sieging and rightclick power you are squishy and easy target for lockdown. You should avoid dying at this stage of game since it's a time where you shine and you want to hit towers/creeps and not count deathtimer.
You need to have bit of map awareness and sense for game flow - so you don't get caught in bad position without anyone that could help you. Obvously, you don't want to push without a backup, but sometimes it happens that enemies will find a way to iniciate on you with your team unable to help you. So always be worried about your positioning and if you have any doubts, it's better to back up.

You should have feel for how high enemy dmg is (be it magic burst or rightclick) and build enough stats to survive.

Aim for first high-ground push at 25minutes. This is perfect time when your other cores should have their core items (with all that tower gold boost and space to farm) while enemy cores are not online yet (due to you denying their farm space and disrupting their farming patterns). This is the time, when late game starts.

Late game

Remember that Drow is the queen of siege (alongwith Luna so if you have advantage and enemy is just defending unable to do anything more, you will eventually slowly take down all towers with your rightclick from safety (with lance) and your illusions from Manta Style which is even safer.

U should be ready to that enemy team iniciates on you. Be aware of that and ready to retaliate.

Keep all lanes pushed so you can proceed and go for mega creeps if enemy is unable to defend or just go end...

When you kill enemy core and he uses buyback, just mark the time (alt click on clock) so you know and can play around that. Pressuring enemy without buyback is sometimes the way to victory.

You should be ready to buyback and BoT to fight in case you get killed but the fight continues and your team can't just disengage.
Don't give up on farming, if you aren't sixslotted yet. If so, your other teammates an use that space to farm up. Although you should always have enough money for buyback.

When you are forced to play from behind in late game, you may consider getting Divine Rapier as something like last hope to comeback. Crucial part is not revealing your rapier - keep it on courier and have your usuall items in inventory and change it right before fight. Hopefully you win a fight and then just go for throne...

When to go high-ground

Well, I wrote in some previous chapters that 25min is optimal time to push high ground. It's truth but take note that it's the optimal timer when everything goes according to plan and there's nothing to wait for - like you just won a teamfight and 3+ enemies are dead, your team managed to get all items they need and enemy is uderfarmed.

Sadly things aren't so easy in mostt of games. So you want to pressure enemy and keep them in their base to deny them farm. Push all lanes and try to find some pickoffs. Usually there's someone who loses his patience and tries to farm outside the base or just misspositiones themselves - easy target for kill. With enemy team weakened, the push is more likely to succeed.
Also you want to push high ground when you have back-up. Don't push t3 when all your teammates are on different side of map (or dead in worse case) and enemies are defending.

Don't forget, you play the queen of siege. One mistake, misplay and lost fight by enemy team will cost them at least one set of raxes. This fact often makes people in enemy pretty frustrated which leads to bigger advantage for you.

If your team has clear advantage and good counter iniciation, drow can slow push decently. Just attack the tower (preferably with aegis in inventory) and force enemies to jump on you (if not, you just destroy the tower).

Sieging is tricky because if you fail, you can easily give up all the advantage you managed to get in previous stages of game. This applies even more when you are the most farmed hero in your team! Remember that 2 succesful pick offs on you by whole enemy team may be worth 4k gold and start their comeback! (GG WP, report drow)

Playing from behind

Well, this is tricky. There is high chance that you will lose majority of games when you are forced to play behind because Traxx needs to be ahead (in terms of objectives) to be really effective. So when enemy team doesn't throw by either overextending (like diving the fountain insted of taking t3 tower) or by letting you recover (this happenns when enemy farms and splits instead of trying to actually win and you manage to get few pickoffs on high value targets) you have very small chance to win.

Defending high ground with Drow is kinda simple. You have the advantage of miss chance, you can play with vision (enemy on low ground may not see you) and when in trouble, there's fountain and towers nearby.

When your team can't fight enemy 5v5 due to them having superior teamfight capability or being more farmed than your team, Drow can split push quite well. You might consider getting Mjollnir and Aghanim's Scepter to clear waves even faster in this case.

Keep in mind that even when you are 15k behind in terms of gold and exp, you can still get yourself into game if you manage to kill enemy carry. With Drow's sieging power you may quickly punish any missplay by enemy - this is even more truth when enemy lineup doesn't have good tower damaging heroes or most of the farm is concentrated on one hero.

Propably the best case when playing from behind is when enemy has one dominating hero who is stomping your whole team. IF you manage to get specific items to counter that enemy, your team will benefit hugely from killing him and even MKB can pay off in 5minutes by killing PA while defending your base and killing her again when she buybacked to defend her base. With this gained advantage, rest of enemy team should be lesser problem to deal with.

Second best case when playing from behind is when enemy team doesn't have any sort of structure hitting capacity (for example Timbersaw, Tinker etc as main damage dealers in fight) because it gives your team pretty long time to get their items because the only way they can actually rax you is full teamwipe of your side.

When to farm, when to fight

Basic mantra of this game mindset is that you should prioritise fighting and pushing over farming your own jungle since with enemies down it's easier to push. While this is truth, roaming mindlessly around map looking for pick off is wrong and this way you only find yourself underfarmed against enemy cores who spent their time more effective when you eventually find someone.

As Drow (or basicaly any hero in this game) you need to learn how to be effective. Prioritise pushing lane over farming your own jungle (if you got picked off three times in a row, you might change that). In intervals between waves there's time window to clean jungle camp (but be sure to not miss last hits on lane). With the obvious advantage of more gold and exp, your enemies will find it slightly harder to gank you since you miss from lane from time to time (if they don't have wards in area you are at). Always position yourself so you have vision of usuall jungle routes (so you don't get easily cought by enemies on move). As long as it's nice to have all those xp going to you solo, don't neglect some backup if something looks fishy.

You may want to learn some basic farming patterns and timings (if you didn't learn it before) so you spend your farmville time effectively. Aim to have at least 60cs/10min (for the first 10min - this is 6 lasthits per minute) which is easily obtainable if game doesn't turn into clash of titans with average 4 kills per minute (when you spend three quarters of time fighting you will obviously have much lower cs).

What to do when someone tries to defend the tower? Well, if enemy hero is alone and you are sure that you can kill him, than do it immediately, the lane is pushed you can easily deaggro tower if needed so feel free to dive. If enemy isn't alone or you can't kill him, just back up, clear some jungle and pressure another line (and then come back). The reason behind is that you don't want to get cought by enemy defenders approaching you from woods when you are busy with defender under tower and because if you just sit in lane and contest tower for 2 minutes, you are not really efficient. Sure, when you have your teammates with you, you just run over enemy and take tower before they can react in reasonable numbers (yea, 2 TPed enemies can't do anything if you push as five man).

When you should TP in to defend tower? Basicaly, this needs to be a team decision. If it's only you TPing in and there are multiple enemies, they can easily kill you even underneath your tower. So don't go solo to defend but you don't need whole team to rush - 3 heroes are usually enough to push enemies back unless they are decided that they want to fight (and you should recognise those times, it's usually when someone on enemy team just picked up new big item and it's easily recognisable by way enemies move). IF you are unable to defend your tower, make sure enemies don't get your tower for free, best result is trade.

Last paragraph of this chapter will be about Roshan. Basicaly, Roshan is another objective. So you should only take Rosh, when enemy team is weakened and unlikely to contest you (or they are pushing some tower on other side of map so you know exactly where they are). Best time to take rosh is as preparation of high ground push, since aegis makes this easier. Make sure your team planted wards so noone can steal/destroy aegis of immortall or Cheese and decide whether you want this or not (well, you are not dependent on some crucial ultimate and useless after using it and you are pretty squishy, so you are great carrier of aegis). It's nice to have someone with dmg amplification such as Medallion of Courage or Slardar's amplify damage because this will speed up taking rosh A LOT. With aegis in your inventory, you can play riskier. You can basicaly stay in front of your team, shoot down enemy t3 tower and force enemies to iniciate on you - this will result into enemies wasting opening on your first life and being open to your team's counter-iniciation. You can bait some big ulties such as Chronosphere or Primal Roar and even if you get killed, it doesn't matter because you will ressurect with full life and your team should already be in good position so you only clean up. Better option is of course if someone saves you with Glimmer Cape against that [[finger of death]) etc... IF you managed to siege one line of raxes while still holding aegis, just go and try to damage other line even if you are on 10% of your hps. Make use of that aegis (of course, your team has to backup you)!

Skill build

Okay, firstly brief explanation of abilities Traxex has. I don't think it's really needed since if someone looks up some guides, that person also can read ability description.

Frost Arrows (Q): Is your build in skadi. When you cast it manually on enemy it won't trigger creep aggro. Take note that this is unique attack modifier.

Gust (W): It pushes enemies in cone in front of you further from you (closer they are, further the distance) and silences them. You can knock them from stairs to low-ground but this doesn't cancel TP. If you have Power Treads, switch it on int before casting it and switch in agi after.

Precision Aura (E): So this ability gives you and all ranged allied heroes boost to dmg based on your agility (nice synergy with your ulti and reason why we want agi items instead of raw dmg). IF activated gives dmg boost to ranged creeps, siege creeps and necro archers so it's pretty nice tower pushing accelerator.

Marksmanship your ultimate and huge damage and attack speed steroid that is disabled when enemy hero is nearby. If the ulti is active, you hero has something like "inner spark" so you can easily see if you have ulti bonus or not. Because of this, we want to stay far away from enemies and that's why lance is sooo good for Drow.

First skill point should either be aura or orb. It depends on how good you are at last hitting, your lane opponent(s) and whether there was a rune fight or not. Usually you want to hold your skill point untill you get to the lane. If you need to set your lane dominance against offlaner(s) early, you can grab Q to orbwalk them while lasthitting, otherwise, you get aura.

Usually you want to have 2 points in Frost Arrows before you start to join bigger fights, after recent buff to this skill there's no need to put more point in it earlier - 36% slow is more than enough. Precision Aura is maxed first because it gives us great pushing steroid and benefits greatly from Marksmanship.
One value point in Gust is the way to go usually. After maxing aura you need to consider whether you need more control via Gust or getting stats would be more beneficial
We take our ulti Marksmanship on 6,11 and 16 which is obvious.

Sometimes you can see drow players maxing aura while having one point in Gust and taking stats instead of orb. While it makes you tankier and your team benefits hugely from Precision Aura the loss of kiting power is significant.

Item build justification and detailed explanation

This chapter will generaly introduce possible items for Drow and what they bring to the table.

Starting items are pretty much always the same however you can go greedy and start with Wraith Band and set of Tangoes but then you are missing salve and I pretty like the ability to make a tree from gg branch in order to eat it and don't miss any lasthits.

Boots of Speed : There's an option to not upgrade brown boots into threads and go straight for Boots of Travel around 25-30min (after first big item). This is good for global presence. This gives you the ability to farm or push lane and if a fight happens, you tp in and help your teammates. Or you can even splitpush pretty well along with manta.

Ring of Aquila : This item gives you aura for creeps (toggle it on when you want to push, toggle off when not) while it provides you with cost-effective damage, armor and mana regen. I think that this item is just so good to skip since it provides lots of stats and dmg for its cost.

Infused Raindrops : This "consumable" gives Traxx some magic nuke mitigation and she desperately needs it. Trust me, this will save you more times than you can possibly imagine and along with some str gain from lance and aquila makes you tankier than your opponents would estimate. Also gives you mana regen so you will rarely go OOM even after several skirmishes and lets you spam your Q freely, using TPs without worry, even SB/SE without worry of going OOM. Just be careful against early Radiance carriers and Zeus since those will burn charges rapidly.

Dragon Lance : This is a core item. It gives you the ability to outrange towers which equals into safer and quicker pushing and also makes your positioning in fights easier - with longer range it's easier to keep your ulti bonus up which further increases effectivness of this item. Stats are good for you since you need str to survive and agi boosts your dmg output and your aura. Later, you can do highground push without actually going high ground. You should get this item by minute 12 or by 15min if you had bad time laning. Just to make it bit clearer for you, this item is THAT cost effective that even Terrorblade builds it for those stats.

Well, so items above are core that you should get almost every game because this item build has some big advantages as stated above, lets just call it basic core. You should choose your next items accordingly to enemies and game situation. So here is list of almost all items you can get for Drow. Keep in mind that this list is by no means complete (yea, sometimes you may find Ethereal Blade as great situational pickup) but covers all popular and logical item choices.

Silver Edge : This is good and well-rounded item for Drow after change of its components. It greatly increases your gank potencial, gives you bit of split push potencial and is needed if you are fighting against carries reliant on passives such as PA's Blur or troll's Fervor. You can even activate it in middle of skirmish and attack right after it just to add more burst (and passive break). For more, check next chapter which is dedicated to this item. Anyway, if you are ever going to Shadow Blade, upgrade it ASAP since SE is just great upgrade of not-really-that-great item.

Manta Style : Provides you with lots of agi, movement and attack speed increase from yasha part and active that creates two illusions. You can use it as AM/alch uses it - send you illusions down the line to push while you farm jungle (this means you farm faster and safer) or push different line. Also you can push towers even more safely with your illusions while you are somewhere else (this is good when enemeis have lots of catch and sudden iniciation). In fights, manta can be used to disjoint projectiles (if you are quick enough on your fingers) or purging silence or just to cause some distract in battle and add some dps. Take note that since you usually build lots of stats item your illusion deal significant amount of damage.

Butterfly : Evasion, agility, attack speed, nice active - Traxx benefits from all stats and this is by far most effective offensive item for Drow and you can have great success rushing it after lance (20min bfly, why not?). Downside is price of this item. General rule of thumb is: get bfly first if your primary concern is enemy righclick dmg. Scout inventories, so you know if some of your enemies goes for MKB. Get manta first if primary concern are spells. I would say that manta is better in terms of farming speed but not sure about that. Get both eventually!

Hurricane Pike : Dragon lance upgrade. Force Staff part makes positioning easier and the new active is just great and makes kiting easier. This item is nice option if you struggle to keep distance from enemies. It's nice against Riki's Smoke Screen iniciation (to get from smoke as soon as possible) and other similar forms of iniciation. With patch 6.88 it is something like ranged phantom strike, but your attackspeed is already high enough so it's just little cherry on top of cake.

Linken's Sphere and Black King Bar : Defensive items that you may not need every game. Get linkens if you get jumped on with Duel or Doom several times. Otherwive not worth it. BKB against magic burst or lockdown that tends to focus you. From 6.88 onwards doesn't make you immune to PA's Phantom Strike. However, you don't want to get one of those, only get it when you need it to survive in fights but my experience is that BKB is a needed in 2/3 of games.

Diffusal Blade is a weird pickup on Drow yet can be very powerful. Agi boost of lvl2 diffusal is comparable to Butterfly, active lets you purge slows, dots or other debuffs from yourself/your teammates. Diffusal is only worth getting against heores that rely on spells yet have rather small mana pool or as part of recovery build because this item provides lots of cost-effective dps.

Satanic and Helm of the Dominator : HotD is a good pickup. Lifesteal is good for sustain in clashes and pushes, you can dominate alpha wolf to add even more righclick power (other good dominate target is that fat creep - ogre frostmage - that gives you frost armor or you can dominate ranged creep to stack ancients. Later on it can be upgraded into satanic that tanks you up and gives you that sweet active that can keep you alive in fights. Just remember that lifesteal doesn't stack with your orb so turn Frost Arrows off when you need to regain health.

Daedalus > Oh yea, mighty critz. While it appears to be good pickup, it doesn't help you push towers and doesn't provide agi boost so no boost to your aura, no boost to manta ilussions. Get critz if you struggle with physical dps output and you feel that dmg increase against heroes is just what you need. With Crystalys or Daedalus along with another dps item you are abble to burst almost everyone in gust duration, if some crits occur. Dae is generaly most effective item in terms of dps in the game, for Drow it's just little bit better than Butterfly (but not providing all the other stuff like evasion and aura boost that bfly does). If you want to troll your enemies, get three of those along with bfly, bots and SE.

Mjollnir is an option against illusion heroes such as Phantom Lancer or when you need the wave clearing power (you clear waves pretty fast even without lightnings). Best paired with Aghanim's Scepter. For more info, look into suggested builds section - thunderstorm build.

Moon Shard is a last pickup if you are six slotted, money for buyback saved and you still can't end. Consume it.

Monkey King Bar is not effective in terms of dps on Drow - bfly, critz and manta provide more. This is worth getting against Radiance carries and sometimes against PA (but if you get SE whole your team benefits while with MKB it's only you getting true strike).

Refresher Orb While Drow doesn't have spells to be refreshed and doesn't really uses long cooldown active items, I find it comfortable to have this item in stash, to BoT into your base after taking raxes if you are on low hp, regenerate and BoT back into enemy base. Just a note, when you are drowning in gold.

Rejected items:
I reject Mask of Madness since it even adds to your squishiness when you activate it. I would consider MoM when there's some actuall synergy between this item and some of my team's spells (MoM could be pretty decent if paired with Chronosphere) but otherwive not really worth getting, even for farming purposes (and seriously, who even uses this item now when everything is centered around tanky quick online str heores??). OF course we reject almost all items that doesn't boost our damage and I think Desolator is pretty bad pickup on Drow as well, but didn't try it, may be sick actually...

About suggested builds

Firstly, all those builds have something incommon - they start with Boots of Speed, Infused Raindrops, Ring of Aquila and Dragon Lance and split after this. You should choose your item progression according to your needs, enemies and game situation.


Standard build:
Ok, this is the standard jack off all trades build. Provides big dmg, good farming potencial, sustain and pushing power while the item progression gives you advantage against enemy. You get Yasha after lance if you just farm and push, Helm of the Dominator first if you need the sustain and survivability it provides because enemy decided to fight early. Dominate alpha wolf to help you with farm/fight or stack yourself ancients, if enemy heroes can't contest them.
After those items you decide whether you want Butterfly or Manta Style or you need Black King Bar for survivability or another situational item.
Usuall progression is: basic core -> Yasha / Helm of the Dominator -> Butterfly -> Manta Style

Thunderstorm build
This build is unique because almost 50% of your damage comes from lightning procs thus is counted as magical. It's go to build when you are against illusion heroes or summoning heroes (especialy nature prophet with aghs will cry when you clear whole his army in no time and get all those gold bounties). Especially good if your team has some spell to put people together/make them stay together like Vacuum or Black Hole. Worth mentioning that this build has the highest farm rate, if you want to accelerate even more, put some points into stats and only leave value points in first two skills. This build is the only one that doesn't use lance (at least at early-mid game) because you go Helm of the Dominator and stack ancients and you need to rush Maelstrom. After aghs and upgraded lightnings you either go BKB or lance, depending on situation, later on you can just sell your domi since your lifesteal would never be significant with aghs+lightnings.
With this build, it's completely manageable to have like 800gpm even when you fight from time to time so you should be sixslotted pretty soon even with consumed Moon Shard and lvl2 bots.
Since majority of damage coming from this build is magic, multiple BKB's, multiple Pipes or some sort of magic resistance can lessen impact of this build. But hey, it also means that Drow with this build benefits if some of your teammates picks up Veil of Discord! (Isn't that hilarious?)
Worth mentioning that your lightnings won't proc if you shoot Frost Arrows.
usuall item progression is: treads+aquilla+domi -> Maelstrom -> Aghanim's Scepter -> mjolnir -> Dragon Lance/

Beefy build
This is pretty weird build that you should choose when you need to survive enemy burst or you find yourself unable to stand in fight till the end due to lots of splash dmg/whatever... This build capitalises on Satanic and other items giving you hp and Butterfly giving evasion and armor so you can take some physical punishment, AC for the added tankiness, feel free to replace it. Your dps with this build is lower but hey, dead drow = zero dmg. If you replace AC with aghs you are pretty much something like Luna with higher physical dmg but without her ultimate. Your dps is still pretty high due to your steroids and with BKB and all str and lifesteal from Satanic you are pretty tanky. If you still think you need more stats, go for Sange and Yasha or Eye of Skadi (this is not that ridiculous as it seems to be on first glance, this item gives lots of stats and even some pro players used it on drow) or even heart of tarasque (which is more ridiculous than skadi cuz no other stats) but i would be pretty worried about my dps in that specific case (worst possible scenario - skadi+heart+satanic+bfly+bkb)
usuall item progression is: basic core -> Helm of the Dominator -> Black King Bar -> Butterfly -> Satanic -> Assault Cuirass or whatever else

Fighting build
This is the build I use when game is nonstop fight. I usually rush Silver Edge and continue with Hurricane Pike and Helm of the Dominator, Yasha is thrown in somewhen when it seems accurate to add some ms, as and damage - if you don't need the manta active disjoint and dispel, feel free to upgrade it into Sange and Yasha instead of manta. Since with this build you will propably only push when enemies are dead and there should be lots of 5man doto, so this is the perfect occasion to stick to Power Treads. This build doesn't have the best dps but provides pretty nice ganking potencial with silver edge rush. Take note that there is danger that you fall behind if you run around map nonstop without farming meanwhile and don't work on you next items.
Usuall item progression is: basic core -> Shadow Blade -> Silver Edge -> Yasha -> Helm of the Dominator -> Butterfly/ Manta Style

bad game build
So yea, sometimes ****happens, you get ganged and shut down badly be it by enemies pressuring you well or you not paying attention or you just have bad game... yea, that stuff happens and can happen to anyone, hopefully there's someone who can carry the game so you swith your role from position1 to position 2-3. In this case you should go for cost effective dps items and some survivability. You should prefer getting items that don't have costly parts. Although I listed Yasha as option of cost-effective item, I would prefer going for diffussal blade because this item offers much more in terms of dps and is more useful in fights with active purge - and comeback gold is the best recovery. Go Yasha if you think you can recover pretty well in jungle. Hopefully you can recover in mid game and get some big items later. Don't panic, there is always chance you eventually win.


You can even consider buying Quelling Blade from side shop since chopping trees makes your farming patterns more effective and even the 15% bonus dmg agaisnt creeps is significant with your steroids. This boosts your farming speed significantly which allows you to outfarm even an alchemist.
Consider early BoTs for movement speed increase and global presence in case you want to join teamfight while you farm somewhere else.

Your item build and timings can differ since you may opt to get even BKB as your fist item instead of Dragon Lance so you should start with Ogre Club as first item of your lance if there's possibility that you may need to rush Black King Bar. However, BKB is not an item that you should be happy to get, it is an item we get when it's neccesary.

There are some players in mid 5k that picked up Blink Dagger on Drow. Despite the fact, that blink dagger doesn't give any stats, it is pretty good pickup for splitpushing style and makes positioning easier (combine with Force Staff/ Hurricane Pike for superior mobility if it's needed for your survival) - so you may consider it, but should not get blink against Radiance carries Alchemist, Naga Siren etc... blink also speeds up your farm a bit but it's not worth getting for it. Blink is not usuall item for Drow since she's not mainly iniciator and should not be - she's there to clean up after iniciation.

Drow usually doesn't need any farming item and farms just fine. If you fight a lot and want some exp and farm boost, getting Hand of Midas can prove to be beneficial but you sacrifice your lance timing. Generaly speaking, getting midas is not worth getting on Drow.

Bit of talking about Silver Edge

Since Shadow Blade and Silver Edge are such controversial items I decided to make special chapter for it.

Firstly, SE/SB is sadly fighting only item and doesn't speed up your farming rate as for example Manta Style with similar price would. So getting this actually slows your farming a bit if you consider that for that 5k gold you could have bought something that would have speeded your farm rate more.

There is some sort of fundamentalistic people that say that SE/SB is lame, noobish item that is easily countered. Well, that's not exactly the truth. Even 8k mmr players build SE and you see SE and SB being built in pro games where people have great coordination. Also, if Se is useless, then invis rune and all invis heores such as nyx asassin Bounty Hunter or Riki are useless as well since they are countered by same things.

The first usage of SB/SE usually nets you a kill since enemy doesn't know you have it (so they aren't prepared for you coming from rear/side). Or it lets you escape a gank sice enemies won't usually have dust on them (if there's no stealthy hero in your team).

And after the first usage, if enemeis want to counter you iniciation with SE, they need to place lots of sentries and this drains their gold away from supports and slows their item progression - so all those luxury items (commonly aghs, Lotus Orb or Guardian Greaves ] for them come later and they may have stuggle to farm up even casual Glimmer Cape which is to be honest prettz annoing pickup. If they want to counter your SE as escape, they need to carry dust so it basically leaves them with one less item slot.

Using SE as escape tool is kinda restrictive. It's true that it isn't likely to happen succesfuly. But main reason for SE is the iniciation part. However, if you find yourself as gank target with no other chance to escape, why not try to use SE for it? Best way to do it is juking into trees and using SE when enemies don't have vision of you. That way they can't know that you activated SE and will proceed to look for you in treeline. You walk through them back, perhaps to the other treeline and TP to safety (or wait for your teammates and turn the tables). To be honest, SE escapes don't have big success rate, but something is better than nothing, isn't it? And what other item would you use as escape item for Drow? If enemy doesn't have disable or very high burst damage, you can just TP straight away, but you can't rely on that either.

The last part of SE is the break effect it applies. This is maybe the most imbalanced part of item since it can render lots of heroes useless in fights for enough time to kill them.
Also most carry heroes are carries because they have some sort of passive right click steroid - and you deny it to them for a while.
Break effect is great against phantom asassin, Troll Warlord, Bristleback, Axe, Dragon Knight, Huskar, Wraith King etc. Sh*t, even Riki's invis and backstab from Cloak and Dagger are disabled! It's pretty funny watching that little goat waiting frustrated for invis to pop.
Those passives are usually defensive skills (such as Blur or Dragon Blood) and mitigating this defense lets you kill them fast since they will position themselves with reliability in said skills.

This patch, you see lots of Slark and Dragon Knight players pick up SE, even QoP picking SE up (it was a 7,5k mmr average match I was spectating) to deal with enemy Bristleback and Riki so in my opinion it's really not lame or noobish item but item that can be used in bad, lame way thus get countered.

IF you need some sort of iniciation item for Drow, it's better to get Silver Edge/ Shadow Blade over Blink Dagger in 95% of all situations.

About items that may be troublesome for you to deal with

Blade Mail is nowadays pretty common pickup for tankier heroes especially if they are forced to play from behind (even freaking Spectre can pick this up). "Countering" BM is pretty straightforward since the active has short duration. You only need to look for it since you may easily kill yourself due to your high attack speed and dmg - especially with aghs+lighting build since you can kill yourself just from splash dmg. You may consider to hit target even under effect of blade mail to put his blink on cd(if he has Blink Dagger) , you will not really suffer from one hit, especially if you got lifesteal.
Blink Dagger iniciation is pretty big problem on Drow and If you find yourself struggling against blink iniciators, get a Hurricane Pike and be fast to get the hell out, gust&destroy. Another useful item is Manta Style.
Manta Style gives its wearer ability to purge silence. Only way to punish enemy for making illusions is getting aghs+lightnings. But the better way is to don't let enemies farm that manta.
Radiance carries are also prettz annoing - miss chance to lower your dps, and that burn chews through your small hp pool pretty quickly. To add something, those heroes usually do good splitpushing job making it harder for you to end game quickly.
Drow doesn't like dealing with evasion since she rarely builds MKB. So Butterfly carriers are annoing to deal with BUT you should already work on their raxes by the time they start to build that item.
The most annoing items for drow to deal are Solar Crest and Heaven's Halberd. the first one is good counter to your Butterfly (and costs somethng like half) while the other can disarm you for 4,5s (practically eternity). You will defenitely want to build BKB as soon as you see halberd ready on enemy team. And then maybe MKB if the enemy with halberd keeps on troubling you.
Since Solar Crest is usually picked up by supports such as Vengeful Spirit, Dazzle - make them pay for it and one/two shot them with their lowered armour.

Items that you can demand from your team

So you are position 1... so team should understand that they should build some items to make you even more effective and you should demand those from support players/offlaner (if you actually have good game and are the one carrying).

Eul's Scepter of Divinity, Ghost Scepter and Glimmer Cape are typical protective supportish items along with Mekansm or Guardian Greaves. Your supports should use said items on you if needed. I don't remember game without supports having some of those items so I don't feel the need to cover this topic.

Lotus Orb is something like luxury support item. The active is great at slow siege since with manta ready and echo shell on you it's really hard to iniciate well on you. This item purges when used on somebody so you can use it to your advantage and your team can easily purge silences and debuffs from you.

Vladmir's Offering is nice item to have on your team since it helps early pushes and gives your whole team sustain in pushes and fights. Your offlaner should get this if it's optional item for his hero choice.

Assault Cuirass can be bought as luxury offlaner's item (for offlaners such as Slardar) or even as luxury item for one of your supports ( Chen as example). This item definitely adds to your pushing power and whole team benefits a LOT from this item.

Pipe of Insight Should be bought if you have trouble with magic damage - Lina, Zeus, Venomancer etc.

Last note of this chapter is about wards and gem. With your farm rate, you can easily buy those when you are sixslotted or close to it and just drop them in base so your supports can focus on getting some luxury items themselves. Remember that it's more effective if you do some farming rotation and buy 10 sentries, 2 obs and gem then leaving support to slowly farm that gold with their pathetic dmg - this applies especially to lightning+aghs build.

Fights

Ganking with Drow is staightforward. If you have Silver Edge just shoot one shot to break invis with bonus damage+passives break, then use Gust and finish the job with orbwalking. Then disengage in case someone rushes to help and continue. Use gust first if your target has some sort of escape such as Blink or Leap.

When there's someone chasing you, periodically shoot Frost Arrows on them so you can keep distance from them. Great thing is escape to highground where they can't see you and welcome them with gust knockback when they try climb stairs to reach you. This way you will get at least few seconds to either juke and TP out or kill them.

Always check inventories of your enemies for dust and wards and items that may cause troubles to you. If they don't have dust you can use SE to escape even if they see you. Otherwise you will have to activate SE when they don't have vision of you or dust is on cooldown and you are not debuffed by it.

Try to position yourself so there's something between you and enemies such as cliff or trees. Kiting is much easier when enemies have to walk around while you can keep the distance and shoot them to death.

Learn to play with fog of war and use it to your advantage. Let your iniciator jump in and don't reveal yourself untill you are sure enemies can't suddenly jump on you. Then proceed to destroy them from distance and add Gust to prevent them from using spells to either fight back or disengage. You can use Silver Edge to reposition yourself in fights like Weaver would do with shukuci.

You should always focus biggest threat in fights. So if you can kill Disruptor before he gets out his Static Storm, do it.

Friends and Foes

Dragon Knight is one of absolutely best allies Drow can have. DK is tanky, with stun and AoE slow with ulti and also good pusher and guess what, his ulti makes him ranged soooo... Precision Aura for him. To add something, your timings and his timings are similar you both hit your peaks in simialar time! Drow should definitely marry this knight.

Lycan is a great ally. While you can activate aura to affect his Necronomicon creep, he can Howl at the same time and tower will literally melt. There's similar synergy with Nature's Prophet but this setup is much easier to take down since you both lack tankiness and you both are hurt by silences and slows (while lycan in Shapeshift is unstoppable and doesn't care about being silenced (or doomed). Lycan is natural carrier of Vladmir's Offering which stacks with your orb (so you can, in some situations, avoid getting lifesteal on your own)

Windranger has some of the most obvious synergies with Traxex. You add her +dmg and she has skill that makes her attack at max speed. Also WR with aura from Drow is basicaly won mid because her attack animation is great and she will have superior last hitting power when fueled by your aura.

Terrorblade is an illusion carry that melts towers even more than you can. So if you two can cooperate, it's just ridiculous. However both of you share the same weakness, low health pool so magic/pure burst hurts a LOT.

Vengeful Spirit is by far best support for drow. Swap to help you get out of danger, stun and damage aura that STACKS with your aura. Also armor reduction from Wave of Terror is helpful. Another great support for Drow is Io due to Relocate giving you global presence and dps increase while Tethered and Overchargeed. Ogre Magi is welcomed for his Bloodlust which makes Drow shoot like a machine gun (when farmed up). Omniknight can supple you BKB with his Repel... Apart from this, Drow likes almost every support that has some sort of disable to help her kite enemies or set up kills.

Radiance carriers are good buddies for Drow since agressive style of Traxxex can assure them safe farm for their radi while later on burn from Radiance makes iniciation with Blink Dagger on squishy Traxx much more difficult. Best of those is propably Lone Druid(because he can go offlane and you can stay in ez lane) and Alchemist (because he usually wants mid so again, ez lane for you). But those heroes want farm so you need to consider if you want such a greedy lineup.

Since Drow has an aura, it can prove successful to stack some auras. Other heroes that provide different auras with synergy are (only heores with positive auras, not those that provide debuff on enemies): Vengeful Spirit with Vengeance Aura, Luna with Lunar Blessing, beastmaster with Inner Beast, Wraith King with vampiric aura. Item auras that has nice synergy with Precision Aura are Vladmir's Offering, assault cuirras and Drum of Endurance. Having Beastmaster, Vengeful Spirit and Drow Ranger on one team is in fact pretty ridiculous and even your supportish venge will be abble to dish out incredible dps and sometimes even manfight enemy carry.

On the contrary, Drow doesn't like facing majority of heroes known as gap-cloers such as phantom assasin, Slark Riki Storm Spirit and Blink Dagger users, worst enemy is propably Phantom Lancer. Kiting heroes with ability to close gaps is much harder and you will definitely need help from items such as Black King Bar or Hurricane Pike if you have trouble with them. Squishy nature of Traxxex means that you can have hard time against natural BKB carriers that are abble to burst you under duration of BKB active such as Sven and Wraith King.

Party Matchmaking

Previous chapter was more about solo mm and/or unranked matches, this chapter is concentrated purely on stack gameplay, which is, as far as I'm concerned, better place for Drow strat than uncoordinated solo play since Drow needs to be protected.

I will not go deeply into banning topic but generaly, you should have plan on what heroes you will pick, what heroes you don't want to play against and ban accordingly. I advise you to go through your opponents recent games - it will give you general idea about their playstyle.

Drow strat is generaly good idea against carries that need lots of farm to be effective even though those carries can wreck drow late game(am, morph, spec), punishes lineup that is bad at taking objectives but usually bad idea against team with global presence, strong gank potencial and midgame orientation.

What to do when enemy capt actually realises you are going for Drow and bans her? Just pick another midgame and push oriented carry - Lycan preferably, if he is not available Luna, even Terrorblade can be good pick.

What kind of team to pick around Traxex?
You need several things to be effective drow team (from the most needed to least):
1. rightclick dmg+push power (Traxx job)
2. iniciation (preferably coming from offlaner of some sort of tankier support)
3. control+disable (do I need to explain this?)
4. magic burst (even coordinated one, needed to burst target in pickoffs so their help doesn't come in time to save them)
5. sustain (so you can push after won teamfight without risk and allows you to slow push)
6. Some kind of global mobility (such as spirit breaker's charge, wisp's relocate etc) for adding pressure in early mid game
7. some sort of catch up so you can actually punish majority of fleeing enemies like Glimpse

Ideal team composition for drow strat in my opinion:
Mid:
Dragon Knight, Windranger and Death Prophet are by far best mids for all heavy-push strats while providing nice ultimates for both pushing and fighting. DP and WR also get your aura so their lane should be easier. If they all get banned (unlikely all unless your opponents got idea about your draft and if so, enemy just wasted almost all bans on your mid which opens more possibilites on other spots) you can just lastpick your mid and get anything your midlaner is comfortable with and good against enemy mid.
Offlane:
Beastmaster has good pushing power, good (but only single target one) ulti. This guy is your way to go when you desperately need spell-immunity piercing disable. Also birds are nice cuz you don't need to place wards around tower you are pushing and can use hawks instead.
Faceless Void is nowadays good offlaner and nice when you have other teamfight ultimates to synergy with. He becomes something like other carry provided he has decent farm but can totally work just as iniciator with very little farm.
Tidehunter is greedy pick but generaly good against melee carry and supports unable to harrass him out of lane.
Slardar is weak laner but needs blink to be effective so he eventually needs some help from supports or his blinks comes bit late. His ulti gives your lineup incredible boost of damage output and is generaly good against lineup vulnerable to pickoffs and physical burst. Also speeds taking Roshan.
Axe is similar to slardar in terms that he is also blink iniciator with spell on low cooldown, but he feels better as agressive dual offlaner. This guy is good pick nowadays to pressure safe lane. This guy can totally be firstpicked and is great against Slark sine his call goes through Shadow Dance thus it's good way to protect drow from fish.
If you feel like different offlaner would do better, feel free to pick him.
supports:
You need at least one playmaking support hero such as Disruptor (this one is especialy good if you have vision advantage) or Tusk etc and you will defenitely need one babysitting support to ensure your Drow solid early farm Witch Doctor, Dazzle etc.

Jungler or not? Generaly, jungler makes your lines weak so only pick aggressive jungler such as Chen that can come to gank at low level and not greedy junglers that would weaken your lines and delay your timings so I can't really reccomend something like LC in your team.

Invis hero is a nice addiction for early agression or to disrupt enemy lines/jungle but not needed.

occasionaly, when enemy picked some their mid (and maybe even carry) early - this sometimes happen when enemy is spamming meta heroes and/or high pick rate heroes - If you think your drow can do well in midlane, just pick drow (as fake bait ez lane carry) and then last pick Terrorblade! Seriously, Metamorphosis + Precision Aura is freaking overpowered synergy and even tankiest enemy just melts if TB focuses him.

So how should you execute drow strat in party mm when things are more coordinated?
With lines estabilished your main goal is to secure your Drow fast level 6 and fast treads+aquila+lance. If your safe lane goes well, you can rotate your support into offlane to disrupt farm of enemy safelaners. After drow is ready to fight, you can start rotating your carry into different lines maybe do some smoke ganks, secure some pickoffs and push towers. Estabilish agressive vision into enemy jungle (to see enemies farming jungle and rotating to defend their towers) and keep an eye onto Rosh. While your mid and carry rotates to different lines, this is the time when your offlaner and four position support have some time to farm their core items and/or recover a bit - of course you want them to be part of fight but they are not needed to be part of push if enemy doesn't defend. Take note that all this can be negated if their mid suceeds in snowballing or you just let enemy carry to outfarm you. Take rosh when you feel strong and try raxes afterwards.
Generaly it's good idea to trade your t1 tower for t2 (go immediately to t3 afterwards to force them use defensive tp - your push should be stronger than theirs at this stage) or Rosh but if you feel strong enough - retaliate and make them pay for trying to push!
Smokes should be used offensively to suprise enemies in their jungle or to defend your tower (5man smoke to def tower usually secures you good fight iniciation and positioning because enemies are unaware since they don't see any TP incoming).
Sounds easy, huh? Well, to be honest, if executed correctly this strategy is highly successful since most enemies will just try to recover from bad early-mid game by spreading and farming. So they are more vulnerable to your "raids". Be sure that enemies will try to splitpush so keep lanes pushed whenever possible and if possible, kill those splitpushers.
When you are ahead, even support will yield kinda respectable gold+exp bounty. So try to avoid dying (well, avoid dying is obvious, I'm more talking about not taking risks of dying and stay grouped up and only split when you know where enemies are). This comeback mechanic is very dangerous when playing Drow lineup because if you feed your enemy several high value kills, it pays them whole big item, then they can successfuly defend and come back later.

If you think you can't get the right idea about Drow strat as whole, check section about drow games in competitive.

What to do against high pick rate heroes

These heroes are more likely to be picked in each match so when you know what are their weaknesses you will have much easier time with them.

Pudge is notorious ganker. He is only succesful because of lack of defensive wards placed n woods. If you have such wards then you are almost sure safe. However, you have to stand between creeps to prevent Meat Hook so only way Pudge can actually jump on you is Blink Dagger into Dismember. In 1v1 scenario, you should be abble to survive through this (if he doesn't have something like 20 stacks of Flesh Heap) and then silence him as soon as you get out of his stun (to prevent hook after stun). If he can't hook you, you can kite him to death since he has no other way to close gap than buying Force Staff(just remember to prevent him from using blink by attacking him). If that fat fisherman doesn't get blink/staff in reasonable timing he will not be abble to deal with you. Build up some tankiness if he prioritizes you with Dismember. If he doesn't use his stun on you, just interrupt it with Gust.
Honestly, I feel that pos4 pudge who roames from start or pudge run as lane support in aggro trilane (encountered this sh!t few weeks ago) is much more effective than usuall mid pudge (just because mid against pudge just has almost freefarm).

Slark is a harder one to deal with. He has great gap closing skill with Pounce and he is natural Silver Edge carrier which disables your Marksmanship and Precision Aura (in addiction to reducing your dmg) which practically renders you useless. I suggest you to build your own Silver Edge in addiction to Force Staff/ Hurricane Pike (this is actually great item against him) so you can kite him once he opens on you and don't forget Manta Style. However, you will have to rely on your team to help you with him. On plus side, you come online much earlier and you can deny him lots of farming space since he usually doesn't want to fight untill he has Echo Sabre , Silver Edge and Eye of Skadi. Wait with Gust and use it after he uses Dark Pact since otherwise he can end up instantly purging your silence. Best use of your knockback is propably when he uses Shadow Dance since he will not predict that and it should make his ulti much less threatening. If you plan to gank this slippery one while he is farming, wait with iniciation untill he uses his Dark Pact.

Phantom assasin is easy to counter with Silver Edge rush since passive break disables her crits and evasion. Also using Hurricane Pike when she jumps on you ensures you win in fight. PA is naturally squishy without her evasion, so if some of your teammates builds Solar Crest you should have no problems with her. However you have to be careful since she can almost oneshot you if she's lucky enough. PA is one of those carries that you can easily fight even in ultra late game so don't lose hope if PA is snowballing through midgame - you have advantage when holding high ground and if your team focuses her with her evasion down, she should not even have chance to pop her Satanic. PA has something like "escape" in Phantom Strike so be prepared she can blink away. Her stiffling dagger spam is pretty annoing due to the slow it applies but not real concern if you are ahead in farm.

Legion Commander. I don't really get why this hero is so popular since she has many weaknesses. Smoke gank legion as soon as you hit lvl6 and try to delay her blink. If this hero is aganst you, it's like one of the best things that can happen! With weaker enemy lanes you pretty much surely win early game and after lc eventually gets her dagger, she will not have many opportunities to gain duel dmg. If she tends to prioritize you with duels, then build up Linken's Sphere (or convince someone to use active of linken on you) and if she jumps on someone else, destroy her within the duel duration or even better, use Silver Edge and disable her lifesteal skill for even easier duel win (and then thank that player for feeding your team duel dmg in all-chat, trust me legon pickers deserve it, especially those who go jungle LC). If lc player has at least two brain cells, she gets Blade Mail whih makes it trickier to kill her in Duel but if there are 3+ people attacking her WITHOUT her lifesteal, you can kill her pretty easily. Kiting LC is a piece of cake since when you shoot her it puts her lifesteal skill and blink on CD and Press the Attack is not enough against your orb. So only way she can actually deal dmg to you is Overwhelming Odds which doesn't deal tremendous amount of dmg if you are not close to your allies or creepwave. Just be careful about her Blade Mail. You should only lose against LC when some of your teammates keep getting picked off while LC stacks up duel dmg.

Invoker. Well, in my bracket there aren't many good invo players but even semi-decent invo can be tough to deal. BKB is a must against this guy. Against QW 'voker be sure to stick together a bit while against E invo make sure not to show yourself on map with low hp. In mid/late game activate BKB as soon as you see his combo coming. Silenc hurts voker really hard and if you can Gust while he's trying to execute one of his bigger comboes, you may considerably lessen his teamfight presence. IF he starts to splitpush hard, just treat him as other splitpushers.

Juggernaut is ine of heroes that you need Manta Style against. If he uses blinnk into Omnislash on you, activate manta and dmg from his ult spreads (or some support uses Ghost Scepter on you). Blade Fury makes kiting him bit tougher and you should definitely build some tankiness against him since his DPS is pretty insane once he gets some items. Usually jugg opts for some sort of early fighting build to be abble to deal with your pushes but if he goes bf build, go ahead and punish him hard!

Windranger aka annoying readhead. If she lands Shackleshot and Focus Fires you, you are practically dead (if some of your teammates doesn't rush in to help with some sort of disable). To add bit more annoyance, she has 100% evasion under effect of Windrun, so dealing with her is tricky. Just juke and wait for her evasion to fade and then destroy her in gust duration. Since WR is squishy and will rely on her ability to escape, stun iniciation into Gust can easily kill her. If you are really annoyed, rush MKB.

Sven is trouble. He can oneshot you with Blink Dagger Storm Hammer iniciation and few right clicks when he has his ulti up (especially dangerous burst with Echo Sabre!) and when he gets BKB you have no chance to stop him from doing so (other than your allies using Ghost Scepter/ Eul's Scepter of Divinity defensively or you are lucky enough to have either Beastmaster or Bane on your team with their bkb-piercing ulties). Generaly you want to delay his items as much as possible. Steal his ancients (must if they stack those!), pressure him early-mid game and try to end as soon as possible. Otherwise he is easily kited with your orb and with keeping your distance, it opens possibility to dodge stun with manta.

Lifestealer gained popularity nowadays. LS becomes trouble when enemy team has some sort of good vehicle for Infest bomb (it will propably kill you if done correctly). Naix becomes threat once he gets his armlet of mordiggan. LS is kitable outside of rage, but he can always opt for max movement speed build ( Sange and Yasha and Wind Lace) and if you get stunned you will get ripped apart. You should avoid dealing with skilled Naix player.
If NAix goes jungle, the threat is much lower (since his armlet comes few minutes later and doesn't levels that fast as in lane) and gank him there once you hit lvl 6 (and he doesn't have infest yet) also in jungle he can't jump into one of your creeps so his escape is pretty limited.

Mirana also gained lots of popularity recently when aghs for her was introduced. IF you manage to gank her few times before she gets scepter, GG you basicaly reduced her to Sacred Arrow and Moonlight Shadow for majority of game which is not something enemy team expected from their core Mirana. Mirana without scepter can't really nuke you and can't escape you with Leap if you time your silence well. You should position yourself to the middle of open space to see arrows coming.

Alchemist is huge problem when he manages to farm armlet, radiance and manta. Alch comes online pretty quickly (14min radiance is not unusuall) so you have to be quickier and take down t2 in safe lane as soon as possible and roam their jungle in hope for pick off on him (but alch is pretty hard to gank with his ult up). If you manage to deny him runes, it's also pretty good. Alchemist desperately needs to be ahead in terms of farm. So denying that works well - steal his stacks, block camps. Since alch usually doesn't have stun untill lvl 10, you can act pretty agressively. Later on be prepared with your Manta Style. MKB can work wonders if you find yourself unable to burst someone with Radiance miss applied to you.

Examples of Drow strat in competitive

Okay so I chose serie Wings vs Na'vi as perfect example because it's three consecutive games with Drow. Here is a dotabuff link to serie http://www.dotabuff.com/esports/series/140244
I chose this serie because it contains everything to be great soure of information. To be honest, it almost looks like Shadow or some of his teammates read my guide, LOL (Shadow, if you read this, leave comment, thx :D).

Okay, now seriously. As you can notice, Wings drafted Drow as one of the first 2 picks in every game.
Game 1 started in the worst possible way for Wings, 4 deaths in rune fight. Later on they managed to come back into the game but they eventually lost it. I think Shadow chose wrong build, he got aghs+lightnings against Necronomicon and killed himself several times because his splash damage killed necro warrior.
Game 2 was pretty even game where eventually Wings' superior damage and pushing tower kicked in and they tied the serie. Shadow went for "Beefy" build which proved tobe good choice because otherwise he would die more often to Tinker and Bristleback.
Game 3 was propably best performance of Wings in the serie. Wings had good early game thanks good rotations of Innocence on Vengeful Spirit and later on they were abble to close the game. Shadow got pretty early aghs, then proceeded to build Mjollnir and BKB. His item choices were optimal IMO - aghs was great against Io and made Na'vi pay for every Tether.
Not gonna spoil more, watch it yourself :).

Then here are two games played by Liquid. They are both complete stomps and I linked them here as example of perfect execution of Drow Strat. You can see that Liquid won laning stage in both games and then pushed hard and pressured t2 towers early, moving on highground siege with aegis and breaking the defense pretty easily with their great ex and gold advantage.
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2508984462
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2508641831

Closing thoughts

So yeah, this summarises my point of view on how to play Drow. I'm pretty new to game (I was hardcore WoW tryhard before) and still used to different game mechanics so maybe some of my ideas are bit weird.
If you disagree with something in this guide or want to suggest something, feel free to leave comments.

I am aware that this build is pretty specific and its usage is situational but I feel that Drow ranger in general is bit situational pick when you want to end match fast and enemy doesn't have tools to punish your squishiness.

I should apologise for my bad english so feel free to point out spelling mistakes or grammatical errors - I will fix them.