Bloodseeker Non-Trash Guide

Have you ever considered a hand of midas? Just use it on any creep and it will heal you instantly + gives you 190 gold, this can save you from a gank sometimes. Further I'd like to discuss your build again,

I always build my bloodseeker this way:

Starting items:
tango/stout shield/quelling blade

Power Threads for stats and switchability or Phase boots for extra chase power, still prefer Threads though.
Skullbasher is mainly my second item, against channelers this item is perfect. Like there is a shadow shaman, enigma, crystal maiden or whoever else channeling a spell, and you can hit that bash you instantly win that fight. Further Skullbasher gives some nice damage.
My third item is Desolator, I never saw any desolator suggested on any guide, a desolator on bloodseeker is not only good for damage, but also a great teamfight potential since BS is no teamfight hero and will mainly always die in a teamfight unless snowballed, and further you can use it lategame to easily destroy towers.
My 4th item is a force staff or a butterfly, when people love to run away from me I always get a force staff to secure a kill with the rupture + to trigger thirst.
The butterfly is a perfect synergy with a skullbasher, whichs gives you nice damage, extra attack speed, and some evasion. Butterfly helps you place that little bash from skullbasher on the right place.
My 5th item is really dependent on lategame situation, normally when I'm playing this build I never get any further because I've been snowballing alot, but I prefer upgrading my skullbasher into a abbyssal blade or buying a black king bar/monkey king bar.

Also, I'd like to react on how you mentioned that Bloodseeker will have a hard time against good solo mid harassers like Viper.

Honestly, if I'm captain and I know that I'll be facing a solo mid Bloodseeker, I'm not going to counter him with a solo mid Viper...I'm going to counter him with a solo mid Faceless Void :)

Think about it, if you lane a hard carry solo mid against BS, what can BS do to prevent him from freefarming? Nothing. A Void with Quelling Blade will out-CS Bloodseeker extremely easily with higher base damage (especially since he's getting Claymore for Battle Fury anyways), and it's not like BS can kill him or anything (TP scroll is your friend). Void will have perfect rune control because BS has none, so this means free sustain. And at level 6, Void can kill BS while BS can't do jack. That's a free 12 minute battlefury. Usually you need a trilane for that, here you don't even need a single support to help you with it.

The only reason why you don't lane hard carries solo mid is because they lose their lane against any "serious" mid hero (the only carries you see solo mid are those with good lane control like Templar Assassin and Shadow Fiend). But with all the silly solo mids I see in pubs I honestly think that mid lane can often be the best place to find free farm...just look at Arteezy's solo mid Naga Siren, who even wins mid against standard mid heroes like invoker or OD :)

Thanks for checking this hamster - I always try to keep them Silenced, but checking the wiki, they ignore the damage from Rupture if they move over 1300 units in less than 0.25 seconds - the maximum range of their Blink is a little lower than this, so you're right, they should take damage from it. Will clarify. I guess it would depend on the situation, blink heroes could perhaps blink into trees/impassable terrain, lose some health, but stop you from getting to them.

The part about Rupture not being useful against Blink heroes is pretty confusing. I just double checked in practice lobby just to see if it did change recently or something, but Rupture still damages heroes who Blink away. Bloodseeker makes Anti-Mage and Queen of Pain completely unplayable.

Not anymore, now Rupture inflicts HP Removal damage, which can't be boosted in this way. Bloodseeker has good primary stat gain, so Ethereal Blade isn't totally useless on him, but it doesn't boost his ult damage at all.

I recently watched purge doing Ethereal Blade + Force Staff on Bloodseeker and I would like to know ir Ethereal form really increases Rupture damage and if worth doing it.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vNIRzFfMp-U

Force Staff is a bit like Vladmir's Offering in that it's very helpful to you, but much better if another hero on the team buys it instead, giving your the benefits without having to buy it yourself...but worth considering if they don't purely for the benefits it offers you. A Force Staff offers you an escape and a way of closing quickly...not as good as a Eul's Scepter of Divinity but still useful.

The Mask of Madness + Skull Basher build does give you a good chance of breaking TP in a 1v1 ganking situation...the issue with it is you can't really use the active during a team fight as you're already a bit squishy and vulnerable to being focused and taken down before you start healing from heroes dying nearby with Blood bath. I also don't think Bloodseeker's problem ultimately is attack speed...with levels and a little equipment his agility ends up pretty high.

Personally, I go for the Power Treads into Eul's Scepter of Divinity to get kills, and then build into Black King Bar (possibly Sange and Yasha if they lack magic damage/disable) to bulk out your stats and allow you to survive long enough in fights to be getting healed. Skull Basher next as you now have the attack speed to make it reasonably reliable.

He's not the easiest hero to build as he needs a lot of different things from his equipment, but he's very powerful in specific situations - being able to gank 1v1 with Blood Rage + Rupture (with a stun to break TPs), being able to heal in team fights and inflict a lot of damage. However, you need the right situations to make all this work for you, which is his biggest weakness.

Generally I like to build heroes like this to try to minimise their flaws and make them more flexible, rather than really boost their abilities in more specific situations at the cost of making them inflexible.

If dagon is bad then Force Staff is even worse because it deals even less damage and it pushes your target to safety.

Basher rush could work, essentially it turns what was previously the worst ganker in the game into a RNG hero like Lone Druid. Why not... Still you have the pseudo-random distribution against you...

What about a SingSing build like Mask of Madness + Skull Basher? At least it works on paper...insane chasing power, good burst damage, and no TP scrolls allowed. Sure you're squishy as hell but the whole point of playing a ganker is knowing when to go in and when not to :)
IMO, mask of madness could replace Vlads.

Dagon? Uh you should be ashamed of yourself! I hate seeing this item on him...ok it can work in pub stomps, and it fits with the snowballing...but this article is an attempt at making him better, not worse - get the damned Eul's Scepter of Divinity!

Much as I like Maelstrom too, I don't think it's appropriate for this hero. He needs HP, speed and some kind of stun early on - this item just encourages you to farm rather than gank.

Shadowblade...it does have it's place, as it's quite useful to be able to sneak up on lone heroes and avoid being seen by wards. The main issues I have with it are that 1) It offers direct damage bonus rather than through stats, so doesn't get boosted by Blood Rage 2) It offers no HP boost, magic immunity or stun, which I think you need more at this point.

I have to say, I'm still tempted to get a Skull Basher as my first big item in some games...the HP, damage and stun potential is really nice...it's just that you become pretty dependent on allies and/or luck here. You're bound to get no procs at just the wrong time... :(

I really enjoyed reading your guide, it's about time someone tried to make something decent out of that silly pubstomp hero.
The fact that you're considering rushing Euls as your main build made me laugh a lot. The simple fact of a hero having a TP scroll as his nemesis is already as far away from serious Dota as you can get (BS could be a joke character honestly, like the "fun" tavern used to be in Dota 1 ^^) ; but indeed Euls has the great advantage of BOTH giving movement speed AND doing something against TP scrolls, which is actually pretty good. Actually I think it's better than Sange and Yasha as first item because you need to be able to gank fast, otherwise you'll just end up searching the map endlessly for gank targets with no TP scrolls in their inventory (lol). And rushing basher isn't that good because you need movement speed/initiation to chase and land the first hit in.

For Force Staff and dagon, however, I think they are terrible items. You don't get nukes on right-clickers, because they don't scale with your right-click. I even tried dagon on Morphling (the only carry/ganker on which it could remotely make sense with your Ethereal Blade combo), and it sucked.

Also you forgot Shadow Blade. It's a good ganking item altogether, it adds damage, and actually I got ganked pretty effectively by Bloodseekers with SB lately (and I even died once to a BS gank for the first time in months, damn those TP scroll cooldowns ^^). I would love to initiate with Euls but you can't because you need to cancel TPs with it, so SB can make you initiate.

I think the reason why BS is not viable in competitive goes way beyond his nightmares of TP scrolls. First off, you can't lane him anywhere. He can't be the "1" safe lane carry because he's not a farming carry and he's useless in trilanes (or even in dual lanes for that matter), also you can't trust a BS to carry a game. He can't be the "2" solo mid because he's one of the worst solo mids in the game, he has zero lane control, zero rune control, and the enemy mid will always get freefarm. Essentialy he's sure to lose mid 100% of the time. The only possible choice is the "3" solo offlaner or jungler ; while it's perhaps semi-doable it's obviously not very effective. Honestly you could even play him as a hard support who ganks with his team (e.g like a Nyx Assassin)...but there's just no snowballing carries in competitive, because snowballing only exists when people feed really hard. Competitive is all about farming carries because there are just way less kills in pro games than in pubs.

There is one Item that I think should be added to Situational as well...

*Hides behind Bristle's back*

...Dagon

The Burst Damage is pretty good for taking out low HP Heroes, or for quickly knocking them down below half HP. Combine it with Rupture for about 450-650, combine that with forced movement for a Force Staff or one of the above mentioned allies, and you can Snowball into a fast finish.