Brace yourselves, Phantom Assassin is coming.

Introduction

From the shadows, Mortred the Phantom Assassin arrives.
She is one of the strongest, and probably the hottest member of the Sisters of the veil.





Phantom assassin relies in her ultimate as no one else, since she has a ****py initial damage, she is a close range hero, and she is also squishy.
Noobs: - Why the hell did they made such an horrible character?
Call down scrubs, there is something called hero skills, get her ultimate pumped up and get a mass of numbers in your screen showing the highest crits you will ever see.
Fact: Phantom assassin is famous for teleporting and lightspeed killing you of one crit, not even a pudge with 6 hearts of tarrasque would of survive.

Pros / Cons

PROS:

-Highest crit damage from all heroes.
-Low mana cost skills
-Chase/escape based skills

CONS:
-Squishy
-Poor initial damage
-Very farm dependant
-You will need to keep up with levels and don't be left behind.

Skills

Stifling Dagger:



Your best friend in early game, if you keep getting harrased and ganked, stay away and throw daggers from distance on the creeps when they are low hp to get farm, in the beggining of the game you may suffer a bit of mana problems, that is why we will level up this skill first, less mana cost, and more damage.


Phantom Strike:



Ever wished for a free blink dagger? Here it is.
This beautiful skill is an upgraded version of a blink dagger:
-WAY less cooldown
-You don't need to wait for cooldown if you get hit.
-An enormous attack speed buff when teleporting.
Homever there is only one Con:
-You can only teleport to targets, and not freely around.
If you are getting harassed, you can teleport to any creeps, even neutral or enemy creeps or an ally, even if so, you can also teleport enemy heroes who aren't paying attention and fool those dumbtards out. (!)


Blur:



This is like having the free evasion of a butterfly, You will be sure to put one point in early game to get a nice chance for avoiding attacks, with a bit of luck this skill will save your life more than once.


Coup de grace:



Your lovely ultimate you cannot live without.
When you get to level 16, this beauty grants you a 15% chance of dealing 450% extra damage, if you get yourself a divine rapier, prepare for some critical strikes of over 2k and even 3k damage.
Combined with a Battle fury, if you get a crit, the crit will also affect the cleave, making a cleave critical damage which helps a lot, mostly in team fights (!)

Items

Early Game Items:


Power Treads:
Your first decision to do in the game is to choose which boots will you buy, you only have 2 compatible options for phantom assassin.
Power treads give you 50 speed, 30 attack speed AND 8 of the stat you want to select.
The extra attack speed plus the 8 additional stat points you wish for is what makes these boots a very good choice for Phantom Assassin



Phase Boots:
A very popular choice for phantom assassin, it gives you 50 speed and 24 damage.
People mainly choose them over power treads because of the extra damage and the active.
The active helps you to run far distances a little bit faster using the active, and also helps you to chase up enemies, but since your habilities are made up specially for enemies who are running away, you will possibly won't be using them too much often to chase up enemies. (and they are 50 coins cheaper, you greedy economists!)



Helm of the dominator:
Gives you 15% lifesteal, 5 armor and 20 bonus damage.
You can pretty much solo roshan when you get this after the boots you choosed and battle fury, your life steal combined with your crits and damage you get from your items will make from roshan a mere joke. (Can be upgraded to Satanic in late game if you really need to)



Battle Fury: (Possibly your only core item)
Ahh... battlefury, your favourite Early-Mid game item for phantom assassin.
+65 damage, +6hp regen and +150% mana regen, plus a passive 35% cleave damage... with crits of 1,2k+ damage you can kill an entire army of creeps of one hit.
The reason why you pick this item is because of the crazy farm you will get, and the stats it gives are also amazing, it will keep you alive and full of mana with the hp and mana regen, and if you are lucky enough to meet your 5 enemy heroes all together and stunned, jump inside, and kill them all at once with your epic critical damage and your cleave damage, and get a rampage! HOLY YES! IT'S TIME FOR A GODLIKE KILLING STREAK!

Additional/Situational Items:

Butterfly:

Holy ****, my head just hurts when i think of a PA with a butterfly, butterfly's evasion stack with blur 'diminishingly', which means it will not fully stack, but just a part of it, instead of a 70% evasion it still gives you a 61% which is also perfect and makes you an ultimate battle demigod.
Prepare for crazy head cutting time, Butterfly is what you will probably go after you get your core itembuild.
30 bonus damage.
30 Attack speed.
30 agility (30 bonus damage, 30 attack speed and a bonus 4 of armor)
Evasion increase from 40% --> 61%
Basically a butterfly will give us in total 60 bonus damage, 60 attack speed, 4 armor, and a bonus of 21% chance of evasion.
If you also want to get a heart of tarasque, you can just go inside the enemy's base and gank without any problems with your insane crits combined with the lifesteal, your insane hp regeneration + lifesteal will make the fountain a mini gunslinger that throws paperballs at you.
A butterfly will make you an insane KSing machine, increased holy ****ing damage, and WAAAAAY higher attack speed, the more you attack, the highest chance to land a critical strike which its damage is buffed with the damage that you get itself from the butterfly, dont forget our extra 4 armor that may help us escape death once.



Abyssal Blade:

OH YESH! BONUS 100 DAMAGE AND BONUS 190 HP!
This serial killer also has a passive 25% chance of stunning for 1.4 seconds (!) which is more than enough to land one critical and finish the sad life of the unfortunate noob who gets in your way, if the noob still gets away, or the noob has a shadowblade, you have the active that gives you 2 seconds instead of 1.4, cross your fingers to get a critical in that short period of time, if you are lucky you will get a crit and kill the noob, if you are not, you still can kill him since you have this item that gives you crazy damage LOL.



Black king bar:

ONLY BUY this if you are getting serious trouble against powerful nukers.
Once you buy this, your nightmares will finish.
Also gets you 190 hp and 24 bonus damage which is not bad.



Divine Rapier:

If you are still playing like past 1 hour, you MUST buy this and finish the **** out of the game already, get ready to get universal critical strike damage, if you have 6 of them at level 25, you will be able to do critical strikes of over 7k damage, but it would be risky to only wear divine rapiers, and your attack speed would suck balls.
Slow attack speed = less chance to crit.



Satanic:

If you are in late game, and you have too much money after those 10+ kills without dying, you can go for Satanic, it will upgrade Helm of the dominator so you get 25 extra strenght (+425 hp) and give you 25% lifesteal instead of 15%, plus you will get an active of 175% of lifesteal.
If you have a heart of tarrasque, butterfly, battle fury AND this one, you will most likely be able to get a rampage by jumping into a 5v1.



Heart of tar***que:

With this and a butterfly, you will become an ultimate battletank.
You will most likely don't need this at all, but it gives you a lot of hp and crazy hp regeneration, which combined with a butterfly, the towers and the enemy's fountain will never be a problem.


Monkey king bar:

Popular between the phantom assassin players.
The monkey king bar straight goes perfect for an insane amount of damage, attack speed boost, and those awesome passives.



Items NOT to buy:



Daedalus/Crystalys:
If you buy this for a PA, i must say you are ******ed.
Your critical strike won't increase you hacker, instead it will REDUCE to the item's critical damage, leaving you to an idiotic noob who just got scammed, you will always preffer that epic ultimate critical damage and the item free slot.

Team Work

In this section I will explain Phantom Assassin's role and how to play with her early game, mid game and late game.
Phantom assassin sucks at mid, phantom assassin sucks at jungling, phantom assassin relies on her teammate while laning, what can we do?
-Ask someone to cover your *** up.
-Feed the enemy and die like a loser.
-Disconnect and reconnect to see if your team wins.

You will most likely go for the 1st option, if you came in this guide is to know how to harass people, and not to lose or depend on others, unfortunately we will need to depend on others in early game to carry the game later.

Your best laning teammate:
-Long range heroes who can keep harassing the enemy so they don't get close to the creeps (A very good sniper player, death prophet, nature's prophet... etc.)
-Heroes with stun skills (sven, sand king, tiny... etc.)
-Heroes with healing/protection skills (warlock... i don't remember anyone else xD)
-Heroes who gank easily and can help you feed up (Axe, lina)


Early Game:

If you go in a lane with another early game weak hero like riki, i recommend you to anyway stay close to the creeps to get melee last hits, if the enemy seems not to get agressive, start playing a bit agresive to keep them away from the creeps, if they response attacking you, go away, you will NEVER win a 1v1 fight early game with phantom assassin, keep getting close to the creeps if they seem not to be agressive, but don't attack them again.
Homever if the enemies are agressive with the farm, I recommend you to stay away and throw daggers from distance to last hit creeps.
If you go in a lane with a good early game ganker, keep always close to the creeps if you are good in health, even if they keep getting agressive, if your teammates shows no mercy and starts harrasing you can easily farm creeps, but if he is not sure if he can win and having some problems, stay careful, but still close to the creeps.
When a Phantom Assassin runs away, most of the time noobs make the mistake to throw daggers on an enemy hero who is literaly very close just to slow him down, but when throwing the dagger, you stop running, the one's who are chasing you will be able to hit you and they may even kill you, keep running and never throw daggers to slow down the enemy heroes, you will most likely screw up.
If you get your boots, battle fury, helm of the dominator and level 12+ in less than 20 minutes, i congratulate you, you farmed like a boss and you have an enormous advantage over your enemies.



Mid Game:

This part is only valid if you were succesful at farming and you are atleast level 11 and have your boots and battle fury (or almost) passed 20 minutes, if not this means you screwed up at farming and you cannot keep up anymore, you will keep getting ganked and you won't be able to do anything:

Once you get your battle fury, you can speedrun jungles and at the same time creep killing in lanes to speed up your farm.
When farming, if an enemy hero runs away with low hp from a fight he had with your team, and he is somewhat 'close' to you so you can catch him, you must leave the jungle and fastly run to him to try and kill him remember your dagger has a long range and you can use it to kill him or to slow him so you can use phantom strike and catch up (in such ocassion phase boots would be very helpful)
If you are statistically having a great advantage in levels against your enemies, you can most likely start going with your team to destroy all your enemies, you will always need backup, you don't have any kind of stunning or high damage dealing skill to damage enemies but your right click, you will most likely always need a bit of support, so don't try to go alone in enemy territory even if you are level 25 and eveyone in the other team is level 11 or something, remember your fault is that you are squishy, if you are stunned you will be a mere blank even for a full team of level 11 enemies.



Late game:

If everything went fine in early and mid game, late game will be a joke.
There is really nothing else I can say at this point of the game, but that you can make roshan if you really need the aegis, and in this ocassion if your enemies are potentially way lower level than you are, you can win a 1v5 with the resurrecting help of the aegis, or if you are just too op, you won't even need it, but it will grant you safety until you die.
Consider buying a divine rapier if you have to and you are sure you won't lose it.