Community Guide to Drow Ranger (Safe Lane)

Introduction

Hey everyone, welcome to this community Drow Ranger guide. In this guide, we'll be going over all the essential info you'll need to get started with Drow. This guide is aimed at lower level play or for players unfamiliar with the hero.

This guide was written with contributions from community members like you! Thank you to the following DOTAFire members for contributing to this guide:


Please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions if you have feedback on the guide. Without further ado, let's get started!

Abilities

Frost Arrows - Great way to harass enemies in the lane without drawing creep aggro. Attacking enemy heroes by casting this spell individually will enable you to harass with low risk and high effectiveness. Increases damage reasonably and slows the enemies hit. Great for chasing down enemies, but remember that the slow doesn’t stack with multiple hits, it only refreshes its duration. Need to watch your mana, especially in the early game. Spamming this skill and using a lot of mana can happen without noticing. Always make sure to save some mana for your other abilities.

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Gust - Great ability to keep enemies at a safe distance and to delay their abilities. Long silence at every level. Always save some mana for Gust, especially in the early game as it may save your life. Can also be used offensively to push enemies into your own tower, if positioned correctly. Don’t be afraid to use it even if enemies are far away. The silence is devastating if cast on multiple enemy units, basically rendering their abilities useless for at least 3 seconds. The cooldown isn’t too long, but make sure you’re in a safe position when casting it so you won’t need it until it refreshes. Also, a cool fact is that at level 4 the silence is as long as Silencer’s ultimate, remarkably useful and strong!

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Multishot - Great at clearing creep waves and anti-pushing. Always good to have when the enemies are trying to push a tower, but make sure to cast it from a safe position. Strong in fights against multiple targets, especially supports. Works well in combination with teammates that can disable multiple enemies for you to efficiently hit more of them. Can be expensive to cast at maximum level, try to be careful with your mana. Always have a clarity on you to quickly regenerate so you can keep using Multishot to boost your farming speed when needed. Positioning is the most important. Always pay attention to your surroundings and try to hit as many targets as possible. The area of effect is large, use it to its maximum potential. Remember in team fights that creeps can tank the arrows, so try to avoid them in order to hit the heroes instead. Also, as mentioned before, make sure to position yourself safely or where your teammates can help you. Don’t make yourself vulnerable to the enemies.

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Marksmanship - Works great in combination with Gust. Staying at a distance from the enemies is key, as that way you will deal the most damage. Heroes like Phantom Assassin, Chaos Knight and basically any hero that can jump or catch you easily will be the most threatening. If you cannot distance yourself from the enemies by simply running, remember to use Gust and items like Hurricane Pike. Great ability against heroes with a lot of armor like Dragon Knight, Terrorblade and Underlord. Boosts yourself and your teammates by purchasing items that grant agility. Best example is Butterfly. Good Aghanim's Scepter upgrade that makes the ability strong against multiple targets. Great against heroes depending on illusions like Chaos Knight and Phantom Lancer.

It’s best to focus on maxing Multishot first because it’s great at hitting multiple heroes and also farming faster. It’s Drow’s only ability that deals damage to more than one target (at least until she gets an Aghanim's Scepter). Keeping only one point in Gust should be more than enough until the later stages of the game. Getting Frost Arrows to level 4 after Multishot is best to increase Drow’s damage and chase potential. Always place a point in Marksmanship when possible.




+5 All Stats - The best pick here is to go for the bonus stats. They will increase your health, mana, damage and attack speed and it makes you survive easier in the earlier stages of the match.

+10 Agility - The pick here is situational. Most of the times it's best to go for the bonus agility since it boosts your own damage and attack speed, but also your ultimate and the effect it has on yourself and your teammates.

+28% Multishot Damage - Going for the Multishot damage is great because it’s going to make your wave clearing much easier and your damage on heroes more devastating. In case you’re dealing with spellcasters that don’t usually buy Black King Bar, feel free to go for the Gust cooldown reduction instead (e.g. against Lion, Silencer, Skywrath Mage.

+12% Marksmanship Chance - This is also a very situational pick. It’s most effective to go for the increased Marksmanship chance when your team is lacking damage and you’re dealing with highly armored heroes (e.g. Dragon Knight, Underlord, Terrorblade). If you feel like your abilities have been impactful throughout the game and that using them more often will be beneficial, try out the cooldown reduction talent instead.

Items

The 2x Slippers of Agility will help in scoring early last hits and in dealing more damage while harassing the enemy laners. They can also be upgraded into 2x Wraith Bands later on for some extra stats, improving Drow’s survivability in the early game. As for regen, one set of Tangoes and one Healing Salve should be enough to keep you on lane, but in case you’re struggling with surviving, remember to use the courier to bring some more regeneration or ask your support for some spare Tangoes!




Power Treads - Offers mobility, bonus attack speed and the option to pick between +10 of any attribute. This is ideal for Drow since it boosts her damage per second due to the attack speed and being able to switch between attributes comes in very handy when in need. For example - switching to strength when escaping (to have more health) and switching to intelligence when you’re in need of an extra bit of mana to cast a spell (defensive Gust or emergency Multishot). Usually you’ll have them set on agility to benefit from the extra damage and attack speed.

Magic Wand - You already have the 2x Iron Branches from the early game, time to make some use of them! Upgrading to a Magic Wand is ideal because it can save you in fights or simply provide you with some extra health and mana to work with without needing to return to the base as often.

Wraith Bands - Same case as Magic Wand - you already have the 2 Slippers of Agility, upgrading them to Wraith Bands will make your life much easier in the earlier stages of the game. Increases your durability and also damage output.



Drow Ranger highly benefits from stats, damage, attack speed and defenses.

Dragon Lance provides a good chunk of STR and AGI, as well as attack range, which will make it easier to position safely.

Manta Style provides good stats, ability to farm, split push, dodge and remove debuffs.

Butterfly offers good offense and defense by giving agility, attack speed, evasion and damage.


Not all of these items must be built in all games and some situational items may have higher priority.

Burst spell damage and chain stuns, hexes and silences are Drow’s nightmare. BKB allows Drow to keep fighting in the storm of spells.

Drow Ranger has no escape or gap closing mechanism and Hurricane Pike give her both. A counter item against melee heroes with gap closing abilities like Phantom Assassin, Riki, or Anti-Mage.

Aghanim's Scepter boosts your farming, grants good stats and makes it easier to deal with mass enemy units or illusions.

Real talk! Marksmanship has a 40% chance to launch arrows that ignore enemies base armor (Armor granted by agility) so basically 40% chance to deal pure damage against enemies that have not built armor. So if you build crit are are going to hit very hard once you proc both Marksmanship and crit. For maximum efficiency build crit after building enough attack speed.

MKB allows you to hit evasive heroes, from heroes that gain evasion from their talents or skills to heroes that build evasion items like heaven’s halberd or Butterfly.

Provides good stats, damage, attack speed, a not that reliable initiation and escape mechanism and break against heroes with annoying passives like PA, Bristleback, and Huskar.

Increases your durability, damage and status resistance, all while giving you the ability to greatly heal yourself during fights based on your damage. Make sure to build it only when you're against other ranged heroes and there are no melee heroes that usually jump in your face, as they'll disable your Marksmanship, greatly reducing your damage output thus lifesteal.

Great item to pair up with Satanic. Will grant you multiple bonuses that benefit Drow Ranger while also increasing the effectiveness of Satanic's lifesteal and status resistance bonuses.

Mjollnir is a really good item because it’s useful from the moment you start building it, Javelin is good damage, Maelstrom boosts your farm and damage and Hyperstone grants good attack speed. This item is a good counter item against illusion heroes, besides the constant chain lightnings, the massive attack speed allows you to pierce through their armor more and deal much more damage.

When you build this odd item? When you want to dispel an annoying buff on your enemy. Ghost Scepter, Necro’s Ghost Shroud, Windrun all these buffs that make the enemy unkillable can be purges with Nullifier.

Besides the great stats this item provides it also allows you to kite enemies through their BKB and adds additional slow on top of Frost Arrows.

This item is ideal in case the game reached the point of no return and you cannot seem to save it (e.g. you’re against mega creeps or you simply don’t deal enough damage to kill the enemies and no other option seems viable). It’s also a strong pick in scenarios where you feel safe and when your team has been doing a great job at keeping you alive. Providing you with +330 damage and true strike, it’s going to be very difficult for your enemies to protect their structures and themselves. Your attacks won’t miss meaning Divine Rapier will guarantee that items such as Satanic and Daedalus are used to their maximum potential. Also, Drow Ranger has a 80%+ win rate when picking up the Divine Rapier!

Extra stats, mainly a high boost in agility. Great item to counter heavy physical damage dealers such as Juggernaut and Phantom Assassin. Can be used in this scope both on yourself and on your teammates (e.g. using it on a teammate while trapped in Chronosphere. Since you're going to be having a lot of agility throughout the game, the Ether Blast can also be used offensively to deal damage, and paired with your Multishot it's going to be something your enemies (especially supports) will have to keep a close eye on!

Moon Shard can be consumed for extra attack speed once you're at full items. An ally can also purchase it for you if you're still working on your main build, so don't buy it if your teammate already used one on you.

Boots of Travel and Boots of Travel 2 are great assets in the late game since they'll let you cross the map very quickly, especially after a death and/or a buyback. The higher movement speed is also pretty nice. Late game you'll have a ton of DPS items and Power Treads won't be as crucial to your damage, so feel free to switch them out once you have enough gold.

Gameplay

Your main objective in the early game is to survive and to get as many last hits as possible. If your lane opponents don’t have the means of killing you (lockdowns, blinks, etc.) then you can farm more aggressively while harassing the enemies and trying to deny your own creeps. This is not easy to do all at once, but it greatly depends on your opponents picks and playstyles and can be influenced by your lane support. Usually it’s best to play it safely at first and see how the enemies react and afterwards decide how to continue.

If you’re having a good time farming and your lane equilibrium is under control, make sure to not waste your supports time and send them to farm neutrals or help other lanes. However, if you’re not doing too well and you’re pressured out of the lane, your options are to switch lanes with your teammates or to simply retreat and try to recover using the neutral creeps. In case you’re switching to the neutrals, it’s best to let your support have the solo lane to soak experience - a support with high level will be able to protect you and help your team more effectively.



Reaching the mid game you should already have a part of your core items. In case you’ve been doing well and you’re ahead, you probably have destroyed all of your enemies first set of towers. In this case, you should focus with your team on taking objectives and making sure you make the most out of your advantage. However, if your team is already doing well by themselves, feel free to split push or farm some more. Usually it’s best to pressure a lane when doing so, because that forces enemies to retreat and defend that specific lane leaving enemies with lower numbers. For example - if your team is doing well as 4, even if you don’t show up to fights but still force the enemies to teleport back to defend a tower, that means your 4 teammates will still have a good chance of fighting 4 vs 4 or even fewer enemies!

Always remember - go for objectives, put pressure on enemies and control the map.

However, there are also matches when the enemies have won the laning stage and it’s not looking great. In this situation, the best you can do is ask your support (or do it yourself!) to defensively ward your neutral camps and try to farm there safely. Remember that you can stack the neutral camps, maximizing your farming potential and your recovery. Your attacks should kill the camps fast enough, but to further increase your farming speed, feel free to use Multishot and buy a Clarity from time to time and bring it to you using the courier. Always have enough mana to be ready for any imminent fight!



As the game progresses the enemies will focus you more and more and will try to take you down as fast as possible, as you’re dealing a lot of damage and you also increase the damage output of your allies. Positioning is the most important in this stage of the game and it’s crucial to stay alive and together with your team at all times. Never initiate yourself as your abilities and durability don’t make you a great initiator, let your teammates initiate instead and don’t show yourself right away if you don’t have vision of all of your enemies. For example - picture a scenario where your Magnus initiates a fight and you go in straight away to deal damage. That’s a good decision if you don’t see any hero missing from the map that could be a threat to you (e.g. Storm Spirit, Phantom Assassin). However, if any hero (usually a mobile one that can jump on you) is missing, you might want to play it safe and wait for them to show up before engaging. Having your initiator and team focusing on the fight might be dangerous for you, as they will be focusing on winning the fight and missing on you getting jumped by an enemy hero.

It’s very important to pick your fights and to be with your team, as Drow Ranger can be killed pretty easily later on when enemies have the right items.

Keep farming constantly as you’re moving around the map, but in the same time don’t stay too far behind from your team. Playing together is key and getting picked off by yourself is something you must avoid at all costs.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading this Community guide to Drow Ranger! If you'd like to contribute to this guide, please leave me a comment in the Discussion tab with your feedback or send me a Private Message if you'd like to contribute regularly to guides like this. Everyone who contributes to one of these Community Guides will be credited in the guide.

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