Dark Seer - Master Manipulator

Ahahahaha Sando I laughed at your last sentence on Friend or Foes part. Yeah Riki + Ion Shell combo is just ****. Nice guide, thanks to you I now understand more about Dark Seer.

+1

Could you add more detail to the jungle section, like maps and videos of the routes you take to jungle effectively? That would be much appreciated.

I shall give the Aghanim's Scepter a good try then and see how i get on with that, i can imagine it being epic with a Refresher Orb :). Like i said i generally dont like going Vanguard but made that choice based on the physical DPS coming my way but will try counter that differently moving forward and see how i get on.

Thanks very much for the replys though, gave me some food for thought right there about pushing/not pushing the lane and about level 1 skill. I havent yet had to solo as him as someone always wants to come (even when solo is requested) but i can definitely see how Surge could be important, i always wait until im in lane and see who im up against to skill so can take it from there.

Interested to hear how you've got on - he is an odd hero and will take some experience getting used to. Whether to take Ion Shell or Surge at level 1 is an important choice - you need shell to pressure/farm...but Surge is sometimes essential for survival.

Find the right balance between pushing and not in lane - you want to pressure, but not push the lane out of safe XP range. Remember that you can disrupt pulls very strongly :).

Items wise, sounds pretty good up to the Vanguard - it isn't terrible on him, but it doesn't scale especially well into the late game. Generally I find getting the Point Booster for an Aghanim's Scepter does the job just as well, and is more useful later on.

One of the biggest issues playing Dark Seer is that you want to rush that early Mek/Pipe and don't really want to slow down for basic stats items like Bracer. This can leave you somewhat vulnerable to big nukes, burst or disable - heroes who can kill you before you Surge away. Again, I'd generally find a Point Booster helpful here, but delay the rest of the scepter until later.

And yes...I talk about Aghanim's Scepter a lot - it's a really great item on him provided the enemy team has anything much in the way of a carry.

Well i have played my first game on ranked with him (i had a couple games against bots to just learn some basics) and went 4-14-33, so what do i take from this? I still have a lot to learn haha

I found the laning phase pretty easy, lvl 1 ion shells really dominate the lane and we were aggressive from the offset, pushing the lane and keeping their hero's on the back foot. Really good laning phase and please how that went down.

Afterwards i perhaps played too aggressive and died too many times (as you can see) but i played a massive part in team fights, present in most/all of them and a good Wall/Vacuum combo really causes some damage in terms of changing a fight around. I definitely need more practice on that combo and missed a couple vacuum's in general so again, practice.

In terms of item build i took an early soul ring, into arcanes and mek as no one else was going to be grabbing it and i had the farm to take mek way before the others would be able to. Then i grabbed a vanguard which is an item i don't always like but they had a team where 4 of them were right clickers essentially so felt it was needed and shiva's was coming next though we managed to win before hand.

So to wrap this novel up, the guide really helped me in that first game and I'm loving playing DS and the offlane, thanks for the time you took to write the guide dude.

No probs, glad you've found it helpful! DS is actually a pretty good pub hero - provided you're not up against some particularly unpleasant counters ( Earthshaker, Disruptor, KOTL, or some very heavy disable) you should be able to do pretty well in the offlane. In team fights you're almost always the lead initiator so don't rely on anyone else to be able to pop your combo. Obviously you do rely somewhat on your team to actually follow it up and do the damage, and to make best use of your Ion Shells and Surges.

GL, will be interested to hear how you get on...

Thanks for the awesome guide mate. I have recently been focusing more on the offlane so expanding my hero pool and Dark Seer has been on that list for some time. The information composed here is fantastic and genuinely feel i could go give him a go and do well and will re-post with the results of my labour. +1

From watching games the feeling i get is that it will be kinda hard to solo pub with Seer as he requires a lot of team coordination to be truely effective so it will be interesting to see how that goes.

Thanks again bro.

Good +1. A Vanguard can be picked up. Blink Dagger can help you positioning to place a better Wall of Replica into Vacuum combo.




I wasn't kissing her, I was whispering in her mouth. ~Chico Marx

I gotta say i hated this hero the first time i played back when i was just beginning, but now i think it might be the best support for any melee carry. This guy is just nuts, also, great build!

Hei, really like the guide. I do most of it the same way (except getting tranquils if I can be reasonably sure that someone else will get arcanes).
The only difference is that I never go for 3 clarities at the start. I tend to go with a single clarity and either get a stout shield (which will allow me to get more last hits and thus speed up by soul ring) or even a soul ring recipe (which isn't much more expensive than 2 clarities). That way, I can finish the soul ring in the side shop pretty early. I get it before boots because it allows me to spam unlimited ion shells and I always have surge to get away with, so boots can wait.

It's only 50 gold for a clarity, and as DS you're basically useless without mana - sometimes you'll get an unlucky hit when using one and lose that regen. Unless you're against a really horrific lane combo, my usual plan is to ensure I've got good wards up so I know if their mid is approaching, and then yeah, make plenty of use of Ion Shell.

DS's right click damage is actually ok, but your attack animation is pretty awful, you're going to have a very hard time denying unless you can keep them somewhat harassed and off-balance. Remember as a long lane solo you can pull the nearby jungle creeps to draw the lane back, spam Ion Shell on their pull camp and various other tricks to increase your income and generally be a pain in the ***...

Some may disagree, but you don't tend to get many ganks from mid as DS ( Pudge maybe), you've got a good escape and vision, so keeping the lane pushed is much less of an issue for him, and I'd much rather keep the opposition off balance than harassing the **** outta me...

That is a lot of clarities for starting items... someone REALLY wants to spam their spells

3 clarities is a waist of money. 1, maybe 2 should be enough before you have the gold for a soul ring/arcanes.

The way this starting item build suggest, it looks like the goal is to push out any lane darkseerk is in...