Dark Willow DPS mid core (Murder everything FAST)

Short guide, maximum badassary

Gonna make this quick.. I only have like 30 mins to make this guide.

Dark Willow absolutely destroys when given space to farm. It can be tough to survive early mid game, but if you're careful (and use Bramble Maze wisely) then you can thrive in late mid/late game.

LANING PHASE

I like to play Dark Willow as a mid core. Use Bramble Maze to keep the other heroes distance. If they do try to harass (and get stunned) then it's almost guaranteed for them to die. Dark Willows best 3 attributes is her attack speed, burst damage and large stun range. Her UAE ult only has a 30 second cooldown so if a hero does get too close, you can give them a hard path at you through the Bramble Maze. If they do trigger the stun, your attack speed and ult should deal with them pretty easily.

The UAE ult also doesn't require you to be doing anything which is the best part of it. If you flick the ult and then mask of madness straight afterwards, you still get to smack them with the ult damage on top of your max DPS (which should be enough for a kill, or at least to force them to retreat)

It also works for when you get stunned. Unfortunately her biggest weakness is she is quite frail against magic damage, so keeping a distance is required or you could get burst down in the early game.

MID GAME

Hopefully by this point you've stayed relatively safe. By this point you should be able to efficiently farm. This is when you start going for DPS and agility gear. I like to target Yasha & Sange first then start trying to get strength and agility gear to taste. You need a little INT for regen but Dark Willow gets plenty of Mana for hero fights just from leveling up. It's better to trick out your damage and defence so you can survive fights and threaten anyone who targets you.
You can also go for Blink dagger for an escape but it's not required.

A good gank tactic is to throw a cursed crown on a hero and then get a Bramble Maze down in their path of least resistance. That will force them to go around giving you time for the stun to hit them. Throw down your ult, hit your mask of madness and go wild. Most heroes will struggle to survive unless they're quite bulky.

LATE GAME

In the late game, you should have your eye on the prize. LEVEL 25 AND THE +200 ATTACK SPEED This gives you ridiculous DPS, so keeping up your farm is crucial. If you're struggling to take towers it's plausible to grab a heart of Tarrasque. You will have the Damage to destroy towers in under 10 or so seconds so if any team fights go your way because the push is ridiculous.

Just to note, if you don't comprehend how devastating the +200 attack speed is imagine the fountain's attack coming out of you, now double that (thanks to mask of madness), yeah, it's crazy. By level 25 your damage should be around 250-300, so you're probably doing around 1-2k damage per second. It really doesn't take long for heroes or towers to go down by this point. Even the most tanky heroes are going to die within like 5 seconds if they get stunned up.

the hardest bit of the game is getting to that point, but if you keep the eye on the prize TRUST ME that the reward is worth it.