Enigma - more than just an Ultimate

I prefer to go medalion after soul ring, it gives great harass, quicker farming and gives your team easier kills.

Consider buying Hand of Midas if u can farm it fast. Sometimes enemies have very strong push and u end up turtling your base by 20 min, it will help u get still lvls and gold. Its better than fast blink, since enigma is really useful only once per 3 min. U can use malifice if u need to without blink alright.

Also Aghanim's Scepter + Refresher Orb give u like 100% pure dmg from Midnight Pulses, so u can do solo teamwhipes. Enigma basically is a semi-carry, though he s labled as support-initiatior.

I think that's what Sando should do. Re-write and update all his old guides. By the time he finishes, he'll have to do it all over again!

Thanks for the info - this was actually the first guide I wrote on DOTAFIRE a long, long time ago! It probably is somewhat out of date in various places, and missing some bits of info.

Certainly the heroes you mention work well in combination with him (almost any big ult does), and the Scepter upgrade does have some utility.

Personally, I still prefer the Ring of Basilius not just for the mana regeneration, but also the armour aura (+2) makes jungling much easier, and your pushes much stronger. I think it's worth delaying your Soul Ring for a little, as you'll still have enough mana to jungle at 100% until it arrives with this build. Certainly you do see Pro players going with stripped down builds and similar results though.

You may want to consider this info, directly from Dota 2 Wiki;

"If the Ring of Basilius holder has 33 Intelligence or more, a Sage's Mask will provide higher mana regeneration than a Ring of Basilius."

Hence, if there is another support in your team that could both afford a courier and a ward. The best possible starting way to go would be buying Sage's Mask + Mantle of Intelligence + x2 Iron Branch. By having these, you will be granted +5 Intelligence. And since a lvl 1 Enigma's Intelligence is 25(+5)=30. By the time you hit lvl 2, you would have even more mana regen than having a Basilius Ring, in addition to being closer to buy your Soul Ring.

Plus, you could add Venomancer, Disruptor, Kunkka, Krobelus, AA, Timbersaw, Lich, Elder Titan, Phoenix, Tidehunter and QoP to Enigma's Friend List.

And eventhough you mentioned that you would prefer Refresher over Aghanim, it would be helpful pointing out that Midnight Pulse stacking with scepter and its extraordinary outcome damage as below;

"With base magic resistance included, an enemy can lose at most 60/75/90/105% max health + 360/600/840 damage"

This worths a lot if one could position himself without getting killed in any TF I believe, not to be ignored.

Rest of the guide is good, +1 already.

You Have to add Lich to a combo hero, or his Ulti at least. A Chain Frost in a 5 man black hole is almost a guaranteed Rampage.

It does suck early game but by the time you've managed to max it you'll be level 10, and by that time it's not really early game anymore. I think if your team has many stuns then you could do this skill build, but if your team has few stuns maxing Malefice would definitely be best.

You could, but you get a longer stun duration (per tick) with higher levels of Malefice. Also, Midnight Pulse is pretty sucky early game.

If you want to yeah

Due to the change in 6.78, couldn't you max midnight pulse and conversion first getting one early point in malefice as you now get all three ticks from that?

I feel that if you're playing on Dire, using conversion at 30s to defeat the Hard camp is more beneficial than denying a single creep mid, as it jump starts your farm, giving a huge advantage early.

You can take on the hard camp at level one. Attack-move on the tough, unconvertable creep till the very edge of aggro, then convert the smaller one. The Eidolons will likely get stunned by Centaur, CLapped by Ursa etc. but it doesn't matter.
Tank-kite the tough one for a hit or two, so the Eidolons don't die. With good execution, you can have the hard camp cleared at 50ish seconds in, and clear the small one with the same Eidolons. Pop a clarity while clearing the small camp (make sure to stand behind, as ranged creeps like to change targets) and return to the freshly respawned Hard camp.

I like taking Basilius, to convert it to Soul Ring + Tranquils, rocking the early game.
I can see how rushing Soul Ring can take over the Basi-start, but getting 4 camps - including 2 hard ones - by 2;00 is huge.

With this being said, on Radiant : convert those bloody mid lane creeps. Hell, have Lich on mid, and body block the lane with your entire team. I just feel that Dire has a better option.