Invoker - Blazing Across a Black Sea of Ignorance

Introduction

Invoker is widely considered one of the hardest (if not the hardest) heroes to play in the game, and also amongst the most unique (due to the fact he cannot put abilities into stats and the fact he has to Invoke his abilities). He is also considered one of the strongest. If you master him, you will have a LOT of power. Mastering him is the difficult part.

Invoker can fit a LOT of roles. His most viable ones, in my opinion, is as a full on semi-carry or as a semi-carry mixed in with support. You should never really search for a match thinking "Ok, for the next 5 games, I'm going to play Wex Invoker" (for example), as they all work in different situations.

Invoker usually fits into mid lane quite nicely, but due to his myriad of CC and semi-supportive abilities (even abilities like Cold Snap are brilliant for two people), he is also really good in a double lane, with any sort of hero, too.

Other than that, he's an absolute blast to play, especially due to the satisfaction you get by having access to such a large amount of spells, and when you get them properly, saying he's fun is an understatement.


LET'S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS! (We don't need to defeat any Huns today, though)

Pros / Cons

As with any hero, Invoker has some pros and cons. Invoker is blessed with having a spell for absolutely every situation, but that doesn't make him the best at every single situation. I'll highlight each of the major advantages and shortcomings here.

Pros -

• Extremely high early game damage due to Cold Snap.
• Incredible laner due to the ridiculous health regeneration from Quas.
• Snowballs relatively well, there's always something that you can put your money into for some better whatever you are trying to achieve.
• Can fit into absolutely any situation with all 10 of his spells and can fit into a multitude of roles, making him a great pick for any team.
• Quite the slippery fellow. Ghost Walk, Deafening Blast, Tornado and Ice Wall, make it incredibly hard to catch up to, and kill him.
• Great ganker, he has invisibility in Ghost Walk, and all around incredible utility within Cold Snap and Tornado (primarily, of course the rest of his spells work wonders too) for ganking.
• Extremely satisfying to play, once you've learned him. The fact he is widely considered to be so hard makes it oh-so-better when you do end up getting a good score with him or pulling off something crazy.
• He has an incredibly smooth, sexy voice. I'd compare it to what melted chocolate would sound like if it could speak.

• First and foremost, he's not easy to play whatsoever. As mentioned before, he is one of the hardest heroes to play in the game. Mastering him is not easy.
• Isn't really one of the hardest carries in the game, really - even if you build him that way. He hurts, don't get me wrong, but tell me true, would you really value somebody like Drow Ranger, Shadow Fiend or Lycanthrope underneath Invoker in terms of pure, hard damage? Of course not. He does not have the sort of damage heroes like that do (mainly due to his Intelligence main stat). He has a lot of CC to make up for this though, naturally.
• Requires a very, very high amount of micromanagement, especially in Exort based builds due to Forge Spirits.
• Kind of reliant on Aghanim's Scepter to be useful in team fights. Otherwise he will run out of mana even faster than normal, and will only be able to Invoke a new spell every 12/5 (rank 3/4) seconds (assuming you're at least level 12 when team fights start) rather than every 4/2 (rank 3/4 with Aghanim's Scepter seconds. Chopping so many seconds off your Invoke cooldown is wonderful, but means before you get it, you're nowhere near as useful as your full potential.

When Do I Go Wex And When Do I Go Exort?

Good question, oh dear viewer, good question indeed.

As the names of the build imply, Wex is, basically, better for being a CC based semi-carry, and Exort better at being a harder carry (though, never expect Ursa-like damage). You should pick according to what team you have, if you have a few hard carries or lots of damage, I'd opt for a Wex build, but if your team is more CC/support oriented, opt for an Exort build.


Why is Exort a Harder Carry?
Basically, your main damaging abilities are all increased by Exort. Forge Spirit's damage, health, and armour, Sun Strike's damage, Chaos Meteor's damage, Deafening Blast's damage, Alacrity's damage, Ice Wall's damage, and, needless to say, having 3 instances of Exort at rank 7 will give you 63 attack damage (that's more than a Sacred Relic) AND 14 intelligence, giving you a further 14 damage, resulting in a grand total of 77, and a larger mana pool and regeneration.


Why is Wex More Supportive?
Wex does a lot of things for your CC/supportive abilities. Namely, it increases the mana drain from EMP, greatly increases the range on Tornado (giving an enormous 3200 range at rank 7), increases the attack speed on Alacrity, disarm time from Deafening Blast, movement speed on self with Ghost Walk and rolling range of Chaos Meteor. You also have the more mobility around the fight with Wex's movement speed, and the fact are slightly more tanky (+2 armour at rank 7) from the bonus Agility you get from it.



WARNING TO NEWER PLAYERS -
Wex based Invoker is easier to understand and manage to begin with. Exort based Invoker requires better aimed Sun Strikes, better micromanagement of Forge Spirits, your escape mechanism isn't as good, and you are the one relied upon for the majority (or at least a large portion) of your team's damage.

How To Learn Invoker.

Invoker requires a LOT of practice to get correct. In your first match, I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least one situation where you thought "I'll just Invoke Ghost Walk and be safe from this gank" and end up with Tornado or even Ice Wall. Not to worry, there are remedies to this, you won't be stuck as the worst Invoker in the world forever!

Needless to say, the best way is by playing him. Sometimes his skills make sense as to why they are what they are (such as Chaos Meteor, it's made of fire, so it needs at least some Exort in there, but it's a meteor and as such moves fast, hence, Wex. Quas wouldn't make much sense as when are meteors ever cold?) but some of them, especially very situational spells you tend not to use often (like Ice Wall, which sees little to no use in the laning phase) can just seem to elude you.

However, I got linked this 'trainer' by a friend as I was learning him, and after but a few goes it really helped me learn Invoker.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/75495922/InvokerTrainer2.0.htm

It's surprisingly fun/addictive, too, believe it or not!

If you're new, you can always click on the question mark next to Invoke and see the list, or have a reference image open such as the one below. At first, you will forget everything. Invoker is naturally hard to learn, and after a while you will, indeed, know them all!

Why THESE Items / When Do I Get X Over Y?

Force Staff is one of the best items in the entire game, especially for Intelligence heroes like Invoker. This item is so much better for Invoker because he has absolutely no way of positioning himself or escaping (lest you rely on Ghost Walk, a spell that can be countered using Dust of Appearance and the likes). It provides some pretty good stats, too, but that much mobility (for anyone on your or their team, not just yourself) is too good to be ignored.






This item should be bought on every single Invoker build, with little to no exceptions. As mentioned earlier, without, you have 12/5 (rank 3/4) seconds cooldown on Invoke rather than every 4/2 (rank 3/4 with Aghanim's Scepter) seconds. That's a lot of seconds, and a new spell 3 seconds faster late game can decide a match, needless to say. It obviously also gives you a few really good stats, but the main reason for an Aghanim's Scepter is, and always should be for the ultimate improvement.






You pick up Phase Boots for one good reason. Invoker is awfully slow. When it comes to the crunch, he needs to be able to keep up, both in Wex (though, to a lesser extent) based builds and Exort based builds. The 24 damage isn't bad either, especially considering the price of the item.






Only ever get a Drum of Endurance if you're the only person on the team that is going to get one and usually if you're not the main damage source, as it REALLY delays your proper damage. If a strength hero (or melee hero) wants to get one, it's usually more beneficial to let them get it, due to their natural synergies with strength, and even though Invoker is god awful slow, he doesn't need the movement speed as much as a melee (yes, I know it's an aura but you're not going to be together all the time and what if one dies?). The reason you'd get this on Invoker is the fact it gives him the movement speed he so desperately needs, it even increases your Forge Spirit's movement and attack speed, and both are far more needed on Exort based builds, as Wex, naturally, gives you a lot of attack and movement speed, but Exort gets none innately.






Oh boy are we onto the big guns already? Orchid Malevolence is, put simply, the best pure damage item in the game for Invoker. Even Aghanim's Scepter doesn't match it, but its utility and CC, of course, does (not to mention it's cheaper). 45 damage, 30% attack speed, 20 intelligence (since Invoker is intelligence, this means +20 extra damage, too), 225% mana regeneration, a silence and +25% damage. For a mana hungry semi-carry like Invoker who also needs a bit of support thrown in there, so the silence does him well, add in the fact that a lot of Invoker's damage can come from his magic, and the mana regeneration and damage boost sound ever-so-more delightful. A must buy for an Exort based Invoker that doesn't need much more utility and/or will be a main damage force, however, on Wex based Invoker, I'd only advise it if you end up getting a lot of kills, or, chiefly, need the silence desperately, as it is largely based on increasing damage.






Black King Bar, or as it's more commonly known, BKB, is arguably the best item in the game right now, or at least, it's definitely up there with the top few. It gives you some pretty decent damage, a bit of health, but most importantly, it gives you the amazing active of magic immunity. Needless to say being immune to magic is good on absolutely any hero in the game. Somebody who also benefits from the damage quite a bit and is prone to be a target due to the large amount of ways you can actually disrupt a team fight basically requires this item. Of course, if they have but one dangerous CC on their team, opt for a Linken's Sphere, if they're a normal team, it is usually a LOT better to grab a BKB.






This is one of my favourite pick ups on Invoker, and has risen in popularity quite a lot recently on him (largely due to Dendi). This item allows you to act as a faux initiator, give you the much needed positioning you need for some spells (namely Ice Wall, Chaos Meteor, Deafening Blast and the likes which need good positioning for obvious reasons), and otherwise, Invoker has no way of quickly (and INSTANTLY) getting somewhere to put these spells down. He has no Blink or whatever. If you want to focus on initiation then this item is the one for you. It must be noted it lacks stats though, and obviously blinking into an enemy team to slap down an Ice Wall or something can be dangerous, even when paired with Deafening Blast, so I'd not recommend this item if you're doing badly.






This item is incredible for increasing the already potent nature of your spells. Of course, you don't get all of your damage from your spells, but you do get a LOT from it. However, due to the fact you'll more than likely be getting the majority of your damage from your auto attacks, it's often not beneficial to get this item unless you have somebody like Dark Seer (with his Vacuum), Enigma (with Black Hole) or anybody that can group enemies up or keep them grouped up. PLEASE NOTE - if you get this you are no longer a physical carry and should only really get it if you do have a hard physical carry doing well on your team. You would squander too much gold in this if you tried to be afterwards. Do not get any items such as Daedalus.






This is basically just here in case a Black King Bar isn't as good of a choice because they have but one dangerous spell/CC on their team rather than a multitude. That's pretty much the only reason you'd ever get it. If they have far too much magic damage, rather than getting this AND a Black King Bar, opt for a Hood of Defiance instead. To summarise, replace your Black King Bar with a Linken's Sphere if they have one, and only one really dangerous CC or spell, and that's it.






You'd want a sheepstick if your team lacks in CC and you want a bit of extra damage. You won't get absolutely tonnes of damage from this thing, but it's a team game and it's a team item, but it does greatly benefit the team if you are to get one in a low-CC team. It can also mean, of course, you can pump out damage whilst your enemies are Hexed, it's useful for you, too. If you're not, and your team does in fact have a lot of CC, you should probably just get more damage instead, or another item that benefits you or your team.






This is like a poor man's Scythe of Vyse, which is by no means a bad thing. You get a bit of extra movement speed, it's worthy of note, which is great for the low base movement speed Invoker, damage from the intelligence, and of course, mana regeneration and mana from it to help you cast your hefty combos more. The CC from this isn't as good as Scythe of Vyse as, of course, you cannot attack them, but an upside is you can save team mates with it, too. It can still be good to Cyclone an enemy team member, get to work on the rest of the team then switch to them as they come down. Just because you have Tornado does NOT mean you can't get this, Tornado is great, I agree, but it can't save team mates!






Want damage? This gives you damage. Get this if your team does end up lacking some sort of really hard carry (like Lycanthrope) and/or you ended up getting a bunch of kills or farmed exceptionally well. You use this to pretend to be a hard carry or to try to make the most out of a bad situation. Gives you insane damage, especially combined with your Forge Spirit's armour reduction and Exort's damage, and you really can become the main damage dealer of the team. Remember never to rush a Daedalus, however, due to the fact crits scale with damage you have got earlier, and usually it's better to get it after you've got something else, for example, your Aghanim's Scepter and Orchid Malevolence.






Get this later in the game if your opponents have somebody with a lethal burst, or their team composition in general just screams burst to you. It will make Queen of Pain think twice before she decides to destroy your team, for example, whilst making you ever more resilient to other kinds of damage. Great item because it also gives you damage whilst returning theirs.






Though you already have the armour shred from your Forge Spirits if you went Exort based Invoker, there's only a certain amount of times they will attack in a team fight. Desolator is still a viable pick-up if the enemy has got a bit of armour and your team has a bit of physical damage to dish out. Wouldn't recommend it if somebody else buys one, however, as they do not stack together, and you already have a shred of your own.






I'd say this was a staple late game item for Exort based Invoker (due to the fact attack speed works wonders with high attack damage, which is what Exort gives you) and a great pickup for Wex based Invoker if you want to support your physical damage dealers in the team. It's an exceptional item for Invoker, and can also help your other physical damage dealers out a great deal, as well as increasing your team's general survivability.






This item basically makes you invincible late game. It's pure, undeniable bulk. Get this after you've got most of your damage and need to be able to take a few hits. I'd say it's required as a late game item, if it's your 6th slot, it doesn't matter, but before your build is finished, you might as well get an item that makes you nigh unkillable.






Get this if you plan on being more of a supportive Invoker (therefore, mainly Wex based) and want to add a bit of CC to your team whilst also helping to shut down most of your enemy team's physical carries, as it lowers their attack speed, makes it harder for them to chase you down, and decreases their ability to escape. A great pick up to counter melee based teams in particular, further increased by the fact Invoker is an intelligence hero and therefore benefits even more from this item! Doesn't give you too much damage, however, and, hence, only should be picked up for purely supportive reasons.

Cheese

Why These Skill Orders?

Good question. It does seem odd, at first, that, for example, in the Exort build I end up getting 2 more points in Quas after 4 points in Exort. I'll explain my reasoning behind both builds' skill orders below.

Why THAT Exort Skill Order?
As mentioned before, I take Quas first for quick access to Cold Snap, and Quas gives insane health regeneration, so I took another point in it for early game regeneration. After that, I take four points in Exort, then rather than finishing it off, take two more in Quas. To an outside observer, this may seem silly, some may ask why I didn't get Quas earlier (which, might I add, is completely viable in harass heavy lanes), or why I stopped back after starting to get Exort. The reasoning is relatively simple, you need a bit of attack damage to have the last hit/deny advantage early game, hence why I'd usually not spend too many ranks in Quas early (again, unless the enemy is harass heavy), but I go back for it after 4 points in Exort because once you have FOUR points in BOTH Exort and Quas, Forge Spirit summons TWO spirits. You want this as early as possible - they have ridiculous damage, and shred armour at an even greater rate when there's two.

After that, it might seem odd to you that I opt for taking Quas over Wex. Exort Wex combined builds do exist and do work, though this one is not one of them. The main reason for this choice is the boon Quas grants to Forge Spirits' attack range, mana (allowing for 10 instances of armour melted for each spirit at max Quas rank), and even duration alive. Cold Snap is, of course, great to be improved if you rely a lot on auto attacks, as you do, and the stun from Deafening Blast and slow/duration increase from Ice Wall are also both incredible.


Why THAT Wex Skill Order?
Well, I start with Quas for quick access to Cold Snap at level 2, as it is such an incredible ability it's far too good to miss out on. After that, the other levels in Quas give you such absurd amounts of health regeneration you'll practically never have to go back. At rank 2 of Quas you have more health regeneration than somebody with a Ring of Health. Now that is something. However, getting too many points in Quas is a waste. It loses a lot of its potency outside of the laning phase, and you really start needing to get your damage/abilities really soon. You should take one point in Exort whenever team fights start occurring OR after Wex is maxed, whichever comes first.

After that, we skill Wex first for the fact this is a Wex based, supportive build, and as mentioned in a previous chapter, most of the supportive abilities are enhanced by Wex. After that, I opt for Quas to increase the potency of Ice Wall in both duration and slow, the duration and interval between stuns in Cold Snap, CC duration of Tornado (and damage), stun duration of Deafening Blast, and AoE slow of Ghost Walk.

Skills

All of Invoker's skills are listed below on this image (credit to lonjaxon, the creator of this image according to its watermark) -

Wex

Exort

Quas

Invoke

Invoker

Quas

Quas

Quas

Quas

Quas

Exort

Quas

Quas

Wex

Wex

Wex

Wex

Wex

Wex

Quas

Wex

Wex

Exort

Exort

Exort

Exort

Exort

Exort

Wex

Exort

Exort

Quas

Exort

Quas

Wex

'Main' Skills / Skill Combinations

I hate using the word 'main' to describe Invoker's abilities. Not only is each skill as important as the next (with the one exception in this guide being Forge Spirit for Wex based Invoker, usually that's a waste of time). However, some should be used more often than others on Invoker, there's no question in that.

The Wex Build Main Combo -
These spells will be used either in succession in a team fight and will be your main two spells throughout the game when you go Wex based.

EMP

Tornado

Ghost Walk

Force Staff

Wex

The Exort Build 'Checklist' -

Sun Strike

Alacrity

Invoker

• Tornado and EMP are great when combined together to create a great initiation, especially as Wex based Invoker. Wouldn't ever recommend using EMP unless you are Wex Invoker, however. It does next to nothing with just one point in Wex, but still costs a hefty 200 mana.
• Always, always, always keep Forge Spirits up in any sort of fight as Exort based Invoker.
• Cold Snap the focus of your team, it will stop them escaping! It's worth nothing it has a huge range and therefore even if you can't reach the current target or are too low to hit them yourself, you can always lend a hand!
• Always keep Alacrity up whenever available. It gives ridiculous stats, and there's no reason not to.
• Try and keep Ice Wall up just in front of your main line of supports/ranged heroes. That way, melee heroes will have an extremely hard time getting to them. It might also be possible to position it in a vertical line through your enemy team, at all of their angles, though it can be hard to position correctly and you'd have to get close.
• Chaos Meteor clumped enemies always. Works great with Deafening Blast.
• Deafening Blast clumped enemies always. Deceptively high range. Works great with Chaos Meteor.

Tips and Tricks

• If laning against Silencer, you can simply use Invoke to cancel is Curse of the Silent, as a low-mana counter to its effect. Even if, say, you have 3x Quas activated and Cold Snap Invoked, you can still Invoke, even though you won't get a new spell, it will cancel his.
• You can mentally pair your Tornado and EMP cooldowns up in your head if you use them together most of the time (which you should), basically meaning when one is off cooldown, so is the other.
• A fancy way to bait people into thinking they may have an advantage as well as getting off an instant heap of damage would be to time Cold Snap when your auto attack is midway between you and its target. This way they will be stunned as soon as it hits, and you won't just Cold Snap then they know this is the time to retreat. Might end up with you getting more auto attacks in than you would have done!
• Quas gives you a great early lane advantage and also makes Invoker relatively good at suicide lanes. Abuse it to whatever extent you want. There's no reason to not try and harass them if you're on full health (if they have no way of instantly killing you), assuming you'll miss no minions, as even if you take a bit more flak than they do, you will have far more regeneration than they do without them investing a bit of gold.
• Quas Quas Wex = Free gank immunity/easy way to get out of a sticky situation. Be wary of its high mana cost though, before you Invoke it, take into account its mana cost and your Invoke mana cost! Bonus coolness points if you instantly know what spell that is and you're new to Invoker!
• Even if you're spotted by a ward as you go to gank, people usually don't anticipate the huge range of Tornado, and you can sometimes change the tides of a laning situation or fight just by using that from a good deal away.
• Ghost Walk is a perfect counter to something like Rupture, or pretty much anything like that.
• Even if you're low health and had to Ghost Walk out of a team fight, if they don't have a Gem of True Sight or Dust of Appearance, there's no reason why you can't stand by and slow them. A 20-40% AoE slow is really, really good, and it's essentially permanent if they can't see you.
• As a general tip/trick that isn't just Invoker specific, ALWAYS carry a Town Portal Scroll. You never know when it might come in handy!
• Cheese.

Change Log

8/5/12 - Published.
8/5/12 - Fixed some typos.
9/5/12 - Added Eul's Scepter of Divinity for Wex based Invoker, and a description in the item section.
16/5/12 - Changed Drum of Endurance to situational, changed Exort starting items to same as on Wex.
25/5/12 - The odd one or two improvements and swapped the order or Exort and Wex based Invoker.
6/7/12 - Fixed the fact they did not have skill builds - they magically disappeared or something, they WERE THERE!
10/7/12 - Added Blink Dagger to situational and did a write up for it.
11/10/12 - Added Force Staff (long overdue) and did one or two touch ups.