Iron Maiden, Tanky-Agressive Support Guide.

I agree with maxing the frost bite > nova though, although vanguard on CM is just too expensive esp since observer wards are now 3 mins CD... :)

Everyone says maxing nova is good, but mehhhhhhhhhhh. Hardly dents the enemy team at all. Frostbite has a 6-sec cooldown at max level. SPAM THAT ***** SPELL INSTEAD! LOL

I just think you should have Tranquil Boots, they provide a huge movement speed boost, which is severely needed and since Crystal Maiden shouldnt be right clicking too much, they keep you up in top shape while your Arcane Aura takes care of your mana :) Interesting guide though! :)

True, but I think that Hand of Midas would be more usefull during mid game, and you can't be afraid to sell it when you need another slot. The attack speed increase would be a waste on CM! On the Shadow Blade, I personally don't think it's a good item on Crystal Maiden since it can be easily countered by a dust, and knowing that Crystal Maiden is so damn squishy, it would be a waste of money..It's way better to know how to position yourself better!

Thanks for the Hand of Midas tip, I will add it to the guide!

Though you can add Hand of Midas if you can farm it and pro players make it to. It will be very useful once you get. You can farm a Blink Dagger or Shadow Blade, flowed by Black King Bar and Aghanim's Scepter. You can buy Eul's Scepter of Divinity to increase your MS since you got 330 and Mp regeneration.

Crystal Maiden is never supposed to "tank" anything. In fact, when pros pick up Crystal Maiden, she is almost always a designated stack-puller in a defensive tri-lane, or a roaming support.

Your job as a support isn't to tank damage for your lane partner. It is to keep the enemy heroes away from your hard carry. Crystal Maiden is one of the best heroes to do this with, since her early game nuking power is top tier. You keep the enemy away by simply making it damgerous.

Against a solo offlane, harassing them down with right clicks will do just fine. Getting them low enough where your tri-lane can combo off and kill them. This is usually the job of the other support in the lane, since Crystal Maiden is not only squishy, but slow.

Against an agressive tri-lane, Crystal Nova is a skill that should never be forgotten. With a large area of effect and a decent slow all wraped up into a nuke, it is nothing to play to agressively against.

The reason most Crystal Maiden's don't level up their ult right away is because they need more HP to want to be in the middle of teamfights, and more base mana to support the nova + Frostbite + Freezing Field's mana cost.


The reason she is seldom taken in agressive tri-lanes is because her movement speed is very slow and her turn rate is decent.


I am not saying you SHOULDN'T tank up on Crystal maiden. I am not saying that getting a Vanguard is a BAD idea. Just remember that however you are getting the 2000 gold for Vanguard is 2000 gold you didn't spend on wards, 2000 gold your other teammates have had. It almost always takes most number 4 or number 5 support heroes, in professional level games (and even in my level pubs) 15 or so minutes to build arcane boots. 1450 gold in 15 minutes. Vanguard is not worth the gold after 10 minutes, usually.

Yea, you can farm Crystal Maiden and there is nothing wrong with getting farm. But the thing is, any other hero on your team is going to want farm more. Crystal maiden does nothing with gold but ward, since there arent items in the game she can really use.

Also, fdon't get mek on Crystal Maiden, please. have the number 4 get it. Have her get a pipe if she is feeling rich, since the protection vs Nukes will help greatly.

Also! Lothar's ) Shadow Blade is actually quite useful on her if you can farm it. Not as an escape, but as an initiate. You can pop Freezing Field and then use lothar's active to go invisible, since it doesn't interupt channels. Yea they can dust you, buit seriously... they dusted a Crystal Maiden and put dust on a 1 minute cooldown. That is just fine with me. And they still could die!

But that's after wards are on cooldown and you have money to spend on something other than TP scolls

First of all, i'm sorry for the delay on answering you, I had a lot of work to do this week! First of all, we need to understand what is the difference between an agressive support and a normal support. The normal one will ward, get items that benefit the most the team, courier, protect the carrier with your life and babysit him. But what happens with this kind of support is that on mid and late game they get very, very squishy and sometimes you wont be able to do much for the team as you would. The concept of being an agressive support, specially with Crystal Maiden is that this specific hero, in my opinion, have the ability to add much more to the team staying alive as much as possible, even if it means sacrificing items like Mekansm, that improve the team's survival, and going for items like Vanguard, that will help you to survive during mid game and "early late game" (does that exist? haha), thus rendering you a better chance to strike an awesome and powerfull Freezing Field. The heal that Mekansm will give you, plus the aura, plus the armour are not worth to me comparing to the long and short benefits of the Vanguard. The main thing about Vanguard and Stout Shield is that you are supposed to "tank" the lane for your partner while he does the damage. For example: Crystal Maiden and a Bounty Hunter are laning against a whisp and a Clinkz, you job as an agressive support is: Deny your creeps, Ward, Poke them with Frostbite + normal attack and tank the damage they would deal to your Bounty Hunter. (you would do that by giving them a better chance to strike you without getting hit back instead of hittting Bounty Hunter and those are the moments that you have to read their movements and Frostbite them while they are on the way to hit you). If you don't have the Stout Shield and later on the Vanguard, the damage will be more than you can tank, and you wont be able to stay in lane too much, leaving your lane partner vulnerable.

About the Black King Bar and the Ethereal Blade, I agree that Black King Bar is a great way to strike a full Freezing Field, but with the adition of an Ethereal Blade, you can completely shutdown a heroe that is making hard the life of your carry. I cited Ethereal Blade as a really situational item, since in most of the games you wont need it, or you wont have the money. I can remember a situation where the was an Axe and a centaur really messing up with my carry, a Bloodseeker, my only option was to sell most of my items to buy a Black King Bar so I could give a full Freezing Field, and an Ethereal Blade, so i could shutdown the axe's hits and damage him the most before my carry attacked him. It worked, my team won. Ethereal Blade is a very expensive and situational item, but you can't deny it's power when used properly.

And I'm sorry, but Crystal Maiden is one of the best support heroes in the whole game, and if played correctly, can deal a massive amount of damage to all the 5 enemy heroes. If played agressively, Crystal Maiden's nuking gets even more powerfull.

I disagree that Treds is a bad item choice on Crystal Maiden.

Most CM's in pro games will just run around with brown boots, but seldom do they spend money on Tranquils. +152 Health and the ability to tred switch to limit mana usage is really useful.

and on the point of mek. If someone needs survivability on CM, Mek is not the way to go. Assuming you are playing a real game, you will have 2 supports at least. The other support is the number 4 and will always be a better mek carrier than CM (if your team doesn't have one still get a mek)

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Your Crystal Maiden has a lot of farm I must say. I mean she is able to hold 850 gold for Ring of Health and 1100 gold for a Vitality Booster while still supporting at least one set of wards every 6 minutes, and roaming the map performing ganks, getting last hits only from jungle creeps through stack pulling.

Sure, assist gold is nice.

You certainly do have an interesting way of looking at crystal maiden, I must say.

>Focus on Frostbite because it is a 'stun' and not on Crystal Nova which is an area of effect slow that does more damage overall at all levels.

>Obviously getting a Vanguard on a Ranged hero that doesn't get farm. But that has already been covered and I know that isn't going to change (nor is likely anything in this guide since you probably won't bother reading what people have to say. You 'predicted it all' already and know you are right.

>No Force Staff, which with Crystal Maiden having the lowest move speed in the game next to (not counting Goblin Lackies), her squishyness and lack of escape, and the cheapness of the components of a force staff, many would consider it core.

>Ult at standard levels, which is usually skipped because she really doesn't want to be in the middle of the action mid game (even with Vanguard) and there isn't nearly as much need for it when it isn't 5 man dota.

>Aura... just getting multiple points in general without having any sort of clarification that it is optional. "main support skill" and "you don't need more damage" caught my eye. With this one, I am legitimately distraught...


Crystal Maiden is easily the hardest support in the game. Very capable of getting first blood consistently. Her issue is the she is slow and scales horribly late game (which is the sign of her support role.) 'The strongest level 3 hero and weakest level 25 hero in the game'

In many cases, after 1 or 2 points of aura, you will just want to get stats. Especially since Aura has diminishing returns, especially late game. Getting stat items and putting points into stats for HP is one of the best things you can do for your team, since it helps you not die.

Now I am not saying your guide is wrong per say. I am just saying it is like no other crystal maiden I have ever seen before, and I would really like to see some feedback on the points I presented

I agree partially with the vanguard choice, CM is a poor mek carrier because she is not that tanky. I would suggest going tranquil boots + a vitality booster as an alternative. They armor and active from the boots compensates for the damage block and heal, while you get the +250 hp from the causal vitality booster.

Skill build is weird. Frostbite scales pretty poorly after the second level (70 damage per second so it does 70/140/140/210 damage), while nova scales much better. Also maxing nova allows you to get quick last hits when no one is farming a wave (melee creeps at half health + ranged creep damaged once). For nova also reduces auto attacking heroes dps by more than 25% early game.

Finally include a Force Staff somewhere. Overall this is decent, but you need more color and pictures. Using double brackets is a start [ [item /hero here] ] (no space between brackets)

You keep saying that you get the best results with vanguard, but that's not what being a support is about. Mek gives you a supporting aura, awesome heal, and costs about the same amount of gold. There is no reason to have vanguard other than to be different. Also, treads give 8 str for survivability. That's it. The attack speed is wasted. If one needs survivability on CM than one needs to grab a mek. If you aren't survivable (I don't think tanky is the right word for cm) and you have a good amount of gold sitting around, an eth blade is completely useless compared to bkb (which you have listed) and even a linken's sphere would be better. Offensively, CM doesn't have the right toolkit to be as powerful as other support/nukers. There's no built in survivability.

I agree with the boot choice and urn o.o!

I will answer all of your questions in a few minutes! Just finishing a game here. Thank you all for the feedback!

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About the Vanguard:

I've tried using mek and vanguard, and I always get the best results with vanguard. The main difference, in my opinion, is that vanguard gives you a better defense against the enemy team when they focus you. But if you can build a Mekansm as fast as you can build the Vanguard, i'd say it's fine to substitute. But the main thing is that you have to really play agressive and get kills early on, that way you will able to get Vanguard/Mekansm in like 13-15 minutes.

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Treads:

Why treads and not Mana boots? As I've shown in the Skill sequence, you will get arcane aura leveled up really soon, so you won't need the mana boots, plus, with the upgrade on arcane aura (double regen), the Treads are way better to have. Treads is way better for CM because it give you nice stats PLUS you can change from STR/AGI/INT any time you want, giving you either HP/ARMOUR/MANA, wich can really save you sometimes.

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Drums:

The reason you need drums is simply to give your carry one more free slot, simple as that. Giving him that free slot can really change the game.

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Rod of Atos:

It is a really good item actually and I forgot to put him on the guide, I'm sorry. But i consider it a luxury item, since its expensive and it's effect is not so good against the other items. Slow? Man, you got 3 slowing skills, use that in your favour.

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Situational:

Shadow Blade:
I really don't like Shadow Blade, it's probably the worse item a CM can have, BUT, since a lot of playes like doing it, and it sometimes work, I've putted it in there.

Aghanin:
Aghanin is an OK item, it will give you a lot more damage and slow while giving you nice stats, but there are other items as good as such.

Ethereal Blade:
Physical damage disable + magical damage amplification? Guys, this is one of the BEST ITEMS for CM on really late games.

Orchid:
Is that line bothering your team? Silence that *****.

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What happens is, mostly of the games i play like this, i end up with my CM having: Treads, Vanguard, Dagger and Drums. You will rarelly end up with more items, because the game will end quickly. About the gold CM will get, that's why you need to play agressive, to get the most assists + kill as you can, and as quick as you can.