Items
Item builds
Basically there are 3 ways to build
Lina.
Build 1
You can focus on being a
SUPPORT LINA, and you will have to buy either wards all game or big support items like
Mekansm,
Force Staff and
Scythe of Vyse. In this build you will try to deny, secure your carry last hits and most of your money will come from kills, ganks and assists (it is very rewarding to get big items just from that).
You will have to be present in most teamfights and dealing the biggest amount possible of damage from the backrow, popping
Mekansm and providing as much CC as you can.
Build 2
If your team has a lot of tanky heroes or at least ones which can survive a pretty long fight without you, you can try to build
PUSHING LINA and try to go for a
RAT DOTO strategy. It is not advisable for most cases, but if your team can create a pretty long distraction and they lack pushing power this may seem the right way.
This build is sincerely not popular for a
Lina but I have tried it and found it unbelievably effective at taking towers, in fact it won a game which would have been unwinnable otherwise. This build requires you to be doing really good and will take you from the support role to a pusher which ressembles
Nature's Prophet.
Go for this build
IF your team needs the pushing power or it would lose and they can survive without you.
Build 3
This build is turning the redhair into
BATTLE LINA, turning her into a devastating force. I have never built her into a carry nor does this guide focus on doing that so I won't talk about it (there are other guides on dotafire that already do).
SUPPORT LINA
Well although a lot of guides divide their items in categories I will do something different here: I will first remind you of the amount of inventory slots you have (6) and then from there see how you can fill those items with the sole exception of starting items, it's not until you need a tp scroll that you realize how little space you actually have.
SPEEDY LINA
Lina is extremely squishy and can die pretty easily, also buying items that make her tankier require some farm that could be going for your carry and will only keep you alive a bit longer. However there is a way to fix this problem without using much money and that is to go make
Lina faster. Making her faster can help her both chase and flee better. Moreover this build provides mana regen, a setup for your stun, health regen, armor, a bigger mana pool and with only 2 items and barely 4k gold!! What is more it allows you to have enough money to spend on utility items such as wards.
PLAYING AS WARD PLACER
This is not fun to do most of the times, it's even frustrating when someone in the other team is dewarding you and you have to spend more money on wards and sentries leading to a ward war -rarely seen in pubs- but just having vision can save your life, your carry's life, and help your midlaner just for the price of 150 gold (350 if you bought sentries -as a good support should- too).
If you thnk about it how many times have you died because you didn't see pudge coming to gank and your midlaner didn't call missing? Forget the team for a minute and the single ward you placed can save YOU from your opponents and from your not focused (noob) teammates too. So if nobody is warding you should buy wards and YOU decide where to place them so YOU are safe. Remember, sometimes a game can be all about YOU, so you can buy wards to protect you and your possibly idiotic teammate. Warding alone won't win you a game, but will indeed help you to do it.
STARTING ITEMS
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Tango will give you some much needed health regen in lane and you may need to pool (give) some to your midlaner if he asks. Usually having one is enough, buy 2 sets if you expect heavy harass.
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Iron Branch gives you stats, which translate into hitpoitns, mana and armor. Having 3 of these gives you an extra 57 health and build into a magic wand, in some games this will be one of the biggest items you will be able to afford, and it can save you from ganks early game (sometimes) or supply you with enough mana to cast a spell and secure (or steal) a kill.
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Clarity - Mana regen if you used your spells or to give to your carry if he needs it.
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Until now you have spent this amount of gold:
150 Iron Branch x3
150 Observer Ward
125 Tango
50 Clarity
475 Gold spent
You remain with 625 - 475 = 150 remaining gold. In pubs you'll probably be the only support, so you could buy the
Animal Courier too, which costs exactly 150 gold. Courier is extremely important, if you picked late and don't have enough money forget one
Iron Branch, games where nobody buys a courier are sad games.
Otherwise you can buy a
Healing Salve for you or your carry, whoever needs it. If you think you will be laning against an invis hero like
Bounty Hunter,
Weaver or
Clinkz buying only 2
Iron Branchs will leave you with enough gold to purchase
Sentry Wards. It does not sound logic at all but playing against invisible heroes turns extremely easy if you keep buying
Sentry Wards, you will see them coming every time and as easy as they came in they died, you should have at least one always in your inventory and if your team is planning to push a lane, surround it with the safety of sentries, there's just no limit to the amount you can buy. Also useful when you see a
Crystal Maiden on the other team and deward her (vision + money).
EARLY GAME
Well now you should start counting the amount of empty slots in your inventory. So let's start with what is a need for every hero.
Boots of Speed help you move faster to chase enemies and flee from them too. They are the basic boots and you may get them at minute 8 if you got a couple of kills or by the 15 minute mark if you had to buy lots of sentries and have died a couple of times. After the 17 minute mark, they are a priority over wards, you need them to live.
Town Portal Scroll, also known as "tp", this single item lets you help your teammates even if they are on the on the other side of the map, it literally can turn a gank from the other team in a countergank from your team, keep your eyes open and you may find easy kills on the other lanes. Tping to help your teammates will either stop the other team from chasing or ensure you a kill (careful to not tp in a bad situation, that may cause you to die stupidly)
Magic Wand or
Urn of Shadows give you life and some basic regeneration. neither of them will provide you with wnough regen to just span all your abilities, but they give you enough regeneration so as to not go back to your fountain every 2 minutes. The diffrences between them is 375 gold, being the urn more expensive, and that the wand provides a lower but instant heal while the urn provides a bigger but not instant heal and a 150 damage nuke. If you are going defensive and your lane opponents spam a lot of spells go for
Magic Wand, if on the other side you are going agressive and plan to get kills early go for urn, it will let you be agressive and be back with full health in little to no time (if you got the kill)
Obsrever ward, having one slot for wards always available helps doing your job (placing wards) a lot easier.
Ok so far we have 4 ocuppied slots, which means that we will only have 2 empty slots for items. If you go so far as to play a good support you will fill one slot with another support/utility item such as
Dust of Appearance,
Smoke of Deceit or
Sentry Wards to either help you deal with invis heroes or gank somebody with the smoke without having the other team's wards seeing you (not even sentires). So you have only one slot available to purchase an item to help yourself and your team.
CORE
So there are a lot of items you can choose from to fill that empty slot depending on your team and your opponents. I will go from the most common items to the more situational ones.
Eul's Scepter of Divinity is a great item for Lina, it provides you with 150% mana regen to keep casting your spells; 10 intelligence, which is the same as a bigger mana pool and 10 extra damage; 40 movement speed, to further chase or escape your enemies; an instant disable, great to help you at landing your stun, disabling an important hero at the start of a teamfight, making fun of
Faceless Void in his own
Chronosphere, stop somebody from chasing you, and be immune from damage for 2.5 seconds. Really a jack of all trades.
Tranquil Boots are cheap and provide you with lots of movement speed, armor and health regeneration. Even though they can be "broken" and you lose the regen the armor doesn't and you still have a lot of move speed. If you add
Eul's Scepter of Divinity and
Fiery Soul you end being one of the fastest heroes of the game. That's why I also call it the
Speedy lina] Build[/color]. They are also extremely good against [[necrophos' Heartstopper Aura and opponents who harass mainly with nukes such as Powershot.
CORE EXTENSION
Force Staff provides some much needed mobility, an escape to enemies who slow you to kill you like Skywrath Mage or Lifestealer or get some distance from those who get close to you like Pudge after he hooked you or Spirit Breaker after he charge or ulted you. It can also help you save allies from death and does not break after being attacked.
Blink Dagger provides excellent folllow up for your initiators. Using it to initiate first is discouraged as you will be easily obliterated after jumping in. As you will be in charge of warding it will be very unlikely for you to be able to afford this, however if you had an excellent early game and started snowballing out of control this item might be the best choice in order to keep you at an advantage.
Ghost Scepter is great in late game when you are against a lot of physical damage and enables you to live after landing your combo. Also provides some minor stats.
Orchid Malevolence is extremely useful when you need a silence to either stop Storm Spirit from killing everyone or make sure Anti-Mage or Queen of Pain dies before they can Blink away. Provides also some good mana regen, mana pool, attack speed and damage, but the most important part is that it gives you a way to silence people (and amplify your magic damage). Made from cheap parts so it´s easy to build.
Vladmir's Offering is not an usual item but it´s not bad if you have a melee carry who needs the lifesteal, besides it provides basic mana and health regen that you really need and has an armor aura that can help you push lanes and protect your team members.
Drum of Endurance are usually built by carries because they give extra health, mana and movement speed. Build this if no one on your team has built it and you need it to live. Use it when chasing or fleeing, and I don´t advise you to rebuy the recipe for more charges.
PLAYING AS MEKANSM MAKER
I have explained why warding is extremely (yes, EXTREMELY) important, but wards are not the only support items in Dota. This should be done when your fellow support player understands the importance of being a warder, and you can go for other items to help your team (and yourself). Depending on who you are against and who you are with you should decide what item are most needed, some of them may not be supportive at all but it may win you the game. Going for mek is not ideal on Lina as it delays getting euls, but if you had a great start and your team plans on fighting early getting Mekansm can turn the battle into your favour. Besides it gives you armor and sme stats which is realy useful
STARTING ITEMS
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Tango will give you some much needed health regen in lane and you may need to pool (give) some to your midlaner if he asks. Usually having one is enough, buy 2 sets if you expect heavy harass.
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Clarity - Mana regen if you used your spells or to give to your carry if he needs it.
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Ring of |
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Ring of Protection gives extra 3 armor which can be really useful if yu are planning on trading hits with the enemy, I usually buy this when someone else bought the wards and I get just enough money for it. Besides it can be turned into a Ring of Basilius which gives extra mana and armor to your laning partner and can help push the lane when you turn it off. Remember to turn it off if you don't want to push the lane.
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CORE
Arcane Boots provide two things essential for
Lina: a bigger mana pool to cast her spells and mana regen for you and your teammates. If your teammates need a lot of mana this boots are the best selection, and considering you will need more mana to use
Mekansm this boots are a must.
Mekansm, the item I have talked too much about already. This item is good for early fights, gives you survivability, aids in pushing line-ups and can save your teammates. On the average game you will complete mek around the 22 minute mark, also it is not worth getting it after minute 30 as it loses effectiveness as the time goes by and the opponents deal more damage. Also if someone else is buying it such as
Viper,
Razor,
Chen,
Enigma or any other core hero they will get it faster and considering that having one is enough you should go for the straight euls build.
Eul's Scepter of Divinity is a great item for Lina, it provides you with 150% mana regen to keep casting your spells; 10 intelligence, which is the same as a bigger mana pool and 10 extra damage; 40 movement speed, to further chase or escape your enemies; an instant disable, great to help you at landing your stun, disabling an important hero at the start of a teamfight, making fun of
Faceless Void in his own
Chronosphere, stop somebody from chasing you, and be immune from damage for 2.5 seconds. Really a jack of all trades.
Aghanim's Scepter gives you hit points, mana and stats. However the most important thing is that it increases your burst damage and allows you to be useful even when the opponents have bought bkb. This item is excellent to transition into late game and can be considered core if you want to transition into late game as a semi carry. That being said you will need someone else to buy utility items for your team the whole game. If you are lacking one component you can get it by flash farming most of the jungle with your spells once or twice.
PUSHING LINA
As I said before I have tried building her like this very few times but found this a needed measure to win the game as we lost all teamfights but I remained alive. This strategy will help your teammates with tower gold even if they are dying in the distraction. There are some points needed to take into account when trying for this build.
- You find yourself barely dying and getting ahead of your team in terms of money and/or exp. This turns you into the one to do something and enables you to buy items to hasten your push
- Your team is made up by heroes who are able to take a lot of damage or have a good escape mechanism against the opponents, this means they can distract the other team and kite them for a while while you push and take down their towers in the opposite lane, safe from danger
- You are able to realize when the other team is focused on something that is not your push so you can take their towers and leave before they come to kill you. This RAT dOTO instinc is vital to playing pushing lina
This build as I said is extremely situational yet it is extremely effective. Besides the always trustworthy
Eul's Scepter of Divinity you must get 2 items.
Necronomicon is by far the best pushing item in the game. Activate it when you reach the tower and its health will drastically reduce. Your spells are the best for clearing creepwaves so you should focus on the creeps while your minions kill the tower, do not forget that the ranged creep has a speed aura that makes your push faster so don't let it die if you can. Take advantage of them being separate units and leave them pushing while you run so you can finish destroying the building while they chase you This item also gives you extra strength and intelligence.
Desolator gives you a lot of damage and decreases the armor of towers, making it one of the best pushing items for
Lina as she has a decent right click damage, which with
Fiery Soul and the minus armor helps her melt towers really fast.
Friends and foes
Lina as any other lady, has some preference when choosing a battle so I´ll repeat what her main strengths and weaknesses are:
-lot of magic damage
-aoe stun
-lategame transition
-Extremely squishy
-Hard to land stun
-Level dependant
Friends
Lina needs some people to let her land her stun properly, which means that they either have a slow or a sure stun. Some of these heroes are:
Sven,
Wraith King,
Chaos Knight,
Drow Ranger,
Phantom Assassin,
Tiny,
Dragon Knight,
Alchemist,
Gyrocopter,
Lifestealer,
Slardar
Crystal Maiden,
Jakiro,
Venomancer,
Bane,
Ogre Magi,
Vengeful Spirit,
Pugna, earth shaker,
Lion,
Rubick,
Sand King.
A special mention goes to
Phantom Assassin as your partner as she is a good companion all throughout the game. In early game in a standard dual lane it is fairly easy to get kills and snowball if you have coordination, a %50 Movement speed slow from
Stifling Dagger is a pretty good setup for your stun, besides Mortred needs your nuke damage to finish the job. In mid game
Lina will be a force to be feared, able to one shot one of the other team's supports or lower the life of a carry to dangerous level. When late game arrives your spells will not be as useful, but phantom assasin will be doing tons of damage. To sum up this combo covers every stage of the game, however, it may fail in early game against a lane which contains strong healers like
Omniknight,
Abaddon and maybe a good
Dazzle can screw you up in your intent of snowballing.
Foes
Though it is not impossible to kill them, heroes who have a lot of magic resisance and an unfair amount of hitpoints turn
Lina into a much smaller threat as they are made to tank through strong nukes:
Abaddon, anti mage,
Axe,
Bristleback,
Centaur Warrunner ,
Doom,
Dragon Knight,
Elder Titan,
Huskar,
Lone Druid in bear form,
Night Stalker,
Ogre Magi,
Pudge,
Razor,
Slardar,
Spirit Breaker,
Tidehunter,
Tiny,
Undying,
Viper,
Visage, wraith king]].
As the game progressess you will only be able to take half their hitpoints with your whole combo, yet you must keep in mind that these kind of heroes don't exactly counter you, they just make you less effective as you can still help into taking somebody down fast.
Besides this heroes, heavy nukers also are a challenge for
Lina as she has a rather low strength gain and since you are probably playing her support (if you are following this guide) you wont be able to afford items to improve your hp by huge amounts. I will not include all carries because they all deal damage at late game, but those which have nuke damage relevant from early to mid game.
Centaur Warrunner ,
Death Prophet if not killed fast enough,
Earthshaker,
Gyrocopter,
Huskar's damned
Burning Spear's,
Invoker,
Juggernaut,
Lich,
Lion,
Luna, nyx assasin,
Ogre Magi,
Puck,
Pudge,
Pugna especially with his
Nether Ward,
Queen of Pain,
Shadow Fiend,
Riki,
Skywrath Mage,
Storm Spirit,
Timbersaw,
Tinker,
Tiny,
Ursa,
Zeus
In order to deal with most of this heroes you should be the one initiating and killing them, as they are in a pretty similiar situation: small hp bar and lots of nuke damage. If you are the one initiating you will kill them before they kill you.
The last bunch of heroes that
Lina hates to be against are those who don't let her use her spells, either because they eat her mana / silence her / are magic immune.
anti mage,
Death Prophet,
Doom,
Drow Ranger,
Invoker,
Juggernaut,
Keeper of the Light,
Lifestealer,
Night Stalker,
Nyx Assassin,
Omniknight,
Puck,
Phantom Lancer with
Diffusal Blade,
Riki,
Skywrath Mage.
Items against you
Blade Mail is used by most tanks, be careful when throwing your spells as you will also suffer the damage.
Black King Bar basically renders you useless unless you have an
Aghanim's Scepter
Orchid Malevolence stops you from using your spells long enough to get killed.
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