Leno's Drow

Drow Guide

Where to Lane her:

I like to go to the long lane when playing Drow. The reasons being:
1. If you go mid with Drow the enemy can easily beat you with many mid heroes.
2. If you go to the safe lane you're still very easy to kill.
3. Drow can, at a push, fight a 2 v 1 lane with her Q and W it makes escapes quite easy depending on the enemy heroes.

Introduction

Drow is renowned to be one of the easiest heroes to play because all you do is use her Q and get kills easily. Now, she has been given nerfs in the past, I don't really follow all the changes but they clearly changed her W from an AOE Silence to a skill shot silence with a mini-stun (the knockback is basically a mini-stun). Being easy does not make her easy to dominate with, she is incredibly easy to counter and playing against those counters takes practice and patience but when you can play against them you will become an unstoppable wrecking ball in your games.

Items

Items:

I like to purchase a Ring of Aquila asap in the long lane for stats and general goodness from the item. You may look over the ring and go straight for boots but trust me do not do this. The reasons being is that stats do very well for Drow, building agility on her gives her better attack speed (which you will want so bad), extra damage and higher armour. I then like to build Poor Man's shield for survivability and the extra agility it gives you, also it's not very expensive.

After the Ring I purchase Phase Boots mainly for escape reasons. Before you get a Shadowblade you're going to be pretty easy to gank and Phase Boots makes it so you can escape quite a lot of heroes, with a couple of them with your Frost Arrows on them you won't be seeing the pool for quite a while. Most people buy Power Treads on her which is viable but personally I feel like you're too slow and the fact that you can get blocked by creeps/enemies just annoys me to no end.

Now, depending on the heroes you're against you're most likely going to want to buy Shadowblade. There are some heroes you won't want to build it for, Slardar or Bounty Hunter just to name a couple because they will put their Ulty on you and will see you even when you're using SB. However, it can still be a very handy item against those heroes because of the extra movement speed it gives you, they might decide to try their luck when you're on full HP and you would activate it immediately and run away. If you didn't have it you'd probably die even with full HP. Shadowblade also gives you bonus damage for your first auto attack coming out of the invis so it's very handy for ganking and/or tracking down an enemy who has escaped during a teamfight.

Next, I build Maelstrom for the attack speed and the much needed lightning bolt. For a long time if you don't build this item you will want cleave, you will want to be easily pushing lanes and rupturing through the entire enemy team. Personally, this item does it all and as I said earlier building attack speed on Drow is the bread and butter to her 15 kill streaks. With higher attack speed it is so much easier to kite enemy heroes because when she has a low attack speed it takes ages for her attack animation to actually fire an arrow compared to other ranged heroes. Once you've built this item it's pretty hard for the enemy team to kill you matched with your phase boots and shadowblade you'll be pretty annoying.

Now, many people don't like the item but because Drow is a complete glass cannon (meaning she has a tiny HP pool but huge damage output) but I like to build Vanguard on her. It is very helpful because without it she will have about 2 HP regen which feels very slow and if you ever get focused you will die in a blink of an eye. With a HP pool which lies around 1k for the entire game that is why I build Vanguard.

However depending on the situation I like to build Drums first instead and then build into the Vanguard. I usually build both on her for stats, movement speed and attack speed from the Drums and the health regen and tankiness from the Vanguard. I usually sell my Poor Man's shield although I believe you can disassemble it, then you could just sell the two slippers and keep the stout shield but for ease I just sell the PM shield and replace it with a Vanguard.

After you've got SB, Vanguard, Drums, Phase boots and Aquila it's time to look to the late game. The time in-game should be between 35 - 45 minutes. Now too build luxury items. Luxury is an important word with Drow. It means you basically do not need these items to kill everyone on their team but... to kill them quicker you should get these items and with the extra gold you may as well but honestly think about what the game demands of you before mindlessly buying these items. These were just a couple of suggestions and many of the BIG items can now be built on her.

Personally I like to get Satanic because it makes her much more beefy and the lifesteal is just insane. I would sell the Aquila to replace with any luxury item and that is items.

Skills

Play Tips:

• Kiting is very important, like it is for Sniper always be on the move. If you sit there and mash out auto attacks you will be easy to hook for Pudge and enemies will have an easier time tracking you down.
  
• Stay well away from enemies, not only does it ruin your passive Marksmanship but you just die too quickly so just stay well away and Frost Arrow them to death.
  
• You should be spamming your E as much as possible, as soon as it comes off cooldown, use it. It uses no mana and can allow your creeps to split push without any allied heroes going to the lane later in the game. There are some pictures online of barracks being destroyed because of Drow's E.
  
• It's kind of counter intuitive but try and max your Q as quickly as possible. The movement speed slow is scarily useful. You will only want one level in W because levels beyond that are just kind of meh.
  
• Remember you are a complete glass cannon just like Sniper so act accordingly.

Pros / Cons

Friends and Foes

Heroes you like

Any support hero will be your friend in-lane. Now I have recommended you go Long Lane but that doesn't always mean as a solo. It's very helpful having someone like Alchemist or Ogre Magi sitting with you, their damage over time mixed with your frost arrows will work dreams.

Heroes that ruin you

• Pudge. You will hate him, especially when he has a blink.
  
• Every hero which is good before 30 minutes.
  
• Gankers.
  
• Teammates who don't ward, you will have to ward in their stead making your farm much less effective and also making yourself very susceptible to ganks by warding areas which are probably already warded by the enemy.

• Phantom Assassin, she can't evade your frost arrows, and the damage for some reason. If she ever uses her Q and blinks on you just W her and Q her to an early grave, being a glass cannon herself whenever she can't evade attacks she is ruined. Although she can evade your normal attacks just as a point.
  
• Enigma. If you don't get caught in his ulty you can just W him and it will ruin him. I believe it goes through BKB but I will update this once tried.
  
• Caster initiators like Tiny or Storm Spirit. They will blink right into your team most of the time just to get silenced and have a nice little knockback on them.
  
• Most strength heroes (not Pudge) because many will have much slower movement speed than yourself and you will be able to kite them easily.
  

Summary

That's all my knowledge for Drow and I hope you enjoy playing with her. Remember to take this guide with a pinch of salt and still play your own way, Dota 2 is very rewarding and you'll be surprised how you can do very well just by playing your own way. :-)