Mid Dazzle... Armor? That's Cute.

Introduction

What you are about to see is the best way to play Dazzle in pubs. No, it's probably not suited for ranked or professional/uber high level play and I don't care. All I have here for you is a fun, effective and awesome Dazzle build you can use to wreck scrubs any day of the week. This build is VERY effective against heroes who rely on a lot of armor or don't have much to begin with as it's based around physical damage and armor reduction. This build is also really fun to play and is heavily centred around ganking and having general map control. If you die more than once early it is really difficult to catch up, so make sure you play carefully.

Pros/Cons

Pros:

High damage output
Good against armor intensive/squishy heroes
Strong ganking capabilities
Excessively fun
Dazzle has an amazing animation for last-hitting/denying in mid

Cons:

Very easily ganked
Squishy squashy
Very difficult to recover from more than 1 death early on

Items

Starting Items:

We're going light on starting items as bottle is pretty important for you to be able to stay in lane and gank actively.

Early Game:

Bottle has already been explained, so let's continue. Brown boots are important for you to be able to escape ganks at this point in the game. We won't be traveling out of mid except for runes so instead of upgrading out boots we will grab an urn of shadows. The stats on Urn are wonderful for Dazzle and the active both secures kills and saves allies.

Core Items:

Phase boots is an important part of this build. You can MAYBE go for treads but I 90% of the time recommend phase. Phase allows for unit walking and speed boosts which will help for both chasing and escaping purposes. Medallion of Courage is one of the most important items. This will significantly decrease enemy armor and make you and your poison touch hit like a truck. Desolator is the creme de la creme of thit build. This item will provide you with amazing damage and armor reduction. Let's just say, medallion+weave+Desolator = a LOT of armor reduction. With Desolator you will be hitting for almost 200 dmg on top of this.

Situational/Extension Items:

Not much to say here. Mobility items if you need them and some tankiness. I would, however recommend getting a Daedalus after Deso as the crits are huge. (2 shotting supports huge)

Skills

Ability Analysis:

Poison Touch

This is your most important ability in the early-mid game. This ability is an insane slow as well as good damage DoT which really makes the hero so powerful early. the ganking possibilities are wonderful with this spell. Also, it gets buffed by your armor reduction as it deals PHYSICAL damage.

Shallow Grave

Shallow grave is rather irrelevant early. We get one level of it early as a precaution but it isn't exactly important until later.

Shadow Wave

This ability is very powerful. It does damage based on how many enemies are around the target. This means that if your whole team is around the enemy, it will deal around 700 damage to them at max level. This spell has huge potential if used well in team fights and ganks and is also a rather potent AoE heal for your team.

Weave

Weave is your most important ability during teamfights. Weave works as an AoE spell. If allies are caught in the radius, they slowly gain armor overtime and if enemies are caught, they slowly lose armor overtime. This spell only adds to the unbelievable armor reduction capability of this hero. Use this offensively and defensively based on your situation.

Overall Gameplay

In the beginning of the game, go to mid with your starting items. Blocking well can help Dazzle a lot in mid as early on he is very squishy and easy to gank and having the wave closer to your tower helps.

As Dazzle mid it is important that you last hit well. DO NOT sacrifice last hits for denies. You're in mid to get an early advantage and to snowball out of ocntrol with that advantage. Once you have bottle and boots it still isn't time to gank. Hopefully, with good last hitting and safe play, your will get your urn of shadows. The time to gank begins in between the time when you get your Urn and complete your Phase Boots.

At this point in the game, you can go to any lane and attempt a gank with your poison touch. This is not easily done solo, so make sure that you have some reliable damage with you while you gank.

Once you have your medallion, you can kill supports solo and contribute a lot to your team with weave, medallion, shadow wave and urn. This is your time to shine. As far as fighting goes, you have several choices. Your ultimate can either be used as a setup, or during the fight. It is up to you to decide whether to use it on your team/the enemy several seconds before attacking to let the buff build, or to use it in the heat of battle and catch both allies and enemies in it to create a large armor difference.

Once you have Desolator, the world is your oyster. You now hit like (even more) of a truck. Roll solo with poison touch+medallion+urn+weave+desolator on an enemy hero and you can kill them extremely quickly. To put it in perspective, let's say I'm fighting an Earthshaker. If Earthshaker is level 16, he has 5.9 armor on average. Maybe more if he has Aghanim's Scepter, so let's say he has 6.3 armor. If I Weave him and wait half the duration of the spell, he has now dropped to -8.7 armor. If I use medallion, he then has lost 6 more armor and is now at -14.7 armor. Now, earthshaker is inflicted with the desolator debuff and he has -21.7 armor. Weave is still going and his armor is still dropping. Now you must get my point. Insane damage.

The name of the game late game is to gank solo heroes and provide support and damage for your team in teamfights. Stay calm and 2-shot everything, why don't you. (more will be added. WIP)