My Girl, My Girl, My Girl, Talkin 'bout my Girl | A DibsMid Guide

Introduction

Mirana is my girl. She takes skill and smarts to play well, and those arrows make the game more dramatic than any TNT show. It took me a lot of courage to start playing with her, since she is very tough to play with correctly. Although once I started playing a couple of games with her I was hooked. Timing, anticipation, and situational skill usage are all things I learned from playing Mirana. Learning a hero that takes a lot of skill to use makes you love the games you play well in, and makes you strive to do better in the games you play badly in. Just making this guide has made me learn many things I didn't know about items, other heroes, and Mirana herself. I recommend this hero for more intermediate to advanced players, but if you are new and want to play her, **** it, play her. She is a great hero that helps you get a much deeper understand of the game as a whole.

Before we begin, this is a guide that specifically focuses on playing in a solo middle lane, but that doesn't mean this guide wont be useful for lane play too. These are my personal builds that I have used in pub matches and know they work from experience, but they are only pubs. It might work for higher levels of play, but I wouldn't know. So without further ado, here is my guide to that sexy moon princess, Mirana.

Hero Introduction

Mirana is a very versatile hero that can fill many roles for your team. She is best played as a ganker in the early game with an eventual shift towards being a semi-carry. She CAN be played as a hard carry, but is quite a weak hard carry role and requires ridiculous amounts of farm. If you are farming the entire game you can't take advantage of her amazing skillset. She is a very strong roamer, but requires very good team coordination which is hard to find in pubs. As a support, you at least get to take advantage of you skills, but you will not be filling the role of a damage dealer.

Mirana is a great mid lane, but can also solo the side lane too. The difference is you will get leap at level 1. You will get levels pretty much the same as the mid lane, but your last hitting will be much harder and will get gold much slower.

Pros + Can fit into almost any line-up + Has a global ultimate that affects the entire team + High magical burst damage + Not item dependent early/mid game (great for ganking) + Can quickly farm items for late game with Starstorm + Can solo the side lanes

Cons and Solutions Problem: Heavily dependent on personal skill Solution: Play, practice, and learn Problem: Her stun is a skill shot Solution: Use teamwork and chain stun Problem: She is quite mana intensive Solution: Manage your mana better Problem: Item dependent to be useful late game Solution: Farming with Starstorm

Skills

Starstorm This is your main nuke and farming skill. It has quite a hefty mana cost at the beginning of the game so use it sparingly, once you get your bottle you can use it more readily, but don't farm with it. Try to save it to use on enemy heroes. When the game moves away from ganking and more towards the mid game is when you can begin to use it for farming. Make sure you don't use up all of your mana just farming though, you will want to save some for fights, or for an emergency Moonlight Shadow.

Arrow

Arrow This is what makes Mirana so much gosh darn fun. Arrow is a skill shot so you cannot click on the hero for it to land such as Lion's Earth Spike. Good players will see this coming and the arrow travels slow enough to dodge pretty easily, so the best way to utilize arrows is to shoot from the fog or to chain stuns. The longer the arrow travels, the longer the stun is, but also makes it much harder to land. This is where communication with your team is essential to set-up a coordinated gank with set targets and chain stuns.

Leap This is both an escape mechanism as well as a way to initiate. For the leap, you jump in the direction you are facing, so make sure you are facing the way you want to before you make the jump. For escaping, it's pretty simple. If you get into some trouble, leap out to the place you are most likely to get away (into woods, into fog, over cliffs, etc). For initiation it's a little harder to know when to leap. For a gank on a side lane you might land an arrow from the woods then Leap over the trees to land a Starstorm. Maybe you need to Leap to get into position to land your arrow. It is usually not the smartest idea to be the first to leap into a team fight since you are on the squishier side, but it is not always a bad idea. Analyze your situation and see what will most benefit your team.

Moonlight Shadow Another skill that can be used in both an offensive or defensively manner. Defensively is what it is mostly used for, to allow you, an ally across the map, or your entire team from being killed. There is a fade time on the invisibility, so make sure to get it off before it's too late. It's a good rule of thumb to always have enough mana to be able to use it at anytime. A much more rare and underrated way to use it is to gank or initiate team fights. It works just like smoke, except better as you can as close as you want to the enemy team without losing the invisibility. This can set a Tide up for the perfect Ravage or for Shadow Fiend's Requiem of Souls. You can always put a level into Moonlight Shadow at level six, I just personally prefer it later as I usually don't have the mana for it at that level and it usually isn't needed as much.

Ménage à Trois (Manta Style Build)

This build is the biggest potential damage dealer of all the builds, due to the Manta Style

Just the basic stat items and regen. Nothin' special. Make sure to creep block per usual folks.





Items: Your priorities are getting your Bottle and Boots of Speed so you can begin to gank and/or put some heavy pressure on the enemy mid hero. The Wraith Band and Magic Wand are situational, the Wraith Band can be built into a Ring of Aquila which is good for your mana issues and makes you a little more beefy.

Playstyle: Remember that rune control is essential, ask your supports to put a ward up on one of the rune spots so you know where to go. If they wont do that, first of all, **** them. Secondly, remember that the top rune is always quicker to check than the bottom rune. Try to make your ganks quick and get back to your lane, don't linger around too long because you will need to keep getting that experience to get those levels to keep givin em hell.




Items: If you did well or the early game lasted a while you might have Power Treads or Ring of Aquila (if you decided to pick it up). The next thing you are looking to get is Yasha, giving you a great speed bonus and the DPS required for you at this point in the game. ALWAYS have a TP scroll on you, not sometimes have one, not every once in a while have one. No, ALWAYS. Pick up Manta Style after this, just giving you mad DPS with the illusions. You can always get Aquila or a Wraith Band after Manta Style, although I usually feel I don't need them at that point. As for any carry, Black King Bar is always an option to deploy you DPS without worry of getting stunned, sheeped, or whatever else magic balogna the team tries to throw at you. Linken's Sphere can be gotten before or after Manta. It is a good item if you are not going for as much DPS and are going for more of a pushing strat. Although it's expensive, it gives great stats, HP & mana regen, and a little extra damage. The mana regen lets you spam starstorm so much more which really helps both pushing and counter pushing. Although the pushing usefulness of this lies in the passive, Spellblock.

Story Time: You just got Linken's Sphere and the game is close. You guys need to push badly because the enemy carry is a much harder carry than yours (e.g. Anti-Mage vs Bounty Hunter). So you definitely want to end it earlier than later. The enemy have all their tier 2 towers up. You are on the radiant side so you push the bottom lane as your entire team pushes the top lane. The enemy team see's you, a lone hero pushing by herself. "What a juicy target to feed on" they think, so they try to come gank you. You are staying near the outside forest treeline as to have the most time to get out of trouble if it happens, as you are approaching the next wave you see them. Windrunner throws a Shackleshot at you, but the Linken's Sphere keeps it from stunning you. You turn towards the trees and Leap, and then you use the trusty TP scroll you always have to go back to base. In the mean time, your team has taken a free tower because the other team wasted so much time going for you. Now of course you buy another TP scroll and head back down to the bottom lane. Your team had to come back to base for a little bit but are now on their way to pushing the top again. This time the team doesn't know what to do. They can go for you and risk losing another tower and maybe get you now that they know you have Linken's, but probably not because you are pushing carefully now. They could defend their top tower and initiate a 4v5 fight, but you team is also playing carefully because they know you are not there. That is what they decide to do and you take the bottom tower down, at the cost of 2 of your teammates lives. The enemy Tide wasted his ult and their Windrunner died, so you guys have more than enough power to defend your towers until your teammates respawn. You then wipe their team in the next time fight, and the Windrunner that was talking **** and feeding all game rage quits and you are sitting there feeling sorry for the guy because he is an immature poor sport who needs to lighten up and probably get laid. They you win and your whole team gets rare items. tl;dr Split push and when ganked Linken's will dodge stuns and you Leap into the forest then TP out.

That is only one strategy to Linken's Sphere. There are more many more benefits to having it (Deflecting all Stuns, strong nukes like Laguna Blade, Doom, Rupture, etc), I just have personally found this strategy extremely effective. This strategy is also much stronger with a Manta Style, which will let you take down the tower extremely fast with the illusions.

Playstyle: Mid game starts about the time that people are leaving the lanes. Here you typically want to be constantly putting pressure on the enemy towers, forcing them to defend and use TP scrolls and whatnot. You will be able to use your Starstorm much more often now, and using it to push and farm. Always carry TP's to defend a tower or to move to your team for an impending team fight, never be just chillin' and doing nothing. You can use your arrow to initiate, if it lands that is. If it does, then hopefully you have teammates with other sorts of initiating skills that will follow up your arrow, and once in the team fight use your Starstorm to rain hell on 'em. If the fight is going badly, might be useful to use Moonlight Shadow, but remember there is a fade time.

In my opinion, all late game items are situational and depend on both the roles you are playing on your team as well as the composition of the enemy team.

Daedalus This synergizes very will with Manta Style, as the critical strike is passed to your illusions. Getting even just a Crystalys would be a big boost to your DPS.

Butterfly This synergizes very will with Manta Style as well, as the stats and evasion will both pass over to your illusions. Sadly the damage and attack speed do not transfer over to them :'(

Orchid Malevolence This is typically what I would go for if I have gotten Linken's Sphere as you are less DPS and more utility. Orchid's attack speed and damage will work for you, but not your illusions, although the silence and 25% damage amp make up for that somewhat.

Monkey King Bar The damage increase and mini bash do not transfer over to your illusions, and you money would be much better spent on another item which will transfer over.

Assault Cuirass Same dealio, your illusions don't get the armor and attack speed aura bonus.

Playstyle: At this point of the game there is not much I can tell you on specifically Mirana that I haven't already told you. You are no the tankies of heroes so don't go rambo. As well, silence would pretty much knocks you on your *** any other time, but Manta Style removes negative buffs, so make sure to keep that in mind on planning when you want to use it.

*Note: With manta style, the illusions do not take any orb effect item you have. The animation looks like they do, but that is so the enemy cannot distinguish you and the illusions by your attack. Attack bonuses as well as armor bonuses and attack speed bonuses from items you have do not transfer over to your illusions. Auras that give armor and attack speed, such as those from Assault Cuirass also will not effect your illusions. The mini bash from Monkey King Bar wont be activated by your illusions either. That is why we tend avoid these kind of items on the Manta Style Build, but should not be discounted only because the effects aren't stacked on the illusions. Stat increses, mana increases, and health increases are what transfer over to your illusions, as well as evasion bonuses and critical strikes. There are times where you may need to shift from being the heavy damage dealer to a more semi-carry role, even with manta style.

Diffusal Blade This has good intelligence and agility buffs and the mana burn is very handy, but is not a good item to grab if you are going for pure DPS. The slow is EXTREMELY effective to focus down a hero with your illusions.

Desolator Great item for taking towers, as you will apply the armor debuff and your illusions will do even more damage to the tower. Not my first orb pick-up but if you are in need of armor reduction this would be the way to go.

Mjollnir Another more of a utility item than DPS, but it works in great synchrony with Starstorm, as you can clear creep waves extremely fast with a proc or two of chain lightning. The active is good to throw on targets that are getting focused as well. It does make you, but only you shoot unbelievably fast. Your illusions get left outta the fun.

Riding Solo (No Manta Build)

This build isn't as DPS oriented as the previous one and is more geared towards being a semi-carry that grabs an orb quickly for the benefit of the team. The play style will be extremely similar to that of the Manta Style build, and I'm really going to just point out differences in the playstyle of the two.

This is tyyyyp ****. I'm writing this part of the guide in the morning still drunk because I went ham last night, may say some weird ****. Alright, lets get to it.

This is as far as I got, as I decided to take a nap instead of writing. Lets forget about this and move on.




This part of the game is virtually identical to that of the Manta build. With perhaps a tiny bit more emphasis on ganking than staying in lane.

Boots of Travel The times to get these are when you are relying on a heavy pushing strat, or the enemy has a heavy pushing line-up. If the enemy has a Nature's Prophet or a Tinker on their team this is a good item to get to counter their global presence. If neither of these are the case, or your farm in the beginning wasn't very good, just go with the Power Treads.

Power Treads Typical grab, good survivability item while you don't have much stats, and good to switch to late game for a little agility boost when you don't need the strength anymore.

Items: Reasons for getting Linken's Sphere and Ring of Aquila are the same as the last build.

Diffusal Blade This item is great for a heavy ganking strat, as the slow is fantastic to turning the enemy into your own personal pin cushion. It counters Warlock very well, as the skill kills his Golem instantly. The mana burn is good at whittling down the enemies magic, but will not do much for you are being ganked or get initiated on by the enemy team.

Desolator Still a great item for taking towers, as well as armor heavy teams. This also gives you a nice increase in damage, but the reason to get this is for the armor debuff. When using this, don't focus on one target, but attack as many as you can to give out the love of the debuff to help your team kill them faster.

Mjollnir Great item for pushing, as the passive proc in combo with your Starstorm will push waves incredibly fast. The proc is also a good damage dealer for team fights if you are lucky enough to get a significant enough of them off. The attack speed also lets you pop down those towers a lot quicker than you normally could have. Can't forget the active, it's always a nice thing to have to deal damage or make a friend a lower priority for the enemy team for a little bit.

Playstyle: Very similar to the mid game play style of the Manta build, but with a less need for farming. Stick with your team more and help them in team pushes, ganks, and team fights, as this item build is made for aiding your team by being with them than it is having a solo adventure.


In my opinion, all late game items are situational and depend on both the roles you are playing on your team as well as the composition of the enemy team.

Butterfly This is an item you will get if you are required to be a heavier damage dealer for your team. Synergizes well with Diffusal Blade as the increase in attack speed with burn more mana. As well synergizes well with Mjollnir as you are more likely for the passive to proc.

Assault Cuirass This is the primary item I get for this build, as the auras aids your team tremendously and synergizes very well with all three potential orb effects. It increases mana burn from Diffusal Blade with the increased attack speed. Same for Mjollnir, as the passive is more likely to happen with increased attack speed. The armor aura debuff stacks with Desolators debuff, making you an armor reducing machine. The armor buff on yourself also really helps out with your squishiness.

Monkey King Bar If an enemy is getting Butterfly this is the item to get to counter that. This will also let you shoot at the enemies 3rd tier towers and hit it from the lower ground without missing it at all. Good for if the enemy team is turtling.

Orchid Malevolence Gives you CC, gives you DPS, gives you a damage amplification, gives you mana regen. If that's what you need, this is your thing. *The good thing about this is if you decide to go for this early in the game, the components are Oblivion Staffs are great early game DPS items, as well as providing you an alternative to Ring of Aquila for mana regen.

Playstyle: Same as before.

Ward Bitch (Support Build)

If you are playing Mirana as a support, you picked first and then your team picked 3-4 carries and 0-1 supports. Other than that, if you are planning on intensively roaming and ganking, a support build will probably work nicely with that. These are the only two situations I can think of where you would be playing a Support Mirana.

Going to a side lane or middle lane are both acceptable for this build and the play styles are about the same for both. The only difference is you will level much slower in a side lane with another hero.

*Disclaimer* You will not have enough money for all items, will be 3 gold short. Just hold off on buying a branch if you are going middle and have the courier bring it to you, or if you are going in the lane hold off on the Slippers of Agility and buy them at one of the side shops.




Items: You should be getting a Bottle if you go mid, and it's situational if you are in the lane. Particularly not not though if you are in lane. Ring of Basilius is great for your mana regen and gives a good aura once you are out of the lane. You should turn it off while you are in lane though so your creep wave does not get pushed out. For Mekanism, let your other support get this, if there is one. If not, get one. This is a very good item that really should be gotten every game by someone. Mirana is already has mana problems, so getting this will just give you more mana problems. Medallion of Courage is my go to item for this build, as it gives you needed survivability in the form of armor, as well as an active that is basically a single target desolator debuff. If you guys are going to be roshing early, this makes you take him out much quicker.

Playstyle: This build is going to be you ganking, ALOT. Basically roaming once you get to a high enough level (around level 5-7), and having another hero shift to the middle. In ganks, try to go for a lane where the enemy heroes are pushed out far past their tower and hit them with an arrow from the jungle. Never steal kills, your teammates need them more than you do. If you have Medallion then pop it on the target that needs it the most, but remember it lowers your armor as well. Constantly be warding. I just recently played with the best support I have ever had recently. He did 3 things that made him stand out as outstanding. Lol.

1. He bought wards every 6 minutes, never missed one all game. This means he did just remember to every 6 minutes, but that he always made sure he had money for them.
2. Every 2 minutes he would ping the rune. He warded one rune spot, and checked every 2 minutes on the dot. If it was there, he pinged. If not, he told us the rune was in the other spawn spot.
3. This is the kicker that I will now do every single time I play, and that is he typed the time out when Roshan was killed. According to my Cognitive Psychology class, this basically guarantees that you will remember when rosh respawns, and if you don't because your memory is just abysmal, then someone else on your team is bound to remember.

Arcane Boots Great support item, gives you more mana to gank and wander around without having to go back to base. Make sure to use if for your allies if they need it, nothing is more annoying than having to type out "mana boots" because the support doesn't notice that they need to use them.

Power Treads Typical grab, good survivability item while you don't have much stats, and good to switch to late game for a little agility boost when you don't need the strength anymore. Yeah this is the same text as the last build, deal with it.

Items: Ring of Aquila not as necessary as before, but does give you a bit more stats and lets you upgrade your Ring of Basilius. Drum of Endurance gives fantastic stats, it is basically a Ultimate Orb for much MUCH cheaper. The aura will also give your team an advantage in team fights and the active will really help take towers faster. Remember you can replenish the charges in the drum by buying the recipe again. Euls' gives you intelligence, much needed mana regen, extra speed, and a 2.5 second disable, or dodge if you use it on yourself or a teammate. The Hood of Defiance should only be gotten if you are going for a Pipe of Insight, which should not be gotten if you got mekanism. It is bad practice to have a support carrying both pipe and mek. Necronomicon is very underrated item, so underrated that I forgot to include initially. Great for pushing, team fighting (if you have good micro), and it synergizes very well with a Diffusal Blade as the mana burn gets absolutely nasty. Also a good counter to invis heroes when the book is fully leveled.

Playstyle: Stick with your team, your are there to help them. Most of the things in the other builds apply here, only instead of killing, you will be using your skills and items to help out your allies so they can kill. Remember to keep warding, that is essential.



In my opinion, all late game items are situational and depend on both the roles you are playing on your team as well as the composition of the enemy team.

Scythe of Vyse Great disable. It is a definite pick up to counter hard carries like Anti-Mage or Morphling.

Shiva's Guard Gives you armor to combat your squishiness, making you quite a bit more tanky if you picked up some of the other armor boosting items in the earlier game (Mekanism, Medallion of Courage). Great active in combination with your Leap, as you can position yourself very well to use it.

Orchid Malevolence Gives you CC, gives you DPS, gives you a damage amplification, gives you mana regen. How many times am I going to have to go over this? *The good thing about this is if you decide to go for this early in the game, the components are Oblivion Staffs are great early game DPS items, as well as providing you an alternative to Ring of Aquila for mana regen.

Pipe of Insight You get this if you need the team magic resistance, such as if you are playing against a Tidehunter or Sand King. These are only a very few examples of people to get Pipe against, and it is pretty much any magic damage dealer that it would be good to get one for.

Playstyle: You are playing a support role instead of a damage dealer but all in all it's not that much different than before.

Enemies and Allies

Disablers Having disables on your team is always good, but for ganks to ensure kills, chain stunning is the way to go. I feel like a broken record but this needs to be emphasized, using arrow as a follow up to a stun is the best way to go about ganking with her. Examples would be Vengeful Spirit, Chaos Knight, and Ogre Magi.

Slowers Simply put it is much easier to land an arrow if the enemy hero is moving slower. Good examples of slowing heroes would be Lifestealer, Venomancer, Ancient Apparition.

Crystal Maiden A very special hero to include here, as she belongs in both the category of disabler as well as slower. Then her Arcane Aura, it's golden. Pretty much no more mana problems. You still have to manage your mana somewhat but you have much more to work with now.

Area Nukers An area nuke to a creep wave in combination with your Starstorm allows you to push unbelievably fast, as well as farm extremely efficiently. That's about it.

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There are no heroes that she really specifically counters, she is just an all around good hero that can play well against almost all enemy team lineups.

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Trackers Heroes such as Bounty Hunter and Slardar counter your ult, making it very hard to use it as an escape mechanism. It can still be used to initiate though.

Silencers Silence renders Mirana pretty much useless. She cannot deal lots of damage (unless she is farmed). She cannot escape, she cannot use her skills, it's pretty much the worst thing that can happen to you. If you have Manta Style, it gets rid of all negative buffs, including silences (except for Doom).

Additional Resources

I did not go into either warding for the Support Mirana as there are plenty of other people that have done a very good job of explaining it.

Warding Guides:

Dota Cinema Guide to Warding

Dignitas' Guide to Warding

Conclusion

I really wanted to make a video guide for Mirana to put along with this, as I think that visuals and seeing real game experiences are much better for learning the heroes and the game overall. When I tried I couldn't get it to work. I was using a free version of XSplit but the audio codec isn't compatible with youtube. If anyone knows how to get it working to be able to put on youtube send me a message and I'll get started on making videos for this guide and all the next guides I put out. Might even do video guides for the guides I already posted.

I made that red so people would actually read it and respond, as I would really like to do it.

This time I tried to make the guide a little bit more short and sweet, but I'm not sure if I really accomplished that. So lemme know if you liked this guide in the comments below, and if so, more or less than the other ones I have made. Give me feedback so I can make better guides for all you guys and girls (lol girls don't play dota). Nah that's sexist, although the ratio is probably something like 2000:1, statistically you ladies don't have a significant p value, so you don't technically play Dota.