Phantom Lancers

Introduction

Phantom Lancer is a carry, and like all other carries, require mass gold amounts to become extremely effective. In this guide, i will teach you some tips for Phantom Lancer in order to succeed with him.

Pros/Cons

Pros

-Good escape mechanism
-confuses enemies
-Ult also gives magic resistance
-Fun to play with
-Pushes well late game
-Invisibility has low mana cost when upgraded to max
-Slows down enemies
-high base damage
-Looks like a cat

Cons

-No stun mechanism
-Rather slow base movement speed
-Low base health early game
-Illusions countered by target point abilities
-Mana problems if you like to spam attack abilities early to mid game

Skills

Spirit Lance
Casts a magical spirit lance on a target enemy unit that damages and slows, while a Phantom is summoned to attack the unit.
Ability: target Unit
Affects: Enemies
Damage Type: Magical
Range: 750
Damage: 100/150/200/250
Movement Speed Slow: 10/20/30/40%
Slow Duration: 3
Illusion Duration: 2/4/6/8
Illusion Bonus Damage Taken: 300%
Illusion Damage Dealt: 25%
Cooldown: 7 seconds
Mana cost: 125/130/135/140


This skill is great for ganking and harassing, proving to being useful also at late game. It provides a slow to chase enemy heroes with ease and creates another illusion. When you and an ally come to verse one enemy hero early game, slow down the hero so that you and your ally can harass the enemy, therefore that enemy hero has less farming time.

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Doppelwalk
Renders Phantom Lancer invisible, while generating a duplicate image to confuse enemies.
Ability: No Target
Affects: Self
Duration: 8
Bonus Movement Speed: 15%
Illusion Duration: 20
Illusion Bonus Damage Taken: 300%
Illusion Damage Dealt: 25%
Cooldown: 30/25/20/15
Mana: 150/120/90/60


This skill I believe is the best escape mechanism in DOTA 2. This is because when casted, an illusion takes your place and you have a bonus 15% movement speed, while causing the enemy to believe that you are the illusion. When you are escaping from being ganked, cast this spell and while you make your real Phantom Lancer go to a safer place, use your illusion that you made to stand next to your closest friendly tower. This causes the enemy hero/heroes to believe that illusion is the real Phantom Lancer.

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Juxtapose
Phantom Lancer's attacks have a chance to create illusions to confuse enemies.
Ability: Passive
Affects: Self
Chance: 12%
Maximum Illusions: 2/4/6/8
Illusion Duration: 20
Illusion Bonus Damage Taken: 350%
Illusion Damage Dealt: 25%


Juxtapose is Phantom Lancer's signature move. This ability creates illusions which may confuse the enemies, last hit better and to push and to destroy building with ease.Players who use Phantom Lancer prefer to level up juxtapose during mid to late game, when you have maxed out juxtapose and phantom edge and you have much higher attack speed. I generally choose and max out juxtapose first as you can last hit more creeps at a time, therefore gaining more gold per a second to purchase more items from the shop.

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Phantom Edge
Phantom Lancer hones his abilities. Improves chance of Juxtaposing, and the Juxtapose illusions can now create their own illusions. Phantom Edge also increases Phantom Lancer's magic resistance.
Ability: Passive
Affects: Self
Magic Resistance: 10/15/20%
Juxtapose Chance Bonus: 2/4/6%
Juxtapose Illusion Duplication Chance: 3/5/7%


the ult complements the juxtapose, with the illusions now able to create illusions them selves. When one of your illusions poof out, the illusions or yourself may create a new illusion. The ult also grants magic resistance, to take in less damage from most magical spells.

Item choice

For my Original Core, I chose Skull Basher. You may be thinking,"Why did you choose Skull Basher?". The answer to that is that skull basher provides a stun which Phantom Lancer doesn't have. Orb of Venom, in my opinion is a great tool for ganking lone enemies as it is cheap, provides a DoT and a slow. This is definitely a price worthy item. Eul's Scepter of Divinity is a great item if you suffering from mana problems and also provides 30 movement speed. This item also provides a Cyclone which causes an enemy to stop doing everything during in a battlefield. Diffusal Blade is a popular pick for Phantom Lancer as the illusions can have the feedback, burning mana effectively.

Crystalys is part of my Ordinary Core set as it provides bonus damage and a crit also available to your illusions. This item can be later upgraded to a Daedalus which provides a huge damage bonus and a relatively high crit chance and power. One of my situational includes a Mjollnir. I chose this as one of my situational items as it provides a huge attack speed bonus used to create more illusions in a smaller time frame. It also provides damage along with an active ability and a passive ability. The active ability provides a shield which damages the attacker and the passive ability releases a chain of lightning which damages several enemies. This item is effective for farming more creeps. Gem of True Sight is used so that you can counter annoying invisible heroes such as Clinkz and Riki when they are planning an attack or when they about to die.

Illusions

Illusions are only affected by certain effects.

Passive abilities Illusions can use

Evasion
Critical Strike (it should be noted that the red number is before the illusion reduction)
Feedback (only works on melee illusions)
Movement Speed bonus
Attribute Bonus (Strength, Agility and Intelligence)
Health or Mana
True Sight
Radiance's Burn Damage (only the area of effect will increase; the damage will not stack with other Radiance auras)
Magic Resistance from abilities, and from base Magic Resistance
Quelling Blade's bonus damage to creeps

Passive abilities Illusions cannot use

Raw Damage, Armor or Attack Speed increase
Health or Mana regeneration, including Lifesteal (regardless of what the animation may show)
Most Unique attack modifiers, with the exception of Feedback on melee illusions and others mentioned above
Cleave
Bash, including Monkey King Bar (regardless of what the animation may show)
Damage Block ( Vanguard, Poor Man's Shield, etc)
Magic Resistance from items ( Cloak, Hood of Defiance, or Pipe of Insight)
Riki's Backstab
Greater and Lesser Maim from items like Sange and Yasha, Sange, and Heaven's Halberd
Auras on Illusions

Illusions will bestow any auras that the original hero has. However, with the exception of auras that increase Attack Speed or Movement Speed, they usually will not benefit from them.

Allies/Enemies

Allies

Allies which you should lane with are heroes who can assist you in ganks or can heal you in battle. These heroes include Omniknight, Dazzle, Nature's Prophet and Shadow Shaman. Omniknight because he can make you magic immune and can heal you. Dazzle also heals and uses Shallow Grave to make you avoid death. Nature's Prophet can use Sprout to trap enemies while you, treants and your illusions can pwn enemies. Shadow Shaman has disabling moves which prevent movement and attacking. He may help you use abilities during in ganks.

Enemies

Avoid tanky heroes with target point damage spells, with your worst enemies being Kunkka and Earthshaker. Kunkka because of his Torrent and Tidebringer, he is a threat towards you. Earthshaker is a great threat as his Echo Slam will do huge damage to you if you have more illusions.

End

Overall, Phantom Lancer is a great and easy hero to play with. Don't judge on me hard as it is my first guide. And feel free to add comments or point out any grammatical errors. Thank you for reading my guide!

Credits

I give thanks to Friedpanseller and steevenator for their motivation and support.