Rikimaru, the bête noire of John Doe.

Introduction

Hello folks,

my name is jomon and some might even know me from various forums or even ingame meetings. After playing DotA for approximatly six years and accumulating some tips here and there I have decided to give something back to the community.

The deciding factor which made me write this in-depth guide , if I might call it so, was because I find the other guides rather lackluster and unfitting for universal use.

Beeing engineered to adress public games, this build has limited usage in serious high level games. This does not originate from the build itself, but rather Rikimaru just having a very narrow skillset, beeing a high damage, relatively squishy but illusive assassin who is lacking AoE except his again, very nich-esque cloud.

To Pick Riki or not to pick Riki, that is the Question!

Obviously picking Riki may not be viable in every game, as we allready said, he lacks AoE abilities and is fairly easy to take down with stuns. Clearly taking away his stealth also severly dimishes his life expectancy.

Naturally picking Riki against heavy stunner lanes, heroes like Slardar who can reveal you or big AoE damage heroes is quite dangerous, the chances of beeing shut down are a lot higher. Nevertheless it is entirely possible to even dominate in such a game.

Although Riki stands out at killing heroes solo, his best friends for fights and skirmishes are stunners, slowers and tanky heroes who all are there to create space and time for Riki to dish out his ridiculous damage.

Beeing forced to solo as Riki against a ranged hero can be detrimental, it entirely depends on the hero, the personal skill and your support from teammmates. When getting an edge from an early gang and beeing able to buy a Poor Mans Shield immediately Riki can outlane many ranged heroes, but again, it can go either way, you can be dominated aswell. Playing Riki on a duallane is safer in most options.

Basics of Playing Rikimaru

Playing Rikimaru is not overly complex, but yet there are some elementary things which are very important throughout the game.

Animation cancelling
This is one of the most important skills to aquire in Dota and obviously also applies to Rikimaru because it maximizes the hits you get on your unsuspecting target before they are able to escape, predicting their movement after ambushing them and animationcancel-walk into that direction can and will give you those important extrahits which decide between a kill or a failure.


Blinkstrike is a great defensive tool
I have seen so many Rikmaru's failing to escape their doom by not using blinkstrike well in a defensive fashion, do not be one of those, be quick and illusive, offensively aswell as defensevely. Try to blink across unpassable terrain like cliffs or trees using teammates, creeps or even neutral creeps (when you're happening to have a ward you can use it to give vision on neutrals in really dire situations).


Creeps are only farmed extensively until the first big Item
When you have the power to kill most heroes on the map, you have to roam, farming somewhere allows the enemys to do the same, Rikimaru has to create a looming fear once he has his first big item to have the best effect. Your enemies can not farm safely alone when they are not seeing you on the minimap. Of course situations will errupt where it is not possible nor feasible to roam, farm then.


Rikimaru is not a Teamfighter
One of the biggest errors of the common Rikimaru player, they seek out teamfights after having a decent earlygame only to be demolished by spells. While Rikimaru is a decent Teamfighter with a BKB, it should generally be avoided , he excels a lot more at killing single heroes or cleaning up after a clash. Little skirmishes though suit Riki well and you should be participating.


Itemcheck permanently
An additional thing which makes the difference between a decent and a good player, when playing any Hero who relies on invisibility you should allways be checking the inventorys of enemys, they will buy Dust, Sentrys, Necro3 or a Gem eventually. By constantly checking the items of enemys you will see it in time and act accordingly. If you have not checked the inventory of someone and you feel 0.1% uncertain about you beeing able to kill him really fast, DONT ATTACK HIM.

Come from behind
This might be spotting the obvious, but Backstab is your main source of damage, thats why you should allways be attacking from behind.

Skillbuild

There are many different Skillbuilds for Rikimaru although they are only mildly different. The biggest discrepancy is between maxing Blink Strike or Backstab first. This highly depends on the game, your enemy heroes, aswell as your team's. Generally saying, Backstab is better aslong as you are able to stay on your foes, meaning they do not have many escape spells on low cooldown or your team has good stuns, slows or other means of holding them in one place.

Another thing worth mentioning is Smoke Screen, it is a really good spell, and it even is it on level 1, the scaling, although not beeing bad, is far from beeing necessary. This is why i decide to skill stats instead of SS until very late in the game, sometimes i am even delaying it even further to get additional stats. Stats are awesome on Rikimaru because he scales ridiculously good with agility and strength is allways a very viable stat for every hero there is. The additional innteligence is good, but not the point of skilling stats, mainly its the high damage boost you get. Under special circumstances it may be feasible to max SS earlier, for example if you are forced to teamfight earlier, there the bigger radius really shines.

Last important thing about the skills is, to safe the first skillpoint until you can be sure that you do not need another one. I have witnessed Rikimarus dying on Level 1 because they skilled Backstab while beeing able to escape had they skilled Blinkstrike. The same can be said about SS, it may safe a teammate from a very early gang attempt.

General Gameplay & Item Choices

Rikimaru has a fairly decent earlygame, when paired with a stunner or slower he is able to get kills as early as level 1 due to his high damage coming out of backstab. Generally speaking Rikimaru should be able to farm on most lanes when paired with a semi competent partner. When playing against a dangerous lane one should focus on getting some lasthits while getting the maximum amount of XP, Rikimaru can function decent even when not getting many lasthits in the early game, just focus on not dying.

Generally speaking one should favor farming over playing aggressive until the first items are rolling in, with poor mans shield, magic wand and treads though, Rikimaru is a very strong hero and farming might be skipped in favor of ganging.

An important thing to allways keep in mind is, that Riki need his first big Item relatively fast, else he will drop off quite hard.

Diffusal Blade will be your CORE item in almost every game you play, its agility, manaburn and purge, which also removes Buffs from your enemys and debuffs from allys while slowing insanely hard, makes it the single best item for him in MOST cases, not all.

When facing a very hard lane and not beeimg able to get a grasp in the game while the enemys are pushing and forcing teamfights, you might be pushed into having to buy BKB, although this is not the optimal case, your damage output will still be ok. When beeing forced to buy BKB one should seek teamfights and go for the most dangerous enemys first, blink on them with BKB activated and immideatly SS, especially casters will be a lot less of a threat to your team.

When having a bad game and your enemys are not relying on spells or crowd control a Vanguard or Drums might aswell be a good alternative, although Drums are better in many many cases, its individual pieces are a lot cheaper, the Item gives damageoutput aswell as an aura which is very very good. Vanguard is a purely defensive item and i personally have not bought it on Riki, especially not after the nerf it got.

Aquila is another cheap item which is good, but because Magic Wand, Poor Mans Shield, Townportals and Treads are allready using up 4 slots there is really no place anymore for another small item. When having a bad earlygame and no other person on the team has the aura from it, it may be a good investment, but it is really situational.

Mask of Madness and Vlads are both niche options, Mask of Madness is viable if the game is very one-sided and your enemys lack escape abilitys. Vlads is an option if nobody else buys it, in the lategame every team should have one, and in the worst case you have to buy it.

Many people will probably want to know why i choose Manta Style over S&Y, but its simple. Manta Style gives you first and foremost a debuffremover, which is beatsly for Rikimaru because it also removes Dust of Appearance. The illusions also scale very well with the high agility of Riki and the manaburn from Diffusal Blade.

Butterfly and Abyssal Blade are both Luxury items and make Riki rediculously strong, he is able to kill pretty much everyone on the field in mere seconds when achieving that level of farm. Generally getting Butterfly before AB is the better choice because it grants defense aswell as buffs your illusions by quite a margin.

Last but not least is the Gem of Truesight, Rikimaru is an excellent gemcarrier to counter other invisible heroes like Bounty Hunter, Clinks and so on and so forth. Additionally the deward aspects make this item a very valid choice on Rikimaru after having bought the Diffusal Blade.

Generally speaking, Riki will farm until he gets his Diffusal Blade and then starts to roam the map, killing unsuspicious squishy heroes. Focussing on the enemy carry might even be feasible if he is getting online slower than you. An example would be an Antimage, Riki is easily able to kill him with a Diffusal when AM has his Battlefury although Diffusal is even 1000 gold cheaper.

The goal to play Rikimaru efficiently is, to constantly gang and keep the enemy team from getting the big items up, although Riki scales well, he is not, and i repeat it NOT, a teamfighter. You want to assassinate lone heroes and take part in small skirmishes, slowly edging out an item and experience advantage.

When beeing forced to teamfight, it is very important to know how to position, you have to observer your enemies and keep in mind how many control spells they still have, jumping onto an enemy and instantly getting stunned is a death verdict, you have to let your teammates bait out the dangerous spells and play the cleanupcrew. An untouched Riki causes havoc in seconds.

Closing Comments

And so this guide has come to an end, i hope you enjoyed the wall of text and have not fallen asleep midways through it, i really appreciate it when people are willing to spend some time learning something in theory.
Of course playing the game is the best teacher in the end, but having a general idea of how a hero works before playing him is allways good and some tricks are just hard to find when playing a hero the first time.