Silencer: Shut up and die!

Opt for force staff then Rod of Atos. If you can get an early Dagon, Silencer is one of the few ints who can support it well if you can get it early enough. Ghost sceptor is also an item to keep in mind to counter heavy physical teams. While ghost sceptor is active you can still orb walk with your glaive.

There is one badass counter here...Batrider will make your life a living hell.(literally)

About wards and courrier well, both are mandatory anyway. I just wanted to highlight how much it is critical to have wards to survive as squishy + no escape mechanism + no wards = Feeding.

Well about orb walking, it is very important to harass without drawing the creeps attention, it fits an aggressive playstyle. I do agree that Curse of the silent is awesome and should be maxed first but one level of glaives of wisdom can allow you to harass without attracting the creeps attacks which is just more important than the first level of you aura. Early on espescially mid, you will not kill anybody within your range (with curse maybe but not in range still), and orb walking can allow you to go beyond creeps and harass. I just think it is better. Like :
Lvl 1 : Glaives
Lvl 2 : Curse
Lvl 3 : Curse
Lvl 4 : Last word
I do not doubt your ability to make a decent k/d/a with this build (and with the level you face on dota 2 sometimes... well nvm), but at lvl 1/2 orbwalking is more useful than curse in particular as lvl 1 curse is just waste of mana. I mean against lvl 1 curse a good player will simply ignore it.

About Manta, It's just bad habit from old dota on W3 where manta used to burn mana, they removed the orb effect in some patch or new map. I still think this item does not fit Silencer, as your only source of damage is glaives of wisdom and illusions don't have it. About Mkb, your damage is already pure, no need to add a pure damage proc.

About dagon, at first most of your damage is not magical, it's pure. Then i meant that the burst is really nice and useful when there is not a lot of magical damage or burst in your team like dazzle or furion or enigma. Don't get me wrong, dagon is not better than orchid, it's just better to shut down some huskar or pugna or any squishy hero you need to kill in 5s not 10 and nobody can do it for you in early/mid game. It's situational and orchid is core.

Hi Givre, thanks for your comment.

Actually I already remarked that this hero is squishy and vulnerable to ganks, of course you will have to defend yourself and pick wards to survive, but that depends on the game and isn't really mandatory. The point is: Mid should almost always carry a bottle to be on the lead all the time, and so he will need a courier to bring wards and control the runes, so someone MUST buy the courier for him to control the runes (must be able to carry the wards without going back) and river gank routes, that way you win the game. As I already stated, you have to do this if nobody else picks support, but if someone else does you can skip courier.

About getting the orb, to be honest, I've tried that several times and the curse totally took over the orb, as I realized how easy the game had become. It simply looks like it was designed for early game, it's useless at late game, doesn't deal any damage at mid game, and depletes the whole mana pool in 2 casts at level 1, thus leaving them wide open for even more curses, it's also cheap, fairly spammable, an AoE... You get 1 point on glaives early enough to chase when you have enough level to skirmish without risking too much. It's important to point that the orb costs a LOT early game too, so you may run out of mana, and having to waste cash on mana regen stuff was something I didn't want, since you can clearly play without even caring about it for the whole game. I've personally had scores of 21/10/13 k/d/a respectively with silencer using this build, and the orb just doesn't fit for early game. :D

About the items: Neither Manta, nor MKB are orbs, so you don't lose any effects actually. Manta doesn't even have any on-attack effects... Didn't quite get your point there.

About dagon... You haven't tried that build, have you? Orchid gives like 500dps at level 10. And take into account that most of the damage is magical, dealt by your glaives, which is your main damage dealer skill.

Actually by the time you have orchid you will be dealing +100 dmg per attack, so that's why I focus on poosting the attack speed over getting extra Int

Nice guide =) I however have some thoughts to share about it

Silencer needs wards more than other heroes early on due to his squishyness, his average MS, and most of all, lack of escape mechanism. Thus he is extremely vulnerable to early ganking. Buy wards if nobody does it, it will save your life. About courrier, it's less critical as you will probably focus on harass and force your opponent to waste his Tango and Clarity. Silencer is not an awesome last hit/deny and has no farming skills. However he is awesome at driving your opponent mad and quickly making him useless and scared. I would not advise taking a courrier early on as wards are more important for you. Place them defensively to protect your mid of course.

Imho it's better to get Glaives of Wisdom as first spell as Curse of the silent is quite lame at level one and Glaives of Wisdom allows you to orb walk which is mandatory for such a hero. You are supposed to have one of the best (if not the best) harass in the game, skiping orb walking is missing one big strength of this hero in early.

Eul's Scepter of Divinity is also a very good item on Silencer as it is cheap, helps you dodge powerful attacks with it's 2.5s of invulnerability as well as breaking channeling (or tp ;p), chasing ennemies, picking off critical opponents etc. Its +30 MS is very nice as well.

I tend to prefer Shiva's Guard to Assault Cuirass as you will get the int, the armor and the escape machanism from the active skill. The aura is quite nice too. Yes Assault Cuirass is more offensive but most of the time you will have more trouble surviving than dps. Most of the carry fear you and your true damage that ignore their armor. Most of the int or combo maker will struggle with your insane aura, and most of the initiator will fear your Global Silence that can make them engage then lack of follow up. The point is everybody will hate you and want you dead first (did i forget to mention that you were squishy?), getting a shiva is more helpful in this case imho.

I would not advise to take Manta Style or Monkey King Bar as orb effect do not scale with your glaives and you already have true damage with your glaives as well. The ministun is nice but part of the point of getting mkb is lost. Boots, orchid, eul's, vyze, shiva, force staff and bkb are far enough. If you feel not comfortable with so many active items skills (it is a lot i admit) then get a Assault Cuirass, Heart of Tarrasque, or Linken's Sphere.

In "situational" I would also think about dagon. If your team lack magical damage (ie the opposite team is not likely to get magic resistance) and you have some squishy heroes opposite, it may be nice to get it.

Upvoted =)