Slark, the Slippery Devil

Vanguard may be horrible on slark, but not on all heroes.

I personally love to use shadow blade. People don't ward against a slark, you get cheap, temporary regen or escape and all the while you still have vision of the enemy team. Then your team can gank them, and you just pop out of nowhere on they're caster, who is now dead and cannot nuke anyone.

Also, you needed to put more emphasis on wards and Bloodseeker. Bloodseeker is THE counter to Slark. If you're below half health, no healing, and no trip to the fountain. A good BS activates his Q, then his ulti, and if you're already moving, you will take a lot of damage. And after you pounce or ulti away, he's still a lot faster than you. He'll catch up easily.

Wards, with slark, you can use trees to pretty much spot the exact location of wards, use dust or sentry, and have a ranged character come and help you. Also, quelling blade if you're not getting a ranged character to help.

You don't need the HP regen, but you need the mana. You should be spamming a lot of Pounces. Also, Slark doesn't rely on runes, but they help a lot with ganking.


I agree with all of this.

I must say this is the best slark guide, the best item build, the best skill build, short and understandable.
+1.

(Note: when i said "the best item build and skill build I meant that those builds are the one who helped me the most and resulted most useful... for me atleast)

Most of the stuff here I pretty much agree with, However I disagree with the bottle, you don't need the regen it provides and you don't rely on runes at all and because of your speed you can easily steal runes and get to the action long before it ran out.

Lastly all the Items you have "yet to try" are all basically useless

• Why would you need a shadow blade you already have 2 insane escape abilities coupled with insane speed and hp regen
• Armlet is really limiting and is not great on slark, you have to regen every time after a single kill which slows down your giant snowball of destruction(and fish)
• Maelstrom just makes no sense in general you don't need anything it provides although its active may be slightly useful, waste of gold and space though
• Manta style can be situational is you are getting stunned or nuked heaps but is otherwise useless
• Medallion can be very useful for taking down high Armour carries like dk and stuff

Rly good guide.maybe and drums in situational not a bad item for slark :)

I'm not neccesarilly disagreeing, just want to know your reasoning for yasha before treads, don't you need the treads for the extra HP and attack speed?

"-Can detect wards/invisible enemies with Shadow Dance's passive"
Since when? :3
If you mean, you can guess when theyre around if the passive suddenly drops, then yes. but you should probably specify.

Also Yasha should be built before treads, and Sange afterwards.

I agree with that, but you have many ways to avoid being focused down: Shadow Dance and lots of Pounces. I just don't need a BKB when I'm playing with Slark.

I max Essence Shift over Dark Pact because on the early-mid game, you don't need that extra nuke, and you'll probably won't have enough mana to use it too often.
I prefer getting Skull Basher before Eye of Skadi because you can stun lock your enemies when you have stolen enough agility.

I would un-reject Black King Bar, Dark Pact is useful for removing Stuns, but you're wide open to a 2nd Stun right after you use it, and you won't always see the Stun/Silence coming all the time. You won't always need it, but it's a good Item if you're getting focused down properly in Teamfights.

This ^. You won't get much out of the extra levels of Essence Shift that early on.

Yes, they do stack.

I like shadow blade as well. In a pub game you'll get a lot of funny comments questioning your decision, but having that extra escape, damage, and mobility start a gank with is amazing