Solo Offlane Jakiro (or is it dual lane??)

Introduction

Hey all, my name is Heinrich, and this is my first guide, so feel free to let me know about any formatting issues/things I can improve on to make it better.

I was disappointed to see that there are no offlane Jakiro guides on this site, and thought I'd start a discussion here. Jakiro is a very strong hero in a solo lane, and is able to really slow down an opposing carry's farm and even get kills at an early level. Of course, his best feature is being able to push towers with impunity, thanks to Liquid Fire. I have played a lot of Jakiro support games, and was thrilled to see him picked up as an offlaner. Some of what I've included is from personal experience, the rest is all Universe-inspired.

So, let's dive in and see what makes Jakiro tick!

Pros/Cons

Pros
-Amazing tower pusher due to Liquid Fire, which slows tower attacks!
-Great DOT(damage over time) from Liquid Fire and Dual Breath.
-All spells are AOE (even Liquid Fire has splash)!
-Excellent durability with crazy strength gain (2.3 per level).
-Great Teamfight with low CD Spells

Cons
-Needs early levels to survive in lane.
-No Escape skills.
-Extremely slow cast rate for spells.
-Requires excellent positioning.
-Can have low impact against strong tri-lanes.

When to Pick(and not pick) offlane Jakiro

Jakiro is a nice hero to pick up early in a draft because while he can certainly run a solo offlane, he is also an excellent #5 support as well. If you do pick him up early, be prepared to run him as a full support.

When to play offlane Jakiro
-When your team is running a mid carry (think Lycan, Morphling, Dragon Knight, etc.) or is running a jungle carry. You are not a carry, and need to make sure that your team is ready for the lategame.
-Your team is looking to push. Jakiro is a great addition to your Death Prophet, Nature's Prophet, Leshrac, Luna deathball lineup.
-The other team is looking to push. Jakiro is able to melt creep waves quickly, and has great area denial with all of his skills. Macropyre may be his weakest skill, but few other skills can hold off a creep wave and discourage tower hits from enemy heroes for as long.
-The other team needs safelane farm. Jakiro is great at making the safelane dangerous for their carry. Your level 4 Liquid Fire allows you to burn them constantly at 24 damage per second.

When not to play offlane Jakiro
-You are laning against Huskar. He is the worst. All you really have is magic damage, and you can very easily bring him down to about 30% hp, when he will kill you in 3 1/2 seconds. Don't solo lane against him. Ever.
-Your team needs carries. If you've got a Puck mid and a safelane Mirana, then your team probably needs a carry offlaner. That is not you.
-The other team has a lot of gankers. You thrive in teamfights. If the other team is just looking for pick-offs, your pushing potential is a lot lower and you cannot escape from anything.

Gameplay

LANING PHASE

Starting Out
Grab your starting items, an Observer Ward from a support, and head up to your offlane. Blocking your creeps is very important, and will give you an advantage early on. If you haven't done a good job blocking, watch out for any first blood attempts and place your ward to scout out future ganks.
Early Laning
You are not very strong for the first couple of minutes. Land Liquid Fire on enemy heroes whenever it's safe to, but do your best not to push the lane. If the enemies are harassing too much, back off and hang out in experience range. The important thing right now is levels, not CS.
Level 5
At Level 5 your whole strategy can change. Level 3 Liquid Fire does exponentially more damage than level 2, and level 4 is just unfair. Hang back and drop Liquid Fire on your enemies until they either fear you and back off, or until they have too little health to stay in the lane. Get as many last hits and denies as possible with the enemy backing away.
Level 7
This is when you become a monster. You can keep an enemy under the constant effect of Liquid Fire, driving them out of the lane or getting kills if they don't respect you. Once you drive them out, push that tower! Drop Liquid Fire on as many enemy creeps as you can, and once under the tower hit the creep wave with Macropyre while you keep the tower under constant barrage with Liquid Fire. 3-4 hits with Liquid Fire and a full wave of creeps are all it should take to drop that tower.

MID GAME

Pushing
Once you drop the tier 1 tower, you have a few options. My personal favorite is to rotate to another lane (or 2), and drop all the tier 1 towers, giving your team a huge gold advantage. Obviously, tier 2 towers are now in your sights, but your should only push these when you have some teammates with you or when the entire enemy team is pushing a tower.
Teamfights
Being Jakiro, and having built a Mekansm/ Pipe of Insight, you're going to have a huge role to play in teamfights. Feel free to focus down a single target with your Eul's initiation, or, if there's another initiator on your team, focus and dealing all of the AOE damage. Also remember to keep Liquid Fire on their right clickers, as it will cut their attack speed in half.
Your biggest threat at this point is the old Black King Bar, which renders you basically useless. Don't hesitate to use Eul's Scepter of Divinity on yourself to buy some time if a magic immune enemy is in your face. This will also allow you to shift- Blink Dagger out of danger.

LATE GAME

So, surprise, surprise, as a hero who deals primarily magic damage, you are going to fall off a bit late game. However, there are a few things still going for you.
Teamfights
At this point in the game, Black King Bars are going to be running low on immunity time. Take advantage of this fact and time your skills accordingly. Also, remember that Liquid Fire's attack slow is a percentage one, so it's still very effective to drop it on those pesky enemy carries.
Be sure to stay alive and use all your nice items. The right Mekansm/ Pipe of Insight/ Scythe of Vyse play can still absolutely turn a teamfight.
Pushing/Anti-Pushing
Jakiro is simply an excellent pusher. The problem is, lategame, many other heroes also become good pushers. Build what your team needs. If you're going full rat, definitely pick up Boots of Travel. If the goal is to turtle and win a couple of teamfights, get a Shiva's Guard instead.
Remember that you can single-handly stop an enemy push by dropping Macropyre/ Ice Path on your tower. Don't hesitate to do so when they're looking to take the high ground!!

Skills

So, as a basic explanation of your skills, Liquid Fire> Dual Breath> Liquid Fire> Macropyre. However, each skill provides you with a lot of utility, so we're going to grab a level in each before maxing any of them out.

- Liquid Fire is absolutely brutal early game. It serves to be an amazing harass, allows you to push the lane, and allows you to take the tier 1 tower with a single creep wave! Getting this to level 4 is key, because the cooldown drops to 4 seconds, meaning you can keep a constant 24 damage per second, and 50% attack speed reduction on the enemy carry, tower, support, or creep wave. A single Liquid Fire attack deals 120 damage at max level, which is a ton of damage early game. The 50% attack speed reduction also makes this a defensive skill early on. Make sure to drop this skill on opposing carries when they start attacking you.

- Dual Breath is a great utility spell, giving you DOT and slow over a decent sized AOE. The only negative thing about this skill is that the cast time is insane. Make sure to lead your target, or trap them in Ice Path before dropping this. Early on I suggest taking Dual Breath over Ice Path because a 5 second slow is almost always better than a 1 second stun, especially in lane. I typically advocate levels in Dual Breath starting at level 8, but grab levels in Ice Path if teamfights are breaking out sooner than later. When pushing lanes, a combination of Dual Breath and Liquid Fire will almost completely take out a creep wave.

- Ice Path is an excellent skill, that just happens to be hard to land. The AOE stun can win a teamfight if you land it, but remember that the stun has a 1/2 second delay after formation. You have to lead your targets, and this is one of the main reasons we build Eul's Scepter of Divinity. Eul's Scepter of Divinity > Ice Path > Dual Breath > Liquid Fire is a nice combo that only has a 20 second cooldown. Throw in a Macropyre before Ice Path for your wombo-combo that will absolutely melt your enemies.

- Macropyre is an AOE, DOT skill. It will deal a ton of damage if you can keep your enemies in the same place. Has tremendous synergy with Faceless Void, Treant Protector, Tidehunter, and others due to their ability to hold enemies in the same place for a significant amount of time. We only take 1 level early because your other spells need their levels, and 1 level is enough to drop on a creep wave to drop those pesky tier 1 towers.

Item build and justification

Starting Items
-Nothing too crazy here. The Stout Shield really helps against harass, but feel free to just go for a Ring of Regen if you are facing the "we love melee heroes" lane.
-Make sure to grab an Observer Ward from one of your supports before heading up. I am more in favor of dropping it in the jungle to scout out ganks, because if they decide to pull you can go ahead and kill their tower faster.
-Depending on your lineup, you may need to pick up the Animal Courier, but try to avoid this as you want to get Mekansm up ASAP.

Optional Items
- Ring of Basilius and Magic Wand are both great items. I'd grab one or both of them if the lane isn't going well, but if you can get good farm (say 2 creeps per wave), I'd rush my Tranquil Boots into Eul's Scepter of Divinity.
- Ring of Basilius is a great pickup to bolster your early mana growth, and is excellent for helping push with your creep waves. However, if you can pick up a quick Void Stone it's even better.
- Magic Wand is potentially a good pickup in any game. Be sure to grab one if the enemy has a lot of active skills.

Core Items
- Tranquil Boots provide you with a lot of utility: great movement speed, armor, and great regen when active (which you will need as an offlaner). Plus, they are super easy to build. Arcane Boots are great for support Jakiro, but you need more from your boots than just mana in the offlane.
- Eul's Scepter of Divinity is an amazing item on Jakiro for a number of reasons. First off, it solves nearly all of your mana problems. Next, it is an extremely useful item, capable of removing many debuffs, slowing chasers, and just buying you time. Finally, it allows you to set up your extremely slow skills. It's the follow up stun you need to land a full skill combo. Pop your target in the air, and immediately drop Macropyre under them. Quickly follow up with Ice Path and Dual Breath, and hit them with liquid fire till they die. This also works great when Macropyre is on cool down, just wait a moment or two to drop Ice Path.
- Mekansm should be a quick build on you, unless there is another natural mek carrier on your team. Make sure they're a farmer though, because you can get it fast and turn those early teamfights.

-As a sidenote, keep a Town Portal Scroll on you at all teams. You are likely the best pusher/counterpusher/teamfighter on your team so you need to be able to move fast.

Extension Items
- Blink Dagger. Some would argue for Blink Dagger's inclusion as a core item, and I would have trouble arguing there. You should probably build Blink Dagger in 80% of your games, depending on your team makeup. However, if your team has strong initiation already, a Blink Dagger could end up being a waste of gold. Blink Dagger allows you to cozy up next to an enemy, and blow them to pieces with your full Eul's and skill combo.
- Pipe of Insight is a good item to build if you don't build Blink Dagger or Mekansm due to a teammate filling those roles. You don't want to have both Pipe and Mek and be your team's main initiator. In that case, you would need to stay alive as long as possible.
- Scythe of Vyse makes sense when you are getting crazy farm and/or there is 1 enemy who just needs to get shut down. This item provides you with even more mana and yet another disable.

Luxury Items
- Aghanim's Scepter. To be honest, this is more of a troll item on Jakiro. Macropyre is easily his worst skill, and adding more damage, duration, and AOE doesn't change the nature of the skill itself. This item can be very powerful, however, when you have other big lockdown skills on your team.
- Boots of Travel are the natural upgrade to your Tranquil Boots as you run out of item spaces and get more gold. Get ready to split push!!
- Bloodstone provides all the mana you will ever need if you didn't grab Scythe of Vyse, and all the hp regen you'll need if you didn't build Pipe of Insight.
- Shiva's Guard has a nice aura and adds even more teamfight, while greatly increasing your own EHP lategame.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading! Let me know of any typos/improvements in the comments. I am looking to add a lot more media (pictures and videos) to this guide, as I learn how to do so.