Terrorizing (ANTI alt-tab)

Introduction

I'm Sp12 -- I write guides here and can be found streaming at http://www.hitbox.tv/sp12; if you have any questions/comments feel free to post at either. My solo ranked MMR is currently ~5200.

This is a guide for Terrorblade, the Soul Keeper. He is one of the oldest Dota heroes having been around in some form since the very earliest maps. He is one of my favorite heroes and this is a guide I've been looking forward to for a while.

Terrorblade is a hard carry, but with a strong early and midgame as well. He has very strong pushing potential and a decent laning phase. His base stats besides HP are great, and he can be played not only as a carry, but as a situational mid or jungler. He has great anticarry and kill potential in Reflection, strong steroids and laning skills in Conjure Image and Metamorphosis, and his ultimate Sunder makes him hard to take 2v1 and brings some extra utility to his kit.

If you're not familiar with the hero I would recommend the wikipedia article.

Each build gets its own minisection for you to check out, so consider this an anti alt-tab guide. The formatting for this guide is matched heavily with my Phantom Assassin guide, which you can check out if you play her.

Overview

Terrorblade is one of the heroes that can entirely be considered a hard carry. His lategame DPS is incredible with his 3.2 agility growth and pair of 60% outgoing damage illusions, along with his 550 range and 80 free damage on Metamorphosis. Additionally, Reflection scales perfectly with the enemy carry's farm, despite it's low range, and Sunder makes his 2v1 potential absurd. He is truly one of those heroes that can carry a game, but he might not stand up to some of the best like PL, Medusa, or Void in the ultra late stages. Luckily, he can be 5 shotting base towers at 20 minutes with his incredible early DPS.

This hero has a tough time despite his 7 armor because of his ~400 starting HP. He is very easy to crush in lane with a stronger dual/trilane or even strong solo offlaner like Bristleback, and he takes a large amount of items to become truly frightening. Additionally, he has no escape, so he relies on outplaying his opponents with Sunder, Reflection, and Conjure Image when ganked. That said, he's a semiviable jungler so you can always fall back on that if the lane is going poorly, and his farmrate is relatively fast with his illusions.

He has a lot of DPS with no items, and it only gets better. 80 free damage and 120% damage from his illusions means that he farms and pushes incredibly well, he just has some (major) gaps to fill with items.

Pros/Cons/Tips

Pros

• Great DPS (farming, pushing, teamfighting) with a 60% illusion on a 16s CD. For comparison, a PL illusion does 20% damage and is melee with less than 300 movespeed
• 2 HP regen a second! This lets him jungle pretty viably. For comparison this is old axe level.
• Sick attack animation and projectile speed for both ranged and melee (0.3s, tied with AM)
• Strong early game besides HP
• Reflection is a great spell if you have ranged stun supports to set it up (60%, 5s slow). It also provides a lot of anticarry with the 60% AS slow and perfectly scaling, invulnerable illusion
• 7 starting armor -- combined with 3.2 agility growth and some items he can easily have 20+ armor by midgame.
• 315 movespeed
• 3.2 agility gain -- 2nd only to PL and a morphed Morphling
• 550 Range agility carry
• Low base attack time -- 1.5 in melee and 1.6 in ranged
• Very strong vs. kitable melee carries and stat carries alike with reflection
• Amazing ultimate
• Footprints leave flames, just like Dota 1

Cons

• Very bad base strength (15=400 HP), with only moderate growth of 1.9
• Takes many items to get out of control
• Long cast point of .5s
• Slight mana issues, with few options to rectify them
• Weak to cleave, especially ranged cleaves
• Has no AoE and cannot reasonably build either Battlefury or Mjollnir as a ranged illusion hero
• Very low cast range of Reflection and Sunder, along with the .5s cast point makes these hard to land
• No disable outside of said melee range Reflection

Brief Playnotes

There's a well maintained wiki, excellent videos, and replays of how to play Terrorblade. An easy way to get better is to watch replays on player perspective -- filter recent games for Terrorblade and very high skill level. I will cover some of the points/tricks people are less aware of, even at higher levels.

• DO NOT POP METAMORPHOSIS IN DESPERATION AS YOU'RE DYING. It is a very long cooldown and is crucial to your effectiveness.
• DO NOT SKILL your first skill until you get into lane and see what you're against. If it's a farm lane get illusion to help you last hit and stack camps. If it's a contested farm lane maybe get Metamorphosis to make last hitting safer. If the lane is your advantage get Reflection.
• Your illusions are RANGED. You can micro them away from harm and spread them out to avoid taking damage, while still dealing damage, something melee illusion heroes simply can't.
• Early game if meta is on cooldown for another 100s when you level up just get another level in illusions.
• Orb effects only apply to your main hero, except diffusal while you're melee -- that said, don't buy diffusal expecting to become Anti-Mage or Phantom Lancer as your melee illusions are mostly for farming and pushing, and when you're ranged the illusions won't manaburn
• Beware the cleave of all types -- Sven, Anti-Mage, Gyrocopter, and Medusa, among others, have strong ways of clearing your illusion army.
• Beware offensive illusions from Morphling, Shadow Demon, or Dark Seer, especially if you went Radiance.
• Conjure Image is not a Mirror Image based effect but wand of illusion based effect (for you WC3 folks). It does not give you invulnerability and simply creates an illusion next to you.
• You can solo Roshan at 7 with an ice ogre or alpha wolf HoTD creep and maxed meta
• Your illusions don't have to be with you -- one can be stacking ancients while another farms a somewhat unsafe lane while you take jungle
• Sunder ministuns goes thru BKB and can be used on allies -- you can save them despite the short range, or you can abuse them as a free heal. You can also use this on illusions, including your own. It does have a very high early manacost.
• You are first and foremost an illusion carry and also mostly a ranged carry. Do not buy Diffusal Blade, and consider items like Skull Basher or Assault Cuirass carefully as you fight mostly from range and have illusions which don't get any benefit from AC. Better choices for those item roles are Morphling type items like Eye of Skadi and Butterfly.
• Meta has a .35s invulnerability period, but the cooldown is pretty long to use it to dodge a stun casually
• Most of your durability comes from being able to avoid damage by staying back with illusions, your high armor, and good use of Sunder. You will die early game if the QoP catches you out and you can't Sunder her.
• Treat Metamorphosis as your ultimate. It is a long cooldown, do not pop it before dying. Try to farm when it's down as your teamfight effectiveness is cut a lot when you're melee.
• Reflection is a 60% 5s slow. With an illusion. That's ridiculous.

Be adaptable -- especially with the skillbuild!

An important note is that skill and item build are not a one-size deal. If they have a Sven laning agianst you CI levels aren't that important. If you're jungling they are. If the offlane is a weaver don't get reflection at 1 since he's going to max movespeed away.

Hand of Midas is good on any of these builds if you're getting freefarm. Boots of Travel are obvious pickups lategame after your 2nd tier four item, but can also be gotten early in a 4 protect 1 strat to maximize your farm. Even if you're not mid if you have good sustain on your team ( Dazzle, Keeper of the Light or are fine mass Bottle crowing you can go Radiance from the safelane.

Traditional Carry

Overview
This build is safe if a bit old-fashioned. It is the most common Terrorblade build in D1 and is pretty effective.

Start with typical melee carry laning items and get either a Ring of Health for passive regen if you're heading towards Linken's Sphere or a Helm of the Dominator if you're looking at either Yasha item. Make sure you consider what's blocked by Linken's as well as Manta when you're deciding your item path, as well as the value of stacked ancients from the HoTD.

Early
DO NOT SKILL YOUR FIRST POINT. Wait to see what you're laning against. If the lane looks hard, as in you won't be able to touch the creepwave, just bite the bullet and get metamorphasis and use it to get some last hits with your ~70 damage level 1 550 range, though it will only last into the 2nd creep wave. If you're needed to maybe setup a kill get Reflection. Get your regen item and boots on your way to power treads -- make sure you're farming. You are the carry and obtaining last hits is the most important part of this stage of the game. If the lane is really bad you can jungle reasonably with just regen via illusions, though that leaves your lane partner alone and underlevelled. Make sure to take care of the enemy ganking you, as you are escapeless and often an easy pickoff.

Midgame
If your lane opponents leave even at level 7 you can just melt towers with Metamorphosis and illusions. Make sure you're farming efficiently with the illusions. Play based on your E cooldown -- farm and split push when it's down, take towers and teamfights with it up.

If you're going Linken's for a safer midgame finish it, if not finish your HoTD for better jungling/stacking then work on your quick Manta or SnY. Pick Manta or SnY based on the game -- SnY gives a slight disable and HP that lets you become active immediately, while manta adds some safety with the extra illusions for pushing as well as split to remove debuffs. With both Linkens and Manta you become very hard to lock down. SnY offers you the ability to split it for a later Manta and Heaven's Halberd, which can be nice vs. some very single target carries like Ursa.

Lategame
Once you have Manta and one or two big stat items after it you start to truly outscale almost every hero in the game. Towers and heroes melt before your sustained DPS, but make sure you play semi conservatively given your low base strength. Your illusions are often able to 1v1 heroes.

Alternative Carry

Overview
An alternative to the last build, I like this one a lot because of the utility and cost efficiency of its item. This is safe to go most games, avoid it only vs. a team with many escape abilities that nullify Atos.

Start with typical melee carry laning items and get a Helm of the Dominator along with power treads. Then grab a Vitality Booster, Yasha, Rod of Atos, then Manta Style. It's important to grab them in this order to make sure you have enough HP despite the lack of a sange or ultimate orb, though you can finish the Atos after Manta if it removes an important disable.

Early
DO NOT SKILL YOUR FIRST POINT. Wait to see what you're laning against. If the lane looks hard, as in you won't be able to touch the creepwave, just bite the bullet and get metamorphasis and use it to get some last hits with your ~70 damage level 1 550 range, though it will only last into the 2nd creep wave. If you're needed to maybe setup a kill get Reflection. Get your helm of iron will before boots if you're running out of regen -- make sure you're farming. You are the carry and obtaining last hits is the most important part of this stage of the game.

Midgame
Once you have a vitality booster it is very hard to burst you before you Sunder, you can farm really efficiently with just a HoTD and levels, make sure you play with your team as they need you to defend or push towers. Do not get caught out, but if you do, remember you can use sunder and reflection to turn 1v1 and 2v1s around. Once you have Atos you can safely solo kill many heroes without an escape given Atos's sick active, and Manta makes you even scarier.

Lategame
Once you have Manta and one or two big stat items after it you start to truly outscale almost every hero in the game. Towers and heroes melt before your sustained DPS. DO NOT WASTE METAMORPHOSIS. You can splitpush effectively as almost no heroes can contest you alone and you destroy towers in seconds. I like to followup with an Eblade for a finisher to go with Sunder as well as good stats for the illusions.

Radiance Carry (often mid)

Overview
This was more a thing with traditional safelaners but has risen to popularity as the 6K MMR breaking Naga Siren build. This focuses on bottle crowing to keep yourself in lane as you farm towards your Radiance, which you then use to cut waves, farm, and stall the game as you work towards simply outcarrying the enemy team.

Early
7/10 times you will have to get your ranged form at level 1 to obtain last hits, but vs. some weaker ranged heroes ( Mirana, or melees like Pudge) you can get illusions to simply last hit better with the +30% damage it offers. They can also be used to rune control. You are a very easy gank target so play safe and feel free to last hit with illusions while your hero is at tower or even in jungle if you're radiant.

You rush bottle, then use it to spam illusions and trade hits in lane via bottle crow abuse. You rush a radiance. Playing mid is a great way to practice your TB laning.

Midgame
Once you have radiance your playstyle shifts completely. Use illusions to farm camps, even enemy camps, harass lanes, and cut creep waves as they walk to lane. Meracle from team Titan, as well as EternalEnvy from Speed Gaming use these techniques very well on their Naga Siren. Both of them have active twitch accounts. I would highly recommend watching one of their games as Naga Siren in order to see how to play this.

Lategame
Amass items, with BoT and Manta as your first two to give more and faster illusions. You can stall pushes endlessly by cutting creep waves and harassing enemies with your radiance illusions. Use your ultimate to teamfight if you have to, but it's likely the enemy team won't be able to do anything if you're playing well as their lanes will consistently have no creeps in them.

Jungle

Overview
Terrorblade is not a bad jungler, with illusions, 7 armor, 2 base HP regen, 1.5s BaT, and 3.2 agility growth he's actually rather good. The main downside of jungling is that you're easily countered, have a potentially suboptimal skillbuild, and leave a lane a man down on the hopes of a carry. Your ganks are actually decent and your farm rate is fine though. We're still developing the best ways to do this at Playdota, but this works for now.

Early
Spawn an illusion from fountain at 0:07 after the horn and use it to take the nearby medium camp, spawning an illusion around :40 to assist you. Let the illusion tank until it's semi low, then you tank with your tangoes. It is very important that your HP remains high so that you don't lose efficiency on your illusions. You will have to back once.

First Item
You can either rush Hand of Midas for a very greedy farming build or Helm of the Dominator for a more sustainable jungle with the potential to push with illusions and a HoTD creep. The HoTD can be used to stack the ancient camp, which you can clear with illusions and Meta around 12 minutes.

You can gank if you have a Reflection level and can count on your lane to setup or followup on you. At 6 Sunder has some questionable use a ganking tool as well if you get low.

Lategame
As always you are a lategame carry that is very dependent on items, obtain them.

Active Midlaner

Overview
A bit of a troll build, but actually viable. This plays similarly to the radiance rush but instead of radiance you get Shadow Blade (or yasha if SB doesn't fit the game) then Eblade to roam and kill people. Eblade offers a lot of agility for your illusions as well as a Dagon like active to work with Sunder.

Early
7/10 times you will have to get your ranged form at level 1 to obtain last hits, but vs. some weaker ranged heroes ( Mirana, or melees like Pudge) you can get illusions to simply last hit better and stack camps with the +30% damage it offers. They can also be used to rune control. You are a very easy gank target so play safe and feel free to last hit with illusions while your hero is at tower if meta is on cooldown.

You rush bottle, then use it to spam illusions and trade hits in lane via bottle crow abuse. You rush a Shadow Blade.

Midgame
Make sure you're farming well with illusions (in lane and jungle), if the midlaner leaves you can melt his tower with your illusions. Get Shadow Blade to help with your roaming -- it's decent initiation vs. weaker teams to get in melee range for reflection, and the escape lets you split push and farm in more questionable situations.

Lategame
Carry on.

Give me an item rundown

Terrorblade is an illusion stat carry, but many items can work on him

Abyssal Blade -- good vs. melee right clickers if Skadi alone isn't enough, lots of safe damage to go along with the active, but realize that the 25 agility from Skadi gives equivalent damage after Manta+CI illusions.
Black King Bar -- some HP and damage, the active magic immunity lets you stand there and DPS and is crucial against some ultimates like Epicenter or Ravage. On the other hand, in some games is overlapped extensively by Linken's Sphere or is obviated by spells like Black Hole. I don't like this item but it's required vs. some lineups
Butterfly -- evasion along with tons of damage, works perfectly with illusions
Daedalus -- carries to illusions who do 60% damage and crit for 150%.
Ethereal Blade -- surprisingly good, 40 agility and +10 to other stats make it quite cost efficient. The active is semi situational since you only right click but it's very strong in combination with Sunder and your agility gain, and has uses for stopping someone like Faceless Void or Lifestealer from clicking your team
Eye of Skadi -- one of the best items for TB, gives HP, mana, and agility. The slow orb works well to let you chase people down and anticarry even further
Hand of Midas -- turns an early lead into a deficit in order to secure a very strong lategame, consider it carefully
Helm of the Dominator -- lifesteal, upgrades into satanic, gives you great ancient stacks and is crucial to jungling
Heart of Terrasque -- alternative to Skadi/Satanic if they have a lot of chainstun but you don't want BKB. Makes your illusions live through most AoE magic
Heaven's Halberd -- gives HP and damage but in a lot of ways is outclassed by butterfly. The disable is pretty good against right clickers, as is the evasion, but it's not an item I build personally unless I'm up against a Void or went SnY midgame
Linken's Sphere -- single spell block along with stats and regen. The buildup isn't that great, but perseverance is a nice early item. A bit situational, but definitely good if you're up against scary single-targets (that don't have to be ultimates) like Nether Swap, Open Wounds, Spectral Dagger, Reality Rift, Fiend's Grip, Hex, or others. Solves your mana issues
Manta Style -- gives a good set of stats, movespeed, along with the manta split for free pushing, farming, spell dodging, confusion, and DPS-boosts in a teamfight. Scales with every stat item you get and offers the dodge/silence removal conjure image misses
Monkey King Bar -- Typically terrible given your illusion focus unless they have 2+ evasion/blind heroes
Radiance -- very strong as it is on most illusion carries, offers a great way to accelerate your farm but leaves you with no HP or regen after a 5K investment
Rod of Atos -- I'm in love with this item on TB, gives a very long range and low CD disable to let you gapclose for Reflection along with great stats to fill in your early gaps
Satanic -- gives more HP, lifesteal, a well as a great teamfight active. Expensive but good late game
Sange and Yasha -- surprisingly good, this item has been buffed and buffed and buffed and now offers a very cost efficient midgame path with easy buildup. The early bulk is great and the slow can help you get close enough for a reflection. It also splits into Manta+Halberd later
Shadow Blade -- Very situational, gives an OK escape or initiation. Good if you have no invis heroes as it forces out detection. Does nothing for illusions.
Scythe of Vyse -- surprisingly good despite being an agility carry, the extra mana, stats, regen, and awesome active make it a great item if a bit expensive



So, you'll have to make your analysis of the game in order to determine what to get.

I used your build and lost

Blame your team.

Just kidding, consider whether your laning situation was appropriate. Not having strong lanes or lanes with a realistic farm priority ( Terrorblade and Faceless Void in one lane? PA+Void with Terrorblade jungling?) can end your game before it really starts. If you go mid vs. a very strong roaming combo and die to ganks 4 times due to lack of wards that's gamelosing. If every lane but yours lost then even great play by just you can't always win the game. If you or your team made a major mistake (5-man Reverse Polarity?, no antipush into a Luna+ Chen+ Pugna?) that can cost you the game. It's actually really good to think about why you lost a game afterwards as it forces you to adapt. You can check out replays in your game history.

Conclusion

So there's some playstyles for Terrorblade. If you have any questions/comments/criticisms feel free to post them. At the very least I'd like a comment why if you feel like downvoting :P. If you feel it was worth the read a vote up helps get builds seen more. Pls gief TB Arcana.