The Ion Curtain

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my guide on one of my favorite heroes Dark Seer. As a support and a pusher Dark Seer has great qualities to benefit your team as well as yourself. Naturally as a support hero Dark Seer benefits from team work and good communication. A support hero is quite useless if you or a good amount of your team are not team players or not interested in working together. In this guide I will show you how I play Dark Seer and be successful simultaneously.

When to pick

When to Pick Dark Seer.

When you are comfortable as a support hero and the actions it requires
When you have sufficient roles already in place
When you can rely on good team synergy and communication
When you understand helping your team rather than carrying your team

When not to pick Dark Seer.

When you are not comfortable as a support hero and the actions it requires
When you need other important roles on your team
When you can't rely on your team or do not trust them to play their roles adequately
When you do not understand helping your team versus being kill hungry.

Skills

1Q. Vacuum - This ability is your most important ability, especially in team fighting scenarios. This ability allows you to bring enemies together, closer to your team or further from your team. It can also be used to stop channeling which is highly important against such foes as Nature's Prophet, Enigma, Witch Doctor and many more.

2W. Ion Shell - This ability is what makes Dark Seer a great pusher and early power-house. Throwing this ability on ally melee creeps will allow a huge advantage in lane pushing as well as harass any and all heroes nearby the affected creep. This is also a great use of insurance in a team fight. Putting this ability on yourself or an ally hero who is in the heart of the fight will produce a ton of damage and scare off a team, allowing for your team to pick off the slower runners.

3E. Surge - This ability increases the target's movement speed by MAXIMUM, highly useful skill that when used can allow you or an ally to escape or chase down victim enemy heroes. As a support in a fight this is best used on an initiator to ensure a fight or chase down a weak enemy hero. Surge is best used on carry heroes allowing them to pick up kills or get them to where they need to be as a general map position.

4R. Wall of Replica - This ability is fairly useful; however, I (as many others do) focus on maxing Vacuum and Ion Shell first for great pushing and team fighting. This ability is very useful in team fights for adding additional ally targets as well as the replicas dealing damage to enemies at your control.

Items

Core Items:

Magic Wand - This is an important item since you will be in any and all team fights giving you a lot of charges for your mana heavy skills.

Power Treads - More survivability and mobility for the constant team encounters, seeing as you are a squishier hero you may be targeted regularly.

Vanguard - I build this item ASAP because it makes for excellent survivability and allows you to tank some fights in which you will be singled out.

Urn of Shadows - In my opinion core for almost all support heroes. Being able to use dead enemy heroes to heal your team is invaluable for pushing and closing the gap that is returning to base.

Observer Ward - Warding as a support is almost always your job, warding is one of if not the most important aspect in DotA, vision of the enemy and runes is key for victory. Can be replaced with Sentry Wards.

Town Portal Scroll - Buy them as you need them, a pusher values teleportation.

Extension of Core:

Aghanim's Scepter - A good choice for Dark Seer in general, but I only tend to grab this if my team is doing particularly well and victory is rather imminent.

Mekansm - This is a great choice for a match that is pretty even or has room for lead change, The active attributes in team fights are critically valuable.

Team Work and Laning

Laning with Dark Seer is pretty straight forward, and in my opinion rather easy. Picking up Surge at level one will allow a boost for your laning partner if you plan on setting up for an initial gank, or help you to retreat from a gank from the opposition. Use Ion Shell on your melee creeps so they can push the lane and indirectly earn you gold, this will also harass enemy melee heroes who are trying to farm. If your enemy is smart, he/she will be able to deny and still farm with Ion Shell active, so make sure the pressure is mutual. Maxing Vacuum and Ion Shell will allow for great team fights from early to mid game above the average of support. Vacuum should be used at best judgement to either group up enemies for AoE destruction, or pull an enemy closer or further away from a key position. Personally I tend to use this ability a little after a team gank to immediately stop them from running. Also keep in mind when fighting enemy heroes with channeling abilities to try and save Vacuum for stopping them in their tracks. After you have decent lead in the lane make sure you ward both Rune spawns or any other key positions to set up ganks and allow vision for you and your team. For Wall of Replica my prefrence is using it before or after Vacuum in order to suck the enemies into the wall, sealing their fate. Wall of Replica is also good to use to head off escaping enemies, just make sure to take control of the images and DPS down the straggling foes. in lane try not to farm a lot of creeps since your shield will pick up a lot of gold if uncontested by the enemy, mostly gold should go to your lane partner and more importantly a farm dependent role. Ion Shell tends to steal kills in team fights because of its combative nature. It's bad to take kills especially as a support, but sometimes it cannot be avoided, just try not to shield an ally who already has a guaranteed kill.

The beauty of Dark Seer is that he pairs with just about any hero fairly well, more so carries. However, amazing combos exist with such characters as Nature's Prophet. Vacuuming the enemy heroes together and then surround them with Sprout is a devastating CC combo.

Summary

Dark Seer is a versatile support and should be played to better the team and push lanes at opportune moments, his play style is fairly straight-forward and is pretty easy to pick up. Keep in mind Dark Seer is a melee intelligence hero and can be picked off early if you are not careful. Keep Observer Wards up for rune domination as well as visual aid against or for ganking. He is built with active items and all active abilities so make sure you pay attention to both, and most importantly - Have Fun!