The Phantom Strikes-A guide to Phantom Assassin

Introduction

Mortred the Phantom Assassin is a melee agility Hero fitting the role of hard carry. Mortred is best-known, and infamous for, her ability to inflict staggering damage with single strikes. Her abilities synergise supremely well with each other, rendering her an extremely formidable foe once she has acquired the items she requires. She is a very farm-dependent melee Hero, but she farms creeps with much more ease than many of her fellow carries, using her Stifling Dagger for last hitting. Besides eliminating the weakness most melee Heroes have in their farming, it also saves her from expending gold on important melee carry items like Quelling Blade. Her second ability, Phantom Strike, acts as both her escape and initiate, while Blur gives her an edge against other Heroes that depend on their physical attacks by evading them; giving her partial damage immunity to many carries. Her ultimate, the strongest critical strike in the game, is what connects Mortred with four-digit damage and what gives her a place amongst the very best support killers in the late game, since they usually fall instantly from the divine strike her ultimate provides.

Pros / Cons

Pros:
-Carry
-Fast movement speed
-Has somewhat of a escape mekasm
-Can last hit with her Stifling Dagger
-Has very good evasion

Cons:
-Carry
-Lowest mana pool in the game
-Her Blur counts as evasion so Butterfly does not give you a full 35% evasion because it stacks diminishing
-Pretty weak early game
-Rather low strength gain

Skills

Ability: Stifling Dagger
Damage: Pure
Affects: Enemy Unit
Target: Unit
Deals minor pure damage and slows the enemy unit's movement speed. Deals half damage to heroes.
Cast Range: 1200
Creep Damage: 60/100/140/180
Hero Damage: 30/50/70/90
Move Speed Slow: 50%
Slow Duration: 1/2/3/4
Mana Cost: 30/25/20/15
Cool Down:6

Notes:
The dagger travels at a speed of 1200.
Stifling Dagger can be disjointed.
When Coup de Grace is learned, Stifling Dagger gains the same chance and value to crit as Phantom Assassin's attacks.
Just like regular crits, a red number is displayed, showing the amount of damage the crit dealt (before reductions).
This is how much damage it deals when it crits on each level with each level of Coup de Grace against heroes and creeps:
Heroes
Coup de Grace Level 1: 75/125/175/225
Coup de Grace Level 2: 105/175/245/315
Coup de Grace Level 3: 135/225/315/405
Creeps
Coup de Grace Level 1: 150/250/350/450
Coup de Grace Level 2: 210/350/490/630
Coup de Grace Level 3: 270/450/630/810



Ability:Phantom Strike
Affects: Units
Target: Unit
Cast Range: 1000
Attack Speed Bonus: 130
Number of Attacks: 4
Duration: 4
Cool Down: 14/11/8/5
Mana Cost: 50
Teleports to a unit, friendly or enemy, and grants bonus attack speed while attacking if it's an enemy unit.
Notes:
Phantom Strike can be cast on allied units, without gaining the attack speed bonus.
Phantom Strike moves Phantom Assassin next to the target, towards the position she was upon spell cast.
The attack speed bonus lasts either 4 seconds or for 4 successful attacks, whichever is shorter.
Missed attacks do not count and don't reduce the amount of attacks left with the attack speed bonus.
The attack speed bonus is lost instantly upon successfully attacking a different target.
Phantom Strike gives Phantom Assassin an attack order on the target when it's an enemy.



Ability: Blur
Affects: Self
Ability: Passive
The Phantom Assassin blurs her body, causing some enemy attacks to miss and allowing her to disappear from the enemy minimap when far from enemy heroes.
Detection Radius: 1600
Dodge Chance: 20%/30%/40%/50%
Spell immune enemy heroes do not cause her to the blur effect when within the radius.
Notes:
The evasion and the blur effect are independant from each other. The evasion is always active.
When the blur effect is active, Phantom Assassin becomes blurry and a status buff is placed.
Invisible heroes and heroes in the Fog of War will remove the blur effect aswell.
The blur effect has a 0.75 second delay before getting applied or removed when enemy heroes get in or out of range.
The blur effect also reacts on the presence of illusions, Meepo clones Warlock's Golem, Lone Druid's Spirit Bear and to Storm and Fire from Primal Split.
The evasion from Blur is disabled by an Aghanim's Scepter upgraded Doom, the blur effect is not.




Ability: Coup de Grce
Affects: Enemies
Ability: Passive
Phantom Assassin refines her combat abilities, gaining a chance of delivering a devastating critical strike to enemy units. Stifling Dagger shares the same critical strike chance.
Critical Chance: 15%
Critical Damage: 250%/350%/450%
Red critical numbers are before illusion and armor reduction.
Notes:
Coup de Grace makes use of Pseudo Random Distribution.
A part of the visual effects (a white glow on her weapon) play during the start of an attack, making it visible that the attack will crit.
Increases attack damage by an average of 22.5/37.5/52.5%.
The reason you get this at 9 and not 6 is because she doe sent have enough damage output to make it of use when it only crits for around 230.

Items

Starting Items

Healing Salve-This will allow you to stay in the lane if you get severely injured so you can continue farming which is crucial for you

Tangos-Allow you to also stay in the lane and keep your hp up so you don't get killed

Stout Shield-This will block damage from creeps or enemy heroes most of the time so you won't be forced to use all your tangos and supports will deal no damage because it can block 20 so if they have 45 damage, they deal 25.

Slippers of Agility-Helps you build your stout shield into a poor mans shield while it gives you some bonus agility

Early Game

Poor Man's Shield-Gives you bonus agility which helps, and blocks 20 damage from any physical attack from heroes or creeps which is extremely important that you don't get harassed too much with auto attacks so they don't waste mana and they deal damage that is reasonable. After early game and while you are going into mid to late game you can sell this because you won't really need it and it will make more room in your inventory

Boots of Speed-This is crucial for every heroe so you can run away or chase people down, pretty obvious

Perseverance-You need this to build your battle fury, and it gives you good regeneration as well as some damage which can help you farm and allow you to get your battle fury much quicker

Core Items

Battle Fury-Gives you good damage and a cleave attack to help you farm and deal damage to all heroes in team fights which is crucial for her, the damage help with her ultimate to crit for a lot of damage while cleaving, crit estimate is around 550

Power Treads-Has great survivability if on strength as well as some attack speed which she need greatly because how slow she attacks and if you want you can switch it to agility for some extra damage

Skull Basher-Give a chance to stun your enemy to keep them in place while you kill them, it also gives good damage which helps with your ultimate even more after a battle fury which can help you crit for around 875 and can later be built into a abyssal blade

Helm of the Dominator-Great life steal which allows you to take down roshan alone and allows you to heal yourself in team fights and allows you to kick anyone's ***

Late Game Items

Abyssal Blade-Gives a greater chance to stun with more damage which means your ultimate crits for around 1750, assuming you have your battle fury and because it has a active ability to stun for 5.0 seconds is a great advantage

Butterfly-More agility always means more damage, plus the evasion which makes heroes miss 75% of the attacks on you if you have a butterfly. Also allows you to move faster for 7 seconds with flutter if you need to escape or chase someone, allowing you to deal even more damage

Divine Rapier-Gives you a lot of damage which means the crit number is completely insane, the estimate is around 2650 which will destroy even tanky heroes and because of all the damage you deal and your evasion, nobody will be able to kill you

Ranked Play

Early Game

While in the lane a lot of your spells are very beneficial, Stifling Dagger has multiple uses. It should generally be the first ability maxed, as it allows you to last hit creeps from a distance. It also allows you to harass the enemy, though do be aware of the relatively high mana cost in the early game as Mortred has an extremely small mana pool.If enemies have fallen back in lane to use a Clarity or a Healing Salve, Stifling Dagger can be used to disable the regeneration effects. Phantom Strike can target both allies and enemies. Jumping to a friendly unit can be useful if Mortred needs to escape.A single point in Blur early on can be beneficial in the laning stage. It can be a good idea to max it in the early game if the enemy are being especially aggressive.During the early game, a highly leveled Blur coupled with a Poor Man's Shield will make Mortred extremely resistant to physical damage as she has naturally high base armor as well. Use this to your advantage by melee harassing enemies who lack burst magical damage, reliable escape mechanisms or powerful disables.

Mid Game

In mid game you have many choices as to which build type you want to go but mainly choosing to build whether attack speed or attack damage is up to the player's decision. Building more attack speed increases the chance of Coup de Grace to proc, although the critical damage will not be too high. Building attack damage will greatly increase Mortred's damage, but attacking too slow will mean proccing Coup de Grace will be a rare event. Keep in mind that Mortred gains 3.15 agility per level, and that Phantom Strike increases Mortred's attack speed for a few moments. This means if you are scaling up well and you are higher level than your opponents, building attack damage is the better choice. If Mortred is underleveled due to constant ganks or the enemy having a lot of disables, building attack speed is better, so you can proc a few more critical hits before retreating or dying. Because of this, Phantom Strike can be used as an escape mechanism as opposed to damage output if it is not sufficient level to be use effectively.Be very wary of enemies using Blade Mail,it is a common item on heroes like Razor and Mortred's damage output is many times greater than her health pool, though with a Black King Bar you can alleviate the issue if the enemy does build a Blade Mail.A Ghost Scepter or Ethereal Blade also heavily counters Mortred's main damage output, physical damage. Acquiring a Diffusal Blade will help purge the ethereal protection and leave the enemy vulnerable. Shape your build to counter items other heroes have gotten but don't go to off course because you still need to farm farm farm.

Late Game

In late game it can be very straight forward as to if you are going to win or not. If you are completely dominating then you don't need to be very strategic because really you can just push and kill everyone. If it's still neck and neck then farm a lot until you get a Divine Rapier and if your behind a little get a second if you can, or get a second in any situation. Once you get those your crit is so high, my guess is it's around 5240 which is very insane. In the late game overall, it's pretty straightforward and mostly easy or very annoying, but keep calm and farm creeps until you get all your items.

Farming

Early Game

In early game farming is the key to any carry, farming for Phantom Assassin is especially crucial but Stifling Dagger makes it easier for her because of how you can last hit creeps. Getting the last hit is how you get farm but make shire to only get the last hit because if you auto attack you can push the lane and then you have to try and farm under the enemy tower which is impossible unless you want to die. If you really need help with farming, get Coup de Grace at 6 to help with your last hitting if you are that terrible. If you can power farm and get your Battle Fury around the 15 minute mark, you can go farm neutral creeps and ancients to get more gold for better items like Power Treads.

Mid Game

In mid game you most likely have your Battle Fury and you are in the process of farming neutral creeps and you may be acquiring more items like Helm of the Dominator and Skull Basher, farming neutrals is a breeze with Battle Fury and getting Helm of the Dominator and Skull Basher will allow you to take down roshan alone which will allow you to get Agies of the Immortal and then you go attack anyone you like without any fear because of reincarnation. Their is really not a lot of tactics in mid game for farming because once you get Skull Basher you can kill almost anyone so just gank and gain more gold.

Late Game

Just farm more ancients and neutrals to get items like Butterfly and Divine Rapier to deal a lot of damage once you get that it's basically GG for the other team and you can just end their misery, or have them push and them kill them all, then push.

Summary

Mortared the Phantom Assassin is a hard carry and is farm dependent. This build showed you how to use your abilities effectively, buy the correct items and what to do with them, and how to farm effectively while in the lane or jungle. I hope this guide help you play a better Phantom Assassin!