Total Wisp by Mu7trak ---> Manly way to play Io

Who Am I?

Former Captain of Imperium Gamers, now in QWERT12345, playing in best polish teams, trying to get into competetive scene.
I have been playing dota for past 4-5 years.
This is my dotabuff profile( I got over 2200 DBR when it was up)
I also was clasified as 26th Wisp by Dotabuff Plus
Other than DOTA I'm 20, living in Gdansk, Poland, and studying Geodesy at Gdansk University of Technology.

Intoduction to the Io

I'm aiming to create the single best guide for Wisp ever.

Wisp is unique support with enourmous mobility all over the map.
Though he has one of the lowest base dmg, worst base armor and you cannot cancel animation of any of his spells.

I studied a lot on how to play Wisp, what is the best skill build, item build, how you should position yourself in every skirmish.
To achieve this I asked questions to schmarrn, for me probably one of the best Wisp in the world.
I also scrimmed a lot versus tier 2 teams like TCM, Keita, Rox.KiS, Pain, Kaipi trying to utilize Io in competetive settings.
Additionally I carefully watched how Wisp is being played in top teams clans wars.
I am gonna show you solid basics of the hero as well as great tricks used by pros.

Why is Wisp so fun to play?

Schmarrn honest anwser.
Even though short, his answer captures the essence of the fun factor in playing wisp:


What is so entertaining about wisp, that make you play him so often?


Its a support which needs a bit training to make him rewarding for yourself. There are particular things about him like presence on the map with lvl 3 5 and bottle (cuz of spirits) and he is one of the less supports which can boost your carry hard.
Low mana and CD on Tether which gives you and your partner MS (most ****ing supports are freaking slow and i luv mobility), a instant stun (which works also on invis), a health/mana regeneration for your ally which makes him more powerful (also to mention the 1.5 heal for your ally, which results to a permanent fully healed ally), a escape/juke mechanism (1800 range jump ****ing luv this), tree destruction. In my point of view the best level 1 spell overall. From important things I would add clearing trees to deward and early pulling in radiant mid/big camp. If you are playing wisp in pubs in hard lane you can destroy the forest next to you to get more overview at this lane even without wards.
Overcharge is OK overall giving you both 20% less damage and 70 AS if maxed out.
And finally Relocate which has a game changing factor. Porting Allies/Carry into a battle or grabbing heroes which are out of position. And furthermore saving allies from death with well timed relocate.
Forgot to mention the Spirits which grant you nice vision on hills and behind trees and also show you invisible heroes if you hit them.

Items

Earlygame Wisp

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Cost: 1506 gold Usually in early build should look like this:

Early game:
At start you should buy Animal Courier/ Observer Ward + Tango, Healing Salve, 1-3 Iron Branch, 1 Clarity. If you are facing invis hero dont hesitate to buy pack of Sentry Ward

Try to get your Bottle as soon as possible. It will boost your capability of killing heroes, and will be very useful throughout the game. Remember about refreshing observer wards. Also dont forget about Magic Stick, great item overall in early skirmishes.


Midgame Wisp

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Cost: 5750 gold Build for midgame, around 20-30 minutes in.

Mid game:
Now you can start from either Soul Ring or Mekansm.
Soul Ring offers you more offensive power to spam spirits, it's also good on mana instensive allies.It's great pickup to continue snowball out of control.
But if you are playing from behind I would recommend going Mekansm(start from Buckler first. It's probbaly the greatest item on wisp. It gives armor you are lacking and instant 250 heal.
You may also consider Urn of Shadows if you feel like you can't make mekasm, or somebody else in team got it, go for Urn.

Clarification:
These 2 items: Soul Ring, Mekansm creates for you possibilites to play MANLY.
With Soul Ring you can spam spirits to farm woods and farm enemies ;) It is very important that it is regeration item not boosting overall mana pool.
Mekansm and Magic Wand/ Magic Stick are only items(+ Cheese) you can use suddenly to heal yourself and teammate, WHEN you are taking Damage.

Ghost Scepter very very very good item, you don't have to worry about bkb physical carries.


Lategame Wisp

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Cost: 11515 gold Build for lategame, after 45minute mark. You shouldn't have more than that, if you have probably your teammates are bad, and the game should have been won 15minutes ago.

Late game:
Heart of Tarrasque - great amount of HP, and regen.
Ethereal Blade good for saving allies, or disarming enemy heroes.
Black King Bar is the way to go if you are facing good amount of magic damage, also buy it if enemies have orchids and hexes.
Upgrade to Boots of Travel so you don't have to carry tp everywhere. Ability to tp to creep greatly upgrades your map control.


Utility:
Gem of True Sight deward all enemies vision, reveal invis heroes, don't get suprised by smoke gank
Pipe of Insight absolute must-be against heroes with lot of magic dmg.
Heaven's Halberd get HP, slow sometimes, disarm physical dmg dealer, get some evasion. All in one item
Force Staff/ Blink Dagger positioning/juking items
Eul's Scepter of Divinity great mana regen, getting out of trouble, great tool to setup stuns
Drum of Endurance great stats gain, get it if nobody in your team got this

Special mention:
Medallion of Courage underestimated item. Get it once and see how fast you can kill heroes/creeps/roshan.


Boots choice:
Before nerf Tranquil Boots were the way to go, but now they don't provide enough to be still worth their price.
Now this is toss up beetwen and .
Power Treads offer you much more survivability, which is very important, because you often will be in the heart of battle. If your team doesn't have a single pair of Arcane Boots you should go for them.
To be honest sometimes you don't even need to upgrade your boots, wait for Boots of Travel instead.

Skills

Tether

Type: Targets:

Active Friendly Unit

Io tethers himself to an allied unit, granting both units bonus movement speed. Any enemy units that contact the tether will be stunned. The tether will break if it stretches beyond 900 units. Lasts 12 seconds.

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Notes:

• (*) Tether duration/stun duration
• If you try to Tether a unit that is 700 distance or further away from Io, he will latch on and pull himself closer to the tethered unit (to a distance of 300)
• The tethered unit will benefit from Overcharge, Relocate, and from Io regenerating HP/mana.
• The following HP or mana gain will not be transferred: Io activating Armlet, Io gaining more than 50% of his HP or mana in less than 0.02s.
• Has a sub ability that lets you break the Tether
• The tethered unit will heal 50% more than Io

I strongly believe Tether is probably the best 1 lvl spell in the game. Period. Why?

People think Tether is only usefull for speeding up you and teammate, and stunning targets with it, and also has possibility to boost AS and decrease dmg taken with overcharge.

But what makes it completly IMBAlanced, is 1800 casting range that lets you travel across the map.
Early on you can nearly without fear go ward, as long as you have somebody to tether to.
This is 900 range, imagine he can cast it at double of this range.
Additionally, tethering to ally clears trees, it's probably the cheapest spell for clearing trees, and it helps greatly with early pulling + dewarding.(Images needed)

When the ganking starts you should always abuse the posibility of initiating from far away, as well as an escape mechanism when you are low HP.

• Try to bait, juke, use clutch stuns to suprise the enemies.
• Remember you can use it also on ally creeps, so when you are low hp and you running away, you can always use it to your advantage
• Healing doesn't work when you have full HP/MP, be aware of it !
• You dont need to stand very close to your teammate, as long as you can tether to him from 1800 range, you will be fine\
• Tether mana cost is VERY LOW, use it a lot
• When you Relocate your Tether refreshes to full duration of the ulti, remember about it

Spirits(W)

Type: Targets:

Active Instant

Io summons 5 ancient Spirits over the course of 4 seconds; the Spirits dance around Io in a circle to protect him. If an enemy hero moves close enough to touch a Spirit, the Spirit releases its life energy in a burst, damaging all enemies in a 300 area of effect. Non hero units only take minor damage upon touching a spirit and do not cause them to explode.

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Notes:

• (*) Area of Effect of the explosion
• (**) Damage to creeps/heroes
• Damage type: magical
• Min/max Oscillation range: 100/875
• You gain 2 subabilities to control how far away from Io the spirits orbit.

Spirits deal more dmg than people expect. If you cast 4lvl spirits 2 times it deals 1000 magic dmg, which is huge for support hero.
To fully utilize this spell you need to train controlling how far the spirits are.
Perfect gank would mean you explode all the spirits on enemy hero and then recast it to gain maximum damage output, there are only a few heroes that can live though that

On higher lvls of Spirits(3,4) you can quite succesfully jungle with them. It's alot about pulling, constant decreasing and increasing radius of spirits + exploding on creeps at the end of duration.

• Spirits give vision for 875 range from your hero, use it to spot incoming smoke ganks, see wards etc.
• Spirits reveal invis heroes by being destroyed on target hero
• Spirits cost a lot of mana so dont use it too often(if you dont have soulring/arcanes already)
• They deal dmg in small aoe, so you benefit greatly for using it on clumped heroes
• Roshan doesn't like Spirits - they make him run out of pit and attack you!
• 
  

Overcharge

Type: Targets:

Toggle Instant

Io draws on more energy than he can safely handle, granting him bonus attack speed and damage reduction, but draining 2.5% of his current HP and MP per second. If Io is tethered to an ally the bonuses are also granted to that ally.

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Notes:

• This bonus affects a tethered unit as well.
• The hp/mana lost can't be reduced in any way.

This skill is mainly for boosting Atack Speed of your ally and reducing incoming dmg. Skilling it early (on 4lvl) reduce the chance of your teammate being ganked because you can heal him, even though you didin't take any dmg. 5% dmg reduction is minor but sometimes it can make the diffrence.

• Turning it OFF/ON doesn't cost anything so abuse it(turn ON when your carry is atacking, turn off when he is not and there is no incoming dmg)
• Remember that Overcharge is percentage based, so don't use it if you dont have to when you're full hp/mana
• When you relocate to fountain with your ally you can use it to regenerate the tethered hero faster
• 
  

Relocate

Type: Targets:

Active Point

Io temporarily relocates himself, along with any tethered hero, to the target location for 12 seconds.

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Notes:

• There is a casting delay and the enemy has visual indicators on the minimap at the target location before it happens.
• If Io is disabled during the this casting delay, Relocate will be cancelled.
• If an allied hero is Tethered, that hero will teleported along with you. You can break the Tether at any time to prevent that hero from returning back with you.
• Cancels any channeling skills when teleporting (in both directions).
• The -disablehelp command will prevent an allied Io from teleporting your hero with this this ability.

This skill is completly game-breaking, it makes opponents feel pressured. They can't move freely on the map, it's very hard to split push. And because wisp boosts carry with AS, playing against a good wisp feels like hearing a bomb ticking.
Communication while ganking:
First of all you need a partner which doesn't constantly run out of your tether.Mostly its you who decides where to gank as you should always keep an eye on the current position
of the enemies while your carry is focused on farming. As the relocate ends, ask your ally whether he wants to stay. If there are no enemies visible on the minimap and you are on the enemy territory,you should rather take him back.

• Watch minimap carefully and choose heroes that are out of position
• Use it as fast way of providing heroes number advantage
• If you get caught use it to save your partner
• When you're relocating duration gets refreshed so you shouldn't worry about it ending prematurely
• Remember Relocate in 1st place is cancelled by stuns.
• It's situational but sometimes you can use it to heal yourself and your teammate then continue to put pressure.
• You can tp to backdoor towers/raxes/buildings( tiny is beast here)
• There is a cool trick to get buildings faster with helm of dominator. You can Relocate at x:29 x:59 next to T3 towers, dominate a lane creep to disable the backdoor protection

Allies

Here ranked some heroes in scale from 1-10 on how strong they are with wisp in terms of synergy.

The most common rule is to combo him with STRENGTH hero. WHY?
First of all most of the strength heroes have low mana pool, and Wisp helps regenerating it.
Second Wisp boost the atack speed, which they lack, because of low agility gain.

10 bosses

Chaos Knight one of the most threatening combos in DOTA. Reality rift perfect fits with wisp tether perfectly. Huge damage earlygame, with decent start Wisp+CK tend to snowball out of control.
Tiny more of late game oriented, very good against cancer,paired with wisp kills every building in few seconds , benefits greatly from additional AS. Toss+tether prevents anybody from escaping.

9 very strong allies

Lifestealer enourmous dmg potential from lvl 1, greatly benefit from move speed, really hard to stop. Lack of stun makes him not so good versus blinking/fast heroes
Riki instant stun with tether Blink Strike, silence makes him very good versus blinking heroes
Phantom Assassin instant stun with tether Phantom Strike , good verus physical dps carries like naix

8 strong allies

Slardar boosting his speed so he doesn't need to use his sprint, also helping proccing bashes
Sven good counter when enemies have stolen CK, non-dodgeable stun
Alchemist

7 Decent

Gyrocopter really unappreciated hero. Early rocket barrage is owning everything, later on he splash all over battleground. Weaknest in no stun/nor slow
Leshrac also very unappreciated hero, works similarly too gyro early on, just going in and popping spells. Hard to land stun.
Dragon Knight

6 OK

Special mention:
Chen makes every gank safer with hand of god which provide sick heal
Treant Protector great enemy, but also great allies, let you dive like hell, with global posibilites

Gameplay

Early

on you should focus on playing it safe, pulling creeps, getting lvls.
Remember about clearing trees which can help you boost your stacking and pulling in the forest(images needed).

You can't succesfully harass enemy having lowest base armor in the game. From lvl 3 when you have 2nd lvl in Spirits your killing power rises. You aim to tether to initiating ally and explode them on enemy hero, then recast them. That gives you maximum dmg burst.

Try to secure runes for your mid hero, or take them if he does not need them. Warding is something really crucial. I will elaborate one chapter only about warding as wisp in future.

You aim to create havoc killing heroes out of position, letting heroes waste tps to counter gank you, split push.

Mid Game

Countering WISP

Heroes which counters:

Mid heroes:
Templar Assassin - hard to burst down, natural bkb and dagger carrier
Dark Seer - Ion Shell is real pain, Surge give him max move speed
Queen of Pain - blinking hero, with a lot of burst dmg

Carries:
Anti-Mage - blinking carry, hard to catch, hard to run from
Faceless Void - Chronosphere is one of the few counter to wisp + any hero tps
Gyrocopter - splash dmg, natural bkb carrier
Luna - same as gyro, natural bkb carrier, splash dmg
Lifestealer- Rage and Infest makes him nearly impossible to kill

Supports:
Treant Protector - lower your possibilites of ganking with Living Armor (healing ganked hero + healing towers which make it easier for team to come counter gank)
Visage - tanky hero, which can use birds from Summon Familiars to stun relocating heroes, also a lot of burst dmg
Nyx Assassin - overall strong hero, Spiked Carapace, Impale, Vendetta open possibilites to not be ganked or gank easily
Venomancer - dmg over time prevent wisp from using bottle or urn, with addition to low base hp, venomancer ulti Poison Nova totally rapes him
Disruptor - Glimpse counter relocates and running away, Kinetic Field + Static Storm helps setup the trap

Items:
Blink Dagger
more defensive way dealing with wisp, makes it nearly impossible to gank somebody with this item as long as he react immediately
Orchid Malevolence
makes you totally useless, in addition with his low hp and armor he is going to be just food
Black King Bar
defensive as well as agressive item. You can't gank anybody becouse opponent can just pop bkb and tp out. Also when enemy engage there is not a lot you can do (stun from tether doesnt work, spirits dont deal dmg)

Playstyle:

1. One of the most improtant thing is not to loose towers, it opens map for wisp, and puts you in threat of being ganked.

2. Always carry tp to counter gank.

3. Dont get into position when you are easily ganked, and you dont have chance to get help from your teammates.

4. Try to 5-men pushing, it's one of the wisp weakest point, that he needs to be quite close to carry to be usefull.

Competetive aspect

MAY 2013

Wisp is being banned or picked in 1st phase in nearly every single game. Even chinese started to recognize his potential. Right now he is most banned hero in TI3 WEST qualifiers, and very popular ban material in TI3 EAST qualifiers.

It is hard to split push versus him and he punish being out of position. The problem is being out of position versus wisp is not the same as versus other heroes.

Meracle from FD made strong performance in 2nd game versus Rattlesnake, in TI3 East Qualifiers. Play Video /dota-2/item/urn-of-shadows-86 JUNE 2013
6.78 and some bug fixing made Wisp worse, but still pretty good hero.

- Io: Fixed the initial Relocate not being interrupted if Io was only disable in the cast time but not when the teleportation happened
- Io: Fixed the initial Relocate not getting interrupted by Root debuffs (Ensnare, Overgrowth, etc)
- Io Fixed Relocate not revealing FoW for enemies
- Io: Fixed Relocate not showing the initial visual effect on the ground for enemies (only showed ping)
- Io: Fixed being able to return Tether Relocate with a different set of targeting rules than the initial direction (no longer allowed to return relocate a creep)
- Io: Fixed Overcharge missing a 2 second toggle cooldown

Wisp is probably one of the most popular heroes in the current metagame, with great winrate.

Let's look at the best pro players using Wisp

From the beggining you see russians loving this hero (Funnik, NS, Silent), excpetional IO players.
It is not coincidence because Goblak was the one to start picking wisp in the European scene after TI3 when he was playing in Empire.

From my personal point of view I have to give huge shoutout to NoTail, he has pretty sick wisp, even experimenting as solo mid.
If you want know how to play with the lowest amount of farm, as 5th postition in the team, watch the ixmike88, and EGM they make really clutch moves.









What is single most costly mistake you see pro's tend to make playing wisp?
Maxing out Overcharge before Tether and secondly buying constantly arcane boots and Urn which are not good choices everytime. ~shmarrn

(Need some more insight from pro player)

Stats from dota-academy.com , and datdota.com

Balance changes

Balance changes: green good, red bad
6.78
Spirits no longer provide vision, except temporarily when they collide with an enemy hero
Overcharge hp/mp cost increased from 3.5% to 4.5%
6.75
Overcharge HP/MP cost over time increased from 2.5% to 3.5%.
Tether regeneration transfer now heals the Tethered unit at 1.5x the rate of Wisp.
6.72
Base damage increased from 33-42 to 43-52.
Attack range increased from 525 to 575.
Tether Movement speed bonus reduced from 15/20/25/30% to 20%.
Stun duration rebalanced from 1/1.25/1.5/1.75 to 0.75/1.25/1.75/2.25.
Spirits Oscillation subabilities no longer interrupt Wisp's movement.
Now circle slightly faster when there are fewer alive.
No longer slow.
Life duration increased by 3 seconds.
Now spawn over 4 second interval instead of 6.
Overcharge Reworked:
Old Overcharge:
Grants bonus attack speed, drains 2.5% of his current HP and MP per second. If Io is tethered to an ally the bonus attack speed is also granted to that ally.
This is a toggle ability.
Attack Speed: 60/80/100/120
New Overcharge:
Grants bonus attack speed and damage reduction, drains 2.5% of his current HP and MP per second. If Io is tethered to an ally attack speed and damage reduction is also granted to that ally.
This is a toggle ability.
Attack Speed: 40/50/60/70
Damage Reduction: 5/10/15/20% [Reduces damage taken]

6.71
Tether movement speed bonus reduced from 20/25/30/35 to 15/20/25/30.
Spirits cooldown rescaled from 14 to 20/18/16/14.
6.69
Tether Stun duration reduced from 1.25/1.5/1.75/2.0 to 1/1.25/1.5/1.75
Relocate cooldown increased from 80/60/40 to 90/75/60
6.68b
Wisp can no longer teleport to the enemy fountain not the case in DOTA 2 :D
6.68
Created

Known Bugs

There are still a lot of inconsistencies from warcraft3 dota to DOTA2, but also in DOTA 2 we have some bugs which need to be fixed.

At the moment there are at least 26 known bugs regarding wisp

Wisp's Overcharge has no cooldown
That bug makes Wisp definitely better, I didn't even know it was the case in warcraft3 dota to have 2sec cooldown, but I checked it. FIXED in 12.06.13 PATCH
Other important bug, which makes Io total beast in late game is this:
Wisp's Tether does not have a cap for its healing
It abuses the fact that you can heal your ally using cheese. Good Luck fighting against team with aegis and wisp with cheese.

Using Wisp Tether directly after Relocate occasionally causes an unexpected repositioning of wisp
Wisp can suicide with active armlet and Overcharge
Wisp Spirits not damaging Spirit Bear

This for me is pretty annoying one Cant level tether while it's active You will face it every single game.

There are some bad interactions with Manta Style/ Eul's Scepter of Divinity/ Blink Dagger.
For example you can't Relocate and dodge stun with Eul's Scepter of Divinity(relocate does not work then).
There is strange interaction with Tether<---> Blink Dagger, when you can enlonger the link to nearly 2000 range.

This one makes Faceless Void particulary strong versus Io.

Huge thanks to these people

Schmarrn- to guy who is FOR SURE one of the best wisps in the world, total pubstomper, lot of knowledge and insight in this guide come from him, he probably hates me for amount of questions I had XD Huge thanks !

Hypetrak- my great teammate from Warsaw, thank you for the possibilities I discovered playing wisp, great teamplay we achieved, and fantastic fun I had on pubs, and CWs.

Chaqu - he helped me a lot with grammar, and fixed a lot of language mistakes in this guide, he is also author of the Complete guide to lasthitting No more "l2 farm noob" 2nd HIGHEST rated guide on Playdota, you MUST check it out!

IceFrog- for this fantastic game I fell in love with

Changelog

24.06 Updating competetive
08.06 Fixing some language, grammar mistakes
26/27.05 Upgraded items, competetive, allies
20.05 Added known bugs
19.05 Published, added items, allies, fixed a lot of mistakes
18.05 Countering wisp
11.05 Upgrading skills
10.05 Guide started, made balance changes and introduction to myself