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Ring of Basilius
Tango
Boots of Speed
Chainmail
Platemail
Hyperstone
Assault Cuirass
Gloves of Haste
Belt of Strength
Point Booster
Ogre Club
Blade of Alacrity
Staff of Wizardry
Reaver
Vitality Booster
Heart of Tarrasque
Ring of Basilius
Tango
Boots of Speed
Chainmail
Power Treads
Assault Cuirass
Aghanim's Scepter
Heart of Tarrasque
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2 | 4 | 8 | 9 |  |
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1 | 3 | 5 | 7 |  |
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10 | 12 | 13 | 14 |  |
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6 | 11 | 16 |  |
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15 | 17 | 18 |
HEROS TO AVOID WHEN PLAYING VISAGE:
Kunkka, 
Sven, 
Magnus, 
Phantom Assassin, and any other hero who is likely to have significant cleave damage late game. They will one shot your familiars if they are good, giving them even more farm and making you useless.
Hello, and thanks for checking out my guide on how I play 
Visage. You may not agree with my item choices, but they have worked for me and I have had some amazing games with Visage using this build. This is my first attempt at writing a guide, but give it a shot and you should do well.
First things first, a little about Visage. This hero requires a small degree of micromanagement skill due to his ult, but by and large I do not focus as much on the stuns that his familiars are capable of. This build is intended to be more of a late game nuke/hard carry build than support, though it does include some elements of team support mostly through the inclusion of the Assault Cuirass. Visage is not suited to killing very fast moving heros as he is very slow, but with his burst damage he is capable of easily dispatching low health enemies early game, and even the tankiest of enemies late game.
Visage's Soul Assumption ability is a real mana burner early game, so I pick up a Ring of Basilius to help mitigate this and to try and get as many early game kills as possible. I also buy tangos for survivability.
After that, you should buy Boots of Speed as soon as possible. Visage's base movement speed is absolutely horrid, and you'll need boots to catch up when your Grave Chill is on cool down. After that, you'll want to start working towards an Assault Cuirass. Once you've got that, finish up your Power Treads, then build an Aghanim's Scepter. If you have time after that, work towards a Heart of Tarrasque to really just break the game.
Why an Assault Cuirass, you might ask? Well, several reasons. First, although Visage does get his Gravekeeper's Cloak ability, his base armor is really low. After taking four hits, he essentially becomes a glass cannon without the armor from the cuirass. Secondly, the aura helps increase his ability to nuke enemy heros by not only increasing his speed, but also the attack speed of his familiars and gives them a little bit of armor to help them survive, which is important because they have a high bounty and really long cooldown, and are easily the most essential part of playing Visage. Last, it is an excellent support item for team members in 5v5 fights.
Grave Chill: Pretty self explanatory. Use this to slow an enemy hero and make yourself into a bloodthirsty ravaging maniac.
Soul Assumption: A little tricky to use properly, but a most devastating nuke. Early game, it will be hard for you to use this skill without support from a teammate. Visage gains soul charges based on the amount of damage all heros around him take; if heros are not taking damage fast enough, soul assumption will do basically no damage and will eat all of your mana if you use it. Visage's base attack is **** early game, so you will need to lane with a high DPS hero.
Late game, you will want to use your familiars to lay out massive amounts of burst damage on an enemy, which will give you soul charges quickly and allow you to use soul assumption to it's maximum potential. Just make sure you've done sufficient damage to maximize this ability before you use it.
Gravekeeper's Cloak: This skill is especially handy late game, and provides great survivability. The magic resistance it provides is especially crucial, but it's less important to have this skill early game as you will be focusing on damage instead.
Summon Familiars: This skill summons two familiars (three with staff) who are permanent unless they die. Each familiar has the ability to drop from the sky and turn to stone; they will stay in this form for 8 seconds before automatically reverting back to their normal form. While in their stone form, they will recover all of their health, they cannot be attacked, and they will regenerate 'damage charges,' in addition to stunning and doing a small amount of damage to enemies in an AOE area. Basically, these units can really only dish out a high level of burst dps in a very short period of time and then are useless unless you wait a moment to let them recharge by turning them into stone. They do their max damage on the first attack they do, gradually doing less damage until it drops to 10 damage a hit, which is obviously garbage compared to the maximum amount of damage they can do. This makes micromanagement with them extremely important; I usually don't use them to attack creep waves, for example, unless I am trying to farm really hard and don't think I'll be fighting any enemy heros anytime soon. Using them to attack creep waves will kill their damage output and you will have to wait around 30 seconds in total before they can recharge again. That being said, I normally have them auto-follow my visage outside of group, then I select them all and manually control them in a group with my Visage when I am going in to burst down a hero or tower. Personally, I don't think the micromanagement involved with trying to use familiars to stun enemies is worth it, as the stun is very short in length and the time spent trying to do that could have been used to kill them instead, however if your familiars need to recharge anyway during a burst you can easily press tab and Q to drop your familiars on them.
Visage is best suited to lane with another hero who can support you and do high levels of burst DPS (
Ursa is probably the best, but any high burst DPS should work). Soul Assumption is basically useless unless you have someone who can help you do damage prior to getting your familiars. Soul Assumption only does high levels of damage if heros in the vicinity of Visage have taken high levels of damage in a short period of time; at the beginning of the game, he needs heros in the area to have taken 330 damage before Soul Assumption can really dish out the hurt. I normally get Soul Assumption at level one, but wait to use it unless the enemy heros are just being stupid and tower diving or something. Assuming the enemies in your lane are competent, you'll likely have to wait until level 2, but Visage can be absolutely deadly at level 2 if you have a competent laning partner who will help you gank. The best way to use Visage is to run in and get really close to an enemy hero before using your Grave Chill, letting your ally burst the enemy down while slowed, which gives you soul charges for your Soul Assumption; using it should kill most heros easily at the beginning of the game, but just be sure that you have soul charges or you'll end up burning your mana pool and only doing around 20 damage. Keep using this combo through level five and you should get easy ganks, which will help you build your Assault Cuirass quickly.
This is where Visage really starts to shine. At level six, you should get your familiars. While they are not yet that powerful, they will allow you to do enough burst damage dps combined with your Grave Chill and auto attack to build your soul charges up rather quickly so that you can use your Soul Assumption. Higher levels of his ult further increase the damage output of his familiars, and once you get your Aghanim's Scepter, you can dish out around 400+ damage with just one round of auto attacks from his familiars, on top of whatever damage Visage is doing. I typically have the familiars attack 4-5 times before I turn them to stone to stun the enemy and recharge their damage, assuming the enemies are still alive. They probably aren't. Assuming the enemy team hasn't rage quit at 20 minutes yet, build yourself a Heart of Tarrasque, sit back, and watch the luls commence as the enemy rages at their inability to kill you.
Let me know how this build works for you in the comments section, I'd love to hear some feedback!
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