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Stout Shield
Iron BranchIron Branch
Healing Salve
Tango
Power Treads
Drum of Endurance
Sacred Relic
Radiance
Magic Wand
Poor Man's Shield
Quelling Blade
Ring of Basilius
Eye of Skadi
Heart of Tarrasque
Manta Style
Linken's Sphere
Diffusal Blade
Butterfly
Boots of Travel
Power Treads
Drum of Endurance
Radiance
Manta Style
Heart of Tarrasque
Diffusal Blade
Butterfly
Boots of Travel
Black King Bar
Battle Fury
Blade Mail
Armlet of Mordiggian
Divine Rapier
Mjollnir
Hand of Midas
Arcane Boots
Helm of the Dominator
Assault Cuirass
Daedalus
Monkey King Bar
Abyssal Blade
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4 | 8 | 9 | 10 |  |
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2 |  |
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1 | 3 | 5 | 7 |  |
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6 | 11 | 16 |  |
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12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 17 | 18 |
note: this is an advanced guide. If you want basic information about the hero refer to other guides as I do not want to bore you with information other guides already covered very well.
Hello everyone, I am GotYou and I hope you find my guide helpful.
This is my first guide ever and I actually am kind of suprised I am writing this. Though, I am so excited of the resurgance of Naga Siren as a carry in the current meta because I really enjoy playing unusual carries and strategies with my averagely skilled team. Ultimately this excitement lead me to writing this guide.
Naga Siren was used as a very effective carry for long periods of time until most notably Team Alliance used her as a support on their way to The International 3 leading to a meta game shift.
Due to her game breaking ultimate and the longest magic immunity ignoring disable in all of DotA she was considered as Tier 1 ban/pick material.
In 6.79 however, while leaving her abilities unchanged she has not seen much attention as a support, which mostly is a consequence of the nerf to experience you can get out of the jungle by pulling neutrals.
Although she mostly vanished as a support in the current meta, she is ocassionally used as a carry again. Even Tier 1 Teams like Alliance are using her successfully again after Lod[A] took over the role of the drafter.
Recently Team Titan (usually considered a Tier 2,5 Team) made an upset by winning games against very strong teams like DK and spG. Granted they still lost the bo3s, team Titan achieved a status in which Naga Siren is first banned in pretty much 95% of the games played by them.
By pointing this out, I want to emphasize how strong this hero is and want to rise awareness of its potential.
Even a 25k gold lead, a huge kill lead and even far superior overall skill of the opposing team can be a matter of no importance if you have a Naga Siren with a Radiance on your Team!
In this guide I want to point out how this hero is used in competitive play in the current meta and how you will lead the opposing team into desperation.
I assume that you are an experienced player, who is aware of pretty much all important mechanics in the game and familiar with the concept of split pushing and team fighting.
Avoid reading this, if you do not want to spend a lot of time learning a hero, you do not play in captains mode with a 5 man stack and you do not know how to last hit with less than 50 base damage.
Still not convinced of her potential? See what SingSing has to say after their game against Titan in the G-League
Team Titan showing off (must watch):
Getting one level of Ensnare early is usually a good thing. After that though, you should focus on Rip Tide and Mirror Image to get the split push going. After level 11 you can either decide to get Stats or Ensnare.
Stats help with the split push and Ensnare helps with locking down BKB carries.
Personal opinion: You may think +6 to all stats is not that big of a deal. But the extra mana can make the difference between getting off one more Mirror Image before you have to go back to base. Getting one more Mirror Image off at that point usually results in about 200-600 gold by farming creeps (best case scenario is that your 3 Mirror Images clear all 3 spawning creep waves at once, thus resulting in about 600 gold).
I gladly pass on one or two kills I would have gotten by skilling Ensnare considering the above stated advantage of stats. And this of course is with minimal chance of dying.
With rat DotA it's all about minimizing risks.
In the end it's up to you and situational.
As you can tell by the item builds, Radiance is instrumental to become the Queen of rat DotA. It allows you to gain a huge amount of farm, pressure all three lanes at the same time, intercept creep waves when there is a push going on and put on insane amounts of hero damage over the course of the game.
You probably know that farming a Radiance takes a lot of time and is kind of risky. It is of utmost importance that you do not die. So be very careful during team fights early on. This pretty much is the biggest downside of the Naga Siren as a carry because she will fall VERY far behind if she dies prior to aquiring Radiance.
You should get your core by 20-22 minutes. If you do not manage to get your Radiance by 25 minutes you are usually f*cked because in my honest opinion a Diffusal Blade is not a very good option in general[/b], so try to get your Radiance at all costs.
Admittedly, Diffusal Blade is a fairly good fighting item. However, this guide's purpose is to explain the way of split pushing your wait to victory. This is only possible with Radiance.
The advantages of Power Treads and Drums of Endurance should be obvious in giving you stats (most notably intelligence) and movement speed. All those items should be aquired every game. Feel free to check out the other builds. For starters I reccomend the Treads/Drums build though.
After those core items diversion begins. In most of the games your core should be followed up by a Manta Style to further increase your split pushing capabilities. It also purges silences which can be instrumental to get your Song of the Siren off.
The only real alternative in my opinion is a Linken's Sphere which also helps a bit with split pushing by giving you passive mana regeneration.
However, it is a far more defensive approach and should only be considered if there are some serious "ratters" like Bat Rider or hex initiation in the opposing team.
The items I put in the "avoid" section might be good items at first glance, but either delay your core as a #1 position Naga too much ( Armlet of Mordiggian) or dont fit the hero in general ( Black King Bar). If you do think you need a BKB in your paticular game, you drafted the wrong hero for this scenario.
Every item slot is worth it's weight in gold and has to be carefully considered.
I do not however want to go into to much more detail regarding the other items and appeal to your general game sense of when to get which items. Carefully analyze the opposing team and think of what you should get. As a general guideline refer to the "average game item progression" recommendation.
Just some last words regarding Hand of Midas. I really think this item is a poor choice on Naga. Not only does it delay your core Radiance (and by that it will actually LOWER your overall GPM in most cases) but you will also run very dry on item slots in your inventory, thus forcing you to sell the Drums very early or to get Boots of Travel.
Picking and banning the right heroes is pretty much the most important part in successfully playing a #1 position Naga Siren.
NUMBER ONE GOAL: Guarantee farm for your Naga Siren
In the first ban stage you have to consider if you have 1st or 2nd pick. If you do not have 1st pick you definitely have to get rid of 
Clockwerk which is one of the best straight up counters to Naga Siren.
Usually while playing ladder you should not reveal the Naga until the 2nd pick phase, so try to get a strong and flexible support and offlaner in the 1st pick stage.
For example this could be an 
Alchemist (best 1st pick in the current meta anyway) and a 
Nature's Prophet (ultimate rat doto). There are many more options which work and can be considered.
Try to get rid of more "rat catchers" in the 2nd ban phase like 
Nyx Assassin and 
Clinkz and follow up your draft with a support and mid that work well with your ultimate and the general concept of split pushing.
The best supports are usually considered 
Keeper of the Light and 
Disruptor. Both heroes can dish out a lot of magic damage to follow up your initiation with Song of the Siren. On top of that Keeper of the Light is a walking mana battery and can 
Recall you across the whole map.
Earthshaker is another insane support since he got buffed repeatedly. Not only is the synergy of 
Echo Slam and Song of the Siren very good but also is it very hard to push into an Earthshaker by the enemy team, hence buying your Naga Siren time to farm. If you want to get really fancy you can also do stuff like the ancient pulling using your 
Fissure.
Venomancer offers pretty much the same advantages.
You can also consider 
Enigma who offers team fight and push. However, drafting a jungler always makes your lanes weaker, so be careful and do not get too greedy.
Ultimately your draft should include an explosive mid hero which helps you to get kills with your ultimate or get a lot of towers. For example 
Shadow Shaman (good in securing early towers to get your Radiance faster) or 
Puck.
You will defenitely need a lot of space to farm up your core, so another farming core in mid lane like 
Shadow Fiend or 
Dragon Knight is not a very good option even though the combination of your umtimates may sound amazing.
Help, we are getting aggressive tri-laned: Keep your cool. Remember, Naga Siren is quite tanky early with 6 base armor and Stout Shield. Nevertheless, she can be nuked down by magical damage quite easily. Conseuquently, tri lanes involving something like 
Mirana and 
Shadow Demon can be quite deadly.
Ideally, you already keep the agressive tri-lane potential of the enemy in check and respond accordingly during the draft by picking a support that does not need that much levels to do stuff. Earthshaker excels at that offering a very potent long range stun at level one with offensive and defensive capabilities.
Worst case scenario: If you have level dependant supports like Disruptor protect your jungle from the start so you can carefully get pulls off during the laning stage. Also cut back on the farm of your Naga Siren and wait for the rotation of your mid player. Also, get a lane ward down.
If the enemy lane is superior to yours by a huge margin (you gave up 1st blood while protecting your jungle or smth), consider putting Naga Siren in the mid lane to at least give her some decent CS and levels.
As already stated, Naga Siren is a very potent and underrated hero. Her ability to turn games around is simply amazing and can lead to very satisfying games, if your team communication is on point!
The amount of control she can have over a game is unmatched in all of DotA and rewards teams that like to play for the late game.
If you like unusual carries, do not fear a very steep learning curve and like rat DotA, this is the perfect hero for you.
I appreciate all the feedback and hope you learned something. Feel free to comment with questions or suggestions to improve this guide.
Cheers
GotYou
2/11/2014
-improved overall formatting
-added more information to the drafting section
-added EternalEnvy's mid lane build
-removed diffusal blade build, since it's not the point of this guide
next update: illustrate advanced farming tactics with illusions, general hero movement during the different stages of the game and late game decision making
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