Dota Hero Spotlight – Lanaya Templar Assasin Guide and Strategy

Lanaya Templar Assasin

The apprentice of a legendary creature from Aiur, Lanaya is a psychic adept who specializes in strategic assassination for the Sentinels. Her psionic abilities manifest in and out of combat, and can be used to amplify damage while attacking, to protect her from enemy assault, or cloak herself invisibly before lashing out at an unfortunate passerby. And so more often than not, the foes that encounter the Templar on the battlefield find themselves dead and buried, their lives cut short as she fades back into the shadows, waiting for a new prey.

Comment:
I admit I have this love-hate feeling towards Lanaya since I’m complete noob when it comes to using her. Lanaya’s invisiblity “meld” skill receives damage if any heroes with AOE skills on the spot you’re hiding.

Note: The Lanaya Guide below was written by IDeadshotI of Dota all stars forum. Currently Deadshot created one of the best and detailed Lanaya Guide ever.

 

IDeadshotI’s Lanaya Strategy Guide

Pre-requiste to playing Lanaya
To play Lanaya effectively, and to her full potential, you need to:

• Have decent last hitting skills at melee range (e.g. 2 to 3 creeps per wave when free farming at LEAST)
• Have decent map awareness (e.g. notice enemy hero is missing even if teammate dosen’t report)
• Have at least one month’s worth of experience in DoTA if you play 2 games a day
• Have played each and every hero at least once, and know roughly what skills they have
• Know the map well

NOTE – LANAYA IS NOT A NOOB-FRIENDLY HERO

If she’s so hard, then why play her?

• Superb laning skills against a multitude of heroes
• Good animation for last-hitting
• Unsurpassed killing power independent of items early game
• Unsurpassed 50% slow at any range, permanantly slowed if pre-warded well
• Legal Maphack with proper wards placement
• Unsurpassed mindgames
• Counter for your average tank like Bristleback
• Almost un-surpassed late game, only a handful of heroes can win you (countable on two hands)
• Incredibly fast pushing late game when you can take out creepwaves in one hit at no mana cost
• Incredibly easy to rack up sprees and win 1 v 2 skirmishes

Lanaya Skills

Refraction
Manipulating psionic energy around herself granting a mystical refraction of light that protects her from external harm and giving her bonus damage for a limited number of instances. Lasts 20 seconds.

Comments:
This skill is the one skill which makes Lanaya fairly imbalanced, and one of the most fun heroes to play. This is the skill which grants you superior mind games against almost any other hero, and allows her to win battles even at extremely low hp, while giving her potential laning power and tanking capabilities.

Meld
The art of Shakuras allows Lanaya to conceal herself at any time of the day and strike from the shadows with her armor-shredding blades. Deals bonus damage and reduces enemy armor for 10 seconds.

Comments:
Meld grants Lanaya invisibility, which is broken by movement, actions, spells, or a change in position by a skill (e.g. Vacuum). When broken with a normal attack, the enemy receives physical damage as stated, while reducing the target’s armour by the stated amount.

Psi Blades
Using her psionic powers, the Templar causes enemy units behind her target to feel the same pain as the target itself. This psionic power extends her attack range.

Comments:
This skill extends your range, and causes unblockable, unreducable damage to enemies in a straight line behind your target, which is only negated by spell immunity. Interestingly, denying also spills damage, and one point in it allows you to attack from the other side of the creep line.

Psionic Trap
Creates psionic traps on ground. When triggered, it will slow units within 400 range by 50%.

Comments:
A trap which gives vision, has insane casting range, decent Area of Effect (AOE), long slow duration, [increased] cooldown and permanent duration and invisibility. Need I say more?

 

Lanaya Skill Build

There are two, and I repeat ONLY two viable skill builds for Lanaya. Skill build A is a typical build I use for most games, including inhouse, whereas Skill build B, although more unorthodox, is used when laning certain heroes which negate Refraction and lane extremely well (e.g. Viper), and is also the favoured build for league play. For obvious reasons, one would never go stats early game since her skills are all so great. So why not Meld + Psi Blades?

Skill Build A

1. Refraction
2. Meld
3. Refraction
4. Meld
5. Refraction / Meld
6. Psionic Trap
7. Refraction / Meld
8. Refraction / Meld
9. Refraction / Meld
10. Psi Blades
11. Psionic Trap / Psi Blades
12. Psi Blades
13. Psi Blades
14. Psi Blades / Stats
15. Psionic Trap / Stats
16. Psionic Trap
17. -25 Stats

Lanaya Item Builds
There are two main item builds for Lanaya, which have two variations each. Both include Desolator as a key item. Let’s have a look at the item builds first, before we evaluate the items.

Item Build

• Tango x 4 (180 gold)
• Clarity x 2 (100 gold)
• GG Branch x 3 (171 gold)
• Slippers of Agility x 1 (150 gold)

If you picked Lanaya, you can afford this immediately with the changes to 6.50. Don’t bother changing the slippers into Wraith Bands. I’ll explain why later.

• Mithril Hammer x 2 (3220 gold)
• Boots of Speed (500 gold)
• Desolator Recipe (1200 gold)
• Boots of Travels Recipe (2200 gold)

On your first trip to the fountain, you should at the very least, be able to afford one hammer and possibly a boots of speed. Along the way, if you die or something, stock up abit on clarities and flasks, which are also effective items in mind games Why Desolator? It adds

1. 60 physical damage that is easy to build and amplified by armour reduction
2. -6 armour reduction, which basically amplifies your damage to kill anything below 14 armour with relative ease
3. Gives one of the best gold / dmg ratio given the armour reduction
4. Gives you the only orb which synergizes with Psi Blades, because more damage done to the first target means more damage cleaved, as opposed to slowing the first target but not affecting the others.

Boots of Travels is taken over treads because the attack speed boost is not relevant early game with animation canceling, and teleportation allows you to push, defend and kill well.

• Ogre Axe (1000 gold)
• Broadsword (1200 gold)
• Black King Bar Recipe (1600 gold)

This item is optional. Generally in league games it is mandatory, but in pubs that’s another issue. It adds nice final hp to your hero, and abit of damage to boost.

• Eaglehorn (3300 gold)
• Quarter Staff (900 gold)
• Butterfly Recipe (1800 gold)

Generally games would end by this point, although a well-farmed Lanaya can go further than this. Butterfly is key to all Agility based DPS heroes, giving you the damage / atk spd equivalent of 60 agility. Best of all is the 30% evasion, which means by now you are a veritable tank against normal attacks. Killing creeps and pushing is also more of a breeze now.

 

Lanaya Templar Assasin Strategy

 

Remember this – Early game up to (early) Mid game, Lanaya does NOT require any items to own, since with her skills alone she can easily take down any hero with 3 digits worth of hp. Therefore, the Desolator is to extend her effectiveness all the way to right before late game, and also to allow her to farm up the items required for her effective late game. If you feel that Desolator is coming up too slow, then skip it and go straight for some survival items, like Vanguard.

Engaging the Enemy

The best lanes for you to gank are easily the top and bottom lanes, since the further you have to chase the enemy, the more advantageous it usually is to you. Before engagement, you should set a trap (or two) in the escape path of the enemy, preferably without the opponent’s notice. Lanaya can solo-engage up to two heroes at a time, assuming they have less than 3 seconds of disables between them (bad examples are Rhasta + PoTM, gg to you).

The next step is to turn on Refraction. When it has 13 seconds left, engage with a trap you set and immediately activate. Walk out behind the enemy heroes, during which they will most likely target you with nukes. Do NOT right-click on them, this will trigger creep aggravation and make your shields go down fast.

Use right-click function to walk up beside your target, and engage with a Meld and immediate breaking of it. By now, they should be a slight distance behind their creeps and slowed by 50%, so landing it should be no problem. Unlike other gankers, spells like Eclipse and Suicide are of no effect to you with Refraction on. Animation-cancel attack your main target, and follow up with a slow once he walks over your initial trap. Walk up beside him, Meld, and end the battle.

Do NOT tower dive unless you are absolutely sure of the kill, enemy creeps are not in the immediate vicinity, AND the opponent heroes does NOT have a lengthy disable (e.g. Dismember)

Remember, Lanaya has problem killing strength heroes with massed strength items and damage, and high movement speed (balanar and lycan comes to mind), so don’t engage them, especially if they have a teammate.

Also, take note of a very important point – with 14 seconds cooldown on Psionic Traps, it becomes much more viable to gank with a teammate, since while you CAN kill your prey, you might not be able to chase them down.

Mind Games

Mind Games are the only counters to map hackers. They allow you to counter ganks, score kills, and escape certain death with a sliver of hp left. Basically, the idea is to make yourself seem alone, or use your low hp to lull the enemy into a false sense of security in enaging you. Once they get tempted, you can either lure them to your teammate, or finish them off yourself.

Refraction allows you to take on most heroes 1 on 1, so long as you lure them out of the creep’s range, since you can kill them before they can take out all your charges, even if they have a damage over time skill. The idea is to take down enemy heroes without losing your hp and your life. Other good heroes are Bristleback, Centuar, and Abbadon. Fortunately for you, you counter all of these heroes, since your armour reduction and burst damage doesn’t give them the chance to retaliate or run away.

Generally, counters for Mind Games include Necrolyte, Axe, Zeus and perhaps Spectre. Fortunately, only Axe can counter you, since his ultimate goes through your Refraction. The rest can be negated with Refraction and sometimes Meld, allowing you to escape any non-disabling gank.

Killing blinkers

Lanaya has difficulty killing heroes with blink-like skills, like Timewalk, Waveform and Leap. How then, do you kill them, before you farm your blink dagger? (if you decided to farm one) The answer is to play effective mind games. Lanaya can play mind games better than any hero, since the 5 hits are definite. If you hang around your tower at around 100 hp for long enough, with right timing and baiting you can get that enemy Morphling to Waveform you at your tower, during which you can Meld-Strike him, and slow him long enough to kill him. By the time they use their escape mechanism on an attempt to kill you and realise their mistake, it would already be too late.

Source: http://forums.dota-allstars.com/index.php?showtopic=196038

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