DOTA Hero Spotlight – Phantom Lancer Strategy mini guide

Although his true name is unknown to his allies, Azwraith’s assigned name tells you enough. Like the Angel of Death, Azrael, he fights to rid the world of those who choose to embrace undeath. He is able to appear and disappear at will like a wraith, often appearing in many places at once. Azwraith is more than capable of dispatching the undead using his lance, each blow sending them closer to the spirit-realm. This lance is the source of his astounding ability to duplicate himself; whenever it draws blood he can use their life to create weaker copies of himself.

Comment:
Phantom lancer is also one of the best characters for me since he’s good in farming, ganking and most of all has invisibility skill.

Note: This mini guide is created by kybarnet of dota all stars forum. I decided to feature his Phantom Lancer guide since it’s concise and up to date as of map version v6.58.

 

Kybarnet’s Phantom Lancer Mini-guide

 

I’ve enjoyed Phantom Lancer since his change and have noticed a number of players have not adjusted to the remake of his skills / no up-to-date guides. PL is a GREAT mid game ganker that rarely dies, and can go on to carry / semi-carry.

Phantom Lancer Skill Build

Spirit Lance
Throws a magical spirit from his lance at a target damaging it and slowing it down for 3 seconds. An illusion is created attacking the target.

Doppelwalk
Allows the Phantom Lancer to become invisible for a period of time, leaving behind a duplicate of himself to confuse enemies. 10% movement bonus at all levels.
Lasts 8 seconds.

Juxtapose
Whenever the Phantom Lancer attacks he will randomly create a duplicate of himself. Limit of 5 images. Duplicates last 15 seconds.

Phantom Edge (Passive)
Gives the Phantom Lancer an edge in combat by increasing Juxtapose’s image generation and increasing magic resistance. Additionally, it enables his images to generate their own images.

Lance is your bread and butter and will always be maxed first. It owns for 3 reasons, which all combined make you a little-hercules for mid game: 1) 3 second massive slow + 7 sec CD, 2) Reasonable nuke to mana ratio to CD, & 3) The bonus image often forces them to retreat (basically they lose ~30 hp / sec if they don’t kill the image).

Juxtapose & Dopple are your next choices and either you will max one or not take it until later. Dopple has an absord mana cost until lvl 4 and all mana should be used for lancing until then.

• Lance
• Stats
• Lance
• Dopple
• Lance
• Dopple
• Lance
• Dopple
• Dopple
• Edge
• Edge
• Stats

Phantom Lancer Item Build

Starting items:
Basic starting items (wand / tangos / GG branches / maybe stout)

Mid Game Items:
Perseverance / Diffusal Blade / Boots of Speed / Scroll of Town Portal

This will allow you to spam lance frequently and quick teles across the map can often turn an enemies gank on its head. Diffusal increases the damages of images greatly as well as the obvious.

Finishing Items:
Boots of Travel / Manta Style / + Butterfly / Heart of Tarrasque / Bloodstone / Linkens (credits Bangkan3

Your success in late game primarily depends on them NOT getting Battle furies. Battle furies on 1 or 2 heroes will ruin your chance to mass image = no massive mana burn = no imbal.

Phantom Lancer Gameplay:
Game play is rather simple, farm ring of health, then Void. Try to save lance for opportunities to use 2 or 3 in a row for a guarenteed kill with an allie. Any time you have full mana after Perse, considering buying some teles and killing someone…the vast majority of the time you can do this. Farming heroes > farming creeps. After the kill stay in the lane until your mana / health recharge. Teleporting after a few images have spawned in the lane is best to disguise your movements. Of course if there is no rush you can walk over when you are 75% full of mana. Remember that lance is a great anti-gank tool as well. At lvl 4 lance requires 420 mana for 3 uses and PL has 427 mana pool…something to keep in mind. Using hotkeys for lance & number keys for diffusal is manadatory.

From lvl 9ish on, you want to gank ~4 or 5 times, but after you have over half the diffusal completed, go ahead and farm to finish it. Continue ganking after Diffusal but remember you always want at least 1 charge on it, unlike other heroes b/c images with a 0 charge diffusal lose the bonus stats / mana burn (mechanics tip biggrin.png). In the mean time, complete BoT if you can to speed up your farm & your images. Afterwards you want to react to the opponants, but often the game ends by this point.

Source: http://forums.dota-allstars.com/index.php?showtopic=267309&hl=

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 11:05 amand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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