Theory Crafting: Spectre

The current main method is:

• Focus on leveling Dagger + Dispersion
• Get Ult whenever possible
• Boots + Vanguard
• Use Dispersion + Vanguard to AFK Farm Jungle & Lane
• Radiance
• Power Treads
• Diffusal Blade
• Manta Style, BKB or whatever you want

General Strategy:

• Ult for teamfights, use Reality to TP to the fight and get as many kills as possible to farm up your core items
• When the game hits about 40 minutes, you're basically going to win (if you haven't been getting stomped too hard / you're not playing stupid)

The major problem is that Spectre needs an eternity to farm up, is very boring to play, and isn't super useful until lategame.

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I've been experimenting a bit (not enough to know whether it's effective or not yet) with a ganking build:

• Max Dagger + Desolate (and Ult) first
• REMINDER: Desolate does 20/30/40/50 PURE damage when no allied heroes are within 325 radius of target enemy hero. Pure damage ignores Armor (i.e. deals exactly that amount of bonus damage, almost like HP removal)
• Phase Boots
• Soul Ring (if needed because it helps for Mana and if you're ganking, you should be getting kills making the HP loss negligible)
• In theory you could go Mask of Madness early on to maximize the hits you get in on them
• Diffusal Blade
• Smoke (for ganking)
• Could also go Orchid later for the Silence, Attack Speed, and Mana Regen (however, those things don't carry over to your Illusions)
• Could go Rod of Atos because mana is good, HP is good, and 50% move slow is awesome (if your enemies don't have many blinks)

Strategy:

• Go around ganking using Dagger and the bonus damage to get early kills
• Dagger + Phase to catch (doing it the other way around will cancel Phase)
• Diffusal and Phase add to your chase capability
• Get early kills and then farm up whatever late game items you find most useful (e.g. Radiance, BKB, Manta, MKB, AC)

Requirements:

• Need an aggressive lineup (if not, due to not leveling Dispersion, Spectre is very squishy)
• Need good ganker lanes

Useful allies:

• Purist would be very useful with this strategy due to the heal, his AoE passive slow, and his shield. Basically, his whole kit is great to support this build.
• Potentially Undying (not sure if Illusions count for Soul Rip, but his slow is useful, plus Tombstone & Spectre's illusions make for a confusing as fuck team fight as long as Earthshaker is not on the enemy team)

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A lot of it comes down to what you want to focus on:

• The Hero
• The Ult