Analysis: Hero Roles

Hard Carry

Hard Carries require a lot of support and farming gold, but will "carry" the team to victory later in the game. They tend to be "Late Game" heroes with high Damage Per Second (DPS) and abilities that scale well into late game.

Traits:

• Farm/Item Dependent (they need a lot of gold and items)
• Generally Start off weaker, but will snowball
• Generally have abilities that scale well (e.g. Critial Hits, % based damage)
• Generally Damage Per Second (DPS) focused

Examples:

• Anti-Mage
• Morphling

Support

Support heroes usually do not deal a lot of damage, but enable others to perform more effectively. Most have some sort of crowd control ability, in that they make their opponents deficient in some way. Support is usually responsible for buying "support items" like Wards, Couriers, as well as items they provide utility like Force Staff.

Traits:

• Generally do not need levels, gold, or items to be effective
• Generally have supportive spells like crowd control (e.g. Stun, Silence), Auras (e.g. increased mana regen, bonus damage)

Examples:

• Crystal Maiden
• Windrunner
• Dazzle
• Lich

Pusher

The Pusher's main role is to take down towers and structures. This is usually accomplished by innate abilities such as being able to summon minions or damage structures with spells.

Traits:

• Able to take down towers with ease
• Generally have summons/minions or spells that damage structures

Examples:

• Leshrac
• Pugna
• Death Prophet

Initiator

The Initiator is the first hero into battle. They do this by using an ability that will either disable the entire enemy team, do a large amount of damage before they can be stopped, and sometimes almost instantly take out one core enemy.

Traits:

• Have the ability to enter battle first without dying
• Generally have a spell with a large Area of Effect (AoE)
• Generally have a spell that can disable (e.g. Stun, Silence) enemies
• Sometimes have an innate ability to get close to enemies quickly or without being noticed (e.g. Invisibility, Movement Spells)
• Many benefit from having a Blink Dagger

Examples:

• Sand King
• Puck
• Tidehunter
• Kunkka

Ganker

Gankers are tasked with suprising a lane with an attack. Most gankers are able to either control the enemies they are attacking with stuns, or instantly tear through them with high damage nukes.

Traits:

• Benfit from early farm or levels (i.e. generally being solo at the middle lane is beneficial for them)
• Have spells that have high burst damage and/or crowd control (e.g. mostly Stuns)
• Sometimes have high mobility

Examples:

• Bane
• Queen of Pain
• Invoker
• Tiny
• Pudge

Roamer

Roamers are similar to gankers except that they usually stay out of lane, moving from lane to lane to set up ganks. This allows for an additional her to take solo farm and levels.

Traits:

• Level independent
• Have strong crowd control ability

Examples:

• Sven
• Earthshaker

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These are probably the terms you'll hear the most. Many heroes fit into more than one category. There are also some mashups you'll hear like "Semi-Carry", which are heroes that aren't necessarily as proficient at carrying as a hard carry, but still have the ability to do so (e.g. Mirana).

Hero Guide: Sand King

Sand King is a complete and total badass. He's an Initiator, Disabler, Semi-Pusher, Ganker, and a master of juking.

Skill Builds

There are two main builds I use for his skills:

1. Burrowstrike / Sand Storm / Burrowstrike / Sand Storm / Burrowstrike / Epicenter
2. Burrowstrike / Caustic Finale / Burrowstrike / Sand Storm / Burrowstrike

In build 2, more levels of Caustic Finale can be substituted in, depending on the situation. It's generally good to have at least one level of Sand Storm for juking, but not always necessary. Sometimes, the splash from Caustic Finale is better.

Generally, Build 1 is used for dual laning. Build 2 is used if you're in a solo lane or an aggressive/push lane.

Additional Information:

• Skilling Sand Storm is useful because of this piece Delay Before Reveal: 0.3/0.6/0.9/1.5. This gives you a lot of extra survivability and juking power.
• Caustic Finale is a great pushing skill and harassing skill. But you have to use it carefully or you will push your lane and have a difficult time getting farm.
• Early game, you can probably DPS more with Sand Storm than from auto attacking enemies. If they juke into the jungle, guess what, it's an AoE Spell so it will still hit them. It does have a fairly small radius though, only 525 at max level (for comparison, many ranged heroes have 600 range)

Item Builds

Starting:

• Tangos
• Healing Salve
• 2 x Mana Potion
• 2 x Iron Branches
• 1 x Observer Wards / Courier

Alt Starting:

• Quelling Blade: If you're solo mid against a hero like Tiny who has high base damage.
• Stout Shield: If you're against a lane that you know will harass the hell out of you.

Boots:

This will be dependent on what you're doing with Sand King. Almost any boots will work on him situationally.

• Arcane Boots: This is generally going to be your choice. Sand King needs mana and can fill a semi-support (aka Secondary Support) with this choice.
• Phase Boots: If you're pretty well farmed, this can help with chasing down enemy heroes to land another stun, move quickly between lanes for ganking, and once Epicenter is activated, you can activate phase to move through creeps and stay on enemies
• Power Treads: If you need extra HP, if you're planning on pushing with Caustic Finale, or having a rough game, power treads aren't a bad option either. Being able to switch between stats is very useful (i.e. Agi for pushing/farming, Int when you need an extra bit of mana, and Str for extra HP and base damage)
• Tranquil Boots: I generally don't use these, but they can be viable for a roaming Sand King.
• Boots of Travel: When you're farmed up and in late game, these are incredibly effective. Sand King is excellent at pushing lanes with Caustic Finale. When you see an opportunity, port to another lane and take a tower.

Core:

• Magic Wand: This gives good stats, is great for extra HP or mana in a pinch, just an all around good item to have.
• Blink Dagger: This is the bread and butter of your combo. It gives you great ability to catch players, to initiate, or escape.

Situational:

• Aghanim's Scepter: This is a nice item for tanking up a bit. The upgrade will decrease the cooldown of your ult and increase the number of pulses. If they do not have a lot of magic resistance or you can get it early enough, Aghanim's is a great investment.
• Urn of Shadows: A good item for a ganking Sand King. It's cheap and has a good build up. If you're ganking a lot, it'll be full of charges, making Sand King even more deadly.
• Drum of Endurance: This item is excellent if your team doesn't already have one. The speed bonus makes Sand King's ult slightly more effective. The aura is useful for pushing and team fighting. Also, the build up is good. Sand King needs both STR and INT for mana.
• Black King Bar: This will greatly help with your initiations. Nothing can stop you once you jump in.
• Pipe of Insight: A good team fighting item. It also helps him take less damage in initiations where BKB is down or what have you.
• Shiva's Guard: The active synergizes well with your ult. As soon as you blink in with Epicenter going, trigger Shivas and watch your enemies melt even faster.
• Scythe of Vyse: This is a great support item to get. It gives Sand King lots of good stats, a larger mana pool, and the mana regen he needs.
• Bottle: If you're going mid, you'll want to get this as one of your first items. Otherwise, let mid buy it because they probably need the runes more than you do.
• Soul Ring: In the event you do not get Arcane Boots, Soul Ring will work as a substitute. You need mana and most of the time Sand King initiates, he gets a kill, thus making the sacrifice of HP less scary.
• Ring of Basillius: If no one else on your team has one and you're going to focus on pushing, this is a good pickup. It gives the creeps a little extra durability and gives you some bonus regen. Unfortunately, you won't greatly benefit from any of its upgrades, so towards late game, just sell it.
• Veil of Discord: Reduces magic resistance, allowing Sand King to dish out more damage with his ult. It also gives him armor and HP regen he needs, plus more Int (increasing mana pool).

Of course, these are just general suggestions. If the game calls for it, there are many other options (e.g. Radiance, Blade Mail, Blood Stone, Necronomicon, etc..)

General Strategy

• Use Shift-Queuing to set up your Ult --> Blink Dagger combo. After that, use BKB (if you have one) and your stun to keep all your enemies stuck in your Epicenter.
• Your main job is to chill off to the side and initiate with your Ult/Blink combo after telling your team you're going in.
• Load up on TPs. Sand King is so damn good at ganking and counter ganking.
• Smoke is one of your best friends. It lets you sneak all over the fucking place like the creepy arachnid you are.
• Sand Storm is great for juking. At level 4, you get 1.5 seconds of invis after you break the channel to escape into the trees and blink to safety.
• If you have mana potions while laning, don't be afraid to use spells. That's why you have the potions. Otherwise, they just go to waste.

You should do fine. Sand King is super easy after you get the hang of his Ult/Blink combo. He also fits in most lineups quite easily. Even if you're in a dual melee lane, you can use Caustic Finale (which has a range of 400) to harass ranged heroes that get too close. He's also a pretty powerful nuker, so half the time, you can just kill the enemies in lane and then farm.

Hero Guide: Broodmother

Broodmother is a beastly pusher and carry with her swarms of minions. She's a lot of fun and pretty relevant in the current meta-game.

Items

Starting:

• 1 x Tangos
• 1 x Salve
• 1 (or 2) x Mana Potion
• 2 (or 3) x Iron Branch
• 1 x Ring of Protection / Courier / Observer Wards (the latter two more so for solo MM)

Alt Starting:

• Quelling Blade: This is a very situational pick up if you're solo mid against a hero like Tiny that can deny the shit out of you with his high base damage.

Core:

• Power Treads: You benefit from the extra HP, the attack speed, and you can switch to different stats when needed.
• Ring of Basilius: Gives you mana regen and is a nice asset while pushing. Some people choose to later upgrade this into Vlads (but that is generally a luxury item)
• Soul Ring: The bread and butter of pushing. Your webs increase your regen, so losing HP to gain mana isn't really an issue.
• Magic Wand: Always a nice addition to any hero build. Having charges on your wand can really get you out of trouble in a pinch.
• Black King Bar: You are incredibly frail. But, you have an ult that gives you massive life leech. However, you cannot use that if you get stunned. Therefore, you need BKB.

Situational:

• Assault Curiass: Great for the attack speed and additional pushing power. It helps the entire team as well, while also synergizing with your ult by giving you attack speed that further enhances your survival.
• Vladamir's Offering: If you're going more for a Pusher role, Vlad's isn't an awful pick up later in the game. It benefits the team and your creeps/minions a bit. Also, unlike Satanic, the lifesteal will work with your passive because it's not a Unique Attack Modifier.
• Boots of Travel: Late game, getting these will help you be a complete douchebag by being able to port to a late and push the shit out of it, then flee.
• Radiance: A generally good pushing item. If you're hidden in your webs and the enemy doesn't have any reveals, it can help make them back off. You do already have a good amount of push from your Spiderlings, but more doesn't hurt, especially if you're up against a hero like Earthshaker that will pushish you for having a swarm.
• Butterfly: Your passive's miss chance stacks with the evasion, making you a pain in the ass to go 1v1 with. You also benefit from the AGI, that being your main attribute. It will make you closer to a glass cannon, but a cannon that can dodge shit.
• Monkey King Bar: For that sweet mini bash and increased damage output, plus you get True Strike.
• Heart of Tarrasque: Mega boost to your survivability
• Orchid Malevolence: Orchid can be a great pickup to stop players from escaping you with blinks or smiting you with their spells. It gives bonus damage, bonus attack speed, and delicious mana regen.
• Drum of Endurance: This is not exactly an optimal item on Brood, however, if you're not doing super great it gives you some things that benefit you and your minions. You also gain some nice stats like STR/HP and INT/Mana.

There are plenty of other options. It depends on what the game calls for. I mean, you could pick up an Orchid if they have an Anti-Mage to stop them from blinking away (plus, the attack speed and mana regen are nice), or a Manta Style for more suvivability, pushing power, and team fight presence.

What you want to avoid is items that have Unique Attack Modifiers, since you already have one as a normal skill.

Skill Builds

My preferred build is as such:

• Spin Web / Incapacitating Bite / Spin Web / Spawn Spiderlings / Spawn Spiderlings / Ult

Then, depending on what is needed, I'll either max out Spin Web or Spawn Spiderlings first, usually going with Spawn Spiderlings for the nuking and pushing power.

My justification is that I like the harass power of my passive, plus I can constantly harass my opponent by regening in the web. Also, having some slow and chance to miss is better than none.

Another popular build is:

1. Spin Web
2. Spawn Spiderlings
3. Spawn Spiderlings (sometimes Spin Web here)
4. Incapacitating Bite / Spin Web
5. Spawn Spiderlings

This build focuses on either: Nuking power, early push, or sending your Spiderlings to farm out of lane.

General Strategy

Spiderlings:

Spiderling micro is pretty critical on Broodmother. There are many uses to them:

• Farming the jungle while you lane
• Pushing towers
• Trapping/surrounding heroes
• Harassing heroes
• Scouting / The poor Brood Ward -- put these at chokes so you won't get ganked, use them to see what the rune is (sometimes destroying it if you/an ally cannot get there in time), seeing if the enemy is Roshing, etc...
• Catching enemies. Your Spiderlings run at 350 and have a 15% move slow on attack.

But you always have to be careful. Do not feed your spiderlings to the enemy.

Webs:

• If you're solo mid, you will usually need less webs than in a side lane
• Watch out for dust on enemies or Sentry wards
• Your ult grants bonus damage in addition to life leech
• Webs grant a small sight radius (150). They can sometimes be useful for watching wards, ramps, etc..
• Webs give you a movespeed increase. Sometimes, throwing one down while fleeing can give you the extra boost you need
• Webs destroy trees, they are awesome for anti-juking
• When you get into a web, there's a 2 second fade time. Do not expect to be instantly safe.

Other stuff:

• Much of your farm comes from bulldozing towers, remember you're an awesome pusher in addition to a carry.
• Remember, Incapacitating Bite is a Unique Attack Modifier (previously known as an Orb Effect). It will not work with other UAMs (e.g. Satanic, Desolator, etc...)

Analysis: Hard Lane Heroes

 LAST UPDATED: May 28, 2013

Disclaimer: This isn't going to be 100% correct (if it were, then Dota would probably be close to a solved game). Also note that the list will innately be more geared towards pubs. Also, have to do a lot of fixes to this list as my skill has increased plus the meta has shifted. The original version of this list was pretty awful. Sometime soon, I'll just do a whole re-write of this post.

The key things are:

• Survivability
• Ability to farm against 2+ heroes

Other notes:

• Some heroes are good because they can play a little more dangerously because they have good escapes
• Some heroes are good because they have long range methods of getting some farm
• Some heroes are good because they don't require much farm and can screw enemies over with levels
• Even if a hero is generally very good at the lane, there are ways to counter them (e.g. they might not be good at fending off pushes)
• Some heroes can solo the hard lane, but whether they should is another story.

Very good:

• Lone Druid is absurdly good at the hard lane. His bear is basically a lanemate that takes no XP from you. His movespeed is very high, allowing him to escape most quarrels. However, a few stuns and he's toast. Also note, using his bear, he can pull creeps
• If the lane is too difficult, he has the option of Jungling
• Dark Seer because he has a speed boost and can farm creeps from a range with Ion Shell to some extent, but due to it being a DoT enemies can deny. However, you can harass the enemy carry and keep the creeps pushed into tower range which makes last hitting more difficult.
• If the lane is too difficult, he has the option of Jungling
• Batrider due to an excellent escape in Firefly. He also can harass with Sticky Napalm and Flamebreak to some extent.
• If the lane is too difficult, he has the option of Jungling
• Nature's Prophet because he can pull with his Treants. Sprout gives him extra survivability. Combine Sprout and his Teleport, you can escape many situations because the enemy does not have vision of you. However, AoE stuns can still shut you down while you're hidden in Sprout and he has no escapes other than those two.
• If the lane is too difficult, he has the option of Jungling

Pretty Good:

• Weaver because he has invisibility and Geminate Attack works well for harass. After getting his ult, he's pretty safe. However, he is very easy to nuke down with his low base HP and poor attack range.
• Clockwerk by using his rockets to last hit and harass. A well placed cogs will get you out of many bad situations.
• Windrunner because she has a good escape mechanism, Powershot allows her to farm from a range as well as harass, plus she has a stun. However, against a coordinated trilane, she'll be in for trouble. She is much better against a dual lane that also has a jungler.
• Clinkz has invisibility to escape with. He also has Searing Arrows, which allow him to last hit effectively. If you turn your back on him, he can easily take out a tower or kill a hero.
• Bounty Hunter is a good pickup because he is able to leech XP with invisibility, similar to Broodmother. His goal is to hit level 6 quickly, then get kills with his ult, making up for lost farm. He can be countered quite easily with Sentry Wards though.
• Beastmaster because his axes have a long range. If you skill his critters, he gets a huge sight radius so it's hard to gank him and you can use his boar to help you last hit or harass. Many people also will stack the ancients and farm that using the Boar. He's also very difficult to deal with 1v1, forcing the enemy to dual lane in order to get farm.  
• How to farm Dire Ancients: Use your boar to stack the ancients on the 52 second mark. Build a Soul Ring. Once you have 3+ stacks, use your Axes to hit all the Ancients. Wait until your Soul Ring comes off cooldown, use it for the mana, rinse and repeat. (I've seen this done with even up to 6 stacks of ancients).

Decent:

• Magnus used to be a tier 1 offlaner. however, Skewer was nerfed (the range now scales instead of starting at max distance). He can still do OK, but kind of relies on Bottle-Crowing and spamming Shockwave. Leveling Skewer is a must, the level 1 distance is crap. He really shouldn't be run against lanes with heavy disables. Ideally, he'd work better if they had a Jungle Trilane. 
  
• Broodmother can hide in her webs and use her spiderlings to farm the jungle, giving her some nice guaranteed farm. The problem is that if the enemy picks up Sentry Wards the lane can be problematic. However, you also have high movespeed in your webs, good regen, a long ranged nuke, and spiderlings. Plus, the enemy has to use money to buy Sentry Wards. Her main goal is to leech XP and then push down towers as soon as laning phase is over (i.e. players leave the lane to gank and do other things), leaving Broodmother unchecked.
• NOTE: Brood got her Spiderites nerfed hard, so she is a bit less viable (they don't do as much damage to towers as they used to and are worth more bounty)
• Enigma because, similar to Lich, he can deny creeps. His minions allow him to last hit while not putting himself in too much danger. He also has a stun, which can be used aggressively or to retreat. Just be careful not to feed his minions to the enemy, they are pretty slow.
• Mirana due to her jump for escapes. She can farm decently with her attack range as well as Star Storm. If an ally comes to gank, a well placed arrow is great. Plus, getting her to level 6 quickly helps the entire team with her ultimate.
• Treant Protector can soak up XP using his invisibility. He's mostly put there to gain levels fast and help other lanes by using Living Armor.
• Lich because he can deny creeps, giving him an even larger level advantage over his enemies. He is mana independent and can harass effectively with his nuke. His movespeed is higher than most and he has a good attack range. However, he cannot fend off pushes very well and if caught out of position, he doesn't have much of an escape.
• Tidehunter is good as a solo in certain situations. Anchor Smash allows him to get some last hits (depending on the match up). It also reduces damage by 40%, making it difficult to kill him with auto attacks. It's also incredibly low in mana cost. Gush can help him escape due to its slow. Lastly, he has Kraken Shell, which reduces incoming damage and will remove debuffs at a certain threshold of damage.
• Like Sand King, Tidehunter is also an excellent counter to Broodmother because of Anchor Smash.

Situationally (and in some cases can, but shouldn't):

• Sand King because he is excellent at escaping. His stun is very reliable and can be used to get away from a bad situation. Sand storm allows him to get out of a lot of bad scenarios as well because of the reveal time after breaking the channel. Additionally, his passive has splash damage which can be used to harass enemies that get too close to the creep wave.
• Sand King is a very good counter to a solo Broodmother lane due to Caustic Finale.
• Wisp Sometimes, people throw Wisp there to get him to level 6 quickly. His attack range is pretty decent (575) and Spirits give him further harass. But, once he's level 6, all hell breaks loose and ganks come non-stop
• Tinker  can work on the same grounds as Beastmaster - Ancient Stacking. He is a bit less able to stay in the lane and is very dependent on Soul Ring or Bottle for stacking properly (no cheap spell like Boar to stack with).
• Queen of Pain because she has blink. She also benefits from the extra levels and can demolish her lane once she has ult. However, she works much better if the lane is 1v1.
• Puck because illusionary orb allows it to farm or escape. Phase shift, when used properly, will make Puck very hard to lock down with a stun. Puck also has a silence.

Also remember, that some of these heroes have the ability to solo the hardlane, but you have to be careful with mana.

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

Theory Crafting: Silencer

 Current Mindset

People generally see Silencer as one of two things:

1. Support
2. Hard Carry

However, he just seems to blow in the current meta (push). So I'm re-examining him. First up, his skills:

1. Curse of the Silent: great for lane control in certain lanes. However, it doesn't have much use later in the game as heroes' mana pools and HP increases.
2. Glaives of Wisdom: this is his "carry" spell. It scales with INT, doing pure damage (i.e. ignores armor).
3. Last Word: a very annoying silence. It lets players cast a spell, but then they must be silenced for up to 3 seconds. The range is 750, which means Silencer must be close to the fight. It also steals INT from any enemy that dies in the area, or 2 INT if Silencer gets the kill.
4. Global Silence: a very powerful spell at all levels. It lasts 3/4/5 seconds, but costs a shit load of mana (450 at level 3).

The problem I see is that he has mediocre support spells:

• Curse is conditional. If they cast a spell, it goes away.
• Glaives isn't really a support spell
• Last Word is conditional and won't prevent anyone from casting a spell. It will stop Wombo Combos (e.g. Tiny's Toss/Stun). The INT Steal adds to his carry viability
• Global Silence is great, but it has a long cooldown

 He's also not particularly fast, he has no escapes, no guaranteed disables (other than his ult, but that's on a long cooldown), and is very squishy. Basically:

• He's not "supporty" enough to support
• He's not survivable enough to carry (i.e. he can get ganked stupid easy)

Theory Crafting

My theory is this: play him as a Ganking Semi-Support. Here's the reasoning:

• Silencer doesn't farm well, he doesn't survive well - instead, make him the offensive one
• Silencer needs to be around a lot of kills to soak up INT
• INT Fuels Silencer's carrying ability

 Skill Build:

Pretty typical stuff. If the other team isn't spammy, grab some levels of Curse. Otherwise go Glaives/Last Word so you can last hit or deal damage. Pure damage is pretty nice at all levels.

Just make sure you have at least a level of Last Word to get the ability to soak up INT.

Item Build:

Early Game Items:

• Tranquil Boots: You have no regen, you need the speed to get around the map quickly
• Soul Ring: If you're involved in kills, then the HP comes back to you
• Magic Wand: Is usually a solid pick up

 Mid-Late Game Items:

• Rod of Atos: You need the HP (the longer you're alive, the more annoying Last Word gets), you like the INT, and the slow is just one more utility spell (chase/escape). It's also cost effective for INT and you get a free active ability out of it.
• Eul's: More speed, more INT, more regen. Plus, it gives you an escape
• Push Stick: Int and DPS, plus an escape
• Orchid: Int, DPS, Regen, and a powerful silence
• Sheep Stick: Never a bad item

Situational:

• Linken's: Regen, Stats, and more survivability
• Shiva's: Int and Armor, both good for you. Also, a slow and aura
• BKB: should be obvious why this is here
• Dagon: Yes, it's gimmicky, but it also guarantees kills which help you and your team by draining 2 INT permanently from your victim.
• Drums: Gives you HP and INT, as well as some speed. Pretty good for him
• Necro Book: Both stats are good for you, the minions are good if you can micro well. One minion increases your move speed, which is good for escapes and chases. It gives you some pushing power. It also gives you detection at level 3.
• Ghost Scepter: If you need to avoid Physical damage and are feeling pretty safe from magic damage.

Play Style:

• Get your Tranquil Boots early and start roaming
• Get involved in a lot of kills early on so you steal lots of INT
• Use Soul Ring because you'll most likely get the kill or just use Tranquil boots to regen the HP lost.
• Early game, you can play sort of a Roaming Support position. If it goes well, you can transition into semi-carry / secondary carry.
• Mid/Late/Situational items are all really just situational, but some are more situational than others.
• Just remember, your biggest things are: you need to be tanky (for Last Word), you need INT (for damage), and attack speed, regen, etc. are very beneficial.
• Even if you're doing well, DO NOT pick up a Blood Stone. Yes, regen is nice, but there are so many items that benefit you far more than that. Regen is not your main concern as Silencer.

To conclude, this is just THEORY CRAFT at the moment. I'll make it a Hero Guide if it goes well over time.

Blink Dagger vs. Force Staff

Updated: 10/15/2012 (due to 6.75 patch changing Force Staff Recipe from 300 ==> 500)

Blink Dagger and Force Staff are regarded by many as very similar. Some even go so far as to say Force Staff is the poor man's Blink Dagger.

However, each has its own uses. Heck, a lot of players pick up both on certain heroes. Anyway, here's the breakdown (note: bolded is better option):

Category	Blink Dagger	Force Staff
Usage	Self	Any Unit (800 Range)
Gold Cost	2,150	2,350
Parts	1	2 + Recipe
Stats	N/A	+10 INT, +3 HP Regen
Mana Cost	75	25
Cooldown	14 sec.	20 sec.
Distance Traveled	1,200 (4/5 max if target outside range)	600
Travel Time	Instant	0.3 sec.
Disjoint	Yes	No
Disabled	3 sec. after attacked by Player Owned Unit (or Roshan)	N/A
Magic Immunity	Can use while BKB is active	Cannot use on Magic Immune units
Tree Destruction	Yes	No
Shows Direction of Travel	No	Yes

Destroying trees is the only neutral / situational piece here. Destroying trees is good for anti-juking and destroying Nature's Prophet's Sprout. However, with Blink Dagger, you can blink into the trees and teleport to safety.

As we can see, both have pieces that are good and bad. They're situational pick ups.

One last tid bit is that Blink Dagger is not allowed on Pudge or Vengeful Spirit. This confuses a lot of players because it was thought to be an engine limitation in DotA that should be gone in DotA 2. The only real reason this exists is anti-trolling. You can easily put people in bad positions by using blink and the Hook/Swap.