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Welcome to Qojqva's Book of the Drow Ranger, a hero guide part of the Book of Dota series!
Here you will find all the information you need to learn to play Drow on a high level – from drafting and builds to the optimal playstyle in different lanes and situations. We hope you’ll enjoy this guide and find it useful!
Draft: The philosophy of drafting Drow is pretty simple – you love ranged allies and you hate enemies that can easily get on top of you. Because of this, Drow is a great surprise pick in the later stages of the draft – if your opponents don’t have a direct counter you can easily get a 20-minute win. She is, however, a weak core to pick up early because you will most definitely get countered and the game will be much more difficult.
Early Game: Before level 6 you are a weak laner and you need to focus on passively last hitting and controlling the creep equilibrium. Help out your supports with Frost Arrows but don’t overextend. After level 6 you can start zoning out your lane opponent and you can even push his tower. Afterward, start out-pushing the lane and farming the jungle with your ultimate. Drow one of the fastest jungle farmer on lvl6.
Mid & Late Game: After you get your first core items group with your team and start forcing fights and taking objectives. This is not only important because you have a strong timing – grouping as 5 will prevent enemies from ganking.
If you’ve chosen to go for a ganking build (Shadow Blade), try to gank the passive enemy cores before they get defensive items against your silence. Use the pick-offs to push towers, as you usually would.
After claiming most outer towers try to get Roshan and break high ground. If this is not possible, continue farming and gear-up for the late game (you scale very well with items). You can even get mobility items and Maelstrom-Aghanim’s to be more efficient in split-pushing and anti-pushing and to delay the game.
Drow Ranger is an agility carry hero who’s good at dealing very high damage from a high range and keeping her enemies far away with her slowing arrows and pushing gust. Thanks to her passive abilities, she hits pretty hard and fast but she requires excellent positioning. She is also able to amplify the entire team’s ranged capabilities, which makes her a great hero in push strategies.
MAJOR:
Flash-farmer:
Drow's ultimate helps her instantly kill creeps. The fact that it works on big or Ancient neutral camps makes her one of the fastest farmers in the early stages of the game.
Good pusher:
Drow Ranger is excellent at 5-man Dota hero thanks to her ability to buff the DPS output of her whole team (if it consists of ranged heroes).
Powerful damage dealer:
Drow is one of the hardest-hitting ranged carries in the late game as her passive abilities allow her to scale very well with items. She also has options to itemize for both single target damage and AoE damage to counter illusions or heroes with a lot of minions.
MINOR:
Buffs ranged heroes:
Precision Aura passively buffs all ranged heroes on the map which allows them to have a better laning phase or 5-man Dota potential.
Control:
Gust is a very useful ability and can serve different purposes. It can silence enemies for a long duration or it can be used to push away heroes who are trying to get to you. Her Frost Arrows are also great for controlling slow heroes without mobility spells.
MAJOR:
Weak early game:
Drow’s early game is pretty hard as she doesn’t have any good lane control abilities. Her attack animation is badand she only has Gust for early protection which is rarely enough.
Weak against heroes that can easily get on top of her:
The effect of Drow’s ultimate disappears when there are heroes within 400 range. Even though items and abilities like Hurricane Pike and Gust allow you to stay in the back lines and protect yourself, Drow is pretty bad against melee heroes that can close the gap like Spectre, PA, Breaker, or just any initiator with Blink Dagger.
MINOR:
Easy prey:
Drow Ranger is often targeted by gankers in the mid game as she doesn’t have any escape mechanism so you have to itemize carefully in order to deal with the different threats. Grouping together with your team as early as possible is usually the right way to solve this problem.
Bad stats:
Drow’s starting stats are bad and she has one of the worst total attributes growths per level. Both her strength and agility gain are low, which makes the hero very dependent on items.
Slow attack animation:
Drow has the third slowest attack animation (0.65s) in the game and is only beaten by Lina and Clinkz (0.75 & 0.7s) in this competition. This makes her last hitting and denying pretty damn hard, at least until she gets some items and her ultimate.
MATCH ID 3943790375
Replay
Liquid combine Drow with Mirana and two ranged supports, one of which is Windranger, who can use Drow’s aura extremely well because of her physical damage potential. Thanks to the aura, the support WR of GH does the most hero damage out of all heroes in the game, more even than the enemy Morph.
The only melee hero on the lineup is Beastmaster, who doesn’t get damage from the aura but synergizes extremely well because he provides his attack speed aura to increase the DPS potential of his allies even more.
Moreover, Liquid are playing the Drow strat versus a pos. 1 Morph, who needs a bit more time to come online and is very vulnerable to the silence.
The strategy works our amazingly and Liquid is able to close the game in 28 minutes versus arguably the best team in the DPC season.
MATCH ID: 3811272637
Replay
Liquid play a very creative draft with a position 3 Draw Ranger whose job is to empower his other two cores (NP and Viper) and the unconventional Weaver Support by giving them Precision Aura, enabling them to win the lanes and eventually push objectives incredibly fast.
Mind Control plays the Drow in the safe lane and has a relatively hard early game, but nonetheless manages to do his job. Notice his item build – he knows he will not be the main farmer and damage dealer in this game and because of this decides to focus on cost-efficient stat items.
The strategy works out extremely well and Liquid manage to take a 21 minute win.
Drow is usually picked in pushing strategies where the team wants to group up at around 15-20 minute and push together. This both utilizes Drow’s pushing capabilities and protects her from ganks.
She can also be a very powerful carry if she gets enough support in the early game, so she’s not really afraid of long games. This means that even if the early push doesn’t outright win the game, simply winning map control and going into the late game with a resource advantage could help you secure the victory. Drow works best with allies that are comfortable with team-fighting pretty early in the game, but her item builds are flexible enough to make her a decent ganker or split-pusher if she needs to be.
Drow is obviously very good with ranged heroes because she can boost their attack speed from the very beginning of the game. Heroes like Windranger, Puck, Mirana or Sniper can benefit a lot from having Drow in the team to win their lane.
Solo mid is the most common position for Drow because of her XP dependence in the early game. Getting lvl6 as fast as possible will increase your farm a great deal and will, ideally, allow you to snowball into the mid game.
Before lvl6 Drow is not a strong laner, but her long-range attacks and ability to orb-walk with Frost Arrow can help you have a decent laning stage.
Drow can also be played as a safe lane carry if you suspect she will be able to do better against the enemy offlane heroes compared to the enemy midlaner. She is a weak laner and would usually need the help of a dedicated support early on. Nonetheless, because of her level dependence she would benefit a lot from getting solo XP whenever possible.
Pushers: Ench, Chen, NP, Jakiro, Pugna, Visage, DP, Enigma
As we mentioned, Drow is a pretty good pusher as she buffs the AS of all ranged heroes on the map (as well as their summons like Visage’s birds – this is one of the most powerful synergies with Drow). She is also a pretty good tower hitter thanks to her Marksmanship which gives her a ton of agility and her good range (especially with Dragon Lance). Pushing early also protects her from ganks of heroes like Slark, who start searching for prey at about 15 minutes into the game and gives the entire team a nice gold advantage from objectives.
Aura heroes: Luna, Venge, SF, Beastmaster, Vlads
Drow is a famous part of the so-called ‘aura strategy’ – this is basically picking a lot of heroes with powerful auras who group up early and fight together. The combination of all auras is often overwhelming and the enemies can’t do anything against you when you hit your timing.
Ranged cores: Windranger, Sniper, Lina, QoP, Puck, Mirana
Ranged mid heroes absolutely love having Drow Ranger in their team as they get a attack speed boost from Precision Aura. This makes it very easy for them to win their lane by last hitting and denying better and harassing their lane opponent more effectively. They also benefit from the huge damage boost in the late game where they turn into physical damage carries as well.
Armor reduction: Slardar, Venge, Medallion, Solar Crest
Any hard hitting hero loves playing with heroes who can reduce the enemy’s armor. Drow, in particular, has high physical damage output early in the game, so she can benefit a lot from having those heroes. They also make killing Roshan a child’s play.
Heroes, weak to silence: Anti-Mage, Ember, Weaver, Mirana, QoP, IO, Phoenix
If Drow gets a good early game, she can be a huge counter to heroes who rely on their abilities to stay alive in fights. She can even potentially go for a Shadow Blade and use it to gank such heroes before they get their Manta Style or BKB.
Immobile Cores: Undying, Doom, DP, Enigma, Omni, Necro, Underlord, ET, Bristle
Heroes who have no way to close the gap and don’t like going for mobility items are very vulnerable against Drow ranger in fights for obvious reasons. She can simply kite them with Frost Arrows and Gust until she kills them. Heroes who go for mobility items but not right away are also vulnerable to her early push timing.
Heroes that rely on armor to survive: Timber, Dragon Knight, Sven
Marksmanship procs fully ignore armor, which makes Drow an effective physical damage dealer versus heroes with high armor.
Heroes that can easily close the gap: PA, Spectre, CK, PL, Clock, Slark, Spirit Breaker, Riki
Pretty much any hero with an initiation skill or mobility skill or just a Blink Dagger can be very annoying for Drow as her Marksmanship bonus will disappear, resulting in huge loss of DPS. You usually want to hit heroes from high distance and use Hurricane Pike and Gust to stay away from the enemy heroes, and this is very hard to do against such opponents (especially if the enemy team has more than 1).
Anti-pushers: Tinker, Zeus, LC, KotL, WW, NP, Techies
Those heroes are very hard to push against and can often stop pushes pretty much single-handedly. This counters one of Drow’s biggest strengths and unless you have a very good initiator who can catch those heroes (like Batrider for instance), you’ll have to prepare for a long game.
Strong offensive lanes and roamers:
Drow is a weak laner (at least until level 6), so it’s only logical that a strong enemy lane can pretty much ruin your game. A single hero is usually not a big problem. Against strong offensive lanes or active roamers, however, Drow can easily get destroyed, which will delay a lot her most important timing.
Broodmother is in a completely different league – if you don’t have great supports against her, Brood can single-handedly make you quit Dota for good. She doesn’t care for Gust as she and her babies are extremely fast. She doesn’t respect towers either, so she can dive and kill you all the time..
Adds a freezing effect to Drow's attacks, slowing enemy movement. Lasts 1.5 seconds on Heroes, and 7 seconds on creeps.
Cast Range: 625
Move Speed Slow: 16%/32%/48%/64%
Hero Slow Duration: 1.5
Non-Hero Slow Duration: 7
CD: 0
Mana: 12
Frost Arrows is one of your ways to deal with melee heroes. They’re also great for chasing enemies without escape mechanism and great for ganking with an item like Shadow Blade.
You can also use them to farm in the early game as the slow lasts 7 seconds on creeps. This means you can slow the big creep in a camp and shoot it from afar so you don’t take damage.
Releases a wave that silences and knocks back enemy units. Knockback distance is relative to how close they are to you.
Cast Animation: 0.25+0.6
Cast Range: 900
Travel Distance: 900
Effect Radius: 250
Max Knockback Distance: 350
Knockback Duration: 0.6/0.7/0.8/0.9
Silence Duration: 3/4/5/6
CD: 16/15/14/13
Mana: 90
Gust is your only natural protection against predators. It’s especially useful against melee enemies because the closer they are, the further it pushes them back. If you are playing against heroes who can easily close the gap, it is prudent to save Gust especially for them.
The other obvious use is for the silence – it can be very useful in the early and mid game against heroes like AM, Storm, QoP, Puck and many others with escape abilities when they don’t have their Manta/Eul/BKB yet to dispel it.
Gust has a great value at level 1 as the knockback distance is the same for every level and the silence is 3 seconds which is pretty good. This is why we’ll usually only level it once in the early game and focus on the other abilities.
Adds bonus attack speed to allied, ranged Hero units based on a percentage of Drow's agility. Affects creeps for 30 seconds when cast.
Cast Animation: 0+0
Radius: Global
Agility as Ranged Attack Speed Bonus: 20%/40%/60%/80%
Aura Linger Duration: 0.5
Active Duration: 30
CD: 100
Precision Aura a huge pushing tool, especially if your other heroes are good pushers too. It’s especially good with Visage’s birds who deal tremendous amounts of damage when you click Precision Aura. You can use it to boost your team’s pushing speed for 5-man pushes, but it can also be used to help out a split-pushing ally (e.g. NP, Weaver, etc.).
The aura is also great for the laning stage, especially if you have more ranged heroes, as they all gain attack speed from it and are able to trade harass or even farm a bit faster.
Drow's experiences in battle grant her a chance to launch arrows with incredible accuracy and effectiveness. Pierces through the enemy's defenses, ignoring their armor entirely. Instantly kills creeps and deals bonus proc physical damage to heroes. This ability is disabled if there is an enemy hero within 400 range.
Enemy Hero Search Radius: 400
Proc Chance: 20%/30%/40%
Proc Hero Damage: 120
Causes Drow Ranger's attacks to splinter on the target, hitting nearby units with normal attacks that deal reduced damage.
Splinter Search Radius: 375
Max Splinter Targets: 2
Splinter Damage Reduction: 50%
Marksmanship is a bit mechanically complicated but in practice, it's a very simple ability. It serves two main purposes:
Farming: it instantly kills creeps, which increases your farming speed a great deal. You get the most value out of the proc on high HP creeps, so Ancients are your ideal targets. Stacking an Ancient camp in the early game could greatly increase your farming speed.
DPS: it also increases your DPS against heroes. The proc deals bonus damage and ignores enemy armor.
Drow’s skill build is pretty straightforward – you want aura maxed and you want it maxed fast. There are however a lot of tweaks you can make if the need arises.
Arrows vs Gust: What do we pick as a secondary ability?
Gust is usually skilled once for the knockback effect and left there unless there are heroes you want to counter with silence – for example, Storm, QoP, AM, Void and such. The duration going from 3 to 6 seconds can be pretty huge. Otherwise, Frost Arrows scale better.
Arrows, however, are pretty good at level 2, so you can skill them twice before investing a point in Gust. The upgrade from 16% to 32% is pretty significant and is very useful against melee heroes. In order to have 2x Arrows and 1x Gust before level 6, you’ll have to delay your Aura with 1 level but that’s worth it against such heroes.
The first talent can also be delayed with a level or two if you prefer to skill something else.
50% Cooldown Reduction
+25% Precision Aura AS
+3s Gust Silence Duration
+25% Evasion
+550 Gust Distance/Knockback
+10 Agility
+5 All Stats
+20 Movement Speed
Lvl10: Both are very insignificant, Drow has very bad stats gain and her speed is atrocious as well, so this decision is pretty hard. Go with the stats if you’re going to push with your team and pick the movement speed if you’re ganking around the map.
Lvl15: The Gust talent will allow you to silence heroes from 1450 range and will also knock melee heroes back more efficiently. This can be huge against PL or CK who will try to swarm you with illusions or heroes with minions like Chen, Beastmaster and so on. The Gust talent, however, comes with a weakness – if you’re trying to gank a hero with it, you will push him away from you and you won’t be able to hit him, so better pick the AGI if you’re ganking a lot with an item like Shadow Blade for example.
Lvl20: At level 20 most heroes will already have BKB, Eul’s, Manta Style, Lotus Orb or other protective items/abilities, so the Gust silence duration is not that useful. The evasion is more reliable.
Lvl25: A full slotted Drow Ranger has about 200 agility, so the Precision Aura talent gives you about 40-50 more AS. This is, of course, a bonus to all ranged heroes in your team, but it will probably be utilized only by your right-clicking core heroes, so let’s say it’s a 100-150 bonus AS in total (not insignificant by any means).
Even though Drow only has one active ability (not counting the aura), the cooldown reduction also works for items. 50% is huge - it means:
Blink – 7s
Shadow Blade/Silver Edge – 14/11s
BKB – 35s
Linken – 6.5s
Force/Hurricane – 11.5s
Mjollnir – 17.5s (15s duration, almost no downtime)
Manta – 22.5s (20s duration, almost no downtime)
Hex – 11s
If you have multiple active items the CD reduction is the choice. If you have passive stat items – go for the aura.
The early game items are pretty common for every agility carry hero. Multiple Wraith Bands are standard because Drow uses the stats very well (thanks to her aura). After Bands and Treads, you usually want to get your mobility item - SB or Blink. In this case, you go for Shadow Blade - it is the more offensive option and allows you to participate in skirmishes and ganks more efficiently. Dagger is more farming oriented.
In the mid game, you get Pike to make yourself even more mobile and to help keep your distance from heroes that want to close the gap on you. BKB is the next usual item. You need the magic immunity once 5-man fights start, and with Drow you usually want to start 5-man fighting sooner rather than later.
In the late game, the most well-rounded choice is Butterfly - the AGI boost makes your aura stronger, and the AS boost gives you more chances to proc Marksmanship. Daedalus is a viable DPS item to increase your single-target DPS.
PT: Drow uses the stats very well - AGI for DPS, STR for survivability.
Shadow Blade: Shadow Blade is great if you get it early in the game. It can be used to gank elusive heroes Void, Storm, Puck, AM and many others before they get a proper dispel. If you’re having a good early game, you can get it around minute 12-14. The upgrade to Silver Edge can be very useful against heroes like Spectre, Bristleback, Timbersaw, Tidehunter and others with annoying passive abilities. You can also skip it if you plan to group up with your team to push early or you’re too far behind to gank heroes.
Dragon Lance: Dragon Lance is a very solid item on Drow Ranger – it boosts both her agility and strength and provides bonus attack range (total of 765) which allows you to hit from a safer distance. It can also be upgraded into Hurricane Pike which is pretty much a must for the hero – you will often be targeted by the enemies and the Force effect is too good to pass.
Hurricane Pike: If you have Dragon Lance already Hurricane Pike is a must for the hero – you will often be targeted by the enemies and the Force effect is too good to pass.
Delaying the Hurricane Pike upgrade is also possible if you are not facing heroes that can easily close the gap on you.
BKB: As we mentioned, you will often be targeted by all enemies as Drow is a glass-cannon. This is why BKB should never be delayed – if you feel like the enemies are always targeting you and your team can’t protect you, get it as soon as possible.
Butterfly: A natural extension for any agility carry hero. The bonus agility synergizes with your aura and you hit harder and faster. The evasion makes you much harder to kill against physical damage. Build it only once you have enough survivability as Butterfly doesn’t give you any bonus HP or escape effects.
Daedalus: Daedalus is the best late game DPS item for Drow Ranger. She usually hits extremely hard and fast and the crits hurt a lot especially when they proc together with Marksmanship for the armor reduction.
This build is usually used when you want to deal damage to multiple targets. This is useful against illusion heroes, against heroes with many summons or against teams that tend to cluster (e.g. multiple melee heroes). Another advantage of this build is that you get tanky pretty fast and you farm much faster later on because of the AoE.
We start with the same early game items and Hurricane Pike for survivability. In this example you get Blink Dagger instead of SB in order to focus on farming. After Hurricane, you get Maelstrom-> Aghanim’s -> Mjollnir. Then just build whatever you think you need in the particular game - be it more damage, survivability, etc.
PT: Drow uses the stats very well - AGI for DPS, STR for survivability.
Blink Dagger: since Drow already has a way to kill creeps (even Ancients) with her ultimate, DPS items don't increase her farming speed that much. To increase her GPM, the best thing she can do is get mobility in order to get from camp to camp the fastest. Dagger is the best item for the job.
Hurricane Pike: If you have Dragon Lance already Hurricane Pike is a must for the hero – you will often be targeted by the enemies and the Force effect is too good to pass.
Delaying the Hurricane Pike upgrade is also possible if you are not facing heroes that can easily close the gap on you.
Maelstrom: Maelstrom is pretty cheap and useful in both fighting and farming. This is why we’ll buy it before the Aghanim’s Scepter – you want to deal some damage while you’re farming it.
Aghanim: Aghanim’s Sceptre causes Drow to perform instant attacks on 2 random enemies around the primary target with 50% damage reduction. While this doesn’t sound very impressive, it is insane in combination with Mjollnir – it basically triples your chance to proc lightnings with every attack. This increases your total damage output by A LOT. You damage illusions, summons, creeps, and heroes. Aghanim also makes you tankier which is a nice quality for a carry hero. The only concern is that the bonus attacks have a 375 range search radius, which means that if you’re hitting a lonely hero with no units around – you won’t be dealing nearly as much damage.
Butterfly: A natural extension for any agility carry hero. The bonus agility synergizes with your aura and you hit harder and faster. The evasion makes you much harder to kill against physical damage. Build it only once you have enough survivability as Butterfly doesn’t give you any bonus HP or escape effects.
BKB: As we mentioned, you will often be targeted by all enemies as Drow is one of the hardest hitting carries. This is why BKB should never be delayed – if you feel like the enemies are always targeting you and your team can’t protect you, get it as soon as possible.
Mjollnir: Mjollnir gives you a huge attack speed bonus as well as the Static Charge active ability – place it on the hero that takes the most damage on your team.
Yasha is one of the best farming items for Drow in the early game because of two reasons:
MoM: Mask of Madness is an amazing item for Drow Ranger. It provides sustain while farming, so you never have to worry about HP regeneration. The active ability is a huge boost to your farming capabilities and it’s great in fighting and pushing too. It can also later be disassembled into parts of Butterfly and Satanic, so it’s a pretty nice investment. The only downside is that you can’t use Frost Arrows while it’s on. Alternatively, you can simply buy a casual Morbid Mask – it’s pretty good on its own too.
Drums: Drums are a cheap stats item meant to boost your early game performance – if you use the charges in early fights it can make a huge difference as it provides a great movement/attack speed boost to everybody around you. It’s pretty much a mini S&Y if you don’t want to invest 4000 gold.
S&Y: S&Y is a cheaper substitute for Manta. It’s a nice way to boost your stats, gain some HP and damage, as well as movement speed. Buy it if you’re having a good game and you want something between Hurricane Pike and BKB that will make you stronger in fights.
Manta: Manta provides great stats for the hero and can be used to dispel effects like roots (Treant, Dark Willow), Corrosive Haze (Slardar), Track (BH) and many others. The illusions aren't
Linken: Linken’s Sphere is sometimes a good choice against heroes with strong initiating abilities or BKB piercing disables like Batrider’s Lasso, Beastmaster’s Roar, LC’s Duel and many more. Linken’s also has a 6.5s cooldown if you choose the cooldown reduction talent which is insanely good.
Skadi: The slow from your arrows and from Skadi stack, which makes this an amazing item for kiting immobile melee cores. Moreover, it gives you decent stats for raw tankiness and a DPS increase.
EBlade: Ethereal Blade is another underrated item for Drow. It’s usually worse than Butterfly in terms of damage output, but it’s cheaper and it provides a nice active ability that can save you or your teammates from physical damage cores. Especially in the late game where BKB durations are 5s, being immune to physical damage for 4 seconds is huge. Of course, it is countered by Nullifier.
Satanic: Satanic makes you very tanky and close to impossible to kill in combination with BKB. Since you have very high DPS, you lifesteal a lot.
Drow Ranger’s early game usually revolves around hitting creeps until level 6 and then using Marksmanship to accelerate her farm by out-pushing the lane and farming the jungle. She is a weak laner before lvl6, so her playstyle in the lane is defensive.
With Drow, you are aiming to hit a very strong early-mid game push timing. This means early on you should play safe and prioritize getting your core items and high levels as fast as possible.
Drow has decent damage for a ranged hero, but terrible attack animation. The bonus attack speed from her aura (and Wraith Bands) are key for last hitting a bit easier so it's a priority to get a couple of levels and Wraith Bands ASAP.
Drow doesn't have an active ability to push out the lane, so with her you usually concentrate on controlling the creep equilibrium and keeping it static.
The key in the early game is to get to lvl6. Once you have Marksmanship, you can start auto-attacking to push out the wave. This will give you some free time to stack and farm jungle. Remember that Marksmanship works on Ancients as well - stacking and farming the Ancient camps will skyrocket your farm.
Drow is pretty bad at this before lvl6. All you have in the early game is a level 1 Gust and level 1-2 Frost Arrows at best which is not enough to pressure most heroes. You will need to rely on your supports to zone out or create kill opportunities.
One good thing about Frost Arrows is that you can use them to harass the enemy whenever you want – manually casting them won’t draw the creeps’ agro and it won’t break your creep equilibrium. This is why you should never put them on auto-cast in the laning stage. Instead, use them to orb walk. The slow will also help your supports harass more easily. Sadly, unlike other orb-walking abilities, Frost Arrows don’t deal additional damage, which means you are unlikely to be able to zone out your lane opponent with them.
In terms of kill potential, Drow can’t do much, but if your supports create kill opportunities – assist them with what you can. The slow from the arrows and the silence from Gust can give your supports time to deal damage and finish a kill.
Once you reach level 6, your damage will increase a lot and you’ll be able to threaten kills if you get a couple of fortunate Marksmanship procs. That being said, your priority is to use Marksmanship to farm, not to attempt kills.
Your most important early game timing is getting level 6. As we already mentioned, this increases your laning presence by a lot and allows you to start flash-farming.
You usually push-out the wave and rotate into the jungle to increase your farm.
If noone is defending the tower, you can pressure it. Bear in mind, however, that you are an easy gank target so you shouldn't over-extend. You contribute to pushes simply by giving your aura to your allies (and when activated - creeps). Use Precision Aura every time your teammates are pressuring a tower to speed up the push.
If you don't feel safe farming on your own (e.g. enemy heroes are actively hunting you), you can group together with your teammates and participate in 5-man pushes.
You can also rush a Shadow Blade right after Power Treads so that you can start ganking. This is a good alternative in case your opponents are passive heroes vulnerable to silence.
We’ll observe Pajkatt’s, Drow Ranger.
He’s up against an Underlord and Tusk dual lane – a pretty powerful lane, so both of his supports start on his lane so he can get easy last hits and some early game items.
At 1:50 you can see how he uses Frost Arrows to harass the Underlord pretty much in front of his tower without being hit. Remember to always manually cast them in the laning stage.
Despite Drow being a relatively weak laner, he recognizes his strength on the lane with his 2 supports, so he’s maintaining an aggressive position, zoning the enemies.
As soon as he reaches level 6, he instantly starts chasing the Underlord, realizing how much more damage he can output at this point. With the help of his teammates, he’s able to kill him and also manages to stay alive against Void thanks to Gust.
At 11:15 he dominates a catapult so he can push the Tier 1 tower. He uses Precision Aura and the tower breaks like a toy. His team uses the fact that they’re already on the bot lane and the enemies are not in position to defend, so they take the Tier 2 as well which gives them a huge advantage, resulting in snowballing the game.
In the mid and late game with Drow you want to be the one applying pressure – usually by pushing with your team, but sometimes also by ganking with Shadow Blade. Either way, claiming objectives and map control in the mid game is very important. The reason for this is mainly that you are very vulnerable to ganks and if your team is losing map control, you might get stuck in your base.
Don’t forget that you have good late game potential – this means you shouldn’t take huge risks. You will be able to close great games in 25 minutes, but winning a slower 40-60 minute game is definitely possible, so play methodically and try hard not to throw away your lead. Understanding the timings of your lineup and the enemy lineup is the most important thing to be able to win consistently with Drow.
An important timing is Hurricane Pike – the Force effect is often priceless for Drow as you will always be focused by the enemy team in fights. It is especially important against gap-closers. Against such heroes try to get your Hurricane ASAP – ideally, before you start team-fighting.
Before minute 30, your stats items like Hurricane and S&Y should be enough to keep you alive against most heroes. In order to take team-fights later on, however, you’ll definitely need a BKB as the enemies will also get theirs and your team probably won’t be able to protect you for the duration of it. Often BKB + Aegis is a great timing to try to break the enemy base, but of course this varies from game to game.
Outside of items and levels, pushing towers is an important aspect of Drow’s game – if you have a better lineup for the mid game, use it to group up with your team and push. Taking towers gives your entire team gold advantage and map control, you can place wards deeper in the enemy jungle and have an easier time taking Roshan, which can transition into an early victory.
As we mentioned earlier, Drow’s early game can be troublesome. This could be a problem because usually, you want to hit a very strong mid game timing that will allow you to fight and to push. Even if you had a bad laning stage if your allies are in position to fight you can still take objectives and support them with your aura and damage. You don’t necessarily have to be a frontline hero in fights – you can maintain a more defensive position and try to assist with Gust, your Aura and some attacks without overextending ОR you can even leave your allies to fight as 4 while you give them aura and farm the safe side of the map.
Even if your mid-game timing doesn’t work out at all, Drow is very powerful in the late game and you can still come back in a game if you get enough farm.
Most of the times when you’re at a big disadvantage, it’s best to buy a Dagger and hit the jungle. Push a lane by killing the creep wave as fast as possible and move to the jungle to farm. Building a Shadow Blade or a Blink Dagger can also be useful for split-pushing and avoiding enemy ganks.
Maelstrom (later Mjollnir) is also a very good item because together with Hurricane and possibly Aghanim’s it will help you a lot to hold your base for longer. The AoE damage is great for clustered team fights (i.e. when the enemy team tries to push the T4 tower). It’s also great for out-pushing the waves as fast as possible without staying in a dangerous position for too long. Aghs + Mjollnir will increase you farming speed a lot and will allow you to catch-up in farm and buy late game luxury items.
Drow Ranger’s team-fight contribution is a ton of physical damage as well as a silence for the heroes without BKB (mostly supports and sometimes offlaner).
Dealing damage is not a complicated topic – you just target an enemy and try to kill him before he kills your allies.
The hard thing is positioning – in order for Marksmanship to stay active all the time, you need to keep your distance from other heroes. This means that you never want to enter a fight early – you can’t afford to be initiated on, so stay in the back lines and either let a teammate initiate or let a teammate tank an initiation. Once you know where the enemies are, position yourself as far as possible from them while still being able to hit.
Don’t use Hurricane Pike to chase heroes unless you’re certain that the fight is already won. First of all, forcing yourself deeper into the fight will bring you close to enemies and your agility might drop. Second – it will leave you without a defensive tool against unpleasant melee heroes like Ursa, PA, Bristleback, etc.
This is where Drow Ranger shines. If your heroes are even remotely good in 5-man pushing, definitely try to group up and take towers. This not only gives you a gold advantage but protects you from ganks (you can’t gank 5 heroes, that’s a team fight). Moreover, in the mid game enemies will have fewer mobility items for initiation and it will be much harder for them to reach you.
If you have a good initiator, you can also pick someone off with your teammates and siege high ground or take Roshan very early in the game. Drow increases the objective speed (right-click DPS) of her whole team, so forcing buybacks is very easy.
In brief, you always want to be 5-manning if you can take fights.
This fight starts terribly for Drow: she gets surprised by the enemy Tiny and Tossed back into his team. She manages to silence most heroes, but dies anyway (a good example why good positioning with Drow is vital). Nonetheless, his team is still in a good position to fight. Realizing this, MC buys back and immediately activates his aura, giving his team a lot of damage and allowing them to win the fight and to claim the rax – a great demonstration of the global potential of the hero.
If you decide that you’d rather be farming, the strategy is simple.
You need to do 2 things – push waves and farm jungle afterward. This is the fastest way of farming with any agility carry hero. Pushing waves is also very important in the mid and late game as you gain map control and vision, so don’t just stay AFK in the jungle. Clear the wave as fast as possible before you enter the jungle.
If you can see where your enemies are (and they’re not close to you), you can try to split-push the enemy tower. You can often force teleports or glyph which brings other advantages – your enemies will have a harder time grouping up and pushing your base for example.
When it comes to split-pushing, Drow’s major problem is her low mobility. Having a Shadow Blade or a Blink Dagger is great in this regard. Those items allow you to quickly leave the lane and move to the jungle if you see an enemy teleporting or sense them coming.
Drow’s minor split-pushing problem is that she deals only single target DPS, which means she is not that fast at clearing out the creep waves. Maelstrom and Agh’s will help a lot in this regard in the late game.
If you have decided to build a Shadow Blade (or Blink Dagger), you can use it to kill enemy heroes around the map and abuse the fact that they don’t have a way to deal with silence in the early-mid game.
For example, an Anti-Mage’s Manta Style usually comes at around minute 20 if everything goes according to plan, so you have a window between building Shadow Blade (maybe around minute 13) and his Manta timing to hunt him around the map and snow down his development. The same goes for many other heroes like Storm, QoP, Ember, Weaver, Morph and many others.
Simply walk up to your prey with Shadow Blade, hit the enemy (to apply the backstab damage) and then instantly throw Gust on him so he can’t use his defensive abilities. Don’t stay too close to him so that you don’t lose your Marksmanship damage – it should usually be enough to kill an enemy with the slowing effect of Frost Arrows because you have very high single target DPS.
Solo kills are definitely possible, but they are dangerous because if you get counter-ganked you will most likely die. Try to make such aggressive moves in locations where your teammates will be able to assist you.
