Welcome

Welcome to Nikobaby's Book of the Phantom Assassin, a hero guide part of the Book of Dota series!

Here you will find all the information you need to learn to play PA 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!

TL;DR:

Draft: PA is a reliable laner, however she has some specific counters she prefers not to play against. Ideally, you want to pick her near the end of the draft to avoid playing against those heroes. You can avoid bad lane matchups by swapping between the mid and safe lane.

Early Game: Use your Dagger to ensure you get as many last hits as possible. In case your lane is easy, use the Dagger to harass your opponent and soften him up for kill attempts by your supports. After level 6 your harass and kill potential grows a lot, so use it to gain an advantage.

Mid & Late Game: Get your core item(s) and move aggressively with your team. Find pick-offs and gain map control. Try to farm a BKB before you start team-fighting. Your game plan is to claim control over the map through aggression, get Roshan and push Rax with your team before the late game comes. You scale amazingly well in the late game, but at the same time you are countered by items like MKB, Bloodthorn, Silver Edge & Ghost Scepter, so you want to end the game before the enemy cores get the chance to buy those items.

Authors

Nikolay "Nikobaby" Nikolov

Endorsement & Info

Niko is a rising star on the EU & CIS pub and pro scene and he is absolutely proficient at carrying. He has played for teams like Basically Unknown, Effect, DD, and recently - 20 min afk les, which won the TI8 CIS Open Qualifiers.

His peak placement on the EU Leaderboards is top 3, while his highest MMR before the reset was 8.5k. According to Dotabuff's player rankings, he is the rank 1 Morphling player in the world.

Nikolay "CTOMAHEH1" Kalchev

Info & Editing

CTOMAHEH1 started his pro career as a support in Basically Unknown together with Mind Control. Since then he has consistently been playing on the European T2 scene, most recently on Unchained Esports.

His highest placement on the EU ladder is top 100 - he plays all roles (mainly support), which is untypical for high-ranking players and shows his great versatility and understanding of the game.

Martin "BRING IT ON" Slavov

Writing & Info

Martin has lots of experience writing about Dota and he is no pushover in the actual game - a Divine III player, Martin plays mid and carry heroes on a very high level.

He has been playing Dota since Guinsoo's Dota Allstars (more than 12 years) and he loves thinking about new builds and strategies.

Kyril "MrNiceGuy" Kotashev

PM & Editing

Esports and gaming enthusiast since forever and founder of Dotahaven.

Has been playing Dota since 2005 (5.84). An Ancient I player in Dota 2.

Don't blink, or you'll miss me.

Phantom Assassin is a carry hero who is most famous for her Coup de Grace (that’s French for “blow of mercy” by the way) – it’s a critical strike ability with monstrous damage which allows her to assassinate enemies in just a few swift hits. Her entire skillset is designed around bursting down her targets as quickly as possible, which makes her a tremendously fun hero to play, especially if you start snowballing and one-hitting your opponents.

Stats

Level 1

Level 15

Level 25

STR

21

Medium

51

Low

72

Low

AGI

23

Very High

70

Very High

104

Very High

INT

15

Low

34

Very Low

48

Very Low

Attack

46-48

Low

90-92

Medium

121-123

Medium

Armor

5.6

Very High

14.42

Very High

20.72

Very High

Resistance

26

Medium

28

Medium

29

Medium

HP

578

Medium

1119

Low

1506

Low

MP

255

Low

483

Very Low

651

Very Low

MS

309

High

317

Very High

323

Very High

STRENGHTS

MAJOR:

Very high burst damage:
Thanks to Coup de Grace, PA can destroy her enemies in just a few hits or even 1-shot them if she’s farmed enough – it is the strongest crit in the game, both in terms of overall damage boost and in highest damage multiplier.

Natural evasion:
PA boasts 50% evasion without having to spend any money on it. This makes her especially resilient to physical damage early on when people can’t afford MKB.

MINOR:

Mobile:
Although her Phantom Strike is not exactly a Blink like Anti-Mage’s or Queen of Pain’s abilities, you can use it to chase enemies and sometimes run away if there’s a creep or a teammate to blink to.

Can throw daggers:
Much like Jason Statham, PA likes throwing knives at her enemies. Stifling Dagger is a very cheap ability, has a low cooldown and can be used as a harassment tool in the early game as well as a 1200 range assassination tool in the late game.

In-Built Dust:
The active component of Blur is a powerful tool for moving around the map undetected, which is especially powerful for ganks.

WEAKNESSES

MAJOR:

Easy to counter:

PA is a one trick pony – all she offers is physical damage which can be easy to counter. Items like Solar Crest, Force Staff, Ghost Scepter will make you curse IceFrog, then heroes like Winter Wyvern, Underlord, Tidehunter, Axe and any BKB-piercing disable will make you want to leave the game. A simple MKB purchase almost completely negates your Blur as well.

MINOR:

Farm dependent:
The hero needs to be even with the enemy cores in terms of farm in order to be effective. This could be a hard task as PA farms slowly (unless she builds a Battle Fury) and you always risk falling behind in farm. Moreover, you need not only damage items but also BKB to be able to stick to your target in fights without getting constantly kited or.

Unreliable:
Coup de Grace has a 15% land rate which makes it similar to shooting with an AK-47 – you just spray & pray. Luckily, it’s a pseudo-random distribution, so you can hit a few creeps first to increase your chance. We’ll talk about this later.

Horrible pusher:
PA can hit like a truck, but when it comes to towers, her damage is very insignificant because she can’t crit buildings. That makes her bad at split-pushing and sieging. In other words – the hero’s only pushing philosophy is “nobody will stop the push if there’s no one to stop it”.

Replays

Countering PA with Medusa:

After 7.20 came out and PA became a top carry, some teams started attempting to counter her with Medusa. In the articles below, we analyze the two games to get a better understanding of the matchup. In the first game, TNC were successful in their strategy, but in game two Nisha's PA was victorious.

Part 1: TFT vs NIP, Chongqing Major Qualifier

MATCH ID 4244096428

Part 2: TFT vs Secret, Chongqing Major Qualifier

MATCH ID 4245828481

VP vs Pain Gaming, EPICENTER XL

MATCH ID: 3853781987
Replay

Ramzes666 plays a monstrous PA against Pain Gaming on home turf. He manages to get 20 kills and 10 assists in a 24 minute game, accumulating 33.4k hero damage and reaching 847 GPM.

VP has a draft with a lot of synergy with PA: Mag gives her cleave and helps her far faster + provides team fight control; IO gives her Overcharge for both an offensive and defensive boost; Treant can protect her with his Armor when she dives for kills. Moreover, VP last-picked PA, which means Pain didn’t have the chance to counter her directly.

Because of this Ramzes was able to snowball very early into the game and secure a very quick victory.

Notice that he goes for a Battlefury build despite having Mag on his team. Versus PL this is never a bad choice, but even if PL wasn’t in the game for a position 1 PA BF is always great to boost your farm without having to always have Mag around. He doesn’t go for Deso because he wants to be able to take team fights and push high ground faster, for which he needs survivability – BKB and S&Y are the perfect items for this goal.

Optic Gaming vs IG, Dota 2 Asia Championships 2018

MATCH ID: 3814007675
Replay

http://replay223.valve.net/570/3814007675_1360870538.dem.bz2

Pajkatt plays PA against IG in DAC and has a great performance with 15 kills and only 2 deaths. Optic draft the classic combination of PA + Slardar to increase her physical damage output.

Pajkatt has a great laning stage – he kills 69 creeps and 1 hero until the 10^th minute, which gives him a very good start: a great replay to watch to learn how to play in the lanes as PA.

Drafting

PA is a standard carry hero – she needs a window in the first 10-15 minutes to farm her core items before she can participate in fights. She’s not a very good laner, at least not in the first 5 levels, so she usually needs support on the lane. Nonetheless, she is a reliable laner because in hard lanes she can simply use her dagger to take last hits and not fall behind.

She has kill potential on the lane if the supports help her, especially after lvl6.

PA is relatively easy to counter, so you usually want to pick her in the later stages of the draft. E.g. you don’t want to pick her against core heroes with very high armor like Timbersaw, DK, Terrorblade or other direct counters like Axe, WW, etc. She is particularly good against heavy physical damage teams with no good MKB buyers.

Positions

Safe lane carry

PA is usually played on the safe lane as she needs support at the beginning of the game. That lane also gives her the space she needs to farm her core items uninterrupted. In case the lane gets pressured, she can always resort to farming by spamming Dagger, which makes her a safe choice in the lane. Moreover, when you have supports you can always use them to blink out of danger.

The safe lane is also quite long, which gives PA the opportunity to chase down heroes with the slow from her Dagger.

Mid lane carry

PA has seen some play on the mid lane – the idea here is that she is fairly resilient to physical damage with her decent starting armor and Blur so she can hold her ground for some time. Stifling Dagger and Phantom Strike can also be used to kill the opponent with the help of supports.

The dagger, as mentioned, can also be used to secure last hits on creeps in bad matchups, which makes her a reliable laner. However, she is very weak against heroes with high magical damage like SF, Lina, QoP, Tinker, Zeus, because Blur will not help her at all in those matchups.

Synergy

Good friends to have are:

Armor reduction: Slardar, Dazzle, Venge, SF, TA, Elder Titan, Solar Crest

Armor reduction has great synergy with PA as her entire damage output is physical. It allows you to 1-shot squishier heroes and helps to deal with higher armor heroes like DK, Terrorblade, etc.

Buffers: Ogre, Venge, Invoker, Magnus, LC, Beastmaster, Omni

Those heroes offer you attack speed or damage buffs that increase your DPS by a lot. Skills like Bloodlust and Empower are pretty much giving you a free item. Omni also deserves a special mention as he gives you a free BKB – an item you desperately need to team-fight.

Counters

Weak Against:

High armor cores: Timbersaw, DK, Terrorblade, Sven, Bristleback, Solar Crest

This type of heroes requires no explanation as they counter directly your biggest strength – your physical nuke damage. They’re extremely hard to deal with and if you get to play against such heroes, you should focus on their teammates first.

Damage reduction: Underlord, Tidehunter, DK, Razor, Bane

Those heroes reduce your damage which makes your crits significantly weaker. What makes them even worse is that Static Link can’t be dispelled, Tidehunter’s Anchor Smash goes through BKB, Underlord’s aura can’t be countered except with Silver Edge and even then it’s only for a few seconds and Bane’s Enfeeble is not dispellable either.

Heroes that can save allies: Winter Wyvern, Lich, OD, Shadow Demon, Omni, Dazzle

Lich, Dazzle and Omni can give armor to their entire team, WW can save your targets with Cold Embrace. OD and SD can hide their teammates and SD’s ultimate goes through BKB.

Those heroes are insanely hard to play against. You might think a few seconds delay is not that big of a deal, but the tricky part is that it wastes your precious seconds in BKB and when it ends – hell breaks loose. Moreover, if you commit to a target with Blink Strike – you will not be able to kill it and you will have your mobility skill on CD, which makes it hard to reach other targets (and makes you vulnerable).

BKB-piercing disables: Bane, SD, Puck, WW, Enigma, Beastmaster, Batrider

Another bunch of heroes who are very hard to play against. During BKB you want to be the king of the battlefield and those heroes can break your dream.

Blur counters: Viper, MKB, Silver Edge

Viper is a nightmare to play against, his Corrosive Skin makes him hard to kill, the ultimate goes through BKB, but on top of everything – he disables your Blur when you’re under the Nethertoxin effect.

MKB and Silver Edge are also pretty nasty items, especially when they’re used by a hero who can kill you very fast like Ursa or Sven for instance.

Taunts: Axe, LC

Those 2 heroes can destroy you anytime they see you, even in the late game and they only need 2 cheap items to turn your damage against you – Blink Dagger and Blade Mail. And while LC’s Duel can be blocked with Linken’s Sphere, nothing counters Axe’s Call.

Strong Against:

Low armor/HP heroes: Shadow Shaman, AA, WD, Lina, CM, Huskar, Alch

Heroes on any role (mostly mid and supports) that have low armor and low HP are easy prey for PA. You can focus them in a fight and you have serious chances of bursting them down with a lucky crit and a couple of normal hits.

Huskar is a special case because even though he is a STR hero, he damages himself and remains on low HP. He is extremely tanky against magical damage, but he has no defense against PA’s physical nuke damage.

Right-click heroes: AM, Lifestealer, Visage, Ursa, OD

Blur is a very good ability against heroes who only rely on physical hits. Most of those can go for MKB or Silver Edge but that’s an item that they have to spend money on, often at the expense of another powerful item – you basically force them to go for worse items. For example, an OD doesn’t want to build MKB at least until he has other items like Hurricane Pike, Blink and BKB. This means he needs a lot of time to start being an effective damage dealer against PA.

Ranged glass cannons: Drow Ranger, Sniper, Lina

Those heroes want to stay in the back lines and hit or throw spells from a safe distance. PA is good against them as she can easily shorten the distance with Phantom Strike and force them to run or to commit to a man-fight they are most likely going to lose.

Skills

Throws a dagger slowing the enemy unit's movement speed, dealing 65+25%/40%/55%/70% of Phantom Assassin's attack damage as physical damage and applying attack effects from items and abilities.

STATS

Cast Animation: 0.3+0.47

Cast Range: 525/750/975/1200

Secondary Target Range Buffer: 300

Number of Targets: 1

Base Damage: 65

Attack Damage: 25%/40%/55%/70%

Move Speed Slow: 50%

Slow Duration: 1.75/2.5/3.25/4

CD: 6

Mana: 30

Stifling Dagger

Mechanics:

The Stifling Dagger travels at a speed of 1200 and upon hitting the target, the dagger causes Phantom Assassin to perform an instant attack on the target.
Since it is a regular attack, it can proc any attack modifier and on-hit effect normally.
However, the attack uses no attack animation, so abilities which proc on the start of the attack (e.g. Untouchable) cannot be procced.
Cleave effects are based on the target's position, damaging a trapezoid area the opposite direction where the dagger came from.
Although the dagger may make it look like a ranged attack, the attack still counts as melee when coming from Phantom Assassin. This means all abilities which differentiate between ranged and melee, use their melee effects/values, not ranged.
The performed instant-attack has True Strike, so it cannot miss. However, when the dagger is avoided, no attack is performed.
The instant attacks ignore disarms.
The dagger first reduces Phantom Assassin's total attack damage by the percentage, and then adds its own 65 extra damage on top of that.
The dagger first applies the attack, then its own debuff.
The projectile has 450 range flying vision. This vision lingers for 3.34 seconds at the target's location upon successfully hitting it.
When choosing the level 20 talent, the spell launches a second projectile towards a random visible valid target within the cast range.
Cannot target the primary target with the second projectile, so when no other targets are nearby, nothing happens.
The secondary target is chosen randomly within the area. There are no priorities.
Since it uses the spell's cast range, cast range increasing effects increase its range as well.

Uses and Tips:

Stifling Dagger is a very interesting ability because it is great for early game harass and last hitting, but it scales into the late game as well – you can use it later on to try to snipe squishier heroes if Coup de Grace procs.

It will also bash enemies, lifesteal from them, even cleave.

On the lane, you can use it to get last hits from distance or use Dagger + hit to secure contested last hits. It can also be used to harass the enemy hero, however, if he has Magic Stick/Wand, it won’t be that useful.

The slow is very strong at 50% and the ability has 2 seconds downtime (6s cooldown, 4s duration), so when it’s maxed you can chase heroes very effectively.

Teleports to a unit, friendly or enemy, and grants bonus attack speed while attacking if it's an enemy unit.

STATS

Cast Animation: 0.25+0.8

Cast Range: 1000

Attack Speed Bonus: 100/125/150/175

Duration: 2

CD: 11/9/7/5

Mana: 35/40/45/50

Phantom Strike

Mechanics:

Phantom Strike can be cast on allied units, without gaining the attack speed bonus.
Moves Phantom Assassin next to the target, towards the position she was upon spell cast.
Phantom Assassin is ordered to attack the target if it is an enemy, automatically canceling the cast backswing.
Cannot be cast on couriers.

Uses and Tips:

It can be used defensively to blink on your teammates or creeps.
Great for initiating on and nuking a target after you’ve slowed it with Dagger. If it is maxed you can even use it to disengage afterward if needed, as the CD is short.
It pierces spell immunity which means you don’t care if the enemy has BKB.
Use it on creeps to increase your farming speed when you have enough mana (both the mobility and AS bonus help)

Phantom Assassin focuses inward, increasing her ability to evade enemy attacks. Can be activated to blur her body, causing her to be impossible to see until near enemy heroes.

STATS

Detection Radius: 1600

Cast Point: 0.4 sec

Evasion: 20%/30%/40%/50%

Vanish Dispel Radius: 600

Vanish Dispel Delay: 0.75

Vanish Duration: 25

CD: 60/55/50/45

Mana: 50

Blur

Mechanics:

The evasion and the blur effect are independent of each other. The evasion is always active.
Periodically checks for the presence of enemy heroes, including clones (except Wukong's Command clones), excluding illusions and creep-heroes, and adapts its status.
When the blur effect is active, Phantom Assassin becomes blurry and a status buff is placed.
Detects invisible, spell immune and invulnerable heroes, but not hidden heroes.
Attacking or casting spells does not break the invisibility. This means you can use it to farm camps (e.g. an Ancient Stack) without taking damage.

Uses and Tips:

The evasion part is straight-forward: you become much tankier against physical DPS and are directly countered by items like MKB.

The active component works similarly to Smoke of Deceit: it's perfect to use when moving around the map because it will prevent you from being detected from Observers.

It's also possible to use it to dodge projectiles if you are further than 600 units from an enemy hero.

Phantom Assassin refines her combat abilities, gaining a chance of delivering a devastating critical strike to enemy units. Stifling Dagger shares the same critical strike chance.

STATS

Proc Chance: 15%

Critical Damage: 200/325/450%

Coup de Grace

Mechanics:

Increases attack damage by an average of 52.5% on lvl3 (70% with talent).
The proc chances of multiple crit sources stack.
If two sources of critical strike proc at the same time, the higher multiplier has priority.
Coup de Grace uses pseudo-random distribution.
A part of the visual effects (a white glow on her weapon) plays during the start of an attack, revealing that the attack is going to crit.

Uses and Tips:

This is the strongest Critical Strike in the game, both as damage multiplier and as average attack damage bonus. For example, Juggernaut’s crit increases his damage by an average of 28%, Chaos Knight – by 21%, Daedalus – by 40.5%.

Coup de Grace uses pseudo-random distribution. What does that mean? It means that each time when you don’t crit, your chance of crit for the next attack is increased. With PA, in particular, it’s most likely to crit once every 6 or 7 attacks. Now how can we use this to our advantage?

You can do something called 'priming' for critical strikes, it is a trick that makes it more likely that your next attack will crit. You perform this by right-clicking a creep and counting the number of times you attack without a crit. If you reach 3 or 4 then your next attack is very likely to crit and you should go and attack whatever you're 'priming' up for. 'Priming' can be sped up by canceling your right click before the attack hits, since the proc/not-proc is still counted.

Skill Builds

Stifling Dagger is usually maxed first because it scales very well – it deals more damage, the duration and cast range increase are significant. It’s also the ability that you use most in the laning stage.

Phantom Strike and Blur are great value points and you definitely want to have one of each. In the safe lane, you usually get a point in Phantom Strike first in order to pressure the enemy offlaner. In the mid lane you can, however, get a point in Blur first in case you are getting harassed by physical attacks e.g. from a ranged hero.

Standard Build

Blur Build

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

18

20

25

pros: a high level of Phantom Strike with a low CD for chasing or disengagin;

cons: lower evasion percentage;

After Dagger, you continue maxing Phantom Strike. The truth is that Phantom Strike doesn’t scale very well, however, the reduced cooldown synergizes very well with Stifling Dagger and allows you to chase enemies very effectively as you can cast both abilities at the same time multiple times.

Blur sounds good on paper, but in the early game, you’re much more likely to die to the magical abilities of your enemies than to physical hits.

Coup de Grace is always leveled up at every possible level. When you’re level 11 or close to level 18, you can even buy the Tome of Knowledge so you can max it sooner as the damage increase is crucial.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

18

20

25

pros: more EHP versus physical damage;

cons: high CD blink for chasing or disengaging;

Maxing Blur over Phantom Strike could be done in case you are playing against a lineup very heavy on physical damage. When you do this it is a good idea to invest in a stat item (most commonly S&Y) in order to increase your HP pool and buff your EHP against physical damage even further.

Talents

+25% Blur Evasion

25

+5% Coup de Grace

Triple Strike Stifling Dagger

20

20% Lifesteal

+20% Cleave

15

-3 Armor Corruption

+15 Damage

10

+150 Health

Lvl10: Both are fairly insignificant. The HP is probably a bit better when you’re playing from behind or if the enemies have a lot of magical damage. You can’t go wrong here.

Lvl15: Armor reduction is usually better, it also synergizes very well with Desolator. However, if you decide you need to farm, the Cleave is also an option. Don’t pick Cleave if you already have Battle Fury unless you are playing against illusions.

Lvl20: Extra Daggers are great if you are spamming them a lot from a long range. The only big downside is that they do not prioritize heroes. Therefore, if you think you will need to man-fight enemy carries you can go for the Lifesteal.

Lvl25: The Blur evasion sounds good, but in reality, the enemies will probably have MKB by the time you’re level 25 and as we mentioned, your evasion chance against MKB is 18% with this talent. On the other hand, Coup de Grace increases from 52.5% average increased damage to 70% which is a big deal.

Item Builds

Farming Build

The early items are standard for every agility carry – Wand and Raindrops are pretty good and Quelling Blade really helps with last hitting early on as PA starts with very low damage. Wraith Bands provide early-game stats for fighting.

This build is oriented towards compensating one of PA’s weaknesses – her slow farming. The disadvantage here is that you can’t really fight early on, or you rather don’t want to. That slows your timing for a bit, but allows you to farm your next item very fast and then fight with an item advantage. Swap the place of BKB and Desolator according to the game – if it’s more passive and you don’t have to team-fight a lot, getting the Deso first is better. BKB first is the safer option, however.

Starting items (offlane)

Early Game

Mid game

Late game

Phase Boots are the standard boots of choice because they provide bonus damage (synergizes with all of your offensive abilities).

Battle Fury: BF allows you to farm much faster. It works in fights as well as it provides raw damage which boosts Coup de Grace and the cleave can sometimes deal quite a lot of damage too. Building BF means that you want to farm for the next few minutes to get a BKB or Deso shortly after and then start fighting.

BKB: One of the core items for PA because you will always be a target for disables. Usually if you have a very good game you can delay the BKB and get a Desolator first, but if your team needs you to fight early with them – get it as soon as possible.

Desolator: Desolator is the most cost-effective DPS item in the game and is especially good on PA because both the raw damage and the armor reduction boost your critical strikes by a lot. The low cost allows you to farm it in just about 4-6 minutes after Battle Fury (and eventually BKB) and makes you a killing machine.

Abyssal Blade: Basher and Abyssal are the only possible source of disable that you can have on your own which makes them very valuable. Bashes can also proc with Stifling Dagger so you can sometimes stun people from distance and they synergize well with the increased attack speed from Phantom Strike – 4 hits should be enough to bash the target. The only disadvantage is that both items give 0 raw damage and the Bash damage is not counted in critical strikes, so you spend 2700/6400 gold only on the disable.

Nullifier: Nullifier is a fairly cheap DPS item that will also block the enemy’s items. It’s very good against heroes with Ghost Scepter, Force Staff, Eul, BKB, etc. It also dispels nasty abilities like Aphotic Shield, Surge, Inner Vitality, Ice Armor, Guardian Angel, Windrun – it really allows you to deal with a variety of heroes who are usually hard to kill. It’s actually safe to say that Nullifier could often outweigh Abyssal Blade against such heroes.

Bloodthorn: Bloodthorn is a very potent late game item and has great synergy with Nullifier – using both basically Dooms the enemy, blocking both abilities and items and it will allow you to solo kill heroes in the late game. You also don’t have to worry about the crits stacking – if both crits proc on the same attack, Coup de Grace will take a higher priority as a higher damage multiplier.

Fighting Build

This build revolves around getting a fast Desolator and starting to look for kills. The disadvantage is that if your early fights don’t bring kills, you will fall behind with the farm and won’t be as effective in the mid/late game, so it’s actually a riskier build. You can choose it when you have an aggressive lineup and your team wants to fight early.

The early game items here are the same, but multiple Wraith Bands are more worthwhile- if you’re going to fight early, you really want cheap early game items for stats.

Battle Fury: Some players build Desolator and BKB and then go back for the Battle Fury if they think they need more farm. Usually, you want to snowball and end the game, but if it’s not possible going back for BF is not a tragedy.

Starting items

Early game

Mid game

Late game

Phase Boots are the standard boots of choice because they provide bonus damage (synergizes with all of your offensive abilities).

Desolator: Desolator is the most cost-effective DPS item in the game and is especially good on PA because both the raw damage and the armor reduction boost your critical strikes by a lot. The low cost allows you to farm it in just about 4-6 minutes after Battle Fury (and eventually BKB) and makes you a killing machine.

BKB: One of the core items for PA because you will always be a target for disables. Usually if you have a very good game you can delay the BKB and get a Desolator first, but if your team needs you to fight early with them – get it as soon as possible.

AC: AC provides more survivability against physical damage and the additional armor reduction is not bad. The attack speed helps you to do more sustained damage in fights even though it doesn’t improve your crits directly.

Bloodthorn: Bloodthorn is a very potent late game item and has great synergy with Nullifier – using both basically Dooms the enemy, blocking both abilities and items and it will allow you to solo kill heroes in the late game. You also don’t have to worry about the crits stacking – if both crits proc on the same attack, Coup de Grace will take a higher priority as a higher damage multiplier.

Nullifier: Nullifier is a fairly cheap DPS item that will also block the enemy’s items. It’s very good against heroes with Ghost Scepter, Force Staff, Eul, BKB, etc. It also dispels nasty abilities like Aphotic Shield, Surge, Inner Vitality, Ice Armor, Guardian Angel, Windrun – it really allows you to deal with a variety of heroes who are usually hard to kill. It’s actually safe to say that Nullifier could often outweigh Abyssal Blade against such heroes.

Other Items

Early Game

Mid & Late Game

Orb of Venom: Another great item for harassment. Orb of Venom and Blight Stone are usually bought when you play mid so you can constantly harass the enemy hero with Dagger. It might not sound like a lot of damage, but using it every 6-7 seconds can be very annoying.

Blight Stone: Blight Stone is pretty good for harassing the enemy with Stifling Dagger and is later upgraded into Desolator, so you can buy it any point in the early game.

MoM: A decent item that increases your DPS and the armor reduction doesn’t hurt you too much thanks to Blur. It also increases the farming speed. The bad part is that it silences you for 8 seconds which means you won’t be able to use Stifling Dagger and Phantom Strike again when they’re ready (as they have 6 and 5 seconds cooldown respectively). It is pretty good in combination with Basher though and when you have BKB, you probably won’t be punished in fights.

Shadow Blade: It allows you to roam around the map looking for prey and sometimes to escape. It can also be upgraded to Silver Edge to help you deal with heroes like Timber, Tidehunter, Bristleback, Bloodseeker and many more.

S&Y: S&Y is a nice all around item for PA, it gives her mobility, HP, slow, attack speed and a bit of damage. You could build it instead of Desolator after the Battle Fury. It’s usually outshined by Desolator however because it’s just not as explosive and because Stifling Dagger and Phantom Strike already give you enough slow and mobility.

Manta: Manta is good against heroes with root ability like Lone Druid, Treant, Naga, etc. It’s usually not worth the gold for the stats it provides (as we’re looking for raw damage), but it’s fine against those heroes.

Linken: It’s usually needed against heroes with BKB-piercing disables like Batrider, Beastmaster, Bane, etc. Same as Manta, you don’t usually want to build it, but it’s sometimes necessary.

Moon Shard: Even when you’re full slotted, PA doesn’t have a lot of attack speed because we don’t build any agility/attack speed items, just raw damage, so consuming a Moon Shard is pretty strong in the late game.

Satanic: It’s not a bad late game item and it also gives a decent chunk of damage (50) which makes it pretty good as a last item.

Monkey King Bar: MKB can work great against high evasion enemies. The bonus damage is also great with your crit.

Skadi:Great Stats item for PA that makes chasing a bit easier. It is a more expensive and better version of S&Y and because of this you usually get it later in the game while S&Y is a snowball item.

Early Game

PA’s early game is usually passive unless you have great supports to help with kills. As every carry hero, you’re looking to get your core items as soon as possible, so you should prioritize getting last hits over all else. This is even more important bearing in mind you don’t have AoE skills to push out the waves or farm the jungle efficiently (before Battle Fury). That being said, if you are at a dominant position in the lane, you can use Stifling Dagger on cooldown to harass your opponent. This becomes very effective after lvl6 and could win you the lane.

Control the creep equilibrium & farm your core items;

Use Dagger to harass if the lane is easy or to farm if it is hard;

Help your supports in kill attempts, especially after lvl6;

Farming:

PA starts with 46-48 damage, so you want to get a Quelling Blade as soon as possible to help you with last hits.

In the laning phase, you might need to use Stifling Dagger to secure last hits whenever the enemy tries to contest. You want to throw Dagger first and then hit the creep – it’s a bit faster than the opposite order. Stifling Dagger is fairly cheap so you can use it any time you need it – don’t worry too much about mana.

Once you have level 6-7 and your early game items – upgraded boots, QB, Aquilla, Wand – you can start farming the jungle as well. It’s going to be a bit slow, so use Stifling Dagger and Phantom Strike on the neutrals. Farming jungle with PA can feel like a torment but it’s still a way to farm a bit more than just lane.

If you're farming a camp that deals a lot of damage (usually an Ancient Camp), you can use the active of Blur - it prevents creeps from attacking you.

Once you get Battle Fury (if you choose that build), farming will be much easier and you’ll be able to farm ancients and clear out stacks easily.

Harassing & Zoning-out:

Stifling Dagger is your main tool of harassment – you can constantly throw it at the enemy hero and the best part is that it won’t draw the creeps agro to you. If you get a Blight Stone or Orb of Venom, it will deal even more damage – this is a common practice if you’re playing mid, but is also applicable on the safe lane.

For safe lane, the bad part is that the enemy can easily buy Magic Stick/Wand. If they do – don’t spam daggers on them unless you’re going to land a few hits as well with Phantom Strike. A Wand charge doesn’t fully heal the damage you do with Stifling Dagger but if the enemy hero has a lot of charges, they can sometimes survive a gank from your supports with it.

On the mid lane, you can occasionally throw a dagger and use Phantom Strike to harass the enemy if it’s a hero without nukes like Invoker. Other than that, you’re waiting for a support rotation to kill the enemy.

Harassing the enemy on the safe lane is usually a bit harder because the offlaners are often very tanky – you just can’t deal alone with someone like Bristleback, Timbersaw or Tidehunter so you want to have support on the lane to help you get some early advantage.

If you get some level advantage and buy Phase Boots, you can start playing more aggressively. Especially after level 6, you’re able to deal quite a lot of damage – it’s usually not enough to kill unless the enemy overextends, but it’s great for forcing them to leave the lane.

Timings and Rotations:

You usually want to farm the lane until you have your first big item (or multiple smaller items).

If you get Desolator as a first item, you can move to the mid or offlane to gank the enemy cores along with your supports. Offlane is better as you have more space to chase heroes and the tower is easier to push.

Always use the Blur active when you rotate - it will prevent you from getting spotted by Obs.

If you go for the Battle Fury build, you can keep farming until you get a Desolator or BKB. If your supports need levels or farm, you can move to the jungle and let them take the safe lane.

Video Example

In this game, we’ll observe Pajkatt’s PA against team Complexity. He gets to lane against Sand King and Nature’s Prophet.

This is typically a very annoying lane as NP can send his treants to harass you, so both of the supports start on the lane to help him.

He knows he can’t play too aggressively at the early levels, so he just focuses on last hitting, sometimes with Stifling Dagger.

You can see how he last hits under tower at 3:40, using Stifling Dagger to secure the creeps.

Then at 3:50, you can see how he uses Stifling Dagger and then Phantom Strike to kill the Sand King – this is the correct order to use them as the dagger will reach the target a moment after you Phantom Strike, chaining the abilities perfectly. That will also make them cool down at the same time (if Phantom Strike is maxed).

At 5:45 the enemies try to kill him but he escapes, blinking on his teammate – this is a pretty useful trick that can save you in a number of nasty situations. After that he moves his items to the backpack while he uses Salve – this lowers your max HP so you can heal more with the Healing Salve.

He brings Wraith Band and later on Sage’s Mask with the courier and buys Ring of Protection from the side shop – that allows you to get the Aquilla a bit faster as you don’t need to wait for the last 175 gold before you send the courier. Keep Aquilla off unless you want to push the lane.

Once he gets his Phase Boots, he starts farming the big camp that is close to the safe lane as well.

At this point, he decides he won’t have the time to farm too much as the enemy team is very aggressive and his team will probably need his help, so he queues a Desolator on his quick buy. He later buys the Battle Fury anyway after Deso and BKB.

Mid & Late Game

PA is a carry that loves to be aggressive. You deal a lot of damage just with your core items and you need to use this to claim map control. Move with your team and provide the damage needed to find kills. Take objectives as a reward. If you are successful you can easily snowball and secure the game – make sure you have your BKB before the enemy team starts moving as 5, take Rosh and break the enemy base.

Even though you scale amazingly into the late game, you are countered by items like MKB, Bloodthorn, Silver Edge, Ghost Scepter, etc. This means you would prefer to secure the win before enemy carries become too rich unless you have other good late-game heroes on your team.

Participate in ganks and team fights, claim map control

Use it to out-farm your opponents

Look for objectives and secure the victory

Farming:

If you have a Battle Fury, you won’t have any problems in that department. Even if you’re not leading in the game, you can still get a decent amount of farm and still be useful.

If you rushed a Desolator and don’t have Battle Fury, and your game didn’t go that well, you might want to forget about fighting for a while. Farming without Battle Fury is very slow but if you focus entirely on it – it’s still doable. With Desolator you can clear out ancient camps pretty easily so you want to go farm a spot that has an Ancient camp nearby.

The active of Blur is less useful for reducing damage, but it is more useful for evading being spotted by Observer Wards. Use it whenever you have doubts enemies can see you.

Team Fights:

In a team-fight your job as PA is simple – you want to take a hero down in a matter of seconds.

As a preparation, you want to ‘prime’ for a critical strike – you want to attack creeps until you hit them 4-5 times without crits to make it more likely to crit with your next attacks. If you do that, your next 4 hits (from Phantom Strike) will almost certainly proc Coup de Grace.

If you’re defending your base, you might want to throw Dagger on CD to soften-up your targets before the fight begins.

Initiation:

You don’t want to initiate the team-fights unless you’re certain you can kill your target – for example, you can burst down heroes like AA, Crystal Maiden, Lina very quickly, sometimes in just a couple of hits, so if you catch them out of position, you can initiate with BKB. But if the enemy you can go on is tanky and his teammates can Force/Glimmer him, or if he has an escape mechanism, it’s better to let your team initiate.

When you’re going on someone, use Stifling Dagger from a distance and then Phantom Strike on him – that way the dagger will hit the enemy a few moments after you’ve blinked on him, stacking both abilities most effectively.

Choosing your target:

Choosing a target correctly can be very important. Two conditions must be met – you want to target strong team-fight heroes (with AoE or a lot of disables, high damage output and such) with low armor. Examples:

Sven – outputs huge amounts of AoE damage, but has over 25 armor when he activates War Cry – bad target.
AA who’s already used his ultimate – low armor but he’s not that threatening in a fight, so he can be ignored.
Skywrath, WD, Invoker – Low armor – check. Deals a lot of damage – check. Go on him.
Enigma, Bane, Treant – Those are usually easy to kill but are threats only if they have their ultimate – go on them if they haven’t used ultimate yet, otherwise ignore.

If you have Nullifier/Abyssal/Bloodthorn, don’t waste them on supports who can’t do anything to you – for example, there’s no need to Abyssal a Crystal Maiden who can’t do anything to you through BKB or to Nullify a Lion who doesn’t have Force Staff or Ghost Scepter. You can save those items for later in the fight.

If your BKB ends, it might be a good idea to back off for a few seconds until Stifling Dagger and Phantom Strike are ready – without them, you’re not dealing that much damage unless you’re really farmed.

Example:

This is the ideal situation you want to find yourself with PA – snowballing and pushing the enemy base in the mid game. Ramzes has BKB here, so he is not afraid to jump in and start dealing damage (he nukes down the enemy Visage). Afterwards we see the great combo potential of Mag with PA – she helps her team kill three heroes before the RP stun ends.

Pushing:

5-man pushing:

PA’s tower damage is so insignificant, it’s pretty much pointless to siege with her unless you’re already full slotted or close to that point. In any other case, you’d want to pick off a hero, take Roshan or win a team-fight with your team first.

Split-Pushing:

If you have a Battle Fury, you can use it to clear waves and occasionally split-push. If you don’t – it takes too much time to kill the creep wave, leaving you open for a gank, so it’s not worth it to farm in the enemy territory.

When you're split-pushing don't forget to make use of the Blur active (it will make you harder to notice and gank).

Ganking:

You have solo kill potential on heroes who can’t escape from you and/or have low armor. But don’t try to kill heroes with Ghost Scepters or other escape abilities unless you have the required items to block those things (like Nullifier, Abyssal, Bloodthorn). You don’t want to chase the enemy too much as he can receive help from his team.

You could participate in ganks organized by your teammates as a damage dealer – if your teammates provide a disable, you can kill the enemies pretty fast.

Always use Blur before ganking - it's great for sneaking up on enemies without being spotted.