Puck is one of the best team-fighters and gankers in Dota 2.  Moreover, he is mobile and very hard to kill thanks to his escape mechanisms. The fight initiation and control he brings to the table is almost always useful and because of this Puck can fit a variety of strategies – ganking, team fighting, or even split-pushing and turtling. Because of this tactical versatility, the hero is consistently present in the competitive scene. Nonetheless, Puck is a squishy low HP hero and if he gets disabled he can be quickly brought down.

Puck is usually played as a solo hero, most often in the mid lane, since he needs a lot of experience. He can be also an offlaner, but if he gets shut down hard in the lane, he doesn’t have a reliable way of catching up.

He is a high skill cap hero, and even though he doesn’t have huge carry potential, if you are good enough you can consistently win pubs for your team with Puck and climb the ladder.

Generally, the heroes that synergize well with Puck are those that can complement his AoE control and nuke abilities. The hero doesn’t counter a lot of heroes but can cripple heroes that are very dependent on their spells to survive or fight. Puck’s counter, on the other hand, are enemies that have instant disables and silences for him. Additionally, Puck doesn’t do well against lane dominators that can slow down his experience and farm progression early on. Overall, Puck is a flexible enough hero and can play around those counters, making himself useful in various situations.

You have a lot of freedom when drafting Puck, as a result of the hero’s versatility in terms of laning and the strategies he fits. In fact, Puck can go solo in any lane and fit almost any strategy. The hero brings powerful initiation, AoE control and nuke damage to the table – qualities that are useful in ganking, team fighting or turtling. This means that you get tactical freedom by drafting the hero – you can develop many line-ups and tactics around the fairy dragon.

Whatever your strategy when you pick Puck you usually want to take advantage of his ability to be active around the map in the early and mid game.

Puck is a strong solo laner that can be countered only by a few heroes – most of the time you can be certain that he will do well 1v1 without any help. In addition, he is very elusive and hard to kill. Drafting him against a strong ganking support duo instead of another mid laner without an escape mechanism is a good decision.

Once he gets lvl6 Puck’s kill potential increases a lot and rotations become a very good option. In the mid lane, the hero can control the runes very well thanks to his mobility. Grabbing a good ganking rune (DD, Invisibility or Haste) increases his kill potential even more. This means that you can create space for your other heroes, especially carries that need time to farm up by being very active in the late laning stage. Moreover, placing Puck in a 1v1 situation mid or in the safe lane will allow him to get the maximum amount of XP during the laning stage and reach lvl6 as soon as possible.

Puck also gets quite strong once he purchases Blink Dagger, and therefore, giving him farm early on is important in order to let him reach his full initiation/gank potential as early as possible.

Puck in the offlane is not a go-to option in every situation. Rather, you should place Puck there if you think that he won’t get zoned out of experience range. Since he isn’t a farm-dependent hero, as long as he gets experience, he will be able to contribute to his team. If he gets shut down in terms of experience, however, he doesn’t have a lot of options – he can’t jungle and won’t be useful if he ganks early on (he needs at least level 6 to be effective).  Therefore, in case the enemy safe lane has a lot of stuns/silences and/or harassing potential, Puck is likely to struggle a lot in the offlane since he doesn’t have a way to control the creep equilibrium. He relies on being able to stay within experience range.

A thing you can do to alleviate this is to send your pos. 4 support in the offlane with Puck. Thanks to his high attack damage he is quite good at harassing and could be strong in 2v2 situations.

Nevertheless, Puck has two escape mechanisms that can help him survive in the offlane while some other heroes might struggle. He can dodge projectile disables with his Phase Shift and jaunt away with his Illusory Orb. This makes him quite hard to kill by some heroes, especially those with slow projectile disables. Because of this if the enemy safe lane heroes are not good at zoning out but rely only on kill potential putting Puck there might be a good decision. Nevertheless, bear in mind that the duration of Phase Shift is low. Consequently, you won’t be invulnerable for enough time to allow you to Jaunt far enough with Illusory Orb without getting disabled/stunned – you need to consider if Puck will be able to deal early on with the kill potential of the specific heroes against him.

Weak Against:

Strong Against:

Puck has moderate versatility in his skill builds. Generally, you prioritize Illusory Orb because it is a long-ranged nuke that can be used for harassing, farming, kill attempts or anti-pushing. Next, you want to have higher levels of your Silence since it can increase your initiation potential and cripple the presence of spell-reliant heroes in engagements.

Moreover, it is an additional source of nuke which increases your kill potential and farming speed. Lastly, you want to max your Phase Shift as it gives you a lot of survivability in fights. Usually, you want to get at least one point early on to be able to dodge spells and abilities.

Your ultimate makes you a strong ganker and increases greatly your team fight potential; therefore, you want to always get a point in Dream Coil.

The difference in your skill builds involves choices about which spell to prioritize the most. While Illusory Orb is often the choice, Waning Rift can help you lock down mobile heroes like QoP, Weaver or AM.

You get your Bottle, Treads, and Wand and rush Blink Dagger to increase your ganking and initiation potential as early as possible. Then you get Eul’s for survivability and Aghanim’s to make your initiation stronger. After that, you get two initiation items (Scythe and Shiva’s) to gank even more effectively and provide more control in 5 on 5 engagements.

Finally, you get a Refresher to be able to use both your Hex/Shiva’s and your Agh's ult twice in a fight.

This is a nuke/gank-oriented build. You are getting a second Null to boost your early game strength even more. Afterward, you choose to get Power Treads to increase your lane dominance. Then you get your Veil, Dagger, and Dagon – these items allow you to gank almost any target early on together with your inbuilt nuke damage.

You get Linken’s to increase your elusiveness even more and Ethereal Blade provides yet another boost to your nuke damage.

The build doesn’t provide much utility to the team compared to other builds. Nevertheless, if you believe constant pick-offs will win you the game it can be a much better option than the normal utility build, especially on a pos. 2 Puck.

Getting last hits with Puck is easy during the laning stage since the hero has good base damage and fast attack animation. Moreover, you have two AoE spells that can help you last-hit and clear out waves. When you get mana sustain (from Clarities, Bottle, Euls) you can use your spells quite often.

Once you get higher levels in your nukes, you can clear out a whole creep wave using both nukes. Alternatively, you can attack different creeps in the lane and damage them so that they are all relatively low on HP, but not low enough to allow your enemy to deny them with a single attack. Then you can use one AoE spell (for example your Illusory Orb) to kill all the creeps at once. Doing so will not allow your opponent to deny the creeps (it will also push out the lanes which has the usual benefits and drawbacks).

In a 1v1 situation, you should be able to get farm and harass/pressure the enemy hero at the same time. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t forget that getting a lot of farm early on is your primary concern since you want to get an early Blink Dagger, which increases greatly your gank/initiation potential and hence - impact in the mid game. What this means is that you shouldn’t over-emphasize on pressuring your opponent on the price of missing last hits.  In some match-ups, especially against lane dominators, you might be forced to use your spells and mana primarily to get last hits rather than harassing and attempting kills. Even though this will make the laning stage easier for your opponent, if you manage to get your experience and farm (Dagger) on time, you will be able to compensate the lack of pressure in the early laning stage with powerful ganks in the late laning stage and mid game.

Puck has two advantages when it comes to harassing. Firstly, he is a hero with long-ranged nukes. Secondly, he has Phase Shift. The ability allows him to dodge enemy attacks and spells and consequently, trade harass more favorable. For example, whenever you are exchanging auto-attack with the enemy in the lane, you can use Phase Shift to dodge a hit. In addition, the spell allows you to mitigate the harassment from heroes.For instance, against Queen of Pain, you can dodge her main harassment tool, Shadow Strike, each time with Phase Shift.

 When it comes to active harass Illusory Orb is your primary tool since it is a long-ranged spell. The ideal situation would be to use the ability to get last hits and damage the enemy in the lane at the same time. Try to predict where the enemy will be when casting a long ranged Orb or alternatively move to him to ensure the Illusory Orb hits.  When you are harassing, however, try to not push out the wave when you want to control the creep equilibrium closer to your tower. If you want to keep the equilibrium at the same spot, but want to harass the enemy hero, then use Illusory Orb in such a way that you don’t hit your creeps.

In the laning stage, you can also bait with the use of Waning Rift when trading harass. In case you face an enemy that relies on casting an ability to escape (for example Blink), you can trade blows with him and cast Waning Rift to silence him just when he is about to use his spell to move away. Then you will be able to hit him a few more times and even possibly get the kill.

Before you get your ultimate at level 6, you don’t have a lot of Kill potential because you don’t have any disable.  Getting a kill would usually require a significant mistake from your opponent. Nevertheless, you can still attempt kills especially if your target is below max HP because of your harass. You can start attacking your target, use Orb on it and when it deals the damage you can Jaunt on top, use Rift to silence and try to finish the kill with more attacks.

If an ally is helping you (coming to your lane to gank, for example), it is better to wait for the initiation of your ally and use Orb afterward. This way you can be sure that you will not miss your spell, which is very important since it is your main source of nuke damage in the laning phase.

Once you get your Dream Coil, however, you can get a solo kill much more easily. Your ultimate locks down a target in place and also sets up for your Illusory Orb and Waning Rift nukes. The mobility of Illusory Orb (you can teleport into the Orb) allows you to close the gap between yourself and the enemy, land more attacks and even chase down your targets.  For example, you can use your ultimate on the enemy hero to lock him down, then cast Illusory Orb towards him, and once you damage him with the spell, you can jaunt into the orb and cast Waning Rift to silence him. Then, you can finish him off with a few auto-attacks.  If you want to be sure that you hit with Illusory Orb, you can move closer to the enemy and cast the spell (it will be harder for him to dodge it).

What you need to keep in mind when your jaunt into the Orb forward is that enemies can easily counter-initiate on you and kill you because you won’t have an escape mechanism (Illusory Orb will be on CD for 12 seconds). Provided you don’t see where enemy supports are, it’d be better not to Jaunt into the Orb since the enemy might be just baiting you – his supports might be staying near him, out of vision waiting to counter-initiate once you orb in. 

Puck has two escape mechanisms to avoid getting killed in the lane.  Both help you dodge projectiles and thus survive ganks. Nevertheless, Phase Shift is better at dodging spells (since it is instant), while Illusory Orb is more about repositioning yourself. If you need to dodge a projectile really quickly then Phase Shift is the right choice. If you have time (you see the movement of supports), you can use Orb towards a safe direction and Jaunt into it to get yourself out of danger. The best way to use the spells in order to avoid getting killed is to use them in combination. You want to use your Illusory Orb firstly in a safer direction (for instance towards your tower) then Phase Shift to become invulnerable (and so avoid getting stunned or silenced by an enemy) and teleport into the Orb once it has traveled far enough. Using the Phase Shift while the Orb is flying is crucial because in case you get stunned or silenced, you won’t be able to jaunt into the Orb to a safer spot, and you will get killed. Keep in mind that the duration of a lvl 1 Phase Shift is just 0.75 seconds. This means that using the spell at the right time is absolutely crucial – too early or too late and you will get disabled and killed. You want to cast your Orb, use Phase just as your opponents are in range to initiate on you and half a second later you need to Jaunt.

You need to be mindful of instant stuns/silences (e.g. Lion’s Hex, Rubick’s Lift). You are particularly vulnerable to such disables as you rely on your spells to survive. If enemy supports and/or cores have such disables, you should play very defensively, especially when you don’t see their positioning. When you don’t see where enemy supports are and they have a strong kill potential (silence or instant stuns for instance), better stay in experience range and get last hits using Illusory Orb. If the creep equilibrium is far from your tower even auto-attacking might be dangerous because you will be exposed to initiation.

In the laning stage, your first timing is when you get to level 6 and skill your Dream Coil. Then you can get solo kills and/or rotate to gank and help out other lanes. The second timing is when you max your two nuke spells – Illusory Orb and Waning Rift. This is usually the case around level 10. At this stage, you will have the highest damage output and could potentially nuke down squishy targets with both your spells and ulti. The last timing is when you get your Blink dagger – in some favorable match-ups, you can get your Blink at the end of the laning stage. Then, your initiation and gank potential gets increased even more and you should look for pick-offs or opening to initiate a favorable team fight.

Puck is a strong ganker early on once he gets to level 6. Generally, you have a choice when you get your ultimate – either rotate right away when there is a gank opportunity and pressure opponents, or stay in the lane, farm up your Blink Dagger and get to level 10 and then start rotating. Which choice is better depends on the game you are playing, your opponent in the lane and whether you can gank before you get your Blink Dagger. For example, provided you want to gank and pressure an Anti-Mage or another mobile hero (Weaver, Storm), you will need your Blink Dagger to get close to cast your silence and as a result, prevent him from escaping with Blink before you even manage to initiate. Alternatively, if you are fairly certain that you can get kills even without a Dagger it is better to pressure your opponents rather than passively farm.

You should rotate whenever your allies need help – carry a TP scroll and join fights or rotate to help lanes in which your allies are struggling.  In case you are getting pressured in the lane, and you are not getting enough farm, then rotating as early as possible will be more efficient.

As a very level-dependent hero, your top priority should be to get experience. Moreover, you also need one important item to have a big impact on the game – Blink Dagger. Therefore, you aim to get to level 10/11 as quickly as possible (to have both of your nukes maxed up) and get Blink around this time. From then on, you can start playing much more aggressively, get more ganks and initiations. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t be passive in the lane. On the contrary, you have good harassing potential and can rotate to gank once you get to lvl6.

When it comes to rune control, you have a big advantage over most heroes because of your mobility thanks to Illusory Orb. You should use that advantage and try to get all runes. You can also use both your AoE spells to push out the wave before the rune spawns, so you don’t miss last hits when you go for the rune. If you don’t need your Illusory Orb to get faster to the rune (you are not racing your lane opponent to it), it is better to save it in case you get ganked thereby the enemy supports – Orb is your primary escape mechanism.

Runes increase your ganking and solo kill potential but are not the main determinants whether your gank/kill will succeed. You have a good amount of nuke and mobility early on to achieve successful rotations and solo kills even without the help of runes.

Getting an early double Null with Puck is always good since you are going to upgrade it to Veil later most of the games. This helps 633 get a significant creep advantage over the QoP early on.

Puck tries not to waste his Phase Shift too much, so he can use it to dodge Shadow Strike. Moreover, he uses Illusory Orb to secure the last hit on the ranged creep while harassing the QoP.

On min 2:40 with a good usage of his spells and with the help of his teammates, Puck manages to kill both Queen and Tuskar and survive – a demonstration how hard he is to kill compared to most mid laners.

Puck gets more points in his silence, which will increase his kill potential against Queen who relies on her Blink to survive, as can be seen on 8:30.

Puck is not the strongest offlaner, but his elusiveness allows him to do well especially against lanes that don’t have instant disables or silences. Since the hero is not item-dependent (he needs only Blink Dagger to be effective), but very level-dependent, he can sacrifice his farm early on if he gets enough experience from the lane. 

Your top priority is to get experience. Once you get to level 6, you will already be a good ganker and can contribute to your team.  With Puck, you don’t have a way to catch up in the jungle (he can’t sack the lane) and need all the levels you can get from the lane.  Due to your Phase Shift ability and relatively high base attack damage for a ranged hero, you can also trade harass favorably with the enemy babysitter who will be trying to zone you out.

You don’t have a special tool to control the creep equilibrium. Because of this and because you are quite squishy (although elusive) you can easily end up zoned out if you are playing against a strong lane which is controlling the equilibrium well (keeping it close to their tower). This could be devastating to your early game because of your level dependence. To avoid this situation you need to try very hard to keep the equilibrium close to your tower for as long as possible, using all the tricks other heroes have:

Use your big attack range: try to hit your own creeps as soon as they enter deny range in order to pull the waves towards you. If the equilibrium is in your favor try not to use Illusory Orb to take last hits – this will push the waves. Even if you miss last hits because of this, it will be worth it because you are getting solo XP for longer.

Prevent your lane opponents from resetting the equilibrium: either block their pull camp with a Ward or give yourself vision in the jungle to be able to contest the pull. You can disrupt a double pull by aggroing the secondary pull camp with a long range attack or Orb. Alternatively, you can just steal creep kills with your Orb. You can use the large camp to pull your own wave and disrupt the equilibrium.

You shouldn’t use your Illusory Orb all the time to get last hits because it is your only mobility spell that allows you to get away if initiated upon. Only if you know where enemy supports are, and you know that you won’t get initiated, you can use the Orb to get some farm and ideally harass your lane opponents at the same time. Otherwise, better save the spell in case you get initiated.

As we mentioned above, getting experience is more important for you than getting farm. so try to get levels as your top priority. Stay in XP range and don’t take big risks to take farm.  Ending the laning phase without farm but with levels is a victory against hard lanes – by using your ganking/fighting potential in the early-mid game and flash farming potential a bit later you will be able to catch up in terms of gold.

Provided the enemy trilane can’t kill you as they don’t have an instant stun or disable to catch you before you can orb away, then you can play a bit more aggressively by going closer to the creep wave and getting last hits with auto-attacks. This way you are achieving two things – first, you are getting not only experience but farm, and second, you are forcing enemy supports to stay in lane in order to zone you out. If they have a go on you, you can always use Illusory Orb towards your tower and get away.

If the enemy trilane has good disables for you, then you should stay as far away as possible and leach experience. Don’t go too deep to get last hits when you don’t know where the supports are. If they initiate on you, your death is almost imminent. You can try hiding in the trees and passively leaching XP.

The first mid-game timing for Puck is when he gets to level 10/11. At this point, you have almost maxed your damage output (you have both your nuke spells at max level) which gives you a lot of kill potential. The second is when he gets his Blink Dagger – initiation becomes much easier which is vital for ganks or starting favorable fights. Once you get the item, you should start being much more proactive – look for pick-offs and initiate for your team to win 5v5 engagements. 

In case the laning stage went well, and you get a quick Blink Dagger, you should start pressuring opponents by constantly ganking (even solo) and initiating fights around the map. If you are with a level advantage, you can possibly kill under-leveled/under-farmed targets even without the help of your ult.

Provided the laning stage went poorly, you are still capable of fighting/ganking and catching up in terms of gold and XP. Your team will usually rely on you to gank and initiate fights so that you can get back into the game after a bad start. Even without Blink, you are mobile enough to get good initiations and pick-offs. After a bad laning stage, however, you would usually lack the damage output to get solo kills. It is a good idea to gank together with your teammates for that reason.

In terms of farming, you have two flash farming abilities that can help you split-push, farm jungle camps, and hence, get your first important item (usually Blink). If you are behind, however, you would rarely have the space on the map to farm freely – as a play-maker, it is up to you to provide this space to your carries, so don’t be passive unless you are really close to your item in terms of gold.

Split-Pushing:

Puck is a good split-pusher as he has two AoE abilities to help him clear out waves fast. He is also elusive and hard to kill if enemies don’t have instant disables/silences. Nevertheless, Puck pushes towers slowly since he deals a low amount of physical damage. This usually means that rather than committing deep to pushes you want to push out the wave as fast as possible and return to your team.

Since he is a good anti-push hero, you usually want him to stop pushes and be in a position to start a favorable fight, while another hero split-pushes.

Anti-Pushing:

To stop pushes, you can do two things. Firstly, you can stay in a safe position behind and cast Illusory Orb from a distance to damage the creep wave. Secondly, you can do a more aggressive move – you can Blink on the creep wave, use Waning Rift, then cast Illusory Orb backward, use Phase Shift and Orb away to safety. Doing this will help you damage the creep wave and enemy units even more since you will use Waning Rift too. Be that as it may, this could be dangerous if enemies have instant silence/disables. If you don’t do this “Blink in- orb out” move fast enough, you might get disabled and killed, which will cost your team a tower because they most likely won’t be able to defend it without you.

5-Man Pushing:

When it comes to five-man pushing, Puck should generally stay behind and wait to counter initiate. You don’t deal a lot of physical damage, and therefore, it isn’t worth it to attack the tower and risk getting initiated upon by staying too close. 

In team engagements, you are the initiator and the hero that counter-initiates. However, you are not a tanky frontline hero. Rather, you are more of a “jump in, jump out” hero. You have low HP, and if you run into the enemies, they will focus you and kill you. Therefore, you should initiate in a way that allows you to get away and not die afterward. The usual way to do this safe form of initiation is to use Blink to get closer to enemies and use your control abilities (Waning Rift and Ultimate) and save Illusory orb to get out of the fight. In most situations, you will blink in, use your ultimate and silence, then use Illusory Orb in a safe direction, Phase out and Jaunt into the orb to get into a safer positioning. As a result, you initiate on the enemies and don’t allow them to counter-initiate on you and kill you while you leave the follow-up to your team.

As with all initiators, you need to make the decision whether to start the fight yourself or wait to counter initiate. This depends on the positioning of your opponents – if they are clumped up for whatever reason (terrain, missplay), you can start a favorable fight by catching multiple people with your Dream Coil. If your opponents are spread out, however, it is better to be patient. If you cast your ult and Rift on just one hero while the rest of the enemy team is ready to react you are likely to lose the fight. It is better to wait for the fight to start and counter-initiate when your opponents are clumping up while fighting. Don’t wait too long, though, you shouldn’t let your damage dealers die because there would be no one to follow-up on your counter-initiation.

Waning Rift versus Dream Coil initiation:

When you initiate you have two choices, you can either use Silence right away or Dream Coil. Generally, you want to use Dream Coil first when enemies are clumped up, and you want to catch as many heroes in the ultimate as possible. Dream Coil stuns enemies for 0.5 seconds, and this will give you enough time to use silence and illusory Orb + Phase Shift to get away. Sometimes, however, Silence is the better spell to use first since it is low CD, and you want to save your ultimate when enemies clump up after your initiation. Blink + Silence is the safer choice in case you are not sure that you want to commit to a fight right away – you can save your ult for later. Furthermore, the cast range of Dream Coil is larger than Waning Rift, which allows you to catch targets even if they are not close to you, whereas Waning Rift silences only targets around you.

In most situations you will Blink in, Silence then uses Dream Coil, cast Illusory Orb, Phase Shift and jaunt into the orb to get away. Alternatively, you can use Illusory Orb towards enemies to chase them down. However, to use it this way, you need to be sure that you will win the fight after your initiation, and that you won’t get focused down and killed after you Orb towards the enemies.

Example:

Sumail demonstrates a lot of the strengths of the hero in this fight:

• Initiation: he initiates with a Naix bomb on the enemy carry and the two of them burst him down before he is able to have an impact in the fights.
  
• Elusiveness: he dodges the Axe Call with his Orb and moves to a safe position.
  
• Control: he uses his ultimate to keep the rest of the enemy team in place and ensure additional kills.
  

Puck is a great ganker. Both his mobility and nuke damage allow him to quickly snipe targets. Therefore, you should gank to gain map control if there is the opportunity for it. In the early-mid game, you can even get kills on your own, provided you are high enough level. In the later stages, you will need the help of an ally to get most kills, especially against enemy farming heroes (this is the case when you go for a more utility/control build). Provided you go for Dagon, you can kill even tankier heroes on your own. Consequently, what you do depends to a large extent on your item build. If you go for Hex, Shiva’s etc, you will be the setup/initiator hero for your team in the mid-late game, and you will rely on your allies to deal the main proportion of the damage. In case you choose a more offensive build with Dagon and Ethereal Blade, you can roam on your own and get pick-offs on heroes without BKBs.

Don’t hesitate to use your ult for single target ganks – Dream Coil has a short CD for an ultimate, meaning that it will be ready soon enough if your team needs you to team fight. When it comes to ganking, you initiate on targets the same way you initiate fights. You blink in, use silence and your ultimate and start attacking your target. You need to decide in which direction to use your Orb. If you can kill the target quickly it is best to use Orb defensively to be able to disengage before your opponents have time to initiate on you. If you need more time to kill your opponent, you should use the Orb in the direction he is running to be able to Jaunt into it and continue attacking. 

With Puck, you create Map control through ganking and team fighting. Once you get your Blink, enemies will start playing more defensively since they expect your ganks and rotations. Therefore, your carries will have more space to farm up.

Use of Illusory Orb as a scouting tool:

The Orb grants flying vision to the area around it while it travels. This allows Puck to scout the positioning of enemies heroes in locations that are out of vision such as the Roshan pit. If an opponent is trying to juke between trees or on a high ground ramp, it is a great idea to use Illusory Orb to give yourself vision and secure the kill.

Another use of this mechanic is to use the orb to deward enemy Observers positioned on a high ground.

Farming is not your top priority. It is better to gank and team fight to create space for your carry to farm up. Nonetheless, you have flash farming potential because you have two AoE spells that help you clear out waves and jungle camps fast. Whenever your Ultimate is on CD, and there isn’t a gank/team fight opportunity, you should farm to get your next item (Scythe of Vyse, Dagon, Shiva’s etc.).