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[frostshotgg]

Wait, cleave used to affect Rosh? No wonder everybody who was at the top built 6 battlefurys.

[CognitiveDissonance]

Wait, cleave used to affect Rosh? No wonder everybody who was at the top built 6 battlefurys.

The trick with cleave was that it ignores armor and magic resistance alltogether. The strategy was to set up somebody to be hit by the enemy team and cleave onto Roshan. As a result, Undying (bonus damage), Sven and Magnus were really popular. People wouldn't really hit Rosh directly in those situations.

[umiman]

Yeah, I remember being literally afk the whole fight. I could just right click an enemy hero and go watch tv for 20 minutes.

[Jelle]

Mhm Invoker intrigues me. Seems like a hero with a high skill ceiling, I like it!

Hard to get into though, seeing as you not only need to put every one of his spells to muscle memory but also need to be able to quickly decide between the wide array of spell choices in a given situation. Cue me fumbling around throwing spells around at random and hoping for the best.  But hey I haven't lost a game on him yet so it's all good right. 

At any rate I'm wondering if it's worth figuring out how to play the guy? I heard he's rather low ranked in the power tiers, Not that that'd ever stop me mind.

As for how to play him, I take it you focus mostly on 2 of the 3 orbs and the spells that benefit from them? I suppose the choice of wich depends on the enemy hero lineup and how the game progresses. Also what kind of items does this guy benefit from? Somewhat high hp, lots of mana regen? Either scepter or refresher any good on him?

[Astral]

Scepter makes Refresher completely useless since his ultimate would have a 2 second cooldown after the scepter upgrade. Scythe of Vyse and Linkens are great choices, maybe even a Skadi or a Radiance if you're overfarmed.

I've found Invoker to be ad an odd place, myself. Played him quite a bit in the days of DotA. His strength is his versatility... and his weakness is that he doesn't really have any strengths. He can nuke, but not as well as a dedicated nuker. He can carry, but not as well as a dedicated carry. He can even support, but nowhere near as well as a dedicated support.

Being able to swap spells on the fly to suit the situation takes a lot of playing with. The three main builds I've seen or used usually involve the following:

Q/W for attack speed, infinite lane sustain, and nasty Cold Snap abuse, occasionally with Radiance/Ghost Walk shenanigans. Alternately, for Tornado/EMP usage, but people tend to stick to one gimmick at a time due to early mana issues, and it takes a little more skill to pull off.
Q/E for Forge Spirits + Cold Snap, with high autoattack damage and sustain
W/E, with a point in Q to abuse high damage last hitting, Meteor+Deafening Blast to push them in the highly damaging portion for longer. Also, Sunstrike.

Lots of ways to play him otherwise, and Ghost Walk makes escaping just about any situation a piece of cake. Find a style that works for you and learn it, and you'll have a hero that can do just about anything.

[crazysheep]

High skill ceiling is about right for Invoker, for the reasons you mentioned. He's basically a jack of all trades and a master of none (except perhaps casting loads of different spells), so you kinda need to learn the right skills based on what's unfolding in your game.

Yes, it's still worthwhile learning to play a good Invoker, because of the versatility he brings to a team. (IMHO you should be able to play all the heroes in the game atm, so that you don't cripple yourself if you ever have to play one of those low ranked heroes, but that's a different story.)

As for Invoker's playstyle, you are essentially correct: focus on a combination of 2 of 3 orbs and their related spells (ie. choose from EQ, EW and QW builds). With items, I'd recommend scepter but not refresher, maybe a pair of boots that allows him to stay mobile (usually phase but sometimes arcane boots are ok as well) and mana regen, a buttload of it since you'll be throwing out lots of Invokes. After that, consider the situation and build accordingly - Veil of Discord, maybe Necronomicon, Dagon, Sheepstick all come to mind (spellcasting items, really).

[umiman]

What?! No! Refresher is used on almost every single lategame Invoker build. His ult may only have 2 second cooldown after Aghs but the rest of his skills don't. His meatball for example takes a minute to cooldown on its own. Just watch any of the innumerable Invoker vids online. Everyone uses refresher. Every single pro if they actually play him in a game will build it in the late game. Every single good Invoker will build it. It's mandatory as just double meatball - deafening blast combo is ridiculous and outputs almost 2000 damage on its own, not to mention all the other double plays.

Look at every single Invoker guide. They all involve refresher at some point.

The only reason I wouldn't recommend getting a refresher is if you're still not good with him and can barely figure out how to pull off tornado - emp - meatball - deafening blast - sunstrike combo let alone two of them.

[frostshotgg]

It makes me sad that you didn't even mention double cold snap. 1 Cold Snap is enough to make you not go anywhere for a long ass time. 2 is downright terrifying.

EDIT: Oh, and double ice wall. It's like an earthshaker q that slows 140%.

[crazysheep]

The only reason I wouldn't recommend getting a refresher is if you're still not good with him and can barely figure out how to pull off tornado - emp - meatball - deafening blast - sunstrike combo let alone two of them.

This is pretty much why I'm not recommending refresher atm.

I do agree with the rest of your points.

[umiman]

Man, Earth Spirit is so donkey balls strong. He reminds me of Lee Sin except... 2x better and 2x more complicated.

[Tyg13]

Man, Earth Spirit is so donkey balls strong. He reminds me of Lee Sin except... 2x better and 2x more complicated.

That's the first thing I thought of, to be honest. His mobility and crazy amount of CC, as well as that kick, it's just all so Lee Sin-esque, which is awesome because Lee Sin is probably the only League champ I can stand to play. The skill ceiling on him is so much higher than on any other champion, it's nuts. Earth Spirit feels like him on steroids. Plus, it's nice to have some more skillshot heroes in Dota, I kinda felt disappointed that there were so few in comparison to League.

[Jelle]

Here I am with another question if you guys don't mind.
I know private servers were a thing in dota (but I don't know how legal they were, I didn't play it much). I was wondering if they exist for this one as well, being a fully fledged game rather then a mod. If they do exist are they illegal/how illegal are they? And where would be a good place to find such private servers if there are any?

[umiman]

There aren't any outside of that one with all the funny gamemodes that I can't remember the name. Even then it still uses Valve's servers.

[frostshotgg]

D2Ware uses Valve's servers?

[umiman]

I'm not really sure actually. Never really investigated. I assumed it did because you need to run Dota 2 and have it queued through their own queue system anyway.

The way I understood it is they use Valve custom game servers but they inject their own code as a go-between.