General DiscussionPhantom Lancer 6.87

new abyssal works really great with him. try to play with it and u will see its really good. u don't need tarresque if u have abyssal.

for me diffusal, abyssal, manta, skadi and one more on situation are valid choice

i love using PL.especially having diffusal on early game after threads and aquila. just secure kills when clashing and always pressure soft heroes when u have the said items. You must create space and ask help to a support. Ive tried playing PL with Wk and Pa as the enemy.

off the top of my head i wud go vang aquila diffusal yasha bots manta but i havent really played him this patch

Is echo sabre viable? I'd imagine it wouldn't be half bad after Aquila since it gives HP, mana regen, chance to proc juxtapose, and a slow.

Always try to last pick PL, that way you wont get countered. Generally avoid playing vs ember, sven and timber. Other than them, pl shits on most heroes late game.
Aquilla, treads, diffusal,yasha, manta, skadi, butterfly.
if you need lifesteal for fights early - vlads, if you need lifesteal and hp for fights late - satanic
skadi > heart
mkb if you deal with evasion
abyssal if you have problems pinning someone down
radiance - useless
daedalus - for teh lulz if ur stomping hard
apply moonshard and bots when needed
otherwise ideal late build : bots, manta, skadi, butterfly,satanic, diff

I rush bot after aquila.

Its good if you dont have to fight extremely early - therefore need stats, and can focus purely on farming.

midas is terrible on PL. a yasha is much better for farming, since the attack speed bonus works on the illusions (it's based off the endurance aura, and attack speed or movement speed bonuses auras do benefit illusions), and you're also getting more movement speed. the 31 attack speed, the fact that you move between camps faster, and you and your illusions getting the 16 agi is better than the bonus gold that you'd get from midas.

midas is an item that you get on a hero that requires a lot of levels e.g. invoker, slark or a hero that doesn't spend a lot of time farming because they're fighting often e.g. chaos knight, even midas puck and dark seer were viable before.

it's not good on fast farming carries because midas' gold gain is static. it's always 190g every 100s, while a farming item will scale and therefore end up accelerating your gold gain. e.g. if you have a BF on AM, you cleave for more as your damage increases, resulting in BF increasing your farm speed further. if you have midas on AM, it's still going to only give you 190g every 100s no matter what your attack damage or attack speed is.

the current go-to item build of PL is early boots of travels, getting some early stat items before it like aquila, wand and/or poor mans shield, and then into diffusal, sometimes yasha before diffusal if you don't need to fight. treads gimp your farm since you move so slow without them especially when you also did not get an early yasha.

if you need to fight early, aquila and wand give you enough stats to be effective in early fights. you don't need treads. most of the time you're just going to be sitting back and throwing lances anyway, where the stats of treads don't do much, while travels boost your farm and also allow you to be at every fight with their lower cooldown compared to TP scrolls.

instead of having treads + midas (3400g), that could have been aquila + travels (3385g) instead, which would give you more farm and allow you to also split push more effectively. a PL that farms jungle with treads and midas is useless. a PL with travels + aquila can either force the enemy to TP back (and therefore stop/slow down the enemy push) by split pushing if he can't fight, or trade towers if the enemy do not TP back.

in the game that you linked blaming your teammates for losing a trilane, you dealt 223 tower damage as a PL. getting a 10 minute midas without boots or any stat items doesn't mean shit. in fact it's a terrible timing and also a bad item. your midas + treads + diffusal timing was 24 minutes but if you look on the PL guide page on dotabuff you'll see that people can get aquila + travels + diffusal before 20 minutes. if I only had 2k gold to spend I'd rather get boots, aquila and either iron talon or magic wand instead of a midas, aquila + wand lets you be useful in early fights, aquila and iron talon let you farm jungle very quickly once you're 6.

also make sure you always get quelling blade before diffusal, because the bonus damage works on the illusions, and also almost all of your damage is going to be due to your agility, PL buys very few raw damage items, and only later into the game so you'll be getting the full 40% bonus damage on you and the illusions when you have QB in the early to mid game. it's even better to buy a quelling blade just to farm a diffusal and to sell it once you get the diffusal because your diffusal timing will be faster and you'll have earned more gold than you lose from selling quelling blade for 50%.

I'm not that great of a player. But I'd like to believe I'm a good PL player. I play the hero since TI5. I'm a normal skill player, but I play PL in 3.0-3.5k party games and do pretty well.

I don't think Midas is viable on PL. Like at all. Also, Boots of Travel is far more useful than Power Treads. If your concern is having more HP, go for 4-4-1-2 skill build till level 11. And then levelup your stats.
I complete Aquila and Travel in like 9 mins. Then go for Diffusal as usual, it'll be done by like 17 mins. I think an early Skadi is more useful than Manta. This way, you can keep your Diffusal charges to purge yourself rather than slowing down the enemy if that's the case of using purge. Though, Manta is certainly a better choices when you are facing silence(s).
My usual 6 slotted PL looks like this; Diffusal - Manta - Butterfly - Skadi - HoT - Travel. I also keep S&Y, Daedalus, Abyssal Blade and BKB as situational items. Abyssal Blade is a must if your enemy carry is e lusive like Storm or Ember Spirit. BKB is a must if you are facing an enemy with Mjollnir. I mean, sure, there are certain counters like Axe - Shaker - Sand King - Sven - Ember Spirit. But a carry with Mjollnir can be a huger problem than them. Raw HP really helps against those heroes. Mjollnir makes you k-ill yourself. Naix with Radiance - Mjollnir can easily kill PL even if PL has HoT. That's when BKB becomes the most important item.

Besides skill and item builds, your performance on the hero is dependent on how well you use Doppelganger skill. For instance; if you're facing Axe, you have to be on point to dodge the call. Or stuns. Also that skill isn't just defensive. Keep an open mind with that.

The item is called treads. Not threads. Treads.

T - R - E - A - D - S

Treads.

skadi > heart

pl is one of the heroes that should be absolutely the last pick. with the right heroes and items it s rather easy to counter.

countering pl= a carry with bf or cleave can ruin pl, mjollnir is also effective. heroes like; earth shaker, sand king, lich, sven, pa(bf build), juggernaut(bf build), zeus, invoker are ones that i can think of now.

benefits of pl= it can destroy dangerous carries as wraith king, slark, clinkz, drow, sniper etc.

i think pl build should be attribute focused to get the best benefit from illusions, and abyssal can be only situational if your team doesnt have much lockdown.note: illusions dont bash.

Can some1 pls tell what I did wrong in this match?
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2378626440

I started in offlane with Sand King against supportish Mirana and PA safe lane (our safe lane was panda+venge). I did well in lane (for 2 melee offlane) and ended 80cs at 15min. My item build went wand (PA was spamming daggers), Poor mans shield, boots.
Then our WR crushed alch mid and did good rotation to our safe lane so I assumed I will have save farm and went BoTs as my next item. I continued to farm, TP when there was a fight about to happen and helped with pushing. My diff came at 23min (I believe). In two next teamfights we just crushed them, almost pushed t3 on mid and forced buybacks.
After this (about 30min) Alch absolutely crushed me like 4 times (he bought battlefury) and I just fell behind. PA was not a problem (she didn't recover from bad lane), troll is easy to kill as lancer but that alch was just clearing illusions faster than I was making them so they eventually won.

I feel like we threw the game really hard and should have won... but I can't find what was my mistake in that game. Any ideas?

Your farm is low, with only manta i believe you had like 1500-1800 hps, and thats not enough against alche. If you had more items, got more hps you would wreck him. Improve ur farmin patterns, skip some fights - i guess alche skipped some fights too in order to farm. Also lvl stats instead of phantom rush, its better- just put value point at lvl 4 there, and learn to play around with doppel - 9 deaths is way too much for pl even with cheap items.

OK, thanks.
I will work on it (carry role is bit weird for me, I will have to learn how to decide when to fight/farm).

The thing about stats is same as with AM putting only value point in spell shield, isn't it? If so, I got the idea.

Did this build here http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2377224859 , i could go 1vUrsa, Slark, Jug without problem but whe lost because i was the only carry(that viper was afraid of everyone), plus the cm feed couriers the whole game ,and we could not push.

aquilla->brownboots->vanguard->diffusal->travels->manta->abyssal->helm->abyssal->satanic->moon shard

I mean, you lost to maelstrom slark, radiance ursa and bloodstone ss. Dunno what to tell you