I build Orchid on him if I'm against heavy spell casters. Drums and other stat items if against a bunch of carries.
i usually go for shadowblade as it synergizes well with his ult, and if you do not have any other inv heroes in your team, your opponents will be 2 lazy to buy detection just for you, most of the time (unless you playing at very high bracket)
the second item depends on the other team, usually i go for linkens if the other team has lots of disable or single target spells. but yea, i think orchid is viable as it gives you a disable, really good mana regen that will solve every issue you might have, and also some attack speed
but i see ppl just going for basher -> abysall. but anyway, if you are constantly out of mana, get a magic wand
Shadowblade is a really great first item for him after boots. The burst damage is very strong and forbids their entire team from farming efficiently (They basically have to 5 man or be in fog of war to feign a trap if they are solo farming).
1.) SB
2.) attack
3.) Leap
4.) use magic away nuke
5.) any hero that isn't tanky is dead
This is also a great precursor to getting silence if you need it against a blink hero. Just think about it: How are you going to get up to them to silence them? They'll just blink away as they see you charging forward. But I have gained disfavor with silence. I find that going straight into a tanky build helps more in team fights usually. Drums/Skadi/basher/BKB/S&Y/etc..
His items are situational, and many people prefer different builds.
Common items to help with mana include: Ring of Aquila, Bottle, Perserverence (Into Linken's)
For stats, damage, or whatever else: Shadow Blade, Drums, Eye of Skadi, MoM, HotD (into Satanic), Abyssal, AC, Mjolnir, Heart, Bfly, Vlads, S&Y, Orchid, Medalion
My preffered item build in a generic game with no situational items being needed: Treads > Aquila > Drums > Eye of Skadi > Basher > Butterfly > Abyssal Blade > AC > Rapier/Mjolnir (depends if I want to throw or not). The Aquila works wonders for my mana regen, but I still have to watch my spell spams until the Skadi is done because Slark has shitty intelligence.
Other common item builds focus on bash locking and stealing stats with attack speed.
Treads > MoM > Basher > AC > Bfly > Abyssal > Mjolnir
i like players that go shadowblade/linkens.
Makes slark annoying as hell to kill.
Really situational though
shadowblade if you can get it up fast, if you're having a hard time drums bkb and then utility items is okay too. just pick up snowbally items while making sure you still have good survivability/mobility.
http://dotabuff.com/players/134203835/matches?hero=slark&game_mode=&match_type=real Copy my builds and you ll do fine.
do the ROTK build :P.... just build hp or strenght items on slark for you to stay longer in fights and when you stay longer in fights then you can still mo stats haha
offlaner's build to slark:
power threads( for hp)
orb of venom to be converted to eye of skadi later for stats( for slow)
BKB(for hp andmagic immune)
butterfly
heavens hallberd( if u got a problem with the enemies carry)
basher to abyssal
my troll build on him is armlet of mordigan cause hes hp regen is higher than the deregeneration rate of mordigan.. so you can just perma turn it on at 6 i think( not sure if 6 or 11)
He just seems like such a poor farmer early I like the idea of going either orchid so he can spam Q on creep waves, go out of sight to regen. Once you get one oblivion staff completed he can do this pretty easily, even pop into a few jungle camps on his way to a gank. I know he's not supposed to farm, he's a ganker, but it's hard to gank with no items in pubs when your team isn't usually in sync with your gank attempts.
I also don't mind going other stats items like bkb, but shadow blade seems pricey and will just hurt his mana more. I guess I'll have to try it but I never liked how shadow blade builds with a 1200 cost item and a 1400 cost item, although I suppose quarter staff isn't much cheaper than that.
orchid is always an option but only worth it if the main targets slarks facing has them. so like vs an antimage or something it would be fine.
Please sign in to post comments.
What do you build on him? He has mana issues early, stats issues early in general. His dmg is poor until he starts chaning that stat steal and upping his agi. Do you go boots basher skadi or what? I haven't played him well in a while. Old guides say orchid is pretty good as a first item but I'm skeptical.