i think midas will really help you in this build
and EQ is only for high level and organised stack
You can solo rosh with the 4-1-4 build
You can push a lot with 4-1-4 + necro
and it's not that easy to "simply walk out" of cold snap + forge spirits + invoker beating your butt
QW is just too team dependent
EW sucks, you don't see any good invoker going this build (gideon, cook, and some people might disagree, but, grimorum)
The FS build doesn't come online at level 10 btw, at level 9 it does if you skip WEX.
4-1-4-1 IMO is the most reliable build ATM, you have a really high chance of killing someone in a 1v1 situation and make ganks from a lone roamer or two to be a guaranteed kill. If you position yourself correctly, you can kill someone alone by yourself if they're squishy enough or force the opposing hero to spend a lot of regen. The latter is very important anyway, meaning if you can get your opponent low enough, next time should be a guaranteed kill or force them to back the F*** up! 2 Forge Spirits + Cold Snap is better for those small scale ganks since they have a much smaller cooldown than SS + Meteor + Ice Wall and two of these spells are typically saved for teamfights/running away/etc. People usually do this when they have Eul's up or a reliable stun to kill a single target so there are more setups needed for this combo than FS + CS + w.e in a similar situation.
The build is still fine at level 17ish but by that level, you should have Aghs. FS+CS is amazing at the early+mid game where ganks are frequent, your right-clicks are more reliable than your most of your spells ATM and your other spells aren't even that strong yet. During that level, your spell choices should be reactionary to the situation anyway so if you've used up your Tornado>Meteor>EMP>DB there's still FS+CS+IW+Alacrity. There's more setup to SS+Meteor+Whatever since you need a somewhat long stun or Eul's to make it work compared to the non-existant setup with FS+CS. FS+CS+SS in that 3rd paragraph also works. FS+CS is WAY more flexible in any situation than SS+Meteor+W.E since you absolutely need Eul's/Stun to make that work.
TL;DR: 4-1-4-1 IMO is the best option you have during the early/mid game, that's why 4-1-4-1 is popular, it's reliable in most situations and is very effective compared to something like 1-1-7-1. QW is fine but situational, if you have a lot of early-mid game damage and lack control or if there's a lot of low mana pooled heroes like Alchemist, that's fine.
1. Midas is always a solid item if you can get it early on Invoke but not every game presents the opportunity for an early Midas.
2. How many Invokers do you see that solo rosh? Is there a point in soloing Rosh? Furion can solo rosh. LD can solo rosh. But they still call allies in to help. It takes a longer period of time making it dangerous and an Invoker needs to tank Rosh quite a bit making him low and having to use pots or keep walking out of the pit putting him in ward vision.
3. You're implying a situational item (Necro) makes this build universal. Can you see the flaw in that?
4. The thing is, a single forged spirit stun locks about as much as two forge spirits do. Thats assuming you delay Invoker's attack evenly between the lone forged spirit. Splitting up three attacks evenly between Invoker and TWO forged spirits is IMO pointless because it barely improves the CC and its time consuming and difficult microing there.
5. The other benefits of 4-1-4 is a longer cold snap duration and a longer attack range for the forged spirits. Lets turn the chessboard around ok? 4.5 seconds might sound a lot compared to 3 but each level of Quas added only adds 0.5 second to Cold Snap. That is horrible scaling when thinking about Cold Snaps effects. Imagine that 3 extra points into Wex. Level 4 EMP becomes viable in team fights, you have a longer tornado, better meteor range and you can move faster. If used appropriately, a 3 second cold snap can achieve just as much as a 4.5 second and it isn't worth adding Quas for those few scenarios where you needed that single extra cold snap proc.
Longer FS range? In the first place, ColdSnap+FS isn't good for chasing unless the opponent is close because of the travelling animation of ranged attacks. If they were far, you'd get like 1 or 2 Cold Snap procs before Cold Snap runs out. So in the first place, situations where you kill with ColdSnap+FS would be when they're near your hero or they decide to exchange with you.
6. What I dislike about 4-1-4 is that it puts wex considerably behind. You feel the effects of that bonus movespeed most during mid game and if you opt to scale wex immediately to buff spells which it affects, you'd get a 4-4-4 build which is horribly ineffective due to all the spells being weak.
7. Maybe its like what Yfay said, that you need a better team. When my team falls behind, FS+ColdSnap doesn't do shit to help you catch up. Its not gamebreaking as a well positioned tornado+meteor+blast combo which wins large fights. Maybe thats why I find 4-1-4 to not be that strong.
"It takes a longer period of time making it dangerous and an Invoker needs to tank Rosh quite a bit making him low and having to use pots or keep walking out of the pit putting him in ward vision."
Well..you can micro a bit and smoke of deceit is an item.
Do you feel slow without wex? Some people like to build drums and force staff to compensate for that
As grimorum once said, Forge spirit builds focus on farming, if you're behind, what do you do?
If you're thaat behind, what would QW or EW do?
And, sorry for doing this, but I was looking through your invoker games, and you went 4-1-4, how did that work for you?
if your positioning is good , spirits + cs will almost guarentee a kill. You probably cs the enemy when he is at the edge of your attack range, thats why u didnt get the kill and the enemy just walked away.
Will discuss EQ vs max exort. WQ is pretty situational and falls off fast.
Ok, the only difference between the EQ and pure exort build is when you take your quas and exort levels (by level 16 you should always have 4 points in quas 2 wex and max exort for a reliable tornado meteor blast combo).
So the choice is between getting double forge spirits and a strong icewall (and cold snap) early vs maxing exort early
I prefer the 4-1-4 because
1) max exort is pretty shit for teamfights. With a heavy reliance on the eul ss meteor blast combo, you can only do solo pickoffs, are pretty squishy, and no escape mechanism early because you have to rush eul
2) double forge spirits hurt so hard early. They last very long too, and your damage is much more reliable and consistent over the duration of a teamfight. Even after I die, I can often get kills by microing the forge spirits. They really do a lot of damage early-mid game
3) it allows you to kill solo still very reliably unless you're against someone with a low cast time escape mechanism. If your targets are just running away from your fs+snap, you're doing it wrong. Get a force staff, force yourself up to the guy, summon your spirits, snap and CAST ICEWALL at a good angle. with an 80% slow at level 4 quas, icewall is terribly underused. This will get you many kills
4) spirits let you farm very well. You can nc easily or just send them to a lane
5) finally, getting quas levels in lane really helps your laning, lol. It's convenient
There's also the spirits/snap + deafening blast combo if you're trying to kill someone with a rather long cast time escape mech btw eg storm. Force up to him, fs/snap, after a few snaps cast blast to make sure he gets stunned long enough. 1.4 sec stun with those early quas levels :)
@Satellizer have you tried roshaning with Invoker?? Your forge spirits will die before the cool down is over and you can't tank through the CD when its down meaning you walk out of the pit. What does that have to do with Smoke?
I've gone through a considerable 4-1-4 games with Invoker. The result? Its easy to rack up a decent KDA but as you see from the winrate, it doesn't do much to help you win.
@Lel didnt I mention that? Read #5.
@banana your arguments so far are the best. But its somewhat contradictory that the 4-1-4 build focuses on sustain and farming whereas its really a pickoff build. Thats what irks me the most.
3 builds for invoker, each with a different purpose
QE build: get 4 E and 4 Q asap for 2 forge spirits. You will be farming and split pushing until you are ready for full on teamfights so midas is core, even at 10 minutes. Get 1 point of W after you got the double spirits, then max E and the rest is up to you. This really requires your team to not be shit because you wont be a big factor until later unless you get a lot of early sunstrikes.
QW build: only put points into Q and W until you have level 3 invoke, which is when you get 1 E for deafening blast. This build deals almost no damage but is AMAZING for early teamfight domination. You dont even need maxed W to fight, even 300 mana burn is a bitch for strength heroes. You should gank a lot with this build because cold snap will be op.
E build: generally a troll/pubstomp build, but often used by pros (not in competitive games). Get as much exort as possible, midas is a good option, euls is CORE. Get 1 Q and 1 W when E is unavailable for leveling up. This build is entirely meant for single target exploding. Euls target, sunstrike, deafening blast (add meatball before DB for added damage). This build is obviously not great for control but the damage is fucking brutal from this build.
Obviously looking at these 3 builds you would see why somebody would pick each one. Fighting early? Go QW. Slow game? Go QE. Want to have fun in a low tier pub? E build! QE generally does exactly what you expect it too, and if invoker has a good start, this build will let him snowball. Imo the best build for winning at dota is QW, but QE can certainly be much stronger against certain lineups, like against squishy enemies, while QW is better against tanky ones.
depends if u wanna farm or kill, i used to choose option 2 and went full exort with eul and os everyone, now im using forges and just outfarm/xp and then rape anyway.
the advantage of playin forges is that it requires less positionning early.
Hmm I don't think it's contradictory? In the sense that farming and picking people off are not mutually exclusive.
With 4-1-4 you can farm a lot faster than the other builds but also retain quite a lot of solo kill and teamfight potential
Example: an enemy furion in a lane? You can just kill him with spirits snap and blast/icewall easily. Then go back to farming and pushing the lane after that.
Another great thing about going 4-1-4 rather than max exort is that the mana costs and cool downs of the spells involved are so much lower. Sunstrike, meteor and blast have long cds of 35, 55 and 45 respectively (iirc) while spirits cd 30s (and last forever) and snap cds 20. This lets you participate in more ganks and lets you continue to be effective in a long engagement
4-1-4 is really strong at pushing too, I usually end up with at least 3-4k tower damage per game.
So basically imo if you go max exort over 4-1-4 you are sacrificing a lot of small advantages for the greater ability to solo kill
A situational build at best, I guess. Some situations to never go max exort over 4-1-4:
-enemy naix (icewall is like the perfect counter to naix btw)
-enemy clock (you NEED a fast force staff and rushing eul will not give you that)
-enemy bristle/many tanky heroes
-enemy pugna (your eul combo costs 575 mana, spirits are great at destroying wards, your fs snap combo so good against him)
-enemy ta (snap icewall so much more useful, consider even taking 4 quas by 7)
When max exort could be preferred:
-enemy am/qop (blink has short enough cast time that you can't perma snap him, yet long enough for him not to be able to dodge eul boom combo)
-enemy squishy support that needs to be taken down very quickly (eg veno)
-enemy fv
-enemy weaver
-you wanna have lots of fun
Eul ss meteor blast at max exort does 1.1k dmg after basic reductions, fyi
it means, u stay on ur lane, and play passive, if ppl aggro u, you fight, if they leave u alone, u leave em alone.
with eul full exort combo u gank and aggro ppl. so idk where u see contradictory~~
4-1-4 is invoker's most reliable build in 6.79. EW is absolute crap. Cold snap is too good to give up.
If you're not going deadalus under 30 mintues might as well do wex build. If you're still sitting at force staff & euls @ 30... just don't play invoker. He as little team potential besides dancing around in the wood by then. Considering most noobs don't gank or push their mid towers anways. There's better heroes like void, LD, NP, DP etc...
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Assuming you add 1 level of wex for survivability, Forge spirits build comes online at level 10. It gives you great stun lock with cold snap and single target damage output but then what?
In 1v1 situations, coldsnap+forge seldom kills because they can simply walk out of it and any half decent opponent will attempt to dodge the sunstrike when they see you invoke it. Even if you invoke in the fog, unless they're idiots, they won't walk the direct path. Unless you're overleveled or they're a poor support, you ain't killing nothing.
In 2v1/3v1 situations, you don't even need the bloody forge spirits anymore do you? Assuming you gank with a stunner/slower, it would make more sense to use a sunstrike/meteor/icepath for more damage than the forge spirits would do...
The build goes offline around 17~ish? You then swap out for tornado/meteor/dblast combo. Or have other spells pre invoked instead of forge spirits where their dmg output becomes negligible in team fights. So this PICKOFF build only works for a short while during midgame where people begin to ward more and stick more...
Not to mention, Invoker should always be farming to keep that level edge, he doesn't gank unless he's wex-based which he is not in this build...
A level 1 quas Forge Spirit is still enough to control runes, scout, pull enemy creeps and provide similar stunlock if enemies close in.
Why all the hype and cheers for 4-1-4? I've come to prefer the EW build and the situational QW build.