Dota 2

[Aractus]

So Silencer ...



Here's a brief overview of how I play him. Silencer is a powerful carry and he's a mid hero - don't pick him unless you're going to play the middle lane. You also need to have acute map awareness because it's important to know when and if you should use your Global Silence to help your teammates. Curse of the silent is the most useless skill in the entire game, and yet I still see 90% of Silencer players getting it first - you do not skill curse at all, and I'll explain this a bit later. At lvl1 silencer should have 2x mantle of intelligence a Circlet and one set of tangos. The first skill to get is always glaives of wisdom.

How to use Glaives - it's a powerful harassment skill because you can "orb walk" which means manually casting it at the enemy hero to avoid the enemy creeps from retaliating. It also helps you get last hits on creeps. When fully levelled Glaives deals bonus damage equal to 75% of your intelligence. The second skill to get, and the first one you max, is Last Word. LW is a very powerful skill when going for kills - it enchants the hero and when the duration finishes or when the hero casts a spell they are silenced - and if they don't cast a spell they are also disarmed. This ability in combination with your Global Silence are the two disable skills you have, and Silencer requires his disable and damage to be effective. That's why curse is useless - it's neither a disable nor does it do effective damage - you're much better off with the stats bonus than with having curse skilled. Curse has a mild mana-drain - but why do you need a mana-drain when you've got such powerful disables (LW + Global Silence)? Curse also wastes your mana and you'll end up needing clarities, when the enemy can counter any damage done by it with a tango. In the game above, Clinkz was mid and I drew first blood I think at lvl6 when I used Last Word for the first time. The finial reason you don't need Curse is survivability - stats increase your hit points passively, and Last Word and Global Silence can help you survive - Curse never helps you survive. +8 to all your stats will do much more for you than having a skill as useless as Curse.

I aim to get 2x Null Tailsmen and then Power Treads which I generally leave on strength (and did in the game above). Sometimes I will get a 3rd Null Tailsmen (it's a very cost-effective way of boosting your intel). From there the next two items you should aim for are Monkey King Bar and Scythe of Vyse in whichever order you feel is needed. MKB is for damage, and Scythe of Vyse is for disable.

I sometimes see people getting Orchid Malevolence or Aghanim's Scepter for Silencer - both these items are wrong. Silencer thrives on two things - damage and disable. As he already has two silences (Last Word and Global Silence) he doesn't need another. Scepter has very little to offer Silencer - it only offers +10 intelligence (which equals +10 damage with +7 bonus from Glaives), gives you agility you don't need, strength you don't need and mana points you don't need. If you need survivability it's not the right item - a BKB would be a much better choice for survivability.

The next item I would get, should the game keep going, is a hyperstone, and then more damage.

At the end of the above game I had stolen 64 intelligence, my total intel was 138+65 (203 and that's still with treads on strength), my base damage was 212+153 (365 total) +152 bonus damage from Glaives on each attack. OUCH!

Silencer is a good counter for Pudge and also for Riki (when riki is silenced from Last Word he loses his invisibility just like if he was tracked by bounty hunter, and that is generally long enough to get a kill on him.)