- Tittle: Smoky
- Author: Lulzicon
Strengths
- Epic at taking on heroes 1v1
- Self purge
- Free fountain
- Mana isn't really that much of a problem
- Cool movespeed
- Decent escape properties
- Slight above average movespeed
- Your sight range is epic, even at night
- Has a suicide ability
Weaknesses
- Pathetic (worst) stat gain which means low health
- His invis is the easiest one to counter in the whole game (maybe besides Meld)
- Killing potential drops by alot without invis
- Needs a second slow or a teammate to help kill in most cases (starts with low damage cause of crap stat gain so how do you expect to leech enough damage to kill in that 3.5 seconds of disable)
Skills
Dark Pact
Slark calls upon deities of the swamps to seal a dark pact. Sacrificing some of his lifeblood, Slark is redeemed of all negative effects. After 1.5 seconds, a dark wave of destruction emits from the Nightcrawler, dealing damage to all nearby enemies.
- 1. Mana 55 / Cooldown 9 / Duration 2 seconds (delay) / 0.5 seconds (pulses) / 75 total damage, removes buffs
- 2. Mana 50 / Cooldown 8 / Duration 2 seconds (delay) / 0.5 seconds (pulses) / 150 total damage, removes buffs
- 3. Mana 45 / Cooldown 7 / Duration 2 seconds (delay) / 0.5 seconds (pulses) / 225 total damage, removes buffs
- 4. Mana 40 / Cooldown 6 / Duration 2 seconds (delay) / 0.5 seconds (pulses) / 300 total damage, removes buffs
- 1.5 seconds after cast, a series of 10 pulses separated by 0.1 seconds deals 75/150/225/300 total magic damage to enemies within 350 AoE, and half that damage to Murloc Nightcrawler.
- Each pulse also removes buffs from Murloc Nightcrawler.
- Murloc Nightcrawler cannot kill himself with this skill.
- If Murloc Nightcrawler dies, the pulses stop.
Your basic nuke. Mostly this skill won't be used much until you get your ultimate to counter its life draining effects, but once you get your ulti start spamming this to farm, kill, anything. Purge off irritating skills like Track and Amplify Damage cause they screw your ulti up. Do NOT purge off useful buffs like haste, DD, Bloodlust, Empower, good buffs.
Apparently you can suicide with it as well, you just need to turn ethereal.
Pounce
Surges directly forward and latches on to the first hero he hits, binding it with chains of darkness. The enemy is unable to move more than 325 distance away from the point of impact for 3.5 seconds.
- 1. Mana 75 / Cooldown 20 / Duration 3.5 seconds / 70 damage, enemy leashed
- 2. Mana 75 / Cooldown 16 / Duration 3.5 seconds / 140 damage, enemy leashed
- 3. Mana 75 / Cooldown 12 / Duration 3.5 seconds / 210 damage, enemy leashed
- 4. Mana 75 / Cooldown 8 / Duration 3.5 seconds / 280 damage, enemy leashed
- On cast, Murloc Nightcrawler leaps forward at a speed of 933.33, stopping when he latches onto an enemy unit in 95 AoE, or has traveled 700 distance.
- When an enemy hero is leashed, it takes 70/140/210/280 magic damage, and is unable to move more than 325 distance away from Murloc Nightcrawler's landing spot for 3.5 seconds (moving more than 100 distance away in less than 0.03 seconds will break the leash).
- Magic immune units cannot be leashed.
- Trees are destroyed in a 200x200 rectangle around Murloc Nightcrawler's landing area.
- Blinking or teleporting away will break the leash.
Your first choice for keeping enemies in places that they should not be at while you chip away at their stats. Think of this skill like Pudge's hook and PotM's leap. You leap a set distance to a target location. If you meet any foe along the way, you stop and the disable comes into place. Doubles up as a escape tool as well.
Essence Shift
Reciting ancient Nightcrawler incantations, Slark enchants his blade to steal the power and courage from his enemies. Every time Slark hits an enemy hero, he steals 1 point from all attributes of that enemy hero while Slark gains 3 points of Agility.
- 1. Mana 0.4 / Duration 15 seconds / Steals 1 of each attribute
- 2. Mana 0.35 / Duration 30 seconds / Steals 1 of each attribute
- 3. Mana 0.3 / Duration 60 seconds / Steals 1 of each attribute
- 4. Mana 0.25 / Duration 120 seconds / Steals 1 of each attribute
- Each time Murloc Nightcrawler attacks an enemy hero, 1 point of each of that hero's attributes are stolen, granting Murloc Nightcrawler the sum of the stolen attributes as Agility.
- Attributes cannot be dropped below 1 by Essence Shift.
- When either Murloc Nightcrawler or the affected unit dies, its stats are returned to normal.
One of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, passives in the game. This skill would be overpowered if it weren't for the fact that Slark has an abnormally low stat gain, but there you go. An epic skill to balance his retarded stat growth. With this skill you take away opponent's damage, their health, mana and in return you get more damage and attack speed to hasten their deaths.
Shadow Dance
Covers himself with a dark smoke, he becomes invisible and does not reveal himself while attacking or casting spells for 5.5 seconds. Passively increases Nightcrawler's movement speed and regeneration when he is out of sight of hostile units. Has a 0.5 delay when activated or deactivated.
- 1. Mana 120 / Cooldown 25 / Duration 5.5 seconds / Invisibility on cast, +30% movement speed and +3% HP regeneration when not visible
- 2. Mana 120 / Cooldown 25 / Duration 5.5 seconds / Invisibility on cast, +35% movement speed and +5% HP regeneration when not visible
- 3. Mana 120 / Cooldown 25 / Duration 5.5 seconds / Invisibility on cast, +40% movement speed and +7% HP regeneration when not visible
- When cast, the Murloc Nightcrawler becomes invisible for 5.5 seconds, this invisibility is not broken by casting abilities, using items, or attacking.
- While invisible from this ability's active effect, a visible cloud effect is shown at Murloc Nightcrawler's position.
- Shadow Dance passively grants +30%/+35%/+40% movement speed and +3%/+5%/+7% HP regeneration when Murloc Nightcrawler is not visible to the enemy (has a 0.5 second delay on activation and deactivation).
- If Murloc Nightcrawler is damaged by a neutral unit, the passive effect is removed for 2 seconds.
- Does not work if Murloc Nightcrawler is affected by Doom.
2 sides to this skill, the passive and the active. The passive grants fountain regen and extremely high movespeed while out of sight, while the active grants permanent invis for 5.5 seconds, though a small cloud could be seen hovering over the location you are at. This skill helps killing greatly, especially if your opponents do not have wards, dust or a gem. They can't hit you back (unless they use AOE spells) while you keep on stealing their stats. Extremely good skill for killing NCs too, as the regen will help you permanently stay in the jungle.
Skill Build
- 1. Pounce
- 2. Dark Pact
- 3. Dark Pact
- 4. Essence Shift
- 5. Dark Pact
- 6. Shadow Dance
- 7. Dark Pact
- 810. Pounce
- 11. Shadow Dance
- 1214. Essence Shift
- 15. Stats
- 16. Shadow Dance
- 1725. Stats
- Dark Pact: Max nukes first, no matter what, because they lose effectiveness over time.
- Pounce: 1 level of Pounce is taken early to avoid getting owned by dual stuns looking for first blood. Also could be used for netting a first blood with a friendly disabler. Since the disabling duration does not scale with more levels, 1 level is enough early game.
- Essence Shift: 1 level of it is enough earlier on for the stat stealing ability, as more levels merely increases its duration, and it isn't time when there are 30 second team fights that require you to keep the stats that you stole. Keeping it for 15 seconds is enough early game.
- Shadow Dance: Add it whenever you can. After all, gives more regen and movespeed, so what's not good about that?
Items
Items to Go For
Important for all late game carries in order to help farming and killing.
Need some cheap survivability? Get this.
The boots
Treads definitely. Helps your low health and gives more attack speed to steal more stats. Later on when attack speed and survivability aren't so much of an issue, get Travels.
The orbs
My personal favourite. Diffusal provides a second reliable slow after Pounce has finished. Gives a lot more damage as well, rapes target's mana (feedback and INT stats stolen), and to some extent solves mana issues. Keep in mind though if you get Diffy be prepared to play very carefully with what little vitality you have.
I suppose it is viable to increase your movespeed to 522, though the slow would not be as reliable as Diffusal. Solves health problems as well.
I would recommend getting MoM only in pubs where they don't bother buying wards and dust, because you are completely relying on your invis to protect yourself. One dust on you and with your low health and extra damage taken, good luck. Nevertheless, helps you steal stats extremely fast, and the movespeed bonus helps chasing while you are visible after your invis runs out.
Takes care of all your retarded stat problems and provides a nice slow. Expensive as hell though, so unless you are farming really well you might as well get the other orbs.
Other items
Generic for all DPS AGI carries.
Being a torchlight while you are under your cloud works too.
In case you are about to die the health bonus helps, and burst damage while you whack away at them. 4% health regen more than counters for the negative effects.
Could work as a third disable if you still haven't killed your target.
Important when facing lots of disables. You don't want to get raped in 3 seconds.
For more stat stealing and as a fourth disable, hex helps nicely. After this one disable of yours should have CD already and you can continue hitting. Only for the extremely hardcore killers.
Much more needed now than in 6.65 for a good reason. Your targets can TP out of Pounce, and you have nothing to stop TP, unless you have a Basher, or this. True Strike comes in handy as well against evasion heroes.
You can suicide while ethereal and you are at a very low health, so buying this may be a good investment to deny others from getting gold and experience.
Rejected items
At the top of the list comes Bfury once again. Slark is specifically meant to go 1v1 head on, not to AOE kill.
Not good on Slark, because you start out with dumb stats, and if you use Manta after the battle when everyone is dead, it is about useless already because, everyone is dead. Unless you intend to go pushing after team clearing, don't get Manta.
Play Style
Choosing your lane
Go with a babysitter because like all other late game carries Slark has virtually no way of controlling the lane, until he reaches level 6. Unless you are feeling really confident that you are going to be up against some other late gamer with lane control capabilities more retarded than your own, don't solo.
Pick the long lane for tower protection, and to pull in case you push too far.
Early Game (1-11)
Last hit as much as you can early game. Let your lane partner deny all the other creeps. If possible, you can also get kills if your partner has a disable. If
you are pushing too far, pull the creeps.
To kill:
- 1) Press C (Dark Pact activated).
- 2) Ask teammate to stun (may be step 1 also).
- 3) Walks towards victim.
- 4) Whack once or twice, depending on how long the stun is.
- 5) Press E (Pounce), and don't miss.
- 6) Continue whacking.
- 7) If you aren't too far from opponent's tower, and you are confident that Dark Pact will CD in time, walk alongside your victim and Dark Pact to finish him off.
- 8) Still haven't killed him? Run back and continue farming.
Mid Game (11-16)
At mid game, hopefully you got a good farm and decent items. Now it's time to start going killing. If no target is present, continue farming. Don't waste 20 minutes running around the map looking for stuff to kill only to find out late game has arrived and you are seriously underleveled.
Assuming you bought Diffusal like my clever self...
To kill (for noobs):
- 1) Press D (Shadow Dance activated).
- 2) Right click target.
- 3) Press C (Dark Pact activated)
- 4) Purge target and whack.
- 5) Purge running out? Pounce. Continue whacking.
- 6) If you still haven't killed him yet, you can try waiting for one of your disables to finish CD and continue killing.
To kill (for pros):
Same thing actually, except that you use Pounce first instead of purge. Sometimes your victim will juke your Pounce, so unless you are sure that your Pounce will land, purge first, because after purge following up with Pounce is effortless. But, if you manage to kill within the 3.5 seconds, you save a charge on purge.
Another role in the team that you may be able to do would be to antiscout for your team. With your ulti, you know perfectly well when you can be seen. Hence, things like Eyes in the Forest, Urna Swarm, Observer Wards or an opponent invis hero stalking you would all be revealed to you. Destroy these scouts.
Late Game (1625)
Hopefully you racked up lots of kills. Now your carry potential starts to shine, as long as you have enough health to stay on the field to dish out the damage. Always be the last to enter the field after all the disables are used, so you don't get raped so fast.
Edited by basicdotaguide.blogspot.com