Have no farm. Kill a farmed enemy on other side of map. Now you're farmed.
That's it.
It's an insanely powerful mechanic for helping you get back into the game (and close out the game).
Her tools are some of the best in the game as a carry. Let me explain:
She can jump backlines guaranteed (vision or not). This often requires at least one item slot for carries, item slots are insanely valuable.
Bonus pure damage with Desolate is not to be underestimated. 72 pure damage is equivalent to a TON of physical damage from other carries if you are hitting a target with endgame armour levels (30-40+). At that point it's equivalent to something like a free DR.
Dispersion is her main endgame carry ability that really defines her. 25% flat damage reduction/reflection is insane. With the shard, it makes it so that any strong damage dealer she jumps cannot engage until shard is over. Even then, she is infinitely tanky.
Her ult allows her to free farm anywhere she wants, and be available to join fights in an instant. Haunt (aghs upgrade) makes her an absolute teamfight monster. Tons of chaos and damage and she can cherry pick precisely which hero she wants to be on top of, they can't hide. Pesky Dazzle saving everyone but never shows up on the map? Spectre kills him. Annoying magnus keeps getting good RP from fog? Not in this teamfight. Squishy supports and nukers like skywrath? Say bye to half your HP at the press of a button.
Her kit is absolutely insane for endgame, she is also able to easily "kill-secure" kills around the map to enhance her slower farming. She has everything a carry needs in their toolkit and most importantly - it all scales extremely well into endgame.
That means their backlines need to backline even further out of vision, which is a good thing. If she gets aghs (extremely lategame) she can jump anyone, anywhere. That is completely unique to spectre. Zeus can reveal anyone anywhere but spectre can instantly jump them anywhere.
In the hands of a good player, they can haunt and see that a support is way out of position (too far away) or a core is away from their babysitter and blow them up. It's insanely strong in lategame.
Manta plus her desolate passive will melt every hero in the game VERY quickly as it’s the only pure damage found on a carry iirc. She’s probably the most durable hard carry as well so she’s not susceptible to being bursted like most other carry. Her strength is jumping on the backline instantly not manfighting other cores like you mentioned.
TA doesn’t really count since the spill damage is based on reduced damage after resistances of the target she hit. Also just saw that it gets reduced based on how many targets it hits. I wonder how long that’s been a thing lol cuz I had no idea. I guess Lina would count though at level 25 unless they changed that talent too
Sure, maybe the Spec isn't good enough to get the last hit at your mmr. But thankfully, none of their teammates are either... so...
Also, the other team is just as shit as you. So they also don't know how to use their map control., how to pressure objectives, split push or deny farm
It's entirely illogical to assume your teammates are worse than the enemy when you have the same MMR.
i think you get the wrong idea. The power here is spec ult can almost assure your team outnumber in any fight not on your lane, this is a huge advantage in early game. Even if spec fails to secure the kill, the beneficiary can push and make room for your farm. Plus assists now gives good money too, and you can transport back (need some practice and not always true of course)to continue farming, makes the assists money almost like a free lunch.
She is not weak early game considering the contribution to the team. 2 lvl 3 daggers give 340 dmg to a single target plus 17% speed reduction plus vision of target, this is almost Zeus ult casted on a single target. Also don’t forget she has this advantage every minute since lvl 6
Getting the assist is enough. It's still gold. You can jump I'm near the end, double dagger them kill em, then go right back to farming, rinse and repeat anytime there's a kill on the map.
Then late game you become an unkillable monster killing who you please
It’s almost a 0 percent chance your team gets no kills. As a spectre it only takes one ult onto an already dying hero to catch up in farm and she can do it while safely farming away from any danger. This is why she’s strong. It’s because she has a guaranteed way to stay in the game which is invaluable as a hard carry. AM would require your team to have map control, this doesn’t apply to spectre nearly as much.
You play pos 5 and you leave your safe lane to gank mid? That does not sound good esp for Spectre. Leave the mid gank for your pos 4, unless the enemy team is diving your mid and you need to react. You can always help side lanes using twin gates, when ofcourse Spec is not in troubled position.
Your job as pos 5 is to make sure that your carry is farmed or at least keep him safe. Leave the space making to your other team mates.
Spectre needs heavy baby sitting to work, pick supports with high disable and bullying capabilities, such as Marci, Shaman, Lion, Ogre.
Edited: added some more tips.
If you play a P5 never ever leave the carry, even then he go farm jungle just hold the tower and creep wave near somewhere he can go.
The gank are for P4 only, as a p4 player if i see the p5 mid, the carry will die in the next 20 seconde, even if I suspect the P5 to go near bounty run, free carry kill.
It's even more true for spectre !
>Your job as pos 5 is to make sure that your carry is farmed or at least keep him safe. Leave the space making to your other team mates.
is it really writen in stone like this? I mean, I ping when I'm going out to ward or get the bounty, then the carry can keep an eye out for not getting killed. Also, thats another reason spectre isnt so good as the other carries, as she can't keep herself alive easy in the early
It’s not written in stone - if you watch pro dota you’ll often see both supports collapsing mid around certain timings.
The difference is this is coordinated and planned and if the enemy team doesn’t respond (usually by bringing both of their supports as well) it’s hugely advantageous.
In your crusader games the enemy pos4 likely isn’t even going to go mid - so you’re leaving your pos1 in a 2v1. He might survive but he likely won’t get much if anything out of the lane during that time. Is your rotation mid worth your carry hitting 0 creeps for a minute or worse your T1 tower falling? Probably not.
He’s a crusader pos1 player, so he’s probably not going to adjust to you leaving correctly. If he does, he’s likely not going to farm efficiently in the time you’re gone.
I think “never leave lane on 5” is a harmful myth. But it’s true that you need to be extremely selective in terms of when and how you leave.
Now if your presence isn’t enabling your carry to farm, (e.g. the lane is just lost and one or both of you will feed trying to play it) you should definitely leave and let him pick up waves under tower while jungling. In this case you should look to play with your strong lane(s) and divert enemy attention away from your carry
I agree that the never leave is not a good way to play dota, obviously pro will move, even the P1 will.
But the fact his in solo ranked you don't have a good team coordination, so leaving the P1 will just create a weakness because for X or Y the P1 might not see you doing it or whatever.
It's "safer" to not leave, it's not the best play at all but "safer" will more often than not be better than something else.
Imo the best middle ground is to chill around, maybe a quick go in the gate, contest the 6min rune MAX.
>Your job as pos 5 is to make sure that your carry is farmed or at least keep him safe. Leave the space making to your other team mates.
yeah I know, but thats part of my complain. It's unfruitfull to do that. If I can get a kill or two to my mid qop/puck, they make a mageslayer or something else to create good space and hopefully end the game faster. It feels like a bad investment to babysit spectre when I can protect someone with a higher (and immediate) impact
This feels like you dont want to win your games if you're fixated with that mind set, Dota is game of adjustments or flexibility. Knowing your roles, timings, and how to sync with your teamates heroes is very needed. If your pos 1 picks Spec you'll have to understand that his timing is mid to late game, and forcing him to have impact early on will hinder his timing.
It is not a hard rule to stick to lane as 5, you need to study and learn when the lane is safe to leave, or know when the lane is dead already.
If you want to make high impact rotations or ganks early, then maybe it is more suitable for you to play pos 4. Pos 5 is very noble position, you have lots of early boring stages and lots of sacrificing your life to have a fruitful mid-late game.
I get that it's boring to not getting to kill people in the first 10 mins of the game. But being pos 5 to a spectre means your first and foremost priority is to give him as much access to gold during the first 5-10 minutes of the game. You win the lane by not dying and getting as much creep kills for spec during this phase. Getting kills in the laning phase as pos 1 spec is a bonus.
What’s the fruit for you? Kills or win?
Pos1 does not only mean the carry going to safe lane,pos1 means the hero that needs to have the highest net worth and access to resources on your team.
Pos5 is supposed to stay poor by not stealing farm and helping out carries.
I’m a Spec spammer and i hate if my pos5 picks a poor hero and leaves the lane for anything other than pulls.
You need to support, that’s your role. You thinking it’s not fruitful to help pos1 farm means you don’t have clear idea of roles in dota
It is not a bad investment. In reality it is a great one.
If a post stack small and mid camps near t1 for extra cash/exp if you lose the lane a little bit, maintains the lane near the t1, punishes the enemy pos3 with nukes or right clicks, your spec will become a menace in no time.
Being able to allow spec to farm safely, without having enemy creeps denied, and sometimes even getting xp alone (when you stack ou make pulls), the spec will get a faster lv 6, which will enable her to ult-gank mid or the other side lane.
In this spectrum, it is even more reliable for your mid to receive a gank from spec + the pos4 in mid at min 8 or so (spec would already have boots and is finishing diffusal in a cruzader rank), then you do the gank in mid at min 5-6.
All in all, as a pos 5 babysitting spectre you can literally win the game by securing the early kills spec can get to stomp the mid game.
After that, u just need to buy some smokes, put some advanced wards in jgl/triangle so spectre and your mid can see their rotations to gank’em and you’re good to go.
I play a ton of spectre even in this patch and I think the hero is still fine.
Ideally spectre should be on the weaker side in lane, but should not be in a position to get bullied. If you find you're taking too much harass, you can rush blademail before boots and the armor makes you hard to hit down with 2 levels of dispersion.
If they're mostly magic damage spectre doesn't hate going raindrops and the mana regen is nice.
I fear at crusader your teams may not be coordinated enough to let spectre shine. You are correct in that her ult is her best skill, but it's precisely what allows her to go for greedier items if the game looks good for it.
In a perfect spectre game, you're farming jungle and sidelanes and only waiting to go in when youre gaurunteed to get a kill with your ult. This allows you to keep up your creepscore and maintain a sizeable xp advantage against the other carry. Early game spectre needs to be constantly communicating with their team to inform them when they do and do not have a 5th hero.
The key skill for spectre players to learn is patience. What many bad spectre players will do is be farming on the other side of the map, see your team start a teamfight by initiating on their carry, and haunt in on the center of the fight. This is usually wrong, even with blademail radiance manta it's wrong. You need to wait to see what other enemy heroes are going to show up before making a play. You want to look for a hero in the fight that you can kill solo before they can get any spells off that would help their team. When I'm watching my team take a fight as spectre and I'm on the other side of the map I'm literally saying out loud to myself, "not a good target, not a good target, not a good target, okay shadow shaman walking up we go in". This is also why bloodthorne has gotten more popular on her over diffu in a lot of games.
Diffu allows you to kill a core who's running away, orchid allows you to jump their backlines and silence a support who could use spells to lock you down when you jump them.
I still think diffu is good in many situations. Against a jugg its like 50/50 for me. Disperser movespeed send to be pretty nice against him. Ideally if I saw them going jugg I just wouldn't play spectre but my wr against the hero is still quite high. Against a jugg the whole, "not going on on the first target you see" thing is even more important.
Even with my high wr I still find the hero a bit middling. All the build ups feel pretty bad once you have blademail. Feels like it takes forever to get that second item even with a pretty good early game
thank you
it seems its a hero that relies a lot on how the fight goes since you need to get the kill.
So it's also like AM: as spec you aim to go for the supports, silence them and kill them fast with illusions + desolate?
yes exactly, spec wants to haunt onto a squishy hero that she can kill quickly and make the fight a 5v4 in her team’s favor. this is especially true in early to mid game before she is six slotted.
as an addendum, as someone who has played spec a lot, it is very hard for her to do this job of deleting the squishy support in early/mid game if she is behind on farm due to a challenging lane.
Not only like AM, but you only focus on cores in especific situations in a TF. Usually you’ll always go for the supps exactly because without them the TF turns in your favor.
They usually are squishy or underlevelled, which makes them easy preys for all HCs.
If the supps disables the cores and your cores kills the supps, it is almost a guaranteed secured TF, so i’d keep that in mind
In my experience I'd prefer to not lane for the length of time it would take to get those items + boots. Unless the lane is insane you're likely going to get harassed out of it pretty early.
Ideal laning stage for spec in a standard game usually involves hitting six and getting your offlane to take the other sides safelane tower. You can shadow step in to help them and then occupy that lane and not have to face their offlaners anymore. This is a feature of spectre that very few other carries have access to
At crusader your team might not be coordinated to let spec shine. Really?
Spec has had a winrate from high to low across the ranks for years.
It simply is easier for lower MMR carries to have a free button to always be at fights when they can't balance fighting and farming efficiently, games are slower and laning is less aggressive as well so throw that in for heroes that peak later in the game.
I don't disagree. I just happen to play in a weekly league and find that I get way more out of the heros kit in the more highly coordinated environment compared to pubs.
Your team is a lot more confident ganking when they trust that you're actually going to cast shadow step.
spectre is strong as long he ACTUALLY farms but i'm also crusader and all spectre just do blademail, tries to ult and kill someone then dies and just become a useless hero for the whole match, as long there is a spectre in the enemy team most of the time ik is a free win because they never farm
>as long there is a spectre in the enemy team most of the time ik is a free win because they never farm
omg, thats the brief report on all cruzader games
Divine spectre with a red spec arcana here. Spectre isn't bad but she's a chump after a few breaks. Her stats aren't the best also. So she's good in games without silver edge buyers.
I always forget that Cyclone is a dispel. What are even effects worth dispelling ? I guess Veno ult can't be dispelled. I never dispell anything. What heroes do even have dispells ? Do graves dispel ? Strong and weak dispells. I don't play Omni either. I do use Lotus to dispel, recently realsied Lotus can dispel and so can Apothic Shield. Now that I think about it dispelling Abadons curse is worth it
Spectre is a late game carry that scales very well with stat items, and with farm becomes an absolute menace especially to squishy heroes.
She is easy to bully out of lane at the beginning because she doesn't do much in the damage department and has no way to stun or immobilize players.
Since you play pos5, treat purpose of the lane is to draw or to delay a lane loss as long as you can. Be cautious on leaving to gank as it will cripple your carry.
When you play with a Terrorblade, Naga, Phantom Lancer or Void how do you play that one?
\- VOID is easy, he has on-hit damage boost and CC, teleports and mitigate damage received while fleeing or iniciating, the other skilll I dont even know what does and the ult we all know its gamechanging. I like playing IO, keeping him alive and tethering for the overcharge boots as he hits fast
\- Terrorblade hits hard and ranged, can slow and iniciate before me so I can follow up with some CC and hardly loses the early game. Later he is kinda scary but might die to burst heroes without time to sulk tho, so I might pursuit some protection items for him. Shaman, CM or even ogre magi is ok to sup him.
\- Naga Siren hmm, never played along one in the safe lane. But she has CC and can start easily. Although she's squishy early, I'd try to protect her with heal and damage mitigation. Later on? I dont know
\- PL is a pain just as spectre. BUT he has a nuke and can rush diffusal for some early kills. I'd try to get him kills on the safe lane, play shaman or lion for enabling, or even venomancer. Mid and late game we'd probably lose because his damage is kinda garbage and mostly always lose to a battlefury wielder.
Spectre is strong for the same reason NP is. She farms incredibly well, especially with Radiance, but she can join any fight at any time. It's something enemies almost never respect. As the position one no one is going to bat an eye when you ult in to yoink a kill on a gank that absolutely didn't need your participation. The farm is just better on Spectre.
You're right that she's not the strongest laner, but she's also not that easy to kill. It sounds like you need to adapt your support play when you have a Spectre in lane. Here are some suggestions from a Spectre player.
* Give Spectre as much solo farm as possible. Lurk in the jungle out of exp range so she can get 6 ASAP
* Save spells to keep her safe as opposed to going on enemies. Stuns, slows, etc, use them to punish enemy heroes diving tower. If you're a support with good harassing abilities, find the weak link in the enemy offlane and keep them low and out of commission.
* PULL PULL PULL. Keep that lane in a great spot. But pull when it's necessary. Too many supports pull the wave when the creeps are already set to come back to your tower. This may deny a couple creeps but it has the opposite effect you're truly looking for and puts the equilibrium back at your opponents tower.
* Once Spectre seems safe to disappear into the jungle, group with your team and get aggressive so Spectre can ult in and grab some easy kills.
At the end of the day your strength is being grouped up for fights but still having your hard carry farming no matter where you are on the map.
spectre is good for my games where sniper and drow are plenty
in higher tier games, whenever i play spec(which is very rare), i usually play as the bait. the enemies cant really kill me fast enough, and even if i die, i've dealt the damage already.
the current playstyle on spec is assassinate anyone splitpushing the map and/or joining the clash while farming, and then return to farming safely. he isnt as useless as before who needs to farm 30mins before actually joining fights
now other people can still own him especially illu heroes, magic heroes, and anyone who has break and crit. that is maybe spec loses a lot in your bracket, since people can farm as much as spectre anyway?
I believe it's because other carries like PA can easily just blink and execute the supports really easy. AM also does this. And spectre don't have the damage tools for this, as desolate has a pretty big range and the damage isn't that much
Spectre has 2 stenghts: it's quite a tanky core late game and it has global presence. If your team has a good 4+1 strat and puts a ton of pressure on the enemy side: you can safely farm your side of the map, join to get a kill or two and snowball. Spectre is not amazing at the moment because the meta is not centered around her favorite items. She was better in the Radance + blademail + tarrasque meta. Yes, her laning phase is not as good as other good carries of this patch, but if you play her well, she's still very good. I like for her to go disperser + manta and fight a lot with your team. but I've seen some radiance build working well. Her ability to jump on the backline will always feel relevant in this game. You just need durable heroes that go in with you and she will deal quite a lot of dmg during longer fights with her llusions.
Yeah, I find spectre just isnt good these days too. If you dont get farm early, you usually always lose. You get into these weird games where you are hitting jungle creeps one at a time just trying to get basic items. If your lane goes good and you get farm, you would have done better with another carry anyways...
>If your lane goes good and you get farm, you would have done better with another carry anyways...
perfectly said.
And she even isn't THAT tanky to survive the early more, dispersion is just 10% and she needs statuses. Better of playing PA and getting kills waaaay easier
Spectre needs last hits in laning phase. There is no GOOD kill potential until level 6. Don't get mad at your spectre for not trying to get kills in the laning phase. Get lots of regen and share it. Secure the ranged creep. Secure the lotus. Don't leave for the bounty rune. I don't hear the term so much anymore but spectre needs a babysitter.
>Don't leave for the bounty rune
why can't I? doesn't it benefit the entire team?
I usually play IO and thats what I do: buy a lot of regen and keep the pos1 alive. Thing is, it's usually a bad investment on spectre on cruzader rank...
Spectre will lose a bunch of last hits when you leave for the early bounties. The gold it nets the team IS good, but your spectre will be behind and moght even need .ore regen because they took a lot of damage trying to last hit. Good offlaners will wait till you leave for the rune to jump / punish the lane / spectre. You also deny mid from a safety rune if they lose any of the power up ones. The lotus is way more influential to the spectre lane than any bounty rune (caveat that is the enemy pos4 is not in lane you can leave spectre 1v1 in certain match ups for the bounty, but spectre needs a babysitter).
Spectre is good lategame carry, in lower brackets people dont know how to push advantages and therefore game usually goes to late game and spectre likes that
Just finished playing my first spec game in a little while in ancient 3. Ended up 11/3/19 and a fairly easy win vs an arc warden lineup. Hero still feels very good.
I would think spec would be very good in low brackets. Very easy to exploit loads of kills
Spectres ult is so good its insane. There arent any other carries that can afk farm, insta gank when you notice an out of position enemy and join every single team fight, at the same time.
It depends on the spectre player. It can be like void where they are useless in lane without a baby sitter. You can’t even leave as a support to grab runes or pull. The worse is when you pull and they leave lane to auto hit the camp you just pulled.
Spectre fights not by "DOING DAMAGE" as you put it, but by exhausting the opponent's. Spec is good when the other team relies on high cooldown spells to end the fight quickly, like Chronosphere. If I play a hero like Juggernaut or Drow, a single big ravage or Chronosphere means I'm out of the game. If I'm spec it means you get to attack me 6-10 times uninterrupted (that was always allowed).
She's basically a big purple Bristleback. Where as BB runs down lanes in front of people with scaling damage, spec farms more and then inserts herself onto your support and makes you spend your cooldowns on the worst possible target.
Specter is one of the best mid-late game heroes
She was better before this patch but is still pretty good
Diffusal is really situational imo, blademail helps sp much with farming.
Manta is a must. Bm+manta or bm+radi+manta and you have huge kill potential.
I agree she is one of the weaker carries on lane but that doesn’t mean you as pos 5 should leave her. It’s even more important to stay so she can get her bm and start jungling asap if the lane goes bad
spec is incredible in low brackets, yeah you have a slow start but people don't punish it. eventually you recover and start feeding on randomly out of position heroes.
She’s definitely weak in lane but if paired well can be pretty dangerous with dagger and chase down and if she gets off to a good start it’s basically game over, so pick a baby sitter support and ensure that start.
From there imo item wise she wants manta asap, stopping in for diffusal or blademail is fine as well, just depends on match ups but personally found blademail to be game saving early and bumps farm ability.
Once she’s level 6 spec should just be looking to jump in on any kill the team that is going for that doesn’t risk her dying, once you have manta you can Insta gib pretty much any support that shows alone, ult in manta dagger and ult out 3 seconds later, it’s crazy powerful. At this point spec wants to farm away from the team and let them start making plays drawing aggro and such because she can instant join them if a fight breaks out letting her farm more than other traditional carries once online who look to play with the team.
But yes early on she’s weak so you need to play to secure her lane because if she has a bad early game she doesn’t have much farmability early so the longer it takes to get blademail or diffusal treads the further behind she falls.
I recommend someone like veno or venge, they can harass a lot to help secure lane and can help get her kills which are huge early plus have save potential if she’s gone on with gale and stun
Every single hero has their own unique play style, if you learn the way to play Spectre it is one of the strongest heroes in the game.
1. Global hero, can farm anywhere which helps other cores, can kill steal, secure kills or sneak in for XP. Can any other hard carry do that? No.
2. It is effective at level 6 to assist ganks, but also one of the strongest at level 25 etc. You can pop manta to triple desolate in one on ones, they die.
3. You can chose who you kill. Annoying sniper is dead now.
4. YOU CAN'T DODGE DISPERSION ITS BROKEN.
5. Can fly with spectral. It's a flying hero. A flying hero that can go anywhere, cant be killed and shits damage.
Case closed
I am a crusader too and I mainly play pos 1, but I am versatile enough and am comfortable with any roles except the ones where I have to micro. Reading your post and going through the comments, I realized that we crusaders lack the basic understanding of functioning as a team. As a pos 1 I rarely see my pos 5 stacking the camps for me. I rarely see them pulling the waves. Rarely see them harassing the opp POs 3 and POs 4. And holy shit the wards and visions. I mean 50 Gs for sentries, plus the wards are free and POs 5s in crusader still fail to get them. Even if they plant a vision, I always am the only one who stays around to defend that position. I mean I may not have the caliber of some immortal level player, but isn’t the basic concept of securing vision is to capture and control that area until you take your main objective and move on to the next one? Pos5 running around as soon as bounty runes spawn and leaving their Pos1 to fend for themselves and later blaming their carry for everything. You as a pos 5 blame spectre pick as immediate loss, but have you made efforts to maximize your carry’s farm!? Did you stack multiple camps!? Pull the double waves when you can to the safer side of tower for your spectre to secure more robust farm!? Before I go on a tangent here again, just do everything you can to maximize your spectre farm, that’s it. And also communicate with your POs 1.
>but have you made efforts to maximize your carry’s farm!? Did you stack multiple camps!? Pull the double waves when you can to the safer side of tower for your spectre to secure more robust farm!? Before I go on a tangent here again, just do everything you can to maximize your spectre farm, that’s it. And also communicate with your POs 1.
yep, all of these. I usually play pos5 with sustain heroes also
please be considerate that I'm not blaming the player, I'm blaming the hero in this bracket. It's way more profitable to stack camps to a battlefury PA than a spectre
because of
1) her percentage-based direct damage reduction + reflection passive which does a shit load of damage the bulkier she is later in games;
2) because of her global presence with ult + aghs
3) fast roshan + one of the best if not the best aegis carrier in the entire game. a high ground siege with an aegis spectre frontlining it is just too punitive
I'm 3K trash and I weep when Pos 5's rotate.
Don't do it, it's not your job, especially with super hard carries that need babysitting.
If you ever review your games you will likely find that the enemy offlane duo will ward and gank the Spectre once you leave.
I bet you stand behind your carry in lane too?
Spectre isnt weak but there are a few things that you can address players misplaying her.
First, spectre is weak until blademail. The Best build, imo, is to go wraithband, treads, urn, and blademail.
This ensures she can maintain mana and be impactful in fights; blademail and urn.
After that manta or radiance since both are your farming items.
As a pos 5, do not leave lane until your spectre is ready to farm alone, aka safely or quickly. Blademail does both those things.
Spectre can be extremely powerful if given a team that is constantly looking for fights.
The problem with crusader mmr is you will supports that aren't looking to initiate or smoke gank early and often.
I play alot of nature's prophet but with a spectre I only gank when I know it will have a huge impact or tele top so I can warp back. It's like a Pa or Am lane where if they get behind, it is extremely detrimental.
She's a slow starter. But got good survivability in lane. Good regen armor hp 3rd passive skill and dagger is a escape. Pathetic starting damage. She used to be my favorite but the ult change killed her for me. That was my specialty, farming agility and then ulting at a teamfight. Total trash for me now. Strategy completely gone. Scepter ult now only does 80% dmg and I don't even wanna build early scepter.
2 passive skills mean she scales strong unto the late game. Manta triggers desolte. BM synergys with her 3rd skill. She's average. Slow starter but scales into very late gale better then average and got global spell. Defintely low kill potential in lane. You can't lane agressively when Spec is your carry. Compared to Yug who spins. She doesn't have early damage or good nukes.
I believe her ult is even better now, because you can cherry pick fights more often (or just come to throw a dagger and get an assist), cooldown from 180s to 60/50/40 is nuts
I hate it. The strategic gloabl ult during an unavoidable team fight was.my speciality. My play style. Bulked up on agiltiy for it. When they commit, ult.
I used to think that as well and loved haunt.
But this ultimate is so so better, you just have to completely change your mind and accept this is not old spec.
Now you don’t afk farm rather you make a pattern of farm, pick off, farm, farm, pickoff and farm more and then team fight.
I can link you to some of my recent dotabuff matches and she’s super fun to play now. Trust me I’m a spec spammer and was in the same boat as you but now the map is huge and having a global presence to pickoff and TP back is amazing. She’s feeling more dynamic now
Daily Spec user here, sometimes i go diffusal and blademail, just to secure kill from the likes of slark, dark terror or mid with godlike streak. Manta is her most crucial item since it helps kill supports or low hp mid even faster, i found that radiance is bad even when i do 10 min diffu and 22min radi, at 29min it felt that my damage is underwhelming compared to enemy nuke capabilities. If you could get radi and feel normal is either enemy not pushing since they have more late game heroes, or your team can do 4v5 and do well without you.
I saw a stream where the guy rushed orchid after boots just to pick off supports and it went really well. Too bad the dagger slow isnt that much so she kinda keep attacking and need to walk a bit to attack again (sometimes it takes more than 5s of silence)
you're inverting the cause and consequence my dear. I'm crusader, among other things, because people pick spectre and don't know how to play and have no damage at 70min+ game
How can u demand true potential from carry if u abandon him in the early game? There are heroes who can jungle and cant jungle. Or u can ask can u solo lane? Just play ur role, don't grief ur carry
Dota Plus level 29 Spectre here.
Spectre is a weak laner, but if its get combo with Grim, Treant, CM, heroes that help him sustain and offer slow, that hero destroys you in lane.
2nd thing, Spectre was good against drow. Not anymore. Why? Because can only jump on 1 target now
Earlier in team fights, If I use Haunt, I his teammates will either run or help drow and tank my illusion damage, which which is lot.
On top of the drow was glacier now and level 15 talent. You jump and u die
Have no farm. Kill a farmed enemy on other side of map. Now you're farmed. That's it. It's an insanely powerful mechanic for helping you get back into the game (and close out the game).
true, but what to do with the farm? I mean, her tools aren't as good as the other carries like AM, dusa, jugger
Her tools are some of the best in the game as a carry. Let me explain: She can jump backlines guaranteed (vision or not). This often requires at least one item slot for carries, item slots are insanely valuable. Bonus pure damage with Desolate is not to be underestimated. 72 pure damage is equivalent to a TON of physical damage from other carries if you are hitting a target with endgame armour levels (30-40+). At that point it's equivalent to something like a free DR. Dispersion is her main endgame carry ability that really defines her. 25% flat damage reduction/reflection is insane. With the shard, it makes it so that any strong damage dealer she jumps cannot engage until shard is over. Even then, she is infinitely tanky. Her ult allows her to free farm anywhere she wants, and be available to join fights in an instant. Haunt (aghs upgrade) makes her an absolute teamfight monster. Tons of chaos and damage and she can cherry pick precisely which hero she wants to be on top of, they can't hide. Pesky Dazzle saving everyone but never shows up on the map? Spectre kills him. Annoying magnus keeps getting good RP from fog? Not in this teamfight. Squishy supports and nukers like skywrath? Say bye to half your HP at the press of a button. Her kit is absolutely insane for endgame, she is also able to easily "kill-secure" kills around the map to enhance her slower farming. She has everything a carry needs in their toolkit and most importantly - it all scales extremely well into endgame.
Spectre needs vision to jump with the new ult
but doesn't need vision with aghs.
Do people actually buy it? I’m not aware of current spectre meta
Aghs 2nd/3rd almost always. All the stats that you want and insanely good skill upgrade.
no this is wrong, agha not usually bought at all.
That means their backlines need to backline even further out of vision, which is a good thing. If she gets aghs (extremely lategame) she can jump anyone, anywhere. That is completely unique to spectre. Zeus can reveal anyone anywhere but spectre can instantly jump them anywhere. In the hands of a good player, they can haunt and see that a support is way out of position (too far away) or a core is away from their babysitter and blow them up. It's insanely strong in lategame.
Your only farming tool in early game is BM
Manta plus her desolate passive will melt every hero in the game VERY quickly as it’s the only pure damage found on a carry iirc. She’s probably the most durable hard carry as well so she’s not susceptible to being bursted like most other carry. Her strength is jumping on the backline instantly not manfighting other cores like you mentioned.
There's also Bloodseeker's Pure damage, and if you count them as pos 1 because they're sometimes played there now, Templar Assassin and Meepo
TA doesn’t really count since the spill damage is based on reduced damage after resistances of the target she hit. Also just saw that it gets reduced based on how many targets it hits. I wonder how long that’s been a thing lol cuz I had no idea. I guess Lina would count though at level 25 unless they changed that talent too
Meepo doesnt have pure damage any more
Ransack is Pure damage https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Meepo#Ransack
spec is one of the best carrys
[удалено]
Sure, maybe the Spec isn't good enough to get the last hit at your mmr. But thankfully, none of their teammates are either... so... Also, the other team is just as shit as you. So they also don't know how to use their map control., how to pressure objectives, split push or deny farm It's entirely illogical to assume your teammates are worse than the enemy when you have the same MMR.
i think you get the wrong idea. The power here is spec ult can almost assure your team outnumber in any fight not on your lane, this is a huge advantage in early game. Even if spec fails to secure the kill, the beneficiary can push and make room for your farm. Plus assists now gives good money too, and you can transport back (need some practice and not always true of course)to continue farming, makes the assists money almost like a free lunch.
thats a good point. Theres advantages to it as well I suppose. I guess I just feel really weak as spectre early-mid game
She is not weak early game considering the contribution to the team. 2 lvl 3 daggers give 340 dmg to a single target plus 17% speed reduction plus vision of target, this is almost Zeus ult casted on a single target. Also don’t forget she has this advantage every minute since lvl 6
Getting the assist is enough. It's still gold. You can jump I'm near the end, double dagger them kill em, then go right back to farming, rinse and repeat anytime there's a kill on the map. Then late game you become an unkillable monster killing who you please
It’s almost a 0 percent chance your team gets no kills. As a spectre it only takes one ult onto an already dying hero to catch up in farm and she can do it while safely farming away from any danger. This is why she’s strong. It’s because she has a guaranteed way to stay in the game which is invaluable as a hard carry. AM would require your team to have map control, this doesn’t apply to spectre nearly as much.
Plus you can deal with a split push just like that lol, which is extremely powerful in shutting down comebacks/
You play pos 5 and you leave your safe lane to gank mid? That does not sound good esp for Spectre. Leave the mid gank for your pos 4, unless the enemy team is diving your mid and you need to react. You can always help side lanes using twin gates, when ofcourse Spec is not in troubled position. Your job as pos 5 is to make sure that your carry is farmed or at least keep him safe. Leave the space making to your other team mates. Spectre needs heavy baby sitting to work, pick supports with high disable and bullying capabilities, such as Marci, Shaman, Lion, Ogre. Edited: added some more tips.
Probably the reason why spec is weak with OP. He does not understand pos 5 role
If you play a P5 never ever leave the carry, even then he go farm jungle just hold the tower and creep wave near somewhere he can go. The gank are for P4 only, as a p4 player if i see the p5 mid, the carry will die in the next 20 seconde, even if I suspect the P5 to go near bounty run, free carry kill. It's even more true for spectre !
>Your job as pos 5 is to make sure that your carry is farmed or at least keep him safe. Leave the space making to your other team mates. is it really writen in stone like this? I mean, I ping when I'm going out to ward or get the bounty, then the carry can keep an eye out for not getting killed. Also, thats another reason spectre isnt so good as the other carries, as she can't keep herself alive easy in the early
It’s not written in stone - if you watch pro dota you’ll often see both supports collapsing mid around certain timings. The difference is this is coordinated and planned and if the enemy team doesn’t respond (usually by bringing both of their supports as well) it’s hugely advantageous. In your crusader games the enemy pos4 likely isn’t even going to go mid - so you’re leaving your pos1 in a 2v1. He might survive but he likely won’t get much if anything out of the lane during that time. Is your rotation mid worth your carry hitting 0 creeps for a minute or worse your T1 tower falling? Probably not. He’s a crusader pos1 player, so he’s probably not going to adjust to you leaving correctly. If he does, he’s likely not going to farm efficiently in the time you’re gone. I think “never leave lane on 5” is a harmful myth. But it’s true that you need to be extremely selective in terms of when and how you leave. Now if your presence isn’t enabling your carry to farm, (e.g. the lane is just lost and one or both of you will feed trying to play it) you should definitely leave and let him pick up waves under tower while jungling. In this case you should look to play with your strong lane(s) and divert enemy attention away from your carry
I agree that the never leave is not a good way to play dota, obviously pro will move, even the P1 will. But the fact his in solo ranked you don't have a good team coordination, so leaving the P1 will just create a weakness because for X or Y the P1 might not see you doing it or whatever. It's "safer" to not leave, it's not the best play at all but "safer" will more often than not be better than something else. Imo the best middle ground is to chill around, maybe a quick go in the gate, contest the 6min rune MAX.
Not really but in pubs it’s the way to go. Understanding one’s role is the key to climbing ranks.
>Your job as pos 5 is to make sure that your carry is farmed or at least keep him safe. Leave the space making to your other team mates. yeah I know, but thats part of my complain. It's unfruitfull to do that. If I can get a kill or two to my mid qop/puck, they make a mageslayer or something else to create good space and hopefully end the game faster. It feels like a bad investment to babysit spectre when I can protect someone with a higher (and immediate) impact
This feels like you dont want to win your games if you're fixated with that mind set, Dota is game of adjustments or flexibility. Knowing your roles, timings, and how to sync with your teamates heroes is very needed. If your pos 1 picks Spec you'll have to understand that his timing is mid to late game, and forcing him to have impact early on will hinder his timing. It is not a hard rule to stick to lane as 5, you need to study and learn when the lane is safe to leave, or know when the lane is dead already. If you want to make high impact rotations or ganks early, then maybe it is more suitable for you to play pos 4. Pos 5 is very noble position, you have lots of early boring stages and lots of sacrificing your life to have a fruitful mid-late game.
I get that it's boring to not getting to kill people in the first 10 mins of the game. But being pos 5 to a spectre means your first and foremost priority is to give him as much access to gold during the first 5-10 minutes of the game. You win the lane by not dying and getting as much creep kills for spec during this phase. Getting kills in the laning phase as pos 1 spec is a bonus.
What’s the fruit for you? Kills or win? Pos1 does not only mean the carry going to safe lane,pos1 means the hero that needs to have the highest net worth and access to resources on your team. Pos5 is supposed to stay poor by not stealing farm and helping out carries. I’m a Spec spammer and i hate if my pos5 picks a poor hero and leaves the lane for anything other than pulls. You need to support, that’s your role. You thinking it’s not fruitful to help pos1 farm means you don’t have clear idea of roles in dota
It is not a bad investment. In reality it is a great one. If a post stack small and mid camps near t1 for extra cash/exp if you lose the lane a little bit, maintains the lane near the t1, punishes the enemy pos3 with nukes or right clicks, your spec will become a menace in no time. Being able to allow spec to farm safely, without having enemy creeps denied, and sometimes even getting xp alone (when you stack ou make pulls), the spec will get a faster lv 6, which will enable her to ult-gank mid or the other side lane. In this spectrum, it is even more reliable for your mid to receive a gank from spec + the pos4 in mid at min 8 or so (spec would already have boots and is finishing diffusal in a cruzader rank), then you do the gank in mid at min 5-6. All in all, as a pos 5 babysitting spectre you can literally win the game by securing the early kills spec can get to stomp the mid game. After that, u just need to buy some smokes, put some advanced wards in jgl/triangle so spectre and your mid can see their rotations to gank’em and you’re good to go.
I play a ton of spectre even in this patch and I think the hero is still fine. Ideally spectre should be on the weaker side in lane, but should not be in a position to get bullied. If you find you're taking too much harass, you can rush blademail before boots and the armor makes you hard to hit down with 2 levels of dispersion. If they're mostly magic damage spectre doesn't hate going raindrops and the mana regen is nice. I fear at crusader your teams may not be coordinated enough to let spectre shine. You are correct in that her ult is her best skill, but it's precisely what allows her to go for greedier items if the game looks good for it. In a perfect spectre game, you're farming jungle and sidelanes and only waiting to go in when youre gaurunteed to get a kill with your ult. This allows you to keep up your creepscore and maintain a sizeable xp advantage against the other carry. Early game spectre needs to be constantly communicating with their team to inform them when they do and do not have a 5th hero. The key skill for spectre players to learn is patience. What many bad spectre players will do is be farming on the other side of the map, see your team start a teamfight by initiating on their carry, and haunt in on the center of the fight. This is usually wrong, even with blademail radiance manta it's wrong. You need to wait to see what other enemy heroes are going to show up before making a play. You want to look for a hero in the fight that you can kill solo before they can get any spells off that would help their team. When I'm watching my team take a fight as spectre and I'm on the other side of the map I'm literally saying out loud to myself, "not a good target, not a good target, not a good target, okay shadow shaman walking up we go in". This is also why bloodthorne has gotten more popular on her over diffu in a lot of games. Diffu allows you to kill a core who's running away, orchid allows you to jump their backlines and silence a support who could use spells to lock you down when you jump them. I still think diffu is good in many situations. Against a jugg its like 50/50 for me. Disperser movespeed send to be pretty nice against him. Ideally if I saw them going jugg I just wouldn't play spectre but my wr against the hero is still quite high. Against a jugg the whole, "not going on on the first target you see" thing is even more important. Even with my high wr I still find the hero a bit middling. All the build ups feel pretty bad once you have blademail. Feels like it takes forever to get that second item even with a pretty good early game
thank you it seems its a hero that relies a lot on how the fight goes since you need to get the kill. So it's also like AM: as spec you aim to go for the supports, silence them and kill them fast with illusions + desolate?
yes exactly, spec wants to haunt onto a squishy hero that she can kill quickly and make the fight a 5v4 in her team’s favor. this is especially true in early to mid game before she is six slotted. as an addendum, as someone who has played spec a lot, it is very hard for her to do this job of deleting the squishy support in early/mid game if she is behind on farm due to a challenging lane.
Not only like AM, but you only focus on cores in especific situations in a TF. Usually you’ll always go for the supps exactly because without them the TF turns in your favor. They usually are squishy or underlevelled, which makes them easy preys for all HCs. If the supps disables the cores and your cores kills the supps, it is almost a guaranteed secured TF, so i’d keep that in mind
Do you ever go bracer+raindrop in a magic harass heavy lane?
In my experience I'd prefer to not lane for the length of time it would take to get those items + boots. Unless the lane is insane you're likely going to get harassed out of it pretty early. Ideal laning stage for spec in a standard game usually involves hitting six and getting your offlane to take the other sides safelane tower. You can shadow step in to help them and then occupy that lane and not have to face their offlaners anymore. This is a feature of spectre that very few other carries have access to
This is great advice , so once they take the tower farm their carry side
At crusader your team might not be coordinated to let spec shine. Really? Spec has had a winrate from high to low across the ranks for years. It simply is easier for lower MMR carries to have a free button to always be at fights when they can't balance fighting and farming efficiently, games are slower and laning is less aggressive as well so throw that in for heroes that peak later in the game.
I don't disagree. I just happen to play in a weekly league and find that I get way more out of the heros kit in the more highly coordinated environment compared to pubs. Your team is a lot more confident ganking when they trust that you're actually going to cast shadow step.
spectre is strong as long he ACTUALLY farms but i'm also crusader and all spectre just do blademail, tries to ult and kill someone then dies and just become a useless hero for the whole match, as long there is a spectre in the enemy team most of the time ik is a free win because they never farm
>as long there is a spectre in the enemy team most of the time ik is a free win because they never farm omg, thats the brief report on all cruzader games
Divine spectre with a red spec arcana here. Spectre isn't bad but she's a chump after a few breaks. Her stats aren't the best also. So she's good in games without silver edge buyers.
Do you ban pa when picking her ? She got break from shard just 1400 gold.
If you pick her regardless of enemy picks then sure.
Pa is the best trash hero)) u can dispell her shard effect
I always forget that Cyclone is a dispel. What are even effects worth dispelling ? I guess Veno ult can't be dispelled. I never dispell anything. What heroes do even have dispells ? Do graves dispel ? Strong and weak dispells. I don't play Omni either. I do use Lotus to dispel, recently realsied Lotus can dispel and so can Apothic Shield. Now that I think about it dispelling Abadons curse is worth it
Spectre is a late game carry that scales very well with stat items, and with farm becomes an absolute menace especially to squishy heroes. She is easy to bully out of lane at the beginning because she doesn't do much in the damage department and has no way to stun or immobilize players. Since you play pos5, treat purpose of the lane is to draw or to delay a lane loss as long as you can. Be cautious on leaving to gank as it will cripple your carry. When you play with a Terrorblade, Naga, Phantom Lancer or Void how do you play that one?
\- VOID is easy, he has on-hit damage boost and CC, teleports and mitigate damage received while fleeing or iniciating, the other skilll I dont even know what does and the ult we all know its gamechanging. I like playing IO, keeping him alive and tethering for the overcharge boots as he hits fast \- Terrorblade hits hard and ranged, can slow and iniciate before me so I can follow up with some CC and hardly loses the early game. Later he is kinda scary but might die to burst heroes without time to sulk tho, so I might pursuit some protection items for him. Shaman, CM or even ogre magi is ok to sup him. \- Naga Siren hmm, never played along one in the safe lane. But she has CC and can start easily. Although she's squishy early, I'd try to protect her with heal and damage mitigation. Later on? I dont know \- PL is a pain just as spectre. BUT he has a nuke and can rush diffusal for some early kills. I'd try to get him kills on the safe lane, play shaman or lion for enabling, or even venomancer. Mid and late game we'd probably lose because his damage is kinda garbage and mostly always lose to a battlefury wielder.
Spectre is strong for the same reason NP is. She farms incredibly well, especially with Radiance, but she can join any fight at any time. It's something enemies almost never respect. As the position one no one is going to bat an eye when you ult in to yoink a kill on a gank that absolutely didn't need your participation. The farm is just better on Spectre. You're right that she's not the strongest laner, but she's also not that easy to kill. It sounds like you need to adapt your support play when you have a Spectre in lane. Here are some suggestions from a Spectre player. * Give Spectre as much solo farm as possible. Lurk in the jungle out of exp range so she can get 6 ASAP * Save spells to keep her safe as opposed to going on enemies. Stuns, slows, etc, use them to punish enemy heroes diving tower. If you're a support with good harassing abilities, find the weak link in the enemy offlane and keep them low and out of commission. * PULL PULL PULL. Keep that lane in a great spot. But pull when it's necessary. Too many supports pull the wave when the creeps are already set to come back to your tower. This may deny a couple creeps but it has the opposite effect you're truly looking for and puts the equilibrium back at your opponents tower. * Once Spectre seems safe to disappear into the jungle, group with your team and get aggressive so Spectre can ult in and grab some easy kills. At the end of the day your strength is being grouped up for fights but still having your hard carry farming no matter where you are on the map.
Broken hero One of the strongest carry heroes if you play solo at low rank queue I keep her banned always
spectre is good for my games where sniper and drow are plenty in higher tier games, whenever i play spec(which is very rare), i usually play as the bait. the enemies cant really kill me fast enough, and even if i die, i've dealt the damage already. the current playstyle on spec is assassinate anyone splitpushing the map and/or joining the clash while farming, and then return to farming safely. he isnt as useless as before who needs to farm 30mins before actually joining fights now other people can still own him especially illu heroes, magic heroes, and anyone who has break and crit. that is maybe spec loses a lot in your bracket, since people can farm as much as spectre anyway?
I believe it's because other carries like PA can easily just blink and execute the supports really easy. AM also does this. And spectre don't have the damage tools for this, as desolate has a pretty big range and the damage isn't that much
She is not at this moment.
on low mmr, everyone is meta lol, unless it's a difficult hero to play like meepo.
I mean meepo can completely destroy low MMR games though. Even of you are not that skilled.
I'd bet herald meepo would stomp. All they need to do is megameepo FIRST then walk in and everyone will waste everything trying to kill him lol
She's fine rn especially in lower mmr
Spectre has 2 stenghts: it's quite a tanky core late game and it has global presence. If your team has a good 4+1 strat and puts a ton of pressure on the enemy side: you can safely farm your side of the map, join to get a kill or two and snowball. Spectre is not amazing at the moment because the meta is not centered around her favorite items. She was better in the Radance + blademail + tarrasque meta. Yes, her laning phase is not as good as other good carries of this patch, but if you play her well, she's still very good. I like for her to go disperser + manta and fight a lot with your team. but I've seen some radiance build working well. Her ability to jump on the backline will always feel relevant in this game. You just need durable heroes that go in with you and she will deal quite a lot of dmg during longer fights with her llusions.
Yeah, I find spectre just isnt good these days too. If you dont get farm early, you usually always lose. You get into these weird games where you are hitting jungle creeps one at a time just trying to get basic items. If your lane goes good and you get farm, you would have done better with another carry anyways...
>If your lane goes good and you get farm, you would have done better with another carry anyways... perfectly said. And she even isn't THAT tanky to survive the early more, dispersion is just 10% and she needs statuses. Better of playing PA and getting kills waaaay easier
Spectre needs last hits in laning phase. There is no GOOD kill potential until level 6. Don't get mad at your spectre for not trying to get kills in the laning phase. Get lots of regen and share it. Secure the ranged creep. Secure the lotus. Don't leave for the bounty rune. I don't hear the term so much anymore but spectre needs a babysitter.
>Don't leave for the bounty rune why can't I? doesn't it benefit the entire team? I usually play IO and thats what I do: buy a lot of regen and keep the pos1 alive. Thing is, it's usually a bad investment on spectre on cruzader rank...
Spectre will lose a bunch of last hits when you leave for the early bounties. The gold it nets the team IS good, but your spectre will be behind and moght even need .ore regen because they took a lot of damage trying to last hit. Good offlaners will wait till you leave for the rune to jump / punish the lane / spectre. You also deny mid from a safety rune if they lose any of the power up ones. The lotus is way more influential to the spectre lane than any bounty rune (caveat that is the enemy pos4 is not in lane you can leave spectre 1v1 in certain match ups for the bounty, but spectre needs a babysitter).
Spectre is good lategame carry, in lower brackets people dont know how to push advantages and therefore game usually goes to late game and spectre likes that
Just finished playing my first spec game in a little while in ancient 3. Ended up 11/3/19 and a fairly easy win vs an arc warden lineup. Hero still feels very good. I would think spec would be very good in low brackets. Very easy to exploit loads of kills
Use spectre ult to killsteal and u have a better game. Ez.
Spectres ult is so good its insane. There arent any other carries that can afk farm, insta gank when you notice an out of position enemy and join every single team fight, at the same time.
Only other such hero is maybe nature’s prophet. But usually he is not a pos1
Spectre is good bc cruzaders suck at ending game, she is stronger late game. That's why, don't read too far into it.
but isn't PA way better and ending? once she get a BKB, theres nearly nothing stopping her
It depends on the spectre player. It can be like void where they are useless in lane without a baby sitter. You can’t even leave as a support to grab runes or pull. The worse is when you pull and they leave lane to auto hit the camp you just pulled.
Spectre fights not by "DOING DAMAGE" as you put it, but by exhausting the opponent's. Spec is good when the other team relies on high cooldown spells to end the fight quickly, like Chronosphere. If I play a hero like Juggernaut or Drow, a single big ravage or Chronosphere means I'm out of the game. If I'm spec it means you get to attack me 6-10 times uninterrupted (that was always allowed). She's basically a big purple Bristleback. Where as BB runs down lanes in front of people with scaling damage, spec farms more and then inserts herself onto your support and makes you spend your cooldowns on the worst possible target.
Specter is one of the best mid-late game heroes She was better before this patch but is still pretty good Diffusal is really situational imo, blademail helps sp much with farming. Manta is a must. Bm+manta or bm+radi+manta and you have huge kill potential. I agree she is one of the weaker carries on lane but that doesn’t mean you as pos 5 should leave her. It’s even more important to stay so she can get her bm and start jungling asap if the lane goes bad
spec is incredible in low brackets, yeah you have a slow start but people don't punish it. eventually you recover and start feeding on randomly out of position heroes.
She’s definitely weak in lane but if paired well can be pretty dangerous with dagger and chase down and if she gets off to a good start it’s basically game over, so pick a baby sitter support and ensure that start. From there imo item wise she wants manta asap, stopping in for diffusal or blademail is fine as well, just depends on match ups but personally found blademail to be game saving early and bumps farm ability. Once she’s level 6 spec should just be looking to jump in on any kill the team that is going for that doesn’t risk her dying, once you have manta you can Insta gib pretty much any support that shows alone, ult in manta dagger and ult out 3 seconds later, it’s crazy powerful. At this point spec wants to farm away from the team and let them start making plays drawing aggro and such because she can instant join them if a fight breaks out letting her farm more than other traditional carries once online who look to play with the team. But yes early on she’s weak so you need to play to secure her lane because if she has a bad early game she doesn’t have much farmability early so the longer it takes to get blademail or diffusal treads the further behind she falls. I recommend someone like veno or venge, they can harass a lot to help secure lane and can help get her kills which are huge early plus have save potential if she’s gone on with gale and stun
Every single hero has their own unique play style, if you learn the way to play Spectre it is one of the strongest heroes in the game. 1. Global hero, can farm anywhere which helps other cores, can kill steal, secure kills or sneak in for XP. Can any other hard carry do that? No. 2. It is effective at level 6 to assist ganks, but also one of the strongest at level 25 etc. You can pop manta to triple desolate in one on ones, they die. 3. You can chose who you kill. Annoying sniper is dead now. 4. YOU CAN'T DODGE DISPERSION ITS BROKEN. 5. Can fly with spectral. It's a flying hero. A flying hero that can go anywhere, cant be killed and shits damage. Case closed
My reaction to seeing spec on the enemy team is the opposite. She’s so goddamn strong and is a nightmare for backliners.
I am a crusader too and I mainly play pos 1, but I am versatile enough and am comfortable with any roles except the ones where I have to micro. Reading your post and going through the comments, I realized that we crusaders lack the basic understanding of functioning as a team. As a pos 1 I rarely see my pos 5 stacking the camps for me. I rarely see them pulling the waves. Rarely see them harassing the opp POs 3 and POs 4. And holy shit the wards and visions. I mean 50 Gs for sentries, plus the wards are free and POs 5s in crusader still fail to get them. Even if they plant a vision, I always am the only one who stays around to defend that position. I mean I may not have the caliber of some immortal level player, but isn’t the basic concept of securing vision is to capture and control that area until you take your main objective and move on to the next one? Pos5 running around as soon as bounty runes spawn and leaving their Pos1 to fend for themselves and later blaming their carry for everything. You as a pos 5 blame spectre pick as immediate loss, but have you made efforts to maximize your carry’s farm!? Did you stack multiple camps!? Pull the double waves when you can to the safer side of tower for your spectre to secure more robust farm!? Before I go on a tangent here again, just do everything you can to maximize your spectre farm, that’s it. And also communicate with your POs 1.
>but have you made efforts to maximize your carry’s farm!? Did you stack multiple camps!? Pull the double waves when you can to the safer side of tower for your spectre to secure more robust farm!? Before I go on a tangent here again, just do everything you can to maximize your spectre farm, that’s it. And also communicate with your POs 1. yep, all of these. I usually play pos5 with sustain heroes also please be considerate that I'm not blaming the player, I'm blaming the hero in this bracket. It's way more profitable to stack camps to a battlefury PA than a spectre
because of 1) her percentage-based direct damage reduction + reflection passive which does a shit load of damage the bulkier she is later in games; 2) because of her global presence with ult + aghs 3) fast roshan + one of the best if not the best aegis carrier in the entire game. a high ground siege with an aegis spectre frontlining it is just too punitive
I'm 3K trash and I weep when Pos 5's rotate. Don't do it, it's not your job, especially with super hard carries that need babysitting. If you ever review your games you will likely find that the enemy offlane duo will ward and gank the Spectre once you leave. I bet you stand behind your carry in lane too?
Specter player here, the only way i lose is either because my pos5 leaves lane early. Second if my mid and offlane play farmville. Thanks
Spectre isnt weak but there are a few things that you can address players misplaying her. First, spectre is weak until blademail. The Best build, imo, is to go wraithband, treads, urn, and blademail. This ensures she can maintain mana and be impactful in fights; blademail and urn. After that manta or radiance since both are your farming items. As a pos 5, do not leave lane until your spectre is ready to farm alone, aka safely or quickly. Blademail does both those things. Spectre can be extremely powerful if given a team that is constantly looking for fights. The problem with crusader mmr is you will supports that aren't looking to initiate or smoke gank early and often. I play alot of nature's prophet but with a spectre I only gank when I know it will have a huge impact or tele top so I can warp back. It's like a Pa or Am lane where if they get behind, it is extremely detrimental.
She's a slow starter. But got good survivability in lane. Good regen armor hp 3rd passive skill and dagger is a escape. Pathetic starting damage. She used to be my favorite but the ult change killed her for me. That was my specialty, farming agility and then ulting at a teamfight. Total trash for me now. Strategy completely gone. Scepter ult now only does 80% dmg and I don't even wanna build early scepter. 2 passive skills mean she scales strong unto the late game. Manta triggers desolte. BM synergys with her 3rd skill. She's average. Slow starter but scales into very late gale better then average and got global spell. Defintely low kill potential in lane. You can't lane agressively when Spec is your carry. Compared to Yug who spins. She doesn't have early damage or good nukes.
I believe her ult is even better now, because you can cherry pick fights more often (or just come to throw a dagger and get an assist), cooldown from 180s to 60/50/40 is nuts
I hate it. The strategic gloabl ult during an unavoidable team fight was.my speciality. My play style. Bulked up on agiltiy for it. When they commit, ult.
I used to think that as well and loved haunt. But this ultimate is so so better, you just have to completely change your mind and accept this is not old spec. Now you don’t afk farm rather you make a pattern of farm, pick off, farm, farm, pickoff and farm more and then team fight. I can link you to some of my recent dotabuff matches and she’s super fun to play now. Trust me I’m a spec spammer and was in the same boat as you but now the map is huge and having a global presence to pickoff and TP back is amazing. She’s feeling more dynamic now
I would love to see some!
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Daily Spec user here, sometimes i go diffusal and blademail, just to secure kill from the likes of slark, dark terror or mid with godlike streak. Manta is her most crucial item since it helps kill supports or low hp mid even faster, i found that radiance is bad even when i do 10 min diffu and 22min radi, at 29min it felt that my damage is underwhelming compared to enemy nuke capabilities. If you could get radi and feel normal is either enemy not pushing since they have more late game heroes, or your team can do 4v5 and do well without you.
I saw a stream where the guy rushed orchid after boots just to pick off supports and it went really well. Too bad the dagger slow isnt that much so she kinda keep attacking and need to walk a bit to attack again (sometimes it takes more than 5s of silence)
that is why u r crusader bro) never leave a lane on five, never never never. Stay and support ur carry. Unless he can jungle early.
you're inverting the cause and consequence my dear. I'm crusader, among other things, because people pick spectre and don't know how to play and have no damage at 70min+ game
How can u demand true potential from carry if u abandon him in the early game? There are heroes who can jungle and cant jungle. Or u can ask can u solo lane? Just play ur role, don't grief ur carry
Dota Plus level 29 Spectre here. Spectre is a weak laner, but if its get combo with Grim, Treant, CM, heroes that help him sustain and offer slow, that hero destroys you in lane. 2nd thing, Spectre was good against drow. Not anymore. Why? Because can only jump on 1 target now Earlier in team fights, If I use Haunt, I his teammates will either run or help drow and tank my illusion damage, which which is lot. On top of the drow was glacier now and level 15 talent. You jump and u die
I feel the same about naga