How to be a stealth assasin!

Introduction

Hello and welcome to Alexgold50's guide on Riki, one of the best ganking heroes and one of my favorites. Riki provides space for the team to farm and is an amazing initiator. Riki is able to silence his enemies for long periods of time making it easier to eliminate the enemy. Riki thrives on farming and ganking and is a fun hero to play with. If you like this guide please comment and vote, Thank you. Lore Riki was born middle child to the great dynasty of Tahlin. With an older brother groomed for the throne, and a younger brother coddled and kept, Riki, the small middle son, seemed born for the art of invisibility. It was an art he cultivated, and one which ultimately saved his life on the night that his people were betrayed and his family slaughtered. Of all the royal line, he alone escaped small and agile, unassuming, using smoke as cover. He cut his way out of the royal grounds, using the advantage of surprise, quietly slitting the throats of one enemy warrior after another. Now free of his royal responsibilities, Riki uses his talents in service to a new trade: stealth assassin. He silences his enemies, sharpening his skills, hoping to one day take revenge on those who killed his family and robbed him of his birthright.

Pros / Cons

Pros
+ Silence from Smoke Screen
+ Permanent Invisibility
+ Good farmer from Backstab
+ Fun to play
+ Reliable ganker
+ Great chaser from Blink Strike

Cons
X Squishy early game
X Easily countered with Gem of True Sight, Dust of Appearance and Sentry Ward
X Focused in team fights
X Needs farm

Skills

Smoke Screen

Throws a smoke bomb down in the area, silencing opponents and causing them to miss on most of their attacks. Also slows by 25% at all levels.

Level 1 - 250 AoE, 40% miss
Level 2 - 275 AoE, 50% miss
Level 3 - 300 AoE, 60% miss
Level 4 - 325 AoE, 70% miss

Mana Cost: 75/ 80/ 85/ 90
Cooldown: 13

Blink Strike

Teleports to a unit and strikes it if it is a foe, dealing bonus damage.

Level 1 - Deals 30 extra damage
Level 2 - Deals 60 extra damage
Level 3 - Deals 90 extra damage
Level 4- Deals 120 extra damage

Mana Cost: 50
Cooldown: 30/ 20/ 10/ 5

Backstab

The Stealth Assassin is not afraid to fight dirty, and specializes in attacking his opponents from behind.

Level 1 - Deals 0.5x the Agility of the SA to the target
Level 2 - Deals 0.75x the Agility of the SA to the target
Level 3 - Deals 1x the Agility of the SA to the target
Level 4 - Deals 1.25x the Agility of the SA to the target

Mana Cost: 0
Cooldown: 0

Permanent Invisibility

Riki becomes permanently invisible when not attacking

Level 1 - 3.5 second fade time
Level 2 - 2.5 second fade time
Level 3 - 1.5 second fade time

Mana Cost: 0
Cooldown: 0

This is a video made by: Dotacinema, of Riki's skills: Play Video

Items

Starting items:

Healing Salve and Tango: Your basic healing because you are squishy early game and will be harassed.

Stout Shield: Your basic protection from harassment and builds up to become a Poor Man's Shield.

Slippers of Agility: Gives you bonus agility, making it easier to last hit with Backstab and builds up to a Poor Man's Shield.

Early game:

Poor Man's Shield: Helps protect you from harassment and lets you farm longer.

Power Treads: Increases your attack speed and the selected attribute. When on Agility, helps you hit harder with Backstab and increases your damage. When on Strength, Increases your health making it easier to survive during team fights. When on intelligence, Increases your mana allowing you to cast Smoke Screen and Blink Strike more often.

Diffusal Blade: Increases your intelligence and agility. Also when activated slows down the selected enemy, making it harder for him to escape and easier for you to kill him/her.

Yasha: Increases your agility and movement speed making it easier to gank and making Backstab hit harder. Also builds up to a Manta Style.


Manta Style: Increases your intelligence, agility, strength, movement speed and attack speed. When activated makes 2 copies of yourself that take 350% damage and deal 33% of your damage (Backstab doesn't work).

Mid game:

Butterfly: Increases your agility, damage and evasion dramatically. This should be rushed mid game because of its evasion. Evasion is the % of time when the enemy misses his/hers attack.

Crystalys: Increases your damage and gives you a 20% chance of doing 1.75 times your current damage (does not stack with Backstab damage). Builds up to a Daedalus.

Daedalus: Increases your damage dramatically and gives you a 25% chance of doing 2.7 times your current damage (does not stack with Backstab damage).

Late game:

Heart of Tarrasque: Increases your health and health regeneration dramatically and when not attacked by Roshan or a hero, regenerates 2% of the bearer's health per second.

Abyssal Blade: gives you strength, a large amount of damage and a 25% chance to stun the target for 1.4 seconds. When activated stuns the target for 2 seconds.

Situational items:

Black King Bar: When activated Gives you magic immunity for 10 seconds, gives you damage and strength.

Vangaurd: Gives bonus health and health regeneration.

Hand of Midas: gives you bonus attack speed and when activated kills any creep (Doesn't work on Heroes, Roshan and ancients creeps), Gives you 199 gold and 2.5 times the normal experience the creep would give you.

Dagon: Gives you a small amount of damage, points to all the attributes and gives you bonus intelligence. The main thing about this item is the large amount of burst damage it gives. When activated deals up to 800 damage to the selected target. Used to finish of a enemy with a lot of health.

Desolator: Gives a lot of extra damage and when attacking the enemy, The enemy losses 6 armor for 15 seconds. This can help a lot with taking down really strong enemies with a lot of health.

Skill Build

I normally try to max out Backstab first because of the bonus damage it gives.

Then I get 1 level of Smoke Screen and Blink Strike before I get my ultimate because you want to have the silence and you also want to be able to jump into battle.

I then grab my ultimate (Permanent Invisibility) at level 6, 11 and 16 because you want to max out your ultimate as fast as possible for the minimal possible fade time.

The I max out Blink Strike because you want the minimal possible cool down, so it is easier to chase your enemy and initiate.

I lastly max out Smoke Screen because 1 level of Smoke Screen is all you need. The only thing about Smoke Screen that I like is the silence and increasing the level of smoke screen doesn't increase the silence duration.

Know I just get starts at level 15, 17 and over.

Skill Build

Level 1 - Backstab
Level 2 - Blink Strike
Level 3 - Backstab
Level 4 - Smoke Screen
Level 5 - Backstab
Level 6 - Permanent Invisibility
Level 7 - Backstab
Level 8 - Blink Strike
Level 9 - Blink Strike
Level 10 - Blink Strike
Level 11 - Permanent Invisibility
Level 12 - Smoke Screen
Level 13 - Smoke Screen
Level 14 - Smoke Screen
Level 15 - Stats
Level 16 - Permanent Invisibility
Level 17+ - Stats

Butterfly Rush

This is a item and skill build you use when:

1. your enemies' heroes rely on normal damage to kill their enemies, such as Ursa and Anti-Mage

2. Your teammates need a hero that can output a lot of damage and survive during team fights.

Butterfly rush items

The main item this build is a Butterfly. A Butterfly gives Riki a lot more damage and agility so your Backstab hits harder, and a Butterfly allows Riki to have evasion and take lots of hits. The evasion from the Butterfly is very useful because your enemies have a large percentage of chance to miss his/her attacks (when on you), thus allowing you to output a lot of damage during team fights and giving you a more likely chance of survival.

Starting Items:

Healing Salve and Tango: This is your basic healing from harassment and allows you to stay in lane longer.

Quelling Blade: allows you to last hit easily.

Early game:

Power Treads: Gives you bonus attributes, attack speed and movement speed. You should normally be on agility but switch the attribute to strength when you need some extra health when running or in team fights.

Buuterfly: Give you bonus agility, damage, evasion and attack speed. Allows you to do more damage with Backstab and gives you a larger chance of surviving a battle.

Diffusal Blade: Increases your intelligence and agility. Also when activated slows down the selected enemy, making it harder for him to escape and easier for you to kill him.

Mid game:

Yasha: Increases your agility and movement speed making it easier to gank and making Backstab hit harder. Also builds up to a Manta Style.


Manta Style: Increases your intelligence, agility, strength, movement speed and attack speed. When activated makes 2 copies of yourself that take 350% damage and deal 33% of your damage (Backstab doesn't work).

Late game:

Heart of Tarrasque: Increases your health and health regeneration dramatically and when not attacked by Roshan or a hero, regenerates 2% of the bearer's health per second.

Eye of Skadi: gives you bonus stats to all your attributes, bonus health and mana. has an affect that when you attack the enemy, the enemy is slowed so it is easier to chase him.

Butterfly rush skill build

This skill build is almost exactly the same as the carry skill build, but instead of getting Smoke Screen at level 4 you get stats. This helps you to farm more and last hit more, thus allowing you to get your Butterfly faster.

Skill Build

Level 1 - Backstab
Level 2 - Blink Strike
Level 3 - Backstab
Level 4 - Stats
Level 5 - Backstab
Level 6 - Permanent Invisibility
Level 7 - Backstab
Level 8 - Blink Strike
Level 9 - Blink Strike
Level 10 - Blink Strike
Level 11 - Permanent Invisibility
Level 12 - Smoke Screen
Level 13 - Smoke Screen
Level 14 - Smoke Screen
Level 15 - Smoke Screen
Level 16 - Permanent Invisibility
Level 17+ - Stats

Team Work

Your role as Riki is a carry, in order to be a carry you need farm. You need to farm as much as you can early game. Concentrate on farm but if you are able to, get a kill.

In a team fight you need to get in there and do as much damage as possible (without dying), and cast your Smoke Screen first. As Riki you should Blink Strike the squishies and eliminate them before aiming for the stronger enemies.

When farmed you should leave your lane and gank lanes that are being pushed. You should try not to gank to close to towers because your Permanent Invisibility will be useless.

When in a team fight and the enemy has a Gem of True Sight, you should inform your team and aim for that person first because without it they can't see you and with it they can.

If following the Butterfly rush build you have to get your Butterfly before engaging into a team fight, because you do not level your Smoke Screen till level 12.

Friends and Foe's

Friends:

Your friends in lane are mainly Supports because they don't need farm and will allow you to farm a lot. Supports like:
Windrunner
Crystal Maiden
Lich
Leshrac
Shadow Shaman
Dazzle
because they need minimal farm and have stuns or slows, making it easier to gank.

Foes:

Your foes in your lane are other carries because you both need farm and are forced to fight for farm.

Your main foes are people that can deny you from using your ultimate (Permanent Invisibility), such as:

Huskar Because his spears are annoying and can stop you from farming.
Slardar His ultimate (Amplify Damage) Stops your ultimate (Permanent Invisibility).
Doom Bringer His ultimate ( Doom) also Stops your ultimate (Permanent Invisibility).
Bounty Hunter His ultimate ( Track) also Stops your ultimate (Permanent Invisibility).

Any heroes with non targeting silences:

Silencer because of his ultimate ( Global Silence) and also Last Word.
Death Prophet because of her Silence.
Drow Ranger because of her Silence too.

pay special to attention to:

Bloodseeker because of his early game Bloodrage silence, and also when low health there is no escape from Thirst.

In Game

Early game:

During the early parts of the game you want to farm as much as possible, therefore you have to lane with heroes that don't need any farm. Don't forget Riki is a carry and carries need lots of farm, and with a lot of farm carries can be the strongest heroes in the game.

Mid game:

When reaching level 6 and getting Permanent Invisibility you should leave your lane and try to gank enemy heroes in other lanes. Try not to gank near a enemy tower since the tower will have vision of you even if you are in Permanent Invisibility.

Late game:

If the game does last this long, you should have lots of money and items. The enemy team will start to buy Gem of True Sight, Dust of Appearance and Sentry Wards. so try to de-ward the Sentry Wards and kill any enemy with Gem of True Sight or Dust of Appearance first in a team fight. Then you should be able to finish the game, but watch out destroying towers because they will show vision of you even though you have Permanent Invisibility.

This is a video by a Dota 2 gamer called: Purge, playing Riki like a boss: Play Video

Conclusion

Thanks for reading my guide, I hope you learnt a lot about Riki and play him more in the future. definitely one of my favorite carries and extremely fun to play with.

if you have and comments on how to improve this guide please share them with me and i will improve this guide. My email is [email protected] and feel free to add me on steam. My steam is Alexgold50 my gaming name is $$Alejandro$$

I will be making more guides in the future (possibly Troll warlord next), and will take any comments on what you want the guide to be about. Please don't forget to up-vote this guide and tell your friends about it (if you like it), that will make me happy, thank you =)

Thank you for reading,
Alexgold50