Semi-support Lina

Introduction

Hello everybody and welcome to my first guide in dotafire! First of all,
let me introduce myself.
My in-game name is Archangel, and I have been playing dota for almost 1 year.
Althought it's not much, since I try to be as cometitive as possible I have learned a lot
about dota, and since in pubs there aren't many good players playing supports I hope i will inspire more people playing supports. Lina is the support I play best as well as the hero that got me in DotA.
*CAUTION*
Guide is work in progress

Summary

Lina is an inteligence hero with hight burst damage, witch can be a hit-or-miss hero.
If played right, she can keep your carry safe, and maybe even provide him with some kills/assists. She can snowball pretty well if she get's kills, whitch should be a high
priority, since it is going to be your only source of gold. Thanks to her Fiery Soul, she scales very well into lategame

Pros / Cons

Pros:
-Hight burst damage
-Intelligence Support
-Can snowball with some kills
- Laguna Blade is one of the most damaging single
target spells
-Scales well into late game



Cons:
-Low HP
-Mana and cooldown dependent early game
-Her main skills (apart from ulti) are skillshots
-Easily countered with Black King Bar

Skills

Dragon Slave is an AoE ability whitch deals 100/170/230/280 damage in a line up to
1075 units away, with a cost of 90/105/125/140 mana. This is the skill we want to max second.

Light Strike Array is your stun. With a cost of 90/100/110/125 mana you can stun in a circle of 225 AoE for 1.6 seconds, while also dealing 90/150/210/280 damage. With a cooldown of only 7 seconds, you can imagine how usefull this spell is. For that, this is the skill I max first.

Fiery Soul This is the spell whitch will help you deal even more damage
into the lategame. Every time you cast a spell, you gain 40/50/60/70 attack speed and
4%/5%/6%/7% movement speed, whitch stacks up to 3 times, resulting in a total of
210 attack speed and 21% extra movement speed. Since you will be able to utilize it best at late game, I max it last, althought I sometimes take one point in it early, if I have trouble chasing

Laguna Blade is your ultimate. With this you can nuke a target for 450/675/950 damage whith a cost of 280/420/680 mana. Aghanim's Scepter increases Laguna Blade's damage to 600/925/1250 and also increases it's range from 600 to 900.

Laning/Skill usage

When at lane, you should try to harass your oppoments with your autoattacks. Since your autoattack range is HUGE (same as Drow Ranger's, 625) this shouldn't be hard. Try to position yourself somewhere the creeps won't hit you, and right-click on the oppements when they go for a last hit. If you lane with someone who has a stun, like Skeleton King or Chaos Knight try to setup first blood, by letting them stun, then following with yours, which will be easy to land, since the foe will be already stunned. When you get about
level 3-4 you should use your Dragon Slave to harras, althought try to not 1. waste too much mana and 2. push the lane by hitting the creeps. Also, since you don't need the gold as much as your carry, DO NOT LAST HIT OR AUTOATTACK. This is crucial, since 1. you don't let your carry farm and 2. you push the lane. You need more levels than gold, and you can get them by standing near a creep when it dies.
When you are level 6, and you take yout ultimate, everything changes. Suddenly you can kill almost everyone of the enemy team, except for tanks ( Axe, Doom Bringer) and people with magic immunity and/or resistance ( Anti-Mage, Lifestealer).
Now what you should do is find a proper target: either an enemy with half HP, or someone gangable. What I personally do is check me lane oppoments: if i see someone
with eg. 500-600HP he's dead. Initiate whith your stun if you can land it and either use Dragon Slave with some autoattacks, or use your ultimate if you're afraid that he may escape. WARNING: Do not use your ulti when you see someone with like 50 hp, since you will waste it's massive damage. it's better to use Dragon Slave as it has more range and it costs way less mana.
At that point, if your ultimate is not on cooldown you should combo it with your other spells to get as much farm as possible, since we don't want to steal our carry's farm.
If you find someone in a 1v1 you sould be able to kill him pretty easily, except if they have some kind ot escape mechanism. The best combo, as far as I am concerned, is:
Light Strike Array --> 1-2 Autoattacks --> Laguna Blade(ONLY IF HE HAS MORE THAN ~300 HP) --> Dragon Slave

Items

Starting items

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First of all, since you're the support, you will have to be the one buying the Animal Courier or observer wards, preferably the first. After that, we need regeneration for both you and your lane partner, and usually 1 Healing Salve and some Tango's are more than enough. Next, we will need some mana regen, so that we don't run out, since we will be pretty much useless(at least in the early game).

Mid Game

Arcane boots are the best thing Lina needs. They provide her both burst mana regen and more mana + movement speed. As far as I am concerned, they are the best for every intelligence hero
As a support, you must keep wards up. However, since you aren't a hard-support, you shouldn't waste as much money in wards as a Crystal Maiden would. Still, if you find yourself or your allies getting ganged too much, you should be their man and help them out.
If you find yourself too squishy and you want more HP, or just more cheap stats, then get 1 or 2 Bracers, since they're cheap and they will provide you with +6 strength, whitch translates into +114HP for only 525 gold!
A Mekansm is one of the best support items. For 2306 gold, you help your team with an aura, plus a very helpfull active, whitch will restore 250HP and will give +2 armour to your allies. A very good item if none of your allies has one and if you aren't getting focused before you can pop it.
A Pipe of Insight is also a very good support item, thanks to it's usefull passive. However, you shouldn't get it if you have already a Mekansm, since it will propably make the enemy team focus you. A perfect item versus magic-damage teams.
If you want to snowball out of controll, a Bloodstone is one of the best items to get. It is also ~1000 gold cheaper, thanks to your Arcane Boots, whitch you can dissassemple. It will provide you with INSANE mana regen, extra health, less respawn time, and a when you die (even though if you have one you should play it quite safe so that you don't lose your charges) you heal your allies, whitch is like an extra Mekansm!!! Great item, however you should avoid it if you are getting killed a lot and/or you have little money, since it is really expensive.

Late Game

Now that is late game, EVERYTHING is situational. So, what options do we have?
1. This is a luxury item whitch will shutdown the enemy carry and will allow you and your team to kill him before he deals any damage