Meepo: Shadow Blade or Blink Dagger, which do you prefer?

Has anyone tried not building aghanim? I mean, to build only aura items so you dont need that 100% stat sharing.

If you get Aghanim's Scepter, you will be getting 10 of each stat, additional health and mana for your main Meepo, 100% stat sharing and an extra Meepo. Getting a combination of aura items, like Vladimir's Offering, Mekansm, Assault Cuirass, is usually more expensive and gives less effects than buying an Aghanim's Scepter and then buying stat items on the main Meepo (although Vladimir's Offering is a good item to get after Aghanim's Scepter).

Back on topic, Blink Dagger is the better item on Meepo. Shadowblade is quite useless on Meepo in my opinion because 1. It is easily countered by true sight, 2. It is not as fast as a Blink Dagger initiation and 3. Blink Dagger lets you bypass terrain to escape (assuming you did not get hit). A Blink Dagger initiation is also a lot more satisfying than a Shadowblade initiation, since it takes more effort to perform.

After Dagon, Shadow Blade is the best item in the game.

I mean come on: Makes you invisible until the duration ends, or until you attack or cast a spell. While Shadow Walk is active, you move 20% faster and can move through units. If attacking to break the invisibility, you gain 150 bonus damage on that attack. Lasts 12 seconds.

180 gold makes Shadow Blade useless.

Actually Shadowblade has been very popular competitively lately. I think people are starting to realise it goes beyond just being an assassin. A Shadowblade is a pseudo stealth buy, and it forces the enemy team to make a decision. They can let you go unchallenged being able to stealth around and have bonus damage, or they can burn gold on trying to counter a single item. Also a Dust is not always enough, 200 gold for sentries stack up, and 700 gold on a risky Gem is a big play (especially if you have a hero with invisibility on your own team).

Dagon is overly priced though and better items can be more easily acquired and have a bigger impact. There's only a few heroes that can really take advantage of Dagon and make it cost efficient, Tinker being one of the bigger contenders.

Dust only works when you are close to an enenmy upon use. . . Therefore Shadowblade is still valid.

I find Shadowblade to be pretty weak. When you invest 3k gold into an item that is so easily countered, it slows down your farm a lot if you ARE actually countered. This is why I don't go Shadowblade on Kunkka anymore. Whenever my friends and I face a hero with SB or any invis heroes, we immediately buy a gem and push as 5. Here's a great example of my friends and I as a 4 stack, do very well in a tri lane and counter invis:

http://dotabuff.com/matches/201405806

We do SD/Tide/Alc short lane, and Tide hunter gets first item gem. Even before boots I believe. We constantly stick as 5 and push down towers. No invis hero was able to get near us, and the game ended up being completely one sided because their heroes that are designed to pick off stragglers, or initiate, could never fulfill their role.

Well actually the extra Meepo is hardly a liability. If you really don't want to/can't micro 5 different Meepoes at 3+ different locations you can just one or two in base for a potential escape and free fountain trips and if you can control 4 Meepoes globally and in teamfights you should be able to control 5 just fine (1.5 seconds is also plenty of time for a 5 Meepo Blink Poof). The extra nuke damage, net, and survivability are worth the 4200 gold.

I like the idea of 5 ninja Meepoes popping of literally nowhere. I still think Blink Dagger is less situational, but Lothar's sounds like a fun item on him since the Meepoes should be separated most of the time anyway.

Shadow Blade on Kunkka is great. You're not even supposed to use the invis as a sneaking/escaping tool. Torrent, Ghost ship, walk up to them with invis, and BAM. Triple kill.

My point here is that it is a really good offensive item for Kunkka due to the extra 150 damage for 1 shot and the constant 30 damage increase alongside the neglected but still formidable 30 AS increase.

Shadow Blade is not that good compared to dagger on Meepo though. At least when based on the utility and mobility it gives relative to the cost.

I'm pretty familiar with Kunkka. I've played quite a few games as him, and I think I can confidently say: You actually are supposed to use SB as an initiating item. Kunkka is 110% dependent on good positioning. With the SB 150 damage now being applied after crit is calculated, and not before, it's a lot of gold for a positioning tool, a small amount of damage, and an unreliable escape. This is why you see Sing almost exclusively going blink in his pubs with either battlefury or a late linkens after he gets crit. Allows you to X yourself, blink in, and hope for a crit, without putting yourself in much danger. SB is seeing a lot of play on Kunkka (Only really on one team...) in China/qualifiers because they play him more actively and start ganking faster. Again, for initiation/element of surprise. Basically you initiate by spamming that and hoping for crits, than unreliable torrent/boat combo. You can X/torrent/boat and deplete all of your mana, or you can just X, blink, kill 2 supports, and fight 5v3.

Back to Meepo: Gotta agree with you: Blink is too dynamic of an item... Can be used in multiple ways, especially for how cheap it is compared to SB. Blink 2 stronk on Meepo.