6.85 Invoker build

This thread is to discuss the way to build Invoker in 6.85, especially quas-exort Invoker, after the nerfs to Euls and the big buffs to his aghs. Is Euls still a viable pickup? Should you rush Aghs because it's just that good? Should you buy some other stuff like Atos?
Of course you still buy stuff like blink, force and situationnaly midas. But what is your first big item, and how do you play especially before you hit level 17 with max Invoke?

I'm just making the thread to not spam other threads with Invoker debates. Discuss :)

Waiting for your thoughs in my build :^)

I've completely stopped buying Midas on Invoker, and have moved on to a hybrid Force Staff into Aghanim's Scepter build. I'll usually go E-R-E-Q-E-Q-R-W-Q-E-E-R-E-E-W-W-R, usually having Aghs by level 13-15. Reason I do this is because the Aghs is so ridiculously good, you want it as soon as possible, but you need some mobility, and just a Blink means you'll have some mana pool issues, and Euls into Blink is too slow. After Aghs, it's all situational, I'll usually upgrade to Travels then.

Items I like as situationals include Blink, Euls, Sheep, Octarine, Skadi, Shivas, Atos. Refresher as an ultra-lategame hyper-situational.

So Tera you're going for the early fighting Invo with the 4 second cooldown Invoke? Yeah I'm with you on that. I really think this 4 second cooldown with only lvl 12 + aghs is insanely strong. You don't need lvl 17 for aghs to pay off. You pick this hero to spam the hell out of Invoke after all, and you can do that as soon as level 12 :)

Force instead of blink? Why not, but won't you miss your Tornado? Blink into tornado is really the reason why you buy blink on invo IMO...especially since you put only 1 in Wex (I put 2). Another thing I don't like about force is quickcast. You need to put everything on quickcast to play invo honestly, and quickcast force is extremely impractical since you can't double tap it (and quickcast blink owns).

Rod of Atos...okay what does it do?

- good synergy with Forge Spirit/ Cold Snap because far better chase with spirits. Also with Alacrity since you can chase with right-clicks. But then blink does that as well, since you can blink on people and summon spirits in their face.

- Helps land Tornado on single targets. But blink does that better.

- Helps land EMP on single targets. That's not bad actually, since it allows you to keep Tornado for your meteor/blast. But then you need to actually skill wex.

- Helps land Ice Wall. OK this one is interesting, like you atos a guy, then turn 90° on the right and cast wall. If the guy can move freely you can't do this. Of course blink does that better but atos is stil pretty fun.

And atos gives great HP and mana. Sure the active isn't as good as blink but it gives awesome cost-efficient stats.
Only downside is, it does nothing to land Sun Strike and maybe it helps a bit land Chaos Meteor/ Deafening Blast but still nowhere close to what cyclone does - people are going to juke you.

Maybe atos is a quas/wex item after all. Like if you play QW against heroes without escape skills and orchid is just bad. Or an item for hybrid Q/W/E.
Still feels a bit too much like a right-clicky item to me. And Q/W is the right-clicky build, Q/E is all about skillshot nukes and pushing.


- Too much magic! It's confusing. Invoker please help me!

- Well I devised this extremely practical system for remembering spells that relies on 3 orbs and an invoke spell so that you have to press 5 buttons to cast every single spell and you need to do that all the time to chain your spells in 3-combos and 4-combos. This way you still need to use a total of 6 keys instead of just having 10 keys (one for each spell) which would require only 1 button press for each. Surely it's the optimal system for every magic user ever.

- Nevermind.

Actually I was thinking if Necronomicon would fit in somewhere. I'm yet to try qe Invoker with an early point in Wex, since I still enjoy playing ratVoker - with 4-0-4-1 by lvl9 for dual Spirits (you need lv4 q and e for them right?) into 4-1-4-3 by lv12 along with Necro Rush then aghs, mostly followed by BoTs with drums in between for early-mid game stats and extra pushing power.

The other build is the old fighty/ganky Invoker with early Euls, Force/Blink and 3-1-5-3 by lvl12, though with the nerf to Euls I too feel going Tera's way with Force staff into Aghs.

I suppose I could go for more Wex in my push build to take advantage of Alacrity, but it feels a bit messy in the landing stage - I can always use Sunstrike to help with ganks or catch fleeing enemies in other lanes, forge spirit (even just one) can help with general harassing, cs-ing and denying runes, cold snap is another decent harassing tool if the enemy mid draws creep aggro, and Alacrity greatly helps in cs-ing and harassing but managing these 4 spells with the early 22 second cd of Invoke feels odd to me. Its probably just that I'm too used to landing with Spirits+Cold snap, and can't really figure out how to throw Alacrity into the mix.

^ Generally you lane in the early game with Alacrity and Sun Strike, this way you secure your last hits and you can assist ganks while sapping XP mid. But this build is a bit greedy and open to ganks so you keep Tornado in mind in case you get ganked mid...or Ghost Walk if you're playing against scrubs who don't buy dust. Forge Spirits are good in lane if you skill Quas to 3 early, but really bad if you max Exort : they scale with quas mainly. I never max exort on invo personally because having damage is useless if you can't land your spells, so if you like skilling early quas you can lane with spirits and sunstrike - this way you can push the mid tower.
Cold Snap is no longer any good in lane since the huge damage nerf and the spirits nerf. It's good if you want to kill when a support is ganking your lane or if you combo it with a low-level meteor, but for harassment, not worth it. Trading hits with spirits or alacrity is enough.

I only really know that 4 quas (along with 4 exort) gives you double spirits, so I'd like to know what taking 3 quas does, I'm probably missing something here.

Agreed. But then, what do you do to land your spells? :3
Ofc there's Euls, one can mess around with Atos, and the good ol Tornado>Meteor>Deafening Blast (a Sun Strike in between if you have aghs) or even spirits+necro book+cold snap which I find rather fun, so yeah.
Problem with the Euls build is that you need a force/blink to really use it, since no one will really let a Euls Invoker walk over to them, and Aghs really needs lvl17 to actually do something. Yes, lv12 is still a 4sec cd which is nice and all, but I believe you still can't perform a tornado>sunstrike>meteor>deaf. blast combo with 4sec Invoke (at least I can't) meaning it takes longer to come online.

Makes your Tornado useable. Makes your Deafening Blast useable. Makes your Ice Wall useable. And gives you 4 points in Quas (so double Forge Spirit) once you get Aghs.

Look at the disable times on tornado, blast and wall. You need a few points in quas to have these skills actually disable. This makes your tornado-meteor-blast actually reliable and not just a "I use max exort meteor and I hit nothing".

For example meteor actually will deal *more* damage with the pushback from blast with quas skilled than from max exort (the pushback increases damage by like 50% on its own).





Tornado! And Ice wall once you get a positionning item and 3 in quas (4 with aghs) to get the max slow.




No, see, that's something that I see a lot, but it's just not true. Aghanim's Scepter does NOT need level 17 to do something. It's actually already amazing at level 12.

At level 17 it allows to do 4-combos. Sure, you can't do 4-combos at level 12, but you still get 4 second cooldown invoke down from 12, and that's already game changing, because in the end it allows you to cast about twice as many spells in a fight. Also, 3 free levels of XP.

A level 12 invoker does his tornado-meteor-blast in a teamfight. WIthout Aghs, he's literally done : his invoke is on cooldown for 10-12 seconds and he has no spells, he's completely useless after that. With aghs, his invoke is on cooldown for only 2 seconds (you cast it at the start of your combo, not at the end), so just after his combo he can jump in and Ice Wall if he has blink. He can clean up with Forge Spirit/ Cold Snap. He has his Sun Strike to snipe people. He can Alacrity his carry. Etc.
Essentially a level 12 invo without aghs is pretty much Lich...he casts a 3-combo and then he's useless. A level 12 invo with aghs can keep spamming the hell out of his arsenal during the teamfight once he has initiated it with his combo.
And for ganking single targets...same. You get that free Ice Wall or Cold Snap only 2 seconds after your initial combo, or that Sun Strike snipe. You can't do the tornado-sunstrike-meteor-blast but you can still use sunstrike as a skillshot or just finish the guy off with spirits or snap.

I guess to each his own way of playing the hero. Personally I hate the Invoke cooldown, lvl 3 invoke + aghs mostly solves that problem already, while level 3 invoke without aghs sucks since it's hardly even better than level 1 invoke :)

@Hamstertamer That explains it pretty nicely :) tbh I didn't realize that 3 quas and 3 exort will give you double spirits with an Aghs :|

Grace to you *in Invoker's voice*

It still kinda leaves my original question open - has anyone else tried ratVoker with early necrobook+BoTs this patch?

I have used it yes, although with mixed results.
But the *you get extra level in each reagent* feature of the aghs is pretty awesome during the 12-13 lvl mark.