7.22g Ember Spirit build (English)

Introduction

Ember Spirit,
A good laner, teamfighter, split pusher and ganker. At the moment, he is one of the best heroes in the mid lane and my personal favorite so of course Ember is the first candidate for a guide.

In this chapter I will go over the skills of Ember Spirit and give some useful tips/mechanics.

Summary Skills

In dit hoofdstuk ga ik even de skills van Ember Spirit overlopen en enkele handige tips/mechanics meegeven.

---

Searing Chains

---

Q ability

Type: Targets:

Active Enemy Units

Xin unleashes fiery bolas that wrap around nearby enemies, anchoring them in place and dealing damage per second.

---

Notes:

• Root 2 random targets in de radius, gebruik dus wanneer er weinig creeps in de buurt zijn.
• Goed tegen heroes met escape abilities zoals Storm Spirit en Queen of Pain
• Geeft True Sight over enemy heroes
• Target enkel zichtbare targets (dus geen targets in fog of war of inviis targets)

Sleight of Fist

---

W ability

Type: Targets:

Active Enemy Units

Xin dashes around with blazing speed, attacking all enemies in the targeted area and returns to where he was standing after. Deals bonus damage to heroes, but less damage to creeps. Xin is invulnerable for the duration of this skill.

---

Notes:

• On-hit effects werken met op Sleight of Fist attacks. (ex : Battle Fury, Daedalus, Maelstrom...)
• Raakt geen invisible units
• Je bent invulnerable tijdens Sleight of Fist, dat betekent dat je enemy spells zoals Torrent kan dodgen. Let wel, je disjoint geen projectiles => timing is belangrijk.
  Voorbeeld : Queen of Pain gebruikt Shadow Strike. Je kan deze dodgen door net optijd sleight te gebruiken waardoor je net op het moment van impact invulnerable bent. Cast je het te vroeg wordt je alsnog geraakt.
  
• Je kan spells en items gebruiken tijdens Sleight of Fist. (let wel dat je enkel "agressive" items kan gebruiken d.w.z. enkel items op enemies, niet op jezelf, of non target items zoals Mekansm ( Rod of Atos kan, Eul's Scepter of Divinity niet))
  Zo kan je ook Fire Remnant's plaatsen terwijl je in sleight animation zit, waardoor je ook meteen na cast kan terugvallen. gebruik je Activate Fire Remnant dan stop je meteen met Sleight of Fist casten.
• Sleight werkt op units in de fog of war. Waar je eerder Searing Chains niet kon gebruiken op units in FoW, kan dat in combinatie met Sleight of Fist nu wel
  video :
  Play Video

Flame Guard

---

E ability

Type: Targets:

Active Self

Xin surrounds himself with a ring of fire that consumes incoming magic damage, leaving him unharmed. Ends prematurely if the damage block amount is used up before the entire duration is reached.

---

Notes:

• Damage wordt per 0.2 seconden gedealt (6/8/10/12) total damage => 240/480/800/1200 (720/1200/1760/2400 met talent)
• De magic damage die geblockt wordt is VOOR enige reductions
• Can dispelled worden (vb : Fortune's End)
• stackt niet met andere sources van magic damage barriers (vb Pipe of Insight)

Fire Remnant

---

R ability

Type: Targets:

Active Point

Xin charges himself with the energy to create a Fire Remnant. The secondary ability lets you target a location closest to whichever Remnant you want to choose. Xin will then dash out, going through each remnant, and arriving at the selected remnant last. Each Remnant you go through causes it to detonate, dealing damage in the area around it.

---

Notes:

• je krijgt meteen 3 charges wanneer je fire remnant skillt
• fire remnants zijn invulnerable
• elke remnant dat je plaatst krijgt ook een status buff, d.w.z. dat enemies kunnen zien hoeveel remnants je hebt staan en hoe lang die nog blijven.
• fire remnants verplaatsen zich aan 2.5x ember's movement speed. (x5 met Aghanim's Scepter
  Dat wil zeggen dat je remnant niet beweegt wanneer je tegen de rand van Kinetic Field loopt of op het uiterste van Pounce loopt. (want die skills zorgen ervoor dat je 0 movement speed hebt)
  video:
  Play Video

Activate Fire Remnant

---

R ability

Type: Targets:

Active Point

Target the Fire Remnant to arrive at. You dash through all other Fire Remnants and end up at the one you targeted, exploding them for area of effect damage.

---

Notes:

• Maakt bomen kapot in een 200 radius rond ember.
• Xin gaat aan 1300 movespeed tot de remnant, of in 0.4seconden.(de snelste van de twee)
• Ember gaat altijd eerst naar de verste remnant en dan pas naar de dichtbijzijnde remnant van het getargette punt.
• disjoint niet
• de mana kost is altijd hetzelfde, ongeacht hoeveel remnants je hebt staan.
  

Drafting phase

Now that you know how Ember Spirit's skills work you can start thinking about when Ember Spirit is a good pick.
Because Ember is so incredibly strong right now, it will always be a good pick, which means that you should mainly look at when you do NOT pick Ember instead.
That is why I have made a tier list with the most important counters (S being the hardest)

I will give a small explanation as to why each hero is good against Ember.

---

S-TIER



In this tier we find the 2 hardest counters; Viper and Razor . These heroes are known as counters against melee heroes and Ember is certainly no exception here.

- Razor can steal all your damage every time you get close and therefore makes trading a lot harder for Ember. You always want to get close to farm and fight and that is impossible with Razor.

- Viper can throw Nethertoxin on the creepwave, making it difficult for you to push with Flame Guard. Thanks to corrosive skin he can tank your magic damage well and you will take damage every time you harass him with sleight of fist. Later in the game, Viper is also extremely difficult to be killed by Ember.

---

A-TIER


In this tier, like most heroes in this list, we see lane counters again.
That is because Ember is such a strong hero that the best counter makes his lane as difficult as possible. The difference between this tier and the S tier is that you can get quite a lot of farm against these heroes in the first 2-3 levels if you play well. After that it becomes much harder.

- Huskar is always strong against melee heroes because he can deal a lot of damage with Burning Spear, but his range is not that high so it's a bit harder for him against ranged heroes. He also has a lot of regen with Berserker's Blood so you can't harass him out of the lane. The first few levels, Huskar's spear doesn't do much damage and you can tank part of it with Flame Guard.


- Monkey King is always good against melee heroes because of his absurd range and Jingu Mastery . In the first few levels, the damage is not too bad so you can farm the lane fairly well but once monkey has level 2-3 in jingu and buys an Orb of Venom you can do very little in the lane.


- Clinkz is a hero who can deal a huge amount of physical damage with Searing Arrows . The first few waves are not too bad, but due to Ember's low armor you cannot do much in this lane.

---

B-TIER



- Outworld Devourer is also always a great hero against melee heroes because he can harass you much easier with Astral Imprisonment and Arcane Orb . The damage from imprisonment will always remove your Flame Guard, making it difficult to farm. You can still play the first few waves around here but as soon as OD starts to gain levels, he does too much damage.

- Shadow Fiend is good for Ember for the same reason that OD is. Shadow Raze does just enough damage to burst your Flame Guard (if they are the same levels). The first few levels you can outfarm your Shadow Fiend because of his low damage, and if you play really well you can also win the lane.

- Lone Druid and Sniper are very similar in why they counter Ember. Ember just can't get close to either of them. With Lone Druid it is due to the spirit bear and with Sniper due to his extreme range with Take Aim . Should you still come close, they can use Savage Roar and Shrapnel to chase you away and/or gain an easy kill.

---

C-TIER



Here, we come to some heroes who don't counter Ember from the lane.

- Lifestealer can almost never be killed by you because of his Rage ability. The reason I don't put Juggernaut on this is because Jug can't manfight you during his Blade Fury and the fact that you can easily dodge his ultimate.

- Silencer is a good counter due to his ultimate; Global Silence. Running Ember is often difficult because he can easily escape with Fire Remnant. If you can silence it, it's easy to bring him down. The fact that you don't have to get close to silencing makes it an even better skill. The only drawback is that he can buy Eul's Scepter of Divinity or Black King Bar to counter the silence, as long as BKB is used AFTER the silence.

- Night Stalker is also a good hero because of his silence and the good thing about his skill is that it is an AoE and therefore cannot be purged by a Euls.

---

D-TIER



- I doubted for a long time whether or not to put Templar Assassin into this list. That is because Ember and TA actually counter each other. Flame Guard can easily burn through Refraction stacks and you can kill her when she goes in with Meld . On the other hand you have a hero like TA who can deal a lot of physical damage, which is very good against a hero with low armor such as Ember Spirit.
This match up therefore depends on who can best play his hero.

- Skywrath Mage has a good silence with Ancient Seal. He is a tier lower than the other silences because he has to come closer to cast it and it is easy to purge.

Build 1

In the following 3 chapters I will explain the 3 possible skill builds on Ember Spirit. Item builds are used in the "laning stage" chapters.

This is the standard build that I follow most games.
This build is a nice balance between farming and creating space.

First you will skill Flame Guard, the reasoning of which follows in the "laning stage" chapter.

After that you will max Sleight of Fist and pick up a second level in Flame Guard at Level 3.
At level 8, you grab your first level in Searing Chains and continue to max it from there. Finally, max out your Flame Guard.

The reason that your Flame Guard does not get maxed out early is to get those beneficial levels in Searing Chains as quickly as possible so that you can travel around the map much more easily and create space.

---

At Level 10, I always go for the +25 damage.
No matter how you look at it, you get much more out of +25 damage than the extra magic dmg absorption.
You farm faster
Every target of Sleight of Fist gets more damage
Flame guard is not a defensive spell but a farming/offensive tool so it makes no sense to upgrade the least important point of a spell.

---

Nowadays I always go for the extra chain duration at level 15. That extra second lockdown can completely turn a fight/initiation. The extra damage certainly has its advantages such as farming faster and dealing more damage in fights. This choice has more to do with personal playing style than which is really better on paper.

---

Much like Level 10, at Level 20 I always chose the same talent; 10% extra spell amp. This is because it gives a huge boost in damage.
You also have to take into account the fact that when you finally reach level 20, the enemy has also become a lot stronger than in the Early to Mid Game so this talent ensures that Ember Spirit continues to dominate into the Late Game.

The true strike talent gives nothing useful to Ember Spirit because all damage dealt is magical. You can also see from the stats that it has a much lower win rate.

---

Lastly, at level 25 I always go for the -20s charge restore time.
Especially in combination with Aghanim's Scepter, this is a very good talent. Once again, your damage increases a lot and it gives you much more room to play aggressively.

Also the fact that 2 Sleight of Fist charges respond to physical damage, which is not the power of Ember.

Build 2

I also use this build regularly. It is more farm intensive and passive.

You continue to skill Flame Guard first, but this time you go Flame Guard immediately after Sleight of Fist being skilled. Therefore you will only take Searing Chains at level 11.
This means that you focus much more on lanes/jungle farm with your Flame Guard and less on ganks.

Item-wise, the build is pretty much the same except that I switched Drum of Endurance and Veil of Discord. More explanation on this later.

---

At Level 10, I always go for the +25 damage.
No matter how you look at it, you get much more out of +25 damage than the extra magic dmg absorption.

• You farm faster
• Every target of Sleight of Fist gets more damage
• Flame guard is not a defensive spell but a farming/offensive tool so it makes no sense to upgrade the least important point of a spell.

---

With this build, I often go for Veil of Discord instead of Drum of Endurance . I often play Drum because it is cheaper and you can use it better. Because you already play greedier with this build and farm more you can still spend that extra 400 gold on Veil. In combination with Veil, the Flame Guard dps is the better choice.

---

Much like Level 10, at Level 20 I always chose the same talent; 10% extra spell amp. This is because it gives a huge boost in damage.
You also have to take into account the fact that when you finally reach level 20, the enemy has also become a lot stronger than in the Early to Mid Game so this talent ensures that Ember Spirit continues to dominate into the Late Game.

The true strike talent gives nothing useful to Ember Spirit because all damage dealt is magical. You can also see from the stats that it has a much lower win rate.

---

Lastly, at level 25 I always go for the -20s charge restore time.
Especially in combination with Aghanim's Scepter, this is a very good talent. Once again, your damage increases a lot and it gives you much more room to play aggressively.

Also the fact that 2 Sleight of Fist charges respond to physical damage, which is not the power of Ember.

Build 3

This build is for when you are having a bad game. For example, you may have been countered with one of the heroes we discussed earlier (especially against the S and A tier heroes you will usually have to use this build). Here you will focus on winning other lanes, because your lane is too difficult.

---

The talents are the same as for build 1







At Level 10, I always go for the +25 damage.
No matter how you look at it, you get much more out of +25 damage than the extra magic dmg absorption.
You farm faster
Every target of Sleight of Fist gets more damage
Flame guard is not a defensive spell but a farming/offensive tool so it makes no sense to upgrade the least important point of a spell.

---

Nowadays I always go for the extra chain duration at level 15. That extra second lockdown can completely turn a fight/initiation. The extra damage certainly has its advantages such as farming faster and dealing more damage in fights. This choice has more to do with personal playing style than which is really better on paper.

---

Much like Level 10, at Level 20 I always chose the same talent; 10% extra spell amp. This is because it gives a huge boost in damage.
You also have to take into account the fact that when you finally reach level 20, the enemy has also become a lot stronger than in the Early to Mid Game so this talent ensures that Ember Spirit continues to dominate into the Late Game.

The true strike talent gives nothing useful to Ember Spirit because all damage dealt is magical. You can also see from the stats that it has a much lower win rate.

---

Lastly, at level 25 I always go for the -20s charge restore time.
Especially in combination with Aghanim's Scepter, this is a very good talent. Once again, your damage increases a lot and it gives you much more room to play aggressively.

Also the fact that 2 Sleight of Fist charges respond to physical damage, which is not the power of Ember.

Laning phase : First waves

Now that you know which heroes Ember Spirit is good and bad against as well as which builds you can use, you can now start a game. Now we are going to talk about the first few things you will do in a game.

Starting items are the first thing you should focus on, which is why I am going to explain very quickly why you are buying the following items.

You will often see Stout Shield and Quelling Blade on melee cores.
Stout ensures that you can block damage (from right clicks) and quelling ensures that you do extra damage against creeps. These are 2 of the most important things in lane because you can stay in lane longer and you have a higher damage output which makes it more difficult for the enemy to deny their creeps.

You also go for Slippers of Agility . That is because in a recent patch Ember got 1 Base Armor, so the slipper allows you to go from 2 to 3 armor and you will be able to tank more hits. This combined with the fact that you get another 3 damage makes it very useful in lane.

You can also upgrade it to a Wraith Band for even more early game stats.

And then finally you have Iron Branch that you just buy to fill your empty slots, but they also have some advantages.
- They give you +1 stats
- You can plant them around you
- Let shared tango (from your dear support player) heal twice as much.
- If you do not use them you can later upgrade them to a Magic Wand

And you will build these items again every game.

---

Then we can finally start the real game.
90% of the time you skill Flame Guard to start the lane.

Why? Because you can push the first wave with Flame Guard. I’m sure that sounds strange because you must have heard that you should never push the lane so that you can always keep the creeps close to your tower.

What is the reason that you immediately start pushing that lane when you play Ember Spirit?

Often when you play mid Ember you will be confronted by a ranged hero, which means that if you want to farm the creeps you will be hit by the enemy. If you push the lane immediately, they have less time to do that.

But because you push so hard, your creep wave will come under their tower, which means that they cannot hit you again because they have to farm those creeps and if they are to hit you then your creeps will attack them.

The next wave that comes will then push to your tower, allowing you to safely farm under your tower.

Conclusion: By skilling and pushing with Flame Guard first you have 2 waves safely farmed without being hit much. This is very important for Ember because he is not that strong in those first levels.

---

Okay, when do you not go for Flame Guard?

The 3 most common instances are:

- You play against a Queen of Pain

QoP uses Shadow Strike to harass her enemies. You can dodge it with a well-timed Sleight of Fist.

- You play against a melee hero

You do not have to push against melee heroes and you can skill Sleight of Fist to harass or create a range creep last hit. You can also just skill Flame Guard and do the same as always.

- You had the chance to get first blood with Sleight of Fist

The latter will not occur often, but I still take it into consideration.


You normally don't skill your Searing Chains up to level 8 unless you need it for a kill anyway.
Once you have Sleight of Fist you can use this to harass the enemy.


You keep repeating this pattern. (push wave with flame guard => hit enemy with sleight or fist)

Laning stage : Later levels

Now that you have survived the first few levels, you can look at what items you are now going to get following those starting items, and what the plan is after the laning stage.

First you will buy a Healing Salve. You will buy this immediately after the bounty runes are picked up by your team. Because you buy a salve in advance, you can stay in lane longer when you ultimately need it.
After these items, you simply follow one of the item builds for the 3 Ember Builds in this guide.

Bottle ensures that you can continue to push by regenerating your mana and HP.
This way you can also pick up runes so that you can get kills in your lane or another, depending on which level you are or which rune it is.

Wraith Band is a natural build-up from Slippers of Agility and gives you good stats for the early game.

You need boots of speed as standard on every hero.

Magic Wand builds from your Iron Branch and gives you extra survivability in team fights.

---

Then we come to the next set of items and the gameplay.




Every game I go for Phase Boots; they give you armor and extra damage which helps with farming and Sleight of Fist . You can also go for Boots of Travel if you want, so you can focus much more on split pushing but then you will come online later than if you were to buy Phase Boots. If you do decide to go BoTs then I would only build it after the Maelstrom.

Maelstrom is the most important item for Ember. You can farm faster with it, but best of all is how it works with Sleight or Fist . Every creep or hero that you hit during sleight has a chance to proc maelstrom.
You can also upgrade it later to a Mjollnir to better prepare for the late game.

Drum of Endurance is a good item because it gives Ember Spirit extra stats (which he needs the most because he is not very tanky) and movement speed (which makes your Fire Remnant go faster. If you are having a bad game, and thus using build 3, you're best off going for your stat item first (drum/veil) and then Maelstrom.

These are the items I go for in most games (in this order) and then you have the situational mid game items.





Veil of Discord is a very strong item that you can build instead of Drum of Endurance . It gives you the necessary stats and also ensures that you deal even more magical damage.

The trade-off is that you have to spend 400 gold more and using veil costs mana, which ember spirit does not have an abundance of. The choice between drum and veil depends on playing style and what you personally like better. I usually go with build 1 for drum and build 2 for veil, but you can of course choose that yourself.

Boots of Travel depends more on playing style. (I personally prefer Phase Boots)

Eul's Scepter of Divinity is an item that you will sometimes have to buy instead of drum (you can still play drum afterwards if you wish). This item gives you mana, which is always handy on Ember, and movement speed that, as I said before, works with the speed of your Fire Remnant . But the main reason you buy this item is to counter silences.

For example Global Silence or Orchid of Malevolence.

---

Moving onto gameplay then. Once you reach level 6 you can play more actively. Do you get a haste or double damage rune? If so, then you can quickly get a kill in your side lanes.

If you use build 1 you always keep coming back to the lane until you reach level 10. At that point you have everything you need to take over the map.

- You have 2 levels in Searing Chains
- Max level Sleight of Fist (this causes the most damage, especially at this point in the game.
- Damage talent (Which makes your Sleight of Fist even stronger.)
- At this point, you at least have Phase Boots, though hopefully you already have a Javelin for extra damage


Now you can go from lane to lane to get kills and push towers and in between you can farm effectively and efficiently.

If you use build 2, you go ganking much less than the other builds. If you get a good rune you can sometimes gank, or if your team needs a tp rotation. But for the rest you mainly want to focus on farming and bring down that mid tower to get all your mid game items together as quickly as possible, then you can gank and push another lane.

If you use build 3 you must always ensure that you have a teleportation scroll. You must use every moment that you can to gank or tp. You do not necessarily have to wait for a rune because your lane will probably be too difficult to farm so you will be forced to the jungle, which is very inefficient.

Mid game playstyle

Once the laning stage is over you can focus on split pushing and teamfighting.
Ember can do this very well.

This way, you can always place a Fire Remnant under your tower or in another safe place and aggressively push the wave in. From the moment you see an enemy, you can activate your remnant and you are safe again. If you have a good game and the enemies do not have kill potential on you, you do not have to use that remnant immediately, but it is always there as a safety net. That's why you should always keep 1 remnant behind.

Furthermore, you must also ensure that you always have a tp with you if you are going to split push. At this moment in the game, Boots of Travel are extremely strong because you can also tp on creep waves to help your team when you split push.

If you have pushed the waves in properly you can start roaming to find kills as Ember deals so much magical damage in the mid game that most heroes are easy to kill, especially since they don't have any BKBs that early on.
You can also take a tower with your team or use a Smoke of Deceit to take on the enemy with your team.

If you split push with a remnant in a safe place but still want to go for a kill, you can throw 2 remnants on the enemy and then activate the remnant in the safe place. You always go first to the other remnants and only then to the ones that you have activated. That way you can finish a kill and still escape.


Video example of Midone (almost) succesfully pulling off this trick :

Mid to Late game items

Now that you have completed the mid game (hopefully successfully) it is time to think about the next set of items that you can purchase to finish the game.

These are the items that you will usually build next.

Aghanim's Scepter is always a good item for Ember as it gives both a defensive and offensive boost. Because you can use more remnants that go further and faster, you can also use them more aggressively, and thus deal more damage in team fights.
It also gives you a huge boost in mobility as you can easily go from lane to lane with 2 remnants.
On top of that you get extra stats, hp and mana.

Shiva's Guard is another item that helps you both defensively and offensively. You get a lot of armor and you slow the enemy's attack speed.
You also get an AoE "nuke" and a big boost in your mana.


Maelstrom could also be upgraded. It gives you more damage per proc and you can also use it on yourself to get a chance to cast a mjollnir proc every time you are hit by a right click.

Octarine Core is also an item that is defensively and offensively strong. This way your cooldowns are reduced by 25%. You also get spell lifesteal, which is pretty good on a hero with only magic damage, and a lot of mana and hp.

Situational items

Of course these are not all of the items that are good on Ember. Some games will help you build these following situational items. These are not always a good choice but you still have to keep them in mind.

Blink Dagger can be a handy item against heroes that are hard to reach.
For example, against Sniper . With the "new" aghanim's upgrade, this item has become a lot less popular because your remnants can go so much further and faster.

Black King Bar is an item that you don't always need on Ember, you are very mobile and can tank some magic damage. However, sometimes there are just too many disables or silences on the enemy team and you can still build a bkb so that you are sure that you can survive your fight and deal as much damage as possible.

Linken's Sphere is a situational defensive item. Sometimes you need it against Rupture, for example or Orchid of Malevolence. It also gives you a few stats and some extra regen.

Orchid of Malevolence can be a useful item against a hero with a lot of escape.
For example: Storm Spirit or Queen of Pain . Usually your Searing Chains are enough or there are enough stuns on your team.

Desolator is an item that pros sometimes build when they have a bad game. They often built it instead of or before Maelstrom . The minus armor and extra damage works with Sleight of Fist and it is not a very expensive item so you can use it a lot if you are going to gank.

Radiance is an item you can build as a first mid to late game item if you really have a good game with a high GPM and you don't need defensive items. It is a whole lot of magic damage that stacks with your talent, and possibly with Veil.

Aeon Disc is a defensive item that you will sometimes need if you have a problem with being burst down. It ensures that you can always survive a large burst and use a remnant.