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22 Votes

Ace's guide to Magnus

June 12, 2013 by GGnet.Ace
Comments: 18    |    Views: 112353    |   


Build 1
Build 2

The Utility magnus

DotA2 Hero: Magnus




Hero Skills

Shockwave

2 3 5 7

Empower

10 12 13 14

Skewer

1 4 8 9

Reverse Polarity

6 11 16

Talents

15 17 18

Introduct Pros/Cons

Magnus is a strength hero and an initiator.Magnus can be very flexible on picking his role, typically he can be anything but support and roamer.

Pros:
High strength/hp gain
Escape Mechanism
Superior to Black King Bars ulti
Great initiation skills
Very good movement speed
Decent Armor


Cons:
Low intelligence/Mana pool/Intelligence gain
Mana dependent.

Best allies

Heroes who have great aoe skills followup for reverse polarity:
Shadow Fiend, Sand King,Disrutpor,Tidehunter,Outworld Devourer, Warlock, Invoker, Queen of Pain, Kunkka, Puck, Dark Seer, Tiny
Special Mention Faceless Void basicly you give this guy a free battle fury with your empower buff.With reverse polarity you set the enemies in one spot for him to cleave them off, who wouldnt love you if you did that for him?
Special Mention #2 Sven .You boost that guy's cleave EVEN MORE .Basicly sven has 65% and you give him 50% more .SO THAT MAKES HIM HIT HARDER AROUND THAN MAIN UNIT ISNT IT ****ING AMAZING ?Also you offering him all enemies at the same spot for a perfect stun.

Worst enemies

Heroes that can burn mana silence or return magnus back can be bad to his laning or generally to his role in the game.
Kunkka, Disruptor, Outworld Destroyer, Nyx Assassin, Silencer
Special Mention to Rubick anything this guy can steal from you is usefull.Worst thing that he can steal is a late game shockwave.

Mangus possible roles and laning

Brief in numbers #2,#3,#1
Magnus can play as a utility hero making items such as Arcane Boots, Blink dagger, Drum of Endurance, Shiva's Guard, Refresher Orb
Following this build he should probably go to hardlane or solo mid.

Or he can be played as stupid right clicker (which imho is pretty bad) making items such as Battle Fury, Mask of Madness, Daedalus, Monkey King Bar, Power Treads, Abyssal Blade
Following this its better to pick the easy lane for yourself and have a support watch your ***.

Note:Competitive players pick the utility role for a reason .However I cant force you to be smart in pubs.In the end its pubs ...

Laning Phase

Go to the offlane (dont steal solo mid from someone he probably needs its more than you).
Again as a general tip but especially in hardlane that you are more endangered DONT SKILL ANYTHING until you see the enemies.If you feel endangered
pick Skewer and save mana for skewering out
.If you dont feel like candidate for death pick Shockwave for some desperate last hits.Farm until your Bottle.Once you have your bottle your life is becoming easier, you might wanna do some bottle crowing as well.
Farm your Arcane Boots or if you are farming too good on the offlane get your blink dagger.

Same are the item goals for the middle lane but without having to be so defensive and in level 6 or even earlier by shockwave spam you can possibly get a kill on enemy midder.You should try to pick up some runes with your bottle if you go mid.

Note:If you are laning on the dire middle you can chop a tree just above roshan and grab your energy booster without having to rotate around.

Consider the laning phase over for you when you get your Arcane Boots .If you manage to get a blink dagger as well that means you have been super successful.

On the ******ed right clicker build:Get boots Ring of Health.
Then Farm until you get your Battle Fury,Have some ally stack some ancients to you (or you can get a Helm of the Dominator to get an ursa to do that for you, later on disassemble the Hotd and sell the helm of Iron will)

Mid Game

If you dont have a Blink Dagger already try farming it or try farming some gold by ganks.
Once you have your blink dagger its time to show your horns to your enemies.
Start moving around the map with smoke of deceit or without.Then try some fishing (fishing=blinking behind the enemy and skewering him out).Fishing is easy kills with kinda low cooldown (30) .If there are many enemies then before skewering them out use reverse polarity.That is basicly how magnus works the entire game as utility.
Consider getting Drum of Endurance (or even mekansm if there is no support hero) and click it once u fetched the enemy team on your allies.

Note:Dont forget to Empower your carry


******ed Right clicker build:After you complete your fury, farm even more and turn your morbid mask into Mask of madness and get ready to fight the enemy team with your cleave.
If you lose the fights you should probably farm even more until you can solo the enemy team.

Late Game

Going into late game you should consider getting Shiva's Guard or Refresher orb or even both.Shivas slow is always great after reverse polarity and a second reverse polarity is always welcome.
Your role doesnt change to mid game.You should catch as many enemies as you can on reverse polarity and bring them to your team.Or Isolate one of the enemy heroes and bring him to your team.
Your 6th item should be made depending on your team's needs.It could be a sheepstick, Black King Bar(if you are getting silenced,an ***ult Cuirass,A heart of tarasque or vladimir's offering for your allied carry.

******ed right clicker build:At this point you are waiting for the perfect opportunity to catch 5 by jumping with skewer and using reverse polarity.You should have farmed Daedalus, Battle Fury, Mask of Madness, Power Treads, Monkey King Bar/ Abyssal Blade so your crits will hurt a lot.However if for some reason the one-man-wombo-combo fails you will probably die because you are a paper with mask of madness on.

Explaining the item choices further

Since you are so mana dependent you should play with arcane boots.
Treads is an alternative choice in case you go carry but I dont recommend that unless its a pub.

Blink dagger is your main tool on ganking.Basicly a more instant setup for reverse polarity compared to Skewer.Also works great for fishing with Skewer,which basicly works like this:you blink ahead and then skewer 1 enemy back to your allies.

Drums of Endurance:Since you cant usually make shivas right after Blink,because it needs too much gold drums are a cheap cost effective item which will give you more mana hp and mobility.Pretty usefull for offering extra As and Ms to your team after reverse polarity so they can chase the enemies to death or finish them up faster.

Vladimir's Offering not a huge item on magnus.To be honest you dont really profit from vladimir yourself,but your allied melee carry does.

Heaven's Halbred: Good survivability item,usefull for shuting down hard right clickers.Situational choice though ,dont let it take your farm away from your cores.

Mekansm: Support item choice on magnus,I ve seen that mostly in chinese games like YYF magnus.Cant really say that I like it.

Black King Bar:Do some enemies escape your reverse polarity ?And chain nuke you and you die ?Then that is the item for you.

Assault Cuirass:Another item that your carry will profit from.
Considered one of the hard luxuries in my opinion.

Scythe Of Vyse:The best item of dota.An extra disable is always welcome.Consider picking it as a 6th item.

Refresher Orb:A very nice item choice for double reverse polarity and double skewer.Careful rushing refresher orb you usually dont have the mana to use double utlimate.Highly recommended to make it after Shivas

Shivas Guard:An extremely good followup for your reverse polarity.
An extremely good mana item for refresher orb as well.

Magnataur players

To be honest the whole idea of an offlane magnus came from Yao of LGD and it worked brilliant so you could seek this guy's replays.Xiao8 plays excellent magnus as well and YYF is a magnus master.
Ferrari 430 played recently as a solo middle magnus but not as impressive as those mentioned above.

In Europe Magnus players are mostly:Scandal,Fata-,S4 (from no tidehunter)

Thanks for your time I could use some feedbak of all kinds.

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