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Slippers of AgilitySlippers of Agility
Tango
Healing Salve
Iron Branch
Stout Shield
Poor Man's Shield
Quelling Blade
Boots of Speed
Ring of Aquila
Power Treads
Mask of Madness
Maelstrom
Shadow Blade
Linken's Sphere
Black King Bar
Diffusal Blade
Blink Dagger
Daedalus
Eye of Skadi
Diffusal Blade 2
Monkey King Bar
Manta Style
Silver Edge
Mjollnir
Butterfly
Bloodthorn
Refresher Orb
Boots of Travel 2
Moon Shard
Satanic
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2 | 4 | 9 | 11 |  |
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6 | 12 | 18 |  |
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10 | 15 |
Faceless Void is a melee agility based carry/ offlaner that relies on a passive bash and an aoe control ultimate to dictate the pace of the game and also serves as an initiator in fights throughout the game. He is one of the only heroes that can conceivable be played in the 1 position while also being the teams main teamfight and initiation threats. He is truly a jack of all trades and master of some. His early game is strong due to his high base damage and skill based survivability. In the midgame he is fairly strong due to the teamfight potential of chromosphere and time dilation. In the lategame he is a monster because of the importance of pickoffs and buybacks in the late stages of the game and the ability of chrono to disrupt and destroy the enemies teamfight with key picks.
Skil Build
It is important to understand why we build void the way we do because in Dota builds vary game to game and from matchup to matchup. In most safe lane vs offlane matchups you might want more lvls in bash than in timewalk but the fact that chrono is such a crucial ability and its early timing being a necessity often lends itself to void getting early lvls in timewalk as it allows him to attain a fast lvl 6 timing by playing aggressive in lane and surviving using its damage backtrack mechanic. In most games it would be prudent to max your timewalk and timelock by lvl 9 with timewalk taking precedence over the latter but in some games you might need to vary the build by getting an early lvl of time dilation. This spell is particularly useful against heroes that rely on low cooldown abilities to deal damage or survice. Heroes like bristleback, antimage, queen of pain, etc... struggle to deal with this spell in particular.
It is absolutely essential to max chrono asap and take lvls in it every time you can because of how the cool down scales. The duration increase is decent but its the lowered cool down that will win you games.
Talents
LVL 10
15 attack speed vs 8 strength
15 attack speed scales better at least for Faceless Void because of his passive bash. The faster you attack, the more attacks you can get off and the more damage you can do. While 8 strength is nice, void is an agility hero so all the strength gives you is minor hp regen and 160 hp. In some games it might be worth it to take this talent over the attack speed, specially if you're getting nuked down at the beginning of fights but in most games the attack speed will give you more value.
LVL 15
7 Armor vs 25 Damage
25 damage is a lot, it is equivalent to a demon edge and it says a lot then that I am advocating for the armor talent. This again depends on what enemy you are up against, But at lvl 15 you are firmly in the midgame. This means the enemies physical damage cores will start to come online and some might have the ability to burst you in the period of a stun and in that situation the 7 armor may very well save your life. To equate this to stats, 7 armor is what you would get from 42 agility. Granted you don't get the 42 damage or the attack speed but that armor value is no joke and could easily save you against some enemies. If there are no heavy physical damage cores on the enemy team, feel free to go for the damage but know that attack speed scales better on void due to his passive bash ability.
LVL 20
300 Health vs 120 Gold per Minute
If you are playing as an offlaner and are suffering in the farm department, it might be more prudent to go for the 120 gpm but as a safe laner, your farm farm should be in a good place and you do not need to gpm this late into the game as you will probably have already acquired most of your core items. 300 health on the other hand is equivalent to a massive nuke, which would give you the ability to survive another nuke in a fight and then maximize the hp by timewalking off the damage that you just received.
LVL 25
600 Timewalk Range vs 20% Evasion
This is a hard choice. In most games the enemy will have some lategame physical damage core that will absolutely suffer against you if you have 20% evasion but even so I recommend talking the 600 range bonus on timewalk, for one reason and one reason only. Faceless Void is reliant on his chromosphere and a good chromosphere can change the game in your favor or end it outright. So It is imperative that you give yourself the best chance to land this massive ability and the added range will give you just that. The only hero I would take the evasion against is OD because he is right click reliant hero that does not build mkb.
With the advent of 7.06 dota more than ever has been reshaped to be a game played around the midlane, in this environment the safe lane has been for the most part abandoned to heroes that require minimal help in safely laning in a strict 1 v 1 with enemy offlaners. Heroes like necrophos, venomancer and bloodseeker have seen extensive play in both pubs and the pro scene because they are heroes that don't need a support to babysit them. Void is another such hero. Strong in the early game with his high base dmg and hard to kill because of timewalk essentially erasing nukes. To beat a void in lane the opponent needs to strictly pick void counters such as a disruptor and often has to dedicate 2-3 heroes to the lane to make sure there is kill potential. In such a scenario, your midlaner (who is technically the real position 1) freefarms and wins the game. If they do not bother trying to kill you, faceless void freefarms and rotates at lvl 6 and kills the enemy mid and builds pressure.
In the early laning phase you need items to make sure you can trade effectively with the opponent. An early poor mans shield can help with this as it enables you to trade favorably with your often superior damage, decent armor and good base attack time. Starting with 2 slppers of agility and some regen and buying your pms from the sideshop after picking up the minute 0 bounty rune will put you in a strong position in the lane. Beyond this you must assess the matchup and find a balance between farming and trading regen, with timewalk and bash you will almost always trade favorably. The goal here is to get a fast pair of treads and start building towards the mask of madness. The mask of madness is key on void because chromosphere is one of the few ults in the game that isolates you from having the manfight heavy dps melee cores so the mask of madness's negative armor doesn't hurt as much. Also once you've timewalked in and cast chrono you have no immediate need to cast your time dilation. The item also allows you to generally get around the map quicker and farm faster with the bonus attack speed. Another goal is to get your lvl 6 early and start pressuring the map with 1-2 team mates. I recommend communicating with your supports and asking them to smoke with you and go kill the enemy midlane or safe lane and get some wards down in the enemy jungle. The wards are crucial in the early-midgame.
At this point you have your core early midgame items in treads, mask of madness and optionally a ring of Aquila. You have also used your first chromosphere. Now the goal is to make sure that objectives fall with every use of chromosphere. This depends on your team as well. Depending on what core you had in your midlane, your goals as a void will change because its important to remember you are not the main core in your team. If for example you have a shadow fiend or an ursa, you can look for a pick with chrono while playing in the opponents jungle with the help of the wards your supports placed earlier. It is also important to note that sometimes, your team might have greedier cores that might need a couple more items to fight such as an alchemist or a morphling or an invoker. In this situation its best to group up with the 4 other heroes on the team and look to make space for the one farming. This is best done by utilizing superior vision and lane equilibrium. It is of prime importance that at any point when chrono is on cooldown you have to be pushing out waves. Nothing gives you more information in Dota than a wave that's being pushed in with no one there to farm it.
Your items in the midgame will change depending on the situation but one of these 4 will be necessary after mom. If the game is more passive you should get a maelstrom and take advantage of the downtime and accelerate your farm. If the game is passive but the passivity is not suitable to your team then maybe a shadow blade can enable you to have more pickoff potential. If you need to counter certain heroes such as necrophos/sven/pugna/morphling a diffusal might be necessary as it purges and burns mana. If you need to fight with your team and the enemy is heavy on disable a linkens or a bkb might be what you need.
Once again the key here is to make sure your team is meeting its win condition. If you need to push early its important to win a fight with chrono and then take roshan so you can threaten the tier 2 towers. If the game is headed towards a later trajectory it is important to protect your towers. Specially the mid tier 1 and its also important to contest roshan because chromosphere as a spell is one of the most feared tools around the roshpit and it would be remiss to not utilize it.
A Bkb/linkens is almost always necessary on void as at this point the enemy will try to initiate on you to try to prevent a successful chromosphere. It is imperative you survive this initiation when it comes. It also helps to have buyback secure because a buyback on void with chrono ready can straight up win the game. Your other key items at this stage depend on what you build before. If you have a maelstrom it might be worth it to finish the Mjolnir and make a damage item next since you have the attack speed to back it up. An Mkb is a good choice if the enemy team has solar crest/ butterfly/ radiance. If not, a Daedalus might help you more since the damage output is strictly better than mkb. If you feel the enemy have the potential to burst you it might be more prudent to get a stat item such as an eye of skadi. The skadi choice might be even better if you have committed to the diffusal manta build. Sometimes it might even be prudent to get a blink dagger, if you are finding it hard to initiate the fight without it or if you need it to get to a key target and still have timewalk saved in case something goes awry. If the enemy team is heavy on physical damage but don't have mkb's it might be prudent to pick up a butterfly as it heavily increases your physical damage while also boosting survivability though evasion and decent increase in armor. The active flutter, which gives movement speed and phase ability for a short duration can also come handy later in the game when you might feel the need to hold a refresher in your inventory instead of boots.
The goal should be to end the game in this period depending on what hero was in your midlane. An alchemist for example will be six slotted and handing out aghs at this point and be ready to end the game. A Venomancer might have already hit his peak and be on the decline. It is crucial to identify the timings at which your team is strongest and over more important to push advantages as and when you gain them.
Chrono Use
At this point Facless Void is a beast, this is the point in the game where chrono cooldown is down to 110 seconds. That means if you get a pickoff on a high lvl hero he/she will likely be dead for almost the entire duration of the cooldown. It also means, if you get a multiple hero chrono with your team ready to follow up you most likely get a lane of barracks or at least a few buybacks! This period in the game is facless void's greatest strength but also his greatest weakness. A 2-3 man chrono can mean the game and a missed chrono can mean a set of racks for the enemy team so its important to give yourself the best chance to hit a decent if not amazing chrono. Another important aspect to keep in mind when using your ultimate, is target selecton. Ideally you want to hit 5 people but since we don't live in your dreams, this will likely never happen, on the rare occasion it does, make a video, post to youtube become famous and bathe in that youtube money and post to reddit for instant karma gratification. In case it doesn't, you need to learn how to pick your targets. Top priority is for heroes that can counter the effects of your chrono, these are heroes like invoker with tornado or Omniknight with guardian angel/repel, earthshaker with his plethora of disruptive disables, disruptor with his glimpse and static storm. Eliminating heroes that offer crowd control or saves can often win your team the fights outright. Sometimes its also prudent to initiate on the enmy initiators so they cant counter your initiation. Very rarely is it worth holding chrono to get a massive 3-4 hero ult. It is often most prudent to go for it when you see the opportunity to get 2-3 heroes. You must also be aware of your teams positioning when casting this spell as no doubt the teamfight revolves around it. Having your team in position to followup on chrono will be key in securing kills and further down the line, objectives.
The game should be over or close to that point now, void should have peaked and should hitting like a truck while also providing bkb piercing lockdown. The hero scales well into the ultra late game simply because of chromosphere and bash. With high attack speed scaling Void's timelock can often pemabash enemies and secure kills easily despite this late stage in the game and well position chrono will mean the end of the game.
Situationally it might be prudent to buy a refresher as boots don't need to be in your inventory at the start of the fight because of the 1250 range timewalk from the lvl 25 talent. Another chrono on the other hand and even another bkb might be swing you need in a super late game fight to ensure victory.
A moonshard is also necessary for void because of how attack speed scales on this hero with his passive bash.
A final mention of course goes to boots of travel 2 which in some situations can win game if there is a team mate on your team that can scout while invisible and provide you with good pickoff opportunities while also containing the enemies inside their base for fear of death.
If you have persisted with this guide and gotten to this point I congratulate you and wish you the very best in taking your newfound knowledge to the lands of ranked matchmaking. Now get out there and spread the terror of the Faceless Void, and most importantly good luck and have fun!
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