Facelifting Void - A short guide to pwnage

Introduction

Hello, This is my first DOTA guide, and I decided to give Faceless Void the opportunity to be my first victim. This will be a fairly short guide, so if your looking for super pro strats, find another guide. However, if you are just starting out playing Faceless Void or even DOTA 2 as a whole, and want to know how to play this beautiful purple thing, I am here to help :). Void is a hard carry, so you should be dominating the game and SUPER fed after the 30 minute mark. I will explain a few of my decisions when I was making the item and skill build/s (above), and how you should be playing throughout the game. So without further to do, here is Void's Facelift (oh puns.......wonderful.).

Items - Yellow
Heroes - Red
Skills - Green

Pros and Cons

Pros -

CRAZY DPS late game
Can 1v1 anybody with enough farm
Large AoE stun
25% chance to stun on auto attack
No useless abilities, amazing skills

Cons -

Very item/farm dependent
Can't do anything by himself early
Squishy
Can lose mana quickly
Doesn't have a face :(


All of these cons (except for the last one) can be overcome when Void is played well. The main thing to focus on when playing him is to farm, which I'll discuss later. Even so, if you die too much, don't get enough farm, or don't get enough gold, you'll have a lot of trouble scaling into late game and becoming a monstrous beast like you should be. This means that if you play him well, you will get fed without a doubt, but if you don't, you will feed the opposing team. There is never an in between of these two outcomes, and it is up to you which way you decide to go..........

Early Game

Starting off you should go to the safe lane (bottom for Radiant, top for Dire) and lane with a ranged support (Jakiro, Venomancer, etc.). This is so #1. You aren't competing for farm and #2. Your fairly safe from ganks from the opposing ganker. Going mid could work, but I honestly don't recommend it unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing. Going to the hard lane is a definite no go, as farming is a lot harder (your lane will probably be pushed back all game) and you are very susceptible to ganks. This will devastate you, and unless you can get your lost farm back later, you will feed.

Your goal early game is amazingly simple - farm. Farm, farm, farm. That is pretty much the only thing you should be doing and will be doing for the first 15 minutes of the game or so. Leave harassing enemies and denying friendly creeps to your lane partner, and only get aggressive if there is a guaranteed kill opportunity in your lane.

You will definitely take a decent amount of damage in lane during this stage. This is normal, and it's the reason you got Tangos and a Healing Salve to start out. Just eat a tree and keep farming if you take some harass. If you get to 100 health with no regen left, the best thing to do is to go back then TP back with a TP Scroll. If you go back to lane and you get harassed again, use your Chronosphere on them and show them who's boss. It won't kill them, but it might be enough to keep them away. Do they keep harassing? Co-ordinate an initiation with you lane partner and get them low enough to push them out of lane. Once they're gone, you can get some free farm.

Mid Game

Mid game you should still be farming like crazy. Your team shouldn't need you for teamfights, as you still do pitiful damage, so you farm. Don't be a douche though, and if your team REALLY needs you to push or defend, TP Scroll in and pwn some noobs. Try not to dive straight in and die though, and initiate smartly. Wait for the perfect moment to strike, Timewalk in and Chronosphere their ***es. Make sure that you don't catch your allies in it though. Afterwards go back to farming your Battle Fury. Once you have a Battle Fury, you can farm like crazy, so once again farming is still the best thing to do at this stage. The reason you need so much farm is to get as many sick items as you can as fast as you can. You could try to gank and get kills, but that can be very risky, which is why farming throughout the mid and early game is your best option. Once you get your Mask of Madness, get ready to do some damage and bash the opposition to bits. As you can tell, last hitting is a critical skill to have when playing Void.

Late Game

By now you should at least have your core items. If you don't then keep farming. If you do, the main things to be doing are pushing with your team, ganking and getting kills, and applying constant pressure to opposition's base. If the opposition was smart, they would have tried to shut you down early and/or win the game as early as possible. If your 35 minutes into the game with all your core items and crazy farm, they have failed to do this, which means you will have an easy time from now on (unless they have a hard carry like Phantom Assassin themselves) killing them all and inevitably winning. If you have no farm at this point in the game, you are practically useless. If this happens, it was either because the enemies knew how to handle you, or you need more practise last hitting, in which case you should do so with bots. A Void with no farm is a Void with no kills, so just stay with your team or farm creeps getting a little too close to your base.

Now is when Void starts to shine. Pushing Nature's Prophet getting on your nerves? Timewalk in and bash your way to glory. Don't like it when the opposition plays safe? Dive them with your Chronosphere, get some help from your team and put your 35% cleave from your Battle Fury to good use. You are now the king of the entire game, so abuse your power as much as you can. Don't go 1v5ing their whole team though, because that is just asking for trouble, and it will result in a kill for them as well as maybe one for you (unless of course they're all 0-20 and your 25-0). Remember that your amazing ultimate has a very large 100 second cooldown, so only use it when it is necessary to. The longer the game drags out, the more likely you will win, so it is fine if that happens. The only exception to this is if your playing against another hard carry like Phantom Assassin or Drow Ranger.

Start Items

Tango
Tango. Not much to say about this decision. This item is a must have starting item for every hero in DOTA 2. It gives you a set of 3 Tangos which heal for 115HP over a 16 second period. This will help you to stay on full health when getting harassed by the enemies.

Healing Salve
A Healing Salve is basically a beefed up Tango. It can be consumed once, and it will give you 400HP back very quickly after a big chunk of damage. The only real downside to this item is that the heal will be interrupted by damage, so stay out of sight when using it.

Quelling Blade
Easier last hitting. You'll want to keep this for a while to farm up your Battle Fury. You will do 32% extra damage to creeps with it, which will make last hitting a cakewalk.

Iron Branch x3
Your only stats to start with. These will give you a small, but helpful +1 to all attributes, and they will also help you farm your Magic Wand a little faster.

Situational Start Items

Stout Shield
This is a very good choice instead of a Quelling Blade, or even with a Quelling Blade when you get into lane. This item will give you a 60% chance to block 20 damage from any hit you take, which means you will take a significantly smaller amount of damage from harass and creeps in lane. Keep in mind that if you decide to get this instead of a Quelling Blade, you will find it harder to last hit. But if you purchase it WITH a Quelling Blade, you will not be able to get your Iron Branches or your Healing Salve to start. This item is also a good idea because it will allow you to get a Poor Man's Shield after your boots without much trouble.

2 Tangos and 1 Iron Branch
If your up against heavy harass, go for this instead of 1 Tango and 3 Iron Branches.

To be continued......

Thanks for reading my Void guide! This is only less than half of the guide done, so expect constant updates every few days. Please vote for this guide, and if you downvote please leave a comment with some CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, as this will help be make the guide 200% better.