Lorbid's newbie guide to Phoenix

Introduction

Hello I am Lorbid and my newbie guide welcome to my guide to Phoenix!

As a 'newbie' myself with less than 1000 games under my belt, I find that I love playing this hero. He looks great, has lots of damage potential, and can dominate team fights. However, I see a lot of information out there that is either not true, unrealistic, or confusing, and that's what this guide is here to help with.

Common Roles

Common Roles for Phoenix are...

Baby Sitter Support
Aggressive Lane Support
Offlane Solo
Midlane

Each role have different items and has different responsibilities. Be mindful of these. Look at the build tabs above if you want quick access to those items/skills I recommend.

I'm going to assume you know what each skill does, so I won't go into that detail... however, I will go into detail when I would level each skill.

Baby Sitter Support

In short, it's your job to keep your carry alive in the safelane.

So as a STR hero, here are the STARTING ITEMS I recommend.

STARTING ITEMS

3 Branches, 1 Tango, Wards (buy the set and give 1 to offlane support or mid) the and the recipe for a Headdress.

The recipe for the Headdress will allow you to get the headdress while at the side shop w/o calling the courier.

While baby sitting your carry, make sure you get a ward up asap to prevent ganks and to see vision on the rune. Last thing you want is your carry to get ganked from the jungle because you didn't have vision. 2nd, deny deny harass. Deny the enemy from getting last hits, and harass them.

While babysitting, I usually prefer to start off with Dive over Spirits . Reason: If your carry is being chased, the dive can help slow the enemy, while doing damage, and then position yourself between the attacker and the carry.

Your headdress will also keep you and your carry's HP up as well. Also, if you're low on HP, and you level up, don't be afraid to take an extra level of stats early unless its level 6. If you get your ult, use it if you're low HP so can get back to harassing the enemy.

Once your carry will hits 7 or 8, check with them to see if they'll be ok alone in lane while you gank the enemy or help out other lanes. Sometimes they'll be ok, sometimes they'll need you till 11 so they can get the most farm.

while baby sitting, I recommend getting your brown boots getting an asap. If you and your carry do get a kill, this will help you and your carry stay alive during the aftermath/counter ganks. Also a magic stick is good to have around even if you don't build it into a wand.

Skill Build Recommendation

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Aggressive Lane Support

Your goal is to prevent the other team from denying or last hitting, with looking for opportunities for the kill.

The main difference Skill build between Aggressive Lane Support and Baby Sitter Support is that you'll max out asap. Add 1 level of early sunray if you think you can get early kills.

Your goal is to harass the lane and gank. In this role, you have to plan and expect your partner to hold their own.

Your starting items will stay the same as each of your spells require HP.

Your early items do change.
Headdress, Boots, Ring of Basilius, and Bracer (and Sange if you're getting farm). This will give you some early killing power and survivability.

Your core items also change. You want treads, mek, Veil of Discord, and BKB. This will make you a killing monster. (alternatively if they enemy has a lot of right click power, pick up the Heavens Halberd instead to disarm the target after you dive. Nothing pisses off an Ursa, Blood Seeker, or Viper, if they can't right click attack.)

Here is a combo I try to get once I have my Veil and BKB. Hit an enemy with the Veil active, activate and fire 1 fire spirit, then dive (auto attack them during dive), then BKB, then fire spirits, then sunray, then fire spirits, auto attacking while casting your spells, and if they're still alive after all this, ult. This should not only get you the kill, but prevent any counter ganks as well. (If you need some additional regen, I recommend Perseverance.)

Late game items should be Shiva's and Linkin's. Shiva's will allow you to do a VERY large AOE slow when combined with your dive and Linkin's prevents targeted spells from hitting you.

As long as your enemy doesn't have a long list of silences, You should rack up a lot of kills and assists.

Offlane Solo

Your goal is to stay alive and not feed. Forget last hitting unless you're under your tower. Forget harassing unless it's defensive. More than likely you'll be against 1 or more than has a stun, and if Phoenix is stunned, you're probably dead unless you can dive out quickly afterwards.

Starting items DO change.

STARTING ITEMS

Ring of Protections

Your core will also change as you will be looking for a lot of defensive items.

Magic Wand, Tranquil Boots, Ring of Basilius, will be your early items.

Mek, Helm of Iron Will, and Vitality Orb should be your core along with your early items. Wand you can sell off mid game, if needed, Helm of Iron Will can built into Armlet of Mordiggian (or Veil), and Vitality Booster can build into Heart or Soul Booster. (both will keep you very much alive). I DO NOT RECOMMEND URN FOR THIS ROLE. Null talisman provides a better value and builds into your Veil)

Typically, you'll want to try to keep any kind of fighting at your tower. If you can bait the enemy with auto attacks and run back to tower, you then can use fire spirits on them to slow their right click attacks, and then Slow their escape with dive. However, if you're against a TRI lane, do not do this.

Also, remember non of your spells 'break' Tranquil boots. You can rotate use of Spirits, Dive, and Sun Ray and keep your HP re-generating non-stop.

Midlane

This is where things become 'interesting'.

Depending on the hero you're against, you could be a monster, or feeding. I don't like taking Phoenix against Viper, Invoker, Drow, or Sniper. These heros can and usually will make your life hell mid.

If you're mid, you want to try to rush bottle... however, I usually go with an offlane solo item build.

STARTING ITEMS

Ring of Protections

Midlane, I always level fire spirits first to harass the opponent. Get 1 level of Dive if you are taking harass, but if you do it right, you shouldn't even enter the river unless you're taking a free last hit.

Get your bottle, and I'd recommend getting your Transquils right away. This should allow you to get more last hits and harass the opponent back out of last hitting range.

If you're against Pudge, you need vision on the other side of the river. Make use of your dive and plant a ward mid dive. With any luck, the Pudge player won't recognize your ward placement. If Pudge hooks you and you're still alive after the stun, always Dive if you can out. If you can't dive, use your fire spirits to slow his attacks and get out. Typically, I can out harass Pudge till level 8, at that point his hook is so long it'll be hard to keep vision on him.

Team Work

You need to be aware of your friends / foes.

The best combo for Phoenix is Necro and Warlock. The 3 of you are basically unstoppable, unless the other team completely gets BKBs for all of their heroes.

Why do you say?

A.) Necro nuke is also a heal (which you need).
B.) Necro's ult is also a stun.
C.) Necro's passive helps take the enemy down just a tad and prevents regen from helping as much.
D.) Warlock's Shadow Word can also heal you.
E.) Warlock's Upheaval can slow the enemy. Combine that with your dive, and the enemy won't be getting away any time soon.
F.) Warlock's Ult is also a stun. If you time it right, you can fire spirit, dive, fire spirit, Supernova, then Warlock can Ult on top of you, buying you much needed time, then your ult explodes stunning everyone, then you can fire spirit everyone and dive out of the way.


I also find CM and Bloodseeker to be a great lane partner. Enigma can be a great team fight partner as well if you can time your ult in conjunction with his Blackhole.

FOES

Ogre Magi - His stun can make you a sitting duck.
Silencer - Basically everything he does stops or prevents your spells.
Necro - his Ult can HURT especially if you've just cast sunray.
Keeper of the Light - Mana Leak and just being a long range PITA is what makes so hard to deal with. Counter with BKB.
Sniper - GAWD, his passive stun sucks. Stops your dive, and generally prevents you from landing any of your fire spirits. However, his low HP makes him a great target for a right click show down if you can get him 1v1.
Invoker - A good invoker player who can Tornado, Blast, and Meteor combo will make short work of Phoenix. Keep your distance and Sunray him often to prevent him from getting his combos off.

Summary

In short, Phoenix can kick some serious tail, however he takes some practice with his combos / skills.

Here's a link to the Dota2 guide to be used in game. (it's a tad different than this)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=229292363

Also, feel free to add me on steam and I'll be glad to play some games with my fellow dota players.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/lorbid/