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4 Votes

Over 200 hours of Crystal Maiden, summarized for you!

February 5, 2016 by 17wuet1
Comments: 14    |    Views: 35620    |   


Build 1
Build 2
Build 3

Roaming Support

DotA2 Hero: Crystal Maiden





Overview

Crystal Maiden is typically played as a support hero with the ability to rapidly find early game farm. Because of her ability to find farm very quickly, Crystal Maiden is often played as an early game roamer or a jungle support who zones the off lane, making it easier for the carry to farm.

Do not be tricked by Crystal Maiden`s straight forward abilities, although it may seem that Crystal Maiden is a very easy hero to play, she is actually a hero who requires a lot of skill in roaming, finding farm early game quickly, zoning the off lane, pulling and early game combat.

This guide is intended for people who are comfortable with the game and will teach you how to properly play Crystal Maiden.

Pros / Cons


The Pros:

    - Good early game damage and disable
    - Good transition into a team fight hero
    - The ability to find farm as a support
    - Help the team with global mana regeneration aura



The Cons:
    - Squishy (trust me when I say this)
    - Lacks an escape
    - Weak against drafts with many channel-interrupting spells
    - Has HUGE mana problems (even with the arcane aura)

The importance of Early Game

This chapter will be dedicated towards telling you how important it is to not mess up the early game. This will especially apply for you guide readers who wish to play Crystal Maiden, because the early game is Crystal Maiden`s prime time, if you do not utilize this early game and decide to be lazy by going to the safe lane and just upgrade your aura and throw a few frostebites once in a while then you sir/madam, are really ****ing up.

In lower MMR games, you will find that the results of the game are usually decided within the first 10 to 20 minutes, being good at playing a support in general can heavily dictate on whether you will win the late game or not. So I really recommend that you take the time to read on with my guide so you do not continue messing up your CM early games.

Early Jungle / Pre 02:00 farm

As a Crystal Maiden, you should always be hitting the level 2 mark by 1:10, by either jungle or farming in the mid lane. Playing on side lanes as Crystal Maiden is viable, however, note that playing on a side lane as Crystal Maiden is a real waste of her ability to get early game farm.

As a Crystal Maiden, you should almost ALWAYS be upgrading frostbite first, unless if you need to upgrade nova to save that noob team mate who is about to die to four people at the rune spot. Frostbite allows you to get level two very rapidly in the jungle, doing 1,000 magic damage to neutral creeps over 10 seconds.

If you do wish to jungle, you should always start off at a large camp. Make the creeps follow you by right clicking the large creep, run off and let the creeps follow you, and then frostbite the largest creep in the camp, right click it a few times and then it will die, giving you 3/4 of the experience you will need for level 2 and some nice gold. Make you are killing the creep before the 0:50 mark, so that you can stack the camp at 0:54, by stacking the camp, you are adding one more large creep into the camp at the 01:00 mark, pull the creeps again and kill the largest creep. This will give you your level two. Now at this point, you can decide whether you want to transition into a roaming support, where you upgrade Crystal Nova, or transition into a "Zone the Off lane" jungle support, in which case you upgrade Arcane Aura.

Farming via Pulling the Jungle

As Crystal Maiden, or any support hero in general, it is important that you know how to pull camps. You should know how to do this because it helps your carry farm closer to your tower and it also gives you good experience!

If you picked the "Zone the Off lane" support build, you MUST learn how to do this! Less so if you decided to go for the roaming support build.

This is a video by Purge showing how to pull through/connect pull on the Radiant Side.
Purge`s Video on Connect Pull 9\6.86

It is important to make sure that you either stack and pull or connect pull to make sure that all the creeps die and you get a good amount of experience, a single pull is not very good because the creeps on your side do not end up dying and it will create a big creep wave which will mess up your carry`s lane.

Roaming Crystal Maiden

Crystal Maiden is a very potent roaming support due to being able to have two disables which do damage at level two. If you picked the Roaming Support build that I provided at the top of the page, then you should pay close attention to this chapter.

After getting the early farm and getting a fast level by or before the 01:00 mark, as a roaming support, make sure to use your 2nd level on Crystal Nova, afterwards, you should use your smoke of deceit to gank either the mid lane or the safe lane. Ganking the mid lane gives your mid laner a higher chance to win the lane while ganking the safe lane assures that your carry can farm faster. When you gank, use your Frostbite first to lock the enemy in place, and as the Frostbite wears off, throw a Crystal Nova at the enemy to slow him/her as s/he tries to escape.

Whether your gank works or not, you should always try to get level 3 after the gank, which will give you another level which you should use on Arcane Aura. Allowing you to stay on the map longer to continue ganking and ganking.

Town Teleportation

As a Crystal Maiden, it is important to make sure that you always have a tp scroll so that you can teleport to provide back up for people who are in trouble or have an emergency. It is also okay to teleport to help gank faster.

I would also like to make it clear that it is PERFECTLY fine to return to fountain if you feel that you are too low on health/mana.

Zoning the Offlane

If you decided to go for the "Zone the Off lane" jungle support then I recommend that you continue on reading with this chapter.

There honestly is not much to say about this style of Crystal Maiden, you go and jungle a large creep or two, connect pull a few camps and then frost bite the enemy off lane while you try to make it easier for your carry to farm. Your frost bite does 150 magic damage and roots enemies for 1.5 seconds!! And if you add a few right clicks, you are talking about almost 200 damage every time you cast frostbite on the enemy off lane, and since you have a level of Arcane Aura, you can pretty much spam this ability! This is good harass and may open up an opportunity for a gank. As soon as you hit level 3, you should get another level of arcane aura, and by level 4, you should have leveled up Crystal Nova, ending up with a skill set of 1 - 1 - 2 - 0.

Freezing Field

I would like to dedicate one chapter to talk about your ultimate, Freezing Field. It is a very powerful ultimate that does a massive amount of area damage.

Many pro players like to skip this ability at level 6, however, I personally like to have an extra nuke at level 6. In the early game, it is alright to use this ability to do little amounts of damage.

During the mid to late game, getting a blink dagger will really help you to position for some good ultimates that may change the tides of a team fight. Unless if you have a Black King Bar, you should NEVER EVER initiate, initiating with your ultimate is a complete waste because the enemies will simply stun you and that will be the end of your channeling. Patience is key when it comes to using your ultimate, you should always look for all of their stuns being used before you come out, even if it means that one or two of your team mates are going to die.

To make your ultimate do more damage, an Aghanims Scepter and Aether Lens can be bought. And to make sure that the enemy does not stun you as soon as you start channeling, you can buy a BKB or a glimmer cape. However, do note that the Glimmer Cape costs a lot of mana to activate, and you may not be able to use all of your spells.

Notes to end the Guide

That is all you really need to know to play Crystal Maiden. I understand that a lot of this is based off the early game, but the late game is easy, you just need to make sure that you understand how to play the early game, because it is at this time where Crystal Maiden is the strongest, yet no one utilizes this part of the game as a Crystal Maiden to its fill extent.

Things worth knowing:

    - Never ever gank alone, go with someone who does a good deal of damage
    - You should always be using your ultimate during the early game

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