Phantom Assassinator

In pubs you can really get away with playing anything solo mid (^^). Wouldn't recommend that in a serious game because you'll just be facing stuff you can't deal with like Queen of Pain-like mids or permanent midlane ganks with 2 supports who want you dead, but seeing the solo mids you face in pubs...the stuff you can get away with you wouldn't believe.

I even played solo offlane PA once just to screw around, sitting back and getting last hits from afar with dagger. I mean, 1200 range and 6-second cooldown, it really makes you want to do that. Got pretty decent farm like about 30 cs in 10 min, didn't feed. Get Ring of Basilius and Clarity, go offlane, sit back and snipe creeps :)
Bounty Hunter PA new meta :P
Troll build, or actually (semi) viable? I let you decide. No matter what it's really fun xD

From experience, I prefer Desolator with Urn of Shadows for healing if you want an early aggressive PA. Or Vlads, generally rushing vlads is bad but on PA it kinda makes sense.
Desolator is really thought as an alternative to Battle Fury if you want early aggression and not farming. But the best part is...deso is actually also an amazing farming item, because it just melts jungle creeps and ancients.

Shadow Blade..you really don't need it, because PA is already an initator. Her biggest strength is that dagger has 1200 range, so she can jump on any hero at 1200 units from her. You can't crit on SB bonus damage, SB has no specific synergy with PA. Escaping smoke ganks? If they know what Smoke of Deceit does they'll probably know what Dust of Appearance does xD

Daedalus : you get the full effect from the bonus damage and damage is exactly what you need. On a normal hero, Daedalus crit increases DPS by 35% On Phantom Assassin, it increases DPS by "only" 29.75% (35*0.85). That's the math, decide what you will.

Could use a more detailed friends and foes section. Foes : anyone with a stun, because PA is way too BKB-dependent and will have a 4-second BKB in no time. Friends : buff placers ( Magnus is my favorite with Empower), any initiator, any harassing support like Lich or Necrophos, and Omniknight for Repel.

Max Blur build basically can be considered now because Stifling Dagger has a 6-second cooldown, so 1 level of Phantom Strike can be enough to play aggressive since they are permaslowed with dagger anyways. Blink only once, keep them slowed, and dive the tower :)

Hamstertamer, you're playing Devil's advocate here by bringing up a different style :) I've never tried it, so I'll have to make another build on it if I find it works. I'm afraid that you may have a hard time mid against nuking heroes, but that's the case in any lane, so I'm becoming a bit more convinced that it might work. In pubs, though, you may be forfeiting the early kills you'd get in the safe lane. Tower diving using Blur sounds fun, for a troll build. Wasn't aware evasion worked on towers. Haha.

Desolator actually sounds pretty amazing on her, I will have to try it. I'm not sure rushing it is a good idea, though, because the buildup takes a while.

EDIT: Oops, realized it's a unique attack modifier, so it won't work with Morbid Mask. If someone else gets Vlad's, you can get it.

I don't really see a scenario in which you'd get Daedelus because of its cost and small benefits; I would just continue piling on attack speed to proc more crits. Hyperstones are cheap.

Yup, Butterfly is not a good item on her. I think I'll have to add a section of items to "get reluctantly."

HoT is a good option, probably, since for real, her weakness is the nukes and stuns. I tried the Cloak -> HoD, and it probably helped, but isn't super effective. Really, it takes some playing smart to avoid getting nuked to death.

Wow, this is awesome! There's some great commentary about Phantom assassin now and I think we're getting closer to the way it should be played.

Xyrus, your comments on the Battle Fury are almost spot-on: the thing about PA is that she is not actually a very good farmer at all, when you consider how hard other heroes can farm. Getting a 4000g item for farming doesn't make any sense, because she's an assassin. She kills heroes. When they're dead, her team can push. This is how it should be played.

Like I said, only get it if the other team has illusions. Period. That said, if they have illusions, you'll own them with it. Meepo is a joke.

I can see how the HotD can be useful, but thank you for noticing the subtlety! We purposely skip it, because there are so much more cost-effective items to use that 900g on, rather than measly armor and a *chance* at killing some extra creeps. Come on, people, we're in low-level pubs, how many people are going to stack creeps that well? (I don't.) Furthermore, that misses the point completely - as mentioned, PA is not farm-hungry, she's hero-killing hungry. The extra 900g is half of what she needs for, say a Hyper Stone. Don't delay that stuff! It'll help you kill heroes, keep the enemies down, and your team up.

Yes, I think Shadow Blade is being a little underrated right now, because the +Damage and +Attack speed can't really just be ignored. I believe it does add to her crit. It's relatively cheap, too - if you can justify getting a Butterfly which only benefits her a little for double the price, how is a Shadow Blade that can save your butt from a 5-man smoke gank not useful?

To sum up, PA is good at killing heros, early, mid, and late game, and that's what she should do. Thank you for your comments! I will be adding to the guide and tweaking the items later today.

I like the concept of PA solo mid, she's definitely not the best mid out there but with the recent buffs I think she's becoming more and more of a mid-game/snowballing carry and less of a farming carry. Poor Man's Shield is amazing to avoid harass, especially with Blur, melee mids are not as bad as they sound. And she can harass pretty well in return. Big issue however is her terrible base damage, not a good thing for a solo mid. The big problem is not that she'll lose the lane (she can win it 1 v 1 actually), but the fact that she'll get ganked with smoke and feed.

PA is obviously still amazing in the very late game, but now she can be played more aggressive in the mid-game and I don't see much point in farming builds on her anymore. She's really not the Anti-Mage-like afk farming carry, and now I think she can be built like Bounty Hunter perfectly fine, as a mid-game carry, or - even - a ganker. Rushing Desolator is currently my favorite build on her, just like Bounty does.

Blur is an amazing skill for tower diving now. With the buff, I tried taking only 1 level of Phantom Strike and maxing Blur just to dive towers, it was pretty neat. Wouldn't recommend it but it's really fun to do.

Butterfly...please don't. Pretty please? When you have 50% evasion, you don't need more evasion. PA is already hard countered by Monkey King Bar, don't push your luck. After the 35-minute mark every enemy right-clicker will have an MKB anyways, otherwise they just can't attack you. PA doesn't need attack speed or agility, she needs damage items, because she has all the attack speed she needs from Phantom Strike. PA's weakness isn't physical damage, she has always been weak to nukes and stuns, and that's what you need to defend against. If you want a defensive item it's Black King Bar, Heart of Tarrasque or Satanic all the way.

If you're ultra-fed, there are much better options than Butterfly anyways. You have Monkey King Bar, you have Abyssal Blade, and honestly I really think Daedalus on PA is underrated as hell (you still get 85% efficiency on this item, the Daedalus crit chance works normally whenever Coup de Grace doesn't proc. You just can't crit on a crit, but otherwise they stack perfectly)

It seems you've been updating the guide, you've explained your Item choices and Skill build well, so you get a +1 from me, but please remove Hood of Defiance 8{(

Also, while you do mention Monkey King Bar, its probably best to add it to the main Item build at the top.

Agreed, Maelstrom is amazing, but that doesn't mean you're a n00b if you build Battle Fury. You just need to make sure that your Team can cover you while you Farm up with it, which, to be fair, isn't very often (unless you got the most badarse Support players known to man).

Please, never do this though. You're essentially Farming an Item so you can Farm another Item so you can Farm some more with the 1st Item...it's as ridiculous to do as it is to say 8((

Phantom Assassin is a powerful Mid-Game Hero, and while Crits scale well into the Late Game, Hexes and True-Strike will be abundant later on, and there'll probably be a method of Crowd Control that goes through BKB, e.g. Abyssal Blade.

If you go Battle Fury + HotD, the game will always go Late (if your Team doesn't win for you) and you'll have very little to contribute since you'll have only just gotten a main Damage Item + BKB.

P.S. I personally don't like HotD at all, not matter which Hero its built on..but then again every game, the other Team always goes for my Ancients...every...time...even if I don't Stack... ._.

Its best to stick to Items which you know work, and most importantly, how they work. If you can't understand how something works, you can never explain it to someone else other than "well, I saw XXX do it, so it must be legit". You seem to have the right attitude towards making a good guide. 8{)

If the Bonus Damage from Shadow Blade is applied to Phantom Strike, then it's Legit 8{) No idea whether that's the case or not though ._.

Agreed, your Evasion will inevitably get countered anyway, and 50% is massive enough, not much point to Butterfly on PA.

When editing the Items you've added should be in a 10 x 2 grid. Simply click on the one you want to remove to remove it.

I'm not sure if that leaves a gap, so I always remove everything to the right of that and re-add it, just in case. 8{(

You have to add Helm of the Dominator, Butterfly, Monkey King Bar. I think it's best to remove Shadow Blade and Hood of Defiance because she has no need of them.

Battle Fury + Helm of the Dominator is the most popular (or used to be) build. You should probably add Helm of the Dominator as a suggestion for stacking ancient creep camps and then later farming it.

PS: you right-click the item to get it off the build

By the way, how do I take items off the build??

Thank you guys for your comments! That means a lot to me.

Krwiozerca, you're right that Battle Fury is overrated and I had the hardest time putting it in core because of its steep price. Maelstrom is indeed amazing and it was really a tossup because I do have Mjollnir and Hyperstone in there.

Thanks for the feedback; I don't have the stamina to play many games, but I watch a lot and I wrote this guide because if you look at other highly rated ones here, they have, for example, Shadow Blade, HotD, and Vlad's in core, plus no tips on how to play PA. I humbly think this guide is the best I've read on here. I will add to the guide based on comments, just wanted to hear what's really needed and keep it to the essentials at first.

Illumination0110, I do apologize for the Shadow Blade. That was a last minute late night decision based on PA's difficulty pushing alone, and pushing is so important in this meta.

Butterfly is OK on PA, and the evasion does stack, but diminishingly. It's hella gold though, and you dont benefit as much from the evasion so I'd only get it as a last item if I have too much farm.

Other lanes probably work with this play style, but you can't get early kills as easily in mid because of the short distance to the tower. In pros I'm sure it'd be hard to do even in safe lane so I can see how mid might work just for farming and levels. Also, yes, then PA can gank.

Regarding maxing Blur earlier, I can't see why you'd need so much more evasion so early, and the early kills and escape given by the blink are invaluable.

Thank you all for the comments, I'm on my phone right now so editing is hard and I'll keep working on it!

That was just what i thought. First dagger, then evasion. Thx timm. Ill search if i can find videos.

PA in midlane has been done the last couple of days by arteezy in the summit lan tournament.
He won the 2 last grand final games with it but both were mostly farmfests.

The day before that he also played her mid and they didnt have an answer to for it. They lacked nuke damage and she just sliced everyone while they were ignoring her in fights becouse she was almost unkillable.

Just be sure to max Blur after dagger.
The evasion is so rediculous now.

You must be thinking of Situations where you Blinked in and Critted a Support with Cleave taking out an entire Team, foolishly clumped together, before they could think to Stun you.

Smarter players won't clump up, and there should always be 2 or 3 that can Stun you, or at least stop you from getting any attacks off somehow, that is what BKB is for

The Strength Gain has nothing to do with it tbh, it's all about being able to fight without getting Locked down.