Proper Enchantress Guide (under construction)

Introduction

Contrary to common belief that micro-intensive heroes are hard to play, Enchantress is surprisingly easy to pick up. She can easily grab creeps to farm with and once she has a few, gank effectively with her Enchant and Impetus abilities. Her skill set is very complete even without her enchanted creeps as she can use the same skill to slow foes. Enchantress is a force to be reckoned with throughout the entire match as her focus shifts from wild card ganker to glass cannon semi-carry during mid game. Her playstyle is fairly unique; some might even see her as too eccentric.

This guide uses a skill build primarily for the Ganking/Jungle Enchantress - if you're going to lane you might want to reconsider. Enchantress is too squishy and has no means to control a lane besides just taking damage.

Skills

UNTOUCHABLE

Untouchable is a passive skill that slows the attack speed of assailants. It needs a lot of levels to be effective and should only be picked up if most of the enemy team is melee (in which case they are already doomed). It is best to stay away from this skill early on as despite the obvious gain, Enchantress is not a tank and shouldn't be used as one (as she has low HP and poor str gain). What this skill is supposed to combat is right-click heroes as it reduces their Dps by up to 80% when fully maxed.

ENCHANT

Enchant is a skill that allows you to take over a non-hero unit for a limited amount of time. If used on a hero, it acts as a slowing spell which leaves a sound trail. It's arguably the most powerful skill in your arsenal at low levels until you get your ultimate. The first point should always be spent on Enchant.

NATURE'S ATTENDANCE

Nature's Attendance is a heal-over-time ability that is shared with any ally who comes near you, providing excellent supportive qualities. It heals a strong amount of HP, but on the flip side it also costs a lot of mana to use and has a 45 second cooldown. It's best used pre-emptively when tower diving or jumping a powerful enemy as it heals gradually and takes time to become effective.

The first point you spend should always be on Enchant, closely followed by Nature's Attendance. Unlocking skills with Enchantress is a fairly flexible process and is heavily dependent on what you need at the time. If you need stronger slows and durable creeps, favor Enchant. If you are taking too much damage, it would be wise to favor Nature's Attendance.

IMPETUS

Impetus is a ranged projectile that deals Pure Damage which increases the farther away you are from your enemy upon impact. Don't use it on auto-attack early, just spam normally over targets to use your mana pool efficiently. In late game though, your Impetus is the main source of your damage output and can be set on auto-attack under the right circumstances. In conjunction with Aghanim's Scepter the range is boosted (to 750), and so the damage scales accordingly. Because the damage is calculated based on the distance gap upon hitting, you can use Force Staff or Blink to create a wider gap, thus greatly increasing your damage.

A thing to note is that Impetus deals Pure damage, which is probably one of the most unnoticed types of damage in the game. Pure damage is a type of damage which ignores all armor and magic resistance, however it can still be blocked by magic immunity. Also it does not become amplified by magical damage amp, but can target ethereal enemies (excluding orb and auto-attack versions). Pure damage does exactly the amount of damage that appears in the tooltip unless reduced by a specialized ability (which only a handful of heroes posses).

Items

Item introductiofghtsnprtmdads considering she's an intelligence based hero and has the poorest strength gain in the game, Enchanrifbugarfdsg

Starting Items

If nobody else buys an Animal Courier, Enchantress should be the one to do it as she has the ability to jungle naked. This means she can be very efficient support as she doesn't need any starter items, although as the game progresses she becomes more or less item dependent if used as a semi-carry. However, if you do decide to get the courier, quickly save up for the Ring of Basilius.

BASE ITEMS

Arcane Boots are an excellent choice for Enchantress as they grant her increased movement speed as well as replenish mana for everyone around her. If things are going well, acquiring Arcane Boots early would be recommended as using Impetus to gank consumes a lot of mana.

Getting a Mask of Madness is strongly recommended, but not really necessary. It gives you the great ability to auto-spam a deadly volley of Impetus if you have the mana for it. The downside is that if you become the focused target, you are very likely to die due to the increased damage taken combined with your heroine's inherent squishyness. The increased movement speed might help to get away from such sticky situations.

If you feel that getting a more permanent speed boost would be more beneficial, consider picking up a Drum of Endurance as it has a relatively low gold cost in comparison to what the stats offer, although getting a Point booster to assemble your Aghanim's Scepter might be more efficient long-term.

CORE ITEMS

After acquiring your boots, focus on assembling your Aghanim's Scepter piece by piece. It's a very powerful tool as it amplifies your damage output and adds a nice chunk of health and mana for your Impetus and tanking capabilities. It also greatly increases your auto-attack/Impetus range which along with correct positioning means supreme survivability.

Also consider a Mekanism for extra support power. While using it along with your Untouchable and Nature's Attendants, most right-click heroes are ignorable. Some armor may also help if you're facing a heavy carry during late game.

In addition its great passive stats, Force Staff can be used to outmaneuver enemies. It's also a good way to increase your damage by creating a wider gap between your foes when having cast Impetus. It will greatly boost the damage upon impact as Impetus damage is based on your distance gap.

SURPLUS ITEMS

Eul's Scepter is a great offensive purchase at a decent price as it gives you the ability to toggle on auto-attack for Impetus due to its +150% mana regeneration. With some increased move speed along with some extra intelligence, this item gives you the ability to better focus and handle foes by sweeping one up into a tornado, removing them from the fight altogether for a few seconds. It's a recommended item after getting Aghanim's Scepter.

Orchid Malevolence is an extremely apt damage booster at it increases your attack damage and attack speed as well as your mana regeneration. It allows you to toggle on auto-attack for Impetus and spam people down with wicked speed! It raises your intelligence and comes with the ability to silence a foe and deal 25% extra damage to it. Excellent for focusing enemies in teamfights. This is definitely a recommended item, but it comes at a pretty steep price of 4125 gold.

Bloodstomksfsdg

How to Play

Early Game

At the first few levels, you should go to the woods to farm. Use Enchant on beasts to make them tank for you. When you feel confident, use them to go gank a lane. Push their towers with your creeps and use Nature's Attendance to mitigate damage from any tower dives.

Enchantress might be one of the most effective heroes in terms of investment at level one. Think of the gap in power between the hard camp creeps and level one heroes. This gap reduces dramatically as the heroes level up, but at level one Enchantress has a leg up (or four) over her opponents. Enchantress' playstyle means frequently coming out of the jungle with your creep(s), do some ganking and then do some pushing. Ganking should definitely take priority over farming early on.

In general, Centaurs and Trolls are excellent for ganking, Satyrs can harass with with damaging projectiles whereas Wildkin have tornadoes for lane pushing.

At first it will be enough to just grab a Troll and have him net a hero from behind and deal damage. Once the net is over, cast Enchant to slow your enemy. If you grab the pace of it, you may start auto-attacking the target with all your units.

If you grab a Centaur or an Ursa, use them reversely to how you would have used the Troll. Use Enchant to slow the target, shift-queue an attack and focus mainly on creep positioning from then on. Have your creep get ahead of the fleeing enemy and place the stun or slow. Once you have exhausted the skills, just auto-attack or spam impetus to land the kill.

It may sound tricky at first, but it only takes 3-4 games to get used to it. Eventually you will learn to do it with multiple units.

If you can't find any good creeps, simply slow your enemies to assist your lane partner. If your enemies are hiding at the tower, use a Wildkin to tank the tower while lunging yourself at the enemy a couple of times until your creep starts to die.

Besides her early creep armies, her power comes from impetus. Impetus is strongest early on with an advantage. Many carries will either easily take down enchantress early (and will, if she's dishing out huge damage) or get a Black King Bar. This means that level 6-12 or so is your window to dominate with Impetus - later on, it becomes an item dependent skill rather than a fight changing wonder unless you're farmed and stacked.

Beyond

As your creeps become less useful, you on the other hand become more useful yourself. Most of your creeps aren't that good in late game, but Alpha Wolves ARE effective at later stages due to their auras. Wildkin are still viable for pushing, but be sure to keep your attention focus on your heroine at all times. If you haven't had a successful ganking phase, that is where you start farming to catch up and get a Scepter piece by piece. At this stage you are powerful enough to face problems by yourself; you can inflict ****loads of damage from level 11 and beyond using Scepter. With it, you should simply spam Impetus to deal damage. Just don't forget to keep your distance from the enemy as you're still awfully squishy.

When using Impetus, remember that the distance gap upon impact is used to calculate the damage. Therefore it will boost your damage to get away from the enemy while the projectile is still in the air. Use Blink Dagger or Force Staff to do this effectively. Just keep in mind that although the damage roof is roughly 2500 distance, it's still reachable if you're trying.


Also be sure to remember that you can enchant almost any enemy target. Enchant is extremely good against Dark Seers believe it or not. Use it to take over the strongest image from his wall (Dragon Knight, Drow Ranger, any hard right clicker really) and now you have 2 of your strongest Dps heroes destroying the enemy. It's also good against illusion runes and the Manta Style. Enchanting an illusion makes it yours, enchanting an enemy hero slows them. It's a win either way.

With Enchant, you can even take Beast Master's vision out or use his slow against him. You can steal Chaos Knight's illusions thereby reducing his damage output. You can control Chen's buffed creeps before he uses their abilities. You can control Forge Spirits to **** someone's armor and reduce Invoker's Cold Snap procs. You can enchant Necronomicon units too. Under the right circumstances, Enchant can be very powerful.

Micromanaging

If you have ticked the box in settings, hold Ctrl to order all your creeps as well as your Enchantress. Using TAB to toggle between units is a quick and easy way to micromanage. Pressing the F1 key is default for selecting your hero, but can be rebound. Holding shift will stack your orders into a queue.

Creep Combinations:

DARK TROLL WARLORD

Net a hero from behind and start attacking. Once the net is gone, use your Enchant to slow your foe. Spam Impetus and command your units to auto-attack.

CENTAUR KHAN/FURBOLG URSA WARRIOR

Use Enchant to slow your foe, shift-queue an attack and have your creep get ahead of the fleeing enemy to place the stun or slow. Once you have exhausted the skills, simply auto-attack or spam Impetus.

CENTAUR+URSA+TROLL

Have the Troll cast a net, if the net breaks too early to place a stun, use the Ursa first and have the Centaur position ahead to stun. If you manage to land a stun right after the net, Use your Ursa's slow.

SEVERAL CENTAUR+URSA

The easy way is to slow first, position and then place AOEs. If the opportunity arises, place your stun before the slow.

WILDKIN WARCHIEF

Send it to a blind spot near the lane, cast the tornado and have it follow a target. Excellent for pushing. If you want to gank with it, make sure they make contact with the tornado's slow and place your Enchant on them. That will make them slow enough for the tornado to stay on them while you spam Impetus or auto-attacks.

SATYR HELLCALLER

Make a command queue with shift to send it to a lane to cast Shockwave on a target and have it go back to your tower. Repeat to keep the lane harassed while you keep farming. If your enemy has low health, you can go around to Enchant and kill the target with another Shockwave to the face.

Having a Satyr early in the middle lane just doing a couple of Shockwaves may land you a kill without even being there. Same with Wildkin Tornadoes (also known as ******** tornado of lane-****ery). Just remember to cast said tornado from a safe place as it's an easily interrupted channeling skill.

Other less commonly used creeps are:

Alpha Wolf with the skills Critical Strike that has a 20% chance to deal double damage and Packleader's Aura which is an aura of 30% extra damage.

Satyr Trickster with the skill Purge which removes negative buffs from allies, or positive buffs from foes.

Satyr Soulstealer with the skill Mana Burn which burns away some mana and deals damage equal to the amount of mana burnt.

[MISSING] with the skill [MISSING] which [MISSING]

[MISSING] with the skill [MISSING] which [MISSING]

[MISSING] with the skill [MISSING] which [MISSING]

[MISSING] with the skill [MISSING] which [MISSING]

Some creeps like Mud Golems are magic immune, unenchantable and therefore useless.

Summary

In conclusion, Enchantress is a micro-intensive early ganker who towards the end of the game slowly develops into a glass cannon and becomes relatively item dependent. Arcane Boots and Aghanim's Scepter are her staple items, Impetus is her main damage skill which benefits greatly from these items. She's an unpredictable murder heroine.

This guide was compiled and copied from a number of different sources, the most prominent ones being This Reddit Thread and my own experience with her. Remember that what I say is not law, it's merely a suggestion. The point of this guide was to make a decent up-to-date guide as I don't see many of those around. I hope it's well balanced, accurate and pithy enough to your liking.

Don't forget to speak up if you have something to say or add. I gracefully accept any critique and will make sure to remove any potential misinformation.

And please don't forget to rate :)