"Stay and Amuse Me!" DiTTo's quick and simple guide to Puck

Gather round! An intro to Puck.

Ahh, Puck. By far, one of the most fun heroes to play with. This is due to his elusiveness, mobility, and ability to make big plays with good coordination of skills. You know the feeling of hitting a global spell, like sunstrike or rocketflare? Well, there's also the ability to dodge almost any spell, which gives a feeling just as good when executed well. The teamfight and initiation potential with puck is very high as well, giving the ability to quickly switch momentum with just one well placed ultimate skill, synchronized with all the other skills of the Faerie Dragon. Puck is often a competitive pick, with famous players such as Dendi and S4 often playing the mischievous character. Puck is also the reason why The Alliance won the biggest tournament in E-sports history, The International 3. Because of clutch plays by S4 with dream coil, Alliance was able to hold on for the victory. With this simple guide, you will learn how to master puck, with no regrets.

Pros And Cons

Pros * Very hard to kill. Skills like Phase Shift , Illusory Orb and its Ethereal Jaunt make puck very hard to target. *Great team fight potential: Dream Coil can deal damage and make enemies stay in one spot, which lets you do many more damaging skills in coordination with your teammates. *An Ideal hero for ganks. *Makes great use of rune control when mid with a bottle.

Cons *Below-Average Intelligence gain compared to other Int heroes. *Very Squishy *Skills require good timing *Easy to get carried away with *Is a very susceptible target to silences because Puck relies heavily on skills.

Skills

Illusory Orb

Illusory Orb is a strong skill which gives Puck not only the ability to damage an opponent, but also to move in for a killer combo. It is also good for early game harrassment and avoiding enemies. Puck shoots out an orb that travels a distance of 1800. This allows puck to use an alternate skill Ethereal Jaunt to teleport to the orb, moving puck closer to his target. What you do after this, is more or less Puck's bread and butter. So here's a numbered guide on what you should do when going in for the kill.

1) Use your Illusory Orb to damage and get closer to your enemies

2) Silence with Waning Rift to deal damage and to throw out a silence which prevents escape skills like Blink or those that may burst down puck quickly or silence him like Last Word or Doom

3) Throw out Puck's ultimate skill Dream Coil and prevent enemies from running away while also doing damage.

4) Let teammates/auto-attacks do the rest.

Waning Rift

Waning Rift is a great skill that can be used for escaping because it silences opponents, or teamfights/hunting. It can both damage and silence opponents, making it a very useful skill. For the combo the should be used with other skills, please refer to the skill above.

Phase Shift

Phase Shift is possibly the most irritating spell in the game. Just when opponents think that they can finish you off, you dodge it. Phase Shift is great for avoiding spells that have cast time or the ones that you can see from a distance like Sun Strike Shockwave Toss Homing Missiles and many more. And with practice, you'll even be able to dodge skills like Meat Hook and Laguna Blade. The combo for escaping with Phase Shift is here:

1) Use your Illusory Orb anywhere away from the enemy killing you

2) Phase Shift (spam it if you need to) to prevent further damage being done to you

3) Simply Ethereal Jaunt to run away.

also, you'll wanna spam this skill, because it has no mana cost. Even for just auto-attacks or tower hits.

Dream Coil

Dream Coil is Puck's most powerful spell. It's ability to hold enemies in one place and deal damage at the same time is very strong. It's great for initiation and can lead to other big skills like Black Hole because of its ability to bunch enemies up in one place.

Items and Tips

For some starting items, I chose the immensely unpopular Circlet, as well as one Iron Branch. While this gives +3 to all attributes with a cost of 235 gold and can be the same as 3 [iron branch]] for the cost of only 150 gold, it does do one thing: Give you a head start on your Bracer. This is important because a Bracer gives you the strength you need with Puck, because the faerie dragon is a very squishy hero. Of course, we cannot forget one set of Tango. Now, this leaves 285 gold left. What do we do with it? Nothing. We save it so that we can get an early start on our Bottle.

When you finally get your Bottle, which shouldn't take too long, you should continuously harass your opposing mid hero and keep restoring mana, until you hit level 6. That is when you should begin to roam and start ganking vulnerable lanes. It would be ideal to have wards as a puck-mid, because puck makes great use of runes, especially haste. Successful ganking should lead to your boots and a Blink Dagger, preferably before the 16th minute (below 20 mins is alright). Then, you upgrade to Power Treads. These items are really what's essential for puck. Next, we go to the situational/luxury list.

Now, there are many situational/luxury items for puck, but my favorites are dagon and Eul's Scepter of Divinity. Dagon because puck has great nuking potential. Although unless the game is a sure win or you really need nuking, i'd only go one or two levels through the dagon. Eul's Scepter of Divinity is great for extra mobility, which puck already has so much of. For the rest, they all depend on the situation. A Bloodstone is a safe bet, while Linken's Sphere can be very useful against spell casters. Shiva's Guard is good for teamfight, and Orchid Malevolence and Scythe of Vyse are great for focusing on one enemy target, perhaps a teamfight specialist or a hardcarry.

Thank You!

Thanks for reading everyone! Feel free to comment. :)