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Tango
Ring of Protection
Healing Salve
Iron BranchIron BranchIron Branch
Tranquil Boots
Soul Ring
Magic Wand
Tranquil Boots
Soul Ring
Drum of Endurance
Diffusal Blade
Magic Wand
Heart of Tarrasque
Daedalus
Manta Style
Power Treads
Butterfly
Boots of Travel
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9 | 12 | 13 | 14 |  |
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10 | 11 | 16 |  |
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4 | 6 | 8 | 15 | 17 | 18 |
Phantom Lancer is a very strong hard carry who scales up incredibly late game. Ridiculous 4.2agi gain and loads of illusions makes him have massive lategame damage output before even considering items items. Further, he can build up a small army of illusions and perform monstrous split pushes at no risk to the lancer himself.
Early game is very situational on pl. Doppel at level 1 is generally the safest option, but in an easy lane spirit lance or even stats might be more useful. Getting at least a point in doppel by level 6 is generally a good idea though for escapes/surprise ganks even in the safest of lanes.
Spirit lance scales very nicely with an extra 50 magic damage, 10% slow, and 2s illusion duration per level hence is maxed first.
On the other hand, doppelwalk scales very poorly. Every level reduces mana cost by 30 and cooldown by 5s. In my opinion, the cooldown reduction is inconsequential, and the mana cost reduction doesn't really matter that much if you build a soul ring/drum. Additionally, each stats level gives an additional 26 mana and 0.8 mana per second regen while helping PL tank up more and do more damage, which is why I prefer to get stats and max out doppel last. The spare illusion can help with building an army through juxtapose/phantom edge, but thats much later on.
Delaying juxtapose/phantom edge is a result of their scaling with attack speed. Without a lot of agility, you are not going to be spawning illusions very fast, so it makes sense to wait and get other things. Further, illusions at lower levels hit like kittens and are about as tanky as paper mache, so they don't really do much (useful though if you intend to mostly jungle pl, but that's a fringe tactic).
His major weakness is often his somewhat fragile early game and weak laning presence. His skill set is actually really good for ganking+laning with spirit lance harass/ganks and doppelwalk escapes, but he suffers from not having enough mana to make use of it. A common solution to this is to pair him with a KotL to allow him to spam spirit lance for harass. Also, as with most agility hard carries, his health is also pretty low.
Tranqs gives PL some needed sustain in lane as well as making him capable of hopping into the jungle when the lane is pushed (the highest ms bonus outside of travels is also always nice). He also gains the ability to farm the jungle reasonably well with tranqs and some early levels of juxtapose.
Soul ring nicely solves PL's mana problems and turns him into a powerful ganker if you choose that path, as well as making sure mana is always available for doppelwak to escape.
Illusions don't benefit from many items, but raw stats do always carry over, and drum is one of the most cost effective raw stats items in the game (the aura/active is also nice for the team and the MS boost does affect your illusions as well). Diffusal gives a significant AS bonus from the agility, which is nice for building an illusion army plus the obvious mana burn and purge (offensive or defensive for smoke) benefits. Once drum and diffusal are up, PL becomes very strong in team skirmishes while maintaining his powerful ganking and split pushing presences.
Heart is an excellent item on pl to make him and his illusions a lot tankier. It's really more of a lategame core item than anything else, there are very few situations where getting something else makes more sense. Butterfly provides a lot of agility and the evasion transfers to your illusions, so it also helps tank up late game if you're against a heavy-right click lineup (ie Naix). Other lategame item choices are largely situational and either give pl more stats, more mobility, more raw damage output, or boost his ability to make an army of lancers in some way.
This is a midgame oriented build, but PL's skill set and agi gain let him scale well into the late game regardless of item choice. Radiance PL would farm better for the late game, but this build lets you be a strong teamfight and ganking presence from ~level 7 on. The midgame oriented items are also all really cheap, so if you find yourself really late, it's not that inefficient to sell off an 800gold soul ring or a 1750gold drum when its no longer worth the item slot.
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