Overview

Ezalor is a powerful support hero that can fend off/make his own large pushes, set up ganks, counter-gank, and aid the carry farm. However, he is also quite capable of single-handedly crippling his own team in the hands of an unskilled player. In this guide, I will show you how to play Ezalor properly as well as utilize correct items/skill builds. I will skip the useless background story and introduction as well as the skill descriptions/details as you can easily find them here on the PD website. However, here's a summary of what skills do:

Illuminate: A channeling nuke. Good for farming and harassing. Gives increasing vision of area. Can be released earlier than the 5 second mark.
Mana Leak: Depletes enemy mana based on distance traveled. If enemy has no mana remaining, slows the enemy.
Chakra Magic: Gives mana to target. Great for mana-dependent lanes.
Spirit Form: Allows you to cast illuminate and have a ghostly spirit channel it for you; you may move and attack freely while channeling illuminate. Also grants Recall (teleports an allied hero to your position) and Blinding Light (knocks back enemies and blinds them for 80% miss).

1. Drafting

Of course, the rest of the guide is useless unless you have picked Ezalor in the first place. While he can be powerful in many lineups, there are also times when he is not needed or even wanted. This part of the guide will help you decide whether or not to choose Ezalor.

Allies

The first thing you should consider are your allies. After all, Ezalor is a support hero, so it's only natural that you'd be thinking of your allies first.

Here are some key questions to ask yourself:
1. Do my allies require lots of mana to simply function and do they lack the means to regenerate/store enough mana?
2. Does our team have Crystal Maiden/Obsidian Destroyer? Will all that mana be overkill?
3. Are there any carries on my team that could benefit from the extra mana?
4. Are there any heroes on my team that would be able to use the mana to obtain complete lane dominance (ie. Nerubian Assassin)?
5. Do we have any glass cannons?
6. Are there any carries with AoEs that will be able to finish a creepwave off after I illuminate?

These five questions are listed in order of descending importance.

Enemies

After considering your allies, the next thing you need to think about are your enemies. Do they counter you? Do you have counters to their counters?

Some key questions to ask yourself about your enemies:
1. Does the enemy team feed off our team having lots of mana?
2. Does the enemy team have lots of physical DPS?
3. Do they rely on good positioning?
4. Do they have fragile, easy-to-gank heroes?

2. Items

Ezalor is an item-independent hero, and as such, should not be farming. His role in a team is support and he should leave the farming to the carries. This is what I mean by crippling your team-are you dumb enough to steal the carry's farm?

At Base
OR

Obviously, you are a support hero. Wards/Chick is YOUR job.

Core


Situational:

Luxury


Situational:

Pub/Just For Fun:

Note that other than Guinsoo/Pipe/Euls, you really should not be getting these (at all) unless your carry is already super-farmed; you should be buying salves (more on that later). At that, if there is another semi-carry, DPS, or tank that still needs farm, buy salves for them. Unless the only items left to obtain are AoE protection and more disables, you should not purchase anything else.

Boots, there really is only one option: Boots of Travel. IAS from Treads is wasted and although the HP can come in handy, you getting BoT allows one other teammate to get another form of boots since you can recall them to the scene.

3. Skills

Lane Dominance Build-Serious Games
1. Chakra Magic
2. Illuminate
3. Chakra Magic
4. Mana Leak
5. Chakra Magic
6. Mana Leak
7. Chakra Magic
8. Mana Leak
9. Mana Leak
10. Spirit Form
11. Spirit Form
12. Illuminate
13. Illuminate
14. Illuminate
15. Stats
16. Spirit Form
17-25: Stats

Justification: In this build, you lane with a mana-heavy nuker. The idea behind this is that with your partner's practically unlimited mana, you will be able to force the enemies to return to their fountain often or die. One level of illuminate is taken early on to deter the enemies from last hitting/denying. Spirit Form is not taken until level 10 because in this build, you are focusing on dominating your lane, not ganking. However, should early pushes occur, feel free to take Spirit Form.

Heavy Harassment/Farm Build-Pubs
1. Illuminate
2. Chakra Magic
3. Illuminate
4. Chakra Magic
5. Illuminate
6. Spirit Form
7. Illuminate
8. Chakra Magic
9. Chakra Magic
10. Mana Leak
11. Spirit Form
12. Mana Leak
13. Mana Leak
14. Mana Leak
15. Stats
16. Spirit Form
17-25: Stats

Justification: This build focuses on maxing out Illuminate first and Chakra Magic second. Your main usage of Illuminate here is to damage your opponents. Hide behind a tree, start channeling. The reason this is a pub build is that skilled players will undoubtedly get a Stick/Wand, rendering your Illuminate practically useless for harassment purposes. Spirit Form at 6 to recall an ally to your lane for easier ganking.

The other side to this build is to farm for your carry. That is, lane with another item-independent hero and use your Illuminate to farm. You are not taking farm away from your carry because you are not in the same lane. What you do with your gold (after buying a few of your own basic items, of course) is to purchase Healing Salves and allow the carry to sell them. Every 2 creeps you kill is equivalent to your carry killing one. Ezalor has amazing farm speed, so that is a HUGE boost to the carry's gold.

4. Actual Gameplay

You should already know basics about playing the game; scout runes, place wards, block creeps, etc. For warding, refer to Heldarion's Total Warding. Aside from that, you may also wish to read the Advancing Your Lane Control series in order to further your gaming. This next section will talk about specific gameplay elements of Ezalor.

4. a) Illuminate

Now, this is a VERY important skill to use properly. Illuminate is great for deterring your enemies from last hitting/denying, harassing your enemies, even nuking them. At max level, it deals 500 damage (375 reduced) to all enemies in the AoE, making it a very potent nuke when used correctly. It is stronger than Queen of Pain's level 2 ultimate; the only downside is that it has a channeling time. Fortunately, with correct usage of the skill, channeling is no problem. Now, I am not going to cover every spot where you can illuminate effectively, but I will highlight some CONDITIONS for spots where an illuminate will have great use.

Cover

This is a technique you should be using often-use your illuminate in plain sight, aimed at the creeps, to cover both your allied hero as well as the creeps. Enemy melee cannot go up to the creeps, otherwise, they will receive a substantial amount of damage. Note that if possible, you should try to aim it so that it will NOT hit the creeps yet still hit any melee trying to last hit/deny.

Hidden

This is an example of a spot where you can hide your illuminate. With proper timing, you can hit enemy heroes with a fully charged illuminate, causing huge damage.

Rune

Enemy coming for a rune while you happen to be in the forest? Charge up an illuminate and hope you weren't too early. Chances are, the enemy has already taken a chunk of damage and is coming to heal, netting a kill, or it will deal that chunk of damage and subsequently use up the heal they later would have used laning.

Neutral Creeping

There are several spots where you can hit two camps with one illuminate. Use this to your advantage if you are neutral creeping.

Vision

Remember, your Illuminate gives increasing vision as it is channeled. Therefore, if you need to see up or over a cliff for your friendly Vengeful, use it!

Spots to Note


If you click on unpathable terrain, your illuminate will not go where you clicked-it will go to the nearest path it can. HOWEVER: it can travel over unpathable terrain once released. Because of that, you do not need to look for spots like these, but it may still be useful (for example, fooling your opponents as to where you are).


Your illuminate gives vision of Roshan, so use it to scout/damage the enemy team that is Roshing. Note that it does pathetically little damage to Roshan himself though.

4. b) Mana Leak

Mana Leak is an INCREDIBLY useful skill. Sadly, in pub games, it just isn't used often. Even at level 1, it removes an impressive 3.5% mana per 100 units moved. An average hero with 300 movespeed loses 10.5% mana per second. The slow is often overlooked as well; not only do enemies lose mana while running/chasing, they get slowed if they run out of mana. Suffice it to say that someone like Weaver, whom moves at 522 movespeed, will lose a LOT of mana-2088 distance traveled means 73.08% of the mana pool lost in just those four seconds of Shukuchi with only level 1 Mana Leak.

Usage: Aim for enemy hero. Click. 'Nuff said.
As for details into how to use the skill, it's still fairly simple. For example, if your ally is low on health after being nuked and the enemy is tower diving, cast Mana Leak and the enemy will either have to stop moving or lose mana. Either way, by the time the cooldown of the nuke has finished, they cannot use it on your ally to finish him off. Same for chasing-the enemy has to keep moving and losing mana or stay there and be hit.

4. c) Chakra Magic

Self explanatory. Use on someone that needs mana. Order of priority should be AoE Disablers>AoE Nukers>Disablers>You>Everyone Else. Note that an allied Tidehunter with a Magic Wand can go straight for Refresher and have enough mana to a double-ult if you Chakra him right after he ults.

4. d) Spirit Form

Use when you need the skills it grants.

Recall: Use when you need a hero at the scene A.S.A.P. and you are not near any towers/creeps. Alternatively, can be used to recall an ally that is about to be ganked.

Blinding Light: Use when you need to disrupt the enemy positions, or when you need the blind (ie. against Ursa), or to stop channeling skills, or to push an enemy into the fray. Note that if you are trying to use Blinding Light for the position movement, you should know exactly where it will push. After all, you don't want to push someone OUT of a Black Hole.