Introduction
This guide is meant to be a Ward-mancer guide. I know most people are agreeable to the conventional Roaming-ganking and ward***** playstyle but I for one, am totally against it. For good reasons, it doesn't always work. It relies too heavily on strong teamwork and skill of your allies to make the ganks successful. There is no guarantee you get all 4 allies who knows how to capitalize on early game ganks or vision from observer wards. In short, a Max. Venomous Gale/Sting Veno roaming around with Boots, Wand, Bottle and wards will fail most of the time. As you accumulate mistakes over and over from failed ganks, your hero will remain too underleveled to be of any use during late game. There are more arguments to it, but I'm keeping this short. Afterall, I'm not the sort of person who enjoys arguing in Dota Chat or Strategy. Because... .
Nevermind.


Skills: Venomancer Hero Page
I suggest looking up into that link for details if you are unsure.

Skill Build:
1. Poison Sting (or Gale)
2. Plague Ward
3. Plague Ward
4. Venomous Gale (or Sting)
5. Plague Ward
6. Poison Nova
7. Plague Ward

*Later on, max Venomous Gale first the Sting. Take Nova at 11/16 and stats once all skills have been taken.
*Depending on lane, you can take Gale first instead of sting. In situations where you have an ally who can make use of the slow.

Venomous Gale -- You won't be maxing this that early since Wards comes first. Even at level one with 90 mana cost, you will have insufficient mana for a Nova + Gale combo at 6. Do take note of that. You will need a mana fix either through Point Booster or Arcane Ring later on.

Poison Sting -- This is excellent for harassment at level 1. A hit will slow enemy for 10% ms. The DoT is equivalent to a 35 bonus dmg (5/sec for 7 sec). Other than Gale, Sting too does lethal dmg. This will be helpful to grab the kill from Poison Nova since it leaves heroes at 1hp.

Plague Ward -- The primary function is to push towers. It does piercing dmg, which is 50% extra dmg against lane creeps. Creep kills is no issue. Double up as observer wards, and at level 2 it has 200hp. Quite tanky (requires 4-5 hits) and unkillable from AoE nukes. Think Rhasta Wards.

Poison Nova -- Good during pushes/defenses where opponents tend to bunch up. Your main goal is to get Afganims asap for the dmg upgrade and more importantly, the reduced cooldown (from 100sec to 60sec) at level 3. Needless to say, you must not die too early in teamfights or you will not get bonus hero kills XP and thus remain underleveled. (Which is common if you go by the roamer/ganker playstyle)


1. Game Start
Neither is preferred. Solo or Dual Lane is equally good.

Solo Mid -- Get a bottle. Since you have no ally, you will almost always level up sting first. Start spamming wards only at level 2 since level 1 wards dies in 1-2 hits. Focus on lasthitting and constantly double-click a ward to group them together and assign a hotkey. You don't need to micro them to focus fire creeps, only do that against heroes if he comes too close in range. It is effective harassment against most solo heroes.
Plant a ward in advance on the river near the top rune for sight. If the rune doesn't appear there, it has to be at bottom. So react accordingly. Your goal is to get to level 7 quickly and destroy the enemy tower. If you face quite a resistance, call someone to replace you at mid while you push/gank other lanes.



Dual Lane (side) -- Get a RoB + 1x tango/flask. Get Gale if you want. Again, spam wards only at 3. Keep the RoB aura on if you intend to push, which in fact you should. Now some pros are gonna come here and say RoB will make the wave push in too far and you will get ganked.
LooooooL. No.
Plant some wards in the jungle for vision of incoming heroes. RoB on creeps not only makes them push better, they are much tougher to be last-hit as well (less gold for your enemy). You won't be denying them anyways since you are pushing so no loss on your side.


2. Chasing and cornering the enemy
Towards level 3-5, expect to be more aggresive on lane. Watch out for opportunities to Gale the enemy. If enemy retreats, they are likely to use juke paths to escape to safety. Most paths can be blocked by Veno-Wards. If you can succesfully drop a ward in his route, he will reverse and exit the same entrance from where he came from. A typical example would be the two small opening near the Sentinel bottom tower. More complicated network juke paths, eg the Sentinel Mid tower path to its right and the Scourge Mid tower path to its right will require more skill to perform successfully but still doable. Im stressing this tactic because there are ample opportunities for you to try it in every game and easily doable.

3. Point Booster or Arcane Ring?
Get a boot first of course. To go Point Booster or Arcane Ring depends on whether you have allies with spammable nukes. Pub randoms are not dumb, nor are they horrible in terms of skills. But during early game, they tend to act selfishly and not trust their allies much. Teamwork is actually present in pub games but unlike games with allies whom you know, teamwork with pub randoms builds up over the course of the game. You will want your team to have a headstart in this. Problem is: to push, you need allies and what other better way than to entice them with free mana replenishment? They will flock around you naturally.