Basic Skill Usage

Urna Swarm: A new skill recently introduced replacing the old watchers. Has great potential, but requires good micro skills to properly use.
Shukuchi: Weaver's trademark skill; used for chasing, escaping, juking, just about anything.
Geminate Attack: Weaver's most powerful skill, yet often underestimated and misused.
Time Lapse: Weaver's second trademark skill; great for juking and escaping.

Skill Build

Level 1 - Shukuchi
Level 2 - Geminate Attack
Level 3 - Shukuchi
Level 4 - Geminate Attack
Level 5 - Shukuchi
Level 6 - Time Lapse
Level 7 - Shukuchi
Level 8 - Geminate Attack
Level 9 - Geminate Attack
Level 10 - Urna Swarm
Level 11-14 - Stats
Level 15 - Time Lapse
Level 16 - Time Lapse
Level 17-19 - Urna Swarm
Level 20-25 - Stats

Shukuchi is maxed out asap to reduce its cooldown and maximize its damage as fast as possible. Geminate Attack follows suit, allowing Weaver to deal high damage early game. One level of Urna Swarm is necessary in order to have some map control, especially mid game when ganks are occuring rapidly. If team battles take place, have your urna swarms (both of them) ready to go. It's possible to get another level of swarms at level 11 if you think either teams will be constantly ganking and such. I suggest you bury 2 of them, have 1 run around, and have one around you at all times. I will explain the usage of Urnas later in the guide. While many people may argue against the idea of saving time lapse for later, I find it to be of little value to get it as fast as possible. Especially with my playing style, I need the stats early mid game.

Core Items



Wraith Bands: Standard items to boost weaver's damage and attack speed. Gives a bit of hp as well. I get two of these usually.
Power Treads: Rather than bots or phase boots, I prefer treads because of its stat bonuses. With its ability to change between str, int, and agi treads, it allows for weaver to be quite flexible. If not used to changing treads regularly, stick to agi or str treads, depending on whether you're being harassed and such or you are harassing. Int treads come in handy when you're chasing and you need that extra bit of mana to get in one more Shukuchi.
Yasha: Weaver gets most of his skills while chasing with Shukuchi. The most common mistake I see with this play style is that people think you don't need movespeed on Weaver because he has Shukuchi. You need to think about the average speed rather than the burst speed you get from Shukuchi. With treads and yasha, Weaver is fast enough to chase most heroes without even using Shukuchi (though you still use it). The agi stats are also great.
Poor Man's Shield: Very easy to make early game and helps Weaver perform more miracles of Time Lapsing with 10 hp left to return back to full hp. It's a nice item to have around early game, shortly after a stout shield.
Vanguard: One of Weaver's greatest flaws is that he is fragile. Very very fragile. Rather than trying to farm a HoT to counter this, which would take up a lot of time and prevent you from getting many kills early and midgame, I prefer to simply get a Vanguard, usually getting a stout shield and RoH fast. Weaver spends a lot of time away from base so it's important that he has good hp regen. The damage block stacks (to some extent) with the poor man's shield, so it's quite convenient.

Luxury / Late Game Items



Manta Style: Made from Yasha, Manta Style allows Weaver some control during team battles (when he isn't chasing). With Shukuchi, it is quite easy to put yourself in a good spot to split. Assuming you have decent damage, you can usually take out a fragile hero instantly with your images.
Butterfly: Standard dps item for all agi heroes. It adds to Weaver's survivability by giving him nice evasion.
HoT: This can either replace or add on to Vanguard, giving Weaver enough HP to tank most chain stuns and such.
Buriza: The famous "2x 2x crit" with his Geminate Attack. It gives good damage and the crit is always nice with Geminate Attack. Crystalis is a pretty good item to get mid game for its damage.

Playing Weaver

Early Game: Weaver's most annoying stage in the game, assuming properly played. As for laning, either go with a primary stunner or solo. Starting items can vary; DO NOT GET A BOTTLE. I usually get a stout shield and some tangos if not agi socks and tangos; might be nice to have a flask. You'll be depending on your teammate's chick a lot early game. For the first level, sit back and last hit and such. Nothing too special. Don't go around spamming Shukuchi just yet. Feel free to harass a bit, but make sure not to go crazy and lose half of your hp in order to get a couple hits in. Once you have geminate, this is where it starts. Using the Shukuchi + Geminate combo (discussed later) you dominate your lane and go for kills. Once you get them down to about 30-40% HP (takes usually about 2-3 combos), do the combo, except this time, Shukuchi deeper in and start right clicking like mad. If you have a teammate, this should be quite easy to do; they stun once you start attacking and you finish them off with Shukuchi. If you're by yourself, you might have to lower their hp a bit more. When not harassing and killing, last hit with Geminate Attack and farm.
Mid Game: During this portion of the game, Weaver should be running around constantly going for ganks and such. Have a stunner ready to help you and have him stun after you start attacking. Shukuchi in, as you attack, have your teammate stun, and you proceed onto chasing with Shukuchi to get the kill. The offensive portion of midgame is pretty straight forward-don't overfarm lanes but if you're there and no one else really needs to farm, go for it. Any time you see a low hp hero, go for the kill, especially in jungles and such. Defense-wise, you'll need to have map control. Using your Urna Swarms, make sure you insure that you and your team are safe. Protecting your own team comes before trying to kill the other team. With the proper use of Urnas (discussed later as well), you should be ganked very rarely. With the gold you got from early game, you should continue to dominate the game with your high dps and such. Team battles start occuring midgame; help out your team with your Urnas. You should be aiming for fragile heroes most of the time. Try to prioritize your ganks as well...try to keep their disablers low and useless so you can pick them off later.
Late Game: Assuming you've had a good game before late game, you'll basically become unstoppable. You can Shukuchi in ahead of your team and take out 2 heroes pretty fast and escape with Time Lapse. By this point (maybe earlier) people may try to disable you, so getting a BKB isn't a bad idea. With it, you can take out fragile disablers instantly with no problems, making it much easier for your team to win team battles.

Specific Skill Usage

Shukuchi + Geminate: This is Weaver's most powerful skill combination, yet I never see it being done. It is only useful early game (it's useful later as well, but nowhere as much). Due to Shukuchi's short cd as well as mana cost, you can spam this combo every time Geminate is on cd. Basically, what you do is first get in position. You'd like to be fairly close to the enemy hero, though not too close. Make sure you're a distance away from the creeps. Something like this will do:




note: The game was under -test so that's why there are so many creeps (I used -spawncreeps).

I am in a position where if I were to right click, it'd take a second or so before the enemy creeps start hitting me. That's the ideal position you'd like to place yourself in.

Afterwards, you attack the enemy hero unit, til the moment you see Geminate go off. By the time this happens, the enemy creeps will be walking towards you. You Shukuchi and hit the enemy and then return back to a safe position. You repeat the process as often as possible or whenever it looks safe to, and you'll have the enemy running back to base in no time.

Example 1:


Example 2:


Note how I Shukuchi behind him and continue to attack because there are no creeps there. This allows me to add 2-3 extra times without receiving any damage. Also, you can see that I've barely lost any hp.

The only thing to watch out for while doing this is to accidentally trigger the creeps, then get disabled before you Shukuchi. This will make you either die or lose a ton of hp, heavily thwarting your early game. In case of a stun heavy team, grab a flask or two to help you in case something like this happens.

Urna Swarm: You can use Urnas as wards to stop neutrals from spawning, or to simply give you vision:



To use them offensively, what you do is have it walk from the back during a gank (or if you're coming from behind, have it stay a little behind you). The enemy will naturally back up, or try to disable you. The moment after you right click out of Shukuchi to initiate the gank, you need to move your Urna slightly behind the enemy hero. If you think they will try to stun you, have the Urna suicide to silence the enemy hero. The 2 second silence will throw off the enemy hero enough. If you think they'll try to cast it later, or you just want it there for safety, have the Urna back up a bit more and have it scout out jungle openings to make sure no enemy teammates appear.

For defense during team battles, have the Urnas buried in the lane the enemy team is pushing. Space them out evenly and once the battle starts, have the Urnas come out and follow the main disablers. If they have channeling ultis (Enigma for ex) your Urna can instantly stop the ulti and basically save your entire team. You can also by late game have 8 Urnas follow around one hero, thus silencing him for a very long period of time. This is quite hard to micro and such, but that's just to show the flexibility of Urnas. Don't be stupid and think you'll use the DoT placed by infestation to kill someone; you use it for the silence.

Offensive usage:




Defensive usage:



Comments

I'm not going to go indepth into late game strategies or intense item builds and such, simply because this guide is meant to show how to play Weaver aggressively early game. I have rarely had a tough timing laning with Weaver and I end up dominating the lane. Maybe a few times in my dota career has the plan failed me; and even in these cases it's because I messed up. Being patient is a key to this strategy. I tried to show my friends how to do this and many of them failed because they tried to go for kills too early. There's nothing wrong with leaving the enemy hero at red hp. In the case this happens, place yourself behind the enemy creeps so that the enemy hero can't even come up. Holding back an enemy to the point he can't even gain any exp will be much more valuable than getting a kill or two. Keep in mind that Weaver is indeed a fragile hero.

Basically, this strategy is to piss off your laning enemy heroes. I warn you before trying this strategy in a pub game: if you do it too early or too much, people will leave instantly.

To watch a game of Weaver:
Click here

the game: I started off pretty well, holding my lane fine and such. Wasn't really last hitting much... the game turned around when my teammates began feeding naga nonstop. We stopped the team's pushes a few times but in the end naga got too strong even for me. Sentinel's pitlord and rhasta were especially bad; they were basically food. Pretty lame game... but you can see how the above guide can be used and such.