Sup guys, im kinda bored so i decided to write a short, ugly and yet informative guide on this hero. PA is underrated amongst professional players and overrated amongst pubbers, truth is shes a fun hero with a lategame that isnt as good as one might think with regards to her ultimate, and a midgame that isnt nearly as bad as some make it out to be. Im writing this for players from all skill-levels.

Hero Stats:

17 +2.05 per level
23+3.15 per level
13 +1 per level

Ill give u a brief summary of them:
PA has terribad intelligence, no surprise or problem as her 2 spammable spells are nearly for free anyway. she also has bad starting str and rather bad str growth, which IS a problem for a melee DPS hero. u prolly already guessed that her agi is good, base agi not so much but her agi gain is great, resulting in high armor and DPS during lategame.
Base armor isnt that good for a melee agi hero so she is rather frail to harrass early on.
Her base movement speed is above average with 310, further underlining her assassin-like playstyle.

Skills:




Hurls a dagger which deals minor pure damage and slows the unit's movement speed for a short duration.

Damage: 40/80/120/150
Casting Range: 1200
Slow: 50%
CD: 8s
Duration: 1/2/3/4s
Manacost: 30/25/20/15

• Damage type: pure.
• Only half damage dealt to heroes.
• The projectile can't be dodged by blinking.

Teleports to the target unit, and receives increased attack speed.[/TABLE]
This skill is both Mortreds farming tool and what makes her one of the best chasers in DotA. it has low CD, manacost and damage, huge range and needs some time to reach its target. one might think that the low CD means its a good harrassing tool, but since it deals half damage to heroes its not a good nuke and spamming it gets countered pretty hard by magic wand/stick.

max this first, dmg goes up, manacost goes down, time slowed increases.




Teleports to a unit and attacks it. Gains 100% attack speed for 3 seconds while attacking that same target. Maximum of 4 attacks.

Attackspeedbonus: 100%
Casting Range: 700/800/900/1000
Duration: 3s (Maximum of 4 attacks)
CD: 30/20/10/5
Manacost:50

Formerly known as Blink Strike. Got changed to increase PAs attackspeed after blinking to the target unit, finally giving her some decent DPS combined with Coup de Grace, and also some decent early game burst in some situations. This coupled with with Stifling Dagger means that Mortred, albeit being melee, cant be kited easily and can reliably deal damage if not disabled/killed.

Usually you should skill this on lvl 1 since lvl 1 stifling is quite useless compared to a blink. max after Stifling Dagger.




The Phantom Assassin becomes hard to see by blurring her body. Some enemy attacks miss.

Evasion: 15/20/25/30%
Transparency: 25/50/75/100

Chance to evade physical attacks. not much to say here, coupled with her great agi-, hence armor-gain and probably lifesteal mortred doesnt really care much about physical attacks come mid-game. Countered by MKB like any evasion-skill.

Max this last. You can choose to get 1 point over crit, but thats pretty much it. PMS should take care of harrass on early lvls anyway, and physical damage only becomes troublesome later on.




Mortred has refined her hero-killing skills to a high degree.

Chance to Crit: 15% (Technically this is only true on first attack after skilling/getting a crit, chance increases whenever you do not get a critical strithis is called pseudo-random distribution) E: disregard this gotta enlighten myself first about the finer points of PRD
Crit-Multiplier: 2/3/4

Thats french. i used to know what this term means but now i dont. Word by word it means "Punch of Grace" but thats not the correct translation. Cool Story rite? I guess ill look it up sooner or later. Also, nice skill description rite?

... A crit. Numbers seem imbalanced at first glance, but sadly her crit doesnt proc very often. When it procs it hurts a freaking lot though, enabling Mortred to take out Heroes ridiculously fast with some damage items. BUT. keep in mind that it only gets decent at 11, and good at 16. dont expect miraculous one-shots before that (actually dont expect them at all in anything above stomps)

Take whenever possible, although its no biggy if you delay first lvl for another lvl of Phantom Strike or Blur if you cant even think about going agressive any time soon. Definitely skill at 10/11 though.

About pseudo-random distribution, basically this just means that whenever you get a crit, your next attack is less likely to be a crit and vice versa. cant give exact numbers for that, sry.




Aim for wand PMS, boots.

Id go as far as saying: Always. Choose starting items according to your money (and needs): u randomed and have access to a chick? 2 branch PMS tango salve. its ridiculously good, PMS helps a ton since PAs other skills have priority over blur. if u didnt random just get 2 slippers instead of PMS, if u didnt random and chose to buy your own chick: well that kinda sucks tbh u might need to ferry a salve or 2. either slipper 3 branch tango, or 4 branch tango salve, sth like that.

Quelling Blade: not rlly a good option on mort imo, you have stifling to ease lasthitting, its only good use would be to speed up neutralling after a rushed fury.. however, i rlly wouldnt get it against hard lanes. mort has good animation too so just practice.

Ring of Basilius: Meh. You can spam stifling every CD with this and the armor/dmg also helps early on, but mana isnt a big problem and PMS wins regarding the other aspects. good on a lanepartner though.

vanguard: mortred is one of the few melee heroes where vang is pretty darn bad on; you need some offensive power to make a difference, and even though u have some burst-dps at your disposal, you wont be able to deal it for another X secs if u eat a stun, resulting in you being rather useless. nukes are also a major prob, and although vang does help with those i still suggest getting BKB instead.



Afterwards it depends.

Against harrass-heavy lanes which lack burst and are still hard to kill, i suggest rushing Helm of Iron Will or Ring of Health depending on your next item (Battlefury/Helm of the Dominator), against lanes with burst damage or weak lanes in general get treads, as the HP/dmg boost and MS increase are better in this case. why treads? well. lategame u can switch to bot but everything else is plain dumb. there rlly is no choice.

ive mainly been writing this guide to promote Basher-PA, so thats what you should aim for after a HotD. Well. Its far from a must, but it has become a very good item on her - it gives decent damage, some HP and bash - do note that bash doesnt deal any damage anymore, the average damage dealt by bashes has been added to the items regular damage value - this means more damage to crit some might say why would u need bash when u can almost perma-slow your target, i say u dont need it but it certainly helps, especially when the target is fighting back; disabled hero > slowed hero. always. you can attack more often, and the bash might also occur when slow is about to run out. very good for ganking, which PA gets pretty good at during mid-game.

another option would be the cookie-cutter battlefury, which is a good item on mortred no doubt about that, especially when you need to carry hard and have trouble with getting pushed too hard OR room to rice since your team is doing OK anyway. i usually rush this before HotD since you dont need the HoiW for lanestaying if you can also get RoH for Fury, which has a bigger impact if gotten fast imo as you deal very significant damage with it and can farm faster (HotD can be used to stack creeps though, i wont go into detail about this sry).

MKB is also a great first damage item, it is rather expensive and comes in big pieces though. doesnt go too well with basher i think, gotta double-check in mech but iirc if a bash/minibash occurs u cant minibash/bash on same attack.

Manta Style is also pretty good on PA despite her being melee since her illusions cant get kited easily (main reason why melee agis get manta a lot less than ranged ones). Illusions benefit a lot from her high agi gain and also get crit, the stats it provides are a well-rounded mix for almost any agi-carry. i usually get this after basher, stifling->pantom strike->split->bash-> rape is disgusting and ppl have to figure out the real PA first. split in general is good to get out of sticky situations.

so after you got manta, what next?

BKB is simply needed sometimes, but rlly its not always necessary with this build if you dont rambo hardcore. especially in low/mid-lvl games you can do very well without it

acually ive started to do butterfly sometimes on morti afterwards with this build. evasion doesnt stack with blur, but the stats buff your illus and ias/dmg is ofc welcome. you dont have to focus on images though, theyre good enough with just the stats from manta. in case you have a lot of nuking allies u might even consider EB as it provides best boost to images anyway; however mortred is the kind of hero that is just utterly useless while etheral, heck it doesnt even help a lot against physical damage as she got blur. id say very very very very very rarely.

still got cash? satanic is cool if you gotta tank a bit, but frankly you should try to avoid tanking and focus on gibbing if you catch my drift. rapier if you got balls (nothing funnier than oneshotting ppl), fury/bot for pushing purposes, MKB if you need truestrike (still didnt check out how bash interferes with minibash :S)

so as you can see PA works with a lot of stuff, the only things id never ever get in terms of DPS-items are MoM, diffu, armlet and crit. MoM makes you even softer than you are already, diffu provides crap for damage, purge is rlly useless when u got stifling. armlet is just built for str, burst HP is ok but damage simply underwhelming, crit doesnt stack additively with coup de grace.


Im blabbering again, for the lazy folks ill just list my standard build: wand pms treads hotd basher manta -> bkb and/or damage/survival item of choice.


Laning phase isnt one of Mortreds strengths, but its not that bad either.
She can passively farm a solo lane with stifling, however shes prolly gonna lose the tower rather fast due to lack of AoE spell. she can be babysat passively but she also can form agressive lanes since Phantom strike actually hurts even early on. Ancient Apparition with chilling maxed first is a great lanepartner for example, he casts chilling on both mort and himself, both do cold feet/stifling on a target and whack away - voila, disable and good damage.

You dont really have to rely on pulls due to stifling dagger which is a great last-hitting tool - however, you shouldnt only stay back as its cd wont be ready every creep and the manacost can be troublesome on early levels. not to mention it feeds magic wand like mad, but thats pretty much sth u have to deal with (against 2 heavily mana-dependent melees like ogre/ earthshaker u should avoid using it too much though).
Phantom Strike is a good escape mechanism, you can blink to ANY unit in range, keep that in mind. Both Phantom Strike and Stifling Dagger can be used defensively and offensively, keep that in mind to evade/support ganks from other lanes. How? Well. Evade by blinking away and slowing chasers if needed, support by slowing target and Phantom Striking victim. Theres just one clue: wait till opposing stuns have been thrown and you can be sure other nukes wont kill u. then u can combo Stifling->Phantom safely without risking your life.

Thats actually a great rule of thumb for mortred in general, bkb makes this less important ofc. always remember that mortred really shines when you have the upper hand, e.g. your opponent(s) have to back off as you can slow and hunt them down - watch out for traps though, often its better to just slow for your allies and blink in later when you feel safe (e.g. running lina decided to laguna a tide that was catching up to her, imagine you eating that ). as we say in germany, "name is program" - you are a phantom assassin, be a sneaky, opportunistic bitch.
other strats? well. actually mort is very easy to learn and play, its mainly about farming and later on waiting for the right moment at the right position (in range for stifling and soon PS). theres some minor stuff, like priming your critical; you can actually increase the chance to crit on next hit by attacking a few times without critting. how? well. luck basically. not very practical but can pay off if you went some baller build (fury fury fury rapier treads etc).

one last thing: although you are an assassin, that doesnt mean you cant fight your ground against other heroes. come mid-late-game blur and high armor significantly increase your survivability against physical attacks, coupled with hotd and pms you gonna survive surprisingly long against pure auto-attack, keep that in mind.






------------ NOT FINISHED YET... but actually i think ive got most information. feel free to correct me if you think i missed sth important. its not gonna be as ugly as it was intended to be i guess, i decided to screw the actual content and just get spotlighted with fancy pics and colors (green is no coincidence)------------------------