Introduction

I'm writing a guide for Naga Siren who doesn't seem to have a lot of fans here. She's definitely one of the harder heroes to use in terms of teamplay sense, team fight sense and farming skills. In the correct team, she's definitely a tide turner.

Pros:
Great survivability
Powerful disable and ultimate
Strong early game
Great 1v1 hero
Great pusher mid to late game

Cons:
Fragile in team fights
Item dependent
VERY afraid of aoe damage

Naga Siren is a skill-based dps carry, her dps comes from her illusions, and that naturally makes her VERY fragile. AOE damage is her biggest weakness. If you choose her against an enemy team with ample aoe damage, you are more likely to lose, which has more to do with better picks than personal skills.

What is Naga Siren good against?


She's a natural enemy of heroes with little or no aoe ability. Many of the heroes that fall in this catagory are late game carries. So she's a good anti-carry carry.

What is Naga Siren afraid of?


Heroes with aoe that you cannot avoid. Axe is a natural enemy of Naga Siren because the more targets attack him, the more damage he deals. SK has an imba disable and almost unavoidable ultimate early to mid game. Heroes like these own Naga Siren easily.

Situational heroes:


A lot of heroes have enough aoe power to own Naga Siren, but if you avoid getting hit, you own them. These heroes can be divided into 3 types:
1. Heroes that rely on skill and timing. Naga Siren has an imba disable, invulnerability, and great dps. If they fail to hit her hard with their skills, they'll die.
2. High burst damage heroes like Tiny and Lina. 1 full combo can definitely kill Naga Siren, but it requires skill. Naga Siren's invulnerability can help avoid a lot of damage too, and if they can't kill her instantly, they die instead.
3. Fragile aoe nukers like Nevermore and TS. Against these heroes it's a matter of who dies first. 1 misplaced skill, 1 wrong step and the fight's over.

Naga Siren has her own weaknesses, but is also very versatile. A lot depends on the player's own skill to avoid her weaknesses and abuse her advantage. So she's kinda balanced in a wierd way. She's unlikely to appear in high-end competition as the best carry, I'm writing this guide for Naga Siren in pubs and mid level gameplay.

HERO OVERVIEW

Stats Analysis
Click for details

Naga Siren's attributes are almost perfect:
Very high base armor
Very high base movespeed
Good attack animation&decent base damage
Average Stats growth, base hp/mp

Her early game is relatively easy for a farmer and can even be strong with a nice teammate.

Skills

• Your dps skill, debuff remover, chaos creator and tanking skill.
• 3 illusions increase your damage by 135%. Click for details on illusions.
• During the casting, Slithice is invulnerable. This can be used to avoid spell and attack damage.
• Upon cast most effects will be removed from Slithice.
• If Slithice is targeted with an attack or skill before the attacker is in range and she uses Mirror Image the attacker will hit the real Slithice.

Your illusions serve 4 purposes: dpsing(duh), tanking, avoiding spells and removing debuffs.
Your tanking is always emergency tanking, it cannot last long but can save lives. You can tank towers to chase an enemy, tank Lich, Juggernaut, Moonrider and even Death Prophet's ultimate.
Avoiding damage is a more difficult trick. Most heroes have a cast animation, a spell animation and a damage time. You need to know how long it takes them to cast a spell, how long it flies to you and how long it's gonna damage you.

Earthshaker's cast animation is very short, the fissure reaches you instantly and damages you at the same time.
Tiny has no cast animation, Avalanche rises from beneth his feet and flies to you fast, the damage lasts for the spell's remaining casting time.
Nevermore takes some time to raise its hands, the spells reaches instantly and damages instantly

Some skills are almost impossible to avoid while others are easier. Naga Siren needs to twist and hold one of her hands in front of her to split, it's a bit faster than her attack animation and you split for 1 sec or so. You only need to avoid the time when the damage hits you.
Against DOTs and other debuffs, it's easier to keep this skill at cooldown and split afterwards. You can dispel Venomancer's everything and Rooftrellen's ultimate. I cannot remember the rest.

• One of the longest disables in DotA. Goes through magic immunity.
• Interrupts channeling. Ensnared units cannot move but can cast spells. I think ensnared melee heroes can attack units within attack range
• Invisible units are held visible for the spell's duration.
• If you ensnare PotM and she jumps, she will still be held for the remaining duration at the new location.

• Your illusions have this skill too, although the red numbers are also reduced by illusion units' damage reduction.
• Highest proc chance critical strike with a lower damage to balance with it.
• I think I read somewhere that stacking different critical strikes isn't a good idea, one supposedly overrides the other. If you know more, please tell me.

• Gives vision around all affected units.
• Does not work on invisible units and units out of sight.
• Sleeping units are invulnerable until the end of the spell. Spells that ignore immunity with affect them but deal no damage.
• Sleeping units do not trigger any aggro.

Use this to escape, push towers, anti-team disable and rarely, as a team disable.

This skill is your ultimate escape mechanism. Ultimate+TP.
This is very good against SS once he drops his serpent wards, your tower and creeps will focus on beseiging weapons first and summoned units next. Use this in team fights if your side is disabled first.

If TH/Rooftrellen/Magnus/Enigma and so on jump disabled first, cover 2-3 enemy heroes with your ultimate when they're moving in so your side fights few with more. Then move back and pawn the wakers.

This is not a good spell to jump start a team fight because few can time it exactly. Casting any spell before it is useless, if enemy heroes use shift-command they're definitely the fastest when the spell ends. Feel free to correct me if you disagree.

Skill Build




Ensnare is leveled up first, a 5 sec disable outshines all your other skills early game. Split illusions next, no brainer. Keep only 1 level ultimate early game, 6 secs should be enough. Leveling it up further gives only 1 more sec/lvl, so finishing it 15-16 would be a good choice. Critical Strike is a good damage amplifier, but Ensnare and Split illusions are too important to miss early game. So get it around lv9 when you have enough dps, some items and 4 illusions to share with. This is by far the best Naga Siren skill build I've met.


Item build

Early game


Your early game should be focused on last hitting/denying. Killing is possible but don't waste farming time, you're the carry, or semi-carry.

Core Build


Naga Siren is one of the heroes that benefit from Magic Wand more because she's melee, she's focused a lot, her mana is in a strain all the time and she's a great 1v1 hero, 15 charges save the day.
She has 2 main dps items, Diffusal and Manta Style. I strongly recommend Diffusal first. It's cheaper, it increases your illusions A LOT and gives you another 5 sec slow. No one can escape from you. With it, you are an imba 1v1 hero complete, but it doesn't make you tougher. Manta Style is next, you are tougher, deal more damage and move faster. What else do you want? With Diffusal and Manta Style, few heroes can stand 10 secs against you, but your illusions still die pretty fast. At this point the longer you stand, the more damage you deal. That's why HoT is next.

Situational items


This is good for early game hp booster. Against average players I'd get 1-2 before Diffusal. Cheap and effective.


This is great for you too, it greatly increases the survivability of your illusions but I wouldn't get it simply because Naga Siren doesn't have that much money. All of her core items are urgent, this will delay her for a long time. But it's a good idea for one of your teammates to get, right?

Rejected Items


This is the biggest mistake for any illusion-based dps hero. Illusions do NOT benefit from the lifesteal aura/armor aura/+attack aura and mana regen is useless I didn't even bother checking.


I don't recommend any +damage items because illusions don't benefit from raw damage increase. Although you deal a lot more damage yourself, your illusions are much weaker. It's not worth it.


Game Strategy

Naga Siren has 4 golden periods:
1. lv1-5 on lanes, her net combined with a good damage dealer can send any hero back home
2. lv7-10 with ganks everywhere, her 5 sec net with a short cooldown shines
3. The first few minutes when you farm up each of these items: Diffusal, Manta Style and HoT.

My Naga Siren playstyle is:
1. Laning for a kill 1-6
2. Ganking&supporting 7-10
3. Farming for Diffusal
4. Gank&team fights
5. Farm for Manta Style

In this way, I think I maximize Naga Siren's full potential. I play her as the carry that ganks middle game, tips the scales for her side then settles down. Then before anyone knows, she's suddenly the main dps.

Early Game
Request a strong early game nuker to lane with you, it's pretty easy to kill fragile heroes early game since you have a 3 sec disable from level 3. Your early game is quite strong, pair it up with enough dps.

I once teamed up with Warlock against a Sniper+whatever, our strategy was Ensnare+Warlock's normal attack. Sniper ran out of supplies at lv3 and died at lv4. LOL

Level 6+
From here I choose to gank and support with Naga Siren.

The major difference between her and Terrorblade, Troll Warlord, Phantom Assasin and other pure late gamers is she can also play a deciding role mid game on establishing team dominance. The money you save your team and make your enemies lose is far more than solo farming.

But she also needs items as well, that's why from lv11, when enemies have some items and start clinging to each other, she uses the advantage to farm safely and freely. When Diffusal is done, enemies become easy targets once more.

How to gank with Naga Siren:
1. Avoid damage. Either finish enemies off with a chain of nukes or have someone tank for you. Leave the true mid game heroes to die and tank.
2. Find enough dps! When you're ganking, the real problem is can you finish enemies? Pick on easy targets and call teammates.
3. You are more a gank initiator and disabler than tank or dps.
4. Time your entry. Know when to tank, when to dps and when to simply disable.


Early game Split illusions usage:
Although your illusions can dps early game when everyone is still poor, using it or not is situational. Consider your mana, enemy heroes and enemy support.

Against enemy heroes with strong aoe ability, use it to avoid damage or between skill cd. Against enemies with strong 1v1 skills, use it to create confusion and tank. Against enemies with annoying DOTs or disables/slow/armor reduction, use it to dispel on yourself.

Dealing damage with your illusions is possible though unstable, they die fast and you lose an important escape mechanism for 40secs.