Mortred - The Phantom Assassin

Range: 100 | Move Speed: 310
Primary: AGI
Str: 20 + 1.85 | Agi: 23 + 3.15 | Int: 13 + 1
Damage: 46 – 48 | HP: 473 | Mana: 169
HP Regen: 0.76 | Mana Regen: 0.53
Attack Speed: 0.72 | Armor: 4

Stifling Dagger (D)
Hurls a dagger which deals minor pure damage and slows the unit's movement speed for a short duration. Deals half damage to heroes.
Level 1 - Deals 40 damage, slows for 50%, lasts 1 second.
Level 2 - Deals 80 damage, slows for 50%, lasts 2 second.
Level 3 - Deals 120 damage, slows for 50%, lasts 3 second.
Level 4 - Deals 160 damage, slows for 50%, lasts 4 second.
• Damage type: pure
• The projectile can't be dodged by blinking.
• Casting range: 1200
Mana Cost: 30/25/20/15
Cooldown: 8
Comment: Aww the good gold Stifling Dagger. A great tool for chasing and harassing and last hitting! This makes our horrible early and mid game more endurable.

Phantom Strike (B)
Teleports to a unit and attacks it. Gains 100% attack speed for 3 seconds while attacking that same target. Maximum of 4 attacks.
Level 1 - Teleports to the target unit, and recieves increased attack speed.
Level 2 - Teleports to the target unit, and recieves increased attack speed.
Level 3 - Teleports to the target unit, and recieves increased attack speed.
Level 4 - Teleports to the target unit, and recieves increased attack speed.
• Casting range: 700/800/900/1000
Mana Cost: 50
Cooldown: 20/15/10/5
Comment: The classics blink strike. This is the source of our damage until we get some decent damage items. Please consult the early game section for more in depth information about blink strike.

Blur (R)
The Phantom Assassin becomes hard to see by blurring her body. Some enemy attacks miss.
Level 1 - 15% dodge/25% Transparency.
Level 2 - 20% dodge/50% Transparency.
Level 3 - 25% dodge/75% Transparency.
Level 4 - 30% dodge/100% Transparency.
• Does not stack with evasion from Butterfly.
• Mortred becomes increasingly transparent as Blur is leveled.
Mana Cost: N/A
Cooldown: N/A
Comment: Blur, is a create skill, adds a tone of EHP and also makes us semi invisible. Only bad thing is that it doesn't stack with BFly, but hey we take what we get.

Coup de Grace (C)
Mortred has refined her hero-killing skills to a high degree.
Level 1 - 15% chance to 2.0x critical.
Level 2 - 15% chance to 3.0x critical.
Level 3 - 15% chance to 4.0x critical.
Mana Cost: N/A
Cooldown: N/A
Comment: our signature skill. This is why we are such a powerful late gamer. 4x our normal damage, will let us easily deal 1000+ damage. But there is more to it than what meets the eye. Read on to find out. ^_^
Back to Top

Skill Build:
1. Stifling Dagger
2. Blink Strike
3. Stifling Dagger
4. Blink Strike
5. Stifling Dagger
6. Blink Strike
7. Stifling Dagger
8. Blink Strike
9. Blur
10. Coup de Grace
11. Coup de Grace
12. Blur
13. Blur
14. Blur
15. Stats
16. Coup de Grace
17. Stats
18. Stats
19. Stats
20. Stats
21. Stats
22. Stats
23. Stats
24. Stats
25. Stats
Back to Top

Item Build:
1.
Power Treads (1450)
60 Movement Speed
25 Attack Speed
8 Selected Attribute
Active: Switch Attribute
Switches the attribute that receives a bonus. From Strength to Intelligence, Intelligence to Agility, and Agility to Strength.
Note: Can only carry one. Movement speed bonus doesn't stack with Boots of Travel, Phase Boots, Power Treads, or Boots of Speed.
Boots of Speed + Gloves of Haste + Boots of Elvenskin or Robe of the Magi or Belt of Giant Strength
Make sure you get the Str version of this. Since it is the same price as the Agi one, we want to make every gold we spend worth wile. It will help you survive and gives a nice boost to attack speed. But aside from that there is also a nice little trick you can play with this item. Read on to find out.
2.
Wraith Band (485)
6 Agility
3 Strength
3 Intelligence
3 Damage
Slippers of Agility + Circlet of Nobility + Wraith Band Recipe Scroll
Cheap and effective. The true Asian Way.
3.
Wraith Band (485)
6 Agility
3 Strength
3 Intelligence
3 Damage
Slippers of Agility + Circlet of Nobility + Wraith Band Recipe Scroll
I'm allowed to make Asian jokes because I am as Asian as you can get.
Back to Top

Early Game:
General Hero Overview





Hero Stats



Disclaimer

Mortred is the stereotypical 1-click I win hero, that being said it is extremely difficult to make a full length guide on her.

This guide may seem that the average 2 star guide with nothing but item builds. However this is not the case, please read what is in the links for they are the actual essence of the guide. Many of the linked posts I have made myself, so please READ WHAT IS IN THE LINKS. I promise you will improve your Mortred play if you do.

Pro
1. Slow finger friendly
2. Late game monster
3. Highest crit rate in the game.
4. Spammable slow
5. Spammable blink
6. Insane attack animation!

1. Awesome evasion
2. Above average movement speed. 310
3. Very spontaneous, catch all your enemies off guard!

Cons
1. Useless unless farmed
2. Early game is a nightmare
3. Mid game isn’t exactly brilliant
4. No exactly the greatest of base damage
5. No “direct” escape method
6. Very susceptible to disables
7. Many people like to call us noob.

True there are many cons, but if played right we will be the late game spontaneous monster.
Why Play Mortred
• You like to see 4 digit red numbers poping up behind you.
• You like to walk around as a shadow
• You like to be really really annoying
• You like it when people run at the slightest sign of a shadow even though it might just be fog of war.
Team Role
• All time farmer. Clinkz is our other homie.
• DPS carry
• Scaredy cat turned monster tiger.

Early Game
level 1~8

Early Game Objectives

1. Farm
2. Survive

That is it, nothing else. Farm and farm some more, even surviving come after farming... since if you didn't farm, surviving won't mean much later on. Don’t even try to kill people, heck there is no point, with our measly damage we will be lucky to even see their HP bar go down. Also, forgive me for saying this but realistically you are not a team player. Other than your slow nothing else benefits the team directly. However our roll in the game is not to support, we are the cold blooded killer type. We are the farm your butts off and then wtfp00wnzoor everyone type.
You know what will happen if we try to kill people early game?



That's right... We just got owned by a dark seer with no skills and virtually same items.

Starting Items
Since there will be a few different builds our starting items will differ.

Point 1 ---------------------------------







----------------------------------Point 2
Or
Point 1 ---------------------------------







----------------------------------Point 2
Lane Picking

Get either sentinel bottom or scourge top. For these lanes start closest to your towers, therefore lessening the chance of you dying early on. As as our objective is quite clear... farm till we can own. A lane partner is optional, if there is a really good babysitting hero such as Omni or Roofy on your team then go with them. If not solo isn't bad.
However as we know, unless you are playing league games you are not going to get what you want. So just in case if you did get assigned to the other side lanes creep blocking is essential. For a great guide on how to do that check out this guide by DS's very own prince Caspian.
"Creep Blocking" Walkthrough
Lane Scenarios

1 v 1 Melee or Ranged
Don't have to be too scared of this one, just last hit with your normal attack if possible, when too farm away use your dagger.

1v 2 Melee or Ranged
Much more difficult, lots of apprehension is needed here. Since Mortred does not come with a natural escape tool, we need to be very careful. Go up and last hit if you have the HP to survive some harassing, if not just stay back and use your dagger.

2 v 1 or 2 v 2 Melee or Ranged
Farm... that is the underlined word for little mis Mortred. Be careful when you go up still since you are up against two opponents.
A really good tactic when in a lane is to use your creeps to your advantage. For more information on the matter please check out this guide by Brandon
http://forums.dota-allstars.com/index.php?showtopic=240801

Heroes You should try and Avoid during early game

Massive nukers like these should be avoided at all costs. They will feed upon our inners and make Japanese sushi out of them.With out punny HP and no real escape skill, these guys will have their way with us. However if you do meet one of these types of heroes early on, the best advice I can give you is; play safe. Sure that isn't always easy to do, but there are tricks to help you.
1. Know Their Casting Animation- What I mean by this is really quite simple, for example if you are against Lina, every time she casts a spell she kicks her leg up wards and pull her hands across as though she was gonna use kamehameha. If you see that blink away as fast as you go and just more back since her casting animation is hell long.
2. Use Dagger to farm. You are more forutuniate than most melee carry type heroes, you actually have a ranged skill you can use to farm. So spam it when you have the chance, more of farming will be explained later in the guide.

Orb walkers are another class of heroes you should try to keep away from. They are different than normal heroes in that their orbs which are extremely spammable don't trigger creeps aggression. That is to say, when they wack you, the creeps won't come to the rescure and save your butt. Not only that but their orbs also have a special effects, such as pure damage from silencer, slow for viper and drow. So be very careful of them. But again, fate has a way of screwing you over so if you do see one of these guys... my advice would be
1. Don't even try and go up to last him unless you are 100% and I mean 100% sure you are going to get the kill and not get killed in the process. By that I mean for example you are need year tower and you go up to last hit, the orb walkers most likely won't tower dive during early levels.
2. Again use your dagger, this is our only advantage against most other carries is that we haev a ranged farming tool.
3. Don't get greedy, getting a few last hits isn't worth a death. So watch for that.


These guys are freakishly scary during ealy game.Str nukers sure they can't spam as much as the int ones but they normally have some sort of side effect. For example Doom's nuke does massive ammounts of damage at the right time, ES's spells will stun you till the end of the world, and Abaddon's shiled will make your farming life go into rehab. True they are melee but they are just as scary as any ranged heroes. My advice is...

1. Watch for what is happening ans asses. For example, if you are against Doom, watch your level and guess his LvL death's level. For abaddon watch for his shield and then book it out of there. Against ES there really isn't much you can do except watch for his animation. He will raise his totum thingy up every time so once you see that blink away if possible. I know it's hard to do ... but staying alive for Mortred really isn't easy.

Yes... it is captian coco. The most powerful melee harasser in the game. He is so scary he deserves a scetion all to himself. If you meet this guy early game, well... good luck. Escaping from his clutches is really not possible for Mortred. He has a hufe ranged nuke so we can't even use our dagger to farm, he has a pure splash damage which will mean going up and last hitting is suicide. And also Xmarks the spot, so that means doesn't matter how hard we juke, how good we blink we are going to end up right were we started. So my advice is...

1. Open a can of woop ass and hope that the guy you are against is a noob... cause if you are against an experienced Kunkka early game with Mortred there really isn't much hope left.

And now for our last and final enemy Obsidian. I know... you are asking why isn't he in the orb walkers catagory. Well... the thing is... he is a heave nuker/orb walker in one kick ass package. His orb does massive damage and he won't even get creeps agreesion on him. Lanning with is really not enjoyable and all I can see is "good luck amigo"

I lied there is one more. xD The awesomely gross Spider. This thingy can push the living day lights out of you. And being mortred we can't do much against it. You will just see tower after tower falling to this beast. And even if you do some how man up and go head to head, Spider has webs that can make her invisible, and an ulti that will suck the living daylights out of you. My advice...
Ask for lane change or ganks... cause if you see her alone 1v1 you can say bye bye to your towers.

Farming Using Dagger- The epitome of Early Game

Since this is "the" most important aspect of our early and mid game thus I have included an entire section devoted to simply "How To Farm" This is not your usual last hitting guide.
Firstly the most important aspect of farming is "Last Hitting" It is basically landing the killing blow to an enemy and therefore rewarded with the bounty. For a great guide on how to do that check out Ghost's mini guide.
Ghost's Guide to... DotA. v6.54b
Now aside from doing that, which is absolutely "critical" but also we have something most heroes don't have. An almost orb like skill that can help us last hit much easier.
Stifling Dagger

Hurls a dagger which deals minor pure damage and slows the unit's movement speed for a short duration. Deals half damage to heroes.
Ability Type Active Unit Targeting
Triggering Information
None Hotkey D
Casting Time
None Base Ability (?)
None

Level Duration Cooldown
Mana Cost Casting Range Area of Effect
Allowed Targets Effects
1 1 seconds 10 seconds 30 600 N/A Enemy unit 40 damage, 50% slow
2 2 seconds 10 seconds 25 600 N/A Enemy unit 80 damage, 50% slow
3 3 seconds 10 seconds 20 600 N/A Enemy unit 120 damage, 50% slow
4 4 seconds 10 seconds 15 600 N/A Enemy unit 160 damage, 50% slow
• The slow can be removed by Purge.
• This skill triggers Linken's Sphere's cooldown but it would still take effect.
• Stifling Dagger deals Pure damage which is unreduced by anything.
"unreduced by anything" Sounds good right?

vs

A little Something about Creeps.
With the two different types of creeps melee and ranged they also have different levels. There three different stages of a creeps life.
1. At the start of the game
2. When the melee barracks have been destroyed
3. When all the barracks have been destroyed
For more information about creeps and what exactly do they give you check the Dota Wiki section and find out.

For Ghouls and Treants
http://www.dota-allstars.com/wiki/Treant/Ghoul

For Druids and Necromancers
http://www.dota-allstars.com/wiki/Druid_of_the_Talon/Necromancer

What we are concerned with is the HP of the creeps, for that is what we need to know in order to last hit them.

So lets see, since we are probably only going to be using this method of farming near the early end of the game we will only concern our selves with the level one version of the creeps.

For the Melee ones they have 550 hit points, their armor can be disregarded since we deal pure damage.
For the Ranged Creeps they have 300 hit points.

Now looking at our dagger, we can see that it has a damage increase of 40 per level. Starting from 40.


That is about the max HP we can take down at level 1 dagger. then simple go up from that as we level.

If at level one we tried to last hit a melee creep we would have to throw our dagger when the creep is about 8~10% hp. Since your creeps will still be hitting the opponent creeps and our dagger has a slight traveling time we can't just hit right on the page.So just eye ball the creep's hp bar. This can be done in two ways, one by holding down "Alt" OR the other much easier way is to go into options and select Gameplay. Then in there you should find "always show hp bar". Makes last hitting so much easier. ^_^

At level two our dagger does a wooping 80 damage. if that is the case then we can kill a melee creep at about 15% hp.

At level three another +40 pure damage. So 120 damage that would be about 22%.

Finally at level 7 our dagger is mastered, now it will deal 160 pure damage with is about 30%. As you can see, killing creeps really shouldn't be a big problem for us.

Now Aside from Simply Farming enemy creeps, which can often open our selves to ganks, we can farm what is called neutrals. Neutrals are basically creeps that belong to either party, thus neutral.
For more information about neutrals check out this guide by MrX.
http://forums.dota-allstars.com/index.php?showtopic=123531

Neutrals

Now of course since Mortred isn't exactly the best farmer in the world, we can't just simply stroll in a neutral camp and hope to destroy everything in a matter of seconds. Also since we are still a little weakling during the early stages of the game, constant neutralling is NOT a good way to go. There are times when neutralling is good though. For instance when you have pushed too farm into enemy territory and needs to retreat. Normally this would mean sacrificing valuable gold and experience however with creep pulling we can cover both of those.

For a more detailed facts about the matter refer back to Ghost's guide.
Ghost's Guide to... DotA. v6.54b

Now aside from last hitting the neutrals from your own creeps, we should think for the future. Killing 1 or 2 centaurs during the later stages of the game is hardly going to do us any good. Well it just so happens to be a way. And it work great with Mortred.

The Art of Automatic Ancient Creep Stacking and neutralling

Check out my mini guide on Semi-Automatic Creep Pulling

With this new method we are capable of setting up massive camps without every worrying about it after the first 30 seconds of set up. Amazing isn't it? But at this point some of you must be wondering... "you said mortred isn't a great farmer how can she take down all those neutrals?"


My answer to that is "Battle Fury" this items solves all our farming and mana problems. For those that still don't believe me take a look at this video.


Well now that we have covered most of farming lets see what items we should have.

Concluding Items

Point 1 ---------------------------------







----------------------------------Point 2
Here you have a little freedom of what you should get. You can either go directly to the
or you can start and build your way to . It is a personal choice.
But there are many definite advantages of AoM even if you don't know it.
Why AoM is good
1. Adds a burst of DPS that you many need to even land kills early on.
2. Adds a burst of HP which Mortred desparately needs.
3. It is cheap, you are only paying 700 gold for Unholy Rage which is really cheap if you consider the benefits it gives you.
Still not convinced? Consult this AoM miniguide at DA to learn more about it and why it is so useful.

http://forums.dota-allstars.com/index.php?showtopic=182665

or YOu can also Have.



OR



More information about these builds will be in Mid game


Detailed Skill Analysis



• Blink Strike doesn't deal any damage if the target is an Allied unit.
• Blink Strike deals Normal damage which is reduced by the target's Armor and is blocked by Stout Shield, Vanguard and Kraken Shell.
• This is not blocked by Linken's Sphere.
• Unlike Blink, you cannot use this skill to evade incoming projectiles from attacks or spells.
• Does not affect siege units.
For a more detailed guide on just Blink Strike check out my mini guide.
http://www.dotastrategy.com/forum/sutra314211.html#314211

Blur




• Blur miss chance follows the Miss/Evasion/Dodge stacking rule.
• The transparency of Mortred is 25%/50%/75%/100%. 100% transparency stands for completely invisible to the human eye. However, this invisible is very different from the state of invisibility.
•
• The transparency visual effect is only applied to enemies. This means that to allied players, Mortred will have no visual transparency even if she has leveled Blur, while she will have the corresponding amount of transparency to enemy players.
• If an aura item (like Assault Cuirass) is gotten after leveling Blur, the aura visual of the item will be visible, but if the item was bought before leveling Blur, the aura visual will be blured as well. Therefore it's better to get auras early on with Mortred such as Vlads
For information on the evasion stacking rules please consult Dota Wiki
http://www.dota-allstars.com/wiki/Dodge

Simple amazing, not only does it gives an instant boost to our EHP or effective hit points but also makes us extremely hard to see. Perfect for hunting down newer players.
This skill is also servers a dual purpose.
1. More EHP of course. Increases by a factor of 1.39 ( Thank you Azzaron)
2. Makes you "Spontaneous"

The first part about the EHP additions will not be needed to be explained but as for the "Spontaneous" part I think a little more details would be good.

What I mean by Spontaneous is that, every hero has something that makes them predictable. Be it their casting animations like Crystal Maiden Or leaving behind a trail of fire like TB. But being Mortred the phantom assassin we are completely secure from such predictions.

Normal blink leaves behind an image and another casting animation, which allows you to detect where the hero has went or will be going. BUT being Mortred with Blur and Blink Strike. Once we displace our selves from our current location it is almost impossible for anyone to tell where we went.

Coup de Graçe



• Coup de graçe follows the Critical Strike stacking rule.
• Coup de graçe is the highest-multiplier Critical Strike ability in the game.

This Skill makes us. This is the skill that lets us crit over 100 damage. The 2/3/4 times crit might be miss leading so to put it into more prospective . It is basically 15%/30%/45% increase in damage. Pretty big increase right?

Now the actually mechanics of Crits really isn't as simple as 15%. The developers of Blizzard decided to incorporate something called pseudo (fake) radom distribution.
For more information about it see