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Climbing with Drow Ranger and Slark!

Feb 5, 2020
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Our Dota 2 7.24 Guide to Help You Reach Your Highest MMR!

Path 7.24 was recently released, and global changes to items, talents, heroes, shrines, outposts, and couriers were made. All of this affected the meta. The winrates of last patch’s strong heroes began to fall, and the weak heroes began to win more often. In this guide, we take a look at one of the strongest heroes of patch 7.24, and discuss how to play them.

Drow Ranger 

Drow Ranger is still one of the strongest carries in the game after the patch. As soon as Drow has the necessary items, nobody can stop her. With the help of Multishot, Drow can fight in the early stages of the game, and together with a strong team, she can win in just 20 minutes. In the late game, Drow only becomes stronger. Overall, she is one of the best heroes, both for raising your MMR, and for the esports scene. We will tell you how to play Drow correctly in this guide.

Drow Ranger’s counter picks

Despite her power, Drow is pretty easy to counter with the right heroes (as any other core hero). In this regard, Drow is good only in favorable matchups, otherwise, you can lose your matchup instantly. Therefore, first, we will deal with counter picks of the hero. In this meta, she is weak against: Phantom Lancer, Phantom assassin, Clockwerk, Blood seeker, and Spectre. If these heroes are picked, consider not picking Drow.

Items

Now you need to figure out how to make a proper build for Drow Ranger, because the build is an extremely important aspect of the game.

You can either go to the safe lane or mid. Buy yourself a pack of tango, a healing salve, and two Slippers of Agility. At the early stage, aim for three Wraith Bands and PT. After this, you can take Dragon Lance and upgrade it to Hurricane Pike. Then go for Yasha. Ideally, you want to upgrade it to Manta Style. After that comes Butterfly.

For late game items, you can buy MKB. And finish off all this with a Nullifier. Change the PT to Boots of travel. If you have money, you can also eat a Moon Shard.

This is the perfect item build that you should build in a game that is going well. But sometimes it can all go wrong, so you need to consider other items that you may need. For example:

BKB – obviously against magic.

Orchid (Bloodthorn) – for a single control.

Scythe of Vyse – for long control.

Linken’s – against target spells.

Mjollnir – against illusionists.

Rapier – in case you lack damage.

Skills and talents

Image via DotaBuff.

This upgrade path has the best winrate and pickrate. At level 10, choose talent “+5 to all attributes”. At level 15 take +12 agility. Further, + 35% to the damage from Multishot, and at level 25 take “+15 to the chance of triggering Marksmanship”.

Gameplay

On the one hand, your gameplay is extremely simple, but on the other hand, requires a large amount of knowledge both about the game as a whole and about this hero in particular. When you pick Drow, then you need to farm – especially at the beginning. Do not leave the lane until you are level 12. Instead, try to farm as much gold as possible and buy key items. By the way, starting from level 8, you can safely farm woods.

After level 12, you can already arrange team fights with your team. If you choose the right position in the fight, then Drow will be able to kill everyone with a Multishot. After several fights, you can push, and Drow does this very quickly. This way you can finish the game without any problems.

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Slark

Slark requires a lot of experience. This is because you can’t make a mistake on this hero, since lagging behind in farm can easily ruin your game. Also, you can’t buy wrong items, since, without the necessary items, Slark loses his main advantage – the ability to gain an advantage and dominate the map. Therefore, you need to play Slark with good micro and macro understanding. So let’s figure out how to play Slark properly.

Bad Matchups

First, you need to figure out who counters Slark in order to choose the hero only in winning matches. Pay great attention to drafts and do not take it if the enemy has one of the following heroes: Blood seeker, Slardar, and Disruptor.

The main weakness of Slark is the laning stage. If your opponent beats you in lane, it will be extremely hard to come back, since Slark is a snowball hero. Without apparent advantage in the early/ mid game, the only hope for you is your teammates and good team fights. 

Gameplay

The most important thing for a Slark is to get a minimal set of items, after that you are set to go. Buy yourself a starting set of items – 2 Wraith bands, PT and Diffusal Blade, and after that you should concentrate on building up your advantage. The best timing for Diffusal is 13-14 minutes. With these items, any weak support will not be a problem for you. After that, you can aim for a Shadow Blade/Sange and Yasha/ Basher/ Echo Saber. 

This is your best scenario for Slark: by the 20th minute, you can already kill the enemy cores. After that, organize a fight with the team, but do not go forward. Let your frontlaner do the job. This is very important since without a tanky frontlaner you will not be able to focus a target. Always try to sneak from the behind and focus weak supports, and only then control enemy cores. After 3-4 successful fights and Aegis you can finish the game.

Skills and talents

Image via DotaBuff.

Depending on the situation you may want to learn passive on level 4, but usually, people max first spell as this provides you with decent damage and ability to farm effectively. Lvl 10 talent – +10 strength (The strength talent effectively grants Slark 200 health, 1 health regen, and 0.8% magic resistance.), lvl 15 – 25 attack speed, lvl 20 – 150 Dark Pact damage, lvl 25 – +80s Essence Shift Duration. 

Conclusion

Of course, there are other effective cores in the game, but these two heroes allow you to carry the game in matchmaking providing good micro and macro understanding. However, practice makes perfect. You will be able to master these heroes only by playing a lot. This will sharpen your hero understanding, their item progression, late-game potential, specific matchups et cetera. Good luck climbing!

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Eugene has a major in Germanic languages and literature. Being an avid gamer and esports enthusiast, he found himself writing and covering the competitive Dota 2 and Hearthstone scenes. He is always ready to deliver reviews, game predictions, tournament analysis, and anything else related to the world of esports.
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