This dota item guide article of mine is to make clear for all those amateur’s or beginner’s of DotA. When you make certain items, it is necessary to re-think why it is useful and which way it is gonna be beneficial to you and your hero and your team. Now I don’t wanna sound offensive calling those who rush these items in the game. The only reason I’m using this word amateur to differentiate an experienced and an inexperienced player. So Let us begin this dota item guide with certain items that amateur’s rush and make the game less interesting to play. Here are some examples. so here goes the dota item guide.

Dota Item Guide :

Vladamir’s Offering:

(2050 gold, 16% life steal aura (melee only), 15% damage aura, 5 armor aura, .80 mp/sec aura)

Vlads is created from a bacillus ring, Ring of regeneration, Mask of Death and a Vlads recipe.

Amateur’s love rushing vlads. This is a very very big problem when you actually look at the amount of gold that gets wasted, because other than the 5 armor aura (3 from the Basilius ring) and the .80 mp/sec aura(.65 from the Basilius ring), vlads is entirely based on percentages or fractions of total damage. Who has low damage early game? Yes, that’s right.Each and every hero in the game has low damage in the beginning. For example,

Juggernaut at lvl 1

Str: 20 + 1.9 (65 at 25)
Agi: 22 + 2.85 (88 at 25)
Int: 14 + 1.4 (47 at 25)

Lvl 1 Dmg: 44-48
Lvl 1 Armor: 3.9
Attack Range: 100 (melee)
Base MS: 305
BAT: 1.7
Sight range: 1800 / 800

Now assume Juggy is carrying vlads (Which is Damn Absurd, You’d wanna make helm for him,  anyway this is just an example). Just have a look at his damage. its 44-48. So at the best cases lets assume his damage is 48. The life steal from this damage is around 7.5, which is absolutely useless in early game. Rather If you would have made helm. You’d have +20 damage which gives you a greater life-steal damage and more to account on and give a good omni-slash damage in-case if you choose to ulti. All a Vlads rush does is spend 1500 gold for very little benefit on a hero(usually a melee carry) that needs farm to perform well.

Dota Item Guide : Do Not Rush Vlads.

If you want to get a vlads, ONLY get it as a 2nd-4th item, then and only then get vlads. Vlads is very seriously situational in almost every game.

Also, For god’s sake please don’t make vlads when one of your team mate has already made one . Vlads is an aura item, which means It Does Not Stack. Two people with a vlads and fighting in the same gank have seriously wasted 2050 gold between them. I hope this article has helped you realize the truth about vlads.It is a necessary item but not an item that you need to get first,unless you need the aura very badly,for instance mage, and ursa for bringing down Roshan early. Please choose wisely and carefully while playing and don’t make any mistakes regarding builds. After all they are what define your skill and game play. I will discuss similar item mistakes that people generally make during a game and actual screw it up big time in part 2 of this article below.

Now this dota item guide will similarly gonna discuss some  about players making mistakes regarding carry heroes, that need to support and boost the team’s winning rate and survivability.

There are many illusion hero’s in the game . Most of them carries, and as I already said, most of the inexperienced players rush vlads. Illusions are very misunderstood by lots of players who play DotA (even good and the experienced !). The most important part, is that damage items do not yield increase in damage for illusions. This means Battle-fury does nothing,that’s right absolutely nothing for your illusions,even Divine Rapier does nothing for your illusions, and those Phase boots do nothing for your illusions apart from the base movement speed.

There are tricks around this. You can get a crit item lets say crystalys (that does increase damage of illusions WHEN you crit), you can get a radiance (every illusion of the carrier has the 40 dps affect), but most importantly, you need to get stats. Stats directly increase the damage of your illusions. Ever wonder why Manta Style is +26 agility, +10 Strength and +10 Intelligence? That’s because if it was +40 damage, the illusion that it splits off would do NO bonus damage based on the Manta Style. For this reason, best solution to this problem is,get stat items to your heros such as Sange and Yasha,Heart,Skadi etc.

If you want a good and efficient build for illusion heroes like Phantom Lancer or Naga Siren, aim for treads (agility if you have adequate hp and likewise for other stats),  get a few wraith bands or maybe some bracers that improve your survivability, and then work towards a diffusal.  The strength and the intelligence will both benefit your hero, and it’s a very simple build to use.. If you are good with creeping and ganking rush radiance directly. I hope this dota item guide helped you all.