Puck - Mini Guide

[Palmar]

Second post I'm doing in a series of mini-guides on the various heroes I like to play in DOTA. The reason I'm doing these guides is because our play-style is very different from what the leagues suggest, so the same strategies do not apply. I would appreciate it if people would take the time to write guides on heroes they excel at playing. The other thing I hope to do is increase the diversity in hero choices for our players. Image links can be found on www.dota-allstars.com

Puck - The Faire Dragon

Basic Info

Puck! He's one of my favourite heroes. He's got such an awesome array of skills to initiate, gank and support. Do not look at this intellect yellow-spell-spamming hero and think he's pure support, far from it, Puck is a great ganker early game, and he keeps much of his strength up until very late endgame.

Don't forget that he's also pretty much immune to ganks with illusory orb as one of the best escape skills in the game. Most of your deaths as Puck will come from initiating team battles, but hopefully your team should be able to mop up the slowed, stunned, silenced and damged heroes you've left them.

Besides, Puck is helluvalot more fun to play than right-click heroes.

Skills

Illusory Orb
Sends a magic orb flying down a straight path damaging everything in its way. At any time during the life of the orb the Faerie Dragon may teleport up to it, taking its place. 1800 Range, 225 AOE.

Level 1 - Deals 70 damage.
Level 2 - Deals 140 damage.
Level 3 - Deals 210 damage.
Level 4 - Deals 280 damage.

Cooldown: 15

Level 1: 125 mana, 15 sec cooldown.
Level 2: 125 mana, 15 sec cooldown.
Level 3: 125 mana, 15 sec cooldown.
Level 4: 125 mana, 15 sec cooldown.

This is your signature ability. It's your standard nuke, it's your escape and initiating ability. Early game you'll use this to harass your lane, and later on it can be used for chases, escapes and charging headfirst into the enemy team.

This skill comes with Etheral Jaunt (hotkey E, very useful), and as long as the orb is alive (3 seconds) you can hop into the orb's location. If you're being chased, just orb up a cliff, and then run. They'll either have to chase you or the orb, and you can then decide what's the best course of action. Usually you want to orb cliffs/forest and hop there for safety.

You also want to initiate your ganks and aoe combos with the orb. make sure it has done it's damage before you switch in. In 90% of cases this means waiting till the orb is behind the enemy before you Jaunt.

Waning Rift
Releases Puck's mystical faerie dust around him dealing damage and silencing enemies. 400 AOE.

Level 1 - Deals 60 damage and Silences for 0.1 seconds.
Level 2 - Deals 120 damage and Silences for 1 second.
Level 3 - Deals 180 damage and Silences for 2 seconds.
Level 4 - Deals 240 damage and Silences for 3 seconds.

Cooldown: 20
Manacost: 100/110/120/130

Level 1: 100 mana, 20 sec cooldown.
Level 2: 110 mana, 20 sec cooldown.
Level 3: 120 mana, 20 sec cooldown.
Level 4: 130 mana, 20 sec cooldown.

Simple skill really, it's an AoE silence that deals a fair bit of damage. The main thing is that it synchronizes very neatly with your other skills. Your early game gank combo is Orb in, and then silence them for some heavy nuke. If they're not dead, just pop the ulti.

Phase Shift
Shifts the Faerie Dragon out of existence for a brief period, temporarily avoiding any further damage.

Level 1 - Up to 0.75 seconds.
Level 2 - Up to 1.5 seconds.
Level 3 - Up to 2.25 seconds.
Level 4 - Up to 3 seconds.

Cooldown: 6
Manacost: 50/40/30/20

Level 1: 50 mana, 6 sec cooldown.
Level 2: 40 mana, 6 sec cooldown.
Level 3: 30 mana, 6 sec cooldown.
Level 4: 20 mana, 6 sec cooldown.

This is the hard skill, and seeing that I'm bad at Dota, I generally skip it until later in the game when dps heroes start hitting hard. I personally use it mostly to hide after unleashing my AoE combo in late game team battles.

Dream Coil
Puck's powerful imagination engulfs an area, creating coils of volatile magic that damages and stuns enemy unit as it latches on to them. Stretching the coils beyond 600 range causes it to snap and deal additional damage and stun time. Lasts 5 seconds.

Level 1 - Initial: 100 damage and 0.5 seconds stun. Coil Break: 100 damage and 1.5 seconds stun.
Level 2 - Initial: 150 damage and 0.5 seconds stun. Coil Break: 150 damage and 2.25 seconds stun.
Level 3 - Initial: 200 damage and 0.5 seconds stun. Coil Break: 200 damage and 3 seconds stun.

Cooldown: 85
Manacost: 100/150/200

Level 1: 100 mana, 85 sec cooldown.
Level 2: 150 mana, 85 sec cooldown.
Level 3: 200 mana, 85 sec cooldown.

This is a great ability. The cooldown is pretty long, but it's such a great tool nonetheless. After you get it, you should be ganking on almost every cooldown. Find a enemy hero on low hp, orb in, silence, and then use dream coil. They will most likely try to run and take the extra damage and stun. Try to aim it on your side of a running hero, to make sure they can't react and stop running, it's got a fairly long cast range, so placing it is not too hard.


Skill Build

1. Orb
2. Waning Rift
3. Orb
4. Waning Rift
5. Orb
6. Dream Coil
7. Orb
8-9. Waning Rift
10. Stats
11. Dream Coil
12-15. Stats (can add in 1-2 points of phase shift here)
16. Dream Coil
17-21. Stats
22-25. Phase Shift (or more stats if you took it earlier)

Item Build

Start out with:
2x Mantle of Intelligence
Circlet of Nobiloty
Tangoes.

As soon as you can, you should finish 2 null talismans, boots of speed, and buy some clarity potions (2-3) this should be very early in the game.

This is all you need to start ganking, your mana pool can now survive your entire combo, and even leave enough for a finishing orb if the enemy is getting away. Now you are either doing well, or bad, and depending on the situation, you want your next 2 items to be either 2xBracers if you've been dying and not getting in kills, but ideally, you want 2 more null talismans

Now you have a cheap stat boost, and a healthy mana pool. Also, at this stage of the game, team battles are beginning to take place, and the laning phase is over, leaving less cheap ganks for you to abuse. So Now you go on a farming spree. Orb+Rift is enough to kill an entire creep-wave, so abuse that to get money, don't leave yourself open to the semi-carries that will start looking for ganks now (Drow, Clinkz, Nerubian etc.)

Farm many golds and get mystic staff and plate-mail (in that order)

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Shiva's guard syncs sooo well with your abilities. you are without a doubt the best shiva carrier in the game (though rylai, jakiro aren't bad)

Once you've done this, finish boots of travel for lane pushing, and your final item build will look like this.

If the game drags on, you will get many many golds because you can obliterate creep waves with your orb+rift+shiva combo and in that case start replacing your nulls with various caster items. I'd start with Skadi, and then move on to guinsoo's. But if there is a particularly dangerous carry on the other team, take Guinsoo's first.


How to play!

You wanna play puck fairly defensively early game. You're going nulls over bracers, so you haven't got a huge buffer of HP to tank enemy nukes/harassment through. Use your range to last hit and deny, and stay close to your tower. If laned with another nuker, feel free to harass alot with orb. But stay mindful of your mana, since it won't be regenning fast at this game. Also, in all your calculations, remember that the orb costs 150 mana and not the listed 125 if you include the Etheral Jaunt, so always stay above 150 mana.

Once you hit 6 and get your 2 nulls, boots and clarities, start looking for ganks. if an enemy is on low hitpoints, you can almost guarantee a kill. Don't be afraid to dive behind towers with your orb, but try to shoot it from the darkness, so the enemy doesn't see it coming. Then silence him and catch him with the dream coil. Autoattack, and be prepared to launch another orb should you need to.

Whether or not you get kills early on, you should continue farming your items. You really, really need shiva's to be effective, so get it.

After nuke-gankers (like you are) lose their ganking potential (when people gain health) you still remain useful because of your awesome team-battle support ability. You never want to hop into an entire enemy team alone, but you need to be prepared to take some risks. The best time to hop in is when your tank is on it's way into the fray, but the battle hasn't actually started yet (both sides are moving awkwardly, waiting for the initation). Orb in, hit your silence, hit your shiva, and cast dream coil. This needs to be done at the same time as your team moves in. Often the enemies will be surprised by the pretty lights, and try to move back, resulting in even more stuns and general ownage.

Your dps may get the glory, but the kill is yours. Also, remember that even though you lose potential late game, you're still extremely good farmer and pusher, so keep porting around and pushing lanes. You're a great candidate to get whatever item your team may need (guinsoo for disable, skadi for slow, diffusal vs sven or omni etc) since your core build is relatively cheap, and you farm extremely well


Heroes to watch out for!

Silencer... words can't describe how hard last word fucks you over. You rely on chaining spells to win, and the aura just completely shuts you down.

Other silencers like Drow, Krob, Luci are pretty tough to deal with

Stun gankers (Lion/Nerubian Assasin etc.) can kill you before you activate your getaway skill of massive win and lulz (orb). So watch out when these are missing.

Yay!