General DiscussionAnti Mage Tips Please

battlemage build!

Well, have you used your reroll yet? :P

Sadly yes :( At first I thought that even the heroes you did would reset as well so I just reset straight on because there were too many carries + there was a meepo lol

I'll give u advice, but when i had AM for my 10 heroes and i rerolled that shithead.
Hes like a T2 carry now compared to FV and Luna etc

Orchid/Silence/Lockdown = Manta
Stuns = Bkb
Nukes = Heart

I think thats the general AM build guide after Bfury

What happens if they have all 3. Does that mean I'm screwed? Loool

Well, playing AM in low mmr pubs isn't that hard. He can almost guarantee his lategame presense due to blink being great escape tool. So if you're playing careful - you won't die.
Second, while being pretty much opposite if what have been said - AM is actually a dangerous right-clicker early. On lvl 3 you can do loads of damage to an opponent. Problem is, you're also very squshy, so you need to understand when you should take risk, and when you shoudn't.
So go with a trilane, try to take first blood, do not die and then play safely. If you are getting harrased and can't afford farming a battlefury right away, you can go for Vladimir's instead. It will not make you strong fighter, but it'll give you ability to reliably farm jungle.

PS And Battlefury is by no means a "musthave"

When you pick AM it puts an instant target on your back. Ask for a strong tri safelane get farm. If you get dual laned, go PMS PT VLADS wand even if you have a really bad start. Focus on farming. ask your team to gank without you (4man) while u split push! make SURE YOU BUY A TP to tp back to defend towers for example.

Get a BKB ASAP after those basic items if needed. or RUSH bfury after PT if your early game is good.

Then --> bfury manta basher into either heart or butterfly.

He's not that hard. Just make sure you make it to the late game. His mana burn during mid - late game is unreal. Be AWARE of your map. I've seen pros hit ALT button to count how many enemies there are on the minimap. It's been helpful to me as I play any hero, most importantly the 1 position (carry).

Just be aware of your minimap..for ganks inc. THEY WILL GANK YOU alot.

Do it the easy way, add me and I'll get you the AM win mate, 2 bucks

edit: $1 on a good day though

How to win with AM:

1. Q on russian/SA server on their midnight time
2. Mute team
2.5. Get the single magic resistance value point
3. Buy bfury
4. Farm for 10-15 minutes
5. Win gaem

This is how i completed my challenge

AM really only works for me when I see a caster that is easy to catch with no mana. e.g. qop and storm and silencer and skywrath. I've also found his blink is pretty good for countering squishy heroes that rely on staying away from you but have no escape e.g. sniper.

but do get battlefury first.

ask your team to go agg tri, AM can beat most offlaners
buy stout shield 1st, trade hits, buy roh, trade more hits and just out-regen enemy offlane
if enemy offlaner calls for support and creeps are near their tower go kill the small and medium neutral creep camp/stack and wait to last hit under your tower. Also ask your tri to crush their carry when this happens (diving tower or something since supports already used tp)
If opponents are smart and they go agg tri against you, deward asap and just pull (no need to actually farm the pull since it's risky, just to pull the wave under your tower)
After getting fury don't go afk jungle, pressure tower, rotate back to jungle and other lanes. buy a quelling blade
PRESSURE TOWERS, since it's pretty hard for opponents to actually kill you without making it obvious
skill build depends but you should time to max or have 3 points in blink when you get fury

Dont forget quelling blade for BF AM, it's core on him

A. When to pick:

Against strong casting lineups that love spending their big manapool, aka zeus, skywrath, storm, rhasta etc. Avoid long lasting disable or silence heros (strom, sky, rhasta). Thats the tough part. Many casters fuck you up early mid, but you fuck them mid-late. You counter them, they counter you. You counter them, if they jump your team. They counter you if they get hands on you. Depending on who gets the first shot. AM is also crap against strength heros with low mana.

The problem with antimage is, that you force your entire team to play YOUR way. They have to protect you early-mid and they have to sacrifice alot of farm. On top they must be able to pressure as 4 and/or sustaion pressure as 4. This leads often to shitpicks in pubs. You get 1 offlaner, 1 midlaner, 1 support, you as carry. If the last guy goes LC jungle or lifestealer, you are pretty much fucked, if your midlaner or offlaner does not get out of control early on or they have a hard feeder on their team. Since the passive jungler and you have nothing to contribute for the first 15-20 min. Thats a problem AM shares with most hardcarries. Unlike a void or spectre his teamfight presence is even lower. Thats why Antimages winratio is so damn low. You can still get a decent wr on him, if you practice alot. It took me nearly 150 games to get him above 50% winrate (started with 9%, 10 loses to 1 win).

B. How to skill:

There is only 1 valid built: Burningbuilt. 1 Point in every spell, 2-3 Points in stats. Max blink if you get close to battlefury, chose spellshield over manaburn. You need to stay alive and not fall to ganks. The offensive potential of manaburn starts to matter with your manta. Ult on 6,11,16.

C. Itemisation:

You start with 2 pair of tangos, 1 salve and a stoutshield. With your insane BAT you should be able to lasthit without a quelling blade. The big amount of regen ensures you the ability to sustain harrass.

I. If you have freefarm you buy:

1. QB (easier lasthits)

2. Brown boots

3. ROH

4. Rest of the battlefury (Aim for 12-15 min mark)

5. Fullboots

6. Yasha (optional vlads. I built it nearly every game, sicne you never run out of mana or health. You can clear stacked ancients and it gives you more push and mid game presence. On top you can solorosh with manta, vlads and bf.)

7. Mantastyle (20-25 min mark WITH vlads)

8. Heart or BKB + Heart(decided by their ability to lock you down)

9. Butterfly/Abysall. Abysall if you have to take another carry out, that can potentially 1v1 you, aka a void etc. In every other situation a Butterfly is better, cause you become unkillable with butterfly and heart.

II. You get harrassed alot

Same starting items.

1. PMS, allows you to sustaion harrass

2. QB on lane for easier lasthits

3. Roh for regen

4. Ring of regen, for regen

5. Brown boots into fullboots

6. Battlefury

Rest as mentioned above. Times should be a little later.

With the 2 rings, the pms and the fullboots you are hard to kill, including the 2 points in stats till lvl 5. With the 8 tangos and the 2 rings it is pretty hard to harrass you out of the lane. If they still are able to do so, your support(s) simply failed it.

D. How to play

You just AFK-Farm. LANEFARMING IS ALWAYS PREFERED. Most anitmages spent too much time killing neutrals. You only rotate into jungle, when the lane is too far pushed out AND there are big bad enemies that could kill you. Use treadswitch to not fuck with your manapool. Learn efficient ways to move arround the map (blink effectivly). The movement can only be learned by practice AND watching some good antimages like black/burning/beesa. The mapmovment is key to farm fast with antimage. A good antimage can outfarm even an alchemist. You should aim for 8 creeps per minute from min 20 in CALCULATED OVER THE WHOLE GAME.

Generally:

Min 1-10: 5-7 CS/Min (below 5 is only acceptable if you face a annoying enemy lane aka 2 ranged offlaners against a duallane on your side or aggressive trilane).

Min 10-20: 6-8 CS/Min

Min 20 on: 10 CS min

You only tp into a teamfight AFTER the big things occured, to snatch 1-2 kills. ONLY tp if you know that you

a) Will not die

b) Will get kills

Defending towers is not your job. Anitmage is 4 protect 1. If they fail to, you can still try to do your job. Splitpush and farm. You play more active, AFTER your mantastyle. You become the leader of your assaults AFTER your heart. Before that, you simply splitpush, even if a fight is about to start. You can just tp in after the first spells are casted and jump on the target that allready spent the most mana. Cast ult, hit 1-2 times. Profit. Antimage is like the biggest pussyhero in dota. Thats how you play him. Even with Heart your MAIN OBJECTIVE is Splitpush. Thats where your strength lies.

You do not rush into joining your team, because with battlefury your splitpush is just huge. You will skip creeps and pressure their towers. If they try to defend, they have to send mostly 2 heros for you. So you create space for your team to start a fight (that you can join, if you want to). If they do not defend, you take their towers. If they start a teamfight meanwhile, you tp in. Thats all.

Your pathetic health pool does not allow you to play more aggressive early on. Do not rush into things, esp be never the guy that enters a fight first (maybe with heart, if you are able to kill everyone alone).

If you want to watch good antimage replays:

Black

Burning

Beesa

They all play outstanding antimages, and they mostley go the above mentioned builts (yes black and beesa go vlads many many times).

Xboct plays a good antimage, too but he prefers a more russiandoto/aggor built, which I clearly do not recommend.

^
You dont buy quelling blade on antimage for easier last hit
You buy quelling because it's combination with battlefury

Magic.

@epsik-kun Well my mmr is not that low, but I get what you mean. The problem is that even though they can't kill me, my team would still have a hard time fighting 4v5. But I guess this comes down to me picking fights. My late game items are usually delayed though due to the fact that my AM sucks ass early game. Thanks for the tips though

@♠║3nVis1on™ Yeah, my antimage is a sad one with all the ganks :(

@dangdang lols, I'd rather lose with anti-mage then pay to win :p

@Traxex I had a friend that went on least played mode to finish some of his heroes. You should probably add to that list too lol

@!yiran Yeah I guess I should just be opportunistic with my pick. I can imagine that he rapes pugna really hard in all stages of the game

@Yfay Yup I do get that item. My friend keeps telling me to get it (even as a first item, but I tend to buy mine in the side shop)

@9v1 That really helped. Thanks a lot. I hope my game starts to improve after that. I'll watch some of those replays if I find any

@Yfay

I know that you get it for Battlefurysynergy on Jungling and Creepskipping. But his Basedamage is rly shit, so its just more comfortable to pickup the qb early on.

Xboct for example goes on lane with Qb, Stout and one pair of tangos. Same for Beesa sometimes. But the lack of regen can be annoying as fuck. If i do not need the regen, i can sell it later at the sideshop. The qb just makes lasthitting so much easier, esp under the tower.

@9v1 Thanks for this, I tried your early game build and I must say that the sustain is quite good. I was able to stay in the lane for a really long time despite minimal cs and constant harass from a fucking soul ring dazzle lol. And (for me) I find that the earlier one can buy the QB the better. I guess I wouldn't buy it at the start of the match unless I'm really confident in my supports, but hey, who am I to say shit about AM when I only have 5 games with him lol

So a combination of good team play, bad opposition, and massive free farm has brought me a win for my antimage. Thanks for the tips guys!

I wouldn't say your gameplay was particularly effective that game I spectated and in the middle you were third in networth of your team I think it's more that your teammates got fed than your Anti-Mage build was effective.

Oh well, you've already won. who cares, toss this hero in ths trash

Its not mine ;). I saw it on Black. You are welcome.

@!yiran

Antimage is clearly no trash. Just takes some practice to learn him effectivly. Btw you learn alot about tarketpicking and positining in teamfights, by playing antimage, because thats what seperates the shit AM's from the decent ones. Same goes for efficient movement arround the map.

http://dotabuff.com/heroes/winning?date=patch_6.81

scroll down

Why you want to learn Anti Mage? Win 1 for challenge and fuck him. Hero is trashkan at current meta , there are at least 10 more usefull carries

lol wow meepo is higher hahahaha

And what does this list tell us? Morph, strom, qop, tinker are also at 40-42% winrate. And Bogi telling hes trash: Brood is also considered trash and Bogi wins pubs with her. Antimage is not a bad carry for public dota, cause he is hard to gank, if played correctly and he can rat doto. Ofc a lycan is a better pick. But that does not mean AM is trash.

Also sucking dick on current pro meta is crap. The meta can change in 2 blinks of an eye. Just some pros need to run a hero and he is considered as current meta. What pros do and what does work in pubs is not even close the same shit.

Kill every creep for 60 minutes
Proceed to kill enemy team + their towers + willpower

I'm going to throw in some cents about not having your game end at 20 minutes. AM is a late game carry, so he puts early game stress on his own team.

If you are feeling the pressure, a safer build is the stat build with early treads over straight BF. This gives you a solid 300 or 400 more HP as well as small boosts to attack speed and damage. It looks like this:

blink-mana-shield-stats-stats-ult-stats-stats-stats... (start maxing blink when you are close to BF. Go back to stats. Max mana once you're close to manta. Go back to stats.)

A few ways this helps you prevent an early ending:
+ more hp
+ you sacrifice an escape mechanism (blinking sooner), which is pretty much meaningless in team fights at your rax or early t2s.
+ Helps with jungling once you get BF by giving you more hp, attack speed, mana, and damage.
+ Treads and stats give enough attack speed/beef to quickly do a couple of camps, sustainable with ring of health, if your lane is a nightmare.

It's just far more reliable in a pub environment than, "I will go max blink, max mana burn, and have 670 hp while going straight BF. If my team doesn't invest every resource into me, and we lose the lane, we have a guaranteed loss."

You ONLY pick Anti-Mage due to his flashfarm capability. If you don't have items advantage due to your flashfarm, then the game is over. He gets outcarried by the tier 1 carries of the current patch.

People underestimate him on lane. Your blink skill allow you to be aggressive (if you have atleast 1 support with you), as you trade hits and teleport back to safety. Abuse that mainly after you get RoH, you'll have full hp again in no time. If you get your BFury until 15 min you are fine, just keep farming the camps, its really easy. By the 30 min mark, you should be @ 350 LH, which is ATLEAST 9k gold, that means that by 30 min you should have atleast 2 big items. If you don't manage to get even close to this mark (300~320) then you probably lost. BurNing said once that Magina relies too much on gold advantage, if you don't have that, you get outcarried.

Usually with a BFury and a Manta you can already join fights, jump into someone, active Manta, dish out their mana and ulti if really needed. Get back to farm.

What I usually build is:

PMS
Boots
BFury
Treads
Manta
Abyssal/Heart/Butterfly/whatever fits you best

About playstyle, I find it more useful to be splitpushing instead of fighting all the time. You usually only get relevant to carry a fight by your own by the very late states of the game, while splitpushing actually prevents teams from engaging in battle. It gives you more farming options as your team can stack the jungle and ancients while you farm at lane, and puts pressure on your enemy so they have to play more catiously.

Thats pretty much it. AM is a good carry if and if only he has farming advantage over the enemy team. If not, then it's pretty much gg

I think he's one of those heroes that you really only want to pick when you can play him super aggressively without getting punished. He's a situational hard carry that can really control the lane equilibrium well, and your orb kind of prevents people from harassing you well, paradoxically making you man-mode them occasionally. A good lane partner is important, consider having two supports with good stuns.
You are one of the most mobile heroes in the game, so be wary that people will be looking to build sheep sticks and orchids. No one wants to watch an AM farm, even if his winrate is pretty shit he's one of the hardest carries (off and on, THE hardest carry) so you will see a lot of pressure from good players. Pick up your battlefury, farm jungle faster than anyone in the game (maybe less fast than batrider?) and buy your bread and butter boring carry items.

Don't forget to get at least one level of your mana shield at levels 2 or 3 or 4.

But you have to realize that its hard to instapick Anti-Mage in pubs, your team MUST have a strong early game lineup, because the pressure is all on you. You can't really do much early on, so its going to be 4v5 for a decent amount of time. If your team is more late game orientated (which is seen very often in pubs), you are screwed, unless the other team is really bad and refuse to highground even when they have the chance (and that happens ALL the time in low lvl pubs, ppl just think they won and start playing cocky, then they let the late gamerzzz get their shit and its gg for the enemy team).

If your team is really strong early on, usually you can grab a kill or two in those small fights, which will help you. But don't fight all the time cuz killing heroes gives as much gold as killing like 2 camps, and take way more time (positioning, start and end a fight etc). Exploit the gaps when you see them, but don't play Magina as a ganking carry because he really relies on farming.

Anti-mage is kinda situational. If they got mostly int or heroes that rely on mana with no real disables and no early push potential you can easily go with AM. The trick with AM is to know your limit in the laning stage. Usually I pick up 1-2 kills in the first 8 minutes of the game just because the opponent underestimates the power of manabreak.

Skill-wise I'd say go for the BurNing build:

Blink, Manabreak, Spell Shield, Stats, Stats, Mana Void, Blink. After that, it's situational. Normally you want your Blink maxed out right when you get your battlefury, your manabreak maxed when you get manta and spell shield maxed when you get heart/bkb (survivability item).

Always carry 2 TPs on you, push lanes -> TP -> push lane -> jungle after you have battlefury and before you get your 3rd major item up. The key with AM is to put pressure on all lanes before the enemy can farm up their cores and start the 5 man mode. Usually, if game is rather decent, you should have T1 + T2 down on side-lanes and T1 on mid before they can even start thinking about team fighting.

Remember, if you're not fighting, you're farming. ALWAYS !!

As for items, it's pretty much standard. You get a stout, tango, salve. Get PMS if you're being harassed in lane, also, a magic wand/stick if enemy laner is spamming spells. Get fast ring of health, boots and if you're having an extremely easy time, finish your battlefury first, if it's not exactly ideal, finish treads before going for battlefury.

As far as building your battlefury, I usually think it's best to get perseverance before going for the damage items just so you know you always got mana for blink and mana void. After that, you can pretty much know what you need to get and in what order (usually Yasha into Manta then Heart).

@yiran Haha no it wasn't. I never said it was. In fact, it's far from effective haha. My teammates were just snowballing really hard and that gave me all the space in the world to farm and push towers even though I wasn't being particularly efficient. 9.3k tower damage is still something though

@bogi Well, I wanted to learn him/get better tips for the hero so I can complete the challenge. I'm most likely not going to play the hero again, but it's good for me as a support to understand how the carry works so I can shut him down harder.

@Vandal Yup, I kind of built myself that way. After putting 1 point in my 1st/2nd/3rd, I placed ulti/stats while taking extra points in my 3rd if I feel like I need it. Then maxing blink when nearing my fury

@Sleave and Skolder thanks for the tips, those really helped!

AM isn't a very good pub hero because he usually needs tons of space that pubs cant provide. Try picking him when you have a death prophet on your team. Free towers= Free gold = Fast battlefury = Lots of farm= win