Road to Pro Invoker

[Amoxicillin]

title.

this guy is litterally my favorite hero ever. he has so many spells, he looks awesome, his arrogant personality is great, and the amount of sheer ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ he can pull off is unmatched. im determined to be the best at him!

i need some tips. any and all would be appreciated. i already know a lot of the beginner stuff. i can remember all of the spell combinations at will now, took me about 20 games? i already know things like euls-sunbeam/euls-manadrain-nuke and early sunbeam escape kills and tornado nuke combo. etc etc. if anybody has any tips that would expand my skill beyond this it would be awesome!

positioning tips would also be great and what counters me mid and how i can combat these counters and win anyway, >_> cause i will win anyway.

THANKS!!

[Shuubaiken]

Im not a Invoker player,but never pick him if the enemy has a Silencer.

[Multi]

Originally posted by Shinji:

Im not a Invoker player,but never pick him if the enemy has a Silencer.

or nyx, or puck, or...weaver? my mind is saying weaver.

[Hex: Event is Misery]

Practice practice practice.

Read guides, watch (pro) gameplay.
Practice some more.

This is the same for all heroes, but absolutely for Invoker.

[Amoxicillin]

weaver ult is the most annoying spell. but i honestly think i could take him as invoker. after the 25 min mark. if he leaves me alone till then hes toast. i can see the logic in not picking during puck or nyx. and silencer is a bit obvious.

[Delfino]

Well I guess you need to train your builds. You can either play quas-exort, quas-wex or wex-exort (never build all your 3 colors at once - aim at two because with long invoke cooldown you can use 2-3 spells in a teamfgiht so make them strong). In the first build you rely on forge spirits and coldsnap for ganks, sunstrike to help on lanes and spirits to deny runes. Then you transition into more pusher than ganker. With quas-wex you are mostly use for utility and crowd control. Use you EMP - tornado combo a lot for teamfigts finnishing with coldsnap. The last build, where you max exort and then wex is used for single target nukes (with euls, sunstrike, meteor and blast) but can also deal a massive dmg in teamfights but only when there is proper crowd control (chrono, blackhole, reverse polarity etc). It can also help your carry with alacrity. Don't pick it unless your team already has lots of crowd control spells.

You need to know which build will be most effective with the picks you have.

As for mid I think that QoP is you main threat - not much you can really do - just play safe. I also dont like Storm Spirit and Puck mid. Bloodseeker can be a threat when he gets thirst from someone and you dont have tornado ready - he can easily tower dive you. But gameplay depends a lot on which build you are making.

Generally tornado is your main defensive skill, of course invisibility can work well too unless they buy dust. I think that quas-wex is the most effective build in current meta and also the easiest to play (tornado emp combo is very simple to do), but you will need to gank lanes with it (no sunstrike). The only problem is that you will get a lot of assists and very few kills. It is also harder to get a kill mid with quas-wex. Quas-exort works better in the mid because coldsnap with spirits can melt almost any hero in the early game and sunstrike will finnish him off, but spirits were nerfed some time ago so this build is not so effective in teamfights anymore.

There could be a book written about Invoker so it's hard to give you good hints here. Read guides and ask.

[Jehenoch]

This should help you play invoker's spells like a pianist, I used to use this but I've decided not to play invoker anymore --> http://www.invokergame.com/

Early combos are important. The most common are =
1. Eul --> deaf blast, sunstrike, meteor. Do this simultaneously to a non-tank hero, and you will most likely kill him instantly. Doesn't work if the enemy is dazzle, supportted by dazzle, naturally magic immune (Juggernaut, Naix), a natural tank (those with high STR gain, axe doesn't count).
2. Tornado + EMP + cold snap. Awesome annoying ♥♥♥♥♥. You should memorize all the heroes who has low mana pool and/or mana dependant and/or has low INT gain. One EMP to break them all. Heroes who rely on spells but born with low mana pool are countered by this. Example : sven, centa, axe, troll warlord. But this doesn't help you well on the lategame., especially if the enemy is smart enough to bulk themselves up with stat boosting items.

There are uncommon combos and playstyle such as support invoker.
One of the best uncommon combo I've ever seen is :
1. Cold snap + spirit summon + sunstrike + ice path. Hard to land thought, do the math on your own.


THE SPELLCASTER
There are mostly spell-based invoker. This species enters the teamfight by throwing everything/everycombo he has then immediately stays back because their abilities are on cooldown. It's important to protect a strong spellcaster you see. This species will later build aghanim and refresher, you can see in DOTA WTF number xxx, an invoker caused a rampage after spamming the exort combo which contained to deafening blasts and two meteors. Epic.


THE FACEGRINDER
The carry invoker is rare. This species build stat-boosting items, even going as far as purchasing desolator and/or assault cuirass, even SKADI. And you know what? IT WORKS MAGIC! The skadi part allows you to have massive boosted stats which allows you to spam all the spells you can have. What's more, if you also have aghanim, you can invoke those spells in a blink, WHAT'S MORE, IF YOU ALSO HAVE REFRESHER, YOU WILL ALSO BE ABLE TO DO THE EPIC ♥♥♥♥♥ THAT THE PREVIOUS SPECIES CAN DO. DOUBLE EPIC! But this requires invoker to farm, which will annoy your main carry's farming time/space, but that doesn't matter if your carry sucks. This can be performed better if you can rush midas while on mid. You should try it.
NOTE : this species is rare because most of the times, an invoker is required to roam + lead a gank, instead of farming. Even 5 minutes is precious dont you think? :D



COUNTERS :
1. Anything that can get to invoker's ass is dangerous to him, so let's say invisible heroes (NYX, RIKI, BH). All is well if you have true sight, do you always have true sight?
2. KUNKKA. Invoker needs farm, he mainly has to get close to the creeps. While he's busy last hitting the creeps that go chris brown on each other, kunkka can hit him with tidebringer from afar. This may not always kill invoker, but it's annoying as hell.
3. Naix because Rage.
4. Juggernaut because bladefury, you just can't oneshot him. But he doesn't ultimately counter invoker because invoker should ghost walk out of omnislash and/or buy EUL. You just shouldn't waste your time trying to nukedown juggernaut.
5. Tinker because big nukes + dagon and annoying as ♥♥♥. You just have to be faster than this one.
6. Pudge because if you're slow, he's gonna eat your first. If you're faster, you can cold snap the hell out of his hug.
7. BKB because you can read what it does. Does it pain you to wait several seconds before spamming your nukes or targetting something else instead?
8. Doom because he counters counters that even counter him. Nuke him down, be quicker, OR EMP HIS BUTT. He has low mana pool early game.
9. Storm with early orchid simply breaks you down quite fast.


All these are not because I can play invoker, but I've lived in the meta where invoker is strong and I was forced to adapt with it. So there you go.
Good luck.

[Delfino]

Pudge is actually easy to play against. You can dodge hooks quite easily and even if he hits, just cast tornado on him before he ults. If you don't have tornado invoked even coldsnap can save you. On the other hand you can harass him a lot so he gets almost no farm.

[Amoxicillin]

theres were all super helpful tips and i will refer to this often. thank you.

my typical build is normally E-Q-R-E-E-E-Q-W-E-E-E-E

basically a pure exort invoker. i rush midas, normally get it around 6-8 mins as mid- next is then euls and leather boots after it. this is my core. next is a mobility item(force blink etc) whichever seems to fit the occasion. then travel boots-> aghs if we are winning or just straight aghs if we are losing.

how viable is this?

i often find us losing because we get pushed harder. even if i get sever sunbeam kills (7 or more in lane phase on a good game) on escapees we lose lane towers. and by the time i at ahgs and truely ready to rock and roll we are pushed so much we are constantly on the defensive. how can i better help my team? should i sacrafice farm for ganks/time spent leaving lane? i need farm for at least the first 15 mins it seems, to be any effective at all but like i said, we are on the defensive from the get go. keep in mind at least for the time being my goal is to carry the entire game... win or die trying attitude.

[HEX: LocalLadyboy]

http://www.invokergame.com/

play the survival game, it's REALLY helpful and it helps with brain muscle(memorization)

[Amoxicillin]

Originally posted by Jannina(ว ˘ω˘ )ง:

http://www.invokergame.com/

play the survival game, it's REALLY helpful and it helps with brain muscle(memorization)

another guy above told me this too, i will definately use it.

[HEX: LocalLadyboy]

Originally posted by Where the ♥♥♥♥ is Waldo?:

Originally posted by Jannina(ว ˘ω˘ )ง:

http://www.invokergame.com/

play the survival game, it's REALLY helpful and it helps with brain muscle(memorization)

another guy above told me this too, i will definately use it.

Always use the same route for invokations, such as meteor I always do EEW and not otherwise, because I trained my brain to do EEW and not WEE. It's the same in the end but it's faster if u always do it the same way due reflex and having to invoke spells fast.

[Delfino]

As I told you this is probbably the most losing Invoker build. It works only if your team has strong spells seting up your meteor strike. Of course you are good 1v1 with euls and help a lot with a sunstrike but there are better mid heroes who can 1v1 much better and help in teamfights. So picking Invoker is a bit of a waste. Try the other side building quast-wex and cast EMP with tornado in teamfights finnishing off with coldsnap. You won't get so many kills but for some reason your team will start winning. Just give it a try. You will be great at initiaion and chasing.

[XxTHUNDERxX]

Izi!!

[vdng-]

I just pick him and play him, and I feel like I'm getting better with every game. I pick him against his counters and I don't even give a damn. They will counterpick me when I get good anyway, so at least when I'm learning I'll get some idea of how to play versus Silencer or some other douche.
Any melee hero will have hard time on mid if you play Spirits and Cold Snap. And if you see silences get Euls. Lets you get out of sticky situations and set up some kills. And Kunkka is funny to play against when you have 600 range. With that range you should be able to farm without getting hit by Tidebringer most of the time, and when you play Q-E, he should pay a big price for just trying to harras you. And you should really utilize your big range on AA and spells the whole game, no matter who is your opponent.
I wonder how much of this post is true, and how much is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but hey, I only have 50 games as this hero and this works for me.

[no brains]

oh look, another invoker player, how original