[REMASTERED] Ultimate Guide to Slark, the Nightcrawler

The Ultimate Remastered Guide on learning how to play Slark, how to optimize your playstyle, and how to properly skill and itemize. (Outdated, currently remastering again)

Preface

About
Before we begin, I'd like to introduce myself to you and why I am writing this guide.

I'm a Dota 2 player (if it's not obvious already), I've over three thousand hours in Dota 2 alone, and I played the original D1 mod in the Warcraft 3 engine. This accumlates to a grand total of about 5 years or so. I played Slark within the original mod aswell.

Currently, within the Dota 2 ranking system, I am 4.8K MMR, and feel free to discredit this guide if you feel I am not within the skill level to give advice. I have roughly over 600 games played with Slark and that is not including Dota 1. In those 600 games played I've won 72% of those games played.

I've also written a guide on Slark about a year ago, but I feel that it is outdated and not very well constructed, so I've continued on to create this one as its successor. Feel free to take a look at the older version, but the advice given there is outdated in this meta.

I very much enjoy playing Dota 2 and am interested in playing within the competitive. Although I feel like I've progressed in my skill, I do better to give advice to others as I don't perform as well under pressured circumstances. I'd like to give others a greater chance at playing Dota 2 better than I ever did, so I'm creating this guide as a testament to my time playing Dota 2. I hope you enjoy it and gain something worthwhile from it.

Thus, without further ado, so this guide begins.

Introduction

Background

Little known to the inhabitants of the dry world, Dark Reef is a sunken prison where the worst of the sea-breed are sent for crimes against their fellows. It is a razor barbed warren full of murderous slithereen, treacherous Deep Ones, and sociopathic meranths. In this dim labyrinth, patrolled by eels and guarded by enormous anemones, only the vicious survive. Pitched into Dark Reef for crimes unknown, Slark spent half a lifetime without kin or kindness, trusting no one, surviving through a combination of stealth and ruthlessness, keeping his thoughts and his plans to himself. When the infamous Dark Reef Dozen plotted their ill-fated breakout, they kept their plans a perfect secret, murdering anyone who could have put the pieces together--but somehow Slark discovered their scheme and made a place for himself in it. Ten of the Dozen died in the escape attempt, and two were captured, hauled back to Dark Reef, then executed for the entertainment of their fellow inmates. But Slark, the unsung thirteenth, used the commotion as cover and slipped away, never to be caught. Now a furtive resident of the carnivorous mangrove scrub that grips the southern reach of Shadeshore, Slark remains the only successful escapee from Dark Reef.

Hero Summary

Slark is a melee agility hero that serves as a multitude of roles. Slark under the hero type classification is only noted as an Escape type hero. Although, Slark can fulfill the role of carry and to some extent a mid and or offlane.

Slark is both elusive and mobile, navigates the map with ease, and can freely position himself in favorable engagements. His adept ability to escape makes him a difficult target in all stages of the game. Essence Shift serves to make him a capable carry and more powerful in extended engagements. Quick, agile and dangerous, if played well he can prove to be an ever-present and looming force over opponents.

In the coming sections, we will be discussing the quirks and advantages to Slark and proper itemizations and skill builds to his kit.

Position

Laning

Slark is a versatile hero who fills a multitude of roles, but none especially well. In most competitive games where he is picked, he serves as a mid to late game carry with his high snowball potential. Although he is rarely used outside the safelane carry role, he can serve to lesser extent as a mid or offlane role due to his increased vision. Even so, his early laning is weak compared to other mids and offlaners due to his lack of sustain, crowd control combined with his weak stat line makes it hard for Slark to trade efficiently pre-level 6. In most cases, early levels are of highest importances as they allow Slark to be effective as a roaming carry. Slark's farming is weak thus, he can't contend with other harder carries into the late game so it's important that he uses his early power spike to its fullest potential, hopefully setting the enemies' cores behind as well as effectively creating map pressure on the opponent.

Current Meta Game (version 6.84c)

With this in mind, Slark serves his purpose well, but is overshadowed by many other heroes making him a sub-optimal pick, at least at the time of this guide.

Slark hasn't sustained any notable nerfs, rather it is the change of meta game that makes his style especially weak in this patch. His power comes mostly in extended fights where he can sow chaos on the battlefield kiting his enemies around or picking off supports and other weaker heroes in the backline as the initiations start somewhere further forward.

Within the current meta, heroes with high burst damage and low cooldown Ultimates are favored and excel in the middle and safelane. With examples such as Lina and Leshrac coming to mind. While these heroes don't scale well into extreme late game, they scale effectively towards the late game due to buffs to items such as Aghanim's and Bloodstone. These magical burst heroes rely on heavy upfront damage coupled with some hard crowd control and are able to sustain the mana necessary with the items previously mentioned which can be attributed to the very high flash farm rate that these heroes can attain. Thus, they can often times suffer loss in the early game but still manage to keep relatively close to the enemy cores in terms of gold and experience gained.

Slark lacks any of these tools, his flash farming is hindered as he can't take Ancients as quickly as other physical based carries such as Anti-Mage, and provides relatively low burst damage. Supports are also not as susceptible to Slark's hit and run tactics due to the introduction of Glimmer Cape and the potency of Eul's Scepter of Divinity.

Overall, Slark has a hard time being useful this patch.

Skills

Dark Pact

After a short delay, Slark sacrifices some of his life blood, purging most negative debuffs and dealing damage to enemy units around him and to himself. Slark only takes 50% of the damage. Mana Cost: 55/50/45/40

Cooldown: 9/8/7/6

Slark's first ability, Dark Pact, acts as a delayed purge and damage source to nearby targets. It deals considerable damage at the cost of self-affliction. With a short cooldown and low mana cost, the ability is relatively spammable and is useful in purging projectile stuns, slows, status effects, debuffs, and silences. While Dark Pact is not able to disspell all effects, it is an instrumental part of Slark's kit making him a hard target to effectively lockdown if used correctly. The skill is useful in clearing ways and dealing damage, but its main utility is in its self-purge. Thus, it would be advised to max second or third.



Pounce

Slark leaps forward, grabbing the first hero he connects with. That unit takes damage and is leashed to Slark, and can only move a limited distance away from Slark's landing position.
Mana Cost: 75/75/75/75

Cooldown: 20/16/12/8

Pounce is Slark's second ability, a blink forward that latches onto enemy heroes. The enemy that Slark attaches to is then bound to that location,for 3.5 seconds, from which they were originally hit. Pounce suffices to be both an offensive and defensive ability. Slark can use Pounce to impede an enemy's escape or escape over terrain and create a gap between his opponents. Keep in mind that heroes that have innate Blinks will be able to detach from the leash. Also, it should be noted that if enemy heroes are within the path of the Pounce they can impede your escape. With decent damage scaling and good cooldown scaling it would be reccomended to be maxed first.



Essence Shift

Slark steals the life essence of enemy heroes with his attacks, draining each of their attributes and converting them to bonus Agility.
Duration: 15/30/60/120




Slark's passive, Essence Shift, is what makes him a viable carry and extremely dangerous in prolonged battles. Essence Shift serves to make up for Slark's awful agility gain. The ability scales massively in duration length, thus making it more fit toward the late game. It would be generally advised to max last or to spread ability points between Dark Pact and Essence Shift.



Shadow Dance

When used, Slark hides himself in a cloud of shadows, becoming immune to detection. Attacking, casting spells, and using items will not reveal Slark.
Mana Cost: 120/120/120

Cooldown: 60

Finally, Slark's Ultimate is Shadow Dance. This skill works in two seperate parts. The first being an active ability, and the second being a passive that is only activated under specific circumstances. Activation the ability will cause Slark to be shrouded in smoke and completely undetectable to opponents for 4 seconds. While Slark is untargetable, his smoke cloud is visible making it so that Area of Effects can be used on Slark during the duration. The latter part works to make Slark sustainable in teamfights. When unseen by enemies, Slark passively gains health regeneration and movement speed. Both proponents help to make Slark very apt at ganking other lanes and agile. While the active portion does not scale whatsoever, the health regeneration and movespeed both scale very well so Shadow Dance should be leveled at every avaliable point.

Recommended Skill Builds

Itemization

Starting

Slark's base items should be comprised of base stat items to help him last hit and increase his abysmal starting agility and mana. Use the components to Ring of Aquila or Magic Wand as starting items to transition into the early game. A Stout Shield can also be useful in certain laning situations and can be used to build an early Poor Man's Shield at the sideshop.

Starting items examples:

Early

Power Treads
One of the most essential items on Slark, usually built first to aid in the early game. It helps his laning with increased stats and attack speed and allows for tread switching for more effective mana usage.

Ring of Aquila
A choice early item, a good item to build the components of the early game into, also comes with a helpful aura to keep a healthy mana pool. It's a choice between this and a Poor Man's Shield, depending on your starting items and the situation, consider PMS over Aquila if you feel there's an item you need to prioritize first, otherwise it's a great pickup for the early game.

Magic Wand
Overally decent stats for the price, it can be useful in terms of mana towards the early game leading up to mid game due to Slark's innately small mana pool, but it's a relatively small item and can end up taking up a pertinent item slot that could be occupied by a better item.

Medallion of Courage
Another relatively cheap item to help keep Slark's mana healthy during rotations. Usually picked up for the synergy with Dark Pact and Valor. Can be used to make a Solar Crest later, but isn't advised as there are many larger items later on that are more beneficial so it's almost always best to choose the latter and sell it afterwards.

Sange and Yasha
Good base stats coupled with a maim that helps immobilize foes to pile the Essence Shift stacks on. A cheaper alternative to an item like Skadi or the combination of two other items, it can disassembled towards the later stages of the game to build a Silver Edge, and possibly a Manta Style if you're in need of a bit of extra spell dodging.

Shadow Blade
Increases the quite weak base damage of Slark as well as putting on some attack speed which is always convenient, usually I'd advise building items to help boost the stat line on Slark, but this one does well enough with the active synergizing with his Ultimate passive as well possibly building into a Silver Edge in the late game to help minimize the damage of the enemy carry.

Skull Basher
The stats are decent for the price, but Slark usually lacks a hard disable. This can solve this problem pretty well, consider it if the opponent has a particularly elusive core as it can build later on in an Abyssal Blade.

Late

Eye of Skadi
A trademark item for Slark, providing a great base line for Slark's generally weak stats along with the slow bonus to be used to the same effect as the Greater Maim on SnY. Usually a first item to build to make the transition to late game somewhere during the mid game depending on farm.

Abyssal Blade
Built with the Skull Basher as component and gives great bonus damage with hard lockdown to deal with mobile heroes. Build it after Skadi unless you're desperation in need of disables early, at which point an Orchid should be considered (refer to Situational).

Silver Edge
The progression for a Shadow Blade will lead here. With the first attack out of invisibility dealing extra damage, decreasing overall damage output and breaking the passives of the target it serves to basically half the the usefulness of a single enemy.

Situational

Maelstrom
A decent alternative to Skull Basher, helpful for quickening pace of clearing camps and waves, consider it if you feel it necessary.


Blink Dagger
An alright choice, I'd advise only picking it up on the occassion you are really ahead early on. A tool for positioning and ganking, its utility is undisputed, but I feel Slark needs damage badly early game and it's hard to argue this is a suitable substitute in some situations.

Black King Bar
Self-explanatory, its purpose is to keep the magical burst and CC away so you can weave through a fight unimpeded by the enemy. It puts a dent in item progression, slowing down the snowball, but sometimes in certain situations it must be picked.

Mask of Madness
On the opposite side of the spectrum, we have Mask of Madness. This item severely lowers survivability in exchange for the possibility of enormous damage output. Coupled with Shadow Dance, it can prove to mount on absurd amounts of Essence Shift in prolonged fights, or simply get you killed in an instant if not used correctly. It's a recommendation I must give as sometimes the item can be amazing, but know when to pick this up (i.e, opponents with loads of single target and/or lacking AoE).

Butterfly
Evasion makes Slark quite the slippery target for physical carries, but unfortunately the current meta favors quite a lot of magic damage, it's a useful pick up towards the extreme late game against the harder carries that you can't really man-fight any longer. The agility also nice to have on a hero so starved of his main attribute.

Orchid Malevolence
A highly situation pickup as to substitute an Abyssal Blade with a silence to bring to the mid game. While not necessarily a hard disable, it can prove to be worthwhile against mobile magical carries such as Storm and Queen of Pain. With the addition of extra mana, its usage is sometimes overlooked on Slark in favor of larger items, which would be normally better but if you're desperate it can be great.

Linken's Sphere
Linken's Sphere acts a comprimise to a Black King Bar, in exchange for a tad bit less security, you get decent stats and extra mana regeneration. In some situations, the item can even be more practical than a BKB, such as Doom (unlikely you'll see one), Legion Commander's Duel, and Bane's Fiend's Grip.

Monkey King Bar
A classic among carries, against Butterfly and evasion skills such as Windrun and Blur, this item is a must against pesky carries who you just can't seem to get a hold of.

Itemization (cont.)

Manta Style
I'd only recommend this under one condition, and that you've built Sange and Yasha and you're desperate to do something with the other component from its disassembly after building a Silver Edge, and to some extent it could be said that Manta could be used to dodge spells and break silences, it's generally not a great pick up as your illusions are pathetic and there are many better choices, but it's an option.

Diffusal Blade
Another very situational pickup, mostly thinking of Warlock Golemn's and Omniknight with this one, but it's effective against some types of heroes. For example, STR carries that have small mana pools, such as Sven, Chaos Knight, and Slardar and heroes that rely on movement speed to traverse teamfights like Dark Seer. Its overall stats are decent for the price, but scales weakly into the later stages of the game.

Mjollnir
It's an item that has fallen out of grace mostly, its utility has become basically obsolete due to the meta shifts, but perhaps you picked up a Maelstrom and you want to bring yourself to the late game it's a possible choice.

Match-ups

Counters
Slark's power comes from his unparalled speed, mobility and elusiveness and anything that can stop that. Heavy disables and silences can do him in, fortunately for Slark many of spells can be purged by Dark Pact, but there are some exceptions out there. It's just a matter of knowing your matchups.

Nemesis
These heroes are the anti-thesis of Slark, whether it be with many heavy disables or certain effects that make Slark less effective or render him nearly useless, they counter him to degree that makes playing Slark rather unpleasant.

Bloodseeker
Bloodseeker is one of Slark's most painful matchup, and it's obvious as to why. While it isn't as prevalent as it once was when Thrist activated at sub 50% health, he remains one of Slark's worst enemies. Rupture is a perfect tool against Slark, a pseudo-disable preventing Slark from roaming around the fight and being a general nuisance, which uses one of his best tools against him, mobility. With his Thrist providing vision on Slark at low percentages, it makes committing to risky plays basically impossible due to the constant vision he'll be providing on Slark, and keeps him from regenerating from very low percentages in laning. These two, along with Blood Rite a massive AoE silence lasting 6 seconds if activated, turn Slark's greatest advantages against him and then some.

Anti-Mage
With Anti-Mage being one of the most relevant carries in the game at this moment, this hurts quite a lot. His mobility is one of the few heroes to match Slark's speed and elusiveness, making him very hard to escape from, not to mention making him nearly impossible to gank without some sort of hard disable. Accompany this fact with his Mana Break, it turns Slark into a fishy little creep at the mercy of the enemy team. Once he has a Manta Style your mana pool will vanish within seconds or you will be forced to pre-emptively use Shadow Dance just to survive. He farms faster, safer and more efficiently than Slark ever can and will punish you if you don't keep him down.

Omniknight
While Omniknight isn't as picked as much as the two former, he still proves to be one of Slark's worst adversaries. A ward against basically all physical based carries, he's got some special interactions to keep Slark down and away. While his passive, Degen Aura, tends be overlooked by many it's actually very useful against a Slark, passively slowing his movement speed and attack speed with a status that lingers after its application making it harder to escape, it punishes Slark both during an initiation and while escaping. Omniknight's very presence is enough to stop Slark's aggression with his Purification and Repel both dealing heavy AoE damage, healing the target and making them invulernable against Pounce's leash. In summary, a pain.

Special Mentions
Either through heavy disables, comparable mobility, great AoE damage or a combination of either, these heroes managed to gain a special mention for heroes that Slark struggles against.

Tips & Tricks

• The passive functionality of Shadow Dance allows for detection of vision wards and invisible heroes.
  
• Shadow Dance's passive is not disabled by neutral creeps, however it is disabled after attacking them.
  
• Essence Shift is essentially an extra 19 damage to enemy heroes due to the Strength loss.
  
• It should be noted that self-damage from Dark Pact disables regenerative statuses such as Regeneration Runes and Aegis expirations.
  
• Slark's Pounce does not pierce spell immunity, however if a target is already affected by its leash spell immunity will not remove it.
  
• There are many strange interactions between Dark Pact the other spells in Dota 2, some examples would be Anti-Mage's Mana Void and Naga Siren's Song of the Siren being purgable for short instances.
  
• Slark has no cast animations whatsoever, so no fake outs!
  
• Dark Pact is not visibile to enemy heroes, so be sure to use it to its greatest potential.
  
• Dark Pact's damage is given in multiple instances, making it very good against spells like Treant Protector's Living Armor and Templar Assassin's Refraction
  
• Pounce can be used to dodge certain projectiles as Slark gains momentary invulnerability during it, such as Sniper's Assassinate.

Final Notes

I hope you enjoyed this comprehension guide on Slark, it was an enjoyable experience to both make and research for! All I hope for is that maybe you can utilize my work to help improve your play, and that's all the reward I need.

PS. I'm weeb scum m8.

Pixel art cover by Kheleksul! Check him out here[kheleksul.tumblr.com]!

You can visit my Twitch here[www.twitch.tv]! Hopefully I will be streaming in the foreseeable future.

[Betawave]

Needs update you can force staff out of slark pounce now

[「Everthus:」]

@Kev Slark counters low mobility heroes the most, especially ones that rely heavily on auto-attacks and/or single target spells. A good example of a hero like this is Drow Ranger. She relies heavily on her spacing from opponents to maximize her damage output. Slark takes away that spacing fast these heroes need and can hold them in place forcing them to fight head on, which will always favor Slark in those situations.

[Baby Nissan☛☚]

Yeah i got to thinking about items for slark and drums sounded like a good option for when you know the enemy will be alert from you and place setnrys and stuff because drumsthey basically give you the same amount of speed that the SB does and gives you more mana so you dont have to go to base after every kill without needing to buy a bottle

[✪ fr0zz]

ah, thanks for the question. but seems, the more i read ur guide & learning in depth slark's guide, i have last newbie question.

you already mentioned heroes who counter slark. now tell me who does slark counter, the most.

basically people often lose the game, just because he doesnt know which hero he will fight against

[「Everthus:」]

@Kev Orb of Venom can be really good if you don't play on building a lot of small items in the early game, like a PMS, Aquila and Magic Wand. It serves the same purpose as an SNY, to slow the enemy and deal damage. It also builds into a Skadi, so its an overall pretty good item to build. Just don't buy it early if you plan on building transitional items to be sold later.

[「Everthus:」]

@AFC While in theory, Drums sounds like a great item for overall stats, it doesn't help Slark snowball faster, which is his whole game plan early on. If you're looking for early game base stats, I'd opt for an Aquila and then build Skadi, whether that be after a Shadow Blade or not is up to the situation.

[Baby Nissan☛☚]

What about drums

[✪ fr0zz]

@34meepo ah i see. simply you mean for safe ability when fighting right?

beside, slark already gains 3 agility each hit, provides him more little armor, if the enemy doesnt nuke.

i have one more question. sometimes i see people buy oov since beginning, whats ur opinion, is it useful?

[「Everthus:」]

Sure thing @Kev! While leveling Dark Pact does scale it's damage well, his health pool is relatively small and makes some engagements fairly unforgiving. I'm not saying Dark Pact doesn't scale well enough to justify leveling, its just sometimes you can put yourself at risk using the skill in the early game with it's self-affliction. Pounce is a safe ability that still scales decently in damage, but the main utility you gain from early levels of the skill is the reduced cooldown, more than halving the base cooldown on the ability and since Slark's strength comes from long, drawn-out fights the extra utility and possible damage that Pounce can provide by acting as a snare makes it apparent that it should be standard to level the skill first. When he gains substantial health and damage, Dark Pact is very good and usually should be maxed second at 10 for the shortened cooldown and damage for faster jungle clearings.

[✪ fr0zz]

can i ask why u prioritize pounce instead dark pact?