Spectre: The Sticky Hero Thingy

All of a sudden, enemy will melt. No one will understand what happened.

What is Spectre?

Spectre is not one of your ''right click the entire enemy team'' kind of carry. She is not even a hero. She is a glitch of dota. A glitch that requires a lot of items. A glitch that causes enemy heroes to run for no reason. A glitch that enemy team will never be sure if she is dead. A glitch that puts her controller back to the game while they are losing with just a simple movement : ''R''.

Early game

Survive, farm, whatever... Go safelane, ask help. If lane is easy, stay. If not, find a way to stay in lane. Get ring, tango or whatever. This section is soo boring. Dont want to talk about early game. If its really messed up in lane, just level up to 6 somehow and things will get more interesting.

Radiance?

Ofcourse, Radiance is the most ''Spectre'' item in the game and deserves a private section. Everybody wants it. But, in what conditions its really helpful and worth saving up the gold?
-When the enemy team has atleast 2 heroes that has low hp pool, its useful
-When the enemy team doesnt have absoloute map control, and you will actually benefit from it while farming, its more useful.
-When enemy team has spawn and illusion abilities (furion, phantomlancer, beastmaster etc.) and you dont want to bother hitting every one of those units, its even more useful.
-When the enemy team has sticky heroes that you can not follow to right click all the time ( windranger, weaver, lion etc.), its magnificently useful. ( yes, i like the word magnificent.)
Also:
-When you are having descent farm, its worth saving gold
-When your team can back you up in case of being focused, so you can survive to burn the enemy, its worth saving gol
-If you know/learn how to mindf*ck the enemy while you are in the woods, worth saving money.

In case you decided to farm up the radiance, dont buy just a brown boot and save the money till radi is done. I, personaly, buy early game items regarding my team and enemy team, untill min 12-13ish. Then start saving for radiance. If you can kill, escape, farm better with early game items , you will build that radiance even easier, also you wont be so weak in earlyteamfights.

Mid-Late Game

Mid-Late game means you have atleast 2-3 items and ulti, and you are ready to fight. When you can see enemy team, push a lane. When you can not see the enemy team, you have two options:
-Keep pushing if the enemy lacks hard lockdown and you are pretty sure you can run with dagger/ult.
-Play safe and go jungle or tp some other lane regarding the sight your team has over the map. ( ofc dont go jungle blindfolded)

Farm your items. If the enemy team has more then 1 core, go a little bit tankier. If not, go full ham and win the game with ''R''.

Allways keep your finger on ''R''. Look over the map. You are Spectre. You can cause a glitch and win the game

Abilities

I dont want to talk about phases of the game, and dont want to teach people how to farm. I want to talk about good usage of abilities.

-First skill is Spectral Dagger. So imba...
If you go phase boots 1-2 lvl should be enough, also consider the enemy team stickyness. But I personally max this one up first. The dagger is not really ment to be a nuke. But in early game if you dont have the dagger, you will not benefit from desolate either. If you max, you can both deal +100-150 damage on use, and blow a couple more hits.
Another benefit of dagger: They can not juke you. No matter where they go, you will know. You will see, even if they dont see you. Use this to mindf*ck them in woods, at cliffs. Hit and run if you need to. This will help you survive, as well as helping your positioning.

-Desolate:
What makes Manta Style a must. When enemy is alone, hit them. Send your manta illusions as well. Doesnt matter if they have evasive items or abilities. With manta illusions, everytime your crew hits its 200 pure damage. Sick. You might consider maxing it first if your team has nice stun/slow abilities. Helps you so much to solo enemy supports in the early game. But again, if u dont think you can catch people go for maxing dagger first. Desolate will increase the damage of your ulti aswell.

-Dispersipon
Another Imba. Increases effective HP 11% at first level and 28% at last. Great ability for survival. Also disperses the same amout in forms of the damage taken ( phsycal or magical or pure whatsoever). With 6.85, this ability turn in to a situational imba, from mediimbanomatterwhat. If enemy team has armor reduction abilities, the damage output decreases for that spell. Also note that, you dont have to be hurt to disperse damage. Thats right. Lets say you have 99% damage reduction and some fool hit you with hiss 100 damage auto attack. In that case you will deal 22 physical damage to the enemies, yet only suffer 0.78 damage ( ofc you will never have 99% reduction. its just an example). Dispersion reflects the blocked damage from vanguard or pms, means the 50 damage you block will still disperse ( I know its sick ). But evaded atacks (a.k.a. miss) will not trigger dispersion ( not that sick).

-Haunt
While playing spectre, ''R'' button stands for ''Rampage''.
-Vision over the enemy team during active
-Option to jump anyone on the battlefield
-Instant confusion among the enemy
-Causing them to fleed like a colony of ants (if they are experienced, they wont)
-Descent damage with the help of Desolate ( and Radiance if you have one)
-While split pushing or farming, no need to give a sh*t about enemy team movement and incoming pushes/team fights.( you can be there whenever you want)
-Evading enemy ganks via confusion and Reality
-Actual chance to have a single button rampage
-Chance to comeback in to the game if you are behind in terms of farm (just haunt at the rigt time and steal important kills)
-***** Most importantly. Buyback and Haunt. You simply have 2 lives in the late game. It hurts in terms of gold, but that buyback will possibly win you the game. Haunt back when ever the fight is and hunt down the enemies with low health. They wont fight you probably because of your dispersion, they might kill themselves.

Tips

-Be patient in the early game, dont flame if you dont get farm or you feed a couple of kills. Your time will eventually come
-Mana management. Spectre has low mana pool. Dont waste too much, since you can have easy kills once you are 6 and gank the map.
-Dont go toe to toe with anyone in the early game ( unless you have points in desolate and the enemy is alone and doesnt have that much damage). Spectre has really low stats and can be killed by any hero in the early game. Instead try to gank enemies or take out the heroes with low health or low mana.
-In the early game, If your lane is not going very well participate in team fights with ult. Just jump on someone with your friends and you wont lose so much from that lane since you already are not gettin too much. But if the lane is fine, dont leave until some big fights accour and you are sure you can kill someone and get away with it.
-While farming and split pushing, if you are suspicious about the enemy team ganks, use dagger to nuke the wave and move to woods then wait untill you see the enemy team in the minimap.
-Consider going back to base with tp when you see a teamfigt starting. Instead going on that fight with low mana or health, you can regenerate in base and fight with better conditions.
-Try not to manfight with the BKB carries while the bkb is active. Istead hunt down the supports until the BKBs runs out. Since desolate and dispersion will not hurt BKB heroes, you will end up wasting your HP. Also Spectre has exceptionally good talent for shutting down the supports. She can kill enemy backline heroes faster then any other hero (not talking about killing just heroes. talking about breaking the front lines and pressuring the supports and causing chaos. finally isolating them from the team and killing or zoning).With ulti they can not avoid being damaged and cannot respond you if the enemy carry is away from them and focusing your teammates. When you are done killing or zoning the supports or some other enemy, focus the enemy carry, which probably alreadly used their bkb and lost their allies.
-Always keep buyback money. Buyback and haunt can change the fight dramatically. Also you can let the other cores of your team to have aegis. Since you have better ability to join the teamfight again with buyback and haunt, they can benefit from aegis. But still aegis on spectre is devastating for the enemy team ( 2xdispersion). If you have aegis, make sure you draw all the attension of the enemy team.
-If enemy team has blink heroes ( QoP and Antimage in praticuar) while jumping them, wait for them to blink first. doing so, your illusion will spawn next to them and they will not be blinking anywhere for 5 seconds. If you use your ult before the blink, they will just blink away and your illusion will run after them.
-After you haunt, wait for big ulties or abilities to be spent first. Having dispersion and having good amount of HP doesnt mean you can survive Black hole + ravage or a raging farmed Void with chronosphere. One of the things makes spectre good in teamfigts is being able to join the fight WHENever they want. Instead trying to tank all the damage and disables, you should consider waiting for big spells and then join the fight and kill some1 while your friends are being focused. (Yes, dota is sometimes cruel)

How to counter ?

I wont say that. I dont want to be countered. She is my favourite glitch. And it is obivious how to counter her at this point.

Conclusion

Spectre is so fun to play, Shes my most played and most succesful glitch. Wish we could see her in the competitive scene more. But the high farm requirements for that character makes her being easily punished via early ganks and agressive gamestyle. Hope you guys enjoyed this guide and pick up something useful for yourself. Dont play this hero too much please. I dont want her to be nerfed