Enigma/Guide

Jungle
Enigma starts off in the jungle, farming with an indescribable efficiency with his Eidolons and setting up ganks with those. After jungling, he transitions into pushing with Eidolons. His ultimate is probably the strongest team fight ability in the game, as it pierces spell immunity, deals pure damage and disables enemies for an incredible 4 seconds, and it has a large AoE. Not to forget, this is only his ultimate ability, he still has other tricks on his sleeve, like the bothering stun chain from Malefice and the health percentage damage from Midnight Pulse. In contrast, such strength comes with a huge price, as Black Hole and all Enigma's abilities cooldown and mana cost are high, he is semi-fragile, and his ultimate must be channeled, so good positioning and timing when casting are required. Due to this, Enigma's mandatory item is, as it offers him the capability to gank, escape and, mainly, start a team fight by placing a scary Black Hole in the middle of the enemy lines. Having a Dagger on his hands, the other items may vary, but often, Enigma players rush a as a protective item against any ability that might cancel Black Hole's channeling and to any heavy nuke. ,, , are some of the items that should be useful on Enigma's inventory. When not fighting, Enigma is jungling or either ganking an enemy with Demonic Conversion and Malefice.

Maxing out Demonic Conversion first is crucial for a jungling Enigma, as it makes his Eidolons more tanky and deal more damage against creeps, especially those in the medium and large camps. Midnight Pulse is mostly used to clear trees or just to add more damage to the jungling, but the next priority skill must be Malefice, as this ability has more effect in fights than Midnight Pulse. Keep in mind that Midnight Pulse's damage is percentage based, meaning it will deal roughly the same portion of damage to all enemy Heroes, and its best use is only to add minor damage to fights, not as a zoning or killing-intent spell.

Offlane
When opt to the offlane, Enigma should still level Demonic Conversion to make Eidolons, helping him get last hits and maybe attempt to harass enemies. In general Demonic Conversion level don't matter as much as Jungler role, Eidolons supposed to cease at the hands of enemy creeps or their duration end before enemy claims a bounty on them. Eidolons can tank at least one spell thrown at them with their high magic damage resistance most of the time and they still come handy at last hitting. Player has the option to level Malefice over Midnight Pulse early on to threaten a kill on enemy heroes early on and participate in teamfights even when Black Hole is at cooldown or gank the safe lanes. Enigma is good in the offlane because he can use Demonic Conversion on his own ranged creeps, denying a lot of gold and experience to the enemies and destroying enemy Siege units stopping a rush in its tracks. Besides creep control advantage, Enigma can hit jungle to crash creep camps, push into river for rune check and hit up Roshan when playing Radiant side of off-lane.

Along the laning stage, Enigma may need to hit jungle when he leveled main course of spells he may need and pushed the oncoming creep waves far enough to the enemy tower at once. Around level 6, hitting the jungle just for an oncoming teamfight is essential for stocking up gold. Enigma often gets to accelerate his farm, getting him levels and gold to key talents and items. Preferably Enigma hits his first Black Hole at night time to be unpredictable with lowered sightline. After the laning stage, Enigma will push as usual with his Eidolons and help ganks with Malefice and Black Hole.

General

 * Enigma can get and  quickly thanks to his jungling ability.
 * Enigma can kill Roshan before the 10-minute mark, with the help of Level 3 or 4 Eidolons. For acquiring them, use Demonic Conversion on either a neutral creep if he's on the Radiant side, or a lane creep if he's on the Dire side. An item commonly picked up is a, as it allows him to reduce Roshan's armor for a higher damage output. Begin the fight by tanking Roshan yourself, until your Eidolons have multiplied; let the Eidolons take over and apply a Healing Salve. Try to micro the Eidolons to distribute the damage that Roshan does to them. Re-cast Demonic Conversion on one of the Eidolons before they expire and repeat the process (tank, heal up, nuke). If executed properly, Roshan will fall within about one minute.
 * Enigma works best with allied heroes that have strong AoE capabilities, such as, , or.
 * Due to it pulling enemies closer together, Enigma synergizes particularly well with heroes with strong but small AoE damage, be it physical (i.e. with his cleave), or otherwise (i.e.  with ).
 * Being limited at spell casting range and the only option to cover this shortcoming delaying potentially more important initiation or survival items, Enigma suffers from losing sight greatly and dependent on positioning tools like or . Either he should take the role of ward supporter of the team or someone else should take this role so he doesn't dive blindly against ranged casters or aura bearers at night time without a plan. A nimble carry hero burdening himself for wards or  will be an immense help.
 * Having a heavy on spell cast gameplay also lacking mobility, Enigma is highly susceptible to silence and other debuffs. Any one of the basic dispel sources such as, or  should find its place on Enigma's arsenal as soon as the moment he lay hand on a dependable damage boost, debuff source or positioning tool such as Blink Dagger first.
 * Enigma can sometimes get countered hard at the initiation thanks to his high priority for wrecking havoc with his Black Hole; lingering damage over time effects or some disablers can cause him reconsider his choices. At these times empowering his secondary role, damage over time spells such as Midnight Pulse and Malefice can get him some leverage. However this playstyle requires Enigma to be more durable alone by prioritizing armor and block for negating physical/magical damage and work on mass debuffs; while his standard free initiation style involves stacking magic resistance and health, improving by the help of either micro-managed summons or other means of gaining reach.
 * By the end game, the damage Enigma put out can be measured in thousands thanks to his massive disabler nukes and max health percentage based area denial abilities. Any sort of damage return makes Enigma receive nothing but a headache when he got himself killed due to reflected damage. Any sort of spell lifesteal such as or  and alternatively, high life regen paired with magical damage block from  or  are essentials to survive against damage reflect abilities. Enigma doesn't have to worry about reflected physical damage because most of the burden would be handled by his Eidolon minions while physical damage block can come handy when versing against carry heroes that abuse long range or invisibility.
 * After the Black Hole combo ended or canceled early, if enemy can still hunt down Enigma, a Malefice cast or a secondary disabler have to be used in retaliation. Healers and high mobility heroes will have an upper hand against Enigma's only attempt at disabling one target at a time.
 * Level 10 talents: The additional Midnight Pulse duration is useful when Enigma decides to emphasize his secondary disablers or improve Malefice later with talent tree; this is a good investment to thwart aggro away from your gates. If the enemy lacks nukes but has long ranged disables or Enigma needs to farm without worrying about feeding gold from eidolons, +135 eidolon health will be a better choice to swarm and bring down towers.
 * Level 15 talents: Additional Malefice mini-stun duration only must be taken in the conjuncture of Black Hole getting denied and you're planning a comeback with extra Malefice instances at the end of your talent tree to play on your Midnight casts. When your Black Hole combo has the possibility of getting denied, Malefice stun time will help you to empower Midnight Pulse for punishing breachers and area denial. But, if Enigma finds himself comfortable at initiation, the cooldown reduction will serve him better as it will allow him to initiate or disrupt teamfights more frequently with Black Hole, even allowing him to skip buying Octarine Core in favor for another item.
 * Level 20 talents: If Enigma's team has the advantage, the additional health can make him tankier and more difficult to bring down or dissuade, allowing him to land a good Black Hole easily if the enemy lacks disables. Extra Eidolon damage will give you faster farming in jungle areas allowing Enigma to stack up gold and make Eidolons rather menacing against fragile carry heroes who lacks area nukes.
 * Level 25 talents: If Enigma can micro-manage his Eidolons very well, an additional eight more Eidolons can increase his pushing and farming potential greatly, clearing camps and leveling towers at a much quicker pace. But care must be taken, for the additional Eidolons may appear to the enemy as free gold, especially if they have lots of area-of-effect damage spells such as or . Malefice instances allow you to completely shut down carry hero at the end game phase and make a simple Midnight Pulse cast more intimidating than it normally was. Additionally, it will make Malefice completely cover its cooldown duration for chaining stuns against one target.


 * Enigma's presence in encounters is greatly diminished while Black Hole is on cooldown, but he can make himself useful by saving Malefice for a crucial moment and also sneaking around to use Midnight Pulse within an area the enemies may try to escape through. A good combo is to use Malefice on an enemy walking through Midnight Pulse or any allied AoE damaging spell.
 * Malefice can prove to be surprisingly detrimental to opponents with slow attack speed, such as siege units and 's Golem, as the periodic stun will reset their attack animation and prevent their attacks from connecting with their intended targets.
 * Roshan in particular is hampered by this spell greatly, as this not only prevents him from performing basic attacks, but also greatly reduce the chances of him bashing.
 * Take note that Malefice acts as a debuff that can be dispelled easily with any basic dispel.
 * Although Malefice can easily be dispelled, the first stun will always occur so long as the spell hits the target. The subsequent stuns/damage instances may not be important if the primary purpose of the spell is to disrupt channeling abilities.
 * Will allow you to catch up highly agile heroes without investing too much into movement speed and will deny any juke attempt by running into the trees. When Malefice is on cooldown, movement speed and positioning become important.
 * While most players skip the malefice damage per instance talent, it nets a near doubled damage gain. Paired with extra Malefice instances talent, it deals more than five times the Malefice damage compared to default.
 * or can increase its damage further with their debuffs, while with the help of talents it can be a reliable way of healing with.


 * Use Demonic Conversion in the laning stage on allied ranged creeps to deny and gain experience for Enigma himself.
 * The Eidolons can then help Enigma trade hits with the enemy laners or score last hits and denies.
 * Eidolons have an innate magic resistance, but have very low maximum health even when the skill is fully maxed. Any harassment fire in a bad position or area nuke can wipe a large team of Eidolons. With their high gold bounty, they are prime targets for farmers, and care should be taken to ensure that they are not recklessly sacrificed.
 * While they have rather low health, they deal high damage, especially when you've manage to amass six of them after splitting. However they don't scale well into the endgame without amplifying their damage output and mobility.
 * Eidolons deal Basic type of damage when they attack. Compared to Hero type, their damage is more effective against Structure units such as towers, at 70% efficiency compared to Heroes' 50% efficiency. Basic damage type has an efficiency penalty on Heroes too, making them only deal 75% of the written values which blows over heroes' armor further. That means they won't deal meaningful damage against enemy heroes unless you get the + Eidolon Damage talent at late game.
 * Demonic Conversion instantly destroys enemy Siege Creep when cast upon them, ruining the creep pushes against your structures.
 * Coupled with items such as, or 's summons, they become a force to be reckoned with. Without any of these items, their efficiency will be lost rather quickly without inflicting additional crowd control, such as a secondary disabler.
 * For additional lane push power or  are other preferred items to keep them alive against ranged carry heroes. This also means, you won't let them split push another lane for recovering space. Sitting by them and buffing their armor is important for their survival.
 * Eidolons will always split and fully heal upon firing their th shot. Careful micro-management is key whenever you are using them for jungling or tower-pushing. Amplifying their attack speed pays up in short timespan spent for their split.
 * Counting their shots up to 5-6 upon normal creeps then sending them on the tail of a Siege Creep at around every five minutes is an effective way to crush down towers efficiently and split pushing. They can tank one area nuke with their high magic resistance and at the further shots they will heal fully on splitting.
 * In sufficient number, Eidolons can be used effectively in encounters, as en masse their collective attack does significant damage by the help of talent tree. Timing their split at late game on unsuspecting pushing heroes for harassment can force them to retreat which you can manipulate for a gank.
 * If you die in an encounter as you have upper hand and you have Eidolons still alive, use them to boost your team's damage a little. If you're losing ground, no need to feed enemy extra gold.
 * While laning, decision about casting Eidolons on enemy or allied creeps must be considered upon position and cooldown of enemy's spells. Even when they spawn as a team of three, a badly positioned bunch of Eidolons can feed the enemy some gold after achieving almost nothing. Try to be bold and send them somewhere out of sight to bait enemy into your jungling or rune-checking teammates by communicating.
 * Keep Eidolons around you when there is a or  on the enemy team, as it makes you difficult to be hooked or arrowed, which is important considering that Enigma is an easy prey for kills in the early game.
 * When jungling, max Demonic Conversion to beef up your Eidolons and increase their damage. Also, micro your Eidolons to make sure none of the initial three Eidolons die to jungle creeps so that all of them can multiply. This increases jungling speed significantly. Do not be afraid to tank for your Eidolons either when clearing the big camps.
 * Enigma can use Demonic Conversion on Eidolons as they are about to expire, useful when pushing or taking Roshan.


 * Investing one point in Midnight Pulse for early game utility to crash creep waves is usually enough. As Enigma does not have a rather large mana pool early game, that mana could be better spent on creating Eidolons for his time in the jungle or to have some sort of immediate stun for his enemies using Malefice.
 * Allocating point on Pulse will be beneficial when opponent has a noticeably health pool by mid-game, however this also means they will gain more magical resistance to diminish Midnight Pulse damage via increased strength, items or defensive talents. Until you can debuff them or them dropping their small strength items (such as; ), investing on Eidolons instead can give you a much needed protectors to keep heated aggro away from Enigma and will dish out damage better.
 * Midnight Pulse damage will scale better compared to your fickle summons or fixated damage stun effects at the end of the game. Try to treat it like a wildcard when your ultimate Black Hole is on cooldown. It has capabilities to crash jungle creep groups with ease. When Black Hole is on cooldown, anticipate some debuffs and use it with conjunction with your teammates.
 * Midnight Pulse deals magical damage with recent changes yet kept its trait of bypassing spell immunity. This means heroes who use will still take the full effect of the spell if they do not leave the area of effect. When not comboing with Black Hole, Midnight Pulse can be used to hold off important chokepoints such as tier 3 towers at the gates of the base, upon friendly teammates or Roshan for denying any engage from opposing heroes.
 * Use Midnight Pulse before Black Hole to boost the damage done. However, you must use this at your discretion because there might not be a time to use it or it can make you miss out on crucial Black Holes. Try to initiate fast by using element of surprise; so you'll have time for a close up blanket Pulse and start channeling Black Hole on top of it before enemy team can react.
 * Just like Black Hole, Midnight Pulse have a short cast range but unlike Black Hole, it possesses no crowd control abilities on its own. A chased target takes rather minimal damage from it by running away from you. Try to pack up a movement slow debuff effect or disabler just for keeping an enemy at bay and seek more cast range with.
 * Unlike Black Hole, Midnight Pulse does damage based on enemies maximum health, therefore ignoring their armor and raw HP. Magic resistance is still calculated and diminish the raw damage output of Midnight Pulse.
 * Use Midnight Pulse to clear trees around towers during pushes, preventing enemies from using them as covers to launch surprise attacks on Enigma's team.


 * Black Hole is a powerful disable that bypasses the spell immunity granted by.
 * Lasting for seconds, a successful cast will almost guarantee a team-wipe, especially if he has allied heroes who can deal heavy area damage like  or.
 * Black Hole is a channeling spell, so care and consideration should be kept in mind when looking at the opponent's hero lineup. You may need to invest in a or  to lower the odds of getting interrupted.
 * Invest in and even, as well as using trees and fog of war, to initiate with Black Hole, giving enemies little time to react. This stands true for night time where every most of the heroes get penalized on sight range.
 * Refresh your Black Hole immediately after casting when you have the, as a teamfight can happen anytime, anywhere. Although, depending on the situation, Enigma may save Refresher Orb for the next cooldown, as a double Black Hole is devastating to the enemy team.
 * Sometimes Enigma may want to refrain from using Black Hole to initiate on a single enemy hero, as having the ultimate available as a threat may dissuade the enemies from pressing their advantages at late game.
 * Keeping the Black Hole level at 1 should be a decision that come from the game flow and enemy picks. When you don't have a second initiator like, or  also enemy team consist of highly mobile carry heroes or mana manipulators you may decide to lay waste on a single hero to break down their progress whenever you can.

Items
Starting items:
 * provides mana to produce Eidolons in the early game.
 * provides some health regeneration to keep Enigma in jungle or hold the lane.
 * grants mana to use Demonic Conversion in lane.
 * a pair of those can easily turn into a Bracer or Soul Ring while also giving you survival on off-laning.

Early game:
 * helps in the jungle since it gains charges from neutral creeps casting their abilities, restoring health and mana to Enigma.
 * is a great source of mana, allowing him to use his Demonic Conversion as often as possible. Enigma does not mind the health cost since he does not often go close to enemies as his abilities and Eidolons have good cast range and attack range.
 * help you get into position to use Black Hole.
 * can be kept for its movement speed bonus or can be worked towards any item recipe including it.
 * as an alternative to Soul Ring can provide some extra mana regeneration and damage as well. Can be used as a step stone for Veil or Vladmir's.

Mid game:
 * is a cost effective upgrade from Magic Stick.
 * helps your positioning greatly and helps to pull off a good Black Hole. Might need to be rushed way early by pushing lanes with Eidolons.
 * is highly recommended, as Enigma can farm very quickly in the early stages of the game, is relatively item independent, and has a large mana pool, all of which are traits of a strong Mekansm carrier. The added armor, health regen, and active heal can also aid Eidolons, and is very effective. The active can help greatly in teamfights or pushing a lane.
 * is a small upgrade for Boots of Speed by providing extra mana and can be combined with Mekansm for Guardian Greaves. If you guaranteed a Soul Ring, alternatively, Arcane Boots can get disassembled for an Aether Lens later.

Late game:
 * grants spell immunity so the enemies cannot easily interrupt Black Hole. It applies a basic dispel on activation to shake off most simple debuffs like plain silence and prevent further disabler casts when heading out for the combo.
 * allows a slot to be freed, provides a steady supply of health and mana regeneration to the team, and increases Enigma's survivability. Aside from healing and replenishing mana for the team, the Mend ability will apply a basic dispel that helps his team when they are disabled or silenced.
 * gives Enigma high health and mana regeneration. The active allows Enigma to use Black Hole twice in one fight.
 * greatly increases the effectiveness of Black Hole, as well as much needed attributes to remedy his health and mana pools. A well put BH combo can wipe half or the entire enemy team that way.

Situational items:
 * can be an alternative to Mekansm when the healing cannot out-do massed area nukes in a push. Should be built to compliment area of effect healing provided by teammates.
 * is an alternative to Black King Bar for when the enemy team has disables that ignore spell immunity, such as and  or long ranged position juggling effects like . When paired with Guardian Greaves, you'd have a reliable dispel at your service and can maintain safe distance. Consider casting its Spell Block to the other initiator when they're leading.
 * can be an alternative to Linken's Sphere to endure damage and position when paired with any sort of invisibility buff or spell immunity like BKB. Can be a safety net for unique aggro deflect skills like, or  at late game.
 * stacks with the cooldown reduction talent to reduce the cooldown of Black Hole, putting constant pressure on the enemies with the frequent threat of his dangerous ultimate ability. Spell lifesteal will provide survival at the presence of damage reflect or counter-attacks such as or.
 * adding an extra area disabler, damages structures and grants a good amount of stat boost, making combo initiation easier.
 * granting movement speed to shift through lanes and gank. Break passive penalty can easily be diminished by or.
 * also gives Enigma some mana management bonuses with protection, and its active ability synergizes well with Black Hole.
 * increasing the armor of eidolons but also reducing the armor of enemy structures and units in its reach. Granting more push power against towers.
 * grants invisibility so Enigma can initiate with the element of surprise. It can be an alternative to Black King Bar or Blink Dagger when combined with Smoke of Deceit or have means of disabling the enemy carry hero.
 * allow Enigma to initiate while suffering damage over time debuffs or very long ranged mini-stuns that can cancel out Blink Dagger.
 * grants him additional cast range, allowing him to land his ultimate perhaps at much quicker speed without having to walk toward the team and also to keep him out of harm's way if he can position at higher ground.
 * can be used for disabling the enemy carry or rushing Roshan faster with.
 * is an alternative pick to deny very specific hard counters such as long ranged disables or debuffs else manipulation abilities that turn your own power back at you such as.
 * rewards bonus gold and experience so Enigma can gain access to powerful items and talents sooner.

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