Lina

Lina the Slayer is a ranged Intelligence hero, adept at destroying enemy heroes quickly by delivering massive bursts of magical damage, making her one of the most effective gankers in the game. She possesses immense damaging capabilities all throughout the game, but is very fragile. Two of her fiery spells are her main source of damage, Dragon Slave sends a wave of fire to burn enemies in her path while Light Strike Array stuns them with a concentrated pillar of solar flame. Each of her spells deals great damage early on and has a low cooldown. Her Fiery Soul bolsters her attack and movement speed every time she casts a spell, which gives her scaling damage for the later game. Laguna Blade, her ultimate, is her ace in the hole. Lina fires off a huge bolt of lightning at a single target, dealing colossal damage. Laguna Blade's damage is staggering in early-mid game, and late game is still enough to destroy frail enemy heroes. Dragon Slave, Light Strike Array, and Laguna Blade are incredible flaming nukes that can incinerate her target instantly, and Fiery Soul allows her to transition into a strong and fast physical attacker. Though her power falls from its peak late game, mana-boosting and damage-increasing items can be purchased to keep herself up.

Gameplay
Lina is a flexible hero in that she can be played with or without farm priority. As a support, Lina's early game focuses around fending off enemy laners with long ranged harass from her auto-attacks and Dragon Slave. With an appropriate setup with spells such as Rubick's Telekinesis or Shadow Demon's Disruption, Lina can stun key opponents with Light Strike Array. The real power of Lina as a support is her ability to keep up with damage for her team. As she accumulates gold, she becomes less reliant on setting up a Light Strike Array to improve her kill potential; a late Aghanim's Scepter or Eul's Scepter of Divinity pick up will make her a threat against fragile targets.

She also boasts a formidable presence in the mid-lane. With levels, Lina's damage output scales extremely quickly, and with key timings on items such as Eul's Scepter of Divinity (to setup her Light Strike Array and solo kills) or Aghanim's Scepter (so that Laguna Blade pierces through BKB), she can quickly snowball into an unstoppable force. Moreover, with two area-of-effect spells on such a low cooldown, Lina finds it easy to farm stacks of jungle camps to catch up.

Her drawbacks are almost entirely related to mobility. Lina is hindered by a low movement speed until later levels when she has more points in Fiery Soul, and with no natural escape mechanism and low strength/strength gain, she is an easy target for ganks. She's also heavily gated by mana costs in the early game; the high mana costs of Dragon Slave require good mana management, and also emphasizes the need for items such as Eul's Scepter of Divinity or Bloodstone to roam and farm freely.

Gameplay
 Strategy & Tips Counters & Matchups

Audio
 Responses Sounds

History
 Lore Old Abilities Changelogs

Trivia

 * The original Lina Inverse "The Slayer" was modeled after the main character from the novels/anime/manga Slayers where, and  are all spells used by the original Lina Inverse.
 * Lina's line lina death 10.mp3 "Better to burn out than fade away" is a reference to the Neil Young song, My, My, Hey, Hey.
 * The line also appears in the suicide note of Kurt Cobain.
 * The line lina death 09.mp3 "Turn me over... I'm done." is a reference to Lawrence of Rome who was roasted alive on a giant grill and joked, "Turn me over — I'm done on this side."
 * Lina's rival response towards Lina rival 19.mp3 "Why'd you stop? This isn't Batrider country." is a reference to a line in the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
 * In older versions of DotA, Lina was a male hero that used the Blood Mage model, also used by the Invoker. In these versions, Lina was known as Link Inverse.
 * Lina's line Lina kill 08.mp3 "It's not the heat, it's the humiliation." is a reference to "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." used in tropical countries where humid weather causes people to sweat heavily although the temperature is not very warm.
 * Lina's coils around her neck are possibly a representation of Kayan Lahwi women in Myanmar, who are also referred to as "dragon women".