Spectre

Mercurial the Spectre is a melee Agility hero adept at dealing pure damage to lone targets and is powerful, both offensively and defensively. Spectral Dagger provides her with a significant amount of mobility, allowing her to pass through objects, units and terrain while slowing her foes that came in contact with the shadowy path left by her Spectral Dagger. Desolate allows her to inflict high pure damage to enemy heroes when she catches them alone. Dispersion reduces and reflects all damage, whether by attacks or spells, to an area around her as pure damage. Dispersion gives her great durability, especially when equipped with items that provide health, armor, and damage block. Finally, her Haunt creates a malevolent spectral illusion to all enemy heroes in the map. Haunt lets Spectre wreak havoc in clashes and ganks, while her allies take advantage of the confusion. Spectre can use Reality during the Haunt, instantly teleporting her to her illusion to take its form. This lets her hound her victim anywhere on the map. Mercurial is a dangerous supernatural being, relentless as she can chase and stalk down her victim to a global range, unhindered by boundaries. Her kit allows her to play the role of the team's hard carry by applying an immense amount of pressure in late game team fights with high consistent damage, damage mitigation, and global presence. More specifically, the pure damage reflection from Dispersion makes it disadvantageous for teams to focus her. It is best to face Spectre with allied help and strength, as encountering her alone isn't the best option and those who are weak will just be failures of their efforts. Despite her abilities not having a very complex nature, newer players should generally not play Spectre as she is extremely farm and level dependant.

Tips

 * Spectre has a weak early- and mid-game, as well as a lack of lane presence. Picking Spectre requires a team that will largely be able to hold out for a large portion of the game until you have accumulated enough major items to start fighting, so keep this in mind when building your team.
 * It is generally a good idea to level up Spectral Dagger first to provide Spectre with extra mobility so that she is harder to pin down during ganks. However, be wary of its mana cost, as a single Spectral Dagger will typically consume half your mana pool per cast (in the early game).
 * It is sometimes beneficial to leave Haunt at level 1 in the early- and mid-game. Your illusions will not be strong enough to significantly benefit from an extra one or two seconds during skirmishes or team fights, and the extra points may be better spent in your other skills or stats.
 * To maximize the damage of an illusion attacking a target you want to focus, try to hold off casting Reality until near the end of the illusion's duration.
 * In late game teamfights, Haunt and Desolate will allow your illusions to wither down support heroes at the back at significant speeds. In addition, you should always be in the middle of team fights to maximize the damage reflection of Dispersion.

Trivia

 * The name Mercurial most likely comes from the DeviantART account of Kenneth Tan, the person who made the 6.28-6.32 loadscreen.
 * "Mercurial" means "swift, shrewd, and deceitful", which is attributed to the Roman god of thieves, Mercury, as Spectre is an agile and quick Hero. It also means to that of the planet Mercury, since Spectre is an otherworldly entity. Mercurial also mean "quicksilver" and of the element Mercury or Hydroargentum which mean "water silver"), which refers to Mercurial's quickness and mobility.
 * Spectre's alternate/fun name "Qwerty-" was given to spectre for remembering a Legendary Dota player Zaven "Qwerty" Terminasov, who died on December 5, 2010.
 * Spectre's voice responses are overlayed with the same track playing backwards, bearing a huge similarity to the Avatar of Vengeance's voice in Warcraft III: Frozen Throne, which was also Spectre's hero model in DotA.