Keeper of the Light

Ezalor the Keeper of the Light is a ranged Intelligence Hero famous for his reputation as a one-man support team. Supporting his allies in need, and push unguarded lanes with ease, Ezalor is a very valuable ally for any team. Having a variety of useful abilities, he can channel a powerful globe of intense light that can heavily damage an army of enemy creeps in the lane, allowing for an easy push; and manipulate the mana around him, restoring mana for himself and his allies or drain the mana out of his enemy. His Ultimate allows him to gain his full power, giving Ezalor access to 2 sub-skills and an improved existing ability, giving him six different abilities in total. Keeper of the Light requires patience, confidence and selfless behavior to play him well, as he is played as a support instead of a killer caster like most Intelligence gankers. His wide set of skills also requires timing, reflexes, and knowledge on their use.

Tips

 * Ezalor's Illuminate is one of the best pushing skills. Buy a Town Portal Scroll, go on the side, that needs to be pushed with ally creeps and cast Illuminate as many time as is needed. When you will feel that you are in danger go to some safe place, covered with fog of war and teleport out.
 * On the other hand, Ezalor's abilities could be crucial during teamfights. If the enemy team has strong initiating potential, spam Illuminate on them, by the cover of fog of war, when they are preparing to start a teamfight. The result depends on your skills in positioning and timing. You can be easily killed, if you will be spotted by the enemy or you can turn the enemy team back with low HP or even kill them if they chose to start the fight. If a teamfight already started and you havent had a chance to lower the health of enemies before it, stay aside and help your teammates with Illuminate. Another useful ability for teamfights is Blinding Light. The best example of how to use it is enemy team with some initiator that has a mass disable. To prevent your teammates from being damaged by dangerous heroes with strong autoattack, cast a Blinding Light on the battlefield, while your mates are disabled and the enemy heroes in range. That will add a good chance of surviving and turning over a teamfight.
 * Ezalor is one of heroes for whom the wards on the battlefield plays a very important role and is one of the fastest farming supports, so don't regret spending gold on it. Firstly, when you're trying to push or harass enemies you should be sure that you are not easy prey at the moment. So the vision around certain areas is very necessary. And secondly, you need to see where the members of the enemy team are. It is not only needed for damaging them with your AOE nuke, but it is more important for sudden teamfights. When you see a bunch of foes trying to attack your team and they are sure that no one sees them, cast Illuminate right in front of them. It could be too late to stop and the entire team will rush in a fight with massive HP loss.

Trivia

 * Ezalor's design in Dota 2 makes several references to Gandalf, an iconic character from The Lord of the Rings book series.
 * His clothing is now almost purely white, similar to Gandalf's attire.
 * Illuminate's wave animation are a group of stampeding white horses. This is similar to the spell Gandalf cast on the torrent of water, at the ford of Bruinen, in The Fellowship of The Ring. Additionally it has similarities to his reinforcements at Helm's Deep during the second book, The Two Towers. This is also depicted in the splash art, with Ezalor taking Gandalf's place at the head of the charge.
 * One of Mana Leak's cast responses, "You shall not cast!", is a pun on one of Gandalf's most famous quote "You shall not pass!".
 * One of his spawn lines, "Ezalor... I think that's my name." is likely a reference to Gandalf "respawning" as The White: "Gandalf? ... Yes ... That was my name ... Gandalf the Grey."