Templar Assassin

Lanaya the Templar Assassin is a very short-ranged Agility hero capable of dealing huge bursts of Physical damage to swathes of enemies with expert positioning and timing. Unlike most physical damage dealers, Lanaya reaches her damage potential quite early and then scales up from that point with carry items, letting her gank with impunity throughout the mid-game, and her short attack range increases from being comparable to that of a melee hero to a ranged hero with short reach as she levels Psi Blades.

Her Psionic Traps provide map control and the ability to chase down fleeing heroes from up to 2000 range, and Refraction and Meld lets you shrug off high-damage nukes and disjoint projectiles. With a Blink Dagger, Lanaya can quickly materialize in the enemy team's weakest flank and shred several heroes at once with her Meld and Psi Blades.

Tips

 * Attacking allied units does not use up a charge. Use this to preserve your  charges in lane for more damage.
 * and deal physical damage and are effective against siege creeps and ancient creeps. 's bonus damage also works on towers.
 * 's cooldown is the same as its duration. Try to plan on entering a fight when its duration is almost finished, so you can re-cast shortly after it expires for two sets of damage block and bonus damage.
 * Refraction has a minimum damage threshold of 5, meaning that damage less than 5 is fully ignored by Refraction and is not absorbed. Because of this, enemies can still disable through Refraction with the help of a damage source that deals very little damage such as.
 * can be used to dodge projectiles.
 * It can be difficult to hit an enemy from within without a high level in . Use, , or disables from teammates to get close to enemies.
 * s can be used for vision. Place traps in narrow walkways to monitor enemy movement. Traps can also be used to maintain vision of runes and the Roshan pit.
 * gains 5% more slow for every second after placement. Try to place your traps slightly ahead of enemies and let them charge past the base 30%.
 * The movement speed from, , and helps Lanaya chase enemies caught in her.
 * Mask of Madness can be a powerful item on Templar Assassin, as she benefits greatly from the bonus attack speed, but with Refraction she can avoid taking the bonus damage.

Trivia

 * In DotA, Templar Assassin makes numerous references to the game Starcraft, another famous RTS game by Blizzard. Her ability to manipulate psionic energy, the psi blades she wields, and the mention of her master being originally from Aiur in her DotA biography all apply to the Protoss, one of the three main races of the game.
 * Although Templar Assassin is a ranged hero, she has a 140 base attack range. This means her attack range is the shortest of all heroes, as melee heroes have an attack range of 150.