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.

Recommended items
Starting items:
 * s and s give Lanaya health regeneration allowing her to stay in the lane for longer.
 * help her sustain the mana cost of her, which is an essential ability for Lanaya in her laning phase.
 * es give an overall cheap damage, health and mana boost and can be built into a later on.

Early Game:
 * is a vital item for every hero in the game in order to escape and chase when necessary.
 * As an aggressive midlaning hero, a is important for saving runes and sustaining her health and mana while she roams the map to find kills.
 * A can help Lanaya out a lot when facing heroes which spam their abilities. The instant health and mana restore can turn around the outcome of a fight when used properly.

Core Items:
 * are a good choice of boots upgrade for Templar Assassin, as it provides a bit of everything she needs: health, damage, attack speed and mana. If an aggressive approach is desired, should be considered instead.
 * The makes use of the branches and the Magic Stick from earlier and has a stronger potential heal burst.
 * is essential to reach Lanaya's maximum potential. Although she is technically a ranged hero, her base attack range is similar to that of a melee hero. A Blink Dagger allows her to get in range to attack enemies and land her attack, or to catch up to enemies slowed by her . In teamfights, it helps her to position herself to use the full potential of . On the other side, it is also a great escaping tool when combined with her spells.  prevents the dagger from getting disabled, but if it does get disabled,  can help her hide for a moment and then blink out if the enemy has no True Sight or area spells.
 * increases Lanaya's damage output immensely, since Lanaya only deals physical damage by default (besides ). The armor reduction of Desolator fully stacks with that of, allowing her to reduce up to 15 armor on a target. This results in a highly increased damage output, which then translates into higher damage with , since their damage is based on what the initial attack target received. On top of this, Desolator also grants a decent raw attack damage bonus.
 * s are an item every hero should carry around, especially aggressive heroes like Templar Assassin. Combined with a, it can ensure a safe escape.

Situational items:
 * A may be required to deal with disables. Although  helps her from taking any kind of damage, it does not stop disables. If avoiding their disables with blink or Meld is not possible, a Black King Bar should be bought.The item also grants some raw damage and a bit of health, increasing her damage output and survivability further.
 * , similar to, synergizes well with Lanaya as it reduces enemy armor and increases her attack speed, upping her damage output by a massive amount. Besides that, the additional armor compensates for her squishiness. The armor bonuses and reductions of it are also auras, making it a valuable contribution to any teamfight.
 * allows Lanaya to fight for much longer, as it gives an enormous health boost. However, it should only be bought after having build up some damage first, because being tanky does not help her much when she deals little damage.
 * is always a great item for every agility hero, as it increases attack damage and speed by a lot and also provides evasion, helping against enemy attacks. The evasion also synergizes very well with, as Refraction does not lose any of its damage block charges when Lanaya evades attacks.
 * can be considered on Templar Assassin if some extra push power is required. If one has quick reflexes, its active can also be used to disjoint enemy attacks and spells. It also provides decent stats and grants some mobility. Keep in mind though that, despite her melee-like attack range, Templar Assassin is still a ranged hero, so the ranged illusion values and cooldown are used.
 * is a great item on Templar Assassin, since a critical strike is spread to all enemies with . It also works extremely well together with her high amount of armor reduction from her ability and typical item choices. However, since it is a chance-based effect and is based on her attack damage, other damage increasing items are required first to unlock its high potential.

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.
 * Templar Assassin's rare response upon snapping a trap, Temp psionictrap 04.mp3 "It's a trap!" is a reference based on Star Wars' Admiral Ackbar's quote on Return on the Jedi.