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.

Recommended items
Early-game:
 * Since Lina is squishy and has multiple high-cost low-cooldown spells picking up a Magic Stick can increase her early staying power greatly.
 * help Lina get into position to land her abilities while avoiding danger zones.
 * is a cheap and quick way of patching up Lina's naturally low HP pool.

Core:
 * will further improve Lina's positioning as she has below average movespeed by default. It will also compliment the natural attack speed she gains from Fiery Soul to improve its effectiveness early on.
 * gives Lina the ability to stay back in safety, then blink in at an opportune moment to cast her Light Strike Array before the enemy can see it coming and evade it.
 * enhances Lina's positioning even further and greatly boosts her mana-regeneration because of her high base Intelligence and Intelligence gain. It can also be used to set up Light Strike Array fairly reliably.

Situational:
 * roughly boosts Lina's Laguna Blade damage by another ability point, increases her survivability because of the increase to her attributes, and lets her damage stay relevant even against Black King Bar users in the mid or late game.
 * is a natural upgrade from the she could pick up in the early game. It slightly improves her own positioning and all attributes for relatively low cost and also benefits her team.
 * gives her team an important disable that also helps to ensure her Light Strike Array. Furthermore, its attribute bonuses will make her a bit more survivable and drastically improve her mana regeneration.
 * can solve Lina's mana issues while also improving her low HP pool. With enough charges, she can keep up her full stacks of Fiery Soul without having to worry about being out of mana during the next team fight.
 * both helps with Lina's mana regeneration problems as well as her low armor value while also benefiting her team with Shiva's Guard's aura and active ability.
 * provides Lina with a larger mana pool that becomes more important as teamfights expand and Laguna Blade becomes more mana-intensive, as well as a significant boost to her low HP pool. Its active effect can also greatly assist in landing her stun, and has a low enough cooldown to do so almost as soon as Light Strike Array comes off cooldown again.
 * is a staple item choice for any support hero that wants to ensure their team members can get their items as quickly as possible.
 * can be bought for more survival in a teamfight from the lifesteal that it grants. Also, it gives a huge intelligence boost, as well as a greater ability to spam spells.

Tips

 * Combining Light Strike Array with a guaranteed stun such as Vengeful Spirit's Magic Missile or Sven's Storm Hammer makes Lina a serious ganking force early on.
 * Positional items such as Eul's Scepter of Divinity, Blink Dagger, Force Staff or Phase Boots can help you a lot landing Light Strike Array and thus your whole spell combo without relying on other heroes.
 * Always cancel the backswing animation after casting your spells, as Lina suffers from long animation times.
 * In teamfights it can be very beneficial to quickly focus on low-HP or support heroes, as Lina has very good nuking abilities.
 * When paired with Pugna or Shadow Demon, both of whom have percentage-based damage-increasing mechanics; Lina's burst damage becomes gigantic (a sceptred level 3 Laguna Blade will do about one thousand damage alone) to the extent where she can assassinate enemy heroes with a significant gear/level advantage over her.
 * If Lina has the basic items she needs, it is wise to augment her physical attack for the sake of Fiery Soul. Almost uniquely among Intelligence supports, Lina's rightclick becomes a serious threat if she attains a level advantage (owing to her enormous Int growth and her passive ability). Some basic items for this build are Daedalus, Eye of Skadi and Monkey King Bar, as well as some form of lifesteal.
 * Dagon can be used to nearly double the burst damage of Lina's ultimate.
 * Lina's Laguna Blade can hit for 1700 pure damage if she combines Aghanim's Scepter and, granting her enormous nuking power.
 * While unmentioned purchasing an Ethereal Blade if the farm is available combined with an Aghanim's Scepter and Lina's naturally high Intelligence gain will give you a perfect combination of survivability through stats, armor and Ghost form and an enormous increase in damage output allowing Lina to instantly kill most low to average HP heroes provided that she lands all of her spells during the Ether Blast. The slow provided by Ether Blast also comes in very handy in landing Light Strike Array (The damage from an Aghanim's Scepter upgraded Laguna Blade is not amplified by the Ghost Form, since it is pure damage).
 * If Lina is tending to be targeted first (this is a very common tendency), some survival-increasing / utility items will be of great use.
 * Some players advocate building a Dagon in place of an Aghanim's Scepter, as it is cheaper (though not if upgraded) and ultimately does more damage (through both its active and its bonus to her attack damage). However, Aghs makes her significantly more durable, whereas Dagon does only slightly, and Lina is very fragile. If you think you are unlikely to die very much, Dagon is probably the wisest choice. However, Aghs can be a wise choice if there are some bkb's in the game or if playing against a Lifestealer or a Juggernaut as they both have magic imunity spells.
 * For Fiery Soul to take to its peak, cast Dragon Slave, Light Strike Array, and Laguna Blade successively to take the speed-enhancing effect of Fiery Soul to its maximum potential.
 * Though somewhat difficult as Lina's survivability is very low, it is possible to play her as a carry due to the fact that she can greatly increase her DPS for 10 seconds simply by casting spells, and both of her first two spells have shorter cooldowns than 10 seconds, meaning the player could potentially be permenantly under a high attack speed increase during teamfights and pushes. If this path is chosen, items such as an Eye of Skadi are extremely effective on her as she becomes much more survivable and gains potent right clicks.

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."
 * In Dota 2 Lina and are sisters with a bitter rivalry and have many unique responses when they encounter or kill each other. In Warcraft DotA, however, they are unrelated as evidenced by lack of mentions in each other's lore and their apparent different surnames (Inverse and Crestfall, respectively).
 * 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".