Phantom Lancer

Azwraith the Phantom Lancer is a melee agility carry and pusher because of his capability of generating multiple illusions in a matter of seconds. He requires deep cunning, positioning, and most importantly, great micromanagement as his illusions might just get in the way rather than help the situation if not utilized correctly. Many of his abilities help him in his creation of images, allowing him to always have a companion. He has a nuke ability in, which deals high damage, slows the target, and creates an illusion at his target's location. His escape ability allows him to quickly relocate himself and any nearby illusions while creating additional ones, possibly tricking enemies into wasting their spells and time in trying to kill said illusions. His passive allows him and his illusions to close the distance toward a target when issued an attack order, giving him the ability to quickly focus single targets in battle. His ultimate gives him the ability to generate a large number of illusions when attacking a target, while giving said illusions the ability to replicate themselves as well. Phantom Lancer is an extremely mobile hero who is hard to pin down and can quickly overwhelm his opponents in battle.

Recommended items
Starting Items
 * and are standard regeneration items that are useful for any hero to stay in lane longer.
 * is one of the components for a, which builds later into , but it cannot be purchased at the side shop.
 * es provides an extremely cost effective increase to his attributes, and can later be built into a.

Early Game
 * is a cheap way to get some damage and mana regen, so that you can use Spirit Lance more.

Core Items
 * has one of the few attack modifiers that work with illusions, and it is not watered down by the illusions' reduced damage - each hit from an illusion of Phantom Lancer will burn the full amount of mana, and deal the full amount of corresponding damage. It also gives a large amount of Phantom Lancer's primary attribute, agility.

Situational Items
 * , when activated, will Purge debuffs, and create some instant illusions which can then multiply on their own.
 * provides Phantom Lancer with a large amount of much-needed HP, which carries over to his illusions making them harder to kill, and provided you're not bombarded with splash damage, Phantom Lancer's natural difficulty to pin down will make it easy for him to blend with his illusions and regenerate mid-fight.
 * is a damage item that is a worthwhile late-game pickup on most agility carries. Illusions will also benefit from the evasion.
 * provides strength and agility, both of which are useful on Phantom Lancer, as well as his illusions.
 * may be purchased if you need your illusions to deal extra damage, as they receive the critical strike.
 * improves his farm which is otherwise fairly slow due to lack of splash damage, while granting an aura burn which synergizes very well with Phantom Lancer's strong chasing capabilities, making it almost impossible for his enemies to escape from him. It also provides a blind to enemies around him, causing them to have a chance to miss whatever target they attack until they get away from the aura, making him and his illusions more slippery.

Tips

 * Though attack speed is still important on Phantom Lancer and still a by-product of making the hero stronger, it is no longer needed as much to create images as he now creates an image on every other attack at level 16.
 * Illusions are counted as Heroes in a target check. However, they receive effects intended for units. An example is 's, which will stun Phantom Lancer's illusions by 5 seconds. Even with this fact, Hero-only spells like 's can be cast on illusions.
 * Creating confusion for enemies is what Phantom Lancer is known for along with outnumbering the enemy. Use illusions to cause unnecessary chases, wasted skillshots, pointless ultimates, and frustration for the enemy. But be sure to pay attention to the real Phantom Lancer while his illusions run around, however.
 * Illusions can have cast on them if a Dazzle is on your team; you can further fool the enemy by making them chase the wrong Phantom Lancer.
 * When choosing an item build, remember that not all passive abilities are shared with illusions.
 * An is an extremely effective purchase for Phantom Lancer - Great stats across the board, all of which will benefit illusions, and a spell immunity-piercing slow which, in conjunction with his slows and speed buffs, along with the mana drain from  that prevents enemies from casting any possible escape mechanisms, will make Phantom Lancer impossible to escape from assuming no teammate is around to help his enemy.
 * Because of the fact that illusions do not last very long, a should be considered in every game if the player wishes to use Phantom Lancer's deceiving abilities effectively, as the illusions provided by it last much longer and hit harder, giving him a higher chance to bait the enemy into poor spots or using their ultimates without the real Phantom Lancer around.
 * While incredibly strong against single target heroes, Phantom Lancer can find himself in great difficulty when facing off against enemies with a lot of strong Area of Effect abilities, especially in the early and mid game as his illusions are very easily disposed of without strong items (Examples of such heroes include and ). As a hard carry, he will become stronger as the game goes on while a very large percentage of those Heroes (including the ones previously mentioned) will see the usefulness of their abilities scale off severely; Some, however, can continue giving him problems in the late game (And arguably more trouble than before) and make you more of a threat to your own team rather than the enemy. Some examples of heroes that can counter Phantom Lancer strongly at any stage of the game are:
 * is very arguably the strongest possible counter to Phantom Lancer, for several reasons; However, the main one being his ability - This ability allows Ember to mark an area on the ground before immediately rushing to slash all enemy units marked within it. All slashes work exactly like Ember Spirit's regular auto-attacks (though with a bonus or reduced damage depending on the unit attacked), and Ember Spirit is invulnerable until all enemies have been either attacked or killed - with a  and any other strong auto-attack item like, Ember Spirit can easily destroy all of Phantom Lancer's illusions and even Phantom Lancer himself with a single . If there enough units within the radius, he could potentially kill an entire team with a single use of his ability. His  creates a fire around him that damages all enemy units, being able to deal up to 1200 points of damage (before reductions) to a single unit if they stay near him through the whole duration, while his  produces an AoE explosion whenever he lands on top of it with.
 * is very close to being impossible to manfight as he has a built-in 66% cleave with, an armor buff that reduces all illusion damage to both himself and nearby allies with , and an AoE stun/nuke with . On top of all, however, he also has his ultimate which ups his base damage by up to 300% as much damage, and if combined with , he can easily wipe out Phantom Lancer's illusions in seconds. It is very much worth noting that cleave damage essentially acts as pure damage - Even though it is registered as Physical Damage by Damage Block and will therefore block (some of) it, cleave damage does not react to armor values whatsoever - This means that if he does build a , Sven does not even need to hit the real Phantom Lancer, as he would actually be dealing more damage than he would otherwise by hitting nearby illusions.
 * While may not propose a big threat whenever his ultimate  is on cooldown, it is a strong enough ability to destroy both Phantom Lancer and his illusions (and his team if nearby) whenever it is off cooldown as it has no upper damage cap.
 * is rarely mentioned as a counter as he may in some cases not pose much of a threat other than destroying his illusions with, but he becomes an extremely deadly enemy once he gets his hands on Aghanim's Scepter, as his upgraded will apply  to all of his illusions it hits as well as Phantom Lancer himself. Once the illusions die or expire it will trigger a chain of damaging explosions that will deal high damage to Phantom Lancer and any nearby ally. If combined with Epicenter, this combo can potentially deal more damage than 's  - all on a lower cooldown, making him an ever-existing threat through the game.
 * is a powerful threat to Phantom Lancer due to . and  cannot remove  (and as consequence, reveals which is the real Hero if Razor has targeted the real Phantom Lancer) nor can any other strong dispel such as, not even spell immunity. The only way to counter  is through  or simply going out of the Link's range.
 * ' AoE abilities can prove troublesome for Phantom Lancer. dramatically reduce Phantom Lancer and his illusions' attack speed, as well as make fleeing difficult with 's movement speed reduction.  deals Pure damage to all of Phantom Lancer's units, and  is invulnerable to Phantom Lancer's illusions.

Trivia

 * In DotA, Phantom Lancer's in-game model was a fan interpretation of Kimahri Ronso, a playable character in the RPG game Final Fantasy X. As such, the Phantom Lancer of Dota 2 gained many similarities with Kimahri, namely the blue skin, humanoid feline appearance, and halberd weapon.