Drow Ranger

Traxex the Drow Ranger is a ranged Agility Hero who excels at laning and gains extremely large amounts of damage and Agility through her abilities, even so in the earliest parts of the game. Traxex is most commonly played as a carry, with her damage coming entirely from her auto attacks. Despite her lack of escape spells, Drow Ranger can keep herself relatively safe from enemy spellcasters and melee heroes using her Silence and her Frost Arrows, respectively. Frost Arrows infuses her attacks with ice cold, greatly slowing her enemies down. Since it can be manually cast, Frost Arrows can be used to harass her foes in the early game without drawing the creeps' aggressive attention. Silence is a great counter to enemy spellcasters who might threaten her life in battles. With her global Precision Aura, she assists ranged Heroes on her team by giving them a portion of her own agility as extra damage. Drow Ranger is among the most powerful carries, largely due to the massive agility she gains from her passive ultimate, Marksmanship, granting her more damage, attack speed, and armor. Position is of utmost importance as Traxex is quite vulnerable in close combat and the agility bonus from Marksmanship will be halved when enemies come near her. With sufficient gold, Drow Ranger's power in the later stages is further magnified by powerful items that will boost her attack damage, Agility, and survivability, which further boosts her Precision Aura, empowering her allies more. Drow Ranger can be extremely powerful at any given point in the game, making her an ideal choice as a Carry.

Tips

 * Manually casting Frost Arrows (known as orbwalking) will prevent you from drawing creep/tower aggro. This is also needed to kite and escape opponents in a bad situation.
 * An early level of Silence is crucial to defend against spellcasters, although it will still be maxed last.
 * It is not advisable to max Precision Aura early. As Drow Ranger has low natural agility growth, and the damage from Precision Aura is drawn from this, getting one level before having one level of marksmanship will give so little damage that it isn't noticeable (4.7 with first level aura at level 5.). This combined with the fact that Aura scales slowly, only increasing by 4% for each level after first, means that leveling up Precision Aura pre level 7 is hardly ever worthwhile, let alone maxing it.
 * With the new Marksmanship, maintaining a distance is important for Traxex now, as this will help her deal great damage to enemies thanks to the additional Agility provided. Make sure you are more than 400 units away from your enemy and kite them to keep your distance so you will enjoy the full bonus effect of Marksmanship, as the extra Agility is halved when being close to your enemy heroes.
 * If during a team fight the enemy heroes get close to each other, using Silence in many or even all of them can simply turn the battle aside, making Drow Ranger not just a great carry, but also one of the best disablers/initiators of the game too, if given the chance.
 * When in possession of Shadow Blade, she can effectively gank by taking a shot to break the invisibility and immediately using her silence, leaving the target slowed, damaged (due to her natural high damage added to the 150 damage bonus) and silenced, being completely unable to react (apart from using items).

Trivia

 * Traxex's original design was slightly different from the one now; aside from the same hood, her white hair wasn't present, and her eyes were completely white. Her outfit was also slightly more revealing.
 * Traxex's Ultimate, Marksmanship, was originally a chance to one-hit kill creeps; however, it was changed in later updates to the passive agility buff she now has.
 * Traxex was briefly featured in the Dota 2 comic "Are We Heroes Yet?".
 * In DotA, Precision Aura is called Trueshot Aura.
 * The term "Drow", another name for "Dark Elf", originates from the RPG pioneer Dungeons and Dragons.