Anti-Mage/Guide

Classic farming
The role of the classic safe lane farming has not changed through many patches, and is still essentially the same. The main role of a safelane is to farm a  as quickly as possible and then start farming up bigger items. As soon as get his  he should start flash farming with his, switching between lanes and jungle camps while split pushing around the map. At this point should focus on forcing the enemy to rotate and defend against his splitpush or taking towers that aren't being defended.

The main problem with this playstyle is forcing your team to take fights 4 versus 5, while you are off either farming your or farming bigger items like  or. If gets shutdown too hard or if you play against heavy early push heros like  or  the game can be over before  get enough items to fill his needed role.

Combat-Mage (also known as the Miracle- build)
In recent patches an build focusing on heavy early fighting has become more popular, most notably pulled off by pro players such as Miracle- and occasionally Fear. The build revolves around getting strong early game items like and  combined with  then proceeding to join early teamfights while delaying or completely skipping. [ In this video] Miracle- pulls off the no build to get 9k mmr.

This build is high risk, high reward and requires incredibly good decision making and map awareness to pull off well, and is not recommended to newer players or people inexperienced with playing.

Ability Builds
A standard involves tons of points in stats to make up for his very bad strength game, after 16 it's common to just keep going stats till you cna't get anymore, then maxing  and only max  with the last 3 skill points. A rule of thumb if you need to max for whatever reason, is to match it with your  timing, meaning you try to have 4 points in  at the same time you get your.