Strategy
Gameplay[]
| Playstyle | |
|---|---|
| Silencer is an intelligence-based teamfight-oriented hero that scales exceptionally well thanks to his innate ability Intelligence Steal. He is able to render any magic user useless with his Last Word and Arcane Curse. His signature ultimate, Global Silence can make a swift table turn in teamfights. Glaives of Wisdom deals damage based on the amount of intelligence he has, which can make him a very powerful right-clicker if he manages to score enough kills. However, with the exception of his ultimate, he has no silence that applies instantly, and lacks escape abilities as well. In addition, he doesn't have a lot of options to deal with spell immunity. | |
| Pros | Cons |
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Support[]
- Support Silencer is typically played in the safe lane, but is just as effective in supporting an offlane carry, and can roam effectively with a few levels.
- A single point in Glaives of Wisdom at level one allows Silencer to easily harass the enemy heroes without attracting aggro from the enemy lane creeps.
- Support Silencer's build is focused on his ability to greatly slow enemy heroes with his Arcane curse in order to assist in kills during the early game.
- A value point in Last Word allows Silencer to limit the spells used on his carry.
Midlane(Carry)[]
- Carry Silencer is typically played in the mid lane, and is primarily focused on maximizing the damage potential of his Glaives by maxing it out first.
- Beside his glaives, Carry Silencer typically focuses on a single other spell in order to maximize his mid game damage potential. Most of the time, Last Word is chosen as his secondary spell, but against careless spellcasters, Arcane Curse will do more overall damage.
- If Silencer has failed to build a modest pool of stolen intelligence in the early game, he should opt to delay leveling up his ultimate ability, as the scaling increases the mana cost of global silence by a large amount, and without a large pool of mana, it limits his ability to deal damage.
Ability Builds[]
| Support Silencer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 |  | | | |  | | | |  |  | | | | | |  | | | | |||||
| Carry Silencer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 20 | 25 | |||||
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Talents[]
| Hero Talents | ||
|---|---|---|
| Last Word Mutes | 25 | +25% Glaives of Wisdom Damage |
| Arcane Curse Undispellable | 20 | 1 Glaives of Wisdom Bounces |
| +0.8x Last Word Int Multiplier | 15 | -20s Global Silence Cooldown |
| +20 Attack Speed | 10 | +10 Arcane Curse Damage |
Tips & Tactics[]
General[]
- Silencer can be played as a carry or support. As a carry, he focuses on taking fights and getting kills and assists with his spells, dealing tremendous damage with his attacks while using his spells to prevent the enemy from easily retaliating. As a support, he focuses on harassing the enemy with his spells and building support-utility items while reserving his ultimate for major teamfights.
Abilities[]
Arcane Curse[]
- Arcane Curse is a decent harass spell as it costs little mana to use and can either prevent enemies from casting spells for a while and deal some damage, or force the enemy to take much more damage if they dare to cast spells during it. Its area-of-effect nature and high cast range allow Silencer to apply the debuff to multiple enemy heroes at once, or cast it from a safe range by edging the enemy with the far end of the effect radius.
- The spell has a pseudo-silence-like effect on enemies; Although enemies are free to cast spells, they take a penalty for doing so, taking more and more damage from the curse for each cast they do.
- In teamfights, harassing the enemy with Arcane Curse before the engagement can severely change the outcome of a battle, depending on what the hit enemies decide to do: Either they hesitate to cast spells in order to prevent its duration from stacking up, or they decide to cast spells and therefore take much more damage and possibly die to the long duration of the curse they stack up. This is especially effective against heroes who heavily spam their abilities in fights, like Bristleback or Batrider, dealing either tons of damage to them, or rendering them useless in a fight for several seconds.
- Try to cast Arcane Curse on enemies before they cast their spells when laning. This ensures that they take much more damage from the spell or possible prevent them from farming if they use spells to do it. In some cases, it is even possible to apply the curse on enemies during their cast times, but this only works against abilities with a long cast time (e.g. Fissure) and requires quick reaction from the player.
- The slow from Arcane Curse can place the enemy in a disadvantageous position as they are unable to easily chase or escape without taking more damage. Choosing to not cast a spell prevents them from decisively nuking or disabling.. This can cause enemies to reconsider their options, as choosing to continue engaging the enemy can lead to them being slowed and taking damage for longer, while choosing to disengage removes them from play anyways as they cannot re-engage easily because of the slow.
- The slow can hinder melee carries who depend on movement speed in order to prevent themselves from being kited.
Glaives of Wisdom[]
- Glaives of Wisdom is what allows Silencer to become a powerful right-click carry, normally something that intelligence heroes cannot do. As its pure damage scales with Silencer's intelligence, he can inflict large amounts of damage with his attacks by building up enough intelligence, whether through farming items or via Intelligence Steal.
- In the laning stage, it may be beneficial to get one early level of Glaives of Wisdom, enabling Silencer to deal bonus pure damage with his attacks, useful for last-hitting as a carry. As well, the attack modifier can be manually cast to harass the enemy without drawing creep aggro, whether as a support or carry.
Last Word[]
- Last Word curses Silencer's target to be faced with unfortunate consequences. If they cast a spell during the debuff duration, they are immediately silenced and take damage, useful for breaking the spell combo of enemies like Tiny and Tinker.
- Last Word's silence proc follows the same rule as Arcane Curse, and only procs on spells requiring mana or which are not toggle-able.
- In general, Last Word is used best against spell casters, as they suffer the most from the silence.
- Last Word is a powerful harassing spell in-lane, as it can force the enemy to retreat from the lane even if they do not cast a spell. If the enemy does not retreat, they are silenced near the creep wave, allowing them to be chased down and killed.
- Remember that Last Word has a very long cast range, and thus can be targeted on fleeing enemy heroes. If you manage to cast it on an enemy who is already very low on health, you can secure the kill as he will most likely die to the damage at the end of the delay, proccing Intelligence Steal at the same time.
- Last Word can be highly effective against heroes with two-spell combos or single spells with two parts, as they are only able to cast the first part of their combo but not the second due to the silence. This is particularly effective against combos such as Tiny's Avalanche and Toss, Keeper of the Light's Illuminate, Elder Titan's Astral Spirit into Echo Stomp, Phoenix's Icarus Dive, and so on.
Global Silence[]
- Global Silence is a powerful initiating and counter-initiating spell that can be cast no matter where Silencer is. However, keep in mind the spell's long cooldown, as using it ineffectively gives the enemy a window of opportunity where they can engage your team in the knowledge that you do not have your ultimate.
- Global Silence applies its debuff through spell immunity and invulnerability. This means that it is able to silence enemies even after they activate a Black King Bar, and even through spells like Ball Lightning. However, it is also a dispellable debuff, meaning that activating Black King Bar or Manta Style after being afflicted with Global Silence removes it. As such, it is important to time your use of the ultimate wisely.
- Silencer on his own is not an initiator; if you try to initiate with Global Silence alone, the enemy team can simply disengage and wait out the silence. However, Global Silence can synergize extremely well with almost any initiator. When someone on your team initiates (or immediately before), activate Global Silence. The other team will be helpless as you collapse on them.
- Silencer's spells can combo in many useful ways.
- Last Word can be applied to an enemy during Global Silence, ensuring the silence at the end of the delay. This can extend the duration of silence on a single enemy.
- Global Silence is usually used in team fights, at times where the enemy usually wants to cast spells. Applying Arcane Curse on enemies in such situations can greatly increase the damage they take, or prevent them from casting spells even further. Arcane Curse's effect even stacks with itself, so when having Global Silence upgraded, placing 2 curses on enemies can have devastating outcomes.
Intelligence Steal[]
- Intelligence Steal allows Silencer to reduce enemy heroes' base intelligence simply by being nearby when they die. This means that Silencer benefits greatly from showing up to fights and ganks, even if he does not actually directly contribute to kills. The earlier he begins acquiring Intelligence Steal stacks, the more easily he can capitalize on the stolen stats and gain an early advantage no matter what role he is played in.
- It is possible to proc Intelligence Steal from outside of its radius if Silencer gets kill credit on the enemy. This means that kills using Last Word or Arcane Curse, which do not immediately kill their targets, can still award Silencer with stolen intelligence even if the enemy manages to escape to outside the radius.
- Your team benefits much more if you manage to steal intelligence from heroes with already small mana pools such as Phantom Assassin, Centaur Warrunner, Pudge, and so on. As such heroes are already hard-pressed to cast their spells on a regular basis, reducing their intelligence further still can render them almost impotent in fights, or force them to build intelligence items just to ensure that they can cast spells, wasting their inventory slots.
- Intelligence Steal will never be able to reduce an enemy's base intelligence to 0, meaning that they will be left to a minimum of either 1 or 2 intelligence. As such, any subsequent kills against such Heroes will not grant additional intelligence to Silencer.
- Intelligence granted through talents, abilities and items cannot be stolen, regardless of the Hero's base intelligence.
Items[]
Starting items:
- Tango sustains Silencer's health in lane; as a support, he can also share the item with his team.
- Healing Salve also restores health to Silencer or an ally.
- Clarity allows Silencer to harass enemies with his abilities as needed.
- Null Talisman provides damage for securing last hits and denies and amplifies the damage from glaives.
Early game:
- Magic Wand has all the benefits of Magic Stick, along with providing stats and greater charge storage. As Silencer is quite vulnerable to enemy attacks even as a carry, burst HP regen is always helpful.
- Boots of Speed help Silencer get close enough to use abilities, and potentially get kills or assists to enjoy Intelligence Steal.
- Wind Lace also provides movement speed boost. Additionally, it can build into Eul's Scepter of Divinity or Drum of Endurance.
- Town Portal Scroll transports Silencer to fights in order to steal early intelligence.
Mid game:
- Witch Blade is the best first item for Silencer giving him intelligence, armor, attack speed and perfect passive that synergies with passive effects of glaives.
- Power Treads provides Silencer with attack speed and appropriate attributes, particularly strength to give him more health. The ability to switch attributes can help with spell casting and outputting damage.
- Hurricane Pike can be used on himself or a teammate as an escape mechanism or him to close the distance upon a fleeing enemy, or can be used to push an enemy out of position. Also, it improves his attack range and allowing him to finish off an opponent with four glaives at long range; Last Word can be used to keep constant vision of his target.
- Orchid Malevolence is a powerful item to build on a carry Silencer, synergizing with all of his spells. Orchid is the only item which grants intelligence, health regeneration, mana regeneration, attack speed, attack damage in one package.
- Arcane Curse's duration pauses when silenced, so a third source of silence from this item's active increases the effectiveness of this spell, and increases the likelihood of being able to apply a second curse, before the first wears off.
- Glaives of Wisdom get more damage and more attack speed, plus Orchid's active will amplify all the damage done during its duration.
- Last Word's biggest weakness is the 4 second delay before damage and silence is inflicted, allowing ganked targets to cast an escape spell. By using Soul Burn, then Last word, the delay duration becomes a benefit, as it provides True Sight over the target for the full duration, and continues into a total of 11 seconds of silence without using Silencer's ultimate.
Late game:
- Bloodthorn, upgraded from Orchid Malevolence, provides additional stats such as intelligence. In particular, it also provides additional attack speed and allows attacks to pierce through evasion. Its improved Soul Rend not only silences an opponent, but makes Silencer's attacks hit harder with True Strike, bringing down even the most evasive and/or tankiest heroes.
- Scythe of Vyse provides a strong disable. It also gives intelligence and powerful mana regeneration to sustain his abilities.
- Black King Bar greatly increases Silencer's survivability with strength and Debuff Immunity so he can continue to output damage without worrying about enemy disables.
Situational items:
- Drum of Endurance suits an offensive Silencer in the early game, increasing the power of pushes with attack speed and improving his ability to chase enemies with movement speed.
- Glimmer Cape, a support item, grants invisibility and magic resistance to Silencer and allies so they can escape.
- Blink Dagger is a powerful mobility tool, no matter what role Silencer is played in. As a support he can easily position himself to cast his disables on the enemy, as well as use it to evade enemy ganks. As a carry, it gives him strong positioning, allowing him to move quickly into a fight to attack after disabling the enemy with his ultimate. Or to simply blink in to steal intelligence from dying enemy heroes.
- Eul's Scepter of Divinity increases intelligence, movement speed and mana regeneration so Silencer can make plays on the map. The active Cyclone can disable enemies, remove debuffs from yourself, and make yourself temporarily invulnerable. Can also be upgraded into a Wind Waker for improved stats, although it is expensive.
- Rod of Atos provides both intelligence and health, as well as a root to catch enemies out of position, or to hold them in place so Silencer can either retreat or stop enemies from using their escape abilities or Town Portal Scroll. Can be upgraded into Gleipnir for improving his attacks with Maelstrom's benefits.
- Shiva's Guard increases Silencer's survivability against physical damage while also granting him more stats to fuel his abilities and attacks, making it a well-rounded item. The slow can also help chase down fleeing enemies more easily.
- Refresher Orb, an ultimate late game item, enables Silencer to inflict a 12 seconds silence at highest level that pierces spell immunity and invulnerability, shutting down enemy heroes who rely on using abilities in team fights. It also refreshes items so he can use Black King Bar or Bloodthorn a second time, improving survivability and damage output.
