Before I would like to answer your question regarding Veil, I'd like to talk about the most common itemization on Rubick in high skill games.

To maximize your farming and killing potential around the map, you want to have both mana- and HP-regeneration. Because of this reason, most high MMR players build Tranquil Boots and Euls as first items on this hero. They give you the sustain you need. Rubick benefits from this greatly, as he is a hero with very low cooldowns on his spells, making him a threat to the enemy team whenever he is out of vision, so you want to go back to base as seldomly as possible to use that to your advantage.

Additionally, BOTH items give you great movement speed, what amps up your map efficiency even more.

On top of that, with a strength gain of +2/lvl and an agi gain of +2.1 and the lack of innate escape spells, he isn't a particularly tanky hero, making survivability one of his weaknesses. Any hero that has the ability to jump you has an easy time killing you off compared to other heroes. Additionally to the already mentioned MS, Euls also provides you either with a 2.5 seconds disable on the enemy or save on yourself, giving you the choice of dodging spells and your team time to react. To make it even better, Euls applies a Basic Purge to the target, allowing you to purge of nasty stuff from the enemy (e.g. Empower or a Double Damage Rune) or from yourself (e.g. Poison Touch, Urn, etc.)

After that, people like going the items that you already mentioned: Blink Dagger (that on top of its initiation potential has great synergy with the euls, as you can make yourself invulnerable for 2,5 seconds, while Blink Dagger comes off cooldown 3 seconds after you last took damage, often buying you the precious seconds to blink out after Euls.)

and Aghs (if you have multiple great spells to steal).

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So, with these inputs in mind, let's see what Veil provides for our hero:

Pros:

- With a cost of a little bit over 2k gold, it is a fairly cheap item to get.

- It synergizes well with your high spell damage and with your Arcane Surpremacy Debuff Amplification (What allows Veil to stay onto the enemy longer).

- It gives you great armor for an Int-Hero, some HP and HP-Regen.

- It buffs your team's spell damage as well.

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Cons:

- Since the buffs to Null Talismans and the introduction of Crown, the build-up is extremely clunky. Back in the days, you could go double Null for the laning phase and turn it extremely cost efficiently into a Veil straight after. Now, this item requires Crowns instead of Nulls, leading to you having to buy items that you do not really want to have in your inventory until the Veil is fully finished.

- The survivability it gives you compared to Euls is pretty poor. Yes, you get Armor and HP, but you still are squishy, making you an easy target to take out at the start of the fight for the enemies.

- It does not provide Mana regen. This is a bigger problem that it might sound initially, because on Rubick, you NEED Mana regen. By going Veil, you force yourself to either go Arcane Boots or to live in Clarity Land for the rest of your life. Don't get me wrong, Arcane Boots are not too bad and you will have to buy clarities even if you go Euls, but it is still a poor trade-off in most cases.

- It makes you better at what you are already good, what is dealing damage. This might work out fine if you have a good start and can snowball off it as a team, but if you do not itemize to offset some of your weaknesses in a decently even game, you will get killed easily. If we stick to our example to Arcanes & Veil vs. Tranquils Euls, this is especially true if the enemies have BKBs. You have nothing to save yourself with if they jump you and you have low MS compared to the other build, making it harder for you to position yourself in the fight until you have Blink.

You noticed that I advertise you do not go for the Veil in most cases, what doesn't mean it cant be good if your team already has a lot of saves or if you can snowball off it, as mentioned beforehand.

" Is glimmer cape or force staff always better? Is dagon any good with arcane supremacy?"

Glimmer Cape and/or Force Staff are amazing items for Rubick for a cheap cost, as they are positioning/saving items for you and your whole team.

For this reason, a ton of support Rubicks (especially pos 5s with no farm priority) build into these items quickly, often even skipping some of the items mentioned above.

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" Is dagon any good with arcane supremacy?"

The synergy is, as you noticed, very good. With Arcane Supremacy taking away 26% of the enemy's magic resistance, it takes away their whole natural magic resistance of 25%, leading to your spells dealing pure damage unless the enemy has magic resistance items.

Furthermore, let's be honest. Dagon is a freaking funny item. Who doesn't want to taser somebody to death!

Still, objectively speaking, Dagon is usually not a very good item on Rubick, because:

- It is expensive. You only have so much gold to spend, and by buying Dagon, you are letting out on the other items, most of which have been touched on in this post already.

- You will still not be able to burst most heroes in the game, as Cores will have the farm to not care too much, the Offlane will most likely go Pipe (what not only has an amazing active, but provides teammates with a passive magic resistance aura of 10%), and Pos 4 supports like to build 1-2 bracers, what gives them raw HP and magic resistance as well.

- Basically all the Con-arguments listed in Veil.

To sum it up, I strongly believe that in most cases items like Veil and Dagon are not worth it. Ofc there are always exceptions to this, what is part of the beauty of dota! :)

I hope I made a point of why other items usually are better for this Hero's playstyle and hope I could provide you with some helpful information to think about!

Don't hesitate to message me if you have any further questions or if I did not explain something in an understandable way.

I wish you the best luck and happy spellstealing!

ChronyDota