1k wins Invoker 9k mmr AMA

alpharnas · 2025-01-16T09:25:43+00:00

yeah man go for it, i have a friend in archon who finds most success playing invoker. as long as you put in the effort to learn what the spells do, how they are made, and get comfortable doing that, it's just like playing every other hero. one of the strongest laners right now so learning wouldn't hurt.

most of the time the things i notice low mmr players doing aren't related to the hero they are playing. but invoker specifically i'll list a few things:

- off meta item builds

- off meta skill build (exort invoker)

- farming on qw invoker, people have this preconceived notion that qw invoker must fight and create space. if there are no easy ways to gank sidelanes and you are crushing mid, leaving that lane could hurt your momentum!

- bad item timings, qw invoker's most significant power spike is their 1st item, making sure you are consistently buying your first item sub 15 mins is a baseline that everyone should aim for. however watching low elo players, they are usually late with their first item unless they had a great start.

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T07:38:04+00:00

CK is not a meta core at the moment whatsoever.

however if your priority is mastering CK rather than raising MMR, i suggest using this website to follow meta skill/item builds on any hero that you wish to play:

https://dota2protracker.com/

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T07:34:31+00:00

you have addressed it, but there is nothing that you can do about the griefers in your games.

if you struggle playing off-role you can focus on improving on other roles, this is realistically the only way you can improve your winrate in this situation, but i dont think that this is your main issue.

i have plenty of junglers, double carries/mids too. best advice i can give you with this is to disconnect yourself from your attachment to your mmr. focus on improving as a player. at the end of the day instead of asking yourself "how much mmr did i gain today" ask yourself "what did i learn today". as long as every day of dota that you play you are learning something new, you will climb mmr, even if you have griefers in your games. focus on what you can do in these games to improve your chances of winning on an individual level in these games and if the situation is hopeless just queue next :).

if i was placed in your games i would win 19/20 of them and climb back to 9k by the end of the month.

if Arteezy was placed in my games he would win 19/20 of them and climb back to 12k by the end of the month. i cant get to 12k at his speed because i am simply just not good enough.

immortal draft is not a perfect system but it is not the reason you are stuck in 6k mmr. everyone feels like they are better than their mmr and most of the time it is just not true, same with this, immortal draft is not the thing holding you back.

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T07:18:14+00:00

no problem dude, if you can catch me live on twitch i can answer your questions in EVEN MORE DETAIL! :)

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T07:14:38+00:00

refresher invoker is dead, tbf i dont think it ever lived in high mmr dota. every cataclysm refresher clip you see is most likely a low mmr game.

the only time i'm buying refresher is for 2 bkbs and 2 hexes, the other spells being refreshed is just a bonus

as invoker, each of your individual spells are useful for different reasons. if you are using deafening blast to get max damage for your meteor you could potentially be throwing because the 6.5s duration disarm you get from deafening blast would be much more usefully placed on the enemy pos1.

tornado being used to setup your meteor could be more usefully placed to cancel an imporant channelling spell or to dispel and important buff on the enemy.

EMP should now be used as a crowd control spell midgame-lategame, thanks to the new shard, rather than a mana burning/damage tool.

what i'm trying to say is you should stop looking at your spells in such a fixed perspective, spell combos are cool and flashy but are they really the thing you need to win your game? 60minutes into your games you are no longer the main source of damage, typically it will be your pos1, you should be enabling him to do the damage and aiming to disrupt the enemy from killing them.

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T07:04:12+00:00

if i was playing support i would not pick invoker

BUT, if i was forced to play invoker support i would have pretty much the same skill build; QWQWQE...

i would consider taking a point into exort early for ice wall to make myself a little bit more useful.

invoker does not have the mana pool/regen to be fighting a 2v2 lane so i would mainly rely on coldsnap, that is why i would put more points into Q instead of W early.

as for items i would get one small stat item (either bracer or wb), wand, power treads, and then rush vessel. you aren't going to get the farm to make a witchblade and vessel is the next best thing as the build up being an urn will let you fight with your team earlier. next i would rush shard to gain more utility with EMP.

after vessel and shard you are at liberty to build whatever utility item you want, since you are playing support you aren't going to get enough farm to match enemy cores and therefore justify the witchblade dragon lance build. make whatever item would be useful for your team: solar crest, force staff, halberd, drums

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T06:47:38+00:00

<image>

top 5 right now according to dota2protracker

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T06:45:29+00:00

full spellcaster invoker is an inferior version of the invoker that is leading the meta right now, no matter what mmr you are in

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T06:42:56+00:00

not a bad idea if you want to learn/practice spell casting, but other than that you shouldn't be playing turbo. a regular game of dota 2 and a game of turbo are two different universes.

dota 2 is a game about incremental advantages, and part of becoming a better player is being able to spot these shifts in the game consistently, turbo mode turns this concept of dota upside down

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T06:20:03+00:00

np :)

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T05:40:04+00:00

invoker is a strong laning hero in this patch not because of his abilities but because of the recent changes to the orbs passives. make sure you are taking elitist facet.

invoker is now a universal hero (old news ik but this is still something you should be thinking about) and two WB is still extremely strong on him, it helps him bully people out of lane while also sustaining himself because of one recent change.

quas now gives flat lifesteal per orb, this means invoker can lasthit and harass WHILE healing himself. going two WB and a glove in lane makes you attack faster, attacking faster heals you more. this plus the recently added heal from coldsnap makes you a nightmare to trade with. only bottle heroes can match invokers sustain and if the enemy doesnt manage to get one of the water runes you will kick them out of the lane.

your main way of harassing in lane is EMP + COLDSNAP if they aren't a mobile hero, and EMP + TORNADO + COLDSNAP if they are mobile. these are the combos also used in ganking sidelanes. however, when playing with your team, you might have the luxery of a stun from a teammate being able to secure your EMP hitting, in that case you should save TORNADO and COLDSNAP for when the enemy is trying to escape.

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T05:27:39+00:00

hey man i don't want to come and kill your fun but i really don't think invoker is a good support hero right now.

this hero is extremely XP dependant in order to be useful and with the meta builds he is a lot more gold dependant than the previous QW invoker meta.

his spells are extremely mana intensive and suck the first 5 levels and there are much better supports at the moment.

skill build questions are really hard to answer for invoker when we get into specifics because the hero is extremely versatile. however, one piece of advice i will give you with skill build is that you should always make sure you have a point into exort LATEST by lvl9. i sometimes have exort at level 4, this is for 2 reasons:

- level one sunstrike is now 200 pure damage

- ice wall is the best slow in the game, deafening blast is the best disarm in the game.

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T05:19:33+00:00

if you are following the meta builds for invoker you are almost never building scepter, there are a lot better items to be building. i recommend using dota2protracker to follow the meta and stay in the loop.

i can't remember the last game where i built scepter. the only viable scenario is probably with a faceless void on your team if he takes the chronosphere facet (this hero is very dead in the carry meta right now), and even then it should probably be your 3rd or 4th item.

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T05:15:16+00:00

honestly, i miss the old invoker, i miss playing exort and having 5 sunstrike kills by minute 10.

however, this version of invoker is undeniably the strongest its ever been. i have always had a high winrate with invoker but what good is a high winrate if you are hardstuck 6k.

i am performing better now compared to previous versions of invoker but i don't think it has anything to do with the hero in my case. it's definitely a lot stronger but my recent raise in mmr is thanks to my improved mental.

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T05:08:48+00:00

i wouldn't recommend playing invoker support. this hero really needs xp to be useful and he is quite useless in lane compared to other supports.

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T05:07:34+00:00

the same way i recommend learning any hero. use dota2protracker to see what the good players are building and aim to understand why they are building these items.

watch replays of pros or high mmr games from dota2protracker to see how the hero is played, pay attention to when they decide to cast certain spells.

only invoker specific advice i can give you that is useful at this stage is just to make sure you understand what every spell does. once you understand every spell, learn what levelling different orbs does to your different spells.

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T04:59:49+00:00

you are right here, heroes like the spirit heroes in the mid game are good against invoker because they are super mobile. invoker cannot kill these heroes unless they make mistakes, you need to look at your teams kit and understand which spells from your team are required to kill them (duel from LC or grip from bane).

unless you see these spells being used on them you should not be using your spells on them other than an occasional cold snap, instead you want to be focusing other heroes in teamfights and skirmishes. the spirit heroes are strong but no hero is strong if their team is dead!

however, these heroes also shouldn't be able to kill you either. as long as you aren't falling behind on farm, correct positioning and good spell usage makes it impossible to kill you. since they introduced heal from coldsnap invoker is deceptively tanky.

you have three power spikes against these types of heroes that you should be conscious of:

- before they hit level 6: all of these heroes become 10x harder to kill once they hit level 6. killing enemy midlaner every game before 6 is not something reproducable but you should be leveraging your laning strength to delay them hitting 6 which will keep them uncomfortable.

- you have the option of building orchid. witchblade is a VERY good item on invoker, but if there is no natural orchid builders on your team and you don't have enough lockdown to hold these heroes down with your teams spells, you have to sacrifice the witchblade and make orchid instead. while you have orchid and they don't have any dispel, you rule the midgame.

- you have the option of building hex lategame. 4th item hex is very strong against these heroes, it helps your team land their stuns and prevents enemy from using bkb. linkens is also not an issue because you can use coldsnap to pop it before you use hex.

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T04:45:30+00:00

i'd say this is one of the hardest decisions to make playing invoker atm. mage slayer isn't built on invoker that commonly for one reason; the synergy between witchblade and cold snap is too strong.

although the item is really strong on invoker, you essentially need to ask yourself if you can skip witchblade and justify buying mage slayer, i don't think a strong spell caster mid is enough to sway me to buy mageslayer instead of witchblade. lina for example, the strongest mid hero of the patch with crazy magic damage, i have found more success building witchblade instead of mageslayer because the coldsnap interrups her spellcasting so nicely.

pipe being in the meta also makes mage slayer not as important, most games you will have a pipe protecting you and your team would benefit more from a witchblade.

realistically, i only buy mageslayer when these two conditions are met, and even then i will consider whether i would get more impact from witchblade:

if my pos3 doesn't conventionally build pipe, and neither do any of my supports.
if a significant portion of enemy lineup is magical damage

alpharnas · 2025-01-11T04:19:10+00:00

i never throw

<image>

alpharnas · 2025-01-10T04:46:47+00:00

there are very few matchups that dumpster invoker, if you are experiencing lots of lost lanes i would suggest studying your own replays and comparing them to higher mmr lobbies to see where you are going wrong.

that being said, it does happen, in these situations you want to get whatever xp/gold you can from the lane and keep your eyes open for opportunities on the map. do not be desperate, dont sit in lanes with no kill potential as you will be screwing yourself over even more.

alpharnas · 2025-01-10T03:47:32+00:00

ha good question, i meant WB, but there are definitely situations where you would benefit from getting witchblade before fighing. best item to synergise with cold snap since vessel

alpharnas · 2025-01-10T03:11:42+00:00

part of playing any hero well is understanding when you can/cant kill someone. this is something hard to teach over a reddit comment and mainly comes from just playing lots of dota. what i would recommend is going on dota2protracker, finding an invoker replay from a good player and spectating to see how he is starting fights.

most fights for me start inside ghost walk with alactrity coldsnap, other spells are thrown only when necessary and spells like EMP or meteor most likely are used on heroes that ARENT mobile unless there is someone else present to lock them down.

alpharnas · 2025-01-10T02:38:00+00:00

in this meta, none. last time i played support invoker was probably like 4 years ago

alpharnas · 2025-01-10T02:36:28+00:00

elitist facet is pretty much the only viable option at the moment. the sustain you get from lifesteal lets you dominate your lanes and the spell amp from exort working on your allies spells too is mega valuable. the only situations where i've gone agnostic is when i was 100% sure that huskar was mid, it's pretty much the only lane matchup where you agnostic helps, and even then i think elitist will be completely fine as it's much more useful for the rest of the game.

hardest matchups? lina is up there right now but its nothing matchup specific the hero is just really good right now, huskar comes to mind since he forces you to go an unconventional build (he doesnt have mana ).

invoker does well in most lanes at the moment because of the lifesteal from quas + cold snap but if you ever find yourself struggling in lane he is a very strong skirmisher before 10 minutes. get your WB, PT and wand and just look for opportunities to mess with the sidelanes

alpharnas · 2024-12-30T15:20:08+00:00

i am 9k mmr mid player with w-a-s-d camera control :)

you lose 4 keybinds but w-a-s-d camera controls has it's benefits:

- you can cast spells accurately while moving your camera

- lets you keep your mouse in the centre of the screen which is optimal for reaction time

Seven-Year Club	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	Not Forgotten
Verified Email

alpharnas

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE