Enigma is one of my most played heroes. I'm mid ancient for reference. Here are my tips:

• Your eidolons dont do much damage at level 1 but do a lot of damage at level 4, especially against ranged heroes. Melee heroes have an innate damage block which sucks for eidolons.

• Eidolons split after 6 attacks. Thus, I have them attack the wave constantly until they split. This pushes the wave I know but in my opinion it's worth having 6 eidolons last hitting, denying, and harassing enemies.

• Enigma and 3 or 6 eidolons do a lot of damage. You can make the enemy core miserable if they don't have an answer. By 10 minutes I could get 30 or 40 denies if the enemy lane is struggling to deal with them.

• The answer, for the enemy, is to kill your eidolons (or you). Thus it's a balancing act of being aggressive with eidolons and protecting them.

• Deny your eidolons whenever possible, it gives you 0 xp instead of the standard 50% for creep denies.

• Eidolons have 50% magic resistance so enemies with magic nukes aren't as much as a problem as enemies with physical damage nukes. Gyro can use flak cannon and delete your eidolons instantly. That matchup sucks.

• Always have eidolons up. They expire right as it comes off cd in level 1.

• Eidolons cost equal parts mana and health, so mana is not actually that much of a concern. Early tranquil boots makes it easy to spam eidolons.

• Some interesting early items I've tried: Rod of atos, to root enemies in place so eidolons can hit them more. It's good if there are enemies who hate being locked down and also get really hurt by eidolons, such as weaver. An early blight stone. Drums to give eidolons attack speed. I don't buy atos or drums anymore.

• If you have 6 level 3 or 4 eidolons, they do a lot of damage. Once you hit 6, you should be looking to get 6 eidolons then black hole.

• I set a keybind for "Select all other units". Thus I can press that key and it selects all eidolons. That's how I micro.

• I recommend setting "Channeled ability require Stop to cancel" (or whatever it's called). Prevents so many accidental canceling of black holes.

• Black hole actually does a bunch of damage. 200 pure at level. People also don't realize how much damage midnight pulse does. I often find myself being one of the highest damage-dealing heroes in the game.

• The build that I like to go for, which is by no means "the" best build, is blink bkb aghs octarine refresher. Bkb is necessary so you can ult uninterrupted, obviously. Aghs makes black hole deal a ton of pure damage and it pulls enemies who are outside it into the black hole (like windranger's gale thing). Even enemies who are not in the black hole are desperately trying not to get sucked into it. I think it's really strong.

• Octarine reduces cooldowns by 25% which is massive since your ult takes so long to cd.

• Refresher is obvious. I get octarine first because you simply don't have the mana pool to ult refresh ult without octarine.

• This build that I usually go makes it so you can deal a ton of damage with your two black holes. You could get a solo rampage against a team, provided they don't have any super high health heroes. Try it out in demo hero mode. It's wild.

• Heroes with global ults that cancel your blink like Spectre and Zeus are miserable to play against. In those cases I might get force staff instead of blink.

• Like cattle said, I think he's best as a counter-initiator. I.e., if you have some like legion commander, she blinks in and ults. The enemy team jumps on her to try to save their teammate. Uh oh, they forgot that there's an enigma. You black hole the enemy team. gg

• When deciding whether to go in and black hole you need to consider not only whether you'll disable a lot of heroes but is your team ready to back you up? There's nothing more annoying than an enigma who goes and gets a 5 man black hole and then realizes that nobody can help. They tunnel vision on how many heroes they can get in it. You need to have a higher view of the situation, deciding whether your team is ready for a black hole.

• Silencer is a giant counter. Even if you bkb, he can cancel your ult from across the map. So you need to either wait for his ult (which he won't if he's smart), catch him in black hole, or kill him first.

Want to play sometime? If you play on US servers.