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View Full Version : Fayde - Shadow Woman. Be afraid.



Tensei
04-24-2010, 11:14 AM
Fayde
http://i40.tinypic.com/2yjzuoo.jpg

Introduction

Fayde is pretty much a semi-port of the DotA hero Nerubian Assassin; her skills, role and playing style are all quite similar, but she definitely has her own thing going on as well. If you know what I mean...

http://i40.tinypic.com/dlp5r5.jpghttp://i44.tinypic.com/344tcn4.jpg

Err, where was I...

She's unfortunately often mistaken for being a carry (I guess the whole AGI thing has something to do with that), but is in fact most powerful as a dedicated ganker, with maybe some *slight* semi-carry potential (think Valkyrie).


Basic Info

http://i43.tinypic.com/k47c2.png
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Analysis

Fayde has decent base damage, good base armor, and a very spread out stat gain. Especially the 2.15 AGI per level just screams "I'M NOT A CARRY", so let's take that hint and treat her as a ganker.

Fayde's role in the team is setting up ganks: She has invisibility comparable to heroes like Scout and Nighthound, but has two decent nukes (one of them a Medium Duration AoE stun), as well as innate static DPS on her ult, that can help her to deal damage in ganks early on.

You should pick Fayde when:
- Your team has another 'melee slot' open (i.e. You can take a melee hero without messing up your early lanes.)

- The enemy team has no particularly strong mid hero and you are confident in your skills with creep tugging and rune control, allowing you to solo mid with her.

- Your team is in need of a dedicated ganker that can set up ganks on strong roaming/jungling heroes like Ophelia and Tempest.

Fayde's Pro's and Cons

+ Ult provides a lot of map control.
+ Medium Duration line stun will always be useful in teamfights.
+ High base armor, decent base damage, strong animation.
+ Nearly ungankable because of two escape skills.
+ Decent amount of burst damage with a level advantage.
+ Can potentially semi-carry after having a particularly good early/midgame.


- Lack of lane control makes her a mediocre solo and doesn't give her any particular sidelane synergies.
- Abysmal manapool considering the cost of her spells.
- Lacks burst damage if underleveled; often ends up having to chase down targets rather than outright kill them.
- Melee (not that being melee is a disadvantage in and of itself, but it hurts her for the role she's trying to fulfill).
- Quite item-dependent for a ganker.
- The way her ult works she always has to initiate ganks by auto-attacking out of invis, giving her enemies the chance to blink/AoE stun/dust.
- Needs to put herself into danger to land her skills because of the overall short range.

Fayde's Skills

Guillotine

http://i39.tinypic.com/216ag5.jpg
http://i41.tinypic.com/14ac0aa.png

Guillotine is what you could consider Fayde's bread and butter nuke. The damage is alright, and the cooldown pretty elegant, but what defines this ability is the fact that it will instantly obliterate a quarter of the target's manapool. This is quite significant, especially in longer ganks where you will be able to use it twice, effectively removing half of the enemies mana.

Overall pretty straightforward in it's use, not much to say about this one.

Burning Shadows

http://i44.tinypic.com/1zedn4m.jpg
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Don't be fooled by the seemingly complicated description. Burning Shadows is, for all intents and purposes, Witch Slayer's Graveyard skill with a DoT component instead of instant damage.

Similarly to Witch Slayer's skill, you can either target heroes directly with it, or target the ground. Note, however, that with direct targeting the wave will only hit the targets that are 500 units away, whereas targeting the ground will allow you to hit targets up to 640 units away, making this a semi-skillshot.

Also interesting to note is that attack modifiers and passive skills on the targets you hit WILL carry over to the illusions, so Magebane's illusion will manaburn him, Scout's illusion can proc disarm, Rampage's illusion will do additional damage because of the movement speed aura, etc.

Dark Shield

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Dark Shield is another straightforward skill. It's comparable to a built-in version of Ghost Marchers, providing a temporary speedboost and unitwalking, which makes it useful for both chasing and escaping.

On top of that, it gives you 100% evasion and disjoints you on use. This makes it a great skill for mitigating damage when you're towerdiving early on for a gank.

The 'Disjointing' means that you can evade, or rather, 'disjoint' targeted projectiles while they're in flight. A good example would be Hammerstorm's Hammer Throw. Simply wait until the enemy uses his skill, and while the projectile is moving towards you, pop Dark Shield, and the damage/stun should be completely mitigated.

Maxed out, this skill has a 25% uptime, meaning you can use it quite often in teamfights to protect yourself from farmed up DPS carries.

Note, however, that additional levels only reduce the cooldown and add some movement speed, which means that early on, skilling one level of it is more than enough.

Reflection

http://i42.tinypic.com/21lv7uf.jpg
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Now, Reflection seems incredibly complicated at first sight, so I'll sum it up for you:

- Creates an illusion at your exact position and turns you invisible.
- You can attack a number of times while invisible, without breaking the invisibility. Your attacks do damage over time and slow your enemy.

Disclaimer: The DoT stacks, you don't have to wait 3 seconds between attacks to get the most out of it, so just attack as quickly as possible!

Most interesting to note about this skill is the cooldown/duration. You will be able to use this skill a LOT, and definitely should be doing so. The fact that your illusion gets experience means you can essentially leave it in a lane while you go ganking the enemy jungle and you won't miss out on ANY experience at all.

Unfortunately, when you find your prey, you usually have to initiate with auto-attacks to deplete your ult charges (for the DoT/slow). If you stun out of the invisibility you miss out on the additional damage from the ult. This gives your enemies some time to respond and can make it harder to sologank, but it can be avoided by initiating in conjuction with a teammate.

While this skill can be used to escape from ganks, you generally shouldn't be farming a lane anyway. Try to keep this skill on cooldown by roaming and ganking a lot in the midgame, as there's essentially no drawback for doing so (since your illusion gains XP anyway).

Skill Build

1. Burning Shadows
2. Guillotine
3. Guillotine
4. Dark Shield
5. Guillotine
6. Reflection
7. Guillotine
8. Burning Shadows
9. Burning Shadows
10. Burning Shadows
11. Reflection
12. Dark Shield
13. Dark Shield
14. Dark Shield
15. Stats
16. Reflection

There's not a whole lot of variation in terms of skill builds for Fayde. Guillotine is maxed out early for harassment/lasthitting purposes, as well as burst damage in ganks. The single level of Dark Shield can be skipped in favor of additional levels in Burning Shadows, but I find Dark Shield is useful in clutch situations during ganks, allowing you to sustain a few additional tower hits.

Why not skill Burning Shadows over Guillotine? For one, the damage from Guillotine is done instantly rather than over time, and the manaburn gives you at least a slight degree lane control early on, allowing you to lasthit/harass at the same time.

Reflection is just too good to pass up so it should always be taken whenever available.

Items

Starting Items:
1x Logger's Hatchet
3x Minor Totem
1x Runes of Blight
2x Mana Potion/1x Health Potion

Unfortunately for Fayde, she is quite item-dependent and definitely needs some fast gold to complete her core items. Her base damage being good but not amazing makes Logger's Hatchet quite important for this purpose. +3 All Stats provides you with some health and mana, and a single set of Runes of Blight SHOULD be sufficient to keep you in most lanes, provided you can always ferry items with a courier. The logic behind the two mana potions is that you can somewhat spam guillotine to harass/lasthit, and ensure a decent farm until you have the money for your bottle, making this a good build for solo mid. In a harder sidelane, you might want to get a health potion instead.

Core


Bottle

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Once you have your first 600 gold saved up, use the courier to bring yourself the bottle, and start runewhoring. Fayde makes great use of most runes and desperately needs early mana regen to fix her lackluster manapool.

Marchers

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Fast marchers will help greatly with early ganks, allowing you to chase down enemies and making towerdives less of an outright "Jump in front of a train"-suicide, and more of an "Overdose on sleeping pills"-suicide.

Mana Battery

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A cheap item that can provide you with instant health and mana in clutch situations. Can be upgraded into Power Supply but isn't that necessary due to the prohibitive recipe cost.

With these items you're more than ready to start ganking and roaming the map, using your illusion to keep up in XP while getting money from succesful ganks.

Divergent "Luxury" items

While not necessarily luxury due to Fayde's item-dependence, these items can't exactly be considered core either, as the build is very flexible and requires you to adapt to the enemy team.

"Rush" Items

The next items are potentially extremely powerful, but you HAVE to get them before a certain point in the game, or they'll start losing effectiveness very quickly. Rushing an item is only recommended for more experienced players who can keep up in farm. Boot upgrades are skipped in favor of these items. After succesfully rushing either of these you can simply continue with the "safe" items.

Codex

http://i42.tinypic.com/15eag5h.png

Often considered a joke item, this item is actually VERY viable on Fayde, providing her with much needed burst damage and turning her into a capable solo-ganker. Whether you should get this item depends on two factors:

- Can you get it quickly enough to make the most use of the damage? Did you gain enough momentum in earlygame? Are you ahead with gold/XP?
- Does the enemy have enough squishy (AGI/INT) heroes, as opposed to beefy (STR) ones?

Ideally, strive to finish your codex by the 20 minute mark, and NEVER UPGRADE IT.

Puzzlebox

http://i39.tinypic.com/mjl18z.png

Commonly know as the Swiss army knife of utility items, Puzzlebox is just a great item period, providing you with additional manaburn, additional DPS, truesight, and a haste aura. Unfortunately, like Codex, it has a pretty strict 'deadline' where it starts to lose effectiveness quickly, but it's absolutely beastly if gotten quickly enough. A few factors to consider when getting puzzlebox:

- Can you get it quickly enough to make the most use of the damage? Did you gain enough momentum in earlygame? Are you ahead with gold/XP?
- Does your team need additional map control in the form of counterwarding?
- Can you be bothered to micro puzzlebox alongside your other skills?
- Is your team pushing early?
- Does the enemy have any invisible heroes that need to be countered?

Ideally, strive to finish your level 3 Puzzlebox by the 25 minute mark.

"Safe" items

Of course there are games where your earlygame won't be perfect and rushing an item becomes unviable, in this case you'll most likely want to upgrade your boots first and then get an item that doesn't necessarily have a "Deadline" like the items you would rush.

Steamboots

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Steamboots are picked over Ghost Marchers because Dark Shield provides most of the benefits Ghost Marchers would have, and Steamboots provide Fayde with survivability or a greater manapool.

Hellflower

http://i44.tinypic.com/2638wer.png

This item fits Fayde like a glove, having an excellent buildup that provides you with lots of mana, mana regen and some DPS as well. It's pretty much the ideal 'fallback' item when you're getting your ass kicked earlygame as it stays relevant throughout most of the game and has cheap components.

It can of course also be gotten in an already succesful game (20% damage increase on Codex anyone?), but is mostly situational.

Some factors to consider:

- Do you have to shut down a farmed up, item-dependent carry (Symbol of Rage, Shrunken Head, etc.)?
- Are you having trouble with your manapool?
- Do you need additional ways of shutting down an invisible hero?

Nullfire Blade

http://i41.tinypic.com/2ce6nbd.png

Another great item that stays useful for most of the game. Nullfire Blade has a pretty good buildup, gives you some good auto-attack DPS, manaburn, as well as an incredibly versatile purge/slow.
It's interesting to note how well this item synergizes with puzzlebox, as you'll be burning people's mana like nobody's business (on top of Guillotine), making you relevant far into the lategame.

The purge has a number of uses, but it always counts as a reliable, ranged slow, which will help you chase down enemies.

Some factors to consider before getting Nullfire Blade:

- Does your team need counters to buff/debuff dependent heroes like Hellbringer, Hammerstorm, Madman, The Dark Lady, Jeraziah?
- Are you planning on semi-carrying with Fayde?

Actual Luxury Items

Geometer's Bane

http://i42.tinypic.com/rbi32b.png

The more, the better, right? Geometer's on Fayde is a logical followup to Nullfire Blade, giving you even MORE DPS, with manaburn propagating to illusions, and turning teamfights into one big party of confusion. This solidifies Fayde's role as a semi-carry because the combined manaburn from multiple illusions is a serious threat to even the more farmed up enemies.

Some factors to consider:

- Did you get Nullfire Blade earlier?
- Is the enemy team lacking in AoE capacity?

Coming Soon...

- Item section finished
- Strategies for laning/ganking/teamfights
- Best Allies/Worst Enemies