KatyPerry

 

Post #1 deals with Ophelia's Stats, her Skills and a few Itembuilds.
Post #2 covers her role from early to late game, which minions to get during what phase of the game, counters to Ophelia and counter warding when certain spots in your jungle get blocked.
Post #3 shows how to push towers, gank in the early and mid game, how to solo Kongor as soon as you hit Level 6 and what heroes work best with/against her. There's also a little guide that shows how to jungle in the beginning and how to pull neutral creepcamps.

So if you check the hero usage statistics you'll probably notice that Ophelia is only picked in 0,6% of all the games played! Is it because she sucks? Definitely not, as most of the higher tier players love her to death.

It's because she's probably the hardest hero out there to play right. Why's that? Because using her to her full potential means that you need to get your microskillz straight.

Strength: 20 (+1.5)
Agility: 15 (+1.1)
Intelligence: 21 (+2.8)

Range: 600
Damage: 43-53
Attacks/sec: 0.68


As you can see her stats aren't that impressive, but if you play her right she'll be jungling for ~15 minutes and only come out for an occasional gank or two.

Her role in the game is to push and to support. Ophelia is one of the strongest pushers in the game. She may get weaker as the game goes on and on, but her creeps are amazing for tanking and damaging a tower.
Also her support is pretty crazy, because with that global heal and the supportitems you're going to get, you'll end up as an awesome addition to almost every lineup.




Nature's Wrath:


Type: Magic
Range: 600
Cast Time: 0.8 Seconds
Mana Cost: 100
Cooldown: 14.0 Seconds
Required Level: 1 / 3 / 5 / 7

Nature's Wrath Effects
7 / 14 / 21 / 28% Damage taken
8 / 16 / 24 / 32% Movement Slow


Nature's Wrath is a powerful single target spell. Ophelia can slow the targeted enemy AND amplifies the damage the target takes as well. If you're sticking your head out of the woods to gank an opponent using Nature's Wrath, having your buddy on the lane know whom you're going for, will often result in a free kill because of the sheer amounts of bonus damage your debuff will make you inflict. It's also good for preventing a hero to run away from a gank/in the aftermath of a succeded gankattempt.
The CD is pretty low for how impressive and useful this skill is, so use it every time you can.



Ophelia's Judgement:


Type: Magic
Range: 600
Cast Time: 0.8 Seconds
Mana Cost: 175
Cooldown: 30.0 Seconds
Required Level: 1 / 3 / 5 / 7

Activation
If target is a player controlled enemy unit, deals {50-100,100-200,150-300,200-400} True damage.

If target is an allied unit that you control, it will be teleported to your spawn point instantly.

If target is an allied unit that you do not control, they will be teleported to your spawn point at the end of the channel time.

Allied units can avoid teleportation by moving more than 200 units away from their original position at time of cast.
A highly situational skill. You don't need it early game, because you only control around 1-2 units and it's not like you can't get new ones. Yes, if you have 2 minotaurs sending the one that's near death back to the base might be a good choice on the first look, but it's actually a wasted skillpoint. You can port allies back to the base as well, which is actually very good, but you won't need that until mid-/lategame.
And for the nuke: It's actually horrible. You can try to nuke in the beginning of the attack, but KS'ing with Ophelia is horrible, as you don't need the money. And if you think that you need money, you can get it by jungling.
Command:


Type: Magic Dominate
Range: 900
Cast Time: 0.8 Seconds
Mana Cost: 100
Cooldown: 30.0 Seconds
Required Level: 1 / 3 / 5 / 7

Activation
Dominates target, taking control of it permanently. Only allows control of 1 / 1 / 2 / 3 units. Applies aura to all minions under your control.

Aura Effects
Radius: 9999
Target: My Other Units
Increases your minion's health by 75/150/225/300
That's Ophelia's bread & butter skill. I'm not kidding, you actually have to take it at Level 1 if you're not aiming for a superexotic build no one ever uses.
It actually enables Ophelia to dominate an enemy creep (NEVER do that. I'm not kidding. Just don't.) or one of the Neutrals. It may not sound like much, but those creeps are insanely strong in the earlygame and sometimes in the midgame. Lategame you can pick creeps like Ice Ogre or Wolf Commander, but more on that later.

The problem with this skill is that many people feel overwhelmed with controlling so many creeps. You actually have to group them right and use many of their abilities at the right time. Plus you need time to learn which creep has which ability.

To summarize: This skill is awesome!

Update as of the new patch: The newest nerf cripples your ganking and farming skills considerably until level 5. The skillbuild didn't change, but you still have to take Command on Level 1,3,5 and 7 to fully use Ophelia's potential.
Ophelia's Touch:



Type: SuperiorMagic
Cast Time: 0.8 Seconds
Mana Cost: 200 / 300 / 400
Cooldown: 120.0 Seconds
Required Level: 6 / 11 / 16

Activation
Heals all allied heroes on the map for 200 / 300 / 400.

Fully heals all minions under your control.

Ophelia's Ultimate. Global heal, sounds boring, right? Well, it's not. If you have a good map awareness and check your teams HP from time to time, you can save their asses with it. You don't even need to be there, because it's GLOBAL!
But that's not all there's to it. You can pop it in ganks too, basically giving your team a free Astrolabe-pop every 120 seconds.
Plus you can use it for pushes, when all your creeps are low from tanking the tower.
With Staff of the Masters the Cooldown gets reduced from 120 to a whooping 30 seconds. But there are other items out there that are better for Ophelia.


Level 4 Command gets left out, unless you're facing a team of AoE nukers that aim for your creeps, in which case that +5 to your creeps Magic Armor could come in handy.
1. Command
2. Nature's Wrath
3. Command
4. Nature's Wrath
5. Command
6. Ophelia's Touch
7. Command (now Command on Level 7 is a MUST HAVE, there's NO WAY AROUND IT! You need it now to dominate 3 creeps, because the skill got nerfed.)
8. Nature's Wrath
9. Nature's Wrath
10. Ophelia's Judgment/Stats
11. Ophelia's Touch
12. Ophelia's Judgment/Stats
13. Ophelia's Judgment/Stats
14. Ophelia's Judgment/Stats
15. Stats
16. Ophelia's Touch
17+. Stats

So it's basically like this: You get Command on Level 3 as soon as possible, and then you max Nature's Wrath with one point in Ophelia's Touch mixed in on Level 6. On Level 9 you can get one point in Ophelia's Judgement to port your mates to the base after ganks. If needed. They can actually save a lot of time running back there or 135g for a Homecoming Stone.
Always take the Ultimate as soon as it's available.

You can always swap Nature's Wrath with Ophelia's Judgment if you prefer, a lot of people like the nuke more than the slow and the damage amplifier early game.





You actually have a lot of options as Ophelia. If nobody buys courier, you're going to buy it. If nobody buys wards, you buy them. If your team is getting both of those things, you can go for an Refreshing Ornament and rush Astrolabe. The +2 Health Regeneration Aura is pretty nice. You'll probably not notice it, but your creeps will stay alive a lot longer with it, if you know how to micro them correctly.
And if you have somebody in your team that's already going for astrolabe ( ) you can save your money and rush a Puzzlebox.

So if you break it down, her items can look like this:



/ /

or



or




As mentioned above, always buy a courier or wards if nobody buys it. Also that Refreshing Ornament is only a viable option if your team wants you to buy Astrolabe (= nobody else is buying it).
Bolstering Armband isn't actually that great. But on Level 1 you can tank for your creep, because it will be a little bit squishier without Refreshing Ornament. And it's only a good choice if you're rushing for Puzzlebox.


or / or


Astrolabe is a great item on Ophelia, but if your team already has one, you can go for Puzzlebox. It's great for pushing, it's great for draining the enemies Mana, and it's great for dealing damage. It also gives True Sight if you're facing a team with heroes that can go invisible and one of the creeps has a nice aura that gives movementspeed to those standing nearby. Unfortunately the cost of the recipe got increased in the last patch again (1100 -> 1250), so you running around owning everything with your puzzlebox level 3 has to wait a bit.

As far as boots go Steamboots are a good choice if you need that extra survivabilty. I tested the Plated Greaves a lot in recent plays, and all I can say is that I totally prefer them over Steamboots. 20% to the base damage of your creeps is indeed awesome and you can push a lot better with the buff than without it.



/ / //


So, after the rework Nome's Wisdom isn't quite as good as it was. Yes, it's still viable because Ophelia doesn't need the regeneration, but personally I would buy a Stormspirit instead, because it's cheap and it has a disable. Or you could invest in a SotM or the Toten of Kuldra. Disable and a global heal every 30 seconds are always good and your team will love you for the Hex or your awesome healing powerzzz!







I know that Whispering Helm is a popular choice on Ophelia, but come on guys. Ophelia doesn't need the damage or the life steal and yeah, having more minions is great, but that's 1850g you could stuff into your Astrolabe or your Puzzlebox. It's nice to have 4/5 or even more creeps with you, but the helm has a 5 minute CD, so it will take 10 minutes for you to have 5 creeps. 10 minutes is a long time in a game where your team has Ophelia, because you should be pushing.
Yes, you can get it. Yes, it's actually pretty viable and useful, I just think that there are better items to get with Ophelia.





Unless you're messing around don't get the following items:

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