hi everyone, im here to give everyone who wants to learn about my favorite hero, the dark lady, some advices
Introduction
The Dark Lady is an AGI carry-type hero, and this is the only way she can be played.
Skills
Dark Blades
Mana Cost: 75 / 85 / 95 / 105
Cooldown: 22.0 / 18.0 / 14.0 / 10.0 Seconds
Required Level: 1 / 3 / 5 / 7
The Dark Lady activates the malicious energy in her Wrath Blades, causing her attacks to silence foes, preventing them from using spells and abilities. The malicious energy in her blades also increase her base damage temporarily.
Applies Dark Blades to self for 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 seconds.
50 / 60 / 70 / 80% Base Damage
Attacks silence target for 2.5 seconds
Your damage-giver skill, will almost double your damage at late game. It also silences everything you attack, or pass by while using Charging Strikes, being able to silence an entire team for 2.5 seconds.
The 2.5 seconds silence duration refreshes everytime you attack your target, and the skill lasts for 6 seconds at level 4.
This means you can silence your enemy for roughly 7~ seconds, which is incredibly long. Imagine a Doctor Repulsor who wants to use his ultimate and run away, you'll have him stuck at his location for another 7 seconds, enough to kill him.
Taint Soul
Mana Cost: 35 / 45 / 55 / 65
Cooldown: 12.0 Seconds
Required Level: 1 / 3 / 5 / 7
Range: 800 / 900 / 1,000 / 1,100
The Dark Lady forces her influence onto an enemy unit's soul, tainting it. The target enemy is weakened, taking damage and reduced Movement Speed for a brief duration.
Deals 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 Magic damage and applies Tainted Soul to target for 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 seconds.
Reduces Movement Speed by 60% initially, recovering to full speed over 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 seconds.
This will be your chase mechanism, slowing your target (even tho its not a powerful slow) and damaging it a bit.
The skill is also useful for last hitting creeps early on game, if your lane opponents are harassing too much, you can simply last hit creeps from a 800+ range safely.
Charging Strikes
Mana Cost: 75
Cooldown: 21.0 / 17.0 / 13.0 / 9.0 Seconds
Required Level: 1 / 3 / 5 / 7
Range: 600 / 700 / 800 / 900
Charges toward target location, dealing one attack to each enemy that passes within radius of self. Each consecutive attack during the charge will deal 15% less damage than the previous.
When the charge completes, applies Zeal to self for 6 seconds.
Zeal Effects
30 / 45 / 60 / 75 Attack Speed
The most important skill of TDL, in my opinion. Your escape, chase, carry, and mobility skill.
At level 4 it gives a huge attack speed bonus, and combined with Dark Blades, you will be dealing an incredible amount of damage.
The best part of it is, it deals an autoattack to everyone she passes through, and this autoattack includes your attack modifiers & Dark Blades. You can silence an entire team by passing through them, you can regen all your lost HP with a life steal modifier by charging through a creep wave, you can apply Shieldbreaker debuff to all your enemy heroes, all in one skill.
Cover of Darkness
Mana Cost: 75
Cooldown: 120.0 Seconds
Required Level: 6 / 11 / 16
Range: 99,999
Radius: 1,000
Using the depths of her Dark Powers, The Dark Lady poisons the minds of all enemy heroes in an area. For the duration, affected enemy heroes move slightly slower, lose all allied vision and have a reduced sight range.
Applies Darkness to targets in radius for 4 / 6 / 8 seconds.
Darkness Effects
5 / 10 / 15% Movement Slow
Shrinks vision radius to 400. Unlinks shared vision with allies.
The Dark Lady's ultimate skill, it just has so many uses..
You can ruin the enemy teams initation,
You can stop support players from finding who to support and who to disable in team fights,
You can use it on enemy carries, making them unable to find their right targets,
You can use it near your allied heroes who are being ganged, and most likely save them,
You can use it on enemy heroes who are being ganged, and get the assist gold from 99999 ranges. (yes, just like Sand Wraith, TDL can get assists while not being there)
Skill Order
1. Charging Strikes
2. Dark Blades
3. Taint Soul
4. Charging Strikes
5. Charging Strikes
6. Cover of Darkness
7. Charging Strikes
8. Dark Blades
9. Dark Blades
10. Dark Blades
11. Cover of Darkness
12. Taint Soul
13. Taint Soul
14. Taint Soul
15. Stats
16. Cover of Darkness
17-25. Stats
Charging Strikes should be maxed first, as it is your escape mechanism, and leveling it decreases its cooldown a lot. I've seen a lot of people leveling Taint Soul before other skills, mostly to last hit creeps, but level 1 Taint Soul is good enough to last hit most of the creeps anyway. Also, leveling Taint Soul increases its mana cost, after a few uses you wont have any mana left to do anything.
Laning
Like most other carry melee heroes, you need someone to babysit you. To be honest, i had success with almost all the support heroes out there, so any babysitter is fine if the player does his job well.
Some of the best examples,
Simply perfect, she has the stun to kill the enemy or save you, she has the heal & mana regen to keep you on the lane farming.
I remember getting my Runed Axe on 16 minute mark, along with my red booties with my friend on Nymph babysitting me.
Stun, hex, high range, what else can i ask for?
The common babysitter hero, not much special about him.
But, there are definetely some heroes you should
not be against on the lane.
The most god damn annoying hero in the game, just keeps slowing & slowing & harassing..
Way too much burst damage, especially on a fragile hero like The Dark Lady, swap lanes already !
Simply annoying.
Items
Before giving the list of items you should get for The Dark Lady, theres something you guys should be aware of.
A high % of your damage at late game will be dealt from your Dark Blades skill, which increases your
base damage. This is the keyword, you get the maximum benefit from base damage giving items, which are items that increase your AGI.
Of course a item like Savage Mace gives you lots of damage bonus as well, but focusing on increasing your AGI should be your main target.
As you can see, getting 6x hammers did not change the damage bonus by Dark Blades, but getting items that give you AGI did change it.
Back to the items now.
Starting Items
Hatchet is almost a MUST, because The Dark Lady has a VERY poor damage at early game.
My TDL Builds
I have two builds for The Dark Lady, in one of them she has a fairly good early game presence, and in the second she shines at late game.
The Speedy Gonzales
You get some nice chasing ability with :EnhancedMarchers:, but lack some serious attack speed. Thats where :HackNSlash: comes to effect, not to mention the slow it gives, making chasing even easier. Since this build has way more AGI in it than the second one, it benefits from your Dark Blades more.
The Farmer
I almost always play The Farmer build, because i simply love :RunedAxe:. It adds an insane farming advantage, especially if you can rush your :RunedAxe: early in game. :WhisperingHelm: allows you to stack creeps, if your support doesnt.
But seeing Sn3yking do a similiar build to my Speedy Gonzales and having an insane success sometimes makes me wanna use the first build.
Thats pretty much all i can think of now, i'll add more / update the thread as much as possible.
Thanks for reading & hope you win lots of games with this guide.
function.
Originally Posted by Cryolite
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