Surviving 3k: Spectre is the the hero you should be playing

There are many heroes to chose from in Dota 2 but the hero you should be choosing is Spectre. This hero is one of the best hard carries in pubs currently with an astounding 55-59% win-rate in the safe lane (according to Dotabuff.com.) This win-rate should come as no surprise when looking at the hero: high ceiling team fight potential; the ability to globally pickoff heroes; high single target damage for separated heroes;  AOE damage; pure damage; damage mitigation; and the ability to chase a hero into the abyss. The biggest weaknesses of the hero are that your laning stage is very weak, you are dependant on your team to take good fights in the mid game, your flash farm potential is low, and you don't want to build a black king bar (BKB) for any reason. With this profile in mind, let's dive a little further into why you should be playing this hero.

As with many carries, Spectre scales well with items and levels. Unlike many carries, however, you can deal a lot of damage even if you're behind. This damage correlates directly to getting levels and some very cheap fighting items. Urn of Shadows or Ring of Aquilla (RoA) and Phase Boots are my preferred initial items because of the cost efficiency and mana regeneration. This hero needs a mana item in the early game to reliably ensure haunt + spectral dagger for team fights. Both Urn and RoA provide damage and have small trade offs; choosing which items is simply figuring out if another player on your team is going to get Urn (like Pudge) and adjusting your build accordingly. My standard rule is to always get Urn unless someone is getting it.

Your next item decision comes from how well your are farming and how many fights your team is winning. If your farm is high and you're winning team fights, saving for Radiance seals the win for your team. If you enter the mid-game at parity with your opponents or you need to to be able to solo kill heroes on the map, getting Vanguard and Diffusal Blade will help you survive, farm the jungle, and kill supports relatively easily; these advantages are on top of having easy build-ups. If the game is very close or you find yourself being focused, Blademail becomes an especially potent item on this hero, scaling with your opponent's damage output and taking advantage of her ability to mitigate damage. The final item you want to consider is manta style. While this is an expensive item, the build up puts it in mid-game item department. The stats are good and it spawns more illusions, which Spectre takes advantage of, increasing your damage and farming rate. The downside to this item is that sometimes, it just doesn't do a whole lot. 

Late game item decisions are extremely important. I cannot stress how important it is to choose the correct items for late game because you usually only get one or two top tier items (5000+ gold) before the game ends - choose wisely. Butterfly, Heart, Eye of Skadi, and Assault Cuirass (AC) are the main four items you want to go for, with a items like Monkey King Bar getting an honorable mention. Each offer different advantages: Butterfly and Skadi are the fighting items; Heart is a sieging and tanking item; AC helps you push and should be gotten if you don't have another natural AC builder; MKB is necessary against heroes that have or will get evasion (most agility carries.) Usually, I build Butterfly against opposing carries that want to man-fight you like Lifestealer, Sven, and Phantom Assassin. The evasion also makes your illusions hard to deal with - not to mention the agility and attack speed increases your damage by a lot. 

After itemizing correctly during each stage in the game, the last things left to consider are overall play style and decision making. The latter is personal to the player so I'll cover this in other posts. The former, on the other hand, depends on your itemization, team composition and game pace. In order to be the most effective hero you can be, you need to figure out, with your team, how to synthesize these elements together into a winning game plan. This is not easy. The most important decision you have to make is when to use your ultimate. If the game is about team fighting, then save it for that. Otherwise, use it whenever you have the opportunity for a pickoff. Be wary of playing too aggressive or not aggressive enough.

To wrap it up, get the right items for the right situation, analyze how the game is going, project how the game is going to play out, and then use haunt appropriately. Spectre is one of the best heroes in the pub meta and should be treated as such. Please use this guide to improve your MMR and expanded your hero pool. Thanks for reading and please leave comments below.