There are three main reasons why I choose to write and maintain this guide. The first is common to all guides: I like this hero and want to share my opinions about him. The second reason is that there is a lot of dispute about how Invoker is best played. Though there is always some build that is popularly held up as “the best,” this way of thinking limits Invoker players. My intent here is to try to break some people away from this viewpoint. The third reason is to generate new interest in the Invoker. He is great fun to play, but can be intimidating to those unfamiliar with the techniques required to excel with him. I hope to demonstrate just how enjoyable he can be and help new players find a strategy that suits them.
This guide deviates from the usual format. I do have some of the basics, such as sections describing the hero, the skills, items and demonstrative replays. However, rather than covering a single strategy and holding it up as The One, I am going to go over each and every trick, build and maneuver I have ever seen or performed with Invoker. It is up to you to decide which of these tools you prefer and generate an appropriate strategy. I don’t expect you to read the entire guide from start to finish, so I have repeated myself a few times about important details. I hope you can forgive me this redundancy, but it is necessary to ensure that people remember those points.
Since this guide is longer than usual I have broken up the table of contents, placing most of the subtopics into mini-tables throughout the guide. To jump to a topic click on the link in the table, and to return to the topic's parent click on a topic header. Trying to use your browser's find feature will not be efficient.
Invoker
So for those of you who may not have ever played him, the Invoker is a hero with completely unique style of play from any other. The skills he levels, which I shall call reagents, max out at level 7. Invoke, his “ultimate,” can reach level 4. The Invoker’s actual spells are “invoked” by casting his ultimate, which generates a spell from these reagents. There are ten different spells that can be wielded. With all these varied abilities the Invoker has arguably the most complex gameplay of any hero in DotA.
Hero Statistics
Overview
Here I will describe the Invoker's basic skills: the three reagents (Quas, Wex, andExort) and Invoke. Unlike most other skills of most other heroes these only affect the Invoker himself. The reagents grant passive bonuses to various statistics, whileInvoke grants access to the Invoker's true spells.
The Invoker can have three reagents active at any given time. Each time you “cast” a reagent it replaces the oldest reagent active. For example if you have Wex WexWex active and then activate two Quas reagents, you will have Wex Quas Quas. Should you then activate two Exort reagents your reagent set will be Quas ExortExort, with the oldest two reagents (Wex and Quas) replaced by Exort. It is good to keep in mind which reagents you have active, for each reagent provides an appreciable bonus to some statistic. These bonuses improve with the reagent’s level and stack with one another.
One important thing to keep in mind when you are switching reagents is that activating a reagent breaks your command chain. For example, if you are walking back to base and you activate three Wex reagents then you will stop moving. The reagent activation interrupted your move command, so you will need to give it again.
Below are more detailed explanations of each of the skills. The letter in parentheses next to the skill name is the hotkey that will activate it. You will also note me using the words “complement” and “orb.” By complement I am referring to a set of three reagents of the same kind, so a complement of Quas reagents is three active Quasorbs. I hereafter use the word “orb” to refer to these skills with respect to their bonuses, while I will continue to use “reagent” when talking about their uses inInvoke.
Quas (Q)
Quas is the orb of ice. It provides a large bonus to your health regeneration, and its contributions to spells tend to involve slows or disables.
Recovering
This is a no-brainer. Quas regenerates HP. Early game it is a great tool for lane perseverance, and if you are judicious enough in your use of the orb you can maintain full health for quite some time. A level 1 complement of Quas orbs provides as much regeneration as a Helm of Iron Will, so even if you aren’t using aQuas-primary build you can still get something out of it.
The way I wield Quas for recovery purposes is simple: I have it active any time I am below full health. Though I may switch out of a Quas complement mere seconds after I switch in, that is still more HP than I had. These little chunks add up, and if you are efficient you can keep other orb complements up for only as long as you need them.
Tanking
This is a little less intuitive, especially given the Invoker's miserable health. Nonetheless, you can create the appearance of durability somewhat with Quas. The high regeneration allows you to eat hits from creeps and heroes for at least a short while without any real risk. Against heroes with powerful harassment tools (Windrunner, Moon Rider, Viper) Quas can completely defuse their lane supremacy. For some perspective, a level 13 Invoker with 1000 hp and level 7 of Quas can receive 21 hp per second from the orb. This is as much as a Heart of Tarrasque, with the added bonus that it will function in combat. A thousand points of health is nothing to brag about though, so don't get too enthusiastic.
Wex (W)
Wex is the orb of lightning. Appropriately, it boosts attack and movement speed. Wex-based spells are delightfully varied, and offer some of the most satisfying strategies. You'll just have to read the Spells section to see what I mean.
Fleeing
Fairly obvious. Increased movespeed means you can run away from uncomfortable situations, or dodge certain spells. The Invoker’s base movespeed is terrible, butWex makes up for this. At high levels it makes the Invoker one of the fastest heroes in the game, and indeed with the right items you can be permanently hasted. With this blistering speed - in addition to his thick spellbook - you can count on never catching the Invoker without a good stunner.
Chasing
I don’t need to go much into this, do I? Chasing is just fleeing with the roles reversed. Unfortunately, though it's hard to catch the Invoker it is similarly hard for a Wex Invoker to win a chase. Sure, he will run circles around you, but frankly he isn’t going to do a whole lot else. To succeed in a chase with a Wex build you will need to rely on items or spells involving other reagents.
Exort (E)
Exort is the favorite child, the orb of fire. It increases your damage. Leveling Exortunlocks the Invoker’s potent nukes, and given the average DotA player’s preference for kill characters it is unsurprising that most Invoker players go for Exort builds.
Killing
Damage tends to be good for this, and Exort doesn’t skimp on the damage. In almost any situation where I am trying to kill someone I have an Exort complement active. In some situations Wex will produce more damage per second, but that will only happen in builds where Wex has a much higher level than Exort. In early game I like to have Exort active every single time I hit the enemy, since you usually only get a single hit at a time and want to make sure it counts.
Pushing
Like killing heroes, killing creeps and towers is facilitated by high damage. Again,Wex can sometimes provide more DPS (damage per second) on the tower, but you rarely get to sit there chucking plasma without attracting attention anyways, so you'd better make sure each shot counts.
Invoke (R)
Casting Invoke will cause a spell to appear in your command interface. At level 1 ofInvoke you are able to combine reagents into spells, and at Invoke’s second level you can have two spells available at once. Once invoked, a spell will remain until you replace it with another spell. You can change your orbs in between invokes without altering the active spell. The cooldowns for each of the ten spells are persistent as well, so re-invoking a spell will not refresh it. Trying to re-invoke an already active spell in fact has no effect at all on the game except to burn mana. It doesn't even change the "age" of the spell. Like the reagents, newly invoked spells will replace the oldest spell.
Reagent Awareness
Pay attention to the reagents you have active, and in what order you activated them. If you have an Exort complement active you don’t need to enter all three reagents to make an spell with Exort in it. If you just invoked a Quas spell and you are about to gank someone, don’t forget to switch back to Exort.
A second part to this awareness ties a bit into the next section. If you want to invoke Forge Spirits it does not do you much good to activate Exort Exort Quas. Then you have to go and reactivate a complement of Exort orbs. A much better way is to activate Quas Exort Exort, and once you have invoked the spell simply activate a single Exort orb. Time-wise this may only wave you a second, but it also will save you from the potential trouble of the command-interrupt that using a skill causes. Furthermore if you are trying to chain two spells together and they share a reagent, it makes for a quicker chain if you order them such that you can reuse a single reagent for both spells.
Precognition
This is a much bigger deal than the previous topic, especially early on. You can only change your spells if Invoke is off cooldown, so the sooner you Invoke a spell the more flexibility you will have later on. If you are moving to gank someone, you should probably Invoke the relevant spell as soon as you make that decision. That way by the time you reach the person you can either prepare a second spell, or have the option to change tactics midway through the gank.
Spells
1. Cold Snap
2. Ghost Walk
3. Ice Wall
4. Tornado
5. EMP
6. Alacrity
7. Forge Spirit
8. Chaos Meteor
9. Sun Strike
10. Defending Blast
Overview
Each of the Invoker’s spells can be used in a variety of ways, and if you play the Invoker frequently you will probably already be familiar with a fair number of them. There are however a few applications that are seen less often, and making the transition from just the normal uses to including the more unusual will provide a good boost to your Invoker game.
I will go into a fair amount of detail on each of the ten spells. As mentioned before you can navigate between the sections by using the table of contents above, or by clicking on the section headers. The reagent combinations are listed inside the brackets, while the spell hotkeys are listed in parentheses. The order of the reagents doesn’t matter at all, so don’t assign too much importance to the way I choose to display them.
The examples I give are drawn from real games. They aren’t always perfect examples of how a spell can be used, and indeed there are a few cases where a different spell would be better. However, you will not always have access to all of your abilities, so it is important to be willing to use those available in unorthodox ways.
Cold Snap (QQQ -Y)
Overview
Cold Snap works by stunning the affected unit any time it receives damage. A short cooldown between stuns means you cannot keep them permanently stunned for the duration of the spell, but for the most part all they will be able to do is twitch uselessly. In addition, each ministun will also deal 30 magical damage. This means at its highest level it can do a maximum of 270 damage.
Uses
Disable
Given its highly disruptive effect Cold Snap serves well as a disable. You will need a continuous stream of damage though, for otherwise all you will get is the initial ministun. Once Quas is sufficiently leveled you can almost completely shut down an enemy hero. Many heroes in DotA have longer cast or attack animations than the ministun's cooldown, allowing you - provided you can injure them quickly enough - to prevent them from taking any meaningful action for the duration of the spell.
In some cases you won't need to attack. The stun first applied on casting Cold Snapcan be used to quickly break a channel. If you foresee that you are the intended target of one such channel, especially a channeled disable like Bane Elemental's Fiend's Grip, you can potentially save yourself by casting Cold Snap in your last moment of freedom. If any friendly units are nearby they may injure your captor, triggering Cold Snap and freeing you.
Kill
Cold Snap is a deceptively lethal spell, and you can use it to score kills even without the aid of allies. If you have enough DPS or can incite your creeps to attack a foe, a quick application of Cold Snap will often prove devastating, if not fatal. I strongly recommend you employ animation canceling when attacking or harassing in this manner. It will allow you to remain in range far longer, and thus deal more damage.
Jungle
If you are farming to carry with a Quas build you may want to use Cold Snap to jungle. By casting Cold Snap on a powerful creep (the Centaur, Satyr Hellcaller, one of the Ursas) you can cripple the creep camp’s damage output. However you will need some source of DPS if you hope to kill the main creep in the spell's duration. One or two Quarterstaffs, for example. This is a good way to neutral farm without purchasing tanking items.
Synergies
Combos
Forge Spirits synergizes magnificently with Cold Snap. The extra hits from the elementals increase the likelihood that the stuns will be triggered as close together as possible. People frequently run from an aggressive pair of elementals as well, soCold Snap can help to keep them in range.
Alacrity is another good spell to combine with Cold Snap. The extra attack speed fulfills the same role as the elementals do from Forge Spirits, and it is less likely that the enemy will try to run from an elemental-deficient Invoker until it is too late.
The third spell which I use in conjunction with Cold Snap is Chaos Meteor. The burning after-effect of the meteor can trigger Cold Snap a few times, and so you can get a decent number of stuns on the target.
Allies
There are many good combos for Cold Snap, but most of these can be boiled down to a few basic traits. Any damage over time spell is superb for Cold Snap, as the DoT triggers Cold Snap even when you aren’t around. Any bash spell is good, so heroes like Faceless Void, Troll Warlord, or Spiritbreaker synergize well. Heroes with high attack speed work as well, though they had better have decent damage as well or the spell will expire before they can inflict enough harm. Spells that slow or stun can be chained with Cold Snap - just as any other pair of disables - to increase the effectiveness of a gank.
A few spells that make good combos don’t fall into the above categories. Some of these, though doubtless not all, are: Dark Seer’s Ion Shell, Juggernaut’s Blade Fury, and Juggernaut’s Omnislash.
I'' just update this.. thanks for reading.. :)
