I've never understood how to play slark

[Letbell]

I've tried slark many time, but I've never understood how to properly play slark, what is his role exactly? I tried to carry, but it's not very efficient from what I had experienced. Any tips?

[Dhamma]

I haven't played slark in years. But hit and run is the way he is played. His role? Mostly Carry and escape, some disable. Not many hats, not compared to other heroes. Hero like voker, far more versatile and better at all these roles, and more. But the skill required is also much higher. This is why any noob can play slark(almost)

[Letbell]

Well dang... I can play voker...but for some reason I can't play slark. Does that make me a reverse-noob?

[Dhamma]

Playing a hero you haven't played much takes practice, doesn't matter what hero.

I can play voker

Sure you can

Went mid solo farmed all game and lost 2x gem

can often made me lost track of invoke order. I muted everyone in order to increase my concentration of getting the right spells.

btw. q4e4 is a weak build on this map

[kunkka]

I can play voker...

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=125465

you mean you can play voker and get banned at the same time? I've never seen such a pro voker

[not2000elo]

There are 2 ways to play slark well, in my opinion. Either rush lothars or rush mom + skadi. Skadi is needed either way. I prefer the non lothars way but I do see the benefits of lothars as well. The more you hit, the higher your damage becomes, either fight or escape with ult, heal up, fight again.

Slark is strong with a decent team. If your team sucks though, no matter how you play him you're most of the time alone vs 2-3-4-5 heroes.

[Merex]

@Quentin can help you with slark tips

[Dhamma]

There are better slark players than Quin.

This guy is, thats one of his accts. Always plays in asian server, makes new acct after one loss. Used to be cheddar 60-2 w/l
https://entgaming.net/openstats/dota/player/iiami/

A few others too.

[EdgeOfChaos]

Brief guide:
- Take solo mid
- Learn ess shift first, it's very powerful and people underestimate it. Or optionally if your team wants to gank the rune, then leap is also fine.
- Learn Leap next, buy boots and now you can easily first blood most enemy solo mids (attack with animation cancel, leap when they're out of range)
- Max pact first, it is your wave clearing ability, two Pacts eliminate all creeps in a wave.
- Pact dispels buffs. The difficult part of Slark is predicting exactly when you're going to be stunned, etc. If you can do that, then you'll be able to escape even long stunners like Rhasta.
- Run past the tower mid and kill the enemy mid at 6. Should be easy. Then farm the creeps using Pact, running uphill and out of vision when low to heal.
- Ward their jungle for future ganks
- Build boots into treads, then build Lothars. Lothars is great because you heal and go really fast when invis. It's also a reasonably reliable escape, since you can dispel dust using Pact.
- Max shift or leap next, it doesn't matter they both are amazing. Shift if you're ganking a lot, leap if you need the escapes with lower cd.
- Build eye of skaddi next, it gives mana, hp, slow - everything you need.
- All items past this are situational. BKB, butterfly, basher, or even mjolinir are common choices.

Play style:
- Lothar can be used in a lot of different ways. Initiation for a gank or fight, healing during a fight, escape, or chasing.
- Pact dispels basically anything and is incredibly powerful. The self damage is negligible.
- The ultimate is your panic button. Don't use it until it's going to really count; I see a lot of slarks initiate a fight then instantly use ult, that is dumb. Instead, fight until they damage you a bit or are preparing to nuke you or something, then ult.
- Slark is a snowballing hero. Farm off the weak Ints and squishy Agis using your lothars, especially when they jungle.
- Don't be shy about fighting that big 4000 HP tank. You gain 3 agi every single attack, you can easily stack up 200+ agi from a single hero, then use that agi to steamroll the rest of the team.

As slark, you either completely demolish them and go something like 30/0, or get shut down early and can't recover, and lose the game. It's rare for there to be anything in the middle, in my experience.

Slark is what I would call a mobility/assassin hero. He's not especially strong, but you just can't catch him. And then he sneaks up behind the team and kills your support before you even know what happened, and is gone again. If you try to play Slark as a hero who rushes in and takes the team head on, it won't go well (until you're ridiculously farmed at least)

Some of your worst enemies include:
- Batrider, for shutting you down early.
- Doom, we have no good response to this. Luckily no one on ENT can even play this hero.
- Void, hardcounters invis stuff
- Riki, cloud+dust+diffusal and you die before you can out-run the cloud.
- Meepo!! - the absolute hardest counter for Slark. Nearly everything in Meepo's moveset is designed to kill heroes like Slark. Like, it's actually worth repicking for this.
- Anything with a gem

Slark isn't especially easy to play, not easier than other carries at least, so stop saying that dumb shit about it being a noob hero. People think it is a noob hero because they get crushed by it and feel there's nothing they can do -> gotta whine.

[Matthew999]

@edgeofchaos
wow. am impressed. It almost sounds like you know what your talking about.

just have 1 question.
have you ever heard of tiny? Hes an actual hero in game.
by the time you build lothars tiny already has dagger.
and you wont ever build skadi before tiny gets dagger.
so what are you going doing to do? Better question is do u even know what to do.

[EdgeOfChaos]

So first: what's your purpose in being an aggressive asshole? who even are you, i've never seen you before, are you that king.kar loser?

second: Early game tiny nukes once and he's done for some time. You can usually survive it with str treads early, then soul booster a bit later, then just go heal... And you underestimate how easily slark can farm. I have never had trouble with any tiny, even the people who play tiny all the time. It's one of those counters that sound great on paper and then doesn't work so well ingame.

(edit) ok I looked at your post history
https://entgaming.net/openstats/dota/pl ... dota-nubs/
that's your account, you clearly don't have a clue, I won't even respond in the future.

[Matthew999]

not sure why your acting up. being pretty offensive. You clearly have a stick up your ass.
I just asked u a question. U dont have to get all butthurt about it.

And that was a brq mixup. not the real user, I edited post.
Did you really think I was ASIA realm user?
I just dont think your as good as you try to act. thats all.
If you have a real problem, we can take to apem/or arem.

[Letbell]

I can play voker...

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=125465

you mean you can play voker and get banned at the same time? I've never seen such a pro voker

Of course, as long I communicate non-verbally and win the game. I wouldn't get any ban request

[Dhamma]

Meepo!! - the absolute hardest counter for Slark. Nearly everything in Meepo's moveset is designed to kill heroes like Slark. Like, it's actually worth repicking for this.

Yea, geo is a fantastic counter to slark. There's just not much slark can do vs a geo except try to run. Especially considered how his clones are bugged. Geo is the only sure way to counter him. These days i typically only get geo of they are stacked or if they have an annoying slark. Immediately slark starts crying how the game is ruined lol.

But there are a few others too. Necro can be good, especially later once you get bm and ghost and heart. With those, slark can't straight out attack you. and once his hp his half you can just ult him. Slark can pact out of your ult stun but not the dmg.

Drow is good too, though you usually need to have a team mate nearby. The silense keeps him from ult and the damage and slow is high enough to just kill him fast. These days if the game isn't going to be too bad, I'll get drow to counter slark.

BS can be good too, not too many ppl play him these days tho.

SB with orchid can help a lot too.

Drow with SB can counter slark without too much problem.

Arc can be good too. Usually I can own slark mid, even kill him a few times. But if the team doesn't push with me and end the game fast, slark will get farmed and fed and will be a problem late.

[EdgeOfChaos]

Those are pretty solid, though Slark does have a response to them at least.

Necro is big trouble. What I try to do is either go BKB or Linkens, after the Skaddi. If you isolate him, you can steal a bunch of stats and kill him, though in a teamfight it's much harder. Against necro, you can actually keep him down early, since slark is great at picking off low HP heroes (which necro is going to be; no one does heart first).

Drow has the same issue. Extremely squishy, she's food for Slark when he hits lothars, unless you out-farm him. Lategame she probably does pretty well.

Bloodseeker's silence move is telegraphed. What I mean is that you see it coming 4 seconds before it hits, making it quite easy to pact out of, and then ult to survive rupture. When you're out of sight, you can just freely move around anyways, the HP regen counters the rupture damage.. as long as he doesn't have vision of you.

SB with orchid can be great, though you need to know how to time it, or slark will pact out of everything.

Ark is another amazing hard counter for slark. Considering how the real core on Arc is necrobook, which can pretty much permanently be on, it's like a gem without the risk. When Slark gets MKB, arc is much less of an issue. Also BE CAREFUL with the book since those summons give 200 gold each if slark farms them. There are Arcs who I've farmed 2000+ gold off of.