LogFAQs > #962526658

102 Spectre (melee Agility)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/2/6/AAAACbAAC6Nm.jpg
Base Abilities: Spectral Dagger, Desolate, Dispersion, Reality, Haunt
Shard Ability: Upgrades Dispersion to automatically fire a free Spectral Dagger at a nearby enemy hero when Dispersion absorbs 300 damage, with a cooldown of seven seconds.
Scepter Ability: New Ability Shadow Step which casts a single-target Haunt illusion on a visible enemy hero, which also hits them with a Spectral Dagger. Scepter can Reality to this Haunt as normal.

Hey, so what if we took a hero with a clear identity of make sure she has no early game and you win but then make her require more items to come online? Because that's what has happened to Spectre.

Spectre is traditionally a safelane carry identified by her terrible base stats but amazing passives and frightening global presence when she comes online, yet it takes an extremely long time for that to happen. Every time she becomes a useful pick, one of her core items gets nerfed, or she needs to pick up another one, but she has soo many different items to pick from. Radiance is one of her big core items but requires a huge money commitment 3800 cash up front for a relic is no joke before you even get the recipe, but there's so many other items you can pick. Diffusal blade for a bit of mana drain on Haunt, plus extra chasing power; Blade Mail if Dispersion isn't doing enough or your enemy is a jackass who counterpicked you as a Viper or Nyx; Agh's Scepter if you want to constantly annoy a position 5 that isn't a Lion or Shadow Shaman; Manta Style if she keeps getting crippling debuffs in the middle of a big teamfight; BKB if there's a lot of stuns being thrown around during a big teamfight and oh no I've run out of space in my backpack and wallet.

One thing I can't comprehend is why, specifically, she has so many talents revolving around Spectral Dagger. The damage on it is crappy until talented, but you can't talent damage until 15; she can't spam it both due to manacost and cooldown, but there's a talent to lower its cooldown at 10; it gives some decent movespeed change that pierces BKB and also provides Spectre with free pathing and escapes, but the significant speed change isn't provided until 20, and then both her Shard and Scepter provide additional Spectral Dagger synergy, but she very much needs to max Dispersion early to not immediately melt to the fifty inevitable ganks coming her way, but she needs to max Desolate to manage a pickoff during Haunt, and *fart noises.*

Spectre is actually one of my favorite carries to play. It's very satisfying to escape from the five man deathball just by throwing a dagger into the trees and fleeing up a cliff, but even failing a gank against a Spectre is a successful one, since she absolutely needs a bunch of cash to even compete with many easier hard carries, and her base durability and damage gets shredded through the simple expedience of picking up a Silver Edge, if you ever get the drop on her. Desolate is useless in heavy teamfight games, as you'll seldom be able to get any picks with it (though I'll concede that it's nifty that the pure damage from it goes through even if you miss, which is handy so MKB/Mjollnir are *also* not core items, and your haunts benefit too.) Dispersion will occasionally lead to some cheeky kills, especially if you go extra hard into it as a tank-Spectre, but if you're going that hard, why not pick a better dedicated tank, like Bristle, Centaur, or Axe, and come online earlier without being expected to win the game for your entire team at the 60 minute mark?

She's got some potential in heavy global or massive teamfight ultimate comps the amount of time I see her run with a Zeus, Ancient Apparition, Treant, Enigma, Tidehunter, or Silencer far outstrip times when she's picked at random, but then you're just playing PvE for 90% of the game, dodging ganks until everyone's ultimate is up and that's just no fun. Psychological damage may win games but it isn't very satisfying there are better melee carries, better tanks, better global threats, better support-deleters, and better/less punishing gank escapers. Pick one of those instead of being a generalist at all of those (at best) 30 minutes into the game - at least until Radiance is good again.

Next hero hint: Pardon me while, so soon after Magnus, I fume against another actually good, but ugly hero, this time an Intelligence flavor.