General DiscussionAnalyze my game please

looked at skill build got cancer now i go to chemotherapy

I had an offlaning Magnus on my lane, needed the early levels in Mana Break to harrass him out of lane/get 2 kills on him, but thanks for your input :)

Edit: typo

- ALWAYS max blink first on AM. ALWAYS.
- dont get spell shield until level 4 (W>Q>W>E>W>R>W)
- Don't pick AM in anything that isn't a 5-stack, he relies way too much on a good team

What is the reasoning on always maxing blink first? I mean I usually do it but in this situation I felt safe enough not to.

I got Spell Shield level 3 to be able to withstand shockwave but I guess it wasn't really needed. One level of Spell Shield is almost a free hood so I like to get it early, but I can see why getting it level 4 is important if you're maxing Blink first.

Randomed AM, wouldn't usually pick him even in a 5-stack haha.

Thanks for your input, much appreciated.

its a defensive and offensive spell. with the shorter cooldown and increased range, you can do multiple things:
- Chase more effectively
- Flee from the same fight you jumped into
- Farm faster
- Dodge projectiles

The quandary with AM is that while he is always recommended to "go farm tons", this just usually isn't realistic if you want to win. In pubs if you're playing as AM (good luck!) I would 90% of the time say that you should help your allies in a team-fight. If you're confident that they (your teammates) are strong and competent enough to win the team-fight more power to you and them, continue farming. But unfortunately in pub games with AM this tends not to be the case. Your team lose the important team-fight? Not only is your team now behind in levels and gold but also because you as AM need gold and levels so desperately compared to any other hero so you're royally screwed BECAUSE the enemies now have an edge in levels and gold. And your team will hate you = morale is lowered. Sure it's risky going into a team-fight early as AM but you can easily dodge death with your blink and some juking. If you're not at least somewhat ahead as AM you're going to have a bad time. And yes, maxing blink first is almost always recommended.

This is what I consider to be helpful advice for AM players without going into great detail.

EDIT: Errr, I should point out that this is for pub AM players, as you can rely much more on your teammates if you're in a competitive scenario.

"I had an offlaning Magnus on my lane, needed the early levels in Mana Break to harrass him out of lane/get 2 kills on him"

you probably didn't need the extra levels with proper animation cancelling. a shockwave once in a while to get a last hit won't fuck up your lane as much as a dark seer with ion shell, so maxing mana break isn't needed especially as magnus's int gain is piss poor anyways that you can empty him with just rank 1 mana break.

higher levels of mana break means that his mana turns into damage sooner, but if you attack him enough times i.e. with animation cancelling, you can still turn his entire mana pool into damage with rank 1 MB, and you'd still get the same amount of damage from the total mana burned. after a certain point, mana break doesn't do anything due to the person having no mana, and on magnus, that's like 4 attacks.

if you actually zoned out the magnus out of xp range, then you'd find that the extra levels in mana break are now useless because he isn't even in the lane anymore, you should be able to last hit every ranged creep with just rank 1 mana break. AM's really good at zoning melee offlaners because they can't trade hits with him. one because mana break adds damage, and two, most offlaners are reliant on their mana for either last hitting, or their lane presence.

getting shield at 4 is preferred, because that's when shockwave's damage doubles. if you actually zoned the mag, if you're level 3, then he's level 2 at best, with rank 1 shockwave doing a piss poor 90 damage, spell shield will block like 10 HP's worth of damage or something. by the time you're level 4, he [i]might[/b] be level 3, where shockwave doubles to 180 damage, and the magic resistance does make a slight difference.

you should max blink first, but you don't always have to max it by level 7. sometimes a second point in mana break helps depending on who you're laning against, or stats can be chosen too.

stats are good on AM if you're getting free farm and you're going to farm fast enough where by the time you do fight, you can still have max spell shield if you need it. also if you went BKB, then magic resistance only helps against universal damage (which they have none of). resistance doesn't beat immunity.

you definitely shouldve gotten bkb over basher, so many stuff that manta alone can't keep you safe. silencer has an orchid on top of last word and global silence, tide has ravage, you could prevent mag skewering you into a chrono, block time lock and chain lightning damage.

bkb + manta makes 3 out of 5 of their team useless (silencer, tide and jakiro). what does basher do for you though? void has butterfly, so tie that in with backtrack for a 51% to dodge attacks. 49% of your attacks hit, only 25% of those will bash, so your chance to bash is like 12%.

tide will remov the bash with kraken shell and still ravage you, and because you don't have bkb, that makes ravage as good as RP. when the enemy team has so much magical CC and no one has BKB, that's just a recipe for disaster.

I think mana break on AM first is fine, but what do I know

and I think your main problem that game is that AM just isn't that good of a hero, added with the fact that the disables in the other team counter you pretty heavily, especially chronosphere, so you can't even build bkb to alleviate it, and your ult only really works possibly on silencer (because jakiro has good strength gain and usually doesn't have his mana empty unless you get free hits on him)

STATS=Surviving idunno what these maxing blinks are talking about
but at your lvl last hitting is much more important- get a 14 min bfury and ur set

*farm faster, lul!

@*ESP* Wink
I'll keep that in mind, thanks.

@~Determination~
Makes sense, and whenever I have an AM on my team and we win, he usually fights early. I'll keep it in mind, thanks :)

@Androgynous
Thank you for your long reply. You have convinced me that maxing Mana Break first was a mistake, and I should've gotten more points into Blink! Even though in this specific game I was still able to max Blink before I was fighting.
Yeah I thought about BKB, but I guess in the heat of the moment I didn't realize how important it would've been, I just assumed it wasn't worth it because of Chrono and RP.
The same with Basher, it was pretty useless since I couldn't even really get hits on anyone, by the end I was getting CC'd so heavily. On a side note Void's Backtrack does not evade bash, so it was only butterfly (not sure if butterfly evade's bash or not). Also forgot about Kraken Shell during the game
Again, thanks for your reply, made me see my build mistakes better. Guess it might have made enough of a difference to win the game, if I fought earlier as well.

@!yiran
Yeah, it was a pretty bad matchup (and like no synergy with my own team).

@I'm what Willis talks about
@eG.IceFrauD
I had a 10 min Battlefury and still lost, so it's not always about farm.

EDIT: Sorry for the late reply, I was away for the weekend.

Imo winning with am is about correct item choices and knowing when to join the fight.
Generally u want maxed blink by the time u finish bf if ur farm is not contested, otherwise get stats. Burning's build is the best one i think, get q w e then stats stats ult. That extra str helps out a lot early on.
Maxing mana break early on isnt bad, matter of choice really