General DiscussionPL Mid - viable? Potential builds.

Viable against 'lesser' mids like Ember, Nyx, Magnus, DP, Tiny. Nothing much to say here, as long as you're not a retard you're get around the same amount of farm, maybe higher or lower but you won't really get 'destroyed' unless you fuck early and give them an edge.

With skill, possible against 'fotm' mids like Lina, Storm, Sniper. This comes down to your blocking skills and the ability to manipulate the wave. All their spells are dodgeable with Doppelganger. And against Sniper you have plenty of gap closers and you win him in a man fight.

Should he mid? I would actually say yes. He's shit in safelane and is outcarried by many other heroes but he has a wonderful snowbally mid game. I'd consider him the same type of hero as Slark.

Get a bottle. Aquila does not maintain the amount of spam he needs to be successful at mid. And don't get vlads... Get Diffusal asap, sometimes rushing past a tread/aquila. You probably want an early stout shield over wraith band. Melee mids all suffer if they skip stout shield and you already have enough dmg to contest with last hits against opposing mid.

current meta mids gonna rape you

i pick sf, i give you 1 raze >>> you go to base

what triple said.

solo pl is dogshit vs sniper, due to shrapnel makin a fool of pl's shitty ms (both 290ms). the gap closing is a lie. 650 range attack w take aim1 vs 600 phantom1 rush range. -15% ms shrapnel1 slow vs -10% ms lance1 slow. Illusions will melt under shrapnel taking 400-600% extra dmg (except 1 doppelganger illusion, which takes normal dmg but does not deal dmg) and u cannot juke or get away from sniper w ur 16 sec cd doppelganger1, because shrapnel shrapnel shrapnel. oh, did i mention headhshot yet?

it might be different in late game, but maelstrom/mjollnir+bkb is making a fool of u as well.

maybe next patch.

More or less all heroes can do well as mid heroes. It all depends on which the other 9 heroes are and how the 3 lanes look like. And item choices.

I was thinking about and i think not , against heroes like qop storm lina puck magnus sf, they all can push the lane too hard for u , farm jungle faster, gank harder , secure runes and high brust damage ,Pl? Pl cant do shit , as a hard carry he doesnt work from what i saw , all it took troll is to get mjolnir and my illusions melt so fast , i was playing jugger against pl and with battle fury its like he had no illusions

aquila with vlads is a waste. you're basically paying 550g for 3 agi.

if you're mid, get a bottle. since diffusal is not a UAM anymore, it seems you don't need to get vlads anymore on PL, although because you have bottle you probably don't need any form of lifesteal anyway. stout shield is always worth mentioning on melee heroes, especially when you've got continuous regen, the stout makes each point in HP go much further.

if you wanna go for an early push strat then the extra armour of vlads and the damage bonus is helpful, but otherwise just the morbid mask on it's own will probably fulfill the main reason for previously getting vlads on PL, which is sustaining jungle farm, and it saves you 1k gold, or you can go dominator for basically the same price as vlads, and dominator will save you money in the long run as it will build into satanic, and will likely help you farm faster than vlads, as you can use the dominated creep to either stack camps, or to provide you with vision so that you can use phantom rush to move between camps faster.

skill build is fine although you're probably more likely to get lance at 1 to help you get your bottle.

if you think it's user error it may be that you're simply not farming fast enough. you lack quelling blade which is a farming item that scales into the late game, and especially on melee illusion heroes such as naga, tb and PL, it's the strongest way to increase their damage. you opt for vlads as well as aquila, which is wasting gold, slowing your diffusal further.

a mid PL is going to be fighting quite often rather than opting for the late game (otherwise you would have played him safe lane), so it's super important that you get diffusal asap. morbid mask *might* pay for itself because you can go hop into the jungle when the wave is pushed out, but vlads will definitely slow down your diffusal.

item build, try bottle > aquila / boots > treads > diffusal, with magic stick/wand and stout/poor mans being optional/situational extras.

make sure you get a quelling blade at the very latest after your treads are complete, as QB basically pays for itself after a single minute if you're smart about farming, since you only need to farm like 112g extra to pay for itself, which is one extra medium or hard camp. you can get rid of it after you get your diffusal since it doesn't help you kill heroes, but in those 5-6 minutes between treads+aquila+bottle, and you farming up your diffusal blade, it will get you your diffusal faster guaranteed, probably by about 2 minutes.

lv 1 skill choice will depend on your starting items (e.g. 2 branch + 2 pooled tangos for bottle rush), and the enemy lineup (whether they have strong lv 1 gankers), but if the enemy supports are missing off the map for a really long time after the horn and they're good gankers, it's pretty obvious that playing safe is better than dying, and you're still probably better off getting lance at 1 in this case, because you can get cs at range which means you won't take harass and you won't be in a position where you can get caught out, whereas with doppel at 1 you have to go into the river and hit the creep, putting yourself at danger, and even if you survive a gank attempt because you got doppel at 1, you'll be low on HP, and you can't go into lane to get cs to get your bottle.

at 8-10 you're better off maxing doppelganger rather than rush more often than not, the 10s cooldown makes you annoying as hell, you can dodge multiple spells in teamfights and although the cooldown isn't as low as phantom rush compared to when both are maxed out (10s vs 4s), it's got way more uses.

there's not going to be a kill that you're going to miss because you don't have phantom rush maxed, since doppel mini blink + lance slow also help you chase, but there are going to be deaths that would be avoidable if you had the lower cooldown of doppelganger.

itemwise, after diffusal it's game dependent. manta's good, but don't ignore skadi especially in this current patch. skadi gives you way more raw HP than manta does and since you have doppelganger instead of doppelwalk, that basically does manta's job of dodging stuff and removing debuffs and creating illusions on demand.

heart isn't as good since the new PL is less about sieging base with illusions and more about teamfighting, but since high ground is difficult to break this patch it can be worth getting sometimes. in actual fights, where the heart's regen is useless, skadi or satanic will provide you with more relevant stats - the 25 agi from skadi is about 4 armour, so although the skadi gives about raw 150 HP less than heart, in a manfight, and with the skadi's attack speed slow, skadi is going to give you a better chance of winning the fight than heart's raw HP, and although satanic gives you about 600 less max HP pool, the active lifesteal more than makes up for that 600 HP lost, plus it also gives you 5 armour.

remember that diffusal 2's upgrade is the most efficient agility bonus in the whole game, literally (besides 15 iron branches). you're getting 15 extra agility for the 700g recipe (about 45g for +1 agi), compared to say, blade of alacrity which is 10 agility for 1000g (100g for +1 agi). and you're also getting more diffusal charges.

even if you're down to like 4 diffusal charges left it can be worth upgrading to diffusal 2 just for the agi bonus because it's that good, unless you're against like omni or warlock for example and you really want to make the charges count.