So Magnus is a hell of a hero, he is currently on my top 10 played right under Invoker if I recall correctly, and he is also being picked quite a lot in the competitive scene in this patch, since teams are going for teamfight/carry centric strategies. He is one of those heroes that I call the melee intelligence , because of how they play out, like Earth Spirit for example; they are strength heroes that use a ton of spells and mess around with different items. Anyway , Magnus is a strength hero (pointing it out explicitly just so new players arent confused right from the start). You probably already know that the reason Magnus is played is because of his massive fight-turning ultimate, but he is much more than that; he is not like Enigma in the sense than once he casts his ultimate its useless for the downtime, no, Magnus can do a lot of work in the map, farm quite efficiently, zone out heroes, etc; all of that on top of Reverse Polarity . So even if he is an initiator by excellence that doesnt mean he cannot be a solid utility all around hero. I wouldnt say playing Magnus is easy, but it is not particularly hard either, once you get the hang of your spells and you feel comfortable eyeballing your RP range you should be good to go. However, mastering concepts of the bigger picture like learning how to mid flawlessly, farm efficiently, create space, etc; will help you become much better much faster. The way the item progression layout I did is used is that I just put up pretty much your pool of options, in there are cores, situationals, luxuries, etc. You are not supposed to be buying everything at all, thats the items I will be talking about in the following sections and I will go over details of each item and when you should buy them, then with that information you can do whatever pickups you see fit in your own matches, not just toss you a general item progression that you could build in an inappropriate match like most guides do.

Item Progression #1 (Starting Items)

This is the section for starting items and laning phase. If you are new to my hero guides and how I lay them out its really simple, apart from the introduction and other appendixes, I divide my guide into big parts, early, mid and late game; with their respective variations.



Each section talks about what you should have in each stage of the match, the reason for the item pickups, your role as a hero and component of the team in said stage of the match and everything in between. So as I said, this is the section for the starting items.



Anyway, that aside lets get into the starting items.

more bang for your buck

pooled tangoes

Bottle Bottle Fastdoesnt mean anything, slowthough does.

Play smart.

Unfortunately my experience primarily depths in the field of mid lane, and this guide is no exception; I will touch into some concepts from Magnus offlane but its not the main focus and I will not go into detail about any offlane mechanics and strategy plays.First of all you must keep in mind that even ifis a melee strength hero he depends a lot in spells not only to maintain his lane balanced, but to take part in kill potential situations. In other wordsis not a right click oriented hero; that does not mean however that he is bad or even under-average at his right click game to say the minimum, he is actually a very solid hitter, and this will be reason for later discussion in the guide. However, deriving for a right click oriented Magnus certainly creates void in his utility to the team, and in the integrity of himself as a hero; in other words, doesnt work as well as you may think; right click is a complement of Magnus not his core playstyle sorry theorycrafters.From what you can see up there at the dotafire built-in item progression system I put up all the viable pickups for the start items, there are different ways of mixing and matching those to get a build going, here is some info on each item and what it does and why you should get it and when; so check it:es, you know, the basic stuff. I strongly recommend tangoes overs when playing a melee hero mid such as, the main reason why is because hot and offtime, you want to be in your lane 100% of the time, full on farming as much as you can; and at the same time blocking out the enemy mid on their own farm (which can be initially tricky since you have to take care of your own issues before starting face offs).es are NOT a regen-back-up item,es are merely sustain, and that is a key term to keep in mind when playing mid; sustain your game. Alsoes are really cost efficient in terms of regen,, forget healing salve.That was proper set ofes that you buy yourself,are a different story. Pooled tangoes also known as shared tangoes are different to your regular set for two big really meaningful reasons; first, they take more space in your inventory, second, they have a full minute of cooldown, opposed to the insignificant 1 second cooldown regular tangoes have. The fact that they have such a long cooldown often completely or partially defeats the purpose of pooled tangoes in the first place, and that is to provide you sustain. Personally I tend to get my own set of tangoes instead of asking for a pair, at least on melee heroes like, so imagine you get pooled tangoes and attempt a fullrush with no other starting items, this means you have to get 100 gold from minute 0:00 and, if we take away natural gold that burns down to 2-3 last hits, which sounds simple, but you never know if you could get ganked by supports, have yourself completely denied and zoned out of farm for a undefined period of time, etcetera. Best case scenario you get the last hits you needed with a level 1 shockwave (which is totally unreliable, especially against ranged heroes), and get yourpre 1:00, which still, just leaves you with aand thats it, you get regen, you still have no stats to work with, and with no stats you arent relevant to your opponent, and in a situation where you want to refill youras its your only source of sustain you could get caught out and killed. All of these starts with the greed of getting pooled tangoes for a fast bottle.es, these usually are your go-to fillers for any safe starting item build, got spare money and room? Get branches, or at least that is what most people do. Standard bottle rush is viable on, this consists of three branches and a full(not shared), this leaves you with 24 strength, 18 agility and 22 intelligence, which is a relatively decent value for level 1 stats, and four tangoes for sustain. If everything works out with standardrush you should be getting it around 0:45 to 1:30 tops, if you get it bordering the 2:00 mark you are falling behind on your first pickup. Also remember branches build into, so think ahead, and if you expect a spammer, a bully mid or overall someone with some killing potential go for the standardrush, get theand finish the branches into the wand. Getting the stick afterwithout gettingin between is acceptable, this way you can start building up charges with more time, andhas solid movement speed as it is naturally (315). If you think you dont need that wand just get the branches and you can use them for the stats and sell them or deny them later in the game, if you plan on doing this its usually because you are going to have an easy time in the laning stage, you should consider if you need the three branches, you can only buy two and be a bit closer to your bottle; never buy more than three, having so many surpasses their cost efficiency and its considered a waste all around.is a pickup I consider really good, even if I dont pick them up as often as I do with other melee strength mid heroes (likeor), mainly because for the duration of the first 7-9 minutes of the game you are going to be full focusing on getting those core items online, bottle, boots and the blink dagger; so getting the pair of gauntlets often dont pay off fast enough, the stats they give are more than valuable though, easy sustain and very solid last hit power. That is what I call the fallback starting build for melee strength at mid; thats a full set of tangoes (not pooled), three branches and two gauntlets of strength, it will delay your bottle, sure; but with that amount of stats you should have a pretty easy laning experience (and you can even attempt contesting the first bounty rune with level 1 skewer and your high movement speed). You can sell the branches later, turn into wand; sell the gauntlets or turn into urn of shadows, depending on how the game is going. The standard fallback starting build is a great option if you plan on playing safe or defensively, much superior tobuild; which I will explain now.Theprovides you with a chance to block, and that, in the long term will grant you sustain. However, as I stated before the stout shield over standard fallback build is not more than a personal preference. I strongly recommend not buyingas a starting item if you are laning against one single hero, as the source of harass is just that said hero, if you were for instance offlaneagainst a trilane and you will be receiving harass from two supports stout shield will be a much more viable option. Remember that you are buying a 250 gold item that only works defensively, as opposed to stats that make you tankier and provide you some extra damage. Also stout shield represents a dead end the vast majority of occasions, meaning that upgrading it to ais extremely situational, as you almost never see the need of more blocking ability and you dont want to be investing money in agility and delaying youreven more, it is up to you anyway. Also a valid pickup against duo mids, as having an earlydoesnt really help as they have support coverage of rune control, so dont mind getting a bit defensive and delaying the. Usually you have yourself get a set ofes, the stout and some branches to fill the missing stats.If you are going to be the one in your team to buy vlads getting aas a starting item along pooled tangoes can be a situational but good decision, it will provide you some passive mana regen, some armor to work with.is a really good laning nuke, very low mana cost and short cooldown for a more than decent damage output (and has great scaling) and it can be pretty spammable as harass and lane control if you have the mana to sustain it, ring helps a tad with that. Again this is a pretty costy item and it will delay yourby a considerable amount, and on top of that it does not provide you stats.is most of the time a bad option; if you need stats doing standard fallback build should sort you out, bracer is going straight for a much bigger item, it is much less cost effective than standard fallback with gauntlets and branches and really only has two positive things, one is that it builds into drums, which is a soild item onmore than often, but attempting going for it that early is counter productive, as you dont need drums for early game more than you need them for mid game. And the other positive thing is that it only takes one slot opposed to five slots you have for stats in the standard fallback build, but honestly for laning stage and early game inventory slots are not really a huge problem. My advice is to not go foras a first item, especially if you are going mid lane; but if you do ask for pooled tangoes.A pair of items that are not really looked at isand, both of this items grant sustain, both are part of vlads (in the form of ring of basilius) and both are part of. Now, the(200 gold) only grants you armor, this means that in the vast majority of lineups this is meaningless, as its usually magic damage that is used the most as output in the early game, there are really very few mid lineups where buying a starting ring of protection is the best possible defensive option (starts with 4 armor already),is an example, arguably, to counter minus armor and take a few hits (but doesnt work with psi blades since its pure damage, etc). Its not really a good pickup but it is out there. However, the, even if its a bit more expensive will provide you some mana regen for spammingand you can turn it intoor basilius just as with. This is a very good alternative if your team is having trouble with map control (and so runes are out of the frame) for you to get passive mana regen. Any of the above can be bought alone a set ofes and spare branches.