A Closer Look At: Anti-Mage September 7th, 2016 14:32 GMT Text by OmniEulogy Graphics by ColonelHampton DotaPit Season 4 Playoff Preview Table of Contents

Intro

Magic Thyself Out Of That



A hero focused interview

Impact of Anti-Mage



Conclusion

The Magic Ends Here



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Magic Thyself Out Of ThatImpact of Anti-MageThe Magic Ends HereMore on Liquipedia

Anti-Mage was once the pinnacle of an entire style of play. He has always been an incredibly elusive hero, and sometimes downright impossible to corner depending on the player controlling him. During TI6, however, Anti-Mage was picked only 10 times. Of those 10 games, he won only 4. Gone are the days of BurNIng’s Anti-Mage leaving only a trail of gold in his wake as he nimbly navigated the map while outmaneuvering his opposition. Being able to farm quickly is no longer enough to single handedly win games. However, the impact the hero left on the game during those times can still be felt today. The way players think about 4 protect 1 strategies, efficiency in farming routes, and the mechanical skill required to last hit properly was strongly influenced by the purple monk.



We are not attempting to write a guide on which skills to take or which items to buy; instead, we want to take a detailed look at what the hero himself offers to the game. To help us, we turned to a player who garnered the nickname “Little BurNIng” due to his farming prowess, mechanical skill, and of course, his renown on Anti-Mage: Dominik "Black^" Reitmeier.



Impact of Anti-Mage OmniEulogy: Can Anti-Mage find a place in the current Meta?

Black^: AM right now in the meta isn’t picked a lot, unless he is a hard counter to enemy cores, like Storm Spirit, because the metagame right now is about getting an advantage early through tower-pushing and then steadily building onto that advantage. If AM is picked in a lineup just because you feel comfortable playing him, you're going to be too far behind by the time he’s online. Though, personally I feel like he actually counters quite a lot of the current offlaners as well, like Faceless Void, Sand King, etc.



What makes him effective against those kinds of offlaners?

Those offlaners, they need mana to escape. If one support comes, they die if they have no mana. What makes Void so good in lane is that you can just Time Walk away and negate all the damage; but against AM you can forget about doing that. So most Voids just Iron Talon and go into the jungle when they see an AM pick because they can’t really do anything. They’ll get maybe 5 CS by minute 5 because of how hard that lane is. It’s the same thing with Sand King and other offlaners, although most offlaners are also just faster by getting an Iron Talon and going into the jungle, but you want to be able to apply pressure to the safelane if you can.



How has the way we play Dota today changed the way we use Anti-Mage compared to the past?

I really feel like the biggest difference is back then you just farmed—some people even skipped boots and just went Battle Fury first—but if you do that now you’ll almost always have a very bad game because your lanes will get overrun. How you need to play now is you get Treads first and, get a TP on your hero when you hit level 6, and actively start looking to help your team. AM obviously still puts a clock on the enemy most of the time to get things done, so they will want to do something like dive your mid or offlaner. As soon as that happens and you see a chance to help, you have to help, you can’t just AFK farm anymore like you could back then. That’s also why AM kind of fell out of fashion and why heroes like Morphling and Juggernaut are way more popular now—they deal way more damage early on and can fight much more easily.



How does Anti-Mage compare to other carries currently?

For me, AM was always the standard carry. If you want to learn how to play carry you should just play AM, in my opinion, because he has everything you need packaged in one hero to learn the basics. He has an escape, late-game, farming, mobility, and you need to know your limits very well with the hero, because if you make one bad blink, you can die. I feel like the most all-around carry that doesn’t specialize in one thing is probably Anti-Mage because he can do so many things. If you compare him to Slark, Slark is going to get a Shadow Blade and he’s going to try to find you and kill you, and he’s really good at that. AM though, he can TP in and do that, or he can farm, or you can tank up, there are a lot more options available to fit your current situation. I feel like he’s the carry.



You said you would watch BurNIng’s replays to find the most optimal farming paths. How do you find the most optimal farming paths with AM and does that translate well to other heroes?

I think it got a lot easier now because back then Quelling Blade had a much longer cooldown, and it wasn’t a part of Battle Fury, so you couldn’t cut trees with it either. So whenever a change like that happens you need to find new ways because the old ones aren’t as efficient anymore. What I did was watch BurNIng to see what he did and then I would go into a practice lobby and try to improve those even more. Because, back then especially, they would let you free farm, you would take safe lane farm, and they would take safe lane farm relatively uncontested. It can really make a big difference to know what you’re trying to do on any hero when you’re getting free farm.



When do you go Vanguard first vs Battle Fury? What does it change in the way you play?

Well there’s two reasons why you can go Vanguard first. The first reason is because when you get it, they don’t want to gank you anymore, because you’re too tanky and it’s not worth the risk. At the same time, though, if you go that build, you’re not afraid of dying anymore, but you also might not contribute as much because you’ll still just be farming most likely, and you will delay your Battle Fury by like 2000 gold. The other build where [Vanguard] makes way more sense is when you start fighting with your team early on all the time. You get an Orb of Venom on top of that, so you can keep blinking after people, hitting them, slowing them. I feel like only 2 out of 100 games are good Vanguard games, though, in the rest you should always just go Treads and then Battle Fury.



What makes it a good Vanguard game?

Well, for example, if they have a good push lineup with a Pugna and other int heroes, they want to push really early obviously, so you get a Vanguard and fight really early because you actually counter them if you fight early. Of course mid and late-game you should just auto-win but even at level 6 when Pugna has like 1000 mana, you’ll still be able to fight and with Vanguard you most likely won’t die as well. That’s the type of scenario you get Vanguard first in.



You mentioned the change in items, how much has the change to Vanguard building into Abyssal Blade and Quelling Blade going into Battle Fury done?

The Quelling Blade was a huge change, because back then you would even buy a Quelling Blade on top of the Battle Fury because it was just so efficient, so it was a perfect change for the hero. The Vanguard is kind of a double-edged sword, though, because late-game, you’re super tanky now, but you lack the 100 damage from the Abyssal Blade, and you can really feel it sometimes. You start hitting these Vanguard carries or high armor carries and you just don’t do damage anymore, you’re way more reliant on your mana void combo to burst somebody down instead of just hitting them. You just have to play differently now, you can be way more in their faces and bring much more attention to yourself than before just because you now have 2.4k health with a huge amount of hp regen and some damage block.



Why do you think we’ve seen Anti-Mage fall off so much in the current patch?

I think we only saw Anti-Mage a couple of times at TI right?



Yeah, he was only picked 10 times.

Those were mostly to counter the enemy draft as well, I think he was 4th/5th pick most of those times. I think we spoke about this before, but it’s mostly because being the aggressor really paid off at this TI and this patch in general. If you’re aggressive you get a big lead early on with tower kills and a gold advantage, and then you just steadily keep on building on that lead. Most of the time Anti-Mage won’t really have the time to do what he does best. The other team avoids the clock that Anti-Mage tries to set by pushing you too deep into your own base, because even if Anti-Mage has a Battle Fury but he’s afraid to farm his own jungle or the enemy jungle, then he can’t abuse his strengths. I think his win rate between those 10 games is also pretty low.



40%, yeah. He only won 4 out of those 10 games. iceiceice won 2 of them on EHOME.

For example, if you want to see how a good AM game is—I’m not saying iceiceice is the best AM, by the way, I was actually pretty mad when I watched him play. Anyway! If you want to see how a team should play around AM, you should definitely watch those games from EHOME, because they played amazing Dota around AM when iceiceice played it.



Is that still considered 4 protect 1 or do they play more of a multi-core lineup that happens to have AM in it?

I think it really depends on the AM player. There’s some AM’s that TP in and participate, and there are some who just like to farm. I really prefer the ones that join fights early on now because as I said, at level 7, you hit for nearly 100 damage and your Mana Void can easily finish a hero or two off, so you should look to finish heroes off. It’s all about taking the chances and helping your team fight when you see the opportunity, whether you’re level 6 or 10 or whatever. Let’s say you TP in and kill one or two heroes, all the pressure the other team wants to put on is just gone. Suddenly, you’ve bought yourself and your team 2-3 minutes so everybody is able to farm much more easily. Those 2 or 3 minutes let you also get to Manta, and if you can hit a timing of like Battle Fury and Manta by 21 minutes it’s super hard to lose the game.



The hero hasn’t really been changed at all so why is it so vastly different from how he used to be played?

What enables him to fight earlier is really just people’s mind set. He always had these tools, people have always said he was an amazing fighter early on, but it was just the fact that people put too much attention on trying to put the enemy on a clock by getting Battle Fury as opposed to fighting early, so they would even skip Power Treads. If you get Power Treads though you have 1000 health with Spell Shield, you don’t want to fight that guy if he TP’s in as a 3rd or 4th hero and blinks in and starts hitting you. You don’t want to use your spells on him or try to hit him because you know you can’t kill him, so either you run, which is bad for you, or you fight and you die to him, which is bad for you too. I think people are starting to realize that he’s a really good fighter; or maybe, they knew it all along, but the mentality of how you farm versus when you fight is starting to change. If you start putting pressure on the enemy as AM instead of letting them dictate the pace of the game, that’s how you win.



The Magic Ends Here To conclude, we believe that while Anti-Mage remains a stable core hero capable of running away with games and building a ridiculous creep score, he might actually be more effective as an agile bruiser in the early stages of the game. Anti-Mage can carefully pick moments in the early game to blink into a fight and turn the tides; previously, he wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the safety of his creep wave before acquiring two, or three, or six items. His skillset has remained relatively untouched, while his counterparts have constantly seen slight adjustments or total overhauls of their abilities. To us, this means he has been a well balanced and well designed hero for a very long time (or Icefrog hasn’t figured out how to give him an Aghs upgrade).



Anti-Mage was once the pinnacle of an entire style of play. He has always been an incredibly elusive hero, and sometimes downright impossible to corner depending on the player controlling him. During TI6, however, Anti-Mage was picked only 10 times. Of those 10 games, he won only 4. Gone are the days of BurNIng’s Anti-Mage leaving only a trail of gold in his wake as he nimbly navigated the map while outmaneuvering his opposition. Being able to farm quickly is no longer enough to single handedly win games. However, the impact the hero left on the game during those times can still be felt today. The way players think about 4 protect 1 strategies, efficiency in farming routes, and the mechanical skill required to last hit properly was strongly influenced by the purple monk.We are not attempting to write a guide on which skills to take or which items to buy; instead, we want to take a detailed look at what the hero himself offers to the game. To help us, we turned to a player who garnered the nickname “Little BurNIng” due to his farming prowess, mechanical skill, and of course, his renown on Anti-Mage: Dominik "Black^" Reitmeier.Black^: AM right now in the meta isn’t picked a lot, unless he is a hard counter to enemy cores, like Storm Spirit, because the metagame right now is about getting an advantage early through tower-pushing and then steadily building onto that advantage. If AM is picked in a lineup just because you feel comfortable playing him, you're going to be too far behind by the time he’s online. Though, personally I feel like he actually counters quite a lot of the current offlaners as well, like Faceless Void, Sand King, etc.Those offlaners, they need mana to escape. If one support comes, they die if they have no mana. What makes Void so good in lane is that you can just Time Walk away and negate all the damage; but against AM you can forget about doing that. So most Voids just Iron Talon and go into the jungle when they see an AM pick because they can’t really do anything. They’ll get maybe 5 CS by minute 5 because of how hard that lane is. It’s the same thing with Sand King and other offlaners, although most offlaners are also just faster by getting an Iron Talon and going into the jungle, but you want to be able to apply pressure to the safelane if you can.I really feel like the biggest difference is back then you just farmed—some people even skipped boots and just went Battle Fury first—but if you do that now you’ll almost always have a very bad game because your lanes will get overrun. How you need to play now is you get Treads first and, get a TP on your hero when you hit level 6, and actively start looking to help your team. AM obviously still puts a clock on the enemy most of the time to get things done, so they will want to do something like dive your mid or offlaner. As soon as that happens and you see a chance to help, you have to help, you can’t just AFK farm anymore like you could back then. That’s also why AM kind of fell out of fashion and why heroes like Morphling and Juggernaut are way more popular now—they deal way more damage early on and can fight much more easily.For me, AM was always the standard carry. If you want to learn how to play carry you should just play AM, in my opinion, because he has everything you need packaged in one hero to learn the basics. He has an escape, late-game, farming, mobility, and you need to know your limits very well with the hero, because if you make one bad blink, you can die. I feel like the most all-around carry that doesn’t specialize in one thing is probably Anti-Mage because he can do so many things. If you compare him to Slark, Slark is going to get a Shadow Blade and he’s going to try to find you and kill you, and he’s really good at that. AM though, he can TP in and do that, or he can farm, or you can tank up, there are a lot more options available to fit your current situation. I feel like he’s the carry.I think it got a lot easier now because back then Quelling Blade had a much longer cooldown, and it wasn’t a part of Battle Fury, so you couldn’t cut trees with it either. So whenever a change like that happens you need to find new ways because the old ones aren’t as efficient anymore. What I did was watch BurNIng to see what he did and then I would go into a practice lobby and try to improve those even more. Because, back then especially, they would let you free farm, you would take safe lane farm, and they would take safe lane farm relatively uncontested. It can really make a big difference to know what you’re trying to do on any hero when you’re getting free farm.Well there’s two reasons why you can go Vanguard first. The first reason is because when you get it, they don’t want to gank you anymore, because you’re too tanky and it’s not worth the risk. At the same time, though, if you go that build, you’re not afraid of dying anymore, but you also might not contribute as much because you’ll still just be farming most likely, and you will delay your Battle Fury by like 2000 gold. The other build where [Vanguard] makes way more sense is when you start fighting with your team early on all the time. You get an Orb of Venom on top of that, so you can keep blinking after people, hitting them, slowing them. I feel like only 2 out of 100 games are good Vanguard games, though, in the rest you should always just go Treads and then Battle Fury.Well, for example, if they have a good push lineup with a Pugna and other int heroes, they want to push really early obviously, so you get a Vanguard and fight really early because you actually counter them if you fight early. Of course mid and late-game you should just auto-win but even at level 6 when Pugna has like 1000 mana, you’ll still be able to fight and with Vanguard you most likely won’t die as well. That’s the type of scenario you get Vanguard first in.The Quelling Blade was a huge change, because back then you would even buy a Quelling Blade on top of the Battle Fury because it was just so efficient, so it was a perfect change for the hero. The Vanguard is kind of a double-edged sword, though, because late-game, you’re super tanky now, but you lack the 100 damage from the Abyssal Blade, and you can really feel it sometimes. You start hitting these Vanguard carries or high armor carries and you just don’t do damage anymore, you’re way more reliant on your mana void combo to burst somebody down instead of just hitting them. You just have to play differently now, you can be way more in their faces and bring much more attention to yourself than before just because you now have 2.4k health with a huge amount of hp regen and some damage block.I think we only saw Anti-Mage a couple of times at TI right?Those were mostly to counter the enemy draft as well, I think he was 4th/5th pick most of those times. I think we spoke about this before, but it’s mostly because being the aggressor really paid off at this TI and this patch in general. If you’re aggressive you get a big lead early on with tower kills and a gold advantage, and then you just steadily keep on building on that lead. Most of the time Anti-Mage won’t really have the time to do what he does best. The other team avoids the clock that Anti-Mage tries to set by pushing you too deep into your own base, because even if Anti-Mage has a Battle Fury but he’s afraid to farm his own jungle or the enemy jungle, then he can’t abuse his strengths. I think his win rate between those 10 games is also pretty low.For example, if you want to see how a good AM game is—I’m not saying iceiceice is the best AM, by the way, I was actually pretty mad when I watched him play. Anyway! If you want to see how a team should play around AM, you should definitely watch those games from EHOME, because they played amazing Dota around AM when iceiceice played it.I think it really depends on the AM player. There’s some AM’s that TP in and participate, and there are some who just like to farm. I really prefer the ones that join fights early on now because as I said, at level 7, you hit for nearly 100 damage and your Mana Void can easily finish a hero or two off, so you should look to finish heroes off. It’s all about taking the chances and helping your team fight when you see the opportunity, whether you’re level 6 or 10 or whatever. Let’s say you TP in and kill one or two heroes, all the pressure the other team wants to put on is just gone. Suddenly, you’ve bought yourself and your team 2-3 minutes so everybody is able to farm much more easily. Those 2 or 3 minutes let you also get to Manta, and if you can hit a timing of like Battle Fury and Manta by 21 minutes it’s super hard to lose the game.What enables him to fight earlier is really just people’s mind set. He always had these tools, people have always said he was an amazing fighter early on, but it was just the fact that people put too much attention on trying to put the enemy on a clock by getting Battle Fury as opposed to fighting early, so they would even skip Power Treads. If you get Power Treads though you have 1000 health with Spell Shield, you don’t want to fight that guy if he TP’s in as a 3rd or 4th hero and blinks in and starts hitting you. You don’t want to use your spells on him or try to hit him because you know you can’t kill him, so either you run, which is bad for you, or you fight and you die to him, which is bad for you too. I think people are starting to realize that he’s a really good fighter; or maybe, they knew it all along, but the mentality of how you farm versus when you fight is starting to change. If you start putting pressure on the enemy as AM instead of letting them dictate the pace of the game, that’s how you win.To conclude, we believe that while Anti-Mage remains a stable core hero capable of running away with games and building a ridiculous creep score, he might actually be more effective as an agile bruiser in the early stages of the game. Anti-Mage can carefully pick moments in the early game to blink into a fight and turn the tides; previously, he wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the safety of his creep wave before acquiring two, or three, or six items. His skillset has remained relatively untouched, while his counterparts have constantly seen slight adjustments or total overhauls of their abilities. To us, this means he has been a well balanced and well designed hero for a very long time (or Icefrog hasn’t figured out how to give him an Aghs upgrade). Front Page Lead