1. Introduction

Hi, I’m SlashStrike (7.7k mmr), and I’m bringing you my renewed guide to Ember Spirit. I have already written two guides on him which you can check out in the older posts, although I will copy-paste the mechanics sections from them since that hasn’t changed for the most part. The purpose of this guide is simply to highlight what’s different about the current 7.22c Ember, why Drums are super overrated and how he should be played and built.

First step to understanding what makes Ember a good hero – SoF is his best spell in combination with the ult for escape purposes. The following part will be repeated at the end because it’s so important, but I’m also writing it here because let’s be real the majority won’t read until the end.

Just read the numbers on SoF, there is no spell that comes close. People don’t realize this and that’s why you don’t see many people playing Ember to his full potential.

You use one SoF on the enemy carry, and they lose 20% of their hp, ok no threat. Do that 2 more times, they are below half and have to back / stop farming. Easy pressure from 1250 range without needing vision, what did you commit? 12s of your time (you can also farm in the mean time), 150 mana. There is zero risk because you have a Remnant out and your SoF range is so massive – it’s broken, yet almost no one is doing it.

Nah man, better max my Flame Guard first, hit the jungle and trade farm with the enemy Medusa/Spec/Sven 🙂

Lastly, information cost – I’ll be writing a whole article on this topic, but here’s a teaser. You see the enemy Medusa TP’ing to the top lane 25 minutes in. What’s her information cost? Absolutely massive, because you know that the enemy team has to play around her, she can’t quickly get anywhere else, and therefore she basically revealed her entire team’s position.

Now, you see Ember with Agh’s TP’ing to the top lane 25 minutes in. What’s his information cost? Practically 0, he can have a remnant anywhere, his team can do anything anywhere and he will be there within seconds. He reveals almost nothing.

Table of Contents

Introduction Most Significant Changes Since 7.20 Characteristics & Statistics Skill Builds Item Builds Laning Stage & Match-ups Spell Use, Item Use and Combos To Farm, or to Gank Closing Words

2. Most Significant Changes Since 7.20

Credits to dota2wiki for these changelogs

Clearly we can see a gigantic amount of buffs (these are not even all of them, just the most significant ones – there are a couple of base stat and stat gain buffs as well), with just one tiny nerf that is Chains not interrupting the target anymore (still cancels tp’s obviously, which is most important)

3. Characteristics & Statistics

Pros

Extremely mobile

Great talents

Good farmer

Strong at all stages of the game

Very hard to kill

One of the few mid-laners with catch

Cons

Doesn’t deal damage when playing from behind

Becomes item dependent after early game

(Thanks to Dota2wiki for the table)

His starting stats are decent, but his stat gains on agi and int are terrible – this is to compensate for the hero’s powerful skillset, and it’s fine because he’s one of the few agi heroes that don’t care much for attack speed. His movement speed is a decent 305. His turnrate is in the middle of the pack at 0.6, to a small extent balancing his instant cast point, which is the hero’s defining aspect and also what makes his spells so powerful. His attack damage is about average and attack point is average, but he is very pleasant to last-hit with due to his animation. With now 3.52 armor at level 1, you are not so vulnerable on the lane as before, especially combined with the new armor-giving Phase Boots. Furthermore, if there’s any hero good at avoiding damage in fights, it’s Ember.

4. Skill Builds

Ember Spirit used to have a flexible skill-build, but right now there is one that’s vastly superior to all others, and that’s maxing SoF asap.

Searing Chains

Ember Spirit unleashes fiery bolas that wrap around nearby enemies, anchoring them in place and dealing damage each second.

Cast Time: 0+0.87

Search Radius: 400

Max Targets: 2

Damage per Second: 60/80/92/100

Total Damage: 90/160/230/300

Duration: 1.5/2/2.5/3

Cooldown: 14/12/10/8 Manacost: 110

Important aspects:

Despite the visual effects, the effects are applied instantly and can’t be disjointed.

The 2 units rooted are completely random, with no priorities.

Affected units can still turn, cast spells, use items and attack. Affected units receive a stop command upon getting rooted – what differentiates this from a ministun is that when you cancel a spell / command with Searing Chains, the enemy has to re-cast or re-issue it.

Roots the targets, preventing them from moving and casting certain mobility spells.

Provides True Sight over the targets. Does not provide True Sight if the root was applied during the fade time of invisibility spells.

Does not target invisible or fogged units – this means careful use when chasing someone through trees and up cliffs – you have to wait ~0.1 sec after using SoF for the vision to arrive before using Searing Chains.

Deals damage in 0.5 second intervals, starting 0.5 second after cast, resulting in 3/4/5/6 ( 5/6/7/8) damage instances.

Can deal up to 90/160/230/300 ( 150/240/322/400) damage to each unit.

This is usually the spell you’re going to max out last, since you already get 50% of the max duration at level 1, and you want to max SoF but also need Flame Guard to farm with early on. However, sometimes when facing slippery heroes like Storm, it can be worth leaving Flame Guard on level 2-3, delaying the level 10 talent and getting those max Chains earlier (keep in mind the cooldown also decreases a lot).

Sleight of Fist

Ember Spirit dashes around with blazing speed, attacking all enemies in the targeted area of effect, then returning to his start location. Deals bonus damage to heroes, and less damage to creeps.

Cast Time: 0+0.7

Cast Range: 700

Effect Radius: 250/350/450/550

Hero Attack Damage Bonus: 40/80/120/160

Creep Attack Damage Reduction: 50%

Cooldown: 18/14/10/6 Manacost: 50

Important aspects:

Ember Spirit is invulnerable, and his model cannot be selected during Sleight of Fist. However, it does not disjoint projectiles, meaning both spells and attacks can still hit you after you are done bouncing around. If you collide with them during Sleight of Fist, they will effectively be ‘dodged’ as they hit you while you are invulnerable. This is not entirely reliable, since the jumping order is random.

Targets are determined upon cast. The targets have a flaming sword above their heads as an indicator, which disappears once Ember Spirit slashes them.

This means that units entering the targeted area after cast are not hit, and units which were in the area upon cast and leave the area will be hit, no matter how far they moved.

Does not mark or jump on invisible units. When a marked unit goes invisible, it will be fully skipped if it’s still invisible on his turn. Units in fog are fully affected.

Jumps in 0.2 second intervals. The jumps are randomly between all marked units, there are no priorities. The damage is dealt immediately upon each jump. *Note: the cooldown on the Chain Lightning proc from both Maelstrom and Mjollnir is 0.2 seconds as well, meaning that every SoF hit has a chance of proccing them.

Ember Spirit can cast spells and use items during Sleight of Fist. Can be great for that long-range Eul’s

The damage is based on Ember Spirit’s attack damage + the stated damage when jumping on heroes, or – 50% when jumping on creeps. This means that the +160 damage is also taken into account for critical strikes.

Bashes, critical hits, mini-bashes and all attack modifiers / orb effects fully apply or have a chance to trigger on each slash.

If Sleight of Fist is cast during the fade time of Shadow Blade, each target will receive the bonus backstab damage. Furthermore, upon completing the Sleight of Fist, Ember Spirit will be invisible.

When Ember Spirit is disarmed, he will deal no damage on slashes, since he cannot attack. He also can miss, and damage reduction will affect the damage.

After all marked targets have been slashed, Ember Spirit will return to his position he had upon casting Sleight of Fist. That position is marked by a remnant for the duration.

Sleight of Fist is not canceled when Ember Spirit gets moved by e.g. a teleport, but it does get cancelled by activating Fire Remnant.

This spell was buffed to scale more linearly, but clearly level 3 to 4 is still the biggest value point because the cooldown at 6 seconds finally makes it spammable. There are almost no heroes that can sustain versus a (80+160) physical hit every 6 seconds as early into the game as you reach level 7, which means you can zone and harass and pressure very effectively, all from a (700 range + 550 radius) = 1250 distance away, without needing vision.

Currently Ember’s best spell, and should definitely be maxed first.

Flame Guard

Ember Spirit surrounds himself with a ring of fire that consumes incoming magic damage, leaving him unharmed. Flame Guard deals damage per second in an area around Ember Spirit while Flame Guard is active. If the shield is broken, the damage is also lost.

Cast Time: 0+1.07

Damage Radius: 400

Damage per Second: 30/40/50/60

Magic Damage Absorbed: 80/220/360/500

Duration: 8/12/16/20

Cooldown: 35 Manacost: 80/90/100/110

Important aspects:

Flame Guard blocks damage before any reductions. The only exception here is spell immunity, during which it does not block any magic damage.

Deals 6/8/10/12 damage in 0.2 seconds intervals, starting 0.2 seconds after cast.

Can be dispelled and purged (SD’s ultimate, the Cyclone from Eul’s Scepter of Divinity, Invoker’s Tornado, and a devoured / dominated purge satyr neutral creep)

Something that is immediately apparent is the huge increase from level 1 to 2, meaning again that you definitely want at least two points in this spell, usually at level 3. After that, it highly depends on the enemy heroes. The main reason to level this spell up is not to deal more damage because as shown it scales poorly, but rather to make sure the shield stays up and does not get nuked down. If you’re up against a lot of physical damage, it’s often a good idea to keep the shield at level 2 or 3 and max out your chains first. If you’re up against big nukes, you want the shield maxed so that it does not drop to one dragon slave or one lightning bolt. However, keep in mind that the duration also scales, so if for some reason you’re not planning to fight but just to farm and split-push, you need level 4 of this spell so that the duration is long enough for you to clear more than just 1 wave or camp.

Fire Remnant

Ember Spirit generates Fire Remnant charges every 38 seconds, with a max of 3 charges. Releasing a charge sends a Fire Remnant that runs to the target location at 2.5x Ember Spirit’s speed. Using Activate Fire Remnant, Ember Spirit can dash out to his Remnants, exploding them for area of effect damage. The targeted Remnant will be arrived at last.

Cast Time: 0+0.53

Cast Range: 1500 ( 4500)

Max Charges: 3 ( 5)

Charge Replenish Time: 35

Remnant Duration: 45

Important aspects:

Ember Spirit gets all 3 charges immediately upon learning Fire Remnant

Fire Remnants move to their targeted location at a speed of 250% ( 500%) of Ember Spirit’s movement speed. The speed is set upon cast and does not adapt.

Since Fire Remnants last for 45 seconds and the replenish time is 38 ( 13) seconds, it is possible to have 4 ( 6) ( 6, 8) remnants up at a time.

13) seconds, it is possible to have 4 ( 6) ( 6, 8) remnants up at a time. Every time a Fire Remnant is placed, Ember Spirit gets a status buff, showing the duration of the remnant. The status buff disappears once the Remnant expires or is used.

Fire Remnants deal no damage when they expire.

Fire Remnants are visible to everyone.

Activate Fire Remnant

Select the Fire Remnant to arrive at.

Cast Time: 0+1.07

Cast Range: Global

Remnant Damage Radius: 450

Remnant Damage: 100/200/300

Cooldown: 0 Manacost: 150 ( 0)

Important aspects:

Ember Spirit moves to a Fire Remnant with a speed of 1300, or reaches it in 0.4 seconds, whichever is faster.

The mana cost of Activate Fire Remnant is always the same, regardless of how many remnants he is traveling to with a single cast.

While traveling, Ember Spirit can attack, cast spells and use items.

Forced movement cancels the movement of Activate Fire Remnant and removes its invulnerability. However, the remnants still get used up and Ember Spirit gets instantly moved to the last one’s location once it explodes.

Always travels to the Fire Remnant furthest away from the targeted point first.

Ember Spirit damages enemies within a 225 radius around him as he travels, and in a 450 radius around a remnant upon reaching it. Enemies may only be damaged once per remnant, either by Ember Spirit as he travels towards the remnant, or by him upon reaching the remnant.

Destroys trees within 200 radius around Ember Spirit while traveling to a remnant. Though at high speeds, some trees may be skipped.

Can be targeted through the minimap.

While it gives you incredible magic burst damage in the lategame, it should rarely be used for anything but mobility in the early and mid game. You have to be extremely careful about using all your remaining remnants for burst damage because it leaves you very immobile and vulnerable. Also, keep in mind the giant cooldown before you get your lvl 25 talent and octarine core – with a triple remnant you can kill a lot of heroes in the early game, and while that’s worth doing to kill a core SF for example, it’s usually not worth it for a support Ogre, because it will take a long time for you to have all remnants back up again and have the same kind of damage and mobility available.

Talents

Ember’s talents are still quite straight forward, since 3 of them are no-brainers and only one of them really requires thinking. Damage at level 10, Chains Duration at level 15, and Remnant recharge reduction at level 25. They are simply superior to their counterparts and what they allow you to do is just going to be stronger in (almost) any matchup and with any item or skill build. Of course, feel free to use your head in extremely unusual cases, for example you might want to take the extra Flame Guard absorption if for some reason you’re up against a Zeus+Veno and neither of them bought a Eul’s.

Level 10 talent explanation

Combined with the damage from Phase & Mael and the bonus damage from SoF, we are talking ~100 + 18 + 24 + 25 + 160 = ~330 physical damage a pop, not counting any Maelstrom procs. It helps you fight, helps you farm, and unlike the Flame Guard talent it cannot be rendered useless by a Eul’s or Purge Satyr.

Level 15 talent explanation

Once again, for the bonus Flame Guard damage to be effective you need to be in the middle of the fight – to do that and not lose it right away you need to have a BKB, and after all that investment the end result is slightly more DPS. Chain duration also gives more dps not just from the spell but from locking down enemies longer, and it over-all bonus damage + disable will have a much higher impact on the game than just bonus damage when the numbers are similar.

Level 25 talent explanation

Double SoF is cool, but Remnants are what your hero is all about in the late-game, and running out and then having to wait two minutes before your hero is relevant again is just not something you can afford to do at level 25. Furthermore, the SoF talent (mostly) only helps you to deal damage, while the Remnant talent helps with that too but also to survive and chase.

Level 20 talent reasoning

This one is kinda interesting, although it seems obvious at first glance. If they have evasion or are going to build butterflies, go True Strike, otherwise go spell amp. However, the heroes that build evasion are generally also agi heroes that are vulnerable to magic damage, and when you have 5 remnants at 300 damage each, the bonus 10% adds up quick. The main reason lategame to connect with SoF hits on high-armor targets is to proc Maelstrom/Mjollnir, but those procs already have true strike, and the lightning also gets spell amped.

Exemplary skill build

Flame Guard Sleight of Fist Flame Guard Sleight of Fist Sleight of Fist Fire Remnant Sleight of Fist Searing Chains Flame Guard Talent Searing Chains Searing Chains Searing Chains Flame Guard Talent Fire Remnant Etc.

As mentioned, SoF is your best spell, max it asap!

5. Item Builds

Starting Items

2x pooled tangoes

Branch

Salve

Stout Shield

Quelling Blade

The reason you start with a Salve is so that you can get the Bottle faster. After that, rush the Phase Boots – which component you get first depends on the match up. Sometimes Chainmail can really help versus some right-click heavy mids, but if you’re going to roam and fight runes you probably want boots. As you’re nearing level 6, with a TP you can start making instant trips to base and back to lane, just make sure to keep re-stocking and make a habit of having two on you.

Early Game

Magic Wand

Phase Boots

Bottle

Stout Shield

Quelling Blade

Mango

Bottle and Boots should not need any explanation.

Magic Wand is a must since you’re going to be up in enemy heroes’ faces and will get many charges.

A value Mango is a good idea to ensure you have enough mana in the early game, even if you keep it in your backpack.

Core

Magic Wand

Phase Boots

Bottle

Stout Shield

Quelling Blade

Maelstrom

Maelstrom is the best item on Ember, it gives you the biggest damage increase and more importantly allows you to farm and wave-shove without using Flame Guard, meaning you can always have it ready for fights. Furthermore, it allows you to actually defend / stop pushes, which you have no chance of doing without it.

“What about Drums?”

I do not recommend Drums because while everything it gives is ‘nice’, it doesn’t allow you to do something new (unlike Maelstrom which enables you to do 2 new things – stop pushes and waveclear without Flame Guard)

To people who say ‘but I get Drums to tank up’, read the item description, it gives 6 strength, buy a Bracer if you wanna tank.

‘But all the pros are buying Drums’ – it’s a team item, the biggest strength is the active which helps you win early fights and push towers. You’re not playing on a team, so Maelstrom will win you games far more reliably.

“Treads over Phase?”

Garbage, the armor and MS bonus from Phase is way too good to pass up on.

Battlefury? vid

Super bad, never ever buy this unless you’re playing for fun and trying to do your outdated challenge for dota plus points.

Luxury

Agh’s, Black King Bar, Blink Dagger, Eul’s Scepter, Manta Style, Linken’s Sphere, Lotus Orb, Octarine Core, Mjollnir, Shiva’s Guard, Ethereal Blade, Scythe of Vyse, Bloodthorn, Nullifier, Radiance

The new Aghanim’s Scepter for Ember is insanely strong and overpowered, I go for it in almost every game after Maelstrom. The stats are great, the effect is crazy good and the manacost removal means you can cast all your other spells far more often as well. It eliminates the need for a Blink as well as the need for BoT, while also giving you more damage and stats – absolutely perfect.

Though it may seem strange, BKB is not a defensive item on Ember, but an aggressive one. With Ember it is not difficult to dodge spells with slow missile speed. You are only vulnerable to instant disables such as hexes or long range stuns, against which a BKB does not help much, because if you couldn’t get your SoF/ult off you probably wouldn’t get off the BKB either. In those cases you would rather get an Octarine/Shivas for a direct EHP boost, or a Eul’s / Manta / Linken’s / Lotus for more elusiveness. The purpose of a BKB on Ember is to enable you to charge headfirst into fights, which magic immunity allows only versus line-ups with low physical damage (teams with Zeus, Spectre, Skywrath, AA, Disruptor, etc.) Do not buy this as your second item unless you are far ahead and able to force fights with it, because if it does not get you kills it will heavily stunt your item progression.

Blink Dagger is an item that’s more or less made irrelevant by the new Agh’s.

Eul’s Scepter is often a good pick-up as it gives you a lot more mana to work with and gives you not only another defensive ability (that also removes debuffs and silences), but also another disable. Normally people can simply TP out between Chain casts, but if you have a Eul’s they can’t – this is absolutely huge when it comes to catching an enemy split-pusher and setting them up for your team . In fights, you can chain 2 people and cyclone a 3rd, allowing you to control over half their team. Keep in mind you can cast it not only while flying to a Remnant but even during SoF, meaning that (provided you have vision) with quick fingers you can get it off from a very far and safe distance.

Manta Style as well as Linken’s Sphere are both stat-heavy items great versus strong single target disables such as Storm Spirit’s (inevitable) Orchid, Beastmaster’s Primal Roar, Doombringer’s Doom, Legion Commander’s Duel, Batrider’s Lasso, etc. Linken’s is the slightly more defensive of the two, giving you a fairly large reaction window and allowing you to splitpush safely as even a linken’s break immediately into a disable is likely to give you enough time to just zip out. Keep in mind it is fairly useless versus blink->aoe disable initiators such as Axe, Centaur, Slardar and the likes. Unlike Manta, it increases your mana regeneration which is useful for prolonged fights, especially in the late-game when the cooldown on your spells is very short. Manta has a different type of utility, making your splitpush stronger thanks to the bonus agility and illusions.

For a hero as elusive as Ember, having illusions is great for messing with the enemy team, since you can constantly send them around to scout. Because killing an Ember requires an instant jump and chain-lockdown, they are more likely to waste spells on the illusions. If they fail several times and stop committing so hard, they may also be slow to jump on the real you. Keep in mind of course that the Flame Guard does reveal that you’re the real hero.

The active of Manta also dispels tons of debuffs, most notably any non-area lingering silence, making it the ultimate counter to Orchid. A special mention goes to Slardar’s Corrosive Haze, which is hard to dodge in fights and definitely hurts you as an already low on armor hero. Of course, Lotus Orb is also a great item for the same purposes, giving you less damage but more regeneration and armor, with the added utility of being able to cast it on a sieging allied Luna/Weaver/etc., just like Linken’s.

Octarine Core is pretty much a must for lategame Ember – the large HP boost and spell vamp increases your survivability a ton, and it also increases your damage output more than most items obviously by virtue of decreasing the cooldown on your 4 spells which all deal damage. How early you get this depends mostly on whether you desperately need other items first – you very rarely want to get it straight after Agh’s though, most often you’ll need at least one other item first, such as Shiva’s, Eul’s, etc.

A Mjollnir is extremely powerful as it not only increases the lightning damage from 160 to 170, but also triples the number of bounces from 4 to 12. With a Mjollnir you can easily clear waves even when you are 2 rax down on that lane, and the active once again is really nice to put on any sieging or initiating core on your team. This is the single item that increases your damage output the most.

Shiva’s Guard is absolutely great on Ember, most often the best item after Agh’s. It increases your teamfight presence massively, it helps you survive as well as catch. The biggest strength of this item on Ember is that you can reliably hit everyone with it since the blast follows you as you Remnant or SoF about. It slows down front-liners making them easier to kite, and helps you stay on top of and burst squishy backliners.

Ethereal Blade is cool for obvious reasons, but most often there’s a better choice. More consistent damage? Mjoll / Octarine. More insta-kill potential? Hex. Defensive choices? Shiva’s / Linken’s etc.

Scythe of Vyse can be a great late-game pick-up if you are having trouble locking down elusive heroes that are able to escape your root. While it’s nice that your chains keep the polymorphed unit in place, they are dispelled by even weak dispels, whereas Scythe is not (anymore). Definitely a good 5th/6th slot pick-up.

Bloodthorn used to be great, but not so much anymore. Far too expensive compared to other items, and enemies will have plenty of weak dispels already to deal with your Chains, so they’ll also be able to deal with the silence.

Nullifier will often be more useful than Bloodthorn – not only is it way cheaper, it mutes items of the target which would be the aforementioned dispels that help them get rid of Chains – if they can’t bkb/eul/manta/lotus, they will stay rooted.

Radiance, while being quite powerful, has a terrible buildup. Mjollnir gives you better wave-clear vid, more damage in fights, and is just as good if not better at cancelling Blink Daggers (doesn’t hit invis, but hits a much bigger radius). The one advantage that Radiance offers over it is the miss chance, which is mostly only valuable versus teams with loads of right-click damage that is unlikely to buy BKB – think Visage, Lone Druid, Beastmaster, Bristleback, Lycan, Terrorblade, etc. However, as you notice, the majority of these are summons or illusions, meaning that straight-up killing them with Mjollnir is usually more effective than relying on miss chance. Another important point is that Radiance has an abysmal build-up and gives you literally 0 benefit until you finish it. Mjollnir, on the other hand, builds very nicely from the cheap mid-game Maelstrom, which even allows you to pick up a different item or two along the way and only finish the Mjollnir once you really need the additional damage.

“But < insert good player here > bought Radiance on Ember! Are you saying he’s a bad player and doesn’t know what he’s doing?!”

Once again quoting the famous words of N0tail, “Dota is a weird game… everything can work can work can work… “So do what you think is best, because at the end of the day if it works for you, it doesn’t have to work for other people. That’s why every player is different.

Why not x?

The -armor from Desolator is great when applied in an AoE, because it boosts the physical damage of your team, but in practice, getting utility items allowing you to disable more enemies more frequently and without running out of mana is far more likely to let your team deal more damage. Furthermore, it does not boost your farming speed, nor give you any survivability, nor significantly improve your wave-clear ability. Also important to note that despite the -armor debuff lasting 15 seconds, you can only re-apply it reliably once every 6 seconds with a SoF, making it weak versus any heroes with dispels (Slark, Abaddon, Legion, PL, manta-carriers, etc.) which people often pick versus Ember in the first place to counter the Searing Chains.

“But Midone buys it often!”

He plays on a team, you don’t. When you play on a team you can make your tasks in the game far more narrow because you can rely on your allies to do the same – you yourself can’t do that in your pubs, as I’m sure you’re aware.

Daedalus used to be a very popular pick-up on Ember, but now that the magical damage is simply superior, there is no situation in which Daedalus is the best item to go for vid. Even in the lategame as a 6th item, you will already have a Mjollnir and the crits don’t benefit from the lightning damage, meaning you are better off getting any other item.

Similarly Divine Rapier used to be great, but is now simply inferior to the magical damage and mana-giving item builds. Considering the difference in damage is marginal and situational compared to other items, buying an item that drops upon death is simply not worth it.

Basher has a cooldown of 2 seconds. If it did not, it would easily be the most powerful item, giving you a ranged pseudo aoe bkb-piercing stun.

Butterfly is not terrible but hardly ever the best choice. The evasion is its main selling point, and it is rather useless as on Ember you want to avoid getting hit at all using SoF and Remnants. The only time you desperately need evasion is versus many summons, but at that point you’d rather get a Radiance which would make them miss versus your entire team and also burn them.

6. Laning Stage & Match-ups

Spam SoF, to harass and win the lane, that’s about it.

Try to grab runes and rotate to sidelanes, when you’re level 7 with a maxed SoF it will usually deal at least 30% of the enemy level 4 supports’ max hp.

Some laners can really punish you, such as MK, in those cases you can consider creep-skipping. Easiest to do when you have Remnants ofc, but it may be necessary before that.

7. Spell Use, Item Use and Combos

When going for a kill on the enemy mid, create a situation in which the Searing Chains are guaranteed to hit – either by running past the enemy creepwave and isolating the hero, or by activating flame guard as the creeps are low hp, killing them while engaging on the enemy. While you should get very familiar with the radius over time, it can still be useful to hover over the skill to see the circle on the ground in order to get those tip-of-the-edge chains. Lastly, you can take a risk and attempt to Chain the enemy with more than 1 creep around. Whether it lands or not is entirely up to the DotA gods, but if it does it will definitely catch your opponent off-guard.

In the early game, Flame Guard is your only farming spell as SoF deals pathetic damage to creeps without a Maelstrom, which means you can’t go wrong with maxing it even if you sacrifice some aggression, as it will allow you to keep up your farm and not fall behind despite a lack of kills. You can use it to farm stacks or several creepwaves. When pushing, you can also use it to clear out the creepwave while you’re hitting the tower, and it provides a nice buffer of EHP in case you get initiated upon.

-> The Sleight of Fist -> Searing Chains sequence is the most basic combo you need to reliably hit if you want to play Ember anywhere close to effectively. It is not difficult, just go into a lobby, practice it 20 times and you’re golden. Landing the combo on someone in the fog (example) is slightly more difficult since the Chains need vision to latch, and SoF on a single target will only give you vision for an extremely short duration, meaning that if you mess up the timing the Chains will miss. The main difference is that you need to wait around a tenth of a second before using Chains after SoF, unlike when you have vision on the target and you can simply press both as fast as possible. Once again, however, a few attempts in a lobby and the consistency with which you land it will get a lot better. Lastly, when chasing a target with creeps around that you want to SoF+Chain, position the SoF AoE-circle indicator in such a way that only the hero is in it (example). Keep in mind however that the AoE of the Chains is still 400, so even if you only SoF your hero target, they might still latch onto creeps if they are close enough.

->

When using Fire Remnant to chase (i.e. throwing it and jumping into it), make sure that you wait a bit before you dive into it (example). This is because moving into a close-range Remnant will be done with an MS of 1300, always faster than the 2.5x your base MS that the Remnant will be flying at. The Fire Remnant has a casting range of 1500. With BoT you will have 410 MS, meaning that the Remnant will fly at (410 * 2.5) 1025 MS, taking (1500/1025) ~1.46 seconds to reach the targeted point. Moving into the Remnant at 1300 MS means it will take you only (1500/1300) ~1.15 seconds to reach the targeted point. Therefore you want to wait (1.46-1.15) ~0.3 seconds before starting to move into the remnant, which translates to when the Remnant is about (0.3 * 900) ~270 units away from you. This is, of course, if you want to jump all the way to the maximum 1500 range. If your enemy is closer, you can start moving into the Remnant earlier and you will reach it before it has reached the targeted point.

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Fire Remnant’s travel speed is equal to 250% of your current movement speed, as established earlier. This means that if you are very slowed down in the middle of a teamfight and need to remnant out, shooting it will be ineffective as it will take far too long to reach where you want it to (example). However, if you use your Fire Remnant during a SoF (example), you will fire it from a SoF position, potentially allowing you to get away.

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If you want to get out of a bad situation with a previously placed Remnant (for example during a teamfight or when split-pushing) keep in mind that despite the instant cast you still need to turn and face your Remnant before you can jump to it, which with Ember’s turnrate takes 0.15 seconds for 180°. To avoid this, you can use SoF in front of you which will go off instantly as you won’t need to turn, and then Remnant out during the SoF (example).

Lastly, if you are about to die and have Remnants left, always drop one before you die. It’s very important to make this a habit. In the early game, if you respawn in less than 45 seconds you can travel back to the Remnant and immediately be in a good position to farm or fight, without using a TP scroll. Ideally you want to leave it at the edge of the trees so that it is just outside enemy vision, but will not leave you stuck in the trees when you travel to it (example).

Furthermore, you always have the option to buyback and get into the fight again instantly by jumping into the remnant (example).

Since you can pick up items while travelling to a Remnant, it can be a very safe way to take runes without putting yourself at danger (example). Keep in mind that Remnants can be targeted through the minimap, making long-distance jumps easier to manage.

8. To Farm, or to Gank

This decision used to depend on team line-ups etc., but right now it’s always better to pressure and gank. It’s not that you’re bad at farming, you’re just so damn good at pressuring with 0 risk thanks to SoF’s crazy numbers. Just look at them, there is no spell that comes close. People don’t realize this and that’s why you don’t see many people playing Ember to his full potential.

You use one SoF on the enemy carry, and they lose 20% of their hp, ok no threat. Do that 2 more times, they are below half and have to back / stop farming. Easy pressure from 1250 range without needing vision, what did you commit? 12s of your time (you can also farm in the mean time), 150 mana, zero risk because you have a Remnant out and your SoF range is so massive – it’s broken, yet almost no one is doing it.

9. Closing Words

That’s it for the guide! I hope you found it informative – if you did and wish to see more from me in the future you can support me by following me on this blog, twitter, facebook, youtube and of course twitch.

If you have any requests for the future guides feel free to send me a message on any platform.

Good luck and remember – balance, in all things.