“ Terrorblade is one of the hardest carries in the game. He is much like Anti-Mage in the fact that he can farm extremely fast and with the accumulated gold he can take over the game and end it mercifully when he has the chance. The holy trinity of hard carries is Medusa, Faceless Void and Spectre but with proper positioning and item build Terrorblade can kill any one of those heroes one on one. ”

If you're trying to decide whether or not to pick Terrorblade in a match, consider your teammates. Make sure that they have heroes that can survive 4v5 skirmishes, and that they can control the early game so you have space to farm and push.

If you trade objectives it's usually worth it for Terrorblade since teleport boots are an integral part of his early game build. He'll thrive on enemy objectives being down and creeps pushing deeper into enemy territory. It creates more opportunities to teleport into unguarded areas and take objectives. If they teleport to defend, then you've wasted the other teams time. Both are wins for Terrorblade as long as you don't die in the process.

If the enemy team is initiating a heavy push, your job as Terrorblade is to counterpush a different lane so the other team has to decide between trying to outpush an undefended Terrorblade or to cancel their push and TP to defend their own buildings.

The minimap on the left shows the movements of a terrorblade during a typical game. Note his movements - always applying pressure in lanes that are undefended, leaving the lane when the team comes to defend, and taking objectives when the enemy team is looking to take their own.

Terrorblade is not made for teamfights. He has no stuns and needs time to create images to get to his full damage output. What he excels at is pushing. When playing him you should seek to avoid confrontation while applying constant pressure to the enemy team's undefended lanes.

RJ's core item build is fairly static, with differences in starting build depending on laning. You choice of luxury items will largely depend on the composition of the team you're facing. In general, you have to ask yourself three questions when deciding your item build:

Jungle

Terrorblades high base starting armor and solid agi gain make him a fairly viable jungle. You wont exceed the GPM you'd get from a safelane freefarm, but few enemies expect it, and you can sustain a respectable income during the process. Be sure to use the techniques below to maximize your efficiency.

Chokepoints and Cliff Jungling

With any jungler, you'll want to minimize the damage you sustain as you take down the creeps. Carving choke points with quelling blade will allow you to only fight one or two creeps at a time, as opposed to the whole camp.

Carving choke points with quelling blade.

Since terrorblade has a ranged mode as well, it opens up opportunities for him to cliff jungle. Use your quelling blade before the game starts to carve lanes for you to attack creeps from. Be sure to pay attention to your timing - you'll want to stack as many creeps in these camps as you can before you use metamorphosis and take them out.

Cliff jungling on dire.

Cliff jungling on radiant.

Deathheals

One oft-overlooked technique while jungling is dying to heal. Running back to base and then running back to jungle wastes more time than simply buying out, letting yourself die to creeps, respawning, and running back. The seconds you save doing this can often lead to another stack of a camp or another collection of a rune. Don't discount its usefulness. If you are going to death heal, make sure you communicate it to your team - dying to neutrals is often surprising and can easily push already agitated teammates over the edge. Even if something is technically advantageous, it might not be advantageous for the mental state of your team.

Death heals often take less time than walking back to fountain.

Below is a map showing the max level at which dying is faster than walking back to base for each camp. Note that at the furthest camp it hits level 7 for a terrorblade with brown boots. The map will be different for slower heroes (a CM without boots can die and respawn at level 10 faster than it takes her to walk back from the furthest camp), but the values below are a good rule of thumb.

Death heal levels by camp