Lanaya - Devastating Damage

[EdteOfChaos2]

Since everyone forgot or never knew how to counter Lanaya, now's the perfect time to play her. Since I prefer randoming these days as I get bored of a hero after 1 game, let me teach you how so you can pub stomp too.

Refraction gives a lot of bonus damage, but the primary effect is invulnerability for 3/4/5/6 damage instances. Good times to use this include:
- Before the Jug ults you
- Before the Omni heals your target
- When the Sniper is channeling his ult on you
- Before Kunkka's ship hits you

Bad times to use this include:
- When you are under Shrapnel (each tick is damage)
- When Sand King is using Sandstorm

It lasts a long time so you can pre-cast it before fighting.

Meld gives you permanently invis until you do an action. Attacking out of it gives bonus damage and reduces enemy armor. Bad idea to try to run away with this since they just AOE you, but if you have Dagger you can use it and hope they go 2.5 seconds without hitting you and then blink away. You really want to run up to the enemy, use it, and then instantly attack for the armor reduce.

Psi blades gives attack range. Useful since she is basically melee at lvl 0 psi blades. Also gives splash on enemies directly behind targets which rarely comes up. You can line up enemy creeps for consistent faster clears though.

Her ult places an invis trap that you can hold or detonate. When used, slows enemies. Slows more if you left it unused for longer. You can use this to scout runes and put it on enemy creep spots because it does have vision.

For the build:
- Rush Dagger ASAP. She has no mobility and must surprise enemies, you can't just walk up to someone and meld/refraction kill them.
- Desolator: Has great synergy with the Meld armor reduction
- Buriza: Pure damage is always great
- Sange & Yasha: Survival + movespeed + more damage
- Assault Curias: Also synergizes with Meld armor reduction
- MKB: Against evaders
- BKB: Only when absolutely needed. She wants more damage over this kind of thing.

Strategy:
Pre-cast Refraction when you see a teamfight coming
Wait until allies engage
Pre-case a trap behind your victim (choose the low max HP one)
Blink in, hit Meld then attack as fast as possible
Enemy will be dead before they can really even react
They also won't be able to fight back well since Refraction will be on, and hopefully by the time it's off you can cast it again.
At this point, you determine whether to continue killing or run away. Depends on how many angry enemies you have after you compared to how many living allies. Against squishy teams, Lanaya does have the ability to just go on a rampage and kill every single one before people can fight back.

Yes you need to farm a bit before you can do this, Dagger is a bare minimum and ideally you have Desolator as well before you start teamfighting. You can use R/D for surviving early game better than many carries.

Here's a game https://entgaming.net/openstats/dota/game/12259507/ - Lanaya Rampage ends the game
And another https://entgaming.net/findstats.php?id=12254276

Bonus -- Live Lanaya reaction
(26:30 / All) trofaZen: dafaq is that shit hero
(26:32 / All) trofaZen: 2 hits
(26:35 / All) trofaZen: 1200 dmg

(43:30 / All) ibmehaetrs: gg
(43:33 / All) ibmehaetrs: wp lanaya lol

(44:01 / Allied) GodSaveTheQQs: gj Frank
(44:05 / Allied) LanayaTime!: nah im not frank
(44:13 / Allied) GodSaveTheQQs: but ofc you are
(i am honored )

[EdteOfChaos2]

A fun Jazzy smackdown using this build, making him rage hard: https://entgaming.net/openstats/dota/game/12261448/

I made a mistake by buying Heart, BKB would have done much better. Luckily they only had 1 good player (Tiny) and Jazzy was running around Culling Blading all of Tiny's kills.

[Astros]

watch out for those grease fires

[Jazzy3113]

A fun Jazzy smackdown using this build, making him rage hard: https://entgaming.net/openstats/dota/game/12261448/

I made a mistake by buying Heart, BKB would have done much better. Luckily they only had 1 good player (Tiny) and Jazzy was running around Culling Blading all of Tiny's kills.

Yes I was the problem that game. Fucking idiot.

[GuessWhosBack]

Many years ago it was this bug with ring of basilius, so basicaly you cast meld then click on the ring, repeat untill you become oom, the bonus damaged stacked and boom one shot kill at level 1. It was so damn funny, icefrog immediately fixed it.

[dumpster_]

I have also had the honour of being mistaken for Frank, by none other than the famous mogu, though something tells me he didn't mean it as a compliment

https://entgaming.net/findstats.php?id=12261583
(35:09 / All) lanoobya: cya nerds
(35:26 / All) Nakamoto*_*: this frank dog

(35:49 / All) lanoobya: ROFL
(35:55 / All) lanoobya: trashboy
(35:59 / Allied) Nakamoto*_*: you guys
(36:02 / All) lanoobya: nice linkin bitch
(36:12 / All) Nakamoto*_*: frank dog bark more
(36:30 / All) Nakamoto*_*: trash animal

4-shot this linkin-first rhasta. That was before I had crit. Also had sny at the time; later on I put it on the ground to combine some other items and forgot about it.
With buriza it would probably be 2 hits, but the game ended before I had a chance to see it in action.


This chick is pretty fun, but in my opinion she's basically just a worse pa.
Both have slow. Pa's is more spammable and does some damage. Lanaya's is AOE, but that isn't a big deal imo.
Both have "mh" (traps and blur). Lanaya's is substantially better, but that's not what you pick her for.
Both do silly amounts of damage. Pa does more and gets there earlier.
Both have some damage mitigation. I think pa's blur is much much better in most situations. Against a physical lineup you basically double your hp. Refraction can be amazing in some situations, but next to useless in others.
Lanaya can grab abbysal if really needed to lock someone down, but the passive bash is not as efficient 'cause she's ranged.
Mort with an abbysal is close to guaranteed death to whoever she chooses to use it on, and it continues to be terrifying even when the active is on cd.

I haven't tried any weird builds like orchid or mom or whatever.
I could very well be wrong, but I don't see her manfighting as well as pa can.
And you really need the raw damage to do your job, otherwise why not just pick someone else who's a better orchid carrier.

[EdteOfChaos2]

I think I agree overall. The biggest differences between the hero is that Refraction is a 100% guaranteed damage prevention from everything, but only temporary, and Blur is a 50% physical damage reduction all the time. This makes Lanaya pretty great for killing people quickly in individual 1v1s, since they can't even realistically fight back until they've hit you 6 times already. But in teamfights especially, Blur is just so, so much better. Essentially forces the enemies to build MKB to be able to fight you at all, especially if you have BKB and sometimes the enemy heroes don't particularly want to (or can't) buy that.

And probably the biggest benefit of Mort over Lanaya is that Mort gets built-in Blink, while Lanaya has to buy it. So Mort can just hit important timings like MoM + a damage item early, while Lanaya is going to be much more delayed and can fail to snowball. I think the answer is potentially to use invis to lie in wait in order to initiate fights, but clearly it's less reliable than a guaranteed blink strike with like 5 second cooldown.

Lanaya does have range over Mort, and a decent bit with level 4 Blades. It's not so easy to escape once she gets on you cause of that. Even if you run immediately, you'll get hit a lot before getting out of range. But Mort has a really strong slowing skill, so it's probably a wash.

The only real benefit Lanaya provides over Mort is invisibility and armor reduction. You can't move in the invis, but if you R then invis, damage won't prevent blink dagger and so you can make some escapes that you otherwise should not be able to make unless they're carrying dust (a lot of times, people don't because they underestimate her invis). The armor reduction (roughly a Desolator effect + stacks with real desolator) is most powerful for hitting quick kill thresholds, reducing something like a 6 shot to a 4 shot is a pretty big deal. But if you want raw damage Mort will still deal more, and if you'd like invisibility you can always go Stealth Assassin or Clinkz and get full invis rather than Meld.

I view the Psi Blade splash damage as basically unreliable/random but I also imagine a funny situation where the Magnus ults the whole team and lines up 3 people in a row and they all instantly die. Of course if the Magnus ults 5 people you probably win the fight no matter what hero you have. But still, sometimes people just end up lined up with each other and you get free damage.

I really wish that Meld would last like ~5 seconds of movement, and infinitely without moving so that she could get more out of her invis without fully being an invis hero.

I am kinda interested in MoM Lanaya. With that, I think she can take almost any 1v1 in the game, since Refraction will completely negate the downside of it (until you get hit some times). But unless you completely skip Blink and rely on traps and positioning only, I'm concerned that you're spending too much gold on things that don't give damage.

I don't think Lanaya is an S-tier hero. Maybe not even A-tier hero. But she's fun, and powerful enough to carry in games where you do well.

[dumpster_]

I think the answer is potentially to use invis to lie in wait in order to initiate fights, but clearly it's less reliable than a guaranteed blink strike with like 5 second cooldown.

I tried that but I think it's a waste of time. Hard to do and very unreliable.
I think my best results were when I just focused on farm.
Basically show up for fights only if the enemy team comes to you, like when they tower dive an ally with bara.

I really wish that Meld would last like ~5 seconds of movement, and infinitely without moving so that she could get more out of her invis without fully being an invis hero.

It sure would be convenient.
Her range is so atrocious before you max psi blades!
I overestimated it so many times and wasted my meld.
Also misclicked the ground instead of the enemy hero many times.
I don't think such a buff would make her excellent or even good, but it still feels wrong, like it's dumbing her down too much.
Even half a second, while super helpful with misclicks, feels off thematically.