Asian Girls | Dota Guide and Strategy

Table of Contents

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1. Foreword
2. Introduction to Akasha, The Queen of Pain
3. Hero Skills
4. Skill Build
5. Item Build
6. Gameplay Walkthrough
7. Blink Miniguide
8. Sonic Wave Miniguide
9. Animation Cancelling
10. Allies/Enemies
11. Replays
12. FAQ
13. Credits

1. Foreword

This guide was written because I found no sufficient enough guides on how to play Akasha, the Queen of Pain to her full effectiveness. I believe that this guide could be used to do well high level play, as well as to stomp low level pubbies. I use the conventional way to play her, is the linkens skadi build, and a better skill build than most other guides, which I will discuss later. None of the other guides seemed to use this skill build, so I will write a guide on it.

Last but not least, the layout on this guide is based on QoP’s shadow strike: dark green, and her dark skin: blue, dark blue.

2. Introduction to Akasha, The Queen of Pain

Stats and Storyline

QoP is located in the middle of the evening tavern (top-left scourge tavern).

Pros and Cons

Pro

• Fast attack animation
• Her spells are great for finish off low hp heroes
• Her spells also deal a lot of damage an an AoE
• Works great with lots of heroes
• If played correctly, she is a power throughout the game

Con

• Low HP
• Gets owned by disables
• No disable

3. Hero Skills

Sha(d)ow Strike

Hurls a poisoned dagger which deals large initial damage, and then deals damage over time. The poisoned unit has its movement speed slowed for a short duration.

Level 1 - 50 strike damage, 10 duration damage. (90 mana cost;22 second cooldown)
Level 2 - 70 strike damage, 20 duration damage. (105 mana cost;22 second cooldown)
Level 3 - 70 strike damage, 40 duration damage. (120 mana cost;22 second cooldown)
Level 4 - 100 strike damage, 50 duration damage. (135 mana cost;22 second cooldown)

You use this skill to slow. Nothing else. Some people get this skill for the damage, but it’s just plain not worth it. Look when you level up, the mana costs more, but it’s the same cooldown, and the same slow. The only thing that changes is the damage, but how can it help when you don’t get xp for killing someone with this skill, and it is easily countered by spell damage reduction and regen.

(B)link

Short distance teleportation that allows one to move in and out of combat.
Costs 60 mana.

Level 1 - 12 second cooldown. (60 mana cost)
Level 2 - 9 second cooldown. (60 mana cost)
Level 3 - 7 second cooldown. (60 mana cost)
Level 4 - 5 second cooldown. (60 mana cost)

This skill is very important to the gameplay of Akasha. It is so important to her, that I made a miniguide to blink. If you want to see it, scroll down, it will tell you all about blink, and how to use it.

Scream o(f) Pain

The Queen of Pain lets loose a piercing scream, damaging enemies within 350 aoe.

Level 1 - 85 damage per target. (85 mana cost;10 second cooldown)
Level 2 - 165 damage per target. (105 mana cost;10 second cooldown)
Level 3 - 225 damage per target. (120 mana cost;10 second cooldown)
Level 4 - 300 damage per target. (140 mana cost;10 second cooldown)

This skill is Akasha’s early game nuke, and what makes you able to take on 2v1’s early. It’s is very powerful, because you can damage both opponents at once, and if they are both low hp, you can go for the early double kill. Also, when killing early, the both opponents will be at low hp, so while one is targeted, the other will run away in fear of getting killed, so you can focus on one enemy, and score the kill. Also, as you can see, the cooldown is very short, so expect to be spamming it once it hits level 2 or 3.

Sonic (W)ave

Creates a gigantic wave of sound which deals heavy damage to all units in a line.

Level 1 - 290 damage. (250 mana cost;120 second cooldown)
Level 2 - 430 damage. (360 mana cost;100 second cooldown)
Level 3 - 600 damage. (500 mana cost;80 second cooldown)

Sonic Wave under effects of Aghanim’s Scepter

Damage
From: 290 / 430 / 600
To: 340 / 530 / 725

This skill is mainly used as a finisher, or a aoe damager. If you are ganking, finish off heroes with this spell if all your other spells are on cooldown, and you think they might run away. Also, keep in mind that this spell hits invis heroes, so if they try and run away at low hp, use this spell and they will DIE. Also, this skill has a relatively big aoe, so you won’t be missing. If you are fighting a team battle, use this spell when the enemies get pretty close together, so you can hit 3-5 targets at once. Damaging the most opponents as possible makes this skill even more powerful, because the more opponents you hit, the more the overall damage it does

4. Skill Build

Level 1 - Blink
Level 2- Shadow Strike
Level 3-5 - Scream of Pain
Level 6 - Sonic Wave
Level 7 - Scream of Pain
Level 8-10 - Blink
Level 11 - Sonic Wave
Level 12-14 - Shadow Strike
Level 15 - Stats
Level 16 - Sonic Wave
Level 17-25 - Stats

Skill Build Explanation

You should get blink at level 1 because in most games with experienced players, they are very good at harassing, and you need blink so that you can harass back, and get out of trouble when you need to get out of trouble, so that you don’t make a mistake and die.

You should get Shadow Strike at level 2 because you want your slow as quickly as possible. You never know when the opportunity will come that you will get a hero low, to around 100 hp. In that situation, you should use Shadow Strike to slow him, attack a few times, Scream of Pain if you have it, Blink if necessary, and finish him off.

Max scream, as it is your primary nuke. I decide to pick Scream over Shadow Strike as your nuke because Scream is instant damage, and isn’t countered by regeneration, and combined with hero spell resistance and regeneration, the duration damage will probably add up to very little. Also, the slow is the same duration.

I have decided to put in Sonic Wave at level 6 because it helps you from tower diving, which is exactly what you do not want to do. When the enemy is low health and at the tower, just cast sonic wave to finish him off. Also, many times all of your spells will be on cooldown, and then your only spell will be sonic wave, so you use sonic wave to finish the enemy off.

Get Blink levels 8-10, because you want to be able to escape ganks easily. If you get ganked, maybe one blink isn’t going to help. You need multiple Blinks to be able to escape successfully.

I choose to get Shadow Strike levels 12-14 because it got nerfed, and you need that extra slow percentage to be a useful slow.

Max out Sonic Wave to improve your damage even more.

5. Item Build

Circlet and Guantlet

2x Tango

Perseverance

Point Booster

Boots

Eye of Skadi

Linken’s Sphere

Boots of Travel

Core Item Explanations

Eye of Skadi

Eye of skadi is also essential in this build, because it gives her lots of life, which she needs to tank the damage she takes when blinking in, a frost attack, and mana, which she really needs because all her spells cost lots of mana. It also ensures that heroes with low hp will have no chance of getting away, because you use shadow strike, and frost attack, and blink.

Linken’s Sphere

This item is much needed against any team. When people try to disable you, they misjudge your linkens and blocks their spell, allowing you to blink away unharmed. The 150% mana regen, the +6 hp regen, the stats, and the hp and mana that linken’s gives is also very good as well against disablers, because it lets you tank the damage for a considerable amount of time. A great item for Akasha, and it can’t be ignored.

Boots of Travel

This item is gotten on Akasha, because it helps you chase with the extra movespeed, and it gives you a tele. You need a teleport if the enemy team is pushing, and you need to cover base fast, in which you would tele. It also helps to tele to your allies when you are pushing, so you can get there faster.

Possible Items Afterwards

Guinsoo’s Scythe of Vyse

This item works well on Akasha for multiple reasons. One, is that it can disable the big threats that can use long disables on you, and let your team pound on them, so that they can’t disable you and kill you. Two, is that it gives 60 bonus damage, very useful when you are attacking a hero physically, and three, is that the mana regen is crazy. You will be spamming spells until you die, just make sure you don’t die.

Heart of Tarrasque

With the removal of Aegis in 6.42, I have been trying to decide on a defensive path during late game, and I think that Heart is the next best thing. For one, Heart allows you to stay in a push with low health, simply by not taking damage, and letting the +17 hp regeneration a second (+6 from Linken’s) allow you to regenerate all your health by remaining passive in fights with low HP. Heart also allows you to blink into the fray and burst damage to 5 players, possibly killing 1-3 of them, and still get away with a decent amount of HP.

Items to Avoid

Pure Nuking Items

These items at first glance might seem great to use on Akasha, but are they really worth it? No. For the amount of gold they cost, they help akasha in no way. Dagon costs 3000 gold when you already have high mana cost spells, so you will never be able to even use dagon. Aghanims costs 6200 gold for 100 extra damage BIG WOOP, so it clears the creeps for using ultimates, well, guess what? So does scream + wave. Also refresher, sheesh 5k gold just to use an ultimate again that you can’t even support enough mana for it. These items are just not worth it.

Pure Damage Items

These items just stink on Akasha. Even though they accompany blink and shadow strike, they are neglecting what Akasha needs most in the battlefield: Health and Mana. You need health so that when you blink in to fights, you aren’t blinking in to suicide. You also need mana so that you can use all your spells consecutively. They cost a great deal of mana, so you can’t get any damage items for her. The only damage item I would suggest is rapier, but most games would end before I even think about getting it anyways.

Hands of Midas

Hands of midas is horrible on Akasha. Your job is not to farm the entire game and get big to carry. The way you carry is ganking everyone and lowering their level, making your team superior. That is how you carry. Midas is a better item for huge farmers like bone clinkz, not a ganker like qop. Anyways, a better way to farm is use BoT to tele around, and get some mana regeneration so you can use scream of pain and last hit every creep in the wave. Midas is not an option for qop.

6. Gameplay Walkthrough

Early Game (Level 1-10)

Point Booster Boots Perserverance

Level 1 - Blink
Level 2- Shadow Strike
Level 3-5 - Scream of Pain
Level 6 - Sonic Wave
Level 7 - Scream of Pain
Level 8-10 - Blink

Start off by buying your guantlet, your circlet, and your 2 tangos. I don’t get ring of regen in this situation, because we are getting ring of health, and you could use some early health that your guantlet and circlet give. You never know, you can survive with less than 100 life left, in which you guantlet and circlet saved you.

Well, for QoP, with this build, try to get bottom lane in sentinel or top lane in scourge so that you can chase if you need to with blink, and tower hug if you are going solo lane. QoP is a hybrid hero, she can solo easily, in order to carry a team, and she can also team with other heroes to chain slows and nukes, which I will write a miniguide to working with lich, as he compliments you in every way possible, and the combo is very, very common.

Teaming Lane

If you are teaming with another hero, for levels one to two, stay back and do last hits and denying. Basically, hold the alt button, until you see a creep with red health, then attack it. To attack your own creeps, you have to press a then click on your creep to kill it. You kill your own creeps so that the enemy team will get less experience, allowing you to overlevel them and get easy kills with better skills than him.

When ever the enemy comes up to the creep line, just attack him until he runs back, or the creeps start attacking you. If the enemy makes a mistake, you can actually get first blood using this technique before. If they get low health, like around the red area, blink in and kill him, just don’t get attacked by the tower.

At level 4, go crazy with nuking. Let your ally open with a nuke, then slow the enemy, and both of you attack him, when the slow starts to wear off, use scream to deal damage to him, and then blink and finish him off, so that you get an easy first blood, and you have money to get your Ring of Health, allowing you to gank.

Also, since you are going to start using scream now, you should know the AoE of Scream of Pain. The AoE is 350 at all levels. You have to make sure you never waste your Screams, and to make sure of the AoE of Scream, here’s a screenshot:

As you can see, it’s actually quite small, but you should still be able to hit people with it, because there’s no cast time.

Whenever you hit half hp, just use a tango to restore your hp, so that you can’t die from a succession of nukes. Once you have enough, get your ring of health ASAP, because if your opponent has played well, you used all your tangos by then, and now you need some regen. If you see a hero under 400 hp in a lane without a disable, and you have a high power nuker, after you buy your ring, go and gank him, if you have a hero like lina or zeus, they will be an easy kill.

At level 4, if the enemy is under 300 hp, and you have 255 or more mana, blink behind him, shadow strike, scream, and attack until he runs. At this point, don’t go tower diving, because you don’t have your bracers yet.

Once you get your 900 gold, go ahead and get your void stone, and now definitely gank a lane in which a hero has no disable, in example tinker, enchantress etc, because you should have level 4 scream of pain, and by then and you can kill heroes 400 hp or lower now, so kill a hero in any lane, so that you get experience, and then go to your lane.

Once you get back to your lane, keep harassing the enemy hero with your ally, keeping them away from the experience range, and if they try to attack you, scream of pain, shadow strike, attack as many times as possible, blink attack again, and scream of pain again to finish him off.

If they call for a gank, or you are near another lane for some reason, go ahead and gank, some extra money and experience can’t hurt, can it?

Once you have enough for your boots and your 2 bracers, go get them. You need these items for mid game, in which we will start ganking enemy heroes, and making them far underleveled.

Solo Lane

If you choose to go the solo build, it is much more simple than the ally lane ganking build. In the solo build, pick the same lane, sentinel bottom or scourge top.

If you are facing a melee hero, whenever he goes up to farm at levels 1-3, just keep hitting him, so that you can weaken them easily, so that it’s easy to kill the enemy once you get level 4. If they get low, shadow strike, and keep hitting him, and blink, to attack him, and finish off the enemy, but don’t go too aggressive, because if you are facing two enemies, and one of them have stun, you might die.

Stay back at 700 range and farm, so that you can get your items as fast as possible, because you are trying to carry your team, and you just simply can’t afford to die. Remember, it is more important to stay alive, than to die and get the kill.

If the enemy goes towards you, just use scream of pain, and blink away as fast as possible.

If you need help, and you can’t keep the tower alive, call for help from someone from middle lane. It is essential to call for a gank as QoP. You don’t have the lane controlling power of other solo heroes, such as viper, tinker, syllabear, silencer, etc, and keeping the tower alive is essential to staying alive, so call for ganks frequently, and request that they allow you to get the kill, as you are attempting to carry.

Mid Game (Level 11-15)

Eye of Skadi

Level 11 - Sonic Wave
Level 12-14 - Shadow Strike
Level 15 - Stats

Teaming and Solo Lane

Once you get mid game, your job is to gank, gank, gank, gank, gank, gank, and gank. It is not effective to start ganking a lot before level 11, because you will be far underleveled, and you will not be able to catch up to everyone else according to level. Just don’t go gank crazy until level 11.

If you see any hero that is alone, and I mean any hero, get a stunner (like VS) and gank him. Keep doing this until you get your linkens.

Again, always use your ult to finish, because it is not worth using it for anything else, with the mana it costs.

If there is a team battle is to start out with Scream of Pain. Then, let your Sand King, Magnatuar, or Levithian initiate. Let your allies do a bit of damage, then use Sonic Wave to hit a few units to damage them, and Scream, while hitting the creeps. Since the creeps are killed, let a Lich on your team use Chain Frost to finish all your enemmies off. Your job is an assasin, to not let anyone at low health get away alive. Akasha is like a more team oriented bloodseeker. All you do, is kill weak heroes. Don’t try to take on the big ones.

If you have a lich, clear the creeps, so that lich can unleash his ultimate, tearing up heroes. This will be discussed later.

Now in mid game, never go alone farming past the river, that is my guideline not to get ganked. Regardless, you should still watch out for people missing. If there are no battles and no people to gank, go ahead and farm. To farm, just wait until a melee creep gets half health, then scream, then attack the ranged creep, then you last hit the other two creeps. If done correctly, you can get every creep in the wave, except maybe the siege tank.

To gank, just shadow strike FROM BEHIND, then scream, then blink and attack, then scream, then ulti. By now they should be dead, and you should have the mana to be able to support all those spells.

You should have your linkens by level 14-16.

Also, now that you have some life, you can start tower diving, if they disable you don’t worry, just blink to them, scream or ulti, then blink away for a kill. No one can get away from you (besides juking of course). Make sure you don’t get juked, just predict if he is going to juke or not.

Also, if there are two heroes at low hp, don’t be afraid to go in. If you are good enough, you can kill them both without them even reacting to you. Just do a quick scream, animation cancel, and use sonic wave to get the double kill.

Again, if you get BoT before skadi, use it to defend, or help your team push.

Late game (Level 16-25)

Linken’s Sphere Boots of Travel

Level 16 - Sonic Wave
Level 17-22 - Stats
Level 23-25 - Shadow Strike

Teaming and Solo Lane

By now, if you have played correctly, you should be higher level than your enemies, because you ganked them a lot, not allowing them to get gold or experience. Since you are so much higher level than they are, they have little hp.

In team battles, you have a simple and easy task. Start off with wave to hit as most people as you can. Then, keep spamming scream, so that everyone recieves damage, and their team gets weaker, and finish off heroes with less than shadow strike, scream, blink, and scream of pain. In late game, when you kill someone with your ulti, try to hit as many people as possible, but don’t try it so bad that you actually miss your intended target.

If you are being focused, blink away, but DON’T blink back in. This makes you less visible to the enemy team, and you will get kills a lot easier by doing this.

If you are pushing, just spam scream on the creeps, so that they die as fast as possible If scream is on cooldown, and everyone is more than 800 hp, go ahead and attack physically, you deal a lot of damage with your +60 stats, and combined with a guinsoo.

Once you get radiance or guinsoo, you can focus more on killing heroes with half hp, and if you get guinsoo (recommended over radiance) ALWAYS hex the biggest target, not the noob who you can get the kill easy off of to get money.

If you aren’t pushing, go ahead and farm neutrals, they can’t damage you much anymore.

When you are attacking physically, always attack the biggest threat dps hero. That way they will be disabled, so that your team can beat down on them, and they will die before they can do any damage to him.

If disablers target you, then blink right when linkens goes off, so they can’t use multiple stuns on you.

Well, thats all the late game tactics I can think of, finish up and push for the win.

7. Blink Miniguide

As far as I have noticed, there are the USEFUL uses for blink, and here they are:

• To hide with low hp where only blinkers, and skills like blink, can go
• To blink over cliffs to escape
• To blink to hiding spots, to escape getting focused, then blink back into battle
• To blink over trees to escape
• To blink behind and kill enemy heroes
• To make up ground when going to somewhere
• To blink behind enemies when chasing

Keep note that Blink has a range of 1000, but you have to click 1000 range to make full use of it. If you click outside of the 1000 range, then it will not go as far. It will go about 800 range. Try to estimate where the maximum range of Blink is so that you can utilize the full power of Blink. It is not necessary, because it usually does it’s job anyway, but it might help when chasing a hero or running away.

A more advanced part of the game is that once a spell’s projectile is thrown at you, you can blink right before it hits you to actually dodge the effect. It takes a lot of practice to do that, and still it will be very tough to pull it off.

Well, thats all for blinking, or at least all I can think of.

8. Sonic Wave Miniguide

Correct use of Sonic Wave is essential to Akasha’s effectiveness. There is one use for sonic wave which is actually quite easy, use sonic wave to finish off heroes when you have already used all your spells and you want to avoid taking damage, so you use sonic wave to kill and dodge an amount of damage. Please try to refrain from doing this. There is no need to teach how to use this way, because you just simply click on the hero, for killing invisible heroes, simply click on where he wind walked, since Sonic Wave has a huge aoe, you won’t be missing if you have quick enough fingers.

Another better use for Sonic Wave is to hit multiple heroes at the middle of a battle, as to Damage multiple heroes and get tons of kills, and if your ultimate doesn’t finish them off, the creeps have died, and let a lich on your team use his ultimate and finish off all the enemy heroes. To aim it, click in the middle of all the heroes, as to hit more of them. Remember, always make sure you hit at least 3 targets when using this method.

9. Animation Cancelling

For all of Akasha’s spells, there is an animation for it after you cast the spell. When you use Blink and Scream of Pain, Akasha raises her wings after she casts the spell. During this time, you can issue a command, allowing to get you more attacks in, and if you run out of mana, this can be the difference between a hero getting away, and a hero getting killed, so it can be very instrumental in how well you do in a game. When you use Shadow Strike and Sonic Wave, Akasha moves her wing to release a dagger or a blue wave, and then swings it further. After Akasha releases the dagger or the wave, you can give her a command, so you can get more attacks after you slow him. However, this concept is hard to learn, so I recommending watching replays of me or someone else who is good with QoP, play her, because it is nearly impossible to use screenshots to demonstrate how to animation cancel.

10. Allies/Enemies

Good Allies

Stunners/Disablers

This works well because of this:

1. Stun
2. Blink and SS
3. Both attack
4. Stun
5. Blink and SS
6. Both attack
7. Etc. (You get it)

The best are stunners/disablers with low cooldown, or have multiple stuns/disables such as earthshaker.

Slowers

The both of you could keep him slowed to the point of him running VERY, VERY, SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW, and when this happens, his only choice is to fight, in which he will die anyway, so basically HE’S DEAD. This is a very powerful combo. Two notablies are omniknight and lich, which combines nukes with slow. Lich is one of the best to team with QoP.

Nukers

With the two of you nukers together, you have lots of spells to nuke with, which means hes dead if he gets caught by your shadow strike, which is rather easy due to blink.

A notible is zeus, with 3 nukes that all deal lots of damage because of static field, and this is unstoppable (chronological order):

1. Blink
2. SS
3. Arc Lightning
4. Scream
5. Lightning Bolt
6. Double Ultimate

As you see, this guy is done for sure.

AOE damagers

Both of you together can do mass damage to a team, greatly giving your side an advantage over the other team, in which you would then kill them and push.

Playing with Lich

Since Lich is the best hero to team with QoP, I have decided to make a complete section on how to play with Lich.

At level 3, start killing. Let Lich start out with Frost Nova, then attack twice, QoP should then Shadow Strike, and then scream, and attack twice again, Lich then uses frost nova again if they aren’t dead yet, and QoP can blink away when she’s in trouble. Keep doing this whenever you are laning together, and have the mana to do the combo.

During team battles, open with Sonic Wave, as described above, and then blink in and use Scream. Let Lich then follow up with a chain frost, because all the creeps were killed, so chain frost will bounce on heroes only, greatly weakening the enemy team. Team this with Sand King and Levithian, and you have the battle won easily.

Bad Enemies

Mass/Long Disablers

These guys just disable you and disable you and hold you in place so you can’t do anything. Also, since you have relatively low hp, you are prone to this. Just try not to get caught. Hey, you have blink, try to get outside of range of it, or use blink to dodge spells.

Silencers

These guys are annoying. They silence you and whack you to death. The only way to avoid this, is to avoid the enemy who can silence, or last it out, because most silences have relatively long cooldowns.

11. Replays

QoP_Solo_Carry.w3g ( 907.52k )
Number of downloads: 1856

This was a TDA game with JooN- who played his DP for his guide. I started out solo bottom against sven, and i quickly picked up 2 kills on him, one stolen by creeps. I then make a mistake, by diving into tower to get the kill, and then dieing, delaying my linkens. Later, bs ksed me a lot, so I couldn’t get skadi before the game ended, so anyway I consider this as I carried, cause bs basically ksed me to get all those kills. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, but we still won pretty easy. Hope you enjoy!

MYMMaelk QoP

To download this file, click on the download file button, and then when it asks for you to register, click cancel, and it will download the file. I don’t have the time to view this replay yet, but once I get the time, I will give some comments on it. However, I am sure this is a good replay because MYM won, and well, Maelk played it.

12. FAQ

This is a section where I will answer FAQ’s. For specific questions, I will post.

Q: Why not get midas?

A: Midas is kind of redundant to radiance, since the 2010 cost is a lot of money. Also, once you spend your early game just farming for midas, you will not have enough hp, making you vulnerable to disables. It’s not a bad item, it’s just the cost part.

13. Credits

Serados: For his guide to guide making
Goomby: For his List of all hero stats, descriptions, mana costs, spell cooldowns and aoes
DotA-Allstars.com: For various pictures in the guide
JooN- : For bugging me so much, that I tried the linken/skadi build with him in game, and decided to make a section on it.