Asian Girls | Dota Guide and Strategy

Table of Contents
To Do List
History and Introduction
Character Overview
Stat and Strengths Breakdown
Skills and Explanations

Skill Build - Nuke Orb

Skill Order
Explanation of Order
Alternate Orders

Item Build - Nuke Orb

Item List
Explanation of Items
Alternative Items

Strategy

A Miniguide on Arcane Orb (and Essence Aura)
A Miniguide on Astral Imprisonment
A Note on Solo Lane Etiquette
How to play as Obsidian Destroyer
Early Game and Laning
Mid Game and Conservative Laning
Late Game and Carrying

Complements and Counters

Your Best Friends
What to Look For
Some Heroes to Buddy up to

Your Worst Enemies

What to Look For
A List of Troublemakers

Your Favorite Targets

What to Look For
People Dying to Die

Replays
FAQ
Final Word

1. Get some replays to back up the new item build.
2. Use a viral marketing campaign to convince people the guide is indeed back from the dead and to start posting in it again. THIS MEANS YOU

So, here I had given up this thread for dead. I thought that people had moved on their way and weren’t interested in the guide, so I stopped updating it and moved onto other things. A back down memory lane has shown that indeed the guide is still referenced (despite being horribly out of date), and that people were still using it.

Well after feeling guilty that I’d abandon the guide that people were still using, I’ve decided to continue updating it. So look forward to the radically new item build, slightly different gameplay and destruction you have come to expect from Obisidian Destroyer!

Strength: 19 + 1.85
Agility: 15 + 1.4
Intelligence: 26 + 2.8
Attack Range: 450
Movement Speed: 300

+ Good base stats for early laning
+ Fairly high intelligence gain for good skill synergy
+ One of the best orb effects in the game (second only to fury swipes)
+ Highest carry potential out of any hero (barring, possibly, permabash)

- Only astral imprisonment for escapes
- Reliant on being able to attack (disablers can be bothersome)
- Doesn’t shine till mid-late game
- Not a good chaser (no way to slow the enemy besides imprisonment)

So what does this mean for Obsidian Destroyer? First and foremost, it means that he is not an early game hero. Furthermore, it means that he is a carry hero, which comes as a surprise to most people, being an intelligence hero. What this means to you is that you want two things — to keep your head low early game, and to take the fullest advantage of the laning stage.

The stats for Obsidian Destroyer can only be described as “average”. The stat gain for obsidian is fairly average — he does have an above normal base intelligence and strength though, which is fairly nice for early laning. However, Obsidian’s strength doesn’t come from his stats — it comes from the skills.

Arcane Orb
Official Description
Gives the Destroyer extra power to damage his enemies based on his remaining mana pool. Damage type is pure.
Unofficial Description
Gives you an orb effect that does 9% of your current mana (note: not total) in pure damage (not mitigated by anything). This doesn’t really become useful until about level 12 (about when you get a soulbooster and/or mystic staff), and doesn’t really take off until about level 15 (when you break 2000 mana). However, past that point, it becomes one of the most powerful abilities in the game, being able to surpass the damage of a divine rapier easily. Just don’t make the fatal mistake of believing it is an early game skill (this isn’t glaives of wisdom).

Astral Imprisonment
Official Description
Teleports a target allied or enemy hero into an astral prison. The hero remains separated from the real world for the duration of the spell. If cast on an enemy, Harbinger steals intelligence from the target. Intelligence is restored to the hero after 60 seconds.
Unofficial Description
This spell will remove a hero from the map for 1/2/3/4 seconds — Enemy, friend, even you. If it is an enemy, you’ll leech 2 intel per second from the enemy, restored after sixty seconds. This has some less obvious uses, so for those of you who outright dismiss this spell (I know you’re out there) — you need to learn how to use it. Luckily, there’s a miniguide that describes just how to do that

Essence Aura
Official Description
Whenever a nearby allied hero casts a spell, it has a chance to restore a portion of its mana pool. Passively adds to the Destroyer’s base mana pool.
Unofficial Description
This is a passive aura that has a chance to return mana whenever you or someone else casts a spell, to the respective spell user. To make good use of this, you need a lot of mana — Arcane Orb relies on this spell, and this is why your biggest goal after intelligence is mana.

(Ultimate) Sanity’s Eclipse
Official Description
The Obsidian Destroyer unleashes his full potential; his mind unleashes a psionic storm able to penetrate lesser minds with terminal force, dealing massive damage to them. More crafty minds are able to resist most of the damage, but they expend most of their energies to do so, losing 75% of their mana. Heroes with more intelligence than the Destroyer are unaffected.
Unofficial Description
Before the nerf, this was easily the best ultimate in the game. After the nerf, it’s still extremely powerful — however, it doesn’t become that way until later in the game. This spell completely relies on your respective intelligence (with a bit of help from astral imprisonment). If you are following my item build and soloing, a good rule of thumb is about 75 damage for every level you get against strength and agility, about half that against intelligence. That means, at level 20, you should be averaging about 1500 damage against most characters. Not bad! Not as good as the 2500-3000 damage you used to be able to get, but this isn’t a spell to dismiss outright.

Level 1: Arcane Orb
Level 2: Astral Imprisonment
Level 3: Astral Imprisonment
Level 4: Arcane Orb
Level 5: Astral Imprisonment
Level 6: Arcane Orb
Level 7: Astral Imprisonment
Level 8: Arcane Orb
Level 9: Essence Aura
Level 10: Essence Aura
Level 11: Essence Aura
Level 12: Essence Aura
Level 13: Stats
Level 14: Sanity’s Eclipse
Level 15: Sanity’s Eclipse
Level 16: Sanity’s Eclipse
Level 17-25: Stats

Note, I would wait for a bit before spending your first level. It’s not going to be useful regardless, most likely, and you might need to change your skill build slightly depending on your lane (see the alternatives below).

Astral imprisonment is definitely your first goal. It gives you a great escape mechanism, an anti-harassing mechanism, a chasing mechanism, and a prep for your ultimate. There is no reason why you shouldn’t get it first. After this, you want to get arcane orb. Note that you shouldn’t actually use arcane orb until at least level 9 — it’s fairly useless at lower levels, despite being necessary to level to have it early at other levels. The only reason orb is gotten at level 1 is because a 1 second astral does nothing (asides from canceling any orders the enemy might have). By the time you’ve done casting level 1 astral, it’s already worn off. It should be designed to level a bit more effectively, but oh well.

Sanity’s Eclipse is gotten at levels 14, 15, and 16. This is mostly to reflect the new item build, since you don’t start building your intel until later in the game, and eclipse is just a waste of mana until it does decent damage. This also allows you to start using orb effectively much earlier. This is also the same time you finish your scepter, so it’s just in time to take advantage of a huge intel boost you get.

Arcane orb is leveled to be fully leveled in time to coincide with your item build, and to get a bit of ganking in. It won’t completely useful until later, but it still has it’s uses as early as level 8.

Getting Essence Aura instead of orb at levels 1 and 4
You might want to do this in three situations — first, when you have a low mana high regen nuker (pudge for example). the 20% to regain mana back lets you astral just a bit more while laning, which lets you spam astral that more often, which makes them that less effective at nuking you. The other time will be if you have a person who can spam low mana spells, such as bristleback or zeus in lane. The benefit they get from essence aura helps them immensely in harassing. Finally, if you’re up against a nasty combo, and know you will have a hard time farming. This makes it so when your items catch up to your levels, you should still have level 4 orb — however, you got the benefit of essence aura earlier, and thus could lane better.

Getting Stats instead of Orb at levels 1 and 4
This is good if you’re up solo against an extremely easy or low health combo (such as clinks or drow). These people have little escapes and will wither under a hard attack. Between stats, astral, sanity’s against a naturally low int hero, and naturally high stats, you usually can get some easy kills. At the very least, you can keep them at the fountain. Don’t let them get control of the lane, harass them!

Other then those two examples, the main build should work fine in almost all situations. In both these situations, push the build back to make room for arcane orb — it just means you get orb at level 12 instead of level 9, which is really when it starts becoming useful anyway.

Note #1: This is assuming RD Gold

Note #2: I list everything at the titles in order of acquisition. So if I say, energy booster, point booster, vitality booster –> soul booster, then I expect you to get an energy booster first.

At Fountain: Tango

ASAP Ring of Health, Vitality Booster

When Available: Energy Booster, Point Booster, Voidstone –> Bloodstone

When Available: Boots, Robe of the Magi, Gloves of Haste –> Intel Power Treads

When Available: Mystic Staff, disassemble Bloodstone –> Scepter, Ultimate Orb –> Linkins

When Available: Oblivion Staff x 3 –> Orchid Malevolence

If the game isn’t over yet (2 hours?): Plate Mail, Mystic Staff –> Shiva’s, More Scepters

The big thing about this build is the sudden transition from being defensive and laning, to offensive and ganking (right around a mystic staff). This allows you to lane effectively until 12-13, and then immediately become an overpowering juggernaut that destroys anything in its path.

The tango at the start is gotten so you can hold off until you get a Ring of Health. A vitality booster is gotten immediately after to supplement any nulls that you would have had to normally buy. After that, it’s just routine to finish your bloodstone. The regen (while useless later game) is extremely important to maintain astral, laning capabilities, and for a while, arcane orb. Later on, the regen will be funneled into a linkins for the spell resistance and a nice stat boost. This gives you everything you need to lane early.

By the time you have level 4 orb, you should have a perseverence and a vit booster, and working your way towards a bloodstone. You have enough regen to be using arcane orb sparingly along with your astral spam. People won’t be able to get close to you without disappearing in a green prison, and arcane orb gives you a minor amount of harrassing ability. It should be enough to secure your lane until you get more powerful.

By the point you get a bloodstone, you’re probably being pushed out of your lane by multiple ganks. You should also level 4 essence aura at this point, which is enough to manually cast orb for literally infinite mana (manually casting orb gives double the chance for essence aura to go off). At this point, you can help ganks. You aren’t carrying yet, but your orb is enough to give any enemy a second thought of attacking you.

At this point, it’s just solidifying your position with attack speed and intelligence items. By the time you get malevolence, the game has probably degenerated into push and counter push (you’re looking at about the 60 minute mark). This is where disables become the bane of your existence — good thing you just got a 4 second silence then, right? Usually you can kill someone before the silence wears off, as you’re doing close to 400 damage a hit.

So now you just got a mystic staff, along with your treads, and turned it into a scepter. Grats, you should be about level 16-17 at this point, and it should be about to 50 minute mark. Now your main build is complete, and you can wreak havoc with either orb or sanity’s eclipse. At this point, it’s just solidifying your position. The stats from linkins, along with the scepter, is all you need to stay alive. Furthermore, the stat boost makes eclipse (a force to be reckoned with at this point) even more deadly. The orchid malevolence is gotten to solidify your orb attacking skills. However, the game is approaching the hour mark at this point, and should be finishing any time. Congrats on being a carry, I doubt anybody could mess with you at this point! If the game continues to live on (doubtfully), the shiva is gotten to help with armor, the one part of your build that is sorely lacking — it also complements Sanity’s Eclipse nicely.

Items you shouldn’t get

Why no Guinsoo? (mathcraft updated for last patch)
The main reason would be because guinsoo gives you much, much less damage then scepter when comparing GPD (Gold Per Damage). It’s not a very efficient item to get, even with sheep in mind. But don’t take my word for it, let’s do some mathcraft!

Scepter: 6200 gold, 30 intel, 500 mana, 500 life
Guinsoo: 5675 gold, 35 intel, 10 strength, 10 agility, 150% mana regen, sheep

Now for some fun with math. 1 intel = 13 mana, mind you.

Scepter Damage: ((30 * 13 + 500) * .09) + 30 = 110.1 (orb damage, + intel damage)
Guinsoo Damage: (35 * 13) * .09 + 35 = 75.95 (orb damage + intel damage)
Scepter GPD (lower is better): 6200 / 110 = 56.36 GPD
Guinsoo GPD (lower is better): 5675 / 75.95 = 74.72 GPD

Conclusion about Guinsoo
Ouch! That means guinsoo costs nearly 20 more gold per damage (5 GPD worse then the previous version of guinsoo)! If you spent 6200 towards guinsoo, you’re costing yourself 2019 more gold for the same amount of damage if you get guinsoo. “But Taelrie, you didn’t factor in the strength, agility, regen or the hex! Those are really important!” True! But, Obsidian Destroyer doesn’t need mana regen. At this point, OD can indefinitely keep casting because essence aura offsets the amount of mana that all of his skills cost. As for hex, I also didn’t factor in the health from scepter, which is 500-190 = 310 more health. Do you think hex is worth 2019 gold and 310 health? I don’t know about you, but I would say hell no.

Different Starting Items
Honestly, starting items are usually up in the air. The main build includes what it does to help with early game survivability, but everybody has their own way to start the game. Choose whatever the heck you’re used to, if you think it synergises well with the main items. Observer wards can help spot out incoming ganks, so I would suggest that if you want to forego the original build.

Assault Cuirass
If you don’t want to get a slow, assault cuirass might be a better option for you. However, at this point it doesn’t really matter what you go — it’s going to be about an hour and a half into the game. The only time I’d get an assault cuirass over shiva’s is if I was up against a whole bunch of intel heroes — otherwise, the ultimate is way too powerful at this point to avoid the intel gain from shivas.

Arcane Orb can be one of the most amazing spells there is. However, it’s also one of the most misunderstood. The answer to most of these misconceptions is this:

Arcane Orb is not like Glaives of Wisdom

You have to get that idea out of your head now. If you wish to compare Arcane Orb to something, compare it to a nuke like Storm Bolt on an intel hero. Do you spam Storm Bolt at the enemy to harass? Do you try to fire off Storm Bolt every time the enemy gets close? I hope not! This brings me to my first point.

Arcane Orb is not a harassing ability. You notice that I have said that Arcane Orb doesn’t become useful until about level 12. Arcane Orb is best used in conjunction with something else for the first half of the game. This something else will be a friend’s disable, a friend’s heavy nuke, your own hex or ultimate. It is, first and foremost, burst damage. Arcane orb is a burst damage ability. Remember that. Turn it on auto-cast only when you are about to engage an enemy hero for the kill, and not before.

Arcane Orb starts becoming useful at level 12 (about 1500 mana), because manually casting arcane orb gives you the 40% chance to regain mana, as opposed to the 20% chance of autocasting at level 4. The obvious application of this is orb walking — from level 12-15, you can orbwalk with arcane orb and retain most of your mana. This is great for last hitting, and for harassing heroes. use it to your advantage, as you’re doing 120 or so unmitigated damage at full mana with orb right now.

Arcane Orb just becomes ridiculous at level 15-16, and only becomes more powerful from here on out. Now, you should have a scepter, and over 2000 mana. Furthermore, you have level 4 essence aura. This means that not only can you maintain your mana (in theory) with arcane orb on autocast, you can now *gain* mana by manually casting arcane orb. You’ll never run out of mana again. Need mana? Orbwalk a wave or two. You’re now fine. Oh, let’s not forget the fact you’re doing 180 unmitigated damage per orb (not including your regular damage, which is also hitting for about 100). Want a divine rapier? you got one now. Feel free to keep your arcane orb on autocast at this point — you can use it indiscriminately. Your goal at this point is just to boost arcane orb.

Obsidian Destroyer is a lucky hero, as he has both one of the most misunderstood spells and one of the most underrated spells in his repertoire. It doesn’t matter what game I’m in, someone inevitably throws scorn on me maxing out Astral Imprisonment first. Luckily having 30,000 views on the first guide has gotten rid of the majority of this ignorance — however, some people still don’t understand the significance of Astral Imprisonment. Let me explain.

Astral Imprisonment is not just a gimped hex. It’s a defensive spell. It’s an offensive spell. It’s a utility spell. Let’s look at what it can do.

The first is that casting imprisonment on someone causes them to have their hero detargeted. The retargeting and consequent moving of that hero out of imprisonment can disorient many people — enough time to take advantage of. That time taking to retarget and move might just be enough time for the tower to bring them into the red while chasing you, for a friend to cast a ground-based spell on them, or for you to kill them before they can stun you. Furthermore, they lose map sight if there are no friends around — if you astral, then run behind them, they might very will waste some spells on where you once were — to their loss. This can let you run, it can net you a kill, and it can let you chase; and this is just one part of the spell.

Furthermore, the intel gain is both offensively and defensively useful, especially while laning. 6-8 intel lost against the enemy is 78-104 mana they can’t use for 1 minute. Every time you cast this spell on an enemy level 5 onwards, they lose a nuke. That’s enough to lane effectively even against heavy nukers. It also makes heroes such as pudge or tiny completely useless, as two astrals takes *all* of their mana. It might even be enough to get leoric past the reincarnation mana point. This mana loss can help you chase, can save you against a gank, and can prep up sanity’s eclipse. You can get three casts off before they get it back, which is a 48 intel difference between you and them if given enough time to properly prep; even 16 intel difference from one cast makes a big difference.

A little known fact about astral is that all stun spells last the same amount after they get out of it. If you astral someone who just got storm bolted, they’ll still have to wait the full duration of the stun when it runs out.

Finally, you can cast astrals on allies and even yourself. This can solve two purposes. Say you see three friends coming your way, and you got someone chasing you waiting for a cooldown. See the storm bolt about to hit you? Astral yourself — you just avoided a stormbolt, and gave time for your friends to come. This is most useful however when it comes to channeled or short duration spells — especially BKB coupled with CM or SK, or avatar with naix. You can’t astral or orb attack an enemy who has avatar on them. So what do you do? Astral yourself! that’s 4 seconds taken from their BKB, from their epicenter, from their chronosphere, or whatever they tried to cast on your or their ally that is an area of effect.

A good example of self-astralling
There’s not too many opportunities where astralling yourself can be useful, but when there is, it can save your life. For example:

Replay 04
Here, I’m surrounded by a 3 person gank, with one more on the way. I’m mana leaked, cursed, sprouted, being beat on by two people, and about to be hit with illuminate. I’m screwed right?

Replay 04
Of course though, I still have astral up. So what do I do? I astral myself — killing my mana (but curse at the same time), and buying myself time to both dodge illuminate and let sprout run out.

Replay 04
Thanks to a couple teammates coming to my aid, I manage to get away with a sliver of health, out of what should have been a massascre. can’t complain about that!

Obsidian Destroyer works best when solo, since he is, after all, a carry hero. His high base stats, fast attack animation, regen/health items and astral let him stay in a lane almost indefinitely. Because of this, you want a solo lane. However, you have to know how to ask someone correctly. Be sure to ask solo as early as possible. If RD, and you see OD as a choice, ask then. If you don’t get OD, just say nevermind. It’s better then having to get a person to get out of your lane. Also, be sure to ask for a certain lane. I prefer mid, because it gives easy access for bottle ferrying, and is ganked less. The downside is that people have the strange urge to always want to go mid when their lane is pushed. Which brings me to the final point, getting someone out of your lane. Don’t get mad, whatever’s going on. You don’t want to belittle them for not seeing your call, you want them to GTFO your lane. Ask twice nicely. If they still don’t leave, then get a bit angry. If they *still* don’t leave, change lanes. You won’t be solo, but at least you’re not laning with an asshole like him for a partner. It happens sometimes, it’s a downside for having random partners. However, make sure to handle the situation correctly

There is one big reason for this, and that is if you get a matchup you can’t handle. If you nicely asked for a solo, then hopefully you can get some help. However, be firm. Don’t ask in general, ask for a specific person to come up. If they don’t, ask someone else specifically. If you just say “can I get help mid”, you won’t get *any* help. Trust me on that. You have to ask by name to get help. Find out the lane that’s doing fine, ask someone specifically in that lane for help. If none of them come help, you have to force their hand, which will catch you some flak. Go into a 2 person lane until you get someone to go mid. You *will* get bitched at for this, but they’re a terrible team who won’t help someone with a tough lane. Why do you care what they think?

Early Game and Laning
The name of the early game is “stay low”. You are fairly useless early game, the best you can do is farm. Especially at the very start. Assuming a call for solo lane went well, you have only a bit of regen. The tango acts does two things at the start. A good enemy (especially if you’re up against two people) will always check your items, to see if you’re a good candidate for harrassment. If they see no regen, they will be *much* more aggressive. You don’t want this — you might get more kills, but you want to hold a good farming lane as long as you can. Kills aren’t early game. Anyway, play defensively, until at least level 5.

This is more or less done by just playing as if you were melee. Only come into attack range (450 for you) just to attack or deny a creep. This is helped a bit by the fast projectile animation, but it might take some getting used to being as your a ranged hero. Yes, it is possible for you to be offensive with your good stats, but you don’t want to draw attention to yourself. The more kills you get, the more likely you are going to get ganked. The sooner you lose your lane, the harder it will be to carry late game. So stay back, attack when you can. Remember that the Ring of Health is now available in the side shop, so you don’t have to leave your lane to pick it up. Careful to avoid ganks in this area though. You can walk over prisoned enemies, so if someone tries to trap you at the goblin shop, just astral them and walk out.

Now, the question is what if they’re going to be belligerent regardless. This can happen a lot when you’re facing a stacked team, against two people who know eachother. They’ll come past the creep wave and stay there to prevent you farming. If you’re mid, you can attack above the ramp (they’ll have a 50% miss chance), which is why mid is a good solo lane. If you just can’t cope, which does happen sometimes, ask for help. Hopefully you read the note for lane etiquette. If you need more health, you can get a Belt of Giant Strength to use in power treads later, and click it over to the intel treads.

At level 5, you can start spamming astral imprisonment. This will be especially helpful against someone who is trying for early game missile spam, such as vengeful and tiny are likely to do. If you can take out three nuke’s worth of mana, then that’s 3 nukes less they can hit you with. Furthermore, with voidstone (and a good base intel), you can do this indefinitely. More room for you! Just keep up this strategy as long as you can, which will probably be when they start pushing at about level 10.

Mid Game and Conservative Laning
Now, at level 10-12, you should have a perseverence, a vit booster and maybe an energy booster. You’re well on your way into your build, and you should have over 1k mana to harass with orb. However, you don’t really shine until about level 16, so if you can, keep farming. You won’t be able to keep to one lane, because most likely the towers are pushed. If there is no lane you can farm in (because it’s pushed or because they’re playing gank squad), just go help with ganks. Your orb effect is useful enough at this point to help out on ganking, and astral is always useful for saving your friends.

However, remember your main goal is to finish your bloodstone, and preferably your treads too. Just lane conservatively at this point, and pay special attention to map awareness. It’s this part of the game when most teams play gank squad, and that can easily put you into the hole (excuse the pun) in no time.

Late Game and Carrying
Now, you should be level 15-16, and hopefully have a scepter to back up that claim. Now it’s good times. You should have over 2000 mana at this point, which means you can autocast orb. This can be much preferable to orb-walking, as you attack every time you possibly can, rather then every time you cast the orb. Furthermore, your sanity’s eclipse is doing over 1k damage. Between the two of these, you can easily become the carry of the game. There aren’t many (if any) heroes that can 1v1 you at this point. Furthermore, you can waltz behind your team in engagements, drop an eclipse and mop up. That’s a triple kill right there. Remember not to initiate team battles though — even with your large amount of health, you will probably be first priority to be killed. Which will happen if you run in first. You aren’t rambo, you’re a cannon.

At this point, you’ll just be getting stronger. I wasn’t kidding when I said Obsidian Destroyer can become the best carry in the game. Mostly this is because all of his items are high level items — he doesn’t really run out of something that he can use (assuming it isn’t a 3 hour game at least). Towards the end of longer games, you can easily be hitting for 400-500 a hit — with 70% increased attack speed and a 4 second silence. Most people will die before they can even make it to you.

Just remember, you can’t 1v5 their team, which is the real difference between the pre-nerf and post-nerf. You can, however, 1v1 or 1v2 any of them fairly easily. The only thing you have to remember at the end game is that you’re not rambo, you’re a sniper. don’t try to take on their entire team, they’ll disable and kill you in no time, even with all your health. In the meantime, giggle maniacally as you kill that SA in the two hits it takes for him to go invisible. MwahahahaHAHAHAAAAA.