DOTA 2 - Silencer

Introduction

“A hush falls on the battlefield.”

Silencer is a ranged intelligence hero. He is almost schizophrenic in his hero role; he can be, and has been, played well as a support, a carry or an initiator/counter-initiator. Above all other heroes in the pool he is perhaps most difficult to pin down in terms of hero role; it’s almost as if Icefrog himself doesn’t quite know what he wants Silencer to be played as.

His lack of mobility and frailness makes him a questionable carry, and his recommended itemisation lacks attack speed, whilst the complete absence of lockdown or stuns also makes him fairly ill-suited to a traditional support role. He is usually therefore relegated to 4th position semi-support/semi-carry, initially taking on joint support duties while later transitioning into a semi-carry role as he accrues intelligence.

You can find our complete character profile for Silencer here.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Amazing teamfight ultimate
• Destroys enemy teams that rely heavily on active abilities and ability combos
• Great as an initiator/counter-initiator
• High damage nukes
• Difficult to lane against for most heroes
• Scales amazingly well
• Permanent intelligence steal

Cons

• Not really suited to any particular role – not really a support or a carry
• Extremely fragile
• No escape mechanism
• Lacks mobility
• No stun or lockdown
• Very greedy as a support pick
• Huge mana issues

Item Build

Before I go into the details of his itemisation and skill build I’d first like to clarify where exactly I see Silencer fitting into the meta-game as he currently stands.

As stated at the start of this guide, Silencer doesn’t really fit ideally into any particular role. He is thus rarely picked competitively, and when he is picked it is typically as a pocket strat to counter caster and combo-heavy line-ups. He is usually played as a 4th position support in such games. Often the professional casters of such games question his viability as a support – but if not as a support then how the hell do you play him? Because he is certainly not worthy of safe lane farm priority, he will struggle beyond belief in the offlane, and is both too static and vulnerable to be the tempo-making mid laner.

My point? There is nowhere else for him to go. Yes, he’s a greedy ‘support’, but the 4th position support, especially in competitive Dota and higher levels of matchmaking, will often get farm priority over the 5th position support and will not invest nearly as much of their gold in support items. They will also tend to farm the pull camps in order to gain some much-needed experience and gold.

I think, on balance, this is the most appropriate way to play Silencer; a 4th position lane support who will farm the pulled jungle camps and transition into a semi-carry over the course of the game. This build guide will recommend items and skills on this basis. If you don’t have a 5th position support hero capable of forgoing most of their farm without being set back to far then do not pick Silencer.

Starting Items

So to start with a 4th position support will buy one of the two/three starting support items – either the Courier or Observer Wards usually. After this you’ll want some regen and stats, like most heroes. I would recommend the following, as it has good overall balance:

- A set of Tangos, a Healing Salve, 3x Iron Branches, Clarity.

Early Game

Silencer’s base move speed is fairly high (300), but he lacks an escape mechanism or mobility skill of any sort, so you want to get some Boots of Speed fairly quickly.

You may need to help out your team’s primary support hero by purchasing Observer Wards every now and then. Finally upgrade any Iron Branches you have into a Magic Wand.

Core Options

First of all you need to decide on your boots of choice. The two most common on Silencer are Power Treads or Arcane Boots. Power Treads are more suited to an early semi-carry transition, and will give you some much-needed stats in order to help mitigate your squishiness. Arcane Boots are more utility-oriented. They will allow you to spam your mana-expensive abilities quite freely, buy up the team’s Mekanism, and give you slightly more mobility.

In short: go Power Treads if you’re feeling vulnerable or intend to become a semi-carry early on. Go Arcanes if you’re positioning yourself more as a utility hero and find you’re using your abilities a lot for harassment purposes.

When it comes to your first proper core item Silencer usually goes for either a Mekanism or a Force Staff.

Mekanism will make you tankier and allow you to provide utility for your team through the armour aura and burst healing (the hallmark of a greedy support in my opinion is being able to either provide a lot of utility or to transition into a semi-carry). It’s also a core teamfight item for any team in Dota 2, and so if you can build it in good time and there’s no more ideal carrier then go for it.

Force Staff should probably be next on your list even if you bought the Mekanism. If you didn’t buy the Mekanism then it’s a no-brainer as your first core item. It gives you much more mobility – something Silencer desperately lacks – as well as utility for your team. It’s an amazing escape tool for someone who is naturally very squishy and can be used on allies and enemies, making it a great play-making item for clutch saves or to Force an enemy into bad positioning.

Luxury Items

Drums of Endurance – Cost efficient stats and decent utility; Drums of Endurance are a great option because they give your team bonus attack speed and move speed auras, whilst at the same time giving you plenty of stats and being easy to build into (since the components are so cheap you can buy them up whenever you have the spare unreliable gold, meaning you won’t lose much gold when you die).

Orchid Malevolence – An absolutely amazing item as you transition into more of a semi-carry role. Big chunks of attack speed, damage, intelligence, and mana regeneration, Orchid is a favourite for intelligence carries and semi carries for good reason – everything it grants you is useful and it’ll really accelerate your DPS capability. The Soul Burn active is fantastic as well, amplifying damage taken by 30% for 5 seconds and silencing your chosen target as well.

Scythe of Vyse – Your ultimate late-game item. 3.5 seconds of solid disable (huge for someone who lacks lockdown), excellent stats and huge mana regeneration. There’s a reason in the competitive scene it is often rushed on intelligence semi-carries as soon as they get their core; it’s that damn good. The problem is it’s also really damn expensive. Most of the time, therefore, it’s probably best made a second or even third luxury item rather than your first luxury item.

Black King Bar – BKB gives you some much-needed health, especially if you went the Force Staff into Orchid route and feel extremely fragile. The Spell Immunity will prevent you from being burst down or stun-locked in teamfights, allowing you to both get off your abilities and dish out some right clicks; right clicks which become extremely potent as the game drags on thanks to your intelligence steal.

Rod of Atos – Huge chunks of health and mana, and an active that slows an enemy by 60% for 4 seconds (especially useful if your team is ahead but the other team is attempting to avoid direct engagements). I'm actually a fan of Atos, but most people are not. If you like it, you can get it on Silencer as a luxury pick-up.

Shiva’s Guard – It gives you utility for the team, thanks to the AoE Arctic Blast and slow aura, gives you a nice chunk of armour to help tank up, and will make you hit harder thanks to the intelligence gain. All in all, a good final item to round out your inventory if the game is going super late.

Aghanim’s Scepter – Aghanim’s is a bit gimmicky on Silencer; it’s fun to get on him but it’s not usually the optimal item choice. Besides the +10 to all stats and a decent chunk of health and mana, Aghanims buffs Silencer’s ultimate in quite a unique way by applying your current level of Curse of the Silent to all units. Since Global Silence prevents enemy heroes from casting spells, this ensures Curse of the Silent works for its entire duration.

Let’s just run the numbers for a second. With a level 4 Curse of the Silent (because you’ll almost invariably have it maxed if you’re: 1) able to afford Aghanims, and 2) decide to purchase Aghanims), you deal a total of 325/390/390 magic damage and remove 160/192/192 mana over the duration of Global Silence, which isn’t really all that much on the face of it. Multiply it by 5 (assuming 5 living enemy heroes), however, and it deals up to 1625/1950/9150 max damage. That’s much more reasonable, but with the proviso that it’s a best case scenario event and will rarely be the case.

On the whole, I give Aghanims a lukewarm recommendation. I feel there are better items for him, especially if you’re intending to fit into a semi-carry role (if you go for more of a utility build then I think it’s a lot more viable). If you do go for Aghanim's Scepter, however, then following it up with a Refresher Orb is highly recommended.

Ghost Scepter – if you find the enemy team is focussing you down quickly with physical damage (typically in the form of right-clicks) you may need to purchase a Ghost Scepter. Ghost Scepter will buy you a clutch 4 seconds of physical immunity, which gives you time to create distance between yourself and the enemy carry or at the very least buys your team 4 seconds of distraction time.

Situational Items

Boots of Travel - Boots of Travel are great for the late game, when you need to free up a slot which would otherwise be taken up by a TP Scroll. With this, you combine your Boots and TP Scroll slot into one, allowing you to put a slot to better use as well as allowing you to teleport to the front lines if you die or if you’re off split-pushing.

Necronomicon - Great if you’re part of a pushing line-up or your team is struggling to break the base. Also a great item for teamfights and for countering any invis enemy heroes. Both of the stats it grants are also ideal for Silencer.

Skill Build

As with his item build, Silencer’s skill build is very much dependent on how you intend to play him. In-line with my view of him as a 4 position support that transition into a semi-carry, I like to build him so that he can provide substantial harassment in the early laning stages.

Precisely what this involves skilling depends on your lane opponent; if it’s someone with an easily spammable, low mana cost ability then you want to avoid skilling Curse of the Silent early on. If, on the other hand, your opponent(s) have high cost, high cooldown abilities you’ll find Curse of the Silent to be one of most potent harassment abilities in the early game (if you’ve ever played against Silencer with such a hero you know exactly how frustrating this can be to deal with). In general, however, I like to max Last Word first, it being the more reliable nuke as well as providing the additional benefit of silencing or disarming a target.

Curse of the Silent is therefore skilled last but maxed second in most case. A magic damage over time nuke, it curses any enemy units within the target area, causing them to take damage and lose mana every second for 6 seconds until they cast a spell. If they cast a spell the effect is removed. It can deal 120/210/300/390 damage and removes 48/96/144/192 mana to each enemy caught by it, assuming they do not cast a spell.

This makes it selectively great. If you can catch multiple enemy heroes in it radius, or you’re facing off against heroes with high mana cost abilities, then you can deal a large amount of magic damage and rapidly burn through a hero’s mana pool. If, however, you’re up against hero(es) with spammable, low mana cost abilities then it can be rendered completely ineffective as a harassment tool. As a result, in certain situations you may want to max it last.

Glaives of Wisdom is a unique attack modifier which converts a percentage of Silencer’s intelligence into pure damage when he attacks an enemy unit. This is the ability which allows Silencer to scale well later on in the game, and is skilled second but tends to be maxed last. Additional levels increase the percentage of intelligence that is converted to damage, from 30% up to 90%.

An early point is great for giving more potency to your right-clicks in the laning and during teamfights, although its true effectiveness doesn’t shine until much later on. Since Silencer accrues intelligence over the course of the game, through enemy deaths and items, the effectiveness of Glaives rapidly accelerates moving into the mid and late game. In most cases you’ll want to max it by level 14. In some circumstances, such as where enemy units have spammable abilities and are thus no affected much by Curse of the Silent, you may want to max it second.

Last Word is a potent magic damage nuke and silence/disarm. It is typically skilled and maxed first. Last Word is a single target ability which deals 150/200/250/300 magic damage and places a debuff on the target. This debuff will silence the target if they cast a spell during its 5 second duration, or will Disarm and silence them if they do not cast a spell during this time, for a total of 3/4/5/6 seconds.

Last Word scales well with levels, increasing both the damage output, the disarm and silence duration, and drastically reducing the ability’s cooldown from 30 seconds to 12 seconds. It’s also Silencer’s only reliable nuke ability (Curse of the Silent is often easily dispelled). For these reasons it is recommended that you max it first and use it to deal significant harassment to any lane opponents.

Global Silence is Silencer’s ultimate ability and it is always skilled (levels 6, 11 and 16). As the name implies, this silences all enemy heroes on the map for 4/5/6 seconds. A potentially hugely powerful teamfight ultimate, as well as an initiation/counter initiation tool for your team, it requires good game sense to be put to effective use; it is just as easy to completely waste it as it is to put it to good use.

Gameplay Tips

Silencer will permanently steal 2 intelligence from any hero that dies within a 900 unit AoE of Silencer. Silencer himself does not need to get the kill, he just needs to be within 900 units of the hero when they die. This stolen intelligence is then added to his base intelligence where it will further buff his Glaives of Wisdom attack modifier ability.

Knowledge of each hero in the game is important if you intend to play Silencer. You need to know whether Curse of the Silent is likely to be annoying or easily shrugged off by enemies. If most of the enemy heroes have high mana cost abilities, or abilities with long cooldowns, you may want to max it early on. If they have highly spammable or low mana cost abilities it can be rendered virtually useless. Adapt your skill build to the heroes you’re facing.

Glaives of Wisdom is an extremely powerful attack modifier later on in the game, thanks to your passive intelligence steal and your recommended item build. Just remember that it is a unique attack modifier, so will not stack with items which have attack modifiers. Also remember how squishy and relatively immobile you are; you are potentially the very definition of a glass cannon later on in the game.

Glaives of Wisdom is very useful in the early laning phase as you can manually use it against enemy heroes without attracting creep aggro. Use this to your advantage to bully enemy heroes away from the creep wave if you are on babysit support duties.

Much like Curse of the Silent, Last Word heavily punishes those enemy heroes who cannot afford to waste their abilities just to remove the debuff, the difference being that Last Word will always deal damage. It is especially great against right-click carry heroes which lack active abilities or have high cooldown/mana cost abilities, because if they do not use an ability they will be disarmed for a lengthy period of time.

Learning when to, and when not to use Global Silence is key when playing Silencer. It is a fantastic tool for interrupting high-powered, channelled ultimates, those heroes or hero line-ups which must combo abilities together effectively in order to be successful, for interrupting enemy initiations, for quickly following up on your own team’s initiation, or even for saving a core hero’s life in clutch circumstances.

Last Updated - Patch 6.83.