Slark goes hard, and with this guide you will too. You’re going to be getting early kills, stomping on kids who have no clue how to counter your sheer level of awesome. Jump on them, spam the keyboard with your face, and get a huge numbers of kills. Then, with those stats you can brag about your fully sick KDA to just about anything who will listen. People, cats, goldfish, whatever.
With this guide, you’re going to learn how to dominate as Slark. You’ll be saying HERE FISHY FISHY in your sleep, as you will even dream in Slark domination from this point on. Welcome to the Slark apocalypse, the Slarkopocalypse. This is certainly not satire.
Starting Items.
Tango.
You’re going to want to get in the face of the enemy as soon as possible and as often as possible. You’re a Slark god, and establishing dominance over the enemy early is key. Shove your Slarkiness at them, right click on them, do big damage, and then heal with the Tango. Boom.
Quelling Blade.
Getting the full benefit of Quelling means that you can get lots of kills. Creep kills. Getting creep kills will give your enemy a glimpse of what is to come. You’ll be getting lots of gold, in order to get the best items – the ones you kill people with.
Orb of Venom.
This will do damage. That is good. Without damage we can’t get to killing the enemy, and bragging about our huge KD ratio. It will make the enemy slower too, so you can get more attacks into their skulls as they run away like the pathetic trash they are.
Double Iron Branch.
Double branch means that if we play against heroes that want to use abilities and rely on skill, well, we can counter them. We get all round stats, more healing with tango, and can craft the magic wand to counter those tricksy skill-relying players.
Early Game Items.
Wraith Band.
Wraith provides us overall stats, good HP and mana. But who cares about that stuff, WE GET AGILITY WITH THIS ITEM. Agility means damage. We deal damage. We get kills. We spam in the game chat with how good we are. We let everyone know we have heaps of last hits.
Power Treads.
Now they cannot run away from us as we wail on them with our huge agility stat. You can change the power treads to strength for bulk to survive ganks, or intelligence if you need some mana. BUT, those things means you’re losing attack damage with the loss of agility, so who cares about those things.
Orb of Corrosion.
Orb of Corrosion will slow them down, so they cannot escape your attacking, and will reduce their armor. Lower armor and slower move speed means one thing and one thing only – kill securing by the Slark.
Build Items.
Echo Sabre.
Double attack means double attribute shift. We get more agility, they get less. We get the good stats; they lose the good stats. Plus, it applies our damage twice on a cooldown. The more damage we Slark mains deal, the bigger our egos get, the better we play. Simple.
Shadow Blade.
Shadow blade means two things:
A) we can sneak up on people with our invisibility, surprise them and secure a kill. Boom.
2) We can health regen with our ultimate through the invisibility.
Ganks and survivability, everything us genius Slark mains want.
Use it when in trouble, get your HP back, go back and murder them hard.
Eye of Skadi.
Eye of Skadi can replace or augment the Orb. I rarely grab both, but they’re good for the same reasons. They cannot escape your insane death dealing, if they are so slow, they can’t run away. You get a big bump in stats, and gain the cold attack to ensure that between this and the snare, they isn’t go nowheres. Plus, it’s cool how Slark says: EYE OF SKAWWDI, when you buy it.
End Game Items.
Silver Edge.
Silver Edge is the beefed up version of Shadow Blade, which once you play a few games with Slark and Shadow Blade, you’re going to quickly decide that is the best item for Slark and probably the greatest thing since sliced bread. So, we upgrade the blade for stats.
Abyssal Blade.
You’re attacking super-fast with all that agility, and you’ve either got Skadi or Orb (or both you cheeky devil) combine those things with the chance to stun from Abyssal Blade, and you’re going to be locking down noobs for days.
Satanic.
Lifesteal on each of your super-fast attacks is going to make you annoying as heck to kill. The longer you stick around, the more kills you can rack up baby. Activate the active ability to activate when the enemy things they’re good, and then prove the suck. Actively.
Mage Slayer.
Mage Slayer is the most slept on item in Dota 2. And especially on Slark – no joke.
It gives us all the stats we like, a huge boost in damage, armour and attack speed from the agility. Protects you from casting heroes with magic resist. Gives straight attack damage. And provides a debuff to spells damage. It’s just insanely good and nobody gets it or expects it.
Skills.
Dark Pact.
Grabbing and maxing this early means that we get a pseudo-BKB, plenty of AoE damage, and a way to easily and quickly clear waves. It deals big damage. That is all that you need to think about. Get this on things that can die, and do it. Also, if you’re debuffed or expecting a debuff especially dust out of your blade .. then use Dark Pact to be uninhibited.
Pounce.
The biggest mistake people make is trying for the long-shot Pounce grab. This is an error. Sure, if you pull it off, great. Don’t hesitate if you know you’re a god tier MLG pro of Pounce. BUT, you don’t have to. Get close, then use Pounce when you know 100% that it will land, so that you can get the leash off and smack away at the loser you caught.
Essence Shift.
This is the best ability in the game, and you don’t even have to activate it, that’s a passive yo. With each whack you lower the enemy stats and build your own AGI up. This will shock enemies who think they can win a fight, and look like they’re doing so at the start, and will make them end up watching the death screen. Grab this, max it, get kills for permanent AGI steal.
Make sure you KS (kill secure) your teammates kills as much as possible to boost this.
Depth Shroud.
Yes, this can save allies, but who cares about those guys. Use this if you panic and might die. Hide inside until your ult builds your HP up enough so that you can go kill things again, then go do that.
Shadow Dance.
This is why invisibility and lack of vision on the enemies behalf is so insanely good on Slark. Activate it to be a man-fighting god, or to save your bacon. And rely on the passive to detect where the enemy has vision, and to slip in and out of fights – coming back with full HP, wherein the enemy has not had a chance to restore their own.
Talents.
Level 10: +9 Strength
If you are dead, then you will not be getting any kills. If you have lots of deaths on your KD, it is much harder to brag to anyone who will listen. So, we get some strength here to ensure we have enough bulk to stay alive, and keeping murdering squishies for our ego boost.
Level 15: + 20 Attack Speed
Now that we’ve got some bulk, we shift our focus back to murder. The faster we get our attacks in, the quicker we build essence shift. So, they have less survivability whilst you build damage. Boom baby.
Level 20: +120 Dark Pact Damage
We grab this because 0.8s is bugger all, and the extra dark pact damage means that we can quickly clear lanes and move on, whilst also building some general AoE damage for team fights. But mostly you want to be doing a sneaky and creeping up on unsuspecting noobs as they’re trying to have fun away from their team – then ruin that.
Level 25: +65s Essence Shift Duration
We’re grabbing this to ensure that our shift is absolutely 100% going to last the duration of the teamfight. We built it up, the pounce off to the next victim, and the next. Elsewise, the extra second of ult isn’t anywhere near as impactful as guaranteed long lasting stats. That’s the secret to racking up kills in the late game, and ultimately achieving your goal: talking smack in the post-game chat.
Credits
| Program | Founding Writers |
| Author | Luke Cowling |
| YouTuber | Dota Watch and Learn |
| Publisher | MGN |
| Game | Dota 2 |