A guide to Puck the Faerie Dragon which after enough practice is guaranteed to ♥♥♥♥ off your opponents!
About the Author!
Hello there ^^
My name is Gunnolf but most people call me Gunny.
I am your typical Dota player, who however gets slightly competitive at times by virtue of the fact that I have been playing this game close to a decade.
I play almost every hero in the game and I hope to share my experience and knowledge, however flawed, with the rest of the playerbase.
Although Puck may have fallen out of favor recently in the metagame he is still perfect for people like me who seek small adrenaline rushes through quick escape plays.
Introduction: Basic Traits!
Puck the Faerie Dragon is an extremely mobile hero who is best known for being a highly unpredictable and slippery target.
Most Commonly he is played as an initiator and ganker, with spells that are equally useful for super-aggressive manoeuvers as well as daring escapes.
Expert use of Puck's abilities will let you appear out of nowhere, suddenly leave your enemies crippled and disadvantaged, and get away in the blink of an eye - but mess up your timing or misjudge the situation, and there is little left to save this fragile Hero from death.
By virtue of his abilities in combination with the following recommended items, I dub this as the ' Puck Rodeo Clown Build'.
Item Choices: Rodeo Clown!
The following build is designed with the purpose of giving puck the ability to control the flow of any fight as well as so many escape options that dying becomes virtually impossible. The list is as follows:
- Treads
- Blink Dagger
- Eul's Scepter of Divinity
- Force Staff
- Situational Item
- Situational Item
Blink Dagger
It should come as no surprise that this is essentially a core item pickup on Puck, since it has tremendous synergy with his abilities allowing him to get in and out of combat easily e.g.
- Blink into combat --> Silence (with Waning Rift) + cast Dream Coil --> Illusionary orb and Ethereal Juant to safety
- Phase Shift --> Blink to safety
Eul's Scepter of Divinity
As most of you already know this item is generally a useful pickup if your team requires another disable. The item does provide extra movement speed and mana regeneration, however that is not the only added benefit for a hero such as Puck. The duration of the cyclone when cast is 2.5sec which when added to the duration of Waning Rift (3.25sec) Provides puck with close to a 6sec invulnerability window which can allow him to escape e.g.
- Blink into combat --> Illusionary orb and Ethereal Juant to safety --> Cyclone from Euls --> Phase Shift --> Blink to safety
Force Staff
This is an overall good and cheap utility item for saving allies and forcing enemies into bad spots.
Apart from the obvious, Puck can additionally use it on an enemy hero caught in his ultimate to forcibly break the Dream Coil to trigger a stun.
Item Choices: Situational Combo
Due to the 'Rodeo Clown Build' only requiring three items to be completed, that leaves two slots open for anything that strikes your fancy or is deemed necessary to stay relevant within the game.
Aghanim's Scepter + Refresher Orb
In the circumstance that my team has quite abit of aoe dmg in the forms of spells or cleave,the combined aforementioned items on Puck can effectively trap enemy heroes quite closely without any means of escape.
Aghanim's scepter provides an unbelievable upgrade on Puck's ultimate as it Increases Dream coil's duration, coil-break damage and coil-break stun duration. Making Coil-break stun pierce spell immunity, thereby making bkb's lose some of their value.
The Refresher pickup is simply for irritating your opponents while you multicast all your items and abilities once again.
Purpose!
Although you won't actually pose any direct threat to your enemies with the suggested items in your possession, being ignored is precisely what will allow you to lead your team to victory.
With so many escape mechanisms at your disposal enemy heroes will effectively think twice before attacking you . In the eventuality that they don't you will be able to use the utility items offensively by disrupting channelling spells, locking down enemy carries or forcing them into danger.
However, in the eventuality that they do decide to focus poor old you, you'll have a total of six spells that will help you disengage easily from the fight.
Conclusion!
As with any build, there are some obvious weaknesses:
- Since the top three items of this deck are all utility, you lack the ability to get any kills yourself without the assistance of your team especially at a high skill level.
- It takes quite abit of time to refine in terms of play. Just because you have all these new shiny buttons to play, does not mean you should be spamming them at a moment's notice. Stay calm and collected and uses when appropriate in either an offensive or a defensive manner.
Having said that, I have play-tested it in pubs as well as ranked games (4k+ mmr) and so far it has proven to be extremely fun.
Thank you so much for reading this build, if you did in fact like it or found interesting I would appreciate an upvote.
I also welcome constructive feedback and potential suggestions to improving this build.
Needless to say disruptive comments will just be deleted.
Thank you very much for the time you have spent.
Stay Safe
Gunnolf
Items & Skill Build
( Side Lane - Rift Build )
