Winter 2017 — Battle Pass: Path of the Skirmisher

Pardon me. Do you have a moment to talk about how Magic Sucks?

7 min readFeb 3, 2017

This path is oriented to those players who like to farm a lot and have a good impact in the game. Up for the grabs is the Fervent Conscript set for Anti-Mage, with a nice white variation as a second style. But getting all 3-stars on this quest won’t be easy if you don’t hone your farming skills and lower your greed sense, because in 7.01 getting picked off solo farming a lane is very punishable.

RECIDIVIST

Get a Killing Spree (3) / Dominating (4) / Mega Kill (5).

Basically, stay alive while you are killing people. Pick whatever hero you like for this task, except a support, which may have some problems. If you aren’t confident with fragile heroes, pick a strength-based carry, like Sven, Lycan and Tiny, to name a few.

Shootout for the Necrophos players, as his ultimate Reaper’s Scythe secures the kill. Just be sure to place it at low HP.

FREE RANGE CLICKIN’

Kill 60 / 140 / 220 creeps, 10 / 20 / 30 of them must be Ancient Creeps.

That high number can be accomplished using heroes who can farm a lot, like Anti-Mage, Luna, Shadow Fiend, Medusa and Naga Siren.

Without taking into account the jungle, you may have to spend at least 25~30 minutes in the match farming heavily.

FIND NO SANCTUARY HERE

Across multiple victories: Destroy 10 / 20 / 30 enemy Shrines

There are 7 in the game. Two of them are vulnerable after bringing down the three Tier 2 towers of the enemy team, the rest is inside the base.

You can spend at least 4 victories doing this, so be prepared and have a lot of patience, because not every match will allow you to bring down all of them. Unless you get Mega Creeps, which can help a lot.

PERFORMING TO EXPECTATIONS

Across multiple victories: Kill 10 / 20 / 30 or more enemy Heroes.

Same as Recidivist, but here you have more window of opportunity. In best case scenarios, you may have to win 3 times.

HARD TO WALK AWAY

Use an Echo Sabre to slow enemy heroes 10 / 20 / 30 times

There is no better way for this quest than going for heroes with Echo Sabre as a good early item. These are Monkey King, Lifestealer, Riki, Slark, Spirit Breaker, Sven, Tiny, and Wraith King. Other options, but less likely because it’s not so good to build, are Ursa, Juggernaut, Phantom Assassin.

Echo Sabre is a good item that makes you hit twice, slow briefly, and grant more mana regeneration, in the first minutes of the game. Consider this always if your hero can benefit from both, even if you can’t kill anybody at the end.

As Wise Guy says, the best hero to do this quest is Monkey King. His ultimate, Wukong’s Command, applies the buff from his illusions.

FLUID DYNAMICS

Evade or disjoint 30 / 45 / 60 enemy Hero attacks, 1 / 3 / 5 must be spells

I would personally recommend Windranger. Windrun grants 100% evasion, and going for Blink Dagger will allow you to disjoint most of spells in the game. I’m talking about Core Windranger, not Support Windranger, but you mileage may vary.

Other options to consider are Puck, and Anti-Mage with someone granting Solar Crest over him. Phantom Assassin is also a good alternative (Blur, up to 50% Evasion) but Phantom Strike does NOT disjoint projectiles as it say’s on some Wikis.

Glad Glad says you can also do this with Brewmaster, but take care of using your ultimate, Primal Split, to disjoint and effectively use his spirits. His passive, Drunken Brawler, will grant evasion almost instantly.

GET ON WITH IT

Kill 2 / 4 / 6 enemy Heroes before the game timer reaches 15:00.

Consider heroes who have killing potential at level one, specially those with an early power spike. Spirit Breaker is my personal favorite, after Pudge, but you can also take Nukers into the mix: Lina, Slardar, Tiny, Lion, Night Stalker or even Zeus, to name a few. If you want a carry, Slark could do the job.

I would also recommend to set early rotations. 15:00 is very late for the laning stage.

LET ME SHOW YOU SOMETHING

Accumulate 3000 / 4500 / 6000 damage to enemy Heroes after leaving Invisibility.

Bounty Hunter armed with Dagon is my personal favorite, but as of today his roaming abilities have been nerfed, so you are playing between position 4–5 (no much farm, or XP) unless you set ganks successfully.

Riki, Clinkz, Mirana, Nyx Assassin and Slark are options to consider. As always, Shadow Amulet is a good item to pick on any hero who can benefit from the invisibility, and from there Glimmer Cape can be your best cheap option to cheat on this quest.

For the record, I did this quest with Legion Commander + Shadow Blade with 3 stars. It helped a lot having 4 Carry Heroes on the other team, leaving the one and only Support poor as hell.

DOUBLES DOWN

Across multiple victories: Perform 3 / 6 / 9 Double Kills(s)

A Double Kill happens when you kill two heroes inside a 20 second window (some reports say 18s, and others 10s).

There is a lot of heroes to cover in this, basically because you should take into account heroes with good spells to follow up a fight. Even if you win without a double kill, you can still try in the next victories.

STORM IN A BATTLE

Deal 2000 / 4000 / 6000 damage to enemy Heroes with Chain Lightning from Mjolnir or Maelstrom.

It’s better to leave this for heroes who need this as a Core Item or to speed up the farm, like Sniper, Windranger, Juggernaut, Faceless Void, Medusa or Alchemist.

Getting 6000 damage it’s an easy task. Maelstrom proc chance is 25%, bounces 4 times and deals 120 damage, so that means that it should hit or bounce 50 times on heroes.

Black King Bar and Linken's Sphere are recommended if you are getting shut off from the game when the teamfights happen, and where you can do most of this quest.

KNEE-BUCKLER

Deal 600 / 750 / 900 or more damage to an enemy Hero in a single physical attack.

For this, the only one hitter who can pull this without too much help is Phantom Assassin.

Second choices are Sven and Templar Assassin but only if you have Daedalus and Desolator together to actually do 900+ damage from a critical.

By the way, you should prioritize targets with low armor, like fragile heroes. The game will count the damage even if the enemy hero is 1 HP. What it counts is the damage dealt after reductions, not the HP removal from it.

BREAKING POINT

Use Silver Edge to Break enemy Heroes 10 / 15 / 20 times.

Silver Edge is a costly but wonderful item when you know what it does and when you have to rush to it. Break means to disable for a brief time any passive ability a Enemy Hero has, such a Bristleback’s Bristleback. You heard that right.

Consider Silver Edge for any carry that builds this as escape or initiation item. Monkey King, Drow Ranger, Slark, Legion Commander, Lifestealer, you name it.

PURCHASING POWER

End a game with a GPM of 300 / 400 / 500 or higher.

For this quest, let’s look at the Top 5 heroes in economy: Alchemist with a lot of ground, followed by Anti-Mage, Luna, Shadow Fiend and Medusa.

That should put into perspective who you should play for this quest. While getting around Alchemist and being fully aware of the farming capabilities it has is not easy, specially when you must also be aware of your itemization vs the enemy team.

For the rest, remember to farm while being close to your team, and keep your jungle clean and safe (dewarding, stacking) so you can use that bump to keep your GPM high.

YOU KEEP ME GOING

Steal 2000 / 4000 / 6000 HP from enemy Heroes using sources of Lifesteal from physical attacks.

Good bye Helm of the Dominator. For this I recommend heroes with innate Lifesteal from right clicking: Legion Commander, Monkey King and Wraith King. For these heroes, the best recommendation is to pair this with Satanic, which grants 175% for 4.5 seconds.

There are better odds for this quest if you also pair your hero with a teammate building Vladmir’s Offering, but I don’t think it should be necessary if you are way ahead in the damage department.

A VOID PUNISHMENT

Damage 2 or more enemy Heroes with Mana Void a total of 2 / 4 / 6 times, and deal 1000 / 2000 / 3000 mana burn to enemy Heroes.

Dealing Mana Burn is easy, as his Mana Break can deal 64 of mana-burn per hit at Level 4. That means that you should burn 3000 mana with around 50~100 hits, depending on how much you level up this ability.

For Mana Void, the recommendation is to always wait and see what hero has the biggest Mana Pool, and who has almost all his mana depleted. Asking for teammates to ping their values while you wait to engage is the best option for executing Mana Void with actual damage.

Good lord, that is the last guide! If you missed out the other two, here they are: