Traxex, The Drow Ranger - DotA Hero Strategy Guide

Range: 600 | | Move Speed: 300 | Primary: AGI
Str: 17 + 1.9 | Agi: 22 + 2.9 | Int: 15 + 1.4
Damage: 40 - 51 | HP: 473 | Mana: 195
HP Regen: 0.76 | Mana Regen: 0.61
Attack Speed: 1.33 (+ 22% IAS) | Armor: 2.1

Traxex was a skilled archer in her oppressive underground homeland, the Underdark, until she grew sick of her kind’s evil ways and fled to the surface world. She joined the Sentinel for greater good, and though still somewhat distrusted for her origins, she has proven herself time after time. She is an excellent huntress, debilitating her foes with her arrows and disabling spellcasters.

Why Drow ?

Because thats simply not true. Drow if played right, is an incredibly deadly opponent if in the right hands. Her orb effect is incredibly annoying and the slow to both movement and attack speed is very deadly and is completely cost free. AOE silence creates chaos and fear and frost arrows prevents them from fleeing. Her ult allows insane neutral creep farming ability (last hit regular creeps unless pushing of course) with decent attack speed (which my build focuses on). Trueshot Aura is good… late/mid game with agility items (which the build focuses on).

Skills

Frost Arrows (R)
Induces a freezing effect to the hero’s attacks. Each attack slows the enemy’s movement and attack rates.
Level 1 - Slows attack rate by 5% and movement rate by 10%.
Level 2 - Slows attack rate by 10% and movement rate by 20%.
Level 3 - Slows attack rate by 15% and movement rate by 30%.
Level 4 - Slows attack rate by 20% and movement rate by 40%.
Mana Cost: 12 Cooldown: N/A

Insane slow and good attack speed slow. Great for team ganks as well as your ally will get to hit the enemy as they are silenced, slowed, and fleeing which is the best case scenario for a Drow.

Silence (E)
Stops all enemies in an area of around 300 AoE from casting skill spells. Doesn’t silence item spells.
Level 1 - Lasts 3 seconds.
Level 2 - Lasts 4 seconds.
Level 3 - Lasts 5 seconds.
Level 4 - Lasts 6 seconds.
Mana Cost: 90 Cooldown: 15

One of the best team spells to break channeling and to cause enemies to flee allowing for kills. Both a defensive and offensive tool as most smart players would rather nuke or stun you then flee and die. In my opinion, mastering this spell is the key to success with Drow.

Trueshot Aura (T)
An aura that gives friendly nearby units bonus damage to their ranged attacks. Only amplifies base damage and damage gained from bonus stat items.
Level 1 - Increases base ranged damage by 7%.
Level 2 - Increases base ranged damage by 14%.
Level 3 - Increases base ranged damage by 21%.
Level 4 - Increases base ranged damage by 28%.

Good spell late game if you accumulate a large amount of agility due to it increasing your agility based damage in an aura. But early game stats are better due to the needed survivability and low overall agility accumulated as a young Drow.

Marksmanship (M)
The Ranger’s accuracy has increased to the point where she can slay lesser enemies in one shot. If she has life steal item and slay an enemy in that shot, she will gain a % of the remaining HP of that creep.
Doesn’t work on Ancients.
Level 1 - Slays creeps 10% of the time.
Level 2 - Slays creeps 15% of the time.
Level 3 - Slays creeps 20% of the time.
Mana Cost: N/A Cooldown: N/A

The neutral camp clearing skill. Better the more attack speed you have, obviously. Abuse it in the neutral camps to get your key items quicker.

Skill Order

1. Frost Arrows
2. Stats
3. Frost Arrows
4. Stats
5. Frost Arrows
6. Marksmanship
7. Frost Arrows
8. Silence
9. Stats
10. Silence
11. Marksmanship
12. Silence
13. Stats
14. Silence
15. Trueshot Aura
16. Marksmanship
17. Trueshot Aura
18. Trueshot Aura
19. Trushot Aura
20-25. Stats

Item Build

Justification of Item Build: The core items Lothar and Butterfly are there in order to aid in 2 things that Drow needs 1. Agility and attack speed, and 2. Survivability. Lothars is good for avoiding ganks and when people decide to attack you in a team battle. Butterfly is essential for the 25% evasion and Agility (which is increased by trueshot directly) and attack speed. Buriza is for the crits which will improve your DPS and crysalis is easily farmable after Butterfly for a quick boost to DPS. Aegis and Rapier are luxury items for a long game and ensure a victory. The reason why my build focuses on agility and attack speed is because agility directly correlates to your trueshot aura, attack speed (for reliable slowing with FA), and damage all things that benefit drow. The quicker you shoot, the less time inbetween each arrow fired, allowing for a smaller gap for people to run away. A fleeing enemy covers less ground if you are shooting faster, they cover less ground during the time the frost effect wears off in between each arrow, and their odds of survival steadly declines as your attack speed rises. You may be thinking “Zzz… Standard Lothar build on Drow.” Well good you know the build already I’m not going to make it fancy for no logical reason.

Strategies

A. Early Game

Go to mid lane or top for Sentinel, and mid or bot for Scourge. Mid is nice because you are within close walking distance to the fountain and Drow should be close to town in order to build her wraiths and treads early. Early game you have two main goals: 1. Stay alive, and 2. farm. Here is my reasoning for buying tangos and circlets: Tangos give you a short burst of regen. You have a very small hp pool. A ring of regen, although very useful, is not as effective when your hp pool can get chipped below a easy nuke limit. You want to have full hp at all times when u do get hit really hard, thus short powerful regen bursts take precedence. The circlets although minor effecting your stats, add in with the stat boots your levels provide giving you a decent early game base damage improvement and focuses on scaling your IAS and damage up to par since your base damage at the stat is very low. You should NOT try to gank anyone this early unless you have an ally and it is easy to slow and kill your opponent. Drow is frail early game and you should never chase people beyond their towers. Stay far back. Early game kills on Drow are extremely bad. Tower hug if you are on top or bottom lane and heroes are missing. EVEN IF ITS THE ONE IN YOUR LANE and you know he could own you. I cannot stress this enough… early game play CAUTIOUSLY with this hero!

Your Role: Cautious farmer

B. Mid Game

Once you have your treads and wraith bands and a few levels of silence this is the time to start looking for gank opportunities. Your role here is to assist primarily. Go behind someone in their lane who is pushed to far and silence + slow them after you ping for a efficient backstab. In the event of a team battle look for any heroes with channeling abilities or disables. Silence them first, try to get multiple heroes in one silence but primarily try to silence channelers and disablers. Pick off heroes who are low hp and will most likely run instead of fight you, they are easy prey. Pick targets that are int and agility because they have less hp typically and will run instead of fight you. Clear neutral creep camps with your ult whenever you can.
Farm and assist your team. Try to gank with your teammates, don’t gank alone.. You are easy prey for alot of heroes 1v1, use your Lothar’s any time you are getting melee’d by a strong opponent, don’t get cocky.

Your Role: Gank Assist (Slower/ Silencer) / Farmer

C. Late Game

This is where Drow really shines. You should have your Butterfly by now and this is when you can single out heroes alone easily, go behind them and open with silence and volley them with arrows. Your attack speed should be high enough to where you can slow them permanently upon ambush and easily kill them before they have time to get away from your freezing wrath. ALWAYS use silence before you attack anyone! this will scare them and make them run. This is what you want to happen. Save Lothars for escaping, don’t use it for ganking unless you know you will be fine. Crush their team in team battles by silencing their most dangerous casters and unleash your speedy barrage of frost. Again, ideally you should be working with your team, so that you don’t have to run in the event of a opponent that rushes you head on .

Your Role: Heavy damage / Team Silence / Slower

Have fun using Traxex…