The Heroes in Dota 2 - An Introductory Guide for Spectre

Introduction

Despite the fact that the overall MOBA scene is slowly stagnating, Dota 2 still retains the vast majority of its player count and remains one of the most popular games in this genre. With over 120 different heroes and items to choose from, it’s not hard to see why so many people from all over the world prefer to play this awesome game. One of the biggest challenges ahead of every new player is to learn what each hero does. This is undoubtedly a very time-consuming process that many people just don’t want to get through. If you are one of those people, you will definitely appreciate our hero highlight series.

Having said that, today, we will take a look at a hero that’s notorious for being able to carry her team to victory - Spectre. Let’s see what do we need to know about one of the strongest carries in Dota 2.
 

Basic information about Spectre

Regardless if you like this hero or not, she is capable of demolishing the enemies’ lineup when she has the needed farm. Spectre is a melee, agility hero that’s only played as a carry. Although there were people who tried to put her elsewhere, that just didn’t work. Similar to other hard carries out there, she is capable of doing insane amounts of damage. Nevertheless, she is also very weak early on and can be easily stomped by a stronger laner. That’s why you won’t see people picking this hero in PUB games that often. If Spectre has good support on her lane and farms well, the enemy will be in for a lot of trouble.

Let’s take a look at the abilities of this amazing hero:

• Spectral Dagger is the only active ability, apart from her ult. When used, Spectre releases a black dagger that hits the target she chose. Apart from damage, this ability slows down the enemy while giving Spectre and her allies bonus movement speed. In addition, the hero also gets the power to move through cliffs and other objectives as long as she is moving on the black path.
• Desolate is one of the strongest passive skills during the later stages of the game. It allows Spectre to do up to 65 bonus damage per hit whenever the enemy that she’s attacking has no allies near him. In other words, she can rip through heroes that are alone like a knife through butter. Apart from just damage, this ability also reduces the vision of the hero for a couple of seconds.
• Dispersion is another passive ability that can do wonders during late game. It allows Spectre to soak up as much as 20% of the incoming damage and reflect it to the enemies nearby. Apart from just being tankier, this spell allows to hero to completely dominate the late game. Once she gets this spell to level 4, the enemies have to be very careful when they attack her because it’s even possible to kill yourself first. In other words, Spectre is like a walking Blademail.
• Haunt is the last spell in the arsenal of this hero and it’s pretty cool. When this ultimate is used, an illusion will spawn near each hero and it will start chasing him down for the duration of this ability. Apart from damage, this spell also allows Spectre to teleport to her illusions as long as their up, which means.
  
  One of the best ways to take advantage of this ult is to cause havoc during team fights. Haunt allows this deadly carry to farm on one side of the map and still join the team fight.
  

The best items and the worst counters

As a hard carry, most items that suit this role will be just fine. However, unlike most carries out there, Spectre doesn’t rely entirely on her physical damage. The strength of this hero comes from the “immortal” status when she gets a couple of defensive items. Thanks to her two passive skills, she has enough damage to deal with her opponents without buying tons of damage items. 

With that said, here are a couple of very important items for Spectre:

• Radiance is one of the best choices for a pure damage item on this hero. It allows Spectre to accelerate her farm by a lot and also deal tons more damage during team fights. After all, the effect of this item also works on illusions.
• Diffusal Blade is also a very popular choice when it comes down to items because it gives good damage.
• Hearth of Tarrasque is a must on Spectre as it makes her super tanky.
• Eye of Skadi has the same effect as HoT but instead of just raw Hp, this item provides more overall stats, more damage, and a slow effect, which is very strong.
  

In terms of counters, Spectre has none when it comes down to the late game. However, there are many heroes during the early-mid game that are capable of making her life a living hell. Here are just a couple of examples:

• Slark - a very dangerous carry against Spectre because he can easily still tons of Essence Shifts.
• Tinker/Zeus both do a lot of magical damage, which makes killing Spectre early on a walk in the park.
• Timbersaw is a tanky hero that also deals tons of magical damage, which makes him a good fit against Spectre during the laning stage.