INTRODUCTION TO INVOKER

You like to play in the mid lane and you have about a thousand hours on Dota 2. You know what time it is? It's time to learn how to play Invoker. I know that it is scary, but you gotta do what you gotta do, and any mid player that doesn't have Invoker in his skill set just isn't all that respectable. Hopefully, reading this will help some of you on your way to learning one of the strongest heroes in the metagame. As an added bonus, he is extremely fun to play and may ruin other, more one-dimensional heroes for you (I'm looking at you, Sniper).

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Invoker and Meepo are the two heroes in Dota that are the hardest to master. Meepo tests your micromanagement skills, as you have to control up to five different units at the same time, all of which you have to keep alive. Invoker, on the other hand, tests a different range of skills: primarily your ability to read fights and pick your moments. You also have to remember combos, time skill-shots, and micromanage too. So basically, Invoker tests every aspect of your gameplay. This is because Invoker actually does everything. He is without a doubt the most versatile hero in the game.

What exactly is it that makes Invoker so versatile? One look at the skill menu at the bottom of the game screen, and you'll notice a difference from most other heroes. Invoker has four skills, like most other characters, however he also has two blank slots. In addition, he has his ultimate unlocked from level 1. This may all seem a little confusing, so let us look at Invoker's skills in detail.

The complications arise when you consider what the skills do. Invoker's basic skills are Quas, Wex, and Exhort (Q, W, and E respectively). There are two aspects to each of these spells: a passive component and an active component. Whenever Invoker levels up his Q, W or E, he gets a passive bonus to his basic stats. Q gives more strength, W gives more agility, and E gives intelligence. 

The active component is a little more complicated. Whenever you activate the Q, W or E, Invoker will get an Orb of the respective colour floating above his head. Q orbs are blue, W is purple, and E is orange. You can have a maximum of three orbs floating at any one time and of any combination. Each orb gives you a bonus depending on how many you have floating.  For every Q orb you gain bonus health regeneration, W orbs give you attack speed and movement speed, and E orbs give you damage. For example, with three Q orbs you gain lots of regeneration, while with three W orbs you have lots of attack speed and movement speed but no bonus regeneration. With one of each, you have a little of everything.

The only time Invoker has no orbs floating above his head are at the very beginning of the game when you haven't skilled anything yet. They have no cooldown and you can change up the orbs whenever you want. If you need to heal, switch to three Q orbs. If you need to chase or run away, use the W orbs, and if you're hitting people then use E. The floating orbs also have another purpose, which brings us to his ultimate- Invoke. Whenever you use Invoke, you will create a spell that will go into one of the two empty slots mentioned earlier. The spell you create depends on the orb combination you have active at the time of invocation. As such, Invoker has access to ten different spells, any two of which he can have stored for use at any time. This vast range of options is what makes him the most versatile hero in the game. If you want to know which orbs Invoke what, there is a question mark on the Invoke icon that opens a pop-up menu with the ten different combinations

As such, it may seem as if the difficulty with Invoker comes from remembering all these spells and continually casting them, however this is a misconception. When you first start playing, other players will often criticise you by saying "slow hands". Take solace in the fact that these people do not know how to play Invoker. The greatest difficulty in playing the hero stems from the cooldown on his ultimate. At level one, Invoke has a 20 second cooldown, which is longer than most fights. As such, in the early game you will only have access to three spells in a fight: the two you had stored and one more. Choosing these spells is crucial to transitioning into the late game, where Invoker truly shines. 

You may wonder, which spells should I choose? This very much depends on your skill and item build, to be discussed in the near future. For now, what you need to know is that there is only one item that is an ever-present in Invoker builds: Aghanaim's Sceptre. With a maxed out (Level 4) Invoke and a Sceptre, Invoker has a two second cooldown on his ultimate, which is what you need to cast four, five or even all ten spells in a fight.

What this means is that the most important thing for an Invoker player is experience. The hero needs levels and he needs them bad. So when you play Invoker, you should almost always get a Hand of Midas alongside the Aghanaim's and, once you do, the possibilities are limitless.

Nabban T. Haque is a Manchester United and Dota 2 fanatic with a degree in English Literature. Feel free to contact him at [email protected] if you want to talk about books, e-sports or Zlatan Ibrahimovic.