Should you pick Spectre?
Image by CiDDi
Spectre is always at the top of win rate charts for pub games and her prowess doesn’t diminish even in higher level matchmaking. However any discussion of the hero soon devolves into how she is virtually untouched in the professional scene and how she might be overrated, easily countered or is an inconsistent pick.
Stats don’t lie and statistics for Spectre tells how not only is she one of the strongest carries in the game right now, but is possibly the strongest hero in the pub environment. She wins more than 60% of her games in Divine+ pubs and is the most successful hero in the game in the last month.
There are many “ifs” and “buts”, however it is futile to argue against this hero: Spectre is a consistent pick, she is not overrated and while she can be countered, the same can be said about every single other hero in the game. Should you pick Spectre? Absolutely. How do you play Spectre effectively? The answer is a little bit longer.
Choosing your build
There’s always been a split between two distinct Spectre builds: one revolving around Radiance and one revolving around early fights and stats. Both of these builds are viable in the current patch, with the latter no longer completely overshadowed by the former after the changes in 7.14.
Slow and Steady
Radiance build is the default build for Spectre for a reason. She benefits from the Radiance aura perhaps the most out of all heroes in the game, giving her global presence and counter-initiation potential along with massive amount of spreaded damage.
The typical progression in this build involves Ring of Aquila and Power Treads for early tankiness, situationally followed by either Vanguard, Drum of Endurance, Blade Mail or even Urn of Shadows. Though the last option is no longer as common, since the changes to the stats Urn provides.
This Spectre build wants to complete Radiance as early as 20 minutes, with 3-5 minutes added if the situational items are purchased.
The reason this subsection is named “Slow and Steady” is because this build doesn’t maximize the hero’s effectiveness in killing the enemy during teamfights. The spread damage is massive, but it doesn’t burst down a single target, but rather makes the whole enemy team lose their HP slowly.
It is Steady, because it maximizes farming efficiency of the hero. Without access to any meaningful AoE or waveclear, Spectre without Radiance farms excruciatingly slow. Given the downtime between ultimates, period when Spectre really doesn’t want to fight, it allows the hero to progress through her items and slowly but surely guarantee herself the dominant position in the late game.
Spectre is not the hardest carry in the game when it is her 20k net worth vs. 20k net worth of the enemy carry. She is among the strongest carries in the game when it is her 40k vs. 40k of the opponent.
By building towards late game, slowly purchasing all the most slot-efficient items Dota offers, she can almost guarantee herself teamfight victories and even though winning a fight doesn’t always means winning the war, it certainly helps.
Fast and Furious
The other build, slowly gaining momentum in both Pubs and Pro scene is the one revolving around early Phase Boots into Yasha, Manta Style and Diffusal Blade. Sometimes it is even complemented with Mask of Madness.
Yasha and Diffusal Blade are the two most cost-efficient DPS items for Agility Cores. They increase both their Attack Speed and Attack Damage, while Phase Boots ensure the extra movement speed to prevent kiting and loss of damage associated with it.
This type of Spectre tries to carefully participate in as many engagements as possible, getting last hits on kills and earning her gold through ganks and skirmishes. Whereas the Radiance Spectre is often the prey, stalked by the enemy team whenever her ultimate is on cooldown, this type of Spectre isn’t as reliant on Haunt and is much stronger when it comes to pick offs, since she doesn’t need to commit her ultimate.
Unlike Radiance Spectre, this build also goes for the Desolate damage talent at level 10. It doesn’t increase Desolate damage by much, but skipping Radiance means earlier Manta Style and since all illusions benefit fully from Desolate, the potential effect is 45-60 extra pure damage on each attack.
So far this build might sound superior to the Radiance Spectre and in certain scenarios it is, however this Spectre can’t farm at all. Despite having decent agility from the items, hence decent attack speed and damage, clearing neutral camps becomes a very inefficient, but often the only way for the hero to get gold.
You can’t show in lane alone, since it will immediately prompt a gank and this Spectre really doesn’t want to be initiated on. You also can’t clear stacks efficiently, so the only option for you becomes finding solo enemy heroes, preferably alongside one or two of your teammates, and killing them for their bounty.
It is also worth noting that this Spectre is often a desperate measure, “Hail Mary”-type of commitment. We’ve all been in a situation where it is 25+ minutes into the game and you just barely have enough gold for Sacred Relic. You can try to finish your Radiance by 28-30 and then slowly attempt to crawl back into the game, or you can right-click purchase Diffusal Blade and attempt to catch the enemy carry off-guard, allowing comeback gold mechanic to do its job.
One other thing worth noting is that “Fast and Furious” Spectre also generally goes for highly specific items that work best against core matchup she is presented with. Unlike Radiance Spectre, who often simply tanks up and gets as many stats as possible to have the ultimate teamfight presence, this Spectre wants to be able to kill the enemy hard carry as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
Closing Thoughts
Spectre hasn’t been considered overpowered in the last couple of years. There weren’t constant Reddit threads about how broken she is or how it is annoying to see her win every game she’s in. In fact, community would complain about Slark (50% win rate) or Tinker (49% win rate), but would mostly dismiss Spectre and all discussion about this hero would end with “she’s not played by the pros so she must be bad”.
The reality is, no matter how high your MMR is, your team coordination in a pub game will be a far cry from what good professional teams have. Every team decision will have a delay and even when every single member of a pub team knows his job and agrees to play as a team, you would still take at least a minute to achieve the same goal as a pro team would do in 45 seconds.
These 15 seconds every minute is more than enough breathing room for a Spectre player. She will be ganked, but she will be ganked later and will have a chance to survive. The enemy team will pressure her towers, but they will do it later and it will give her the chance to come online. Ultimately, she is a lot more likely to get to the later stages of the game and at this point her impact from pressing a single button would probably be comparable to the impact of half the enemy team.
Spectre is a nice hero for a mm, but she can`t play on pro-scene
stronk passives
nice article Sir ~
"Ub game." Not to sound like an ass, but how do spelling errors like this get through? Do the writers not run their articles through spellcheck?
Spectre is op and always was. The reason why she is not picked on pro scene is probably just meta brain desease.
If you are a carry player and like winning.
как же стыдно эти статьи читать когда они об общего к частному переходят хоть немного
консультируйтесь хоть с кем-то кто что-то понимает в доте или оперируйте общими фразами
it was picked a couple of times in ESL but it mostly got countered
Лучший герой в доте.
Nice article for my fav hero :)
When I got losing streak or 1 or two lose in a row I just spam this hero to make green again.
Nice article for my sweetheart, best girl in dota. Given in a right team situation, spectre is a beast. U just need to pick spectre when the time is right. Isnt that the case to every carry? Yeah, but in my opinion spectre is really situation-dependant hero.
just pick an all push lineup and pressure tier 3s before 20 mins and spec will be the most useless carry ever
Nice article
nice article
I've just win with this hero XD
Nice Article man
The answer is yes u must!
Yes first pick Spectre free mmr for me(I'm kidding pls ban that hero).
How to win against Spectre:
Step 1: Pick Undying
Step 2: Profit
Pick spectre IF enemy offlane isn't rediculously overpowered dual, AND you have adequate lane support that knows that keeping you happy is the only win condition they need to worry about. - With these factors spectre can basically go toe to toe with just about any enemy lineup.
The simple answer is no in the pro scene, winning the lane stage has become the most important aspect of Dota. VP is a big threat in the pro scene, and picking Spectre just helps VP end the game even faster. VP is known to win all lanes and end games at 20 minutes, like Spectre is gonna keep farming after the ancient die and get 40k net-worth to destroy the enemies??
in the last 17 games with spec i won 15, thats pretty much 100% as long as your team is even half decent.
most games i went solo off lane because i know i can easily catch up later and relay on vanguard and blaid mail to have a huge impact in team fights.
she can be very good early game just by maxing her E and standing i the middle soaking dmg, not to mention the moment she hits 6 she can be anywhere on the map to help get a kill.
overall she is my favorite carry and it is freaking hard to lose with her
Currently, there is no place for Spectre in the pro-scene because of the prevalence of strong offlane dual lanes which can dominate the safelane. Gone are the days where you can dedicate two supports to control the lane with pulling and stacks while zoning out the lone enemy offlane. A trilane versus a strong dual offlane usually translate to the trilane losing in gold and exp.
Spec is not a op hero the reason she win 60% of matches is coz most ppl in pub don't know how to counter spec
Spec is well balanced hero and doesn't need any nerf or buff
I believe pros don't play spec because spec need high farm n high XP to participate in team fight and all pros know how to counter spec so even farmed spec can be easily killed like paper...
Best counter for spec are timber dk io huskar undying ls even bs can counter if u play good bs
Items to counter spec silveredge bkb Nullifier
I love to play spec its my most fav hero but I also know how to counter it ez if enemy picks it up...
Dk,huskar,timber weak vs spectre late manta pure damage,only medusa is better carry in late
She is of course a SITUATIONAL pick and no wonder why she has a high win rate because mostly people will pick Mercurial last. Even Guardian like me pick last and of course she has a lot of win rate.
I might sound like a noob but I never actually know how to play spectre.
I know how to counter him but just don't know how to play her.
.......
It's not even about anything like "people in pubs don't know how to counter her" or similar. People in pubs have simply no way to be as coordinated as pros - and to counter Spectre you have to play coordinated. So no matter the player's individual skill, Spectre in pubs will always be way, way above that in pro games. There are 4 possibilities here for balance; totally rework her, let her be very underpowered in pro games, let her stay overpowered in pubs or change the meta insanely much.
Should you pick her?
If you care about climbing MMR you probably should. Even if you are below average player, if you spam her you will probably get a hang of her so that you can have 55% plus win rate until way out of your MMR.
If you don't care about MMR and don't find playing her fun (which I think most people don't do) then don't.
Spec and Zeus are OP in pub. Based on my experience, not only once, many times when I was playing spec I was devastated on the lane especially with passive supports, but somehow in the post 30-min mark, I actually got a rampage and a turn around after finishing radiance + vangu on 20-25 min mark, Dispersion is ridiculously strong that makes spec very tanky and kill every heroes around him unless he got Break or the enemy got spell immune
Pick Lifestealer and gg.
Have any of you ever tried Mjollnir on Spectre?
Best item on the hero in my opinion, (maybe aside from Manta Style) yet I never see Spectre players other than myself pick it.
Spectre is so good in some certain situations..
I love Spectre. I just carried an impossible comeback with her last night. I was basically durable af with 103k dmg output at late game.
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/3931613587
Рано или поздно, Спектра расфармится, а расфармленная Спектра нажатием одной кнопки вносит в драку больше импакта, чем половина команды противника.
Ха-ха! Ха-ха! Ха-ха!
Самый сильный Carry в Dota!
Late game almost immortal..u just can fountain dive with just 4 good items... HOT manta butterfly and radince...
But she is a situational pick offcourse... If the opponent team is not much dependent on their main carry,then there's high chance of loosing the game with spectre inside 25 minutes...she needs loads of farm...
But late game, MFS, seriously unbalnced... Even if breaked, there will be manta and blademail coming your way...that +8% =30 % dispersion in total is too much in late game...and that with manta and the haunt illusions to which you deal more damage, means you get more damage reflected with the dispersion than the real spectre.... U just have to tp out and counter push...can't fight...
the reason spec is not picked in pro scene is the pro game meta is of early to mid game snowball ....
good lane leads to good mid game and that leads to game as shown by VP and Liquid so spec along with am doesn't fit with that meta....