Double trouble dota 2 total biscuit dying

General DiscussionHow to play Lina?

I always fail with her. Should I be aggressive or farm a lot? Magic build vs physical build? When to pick her besides “not to lose lane hero as 9th pick”? Mechanically she is v. easy, but I struggle in terms of decision making, and teamfights. I usually take range, hp, magic, slave talents. My usual build – 2x null, bottle, phase, eul, bkb, shadow blade, aghs, linken. I can’t carry the game 1v9 as her. I would like to master her as a safe 9th pick when I need to win my lane.

Skip Phase Boots, get a faster Euls.
Then ideally,
BoT for double TP to fully regen mana. Double trouble dota 2 total biscuit dying

If you need armor, get Lotus Orb or Shiva’s.

skip boots, dagon 5

Play pos4 lina and carry monkeys from there. Face roll until divine 6

Never really played Lina, but my experience with Caster types are to work around power spikes. Know when you’re the strongest and snowball from there. Whatever you build won’t matter as much as your levels but don’t take my word for it. I’m just a scrub ancient.

Playing around your power spikes applies to literally any core hero.

Go mid, skill your stun first. If its a melee hero then congrats you won your lane, if its a ranged hero then you can usually agro with your right click due to your long range whilst using your spells to secure last hits.

When you get level 6 you pretty much have a free kill in your lane after which you can press the mid tower and rotate to the other lanes. If the enemy mid laner is hard to kill then gank the sidelanes, preferably the offlane so you can kill the enemy pos 1. I would say the vast majority of the hero pool will die to you when you are level 6 so its pretty easy to secure other lanes as well as mid.

At this point if you are ahead then you need to press the lanes. Lina snowballs fast but I find she falls off super late so you want to be looking to force fights in the early-mid game and secure objectives before the enemy builds bkbs. If you are good you should be able to press barracks by around 20-25m.

As for the build. I recommend starting with a couple mangoes and a mantle to build into nulli. You will only need 1 nulli in the early game in my experience. Make a decision early as well, you should always go bottle but it you arent farming well in lane build phase boots and then euls. If your lane is easy and you are snowballing I highly suggest you skip phase boots entirely, keep brown boots and upgrade them to boots of travel after you get euls. Euls is obviously your core item and you will want it literally every game and if you can have euls online within the first 10 minutes of the game then you will be the strongest hero on the map. I find on Lina that going maximum utility is the way to go. Build a shadow blade to enable faster ganks deeper into the map but also pick up a blink and maybe even a hurricane pike. I wouldnt say BKB is a core item but it you are getting bursted down by magic damage and effects that are unavoidable with euls then you should grab one. You shouldnt be terribley at risk of dying to right clicks however due to the versatile escape nature of the build. You are not a frontliner either and with good positioning you should never really be the first engagement target for the enemy team.

To scale well into late game you should avoid building items which bolster your magic damage and favour items which amplify your right click instead. Due to fiery soul most of your damage is actually right click based and I find Lina is one of the most potent tower pushers in the game. Build a desolator and/or an ac to push faster if your team has poor push potential. I also find MKB to be an excellent pick up and its pretty sick how fast you can melt enemy heros with it. You shouldnt have much trouble farming either, Lina flash farms super fast and you can comeback from behind it you have to just by clearing out the jungle. I played a game earlier where my computer crashed twice causing me to lose the midlane and go 1-7 but I managed to comeback and carry the game just from flash farming the jungle and getting a couple
key pick off kills when I reached my power spikes.

Lastly though make sure your team has a hard carry. Whilst I find Lina to be an excellent semi carry and versatile hero I find she is very hard to solo carry with. Most of that comes down to the other 4 heros your team has. I find myself constantly getting a high number of kills as Lina yet even games that you stomp are easy to lose if you dont have a harder carry. I find her similar to other glass cannon heros such as Sniper or Tinker in the sense that no matter how strong you are and how many kills you collect you are always at risk of being killed and losing the game if you arent careful 🙂

Gank when you have your ult, flash farm when you dont.