My Mirana Nightshade Guide

[DthDealer]

This is STILL not for a completely new person, it assumes basic microing abilities and an understanding of game mechanics. I'm working to make it simpler.

One Important Thing to Remember!
I am not god, do not follow my teachings like a religion, be flexible. Necessity often overrules tradition.

Mirana Nightshade, The Priestess of the Moon
(*Not to be confused with Moonrider.)

Found in the Dawn Tavern
(*Bottom Right in Sentinel)

Contents: (To jump to a section in Internet Explorer press Ctrl+F and enter the code in brackets)
Backstory [BKS]
Skills and Stats [SNS]
Skill Build(s) [SKB]
Item Build(s) [ITB]
Gameplay [GPY]

Backstory [BKS]: Amatriarch and high priestess... blah.... serves as light in darkness... the bottom line is she kills nooblets and feeds em to her pretty kitty. I wonder what kind of litter box it needs.....?

Skills and Stats: [SNS]
Skills:

Starfall

Calls down a wave of meteors to damage each nearby enemy. If enemy is farther than 600 range, it has a 60% chance to still hit him. One random enemy unit within 200 aoe will get hit again for half the damage.

Level 1 - 75 damage per wave.

Level 2 - 150 damage per wave.

Level 3 - 225 damage per wave.

Level 4 - 300 damage per wave.

One of my favorite farming skills. This spell has a low cooldown, and high total damage-mana ratio. It can hit all targets within 600 units and 60% of targets between 600-900 unit range. It even hits one unit twice within 200 units, great for that ambushing BH. Spam this spell as much as you can near as many targets as possible once you get your arcane ring. Due to the low cooldown, you can argue that getting an Arcane Ring and Leveling this up might be more preferrable to leveling Arrow First as you can harrass better...

Elune's Arrow

Fires an arrow to a location with deadly precision, dealing large damage and stunning the first unit it strikes. Stun duration increases based on how far the target is, ranging from 0.5 to 5 seconds.

Level 1 - Deals 90 damage.

Level 2 - Deals 180 damage.

Level 3 - Deals 270 damage.

Level 4 - Deals 360 damage.

Elune's Arrow is a great damage and disabling skill. You can actually use this to kill people until mid-late game, where you'll be using it mainly as a disable in order to get a starfire and a few additional attacks in. The mana cost remains constant (100) as you level it, this is one of the reasons I say that this should be leveled first as your mana is restricted early on.

Leap

Mirana's wild Frostsaber leaps forward into battle, empowering allies with a ferocious roar upon landing. Movement and Attack Speed bonus lasts 10 seconds.

Level 1 - 400 range. 4% speed increase.

Level 2 - 450 range. 8% speed increase.

Level 3 - 500 range. 12% speed increase.

Level 4 - 550 range. 16% speed increase.

Leap is a good pursuit and retreat skill, do not neglect to get at least one point early on. All levels cost little mana, 60 at level 1 and 45 at level 4. So, use it as much as you want.

Moonlight Shadow

Turns Nightshade and all allied heroes invisible. If Invisiblity is broken, it gets restored after the fade time during the shadow duration.

Level 1 - Lasts 7 seconds. 2.5 second fade time.

Level 2 - Lasts 9 seconds. 2 second fade time.

Level 3 - Lasts 11 seconds. 1.5 second fade time.

Moonlight Shadow's usefulness is arguable, it has a high mana cost, and moderately long cooldown time. It's basically a 200-300 mana, 7-11 second wind walk. It's great for a gank or an escape, if you've got the mana. But imo it would prevent you from getting in that one extra starfire or arrow that you need to finish.

[left]Stats:

The Below section is a basic overview of her starting stats and stat growth, for any calculations you might desire to make.

Above is the backstory and growth per level.


As you can see she is an Agility hero.

The Starting Stats, can be ganked!

Ending Stats, Full Stat+

Full equip as in this build

Skill Build(s): [SKB]

One Important Thing to Remember!
I am not god, do not follow my teachings like a religion, be flexible. Necessity often overrules tradition.

This is the skill build I like:

1. Elune's Arrow

(disable for early HK's and a decent amount of damage)

2. Leap
(only one point til later levels, better for your damage)
3. Arrow
(More damage)
4. Starfall
(More damage, farming potential.. it hits EVERYTHING (Certain range))
5. Arrow
(More damage)
6. Ulti
(Good for escape, or ambushing)
7. Arrow
8-10. Starfall
(getting this up there with arrow's damage)
Then Max +Stats
Then Max Leap
Then Max Ulti
IN THAT ORDER

Item Build(s): [ITB]

One Important Thing to Remember!
I am not god, do not follow my teachings like a religion, be flexible. Necessity often overrules tradition.

Now for Items:
Item Build 1:

Start off with a ring of protection and a ring of regeneration. (550Gold, you'll have to wait a sec for it to accumulate, but dont be late to your lane!)

Farm until you NEED to heal, which should take a bit with ring of regeneration and good gameplay.
You should shop in about 2000-2500gold increments to help reduce total downtime.

Buy boots (500g) and complete a Headdress of Rejuvination (Scroll + Ironwood branch at 282g). Another ring of protection and a Sobe Mask (500g), completing a ring of Basilius).
And if you have enough, an Energy booster (1000g).
This comes to a total of 2282g if you want to aim for exactly that.
After you've gotten your items, back out to farm and kill!

Now when you need to heal again or have accumulated 2302g, go back and shop! This step is very important in farming for your final two tier4 items, whatever they may be.

Buy your Arcane Ring recipe (525G)
Make a Nathrezim Buckler and Complete Mekansm (1777g)
Now you can Heal yourself and your allies (providing them with mana too) for a cost of 10 mana. Which I like and is great for pushing (healing creeps too so they can be your tower shield) or running (keeps you alive longer or gives you mana for leap) or chasing (an extra spell).

The total cost of this base item build 4582g, if you've managed to farm that quickly.
What you do next is up to you, and your patience. Being able to spam starfire and take a moderate beating and keep coming makes farming incredibly easy.

Now here's my explanation for the noobish choice in items:
You're skills are deadly enough early on to not require you to build many damage items, so you'll need regens and staying power in order to be there for your skills to matter. And pushing along with the 30 or so creeps that will come along with you (with your plethora of auras)into their base always helps.

Having the creeps in the way of pesky towers is good.
The mana regen allows you to spam your skills more to BE more deadly.

The Hp regen allows you to stay away from base longer (helping you earn the 18k gold needed for final build)
This has advantages over rushing for a tier4 item in that you will be making farming for that opponent who is rushing for it much slower...

I cant think of many disadvantages.. Point some out and I'll address them.

Item Build 2: Same as above, but with Manta Style!
Now a bit of Info about Manta Style and how different items work with your clones... In case you wanna rush Manta early.

Manta Style Produces 2 Clones when activated which do 40% damage and take 300% damage. These are damaged more by Purge and other spells that specify they that they do more damage to summoned units/clones.
You cannot have more than 2 clones from manta style, I've tried it with tinker's rearm.

Here's a Quick reference from the DotA Forums at [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
One should Look at that guide, it holds many interesting things.

The following items and effects DO work on images

• Stat bonus items. Images gain hit points from strength, armour and attack speed from agility, and bonus to damage from your primary stat.
• Feedback (Diffusal Blade/ Manta Style). Only works on melee images. Ranged images do not burn mana.
• Critical Strike (Crysallis / Buriza ). Just the critical strike ability is transferred to images not the bonus damage from the item.
• Evasion (Butterfly, Radiance)
• Raw movement speed gain items (Boots, Treads, Teleboots)
• True Sight (Gem of True Sight)
• Radiance burning aura (Radiance) - Note that while images get the burning aura only one such aura will apply to an enemy at a given time (i.e. 4 images do not mean 4xdamage from the burn aura). Also note that only the aura damage and evasion bonus transfers to images. The bonus damage from the Radiance item itself does not transfer.
• Hit Point bonus items (Vitality Booster, Point Booster, Soul Booster, Heart of Tarresque, Manta Style)

The following items and effects do NOT work on images (despite what the attack animation might suggest!)

• Direct bonus to damage items (i.e. items that say +x to damage do not give that bonus damage to images)
• Direct bonus to armour items (Chainmail, Platemail, Aegis etc). Note: Java's Premium Naja Siren Guide says the opposite so I am prepared to be corrected on this point!
• Increased Attack Speed percent (Hyperstone, Treads, Hand of Midas, Monkey King Bar, Butterfly)
• Lifesteal (Satanic, Mask of Madness, Mask of Death, Helm of Dominator)
• Frost Attack (Eye of Skadi)
• Chain Lightning (Maelstrom)
• Cleave - Percentage Splash Damage applied to nearby targets (Battlefury)
• Bash - % chance to stun (Cranial Basher)
• Maim (Sange, Sangeyasha)
• % Chance for Microstun that disrupts concentration spells and gives bonus damage (Monkey King Bar)
• Corruption effect - minus to armour upon hit (Stygnian Desolator). Bear in mind however the images will benefit from the corruption given by your main hero
• Return damage % from melee attackers (Blademail)

One Important Thing to Remember!
I am not god, do not follow my teachings like a religion, be flexible. Necessity often overrules tradition.

Gameplay: [GPY]
Now the actual gameplay:

One Important Thing to Remember!
I am not god, do not follow my teachings like a religion, be flexible. Necessity often overrules tradition.

React to Sudden Contact
Do your usual harrass/farming thing for a while, and if anyone (SA or BH are the most fun) backdoors you then just arrow them (They'll be right on you so you have to act fast as stun wont last long) Starfire (if no creeps are near they should get hit twice).
Now what you do next depends on their attack power (How much damage you've taken) and how they are doin after your counter. If he's badly off (or you've got friends) just leap randomly so you wont be taking more damage and begin firing on him (your attack and move speed aura from it helps). He'll either chase (in which case he'll likely die) or run (start chasing and when leap recharges, leap after him and starfall (it'll likely be recharged too.).

Breaking Contact (Conducting a Retrograde)
Now if you're doin badly or he has friends, start movin towards base (this gets you turned in the right direction) and leap. Immediately right-click towards base again.

Ambushing
Now for ganking, Let someone else use their disable BEFORE you do.
Elune's arrow is like meathook, it hits whatever it comes to first and it's easy to miss, but it wont hit allies (whew). Better that you have your target standing still and help in a longer stun. Leap as close to the gankee as you can and arrow, starfire and attack.

It's better to have a friend with you in ganking, but if you dont want one then do it as you would react to sudden contact, getting close to them, arrowing, starfiring, and leaping after or away... depending.

Farming
Farming is relatively easy as a ranged attacker and your movespeed is decent even without boots... So not much of a prollem there.

Last Thoughts
She has great escape, disable, and damage potential, help your teammates out with heals (from mekansm) and mana (arcane ring).
Grab some easy kills with arrow and Starfall.
But dont do anything stupid like running off into the woods after a Moonrider or ambushing more than one hero alone, she's an Agi Hero and somewhat fragile for all her escapes and disables.
All the normal gameplay bits of wisdom apply.

FAQ:

One Important Thing to Remember!
I am not god, do not follow my teachings like a religion, be flexible. Necessity often overrules tradition.

Q: How does Elune's Arrow work?
A: It flies almost directly from your position to the aimed position. It works similar to Pudge's Meat hook in that it works on the first target it comes to. Unlike Pudge's Meat hook, it does not work on friendly units. Not good for denying, but then I wouldnt use it to deny anywho.

To employ it you can do as you would for Pudge's Meat Hook, and go to one side of the creeps where where there's a clear area between you and your favorite enemy. Or you can get right on top of the enemy and cast it on them.

Q: How does the stun on Elune's Arrow work?
A: It is directly proportional to to the distance the target is from the firing point. Similar to the Enchantress' Impetus, except with stun duration. So getting on top of an opponent and casting it on him is not always a good idea. It goes anywhere from 0.5 seconds to 5 seconds.

To best use it to escape, leap away first then shoot back towards your enemy. To pursue, fire ahead of your enemy in the direction he is going. With a leap you can be on him in as little time as possible to make the most out of your stun.

Q: HELP! I jumped in the air and got stuck!
A: This glitch plagues many Nightshades. Hopefully you have no enemies nearby. Either wait for leap to recharge again and jump or use Boots of Travel to Teleport. Try not to jump towards cliff areas as these tend to get you stuck the most. I've been killed a couple of times to learn this lesson.

Q: This caster keeps ganking me! I want to slowly pull his intestines out through a small hole and feed them to him!
A: If it's just one person, avoid them when they take it into their heads to cast at you. If it's a multitude of people chasing and ganking... Do the same to them with your team. If they have been fed to much with earlier gankings, then I'm afraid you're screwed, cheer up and do better next game!

As for Fosaken's issue:
I've faced a few of the early game nukers like Slayer and Lich, but have never really had a prollem farming. I haven't met any legendary players yet. And I'm sure I'd quickly become charred Cat Chow.. Or frozen..

The thing of it is, you learn the mannerisms of the caster classes after a time playing, and if they move a certain way, they're gonna cast a certain spell. Not just the spell animation... But character movement.

Take for example, Nightshade herself, If she moves to one side so there's a clear line between you and her, you know she's gonna try to cast Elune's Arrow.

Also, a lot of Lina's spells are shorter range than her main attack, so if she moves TOO close to creeps (a lina should'nt normally do this b/c of low hp prollems) or starts movin too close to you, you know she's gonna cast.
Just use intuition to get away from such casters.

All that aside, most casters are plagued by the same low hp prollems as Nightshade. Use Nightshade's abilities to make those problems apparent. This build allows you to cast more freely, and to heal back a little bit of what they've taken.

Q: What's this bug/exploit I keep hearing about?
A: I do not know. The mechanics team at the official DotA forums are always closemouthed and limit discussion on the matters of bugs.
I can only offer speculation.
It occured after the release of 6.38
I assume it was with the new hero.
I heard it was an invincibility exploit.
She becomes invincible while jumping...
Jumping is kinda... strange sometimes.

Q: Insert Question Here
A: I need you, the reader to ask questions so I can paste them here.
[size=3]Try to reference basic info from this site before asking silly questions though. If it still bugs you, ask me, or someone in the DotA forums, or GzP. Preferrably me, so that I can learn the answer and post it here in this guide.

V1.01 Started reformatting the Guide
V1.02 Getting tired, having some prollems formatting.... so.... imma go to sleep and work on it tomorrow, hope to get some thoughts on the direction the formatting is goin too..
V1.03 Changed the format a bit. Spaced it out a little. There are some .. quirks with the edit post system. Added some on skill section.
V1.06 Added a bit more info, left the format as the edit function left it, I'm worried more about info at this point. Added Disclaimers everywhere.

[DevoX]

Its Boring man. Can you add some picture? And change the words color.

[saint]

If you could, add the Hero Introduction in the guide itself. Otherwise, I will have no other option than to close it. The general game play is good, but your item and skill build, seems messy some how. Try making it look more, "in-order" and pleasant with the eye. One last thing, take off the Quote Tags. It's not necessary since it's your guide. The tags are only used in this section mostly when the guide is not written by the person itself and the credits have to be given to the original author.

Can you add some picture? And change the words color.

You have been saying that in every single guide made since I advised you to do so in your own guide. Be patient. Pictures and font colour can come later. Unless he hasn't update his guide in a long time, I don't see any reason for you to keep pushing him or anyone else especially when he just made this.

[DevoX]

You have been saying that in every single guide made since I advised you to do so in your own guide. Be patient. Pictures and font colour can come later. Unless he hasn't update his guide in a long time, I don't see any reason for you to keep pushing him or anyone else especially when he just made this.

ok Take your time i dont mind after you have finish you can pm me and i'll come and look at your guide.

And put a FAQ Section also.

Eg. Whats the diff between meat hook and arrow.

[DthDealer]

I'll add pics from the replay in a bit
and I'd like to address questions as they come up. New Char
This be a first draft, some of the other guides i've seen have been revised upwards of 10 times ;) i still got time
Hero intro? like the background story and stuff?
EDIT: Hmmm imma play a few more games and check a few feasability issues...
Oh yeah, Thx Saint

[crushmixnshake]

Youre build is very prone to team gang bangs ^_^)!

Although its very inclined in teamwork though.

That is if you know how to maximize her ulti ^_^)! Its not just an escape mechanism ^_^)!

[DthDealer]

I dont use her ulti often.... Only used it a couple of times to gank.This IS a very support oriented build, most often you dont win a game alone imo.When you're pushing it not only keeps you alive longer, it keeps your allies alive longer.And the only way that you SHOULD die is if you're actually ganked, with 2 or 3 disablers, but if you are supporting 2 or 3 of your buddies such ganks become harder for your opponents to pull off =).

[saint]

I agree with the FAQ coming up, but you can add the questions which are commonly asked when members post their questions. I like the update. It looks good. Do you stick to only one build or do you have other builds?

Heroes usually have a few types of skill and item build. I would like to see what else you have installed for us ^_^

[fen92]

It's a average guide ,but you din't note down the important of Night Shade, to say ,lack of something.

[fosaken]

hmm with this guide i guess u probably plyin with either few noobs opponent or damn good teamwork, coz its not easy to farm with this hero since its lack of hp n damage. .
a good lich can easily pwned her in sec with this build. . .