Would you like to know how to Play Puck in Dota 2?
Arguably the most mobile and elusive hero in Dota 2, Puck misdirects and bamboozles enemies while disrupting their formations. With its multiple escapes, Puck is a relatively well-balanced Midlane hero that becomes a daunting initiator in the Midgame. Consequently, learning How to Play Puck in Dota 2 can be the key to gaining fast MMR.
Though Puck has quite a high skill cap, his multiple initiations and nuking abilities allow him to dominate team fights. Apart from this, it also has disables in its impressive arsenal, which leads to an incredibly high Midlane pick rate. Adding onto its overwhelming traits, Puck has multiple farming mechanisms and often tops the networth charts.
Furthermore, this combination of spells allows Puck to have one of the best potentials for pushing and clearing creeps. Moreover, its variety of playstyles has also allowed players to experiment and succeed with many different builds. This is a testament to its above-average winrate and why all should learn How to Play Puck in Dota 2.
Usually favoring enemies with a lack of lowdown and low mobility, Puck functions quite well against many heroes. Some of these heroes include Sniper, Crystal Maiden, and Terrorblade. In contrast, it works extremely well with heroes like Kunkka, Invoker, and Magnus, as they can quickly jump in and take full advantage of its initiations.
Puck’s Abilities
For its first ability, Puck propels its Illusory Orb that travels in line. While traveling, this magic orb damages any units in its path and deals a maximum of 300 magical damage. Moreover, this spell is its first escape as at any instant in its travel, and Puck can transport it.
Waning Rift allows it to relocate to a location 400 units away while silencing and damaging any units. At its final destination, Puck silences targets in a 400 radius for 3.5 seconds and deals 250 magic damage. In tandem with Illusory Orb, this ability has enough damage to clear creep waves and push almost instantaneously.
Along with its first two escapes, Puck’s third ability, Phase Shift, is also an incredibly efficient escape mechanism. By using this ability, it travels to the realm of the intangible and becomes unobservable and invulnerable. Moreover, this move can remove any targeted projectiles and ranged attacks, making it unmatched in quick escapes.
Puck’s main disable and team fighting tool is Dream Coil which allows it to leash the entire enemy team potentially. These leashes limit enemy movement and stun them whenever they break their link by moving away. Furthermore, this crowd clearing ability also deals damage, both on the initial link and when a leash breaks.
How to Utilize its Abilities
With a relatively low cooldown and a matching mana cost, Puck can usually spam Illusory Orb to secure creeps. However, it is essential to consider the escapes one can make with this enticing spell. Players may find it beneficial to send the Orb in the opposite direction to confuse enemies. Moreover, they can also use it to catch support or initiate.
Another aspect of this ability that many use sparingly is securing vision with it. This is because Illusory Orb provides a vision of the path it travels in for five seconds. As a result, players can scout objectives, Fog of War, or Roshan by using Illusory Orb from a safe distance. It works best in combination with Blink Dagger to confuse opponents.
Waning Rift is usually the first or second spell used in a fight depending on the method of initiation. This stems from the reason that Phase Shift silences targets and stops them from having a chance to lockdown Puck. As it can also teleport Puck up or downhill and away from the epicenter of fights, it is an excellent escape.
Early on, Phase Shift works best in dodging enemy harass, like QOP’s Shadow Dagger and many target unit stuns. Players should focus on first launching an Orb, then hiding until it is time to teleport to one’s desired location. This maximizes efficiency, and it becomes essentially impossible to stop Puck from escaping.
As Dream Coil can target units in Fog of War and those that are invisible, it can stop enemy escapes. In addition, Dream Coil has a low cooldown for an ultimate ability. Thus Puck should always use it to catch enemies. Many learn to place Coils, so they break soon after use.
Item Build
As the laning stage begins, Puck heads to the Midlane and usually buys healing and items to boost stats. Being conservative at this stage helps as Puck soon builds a Bottle, which assists one in staying ready to fight. Building towards Null Talismans to boost its magic damage output is usually the way to go.
Moving on, Boots of Speed to aid its extremely low turn rate and movement speed increases ganking potential. Moreover, Puck usually aims to complete up to three Null Talismans, along with a Magic Wand, Bottle, and Brown Boots. After this, however, the build completely depends on the situation presented.
For its choice in Boots, Power Treads or Arcane Boots can both help accelerate farm and buff attributes. An item that never sees compromise is Blink Dagger which is a part of almost every player’s Puck build. However, one can decide whether to build this item early in the game or much later on.
Another great addition to its arsenal is Witch Blade, which is a signature item for getting solo kills. Not only this, but Witch Blade gives Puck stats, attack speed, armor, and even enhanced projectile speed. This item is usually done by the fifteen to twenty-minute mark and helps secure pickoffs.
Though Puck can build many different items at this point, Eul’s Sceptre of Divinity is a great choice. This is because it provides another source of lockdown and a further escape, making it impossible to catch Puck. Additionally, Sange and Kaya is also a solid choice and amplifies its insane magic damage output.
Laning Stage and Gameplay
As a midlaner, Puck should ideally focus on securing last hits while denying allied creeps. To do this efficiently, one should focus on using spells as stated above, especially on the ranged creeps. The ranged creeps decide the creep equilibrium and provide bonus gold and XP.
Besides this, Puck should always focus on stealing enemy power runes due to his extremely high mobility. These power runes can turn the lane’s favor instantly as the right rune enables effortless killing. Another point worth noting is how one should use Puck’s creep clear to move onto the small creep camp swiftly.
After the laning stage and even as soon as Puck reaches level 6, it works best by ganking other lanes. With its insane mobility, Puck moves through the map faster than many can. Apart from this, constantly shoving waves to apply pressure and secure a farm for oneself has the highest priority.
Smoking with one’s Offlaner and Supports to apply pressure constantly is something Puck excels at. A lead in the early to mid-game is extremely important as Puck’s potency decreases quite a bit later on. Finally, Puck players need to read the map and identify where they can catch supports or core pickoffs.
Escapes, disables, nukes and initiations; Puck has it all and is an extremely mechanic-heavy hero. Though learning its power spikes and mastering its abilities is hard, it is extremely worth it. Professional players abuse this hero, and it’s now time all players learn How to Play Puck in Dota 2.
