General Tips on How to Carry as Silencer in DotA 2

In this guide, we’ll be going over why DotA 2‘s Silencer is such a versatile ranged intelligence hero that can fill the role of support or carry fairly easily. When enemy heroes die within range of Silencer, he permanently steals two intelligence for each death and adds it to his own.

His spells make enemy heroes lose mana and become disarmed based on their use of spells. Meanwhile his ultimate ability, Global Silence, prevents every enemy on the map from casting spells for a few seconds which is a powerful tool in team fights and in the hands of those with good map awareness.

Things to be Aware of:

• Some people will be adamant that you only play full support. If you’re reading this, you obviously don’t want to do that. That being said, if you are the only character that could possibly play support on your team, suck it up and buy the courier. You may even have to buy the upgrade too. 

• Silencer can grow into a powerhouse but remember that he is as squishy as a wet sponge. You can solve this by getting Shiva’s Guard in late game or Scythe of Vyse to turn enemies into harmless critters so you can slice them up easier or run away.

• Glaives of Wisdom, a Unique Attack Modifier, gives a bonus to Silencer’s attacks based on a percent of Silencer’s intelligence stat. Most of the time, more intelligence is better than a flat damage increase as you also get better mana regeneration. 

How to Play: 

• It is important that you be in and SURVIVE team fights. You steal the intelligence of every enemy hero who dies in range of you or to one of your spells. If you are dead when an enemy dies, the effect doesn’t occur.
   
• Use Last Word to engage and/or finish off fleeing enemies followed by a Curse of the Silent if you can.

• Use Force Staff to close in on enemies, save allies, and even push an overly aggressive enemy hero towards your team and away from his or her group.

• Glaives of Wisdom should be on every time you attack an enemy hero after the skill reaches level 2 or 3. 
  

General Skill Build Up to Level 6

• I go with Curse of the Silent as my first skill since it’s a relatively cheap harass spell that can affect more than one hero with the right positioning.

• After that, I alternate between Last Word and Curse of the Silent before putting a point into Glaives of Wisdom at level 3 or 4. Why? At low levels, the damage you’ll put out from the skill is somewhat small while your spells have a higher chance of finishing off an opponent. 

Last Notes and Tips

• Keep in mind that you potentially can shut down your opponents in team fights so often many players will focus fire you to death. 

• A Silencer carry build works best against a team with skill heavy characters. The key is to hit your ultimate skill at just the right time. Queen of Pain just blink in? Silence. Storm Spirit charging in? Silence. Pudge chomping down on a teammate? Silence. Lina charging in with her ulti off cooldown? Silence. Any team fight? Silence. Getting tired of the word silence? Silence!

• Curse of the Silent is powerful against heroes with low mana pools and high-cost skills and weak against heroes with cheap spells with low cooldowns. 

Photo Credits: 

DotA 2 Silencer by BigGreenPepper via Deviant Art
DotA 2: Nortrom, The Silencer by Geying via Deviant Art