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# BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO FACELESS VOID (SAFE LANE)

February 28, 2020 by PsiGuard

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Tango

Healing Salve

Iron Branch

Iron Branch

Iron Branch

Boots of Speed Magic Wand

Monkey King Bar Nullifier

Linken's Sphere Diffusal Blade

Aeon Disk Hand of Midas

Aghanim's Scepter Daedalus

Satanic Heart of Tarrasque

Mjollnir Black King Bar

Aghanim's Scepter Butterfly

+175 Chronosphere AoE +450 Timewalk Cast Range

20

+40 Attack Speed +70 Time Lock Damage

15

-1s Time Walk cooldown +10 Strength

10

+15 Damage

## Beginner's Guide to Faceless Void (Safe Lane)

PsiGuardFebruary 28, 2020

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## Introduction

This guide was written with contributions from community members like you! Thank you to the following DOTAFire members for contributing to this guide:

Please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions if you have feedback on the guide. Without further ado, let's get started!
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## Abilities

**Abilities**

**Max Priority**

Put points into R whenever possible. Max E first to improve the damage and chance to proc, which drastically improves your DPS. Max Q second to lower the cooldown on your dash, since it's important for mobility and defense. W can be maxed last since you'll only be casting it once per fight, and 6 seconds of duration is enough for the early and mid game.**Talents****+15 Damage** - You'll need all the DPS you can get to bash brains during your ultimate. Strength will improve your survivability, but if you play your cards right, you won't need it.**+70  Time Lock Damage** - Again, more damage, this time for your bash proc. The max E rank damage will go from 40 to 110 which is a big jump. 1.5s faster cooldown is useful for survivability, but if you play safe while the ability is on cooldown, you usually won't need it.**+450  Time Walk Cast Range** - Here's where we break the pattern of taking DPS talents. This talent nearly doubles your Q range which makes you much harder to catch and drastically improves your engage range. 45 Attack Speed is also pretty tempting, but by level 20 you should have pretty solid DPS and can afford the extra utility.**+175 Chrono Sphere AoE** - Big bubble makes it easier to catch lots of enemy heroes. By level 25, you should be able to kill multiple frozen enemies if you catch them in a perfectly placed bubble. The alternative is 25% Backtrack, which gives you a 25% chance to ignore any instance of damage. That's also pretty powerful, but Faceless Void works best when you don't fight fair and don't let enemies hit you most of the time. If you're getting blown up or enemies are forcing fights while your R is on cooldown, you could consider this to give you a chance to live through enemy burst damage.

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## Items

**Starting Items**

Quelling Blade is highly recommended to improve your early last-hitting. You can buy it at the side shop, and it quickly pays for itself by securing you extra CS.  Faceless Void scales hard but is vulnerable without levels and items, so early stats and healing consumables will allow you to keep farming for your early core items. You shouldn't need much mana since your cooldowns are so long early, so no need to start with any mana sustain.

**Early Game**

Wraith Band offers cheap, efficient stats for early farming and fighting.  Boots of Speed are useful to pick up early since they make you safer against ganks and improve your ability to get in and out of enemy range quickly when farming.
 Magic Wand is a cheap stop-gap to improve your laning safety. With the extra stats and healing, you'll be much harder to punish while farming, which is more important than rushing damage items right away. This is usually a decent pickup overall, but the  Magic Stick is especially useful early against heroes that spam spells in lane.

**Core**

Power Treads offer the most raw attack speed and damage (from agility) out of all the boots options. Remember to switch to Strength to give yourself a little extra HP when you're in danger of dying, and switch to Intelligence to regenerate mana if you're low. Most of the time you can sit on Agility though.
 Maelstrom is a cheap and effective farming tool and also provides some AoE damage when you  Chronosphere multiple enemies.  Time Lock gives you a free second hit on the target when it procs, which means double the chance to proc the chain lightning. This is an easy upgrade to  Mjollnir later by slapping a  Hyperstone on it for more attack speed.

**Situational**

**Extension**

**Extra Gold?**

Moon Shard can be consumed for extra attack speed once you're at full items. An ally can also purchase it for you if you're still working on your main build, so don't buy it if your teammate already used one on you. Since  Time Lock scales so well with attack speed, you can pick this up in the mid game for some efficient DPS and consume it later once you need the inventory space.
 Boots of Travel and  Boots of Travel 2 are great assets in the late game since they'll let you cross the map very quickly, especially after a death and/or a buyback. The higher movement speed is also pretty nice. Late game you'll have a ton of DPS items and  Power Treads won't be as crucial to your damage, so feel free to switch them out once you have enough gold.

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## Early Game

**Early Laning**

As a safe lane carry, Faceless' early laning phase is pretty basic. Your job is to get as many last-hits as possible and stay healthy so you can remain in lane and farm for a long time. Faceless is pretty weak in early fights, so don't expect to apply a lot of pressure in lane. That said, some lane dominant supports can definitely set up kills for you if the enemy overextends, so keep an eye on what your support is doing so you know when to follow up with  Time Walk.

Time Walk has a very long cooldown early, so you'll want to plan out what types of trades or abilities you can mitigate with it and in which cases you'll want to save the cooldown. A good rule of thumb is that a single basic attack is not worth casting Q to heal, but an ability cast or multiple basic attacks will usually make it worth it to Q.

Your followup to plays made by your teammates will largely be limited to extended fights or all-ins. You can win trades with  Time Lock, but it's pretty RNG-based in the early game. Be sure you'll win a 2v2 trade (or 3v2 if you're following up a gank) before committing to an extended fight with  Time Walk.

**Power Spikes**

Once you get level 6 and have access to  Chronosphere, your ability to contribute to fights improves a bit. The stun duration is pretty long even at rank 1 of your R, but unfortunately your DPS will still be low at this point and chances are you aren't going to kill someone from full health during the CC. This makes your R more of a setup tool for your teammates, so they can hit the targets inside the sphere from range while you deal what damage you can. In emergencies, you can use R to survive if you're being focused down, but it's a long cooldown so try to use other tricks like Q and teleport scrolls before you're forced to waste your R defensively.

Your quickest power spike options are  Mask of Madness and/or  Diffusal Blade. Mask of Madness will improve your DPS during  Chronosphere through its active, while  Diffusal Blade will help you stick to targets without needing your R to hold them in place. If you aren't going for a very PvP, active style in the mid game, you're free to use  Hand of Midas and  Maelstrom to farm up a storm and start hitting those extension items.

Faceless' damage scaling is largely based on his  Time Lock rank and his attack speed. Hitting max rank on your E and buying as much attack speed as you can get your hands on will drastically improve your DPS. This makes Faceless' power curve a little smoother than some other heroes, since his damage is based more on the number of attacks he can get off rather than finishing huge damage items. That said, obviously you'll notice a big spike in damage if you finish something like a  Daedalus.

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## Mid Game

**Keep Up the Farm**

Hand of Midas,  Maelstrom and even  Mask of Madness are all great tools for farming. Due to the high impact of your  Chronosphere, you can look to contribute to fights if you're nearby and have your ultimate available. However, Faceless is really weak in the early and mid game, especially without his R, so if it's on cooldown you should focus on farming above everything else.

Faceless' late game scaling is extremely good, so you're in no rush to start fights if the game looks to be going slowly and largely uneventful. Every minute that you can freely farm brings you closer to 1v5 potential with a well placed  Chronosphere. Take free kills if you see them and respond to fights in progress when necessary, but make sure you spend as much time as you can afford farming for items.

**Don't Get Caught**

Obviously no one likes to die in DotA, but it's especially important on late game carries since every death significantly delays their power spikes. You'll want to ensure you don't enter doomed fights or get caught out while farming. Avoid overextending in lane and use wards to keep yourself safe while farming the jungle. If an area of the map is controlled by the enemy team, find somewhere safer to farm.

You'll only have  Time Walk and to some extent  Chronosphere to protect you from getting picked off, so watch the map carefully and judge for yourself which enemy heroes can threaten you even with those abilities up. When those dangerous enemies show elsewhere on the map, you'll be able to take riskier farm as long as you have your Q (and maybe R) off cooldown and ready to use to escape.

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## Late Game

**Roshan**

Roshan's  Aegis of the Immortal drop is a huge asset to whichever team secures it. Late game, when a single team fight can decide the game, this is an important objective to contest (or sneak) when possible. It'll usually be best if you can let one of your teammates check the pit (or use the scan ability on the map) rather than walking in yourself. If you find the enemy team inside the pit, you'll be able to catch them all with  Chronosphere for a free team fight win.

If your team manages to secure Roshan, it'll usually be you who picks up the Aegis, unless someone else on your team is more fed than you. In some cases it may be better on one of your squishier teammates if you're unlikely to die in fights, but in general it's pretty nice to be able to play really aggressive in team fights with a guaranteed revive backing you up.

**Positioning**

Your positioning will depend on which cooldowns you have up at the time.  Time Walk is your major escape tool, so you can play a little more aggressively while you have it up (and preferably your  Black King Bar available). If the enemy team is engaging on yours, feel free to hit the frontliners until the enemy backline gets close enough for you to ult them.

If you have  Chronosphere available, you can also wait in the back or to the side of fights to look for an ideal opportunity to ult. Getting a perfect ult is usually worth the slight loss of DPS if you're not hitting someone at the start of the fight. You can also play aggressive, use Q to disengage when you're punished, then look for a good R to get yourself back in the fight. Don't cast it too early since it's one of the biggest ways to turn fights in your team's favor, and remember to avoid hitting your teammates with R when possible.

Remember to keep an eye out for enemy defensive items like  Glimmer Cape and  Ethereal Blade so you don't overextend thinking you can kill an enemy that still has an ace up their sleeve.

**Buybacks**

Buybacks are expensive late game but they can be a game changer. Try to hold onto enough gold for a buyback unless you can pick up a major power spike. Your inventory will often be full late game anyway, so there's no rush to spend your gold until you can afford a full upgraded item.

Since buybacks have a cooldown, make sure you use it at the right time. Don't use buybacks just to pick up farm, but do use it to protect your base or rejoin a team fight in progress.

If you have  Boots of Travel or  Boots of Travel 2, use a buyback in combination with the teleport to quickly rejoin fights happening anywhere on the map. This is really useful when trying to end the game since the enemy team will likely have some members who can buyback. If you die and then buyback and teleport back in, it'll help mitigate the advantage defenders have by being so close to their base.

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## Conclusion

Thank you for reading this beginner's guide to  Faceless Void! If you'd like to contribute to this guide, please leave me a comment in the Discussion tab with your feedback or send me a Private Message if you'd like to contribute regularly to guides like this. Everyone who contributes to one of these Beginner's Guides will be credited in the guide.

If you liked the guide, don't forget to vote and leave me a comment with your thoughts! If you have any suggestions, criticism or other feedback, comments of all sorts are appreciated. Good luck in your Faceless Void games!

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