I rarely use Mortred, also known as The Phantom Assassin, in playing Warcraft DotA. This is because she is quite weak at the start of the game. You have to be really good at leveling up and last hitting the enemy creeps if you really want to grow Mortred into her full potential, which is to be the killer hero in a particular game.

Overall, however, she’s got quite a good set of skills to play with. She has the Stifling Dagger, which hurls a dagger to an enemy unit, dealing minor pure damage (Level 4 damage is 160) and slowing the unit’s movement speed by 50% for a short duration. Another good skill is the Phantom Strike, which is basically the same as Rikimaru’s Blink Strike and Chaos Knight’s Reality Rift, except that this skill gives Mortred an increased attack speed as opposed to Rikimaru and Chaos Knight’s bonus damage.

An important skill for Mortred is the Blur, which enables her to “blur” her body, making her hard to see and causing enemy attacks to miss (dodge is 15%, 20%, 25% and 30% for Level 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively). But here’s one very attractive skill of Mortred—the Coup de Grace, a critical attack that deals up to four times her damage when landed on enemy heroes.

Item-wise, it is important to increase Mortred’s damage, and then to splash this damage, to take full advantage of her ultimate skill Coup de Grace. So when I do play Mortred, one item I always aim to build is what I consider the item of all items—the Divine Rapier, which gives +250 damage. And then to splash this damage, I always build a Battle Fury.

Another item that goes well with Mortred’s Coup de Grace is the Buriza-Do Kyanon, which provides +75 damage and a Critical Strike (a passive ability), which gives a 20% chance to deal 2.4x normal damage on an attack. Picture this out: Mortred’s Coup de Grace gives her a 15% chance to deal 2x (Level 1), 3x (Level 2) and 4x (Level 3) critical damage, while the Buriza gives 20% chance to deal 2.4x damage. I can’t do the math, so I will just ask you to use your imagination. All I can say is that this item-skill combination (considering the Divine Rapier) will definitely deal pain, lots of pain!