alchemist

Alchemist DotA2 Guide

Alchemist, Razzel Darkbrew

Strength 

Durable,Nuker,Carry,Ganker

Overview:

Alchemist is known as the 'fastest' last hit gold farmer due to the large amount of bonus gold gained from his passive, Goblin's Greed. Also having one of the fastest/shortest BAT in the whole game with his ultimate on. If you like right-clicking tanky carries and have a decent skills in last hitting, you might wanna give this big guy a try.

Stats: 

Strength : 25+1.8 

Agility : 11+1.2

Int : 25+1.8 

For a Strength carry he has quite a low strength and agi gain but moderate Int gain. Coupled with his Chemical Rage's low mana cost and Mana Regeneration, Alchemist shouldn't have mana issues after the early game but his relatively low Str and Agi results in a lower HP and Armor which could be remedied by his ability to quickly pop up items for Health and Armor like Heart and AC.

Skills: 

(Q) Acid Spray

Target an Area, for the next 16 seconds that area will be filled with green acid and all enemies inside this area will receive a debuff which deals composite damage (which is reduced by magic and armor) and a negative armour buff.

Range: 900

Radius: 625

Duration: 16

Damage Per Second: 14/20/26/32

Armor Reduction: 3/4/5/6

Total Damage: 224/320/416/512

Cooldown: 22s

Mana Cost: 130/140/150/160

Note: 

Wide Aoe, Huge range, long duration. Its mana cost is a little high at max level but as I mentioned it could be offset by the fact that its ultimate gives bonus mana regeneration. AOE DOT damage, goes through BKB, and -6 armor to all those inside this huge AOE. This skill should always be used whenever you are going for a gank as it can make or break the kill.

1) DOT with huge AoE blocks Blink, HoT and Armlet Toggle. Also helps with taking down TA or Visage's Gravekeeper's Cloak.

2) A solo offlane build consisting of Acid Spray, Greed, 1 lvl Stun with a RoB can be used by spamming Acid on the lane preventing their carry from staying near the creeps too long. While doing this, consider the fact that acid spam might result in your creeps being pushed further and denying your farm. The DoT might score a few last hits for you here and there. 

3) For players new to the hero. The armor reduction helps with last-hitting as well. (But might push out the creeps as mentioned).

4) Cast acid spray then throw Unstable Concoction for more damage. Unstable Concoction does Physical Damage which is amplified by the negative armor debuff from acid spray. 

(W) Unstable Concoction

The moment you click/activate this skill, a timer will appear above your head for 7 seconds. Within the 7 seconds you can click/activate the skill again and target one Hero (note: unable to target anything else). The target and 175 aoe around him will take Physical damage and be stunned. The longer you charge, the more the damage/stun. Max stun / damage will occur when charged for more than 5 seconds. You can still move/attack/cast spells while charging. Charging for more than 7 seconds will result in the stun and damage occurring n yourself.

Range: 775

Maximum Stun Duration: 1.75/2.5/3.25/4

Maximum Damage: 150/220/290/360

Cooldown :16s

Mana Cost: 120

Note:

1) You can deny yourself with this skill if carefully timed. It also explodes on death. If you see a low life Drow Ranger beating the crap out of you while you were silenced, you can try your luck by going near to her to net a kill.

2) The AoE is small, if some Heros clump together you can get a lucky game changing stun.

3) Your enemies can also hear the charging sound but are unable to see the timer (decent players can tell by the sound when its going to explode) so always keep your volume on when playing against Alche.

4) Failing a stun could be extremely dangerous if you move too far out, either drop the stun early or move backwards if you feel you might miss it due to the enemies escape mechanism. It could result in you being counter-ganked.

5) There is no extra damage/stun or free candy if you were to charge till the timer left 0.0 seconds. Drop it at 2 or less for the maxc damage.

6) This skill works well with followup disables or set ups (Bane/ Shadow Demon)

7) The damage still works if the target tries to dodge with BKB

(E)  Greevils Greed

*Passive*

Whenever you kill an enemy creep you gain bonus 4/6/8/10 gold + 1/2/3/4 gold for each creep kill or deny you get in the past 25 seconds. Max bonus gold per kill : 30

Bonus Gold Per Kill: 1/2/3/4
Base Bonus Gold: 4/6/8/10

Note:

1) This is what allows Alchemist to be the fastest farmer in Dota. Leave him to farm for a moment and BAM! Items pop out.

2) Get a support to stack easy, medium camp for you. Acid Spray and a couple of right clicks would easily net you 500-700 gold depending on how many creeps are there.

3) Denies ! They matter. They increase the gold counter but don't give you the extra gold. Practice your last hit with both creeps and denies to maximize your farm.

(R)  Chemical Rage

Transforms into a Raging Orge ! Increase your BAT, HP, Regen, MS.

Duration: 25
Bonus Attack Speed (Base Attack Time):
1.4/1.2/1.0 BAT
Bonus HP: 300/600/900
Bonus Health Regeneration: 15/30/60
Bonus Mana Regeneration: 3/7.5/12
Bonus Move Speed: 30/40/60
Cooldown:45s
Mana Cost: 50/100/150

Note:

1) Try not to cast this spell while farming as you might not know when you need the addition HP or MS to survive.

2) On the other hand, if you need mana, casting this spell will grant you 25/87.5/150 additional Mana through the additional mana regen. If you want to maximise this regeneration you can drop all Int items or do not keep threads at Int as the additional regen is a flat regeneration rate.

3) With lvl3, you have the lowest BAT in the game. With 400 IAS its 0.25s per attack. Allowing items like basher, mjonnir and crits to take its full effect.

4) You are able to dodge stuns like magic missle, hellfire blast within the 0.35s of transformation.

5) Monitor how much time your ultimate has, once your ultimate is over you lose a chunk of hp as well as movement speed.


Builds:

1) Safe-Lane Carry (Radiant Bot, Dire Top)

Starting Items:

 Branches for extra stats, Flask and Tango to heal from harassment. Stout to take damage from supports who try to zone you out.

Transit into RoB for Acid Spam to get farm + harassment. Bottle crow if your team permits.

Early game in lane, try to stay near the exp AoE. One helpful tip is to on Dota_range_Display 1200 in your console to have a ring around you that is 1200 aoe to see what is the maximum distance you can keep.

Your main aim is to get EXP, as much creep kills as possible and
 NOT DIE. Take kills when your mid comes to gank with acid + concontion. Should be an easy kill on the supports around.

Reason why Alchemist will do alright in the offlane is that acid will harass and prevent the opponents melee carry from farming. After that, transit to mid game farming and go for end game items (below).

Safe Lane Carry:

Starting items:

Queling for easier last hits, its optional though, you can go for branches instead. Stout for harassment, Flask as usual.

The laning phase should be quite easy, supports from your team should zone out whoever is laning against you, once your supports CC an enemy who is out of position, immediate charge up your concoction for a follow-up.

Midas?

General rule of thumb, if you have the gold before 6-8minutes ( based on preference) go for it.
Midas is an item that sacrifices early game boosts for mid game/ late game farm. If you feel the opponent is going for an aggressive lineup I suggest you skip this and go ahead for MS or Health items. No point getting extra gold if you keep dying every 2minutes. If you feel that you supports can cover you or your team has good early presence then go for it.

If not... your end game items should look like this.

 

Phase is the Ideal boots for Alchemist, with lvl 3 Ultimate and Phase Boots active it gives Alchemist a total of 475ms. With drums aura is 496. Movement speed is crucial for melee carries like Alchemist who requires to get up close and personal with his targets.

The next priority item should be Shadow Blade. Not only it gives IAS and some damage, it gives Alchemist a great escape mechanism

 along with the ability to gank lone enemies with a simple combo.

Here are the steps:

1) Chemical Rage
2) Unstable Concoction
3) Shadow Blade
4) HIT (dont waste the damage) [unless its a hero with a quick escape mechanism, then always stun first]
5) THROW IT.
6) Proceed to right click him to death.

Things get difficult when they get gem/wards/dust, for high mmr games, go for the right timing and positioning. Allow someone else to initiate first then followup from behind.



Its not nice when you are slicing someone at 360 slices per minute and someone stops you with a MAGICAL MISSLE OF DOOM.
Same reason why you need high ms, to prevent being kited down. Alchemist doesn't have any positioning skills so I can just hex, slow, stun you till when everything is over you are the only one from your team left. Within that 5 seconds, with enough IAS and damage you can pummel down a support or two. BKB , Phase walk in and proceed to chop them down. Another thing is that most supports will predict when you will throw your concoction and stun you for the duration before it goes off, resulting in you being stunned. BKB prevents that from happening and would allow you to get a stun off easily.



+80 Attack Speed on the Hero with the lowest BAT will result in lightnings faster than Zues' arc lightning spam. 3 reasons why this is core.

1) Lightning allows Alchemist to farm up Neutrals and creeps fast and switch between the two. The high attack speed assures that lightning will be proc-ed a couple of times during an engagement

2) Low BAT but no IAS doesn't really makes an impact. This will allow Alchemist to reach the max attack speed quickly and compliments Abyssal / Basher when you get it later.

3) Static Charge, Alchemist being anky makes it a good candidate for Static charge once its being focus down. Being able to dish out decent AOE damage and maximise Mjonnir's potential.



With the fastest late game attack speed, you can see bashes occur so frequently that its an effective anti-carry. Opponent team pops a BKB? no problem i will proceed to stun and bash him till his BKB is up and my supports can take care of him

 This item covers up two of Alchemist's flaws, low attack speed and lack of armor. The negative armor will stack with Acid as well, causing a massive -11 armour for those under Acid Spray.

Support Build

In order to play this build, you most probably require another support to set up for you, Bane, SD , CM are all good candidates.

Unstable concoction deals a decent chunk of physical damage and also a long duration stun. Coupled with a setup such a bane or sd it can work pretty well.

Starting items go with either smoke, wards some branches and consumables.

NaVi's support Alche & Bane executing a well-timed gank against the mid lane solo

At early levels, stay a distance away from the creeps, once the opponents gets out of position, get your set up support to disable him and start to charge up, follow up with a stun and carry on right clicking / blocking him.

Mid Game, if your team permits, get some decent farm, items such as VG, Phase,Pipe Blademail and Heaven's Halberd to help your team as much as possible.

Or, if you team is doing well, you could go for the standard carry build or another case scenerio would be you are getting kills but your carry isnt farming well. Going for SB to net some kills would benefit your team as well.

Thats all I have to write, I will add on such as good teammates and worse enemies when I have the time. I hope I can have your support to be writing more guides and making more GIFS.

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