How to choose items: why the right build loses matches

Every build tool in the world, including the one on this site, answers the same question: what players buy in this hero. None answers the question that decides the game, which is why this item, now, in this game.

This guide is about the second one. It won't give you a list: it will give you the criteria that makes the list fit.

The central idea: item is bet on the map

Almost every player chooses an item looking inward (my hero, what he does) or at the other team (they have silence, I need BKB). Both looks are legitimate and both are incomplete, because they ignore the variable that most changes the value of an item: how much map you will have in the next ten minutes.

The easiest example is Battle Fury. It is a conversion item: it turns time with farm space into gold. If you will have space (the team controls territory, the enemy is defensive), it pays. If you will not have space (you are stuck defending the base), it is the worst item in the game, because you bought a farming machine with nowhere to farm.

The question that precedes every big purchase:

Will I have map space to use this in the next ten minutes?

If the answer is no, the right item is the one that solves now, not the one that scales.

The four categories, and what each one buys

The most common mistake of mid bracket is to buy two conversion cards in a row when the match calls for survival. The player looks at his own assets, sees that he is growing, and does not realize that he is growing in a direction that does not change the outcome of the fights that are happening.

The hidden cost of the damage item

Every item has a cost beyond the price, and it is this that almost no one counts: the time you are without the others.

If your next item costs 4,500 and you farm 500 gold per minute, you've just decided how you're going to play the next nine minutes: farming, far away, and probably absent from two fights. If the match is going to be decided in those nine minutes, the item arrives late even if purchased at the right time.

That is why the practical rule that changes the most results:

• If the match is up for grabs right now, buy the cheap item that changes the fight now.
• If the game is stable and you have space, buy the expensive one that changes the next phase.

A 2,250 Blink that arrives at minute 18 is worth more than a 5,000 item that arrives at 28, if your hero's window is between 18 and 26.

Items per level

Laning phase

The budget is small and the decision is one: are you buying to win the lane or to survive it?

• Winning: Damage and Aggression Sustain items.
• Surviving: regeneration, and the minimum stat that keeps you in the experience range.

And the purchase that almost no one makes at the right time: detection. If the other team has invisibility, the sentry in the bag is worth more than any component you were putting together.

Midgame

This is where items decide departure, and the decision is almost always between mobility and survival.

The useful read: buy what gives you the right to be where the match is happening. An offlaner with Blink at minute 16 changes the map; the same offlaner with Blade Mail and no Blink at 16 is a durable hero who doesn't get to anyone.

And there is a hard window worth knowing: almost every initiator has 8 to 12 minutes between buying the entry item and the enemy carries buying BKB. Losing this window is losing the hero's game.

Game over

From minute 30 onwards, almost every item is evaluated by a single question: does it change the result of a five-on-five fight?

Items that increase your farm do not change. Items that keep you alive for an additional three seconds, that prevent the enemy carry from acting, or that save the hero from your team's 25k assets, change.

That's why endgame support should be buying saves (Force, Glimmer, Ghost, Lotus) and not damage: your gold yields more by keeping those who have six items alive.

How to Decide Against Their Team

The wrong way is the most common: look at the list of enemy heroes and buy the counter for each one. You end up with six average items that respond to six threats and don't solve any.

The best way has two questions:

1. Who, on the other side, stops me from playing? If it's a controller, you need dispel or immunity. If it's damage, you need stamina or distance.
2. Who, on the other side, do I need to kill for the fight to end? Buy what makes you get to this person, not what makes you hit harder in general.

Two questions, two items. The rest of the build can follow the hero's pattern without prejudice.

The error that appears in almost every replay

Buying out of habit in the middle of a match that changed. The player decided to build at minute 5, the match turned at 15, and he kept executing the decision from minute 5.

The habit that corrects is silly and works: at each turn around the base, look at the equity scoreboard and answer if your next item is still the right one. Most of the time it is; the others, you just save ten minutes of matching.

The items that almost no one buys at the right time

It closes with four specific purchases that appear little in mid bracket and always in high bracket, because each one solves a problem that the player doesn't even realize he has.

Detection (sentry and dust). It's not a support item, it's an item for the person being hunted. If their invisible hero is killing you, the sentry is yours, not your 5 who has already died twice.

Level 2 boots, early. Travel, improved Phase, Tranquil swapped. Speed is the most underrated item in the game because the perk doesn't appear in any number on the screen: it appears in you arriving at fights and leaving them.

The dispel item. Lotus, Manta, Eul, BKB, Guardian Greaves. Against teams with a lot of accumulated control, a well-bought dispel is worth more than 2,000 damage, because it gives back to your team the hero who was going to stand still for the entire fight.

Aghanim, when he changes the role and not the number. Half of the Aghanims in the game increase damage; the other half gives a new ability. The first half is almost never worth the price the minute you buy it; the second almost always is, and sooner than it seems.

The pattern that unites the four: they all buy capacity, not stats. This is the difference between the build that the tool shows and the build that wins the match.

At the shop, remember this

• Item is bet on how much map you will have, not response to hero.
• Conversion item with no farm space is the worst item in the game.
• The hidden cost is the time without the other items. Expensive item decides how you play the next ten minutes.
• In the middle of the game, buy the right to be where the match takes place.
• After 30, only what changes a five-on-five fight counts.
• Against their team, two questions: who prevents me from playing, and who do I need to reach.
• With each turn in the base, reevaluate. The match changes; the build has to change with it.