PL is underrated as a counter pick

When to pick PL

I think Phantom lancer is super underrated right now, I never see this hero picked in my pub games. If you get a late pick in the draft and the enemy team doesn’t have a lot of AoE spells than pick this hero and you will probably win. This does not mean you need to last pick this hero, if the enemy has 3-4 heroes without much AoE already that should be more than enough to have a good game. I use my double downs very often with PL games that look like they are easy draft wins.

Role in a game

Phantom lancer basically plays like spectre or similar, a hard farming carry early game that will win the game. You get a pretty strong early spike once you get a diffusal though so you can look to fight around that timing if you will survive in fights. Of course once you get like manta and heart you will become unkillable essentially in the right draft.

Early Game/Lane

I find that maxing Phantom Rush is much better than Spirit Lance as it will let you transition into jungling very fast. I think Spirit Lance max is okay if you want to go for kills in lane or think you can zone the enemy with it as it has a pretty low cd just keep in mind your farm will suffer. Doppelganger is super strong for the dispel and disjoint if either are useful definitely get a point in this.

General Tips

1. Make sure not to click anywhere once you are in phantom rush or it will cancel, make it a habit to just take your hands off till PL finishes running up and hitting once
2. Think about spells that are crucial to dodge and save doppelganger for them, a lot of the time not wasting it too early will save you
3. Make sure to have a key bound to “Select All Other Units”, use this to send your illusions at the enemy, just press the hotkey and right click someone. This makes micro with PL very easy.
4. Also add a hotkey for “Select All Controlled Units”. After doppelganger a lot of the time you just want to man up and hit the enemies with everything to hide your hero among the illusions. Use this hotkey for that so you don’t accidentally micro your hero only and give it away.
5. Send your illusions at tanky strength heroes to drain their mana. If the enemy centaur doesn’t have mana he is much less scary.
6. Farm a lot, I can’t stress this enough but a lot of the time you should not come to fights and just farm.
7. Use your illusions to farm dangerous places, manta illusions will clear waves easily and you can farm jungle out of vision while pushing waves.

That’s it, go out there and win some MMR!