Dota 2 Heroes – An Introduction to Mercurial the Spectre

By: Jason McCarthy

  |   August 28th, 2012   |  

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Mercurial the Spectre is a melee agility carry hero who exhibits immense amount of endurance, speed, damage and confusion.

Her abilities make her an extremely hard hero to take down especially when facing her alone. Even more notable is the fact that it is not easy to get away from her as she has a few aces up her sleeves that allow her to catch up to her prey no matter how far they may have gotten.

Spectral Dagger is her first skill. It is a single-target ability that can target an enemy 2000 units away, damaging any enemy it comes in contacts with during and at the end of its path by 200. The target enemy will lose 18% of his movement speed when inflicted by the dagger, whereas Spectre will have her speed boosted by 18% for 12 seconds. Also after using this skill, you will gain 0 collision for a short period of time. What this basically means is that you can go through units and even terrains, which makes up an effective escape mechanism.

Desolate is Spectre’s second skill. It is a passive ability that at Level 4 will grant you +50 damage if you manage to catch an enemy alone. What this means is that the buff will only active if the enemy hero you are attacking does not have an allied units in 325 range. This also works on illusions, which is very important when we go over his ultimate.

Spectre’s third ability is named Dispersion. It is a passive skill that justifies that tanky build that we often find on her. At Level 4, it will cause 22% of any damage, be it physical or magical, to reflect on all enemies within a 1000 Area of Effect (AoE). Keep in mind that the damage reflected is not taken by Spectre, thus acting as a ridiculous tanky mechanism.

Now we get to Spectre’s ultimate Haunt. It is a global skill that allows you to create an image of yourself next to every enemy hero irrespective of where they are on the map. These images are uncontrollable, take 200% damage and deal 40% damage. These images will only attack the hero they are assigned to and will last for up to 7 seconds. Just remember what I stated earlier that the desolator passive will work on all these illusions. One of the best things about the ultimate is that you can take place of any of these illusions within the 7 second period, though this will effectively end your ultimate. This can serve as a great escape mechanism or solid team fight initiation ability.

Spectre is indeed one of the strongest carry heroes in game because of her ability to dish out large amount of damage while possessing the capacity to endure incoming damage. Her ultimate and skills make her adept at taking enemy heroes down, thus keep the latter on their toes throughout the course of the game.