General Discussiontips on getting better with invoker?

I have more than 250 games on Invoker in the Crusader-Archon-Legend bracket, so my advice is for this bracket only.
Why Invoker is good in this bracket:

1) They don't gank you at early levels.
2) If they do so, they don't carry dust.
3) They can't dodge sunstrikes.
4) Invoker can 1v5.

So, follow this cookie cutter build and you will do fine.

Get null, fairie, branch and a shared tango.
Build midas at 7 mins or so.
Then get brown boots, and Point Booster by 9-10 min.
Complete your aghanims by 15-16 min.
Go for boots of travel. (PLEASE GET IT IMMEDIATELY AFTER AGHS)
Then you can go linken, octarine, scythe, bkb, whatever. (I don't like blink that much)

Gameplay:
1) After the removal of manacost of invoker, please spam spirits everytime off cooldown. Nobody can beat you in CS. Deny everything and look out for sunstrikes.
2) Sumiya combo - CS into Tornado into Meteor at Lvl 7-8 is insta kill.

With invoker, good aghs timing means ez game. Enjoy.

I don't see the point on getting good at a hero who requires a really high skill capacity when you're in a low bracket. Maybe try to understand the basic concepts of the game and learn heroes who requires less skill so you can actually get good at the game?

@tribo, You can have good invoker players in Archons bracket (relative to the skill of players within your bracket) , and you can get good invoker for Divine bracket, you may not be "good" at the game but you can still aim to master a hero within your capability of the game. Your comment was a load of crap.

^follow this guys advice and you'll get good at playing invoker eventually if you really want it,but understand the game first

referring to tribo btw

or you can ask @Bitcoin he's a god injoker

Your comment was a load of crap.

@rhywfathojulian
yes there are (good) invoker players in the archon bracket,but the only thing that makes them look good in your eyes is because they are playing against an archon also, let them try playing invoker against divine players and they will get punished heavily

^thats the point.. rather then askin how to mastering that hero u better know the game first.. well u could see sumiya on youtube and learn how he plays tho it really helps a lot

i think there no point to tell you how to cs creeps or what combo you should cast. I fully agree with guys above, to become better voker you have to become better player first. The point is, you can become better player just spamming invoker, but it's gonna be longer and harder path. You should understand that invoker is very powerfull, farm priority late hero.
I am also learning this hero right now, and have been watching lots of couching vlogs about that hero. So what i can tell you from that is map awareness - key to success. Take objectives as priority. Split push hard. You have to make enemies follow you and play your game.
Well, you have to understand which kill leads you to get that tower safely and which is not (don't chase support if its danger zone , etc).
Invoker is pretty weak on the laning stage, so focus on farm untill you get boots, midas, etc. Than when the early mid game starts you should push lane creeps hard and force enemies to defend their tower, that's how you get vision on them, that's how you can start a fight in another part of the map. Well if u want you can add me on steam and we gonna improve on that hero togheter. GL

And yes, if you lose a game, just watch your replay and focus on your death. I am pretty sure that if you die after min 10 as invoker it is only your mistake.

Let your team die for your sin

just practice it, I got out of 2k bracket because of invoker, and play other heroes too to know their power spikes(curves), so you'll know who to punish at early levels.

Literally just play the hero
It's the only way to learn him
Its to just keep playing him

^there are so many hero spammers in low brackets and still they never learn... Look at this guy https://www.dotabuff.com/players/152179159

@Tribo, olol inJOKER huh?

For starters I would stop going midas at all, go stick > aquila > treads > aghs > blink/forcestaff/euls
After you understand the mechanics of the hero, you need to practice map awareness, itembuilds, your teams power curve and your power curve - play relative to what item/hero timings your team and their team has

/edit

https://www.dotabuff.com/players/381824495/matches?hero=invoker

You can see my aghs timing is alot faster with no midas, allows you to actually just run around and kill people the minute you get it - used to run midas alot before, but switched up the build and it works alot better imo

guys post ur fastest timings for aghs

I got a 12 min Midas and a 16 min aghs once
Idek

U go some combination of extra null, aquila, wand, raindrop, then treads, maybe some clarity or extra regen and aghs

Item timing is just a number

As an archon 2 who short-spammed invoker at some point, and have a decent winrate of 69% with 200+ games, i can say that i am not a bad invoker player for my bracket or even legend's first few medals ( two of my legend/ancient friends told me my invo play is around legend 1/2/3 tier )
I will tell you what i am bad at as invoker (i have improved on a lot of these things now) and what mistakes i have seen people doing .

1. I tend to provoke my enemies during laning a lot, taunting and using dota plus sounds ( i am lvl 12 on invoker ) . This makes me cocky and i make silly mistakes in laning.

2. Also , people think i am good at invoker and ganks mid constantly, but the fact is i am a TERRIBLE laner, i suck at dota basically, cant handle lane pressure. especially last hitting and farming in the lane, i am very bad at it. I dont know how to deal with a bad matchup like a tinker against me in lane, or if a higher mmr guy is agnst me in lane ( legend 3-4 or above, everyone else is the same for me, can be outplayed) i get tensed and i fuck up. As invoker its again easy to lh coz of the high base damage and alacrity but any normal hero, i tend to get pissed and pressured. 3 heroes that i hate playing against as invoker are kunka, pa and tinker. With no rotations, its almost impossible for me to win that lane, but if i was a better player i could have outplayed them.

3. If laning goes bad, people dont get the space to get that scepter, partly this fault lies with teammates as well, they need to give that space to invoker if he is behind, but if both cores in team is in jungle u just lose towers, but then in archon and below enemy team doesnt do that grouping up to take advantage of that fact, so this usually never happens unless its HS games or above.

Some good things i do,

1. Map awareness for SS kills

2. Getting wards for myself mid if supports are not able to provide, u usually get good amount of last hits, so its cool

3. Getting combos well, ESPECIALLY ICEWALL, its the best skill he has and rarely anyone below archon uses it properly. It scales so well with early levels of quas, and is a really good slow if supports in your team are ganking mid. I usually get solo kills in mid once i am lvl 8 or above, against any 'not so tanky' and 'non escape' heroes. I get the kill, push the wave out, pressure tower if its safe ( i see enemy heroes in map, not responding/respawning soon) and/or go to jungle to maximise the farm, especially since i go midas a lot.

4. Itemising properly for a game, I still go midas and manage to get a scepter at 16-17 minutes mark after brown boots aquila wand and null, this goes to 18-19 if game was bad, but its almost always below 20 min mark. But if game is super easy and i get multiple kills early minutes, i get the scepter in 14-16 minutes without midas and same items + treads and walks around getting kills, making space for my carry. I know at that point i am the strongest hero on the map. I get my aeon disks, forcestaffs, BKBs, shivas, etc in games where they are needed. But then again, i am able to do this because the enemy team doesnt use the advantage that i spent 2k gold on an item that doesn't provide anything to a team-fight.This will change once u go into higher mmr brackets.

5. I have improved my mechanical skills by playing earth spirit and invoker mostly, it helps a LOT for fast hands.

6. Using and switching orbs when last hitting: when the attack projectile leaves ur hero u still have time to switch to 3 exort from 3 quas to get that extra damage in and then switch b to 3 quas for the regen to kick in again after the creep has died. I dont see people doing that in archon.

What @Tribo said is right, i can confidently say i am good at invoker for my bracket and i can help u with it for our bracket, but what is the point if i have not gotten better at some basic things in dota like pressuring lane properly, creep aggroing in mid ( which i have learnt recently and have started doing ), etc.
But just coz u are bad at dota why ruin the fun involved in learning a complex hero like invoker, especially if getting better at him increases ur chances of winning the game coz of the high risk-to-reward property of dota 2.
I have watched countless videos, played a lot of games agnst bots and humans, offline and online to get good at the hero, learn which combo is effective at what stage in a game, etc. I learnt a lot of things in dota as well coz i was spamming invoker, but i have so much more to understand (explains why i am in archon, but im climbing :) )

Gl to your quas wex exort games. :)

As a fairly experienced invoker player myself, here is what i can offer that i dont see mentioned in the responses yet.
As a little sidenote for full disclosure, though i think im well equipped mechanically to play invoker due to my experience, i never really thought to improve at the game itself up until the start of this year. Because of this, even though i could pull those highlight reel style combos pretty consistently, i wouldnt have enough impact to carry any games. In the past few months however, my winrate with invoker has shot up because i learned to harness my game impact more efficiently.

That being said, here are my biggest tips to you:
1. When laning, focus on getting an early gold and level advantage by prioritizing cs, then harrass, then kills. (what i mean by this is if it costs you a last hit or deny to harass a hero, it probably isnt worth it. if it costs you a wave of cs to kill a hero, it probably isnt worth it. this will be situational, and as you do it you can get a feel for what is and isnt optimal, but general rule of thumb is to focus on last hits and denies above all). This may seem small but you can easily gain a 2-3 level advantage within 10 mins of the game against the enemy mid by out denying them, and Invoker is the hero that takes the most advantage of being higher level than any other hero early game imo.
2. Pay attention to item progression and timings. This is something i struggle with myself, but your items as you progress through the game are very important. Pay attention to what your team needs, dont just fall into a cookie cutter build that you go every game. As a core with as much game impact as invoker, one wrong itemization choice can lose you the game, so be aware of what items you are getting and why. This goes beyond the two big item discussions of getting or not getting midas, and what timing your aghs is. The game doesn't end because you got aghs early, as long as the game goes on, there is a lot of important decision making to take care of.
3. Do not neglect regen. Do not hesitate to ferry yourself an extra salve, set of tangoes, or clarities in lane if needed. In fact, until you have your first major mana regen item, you should often have at least one clarity in your inventory at all times. Pop them right after using your more mana intensive skills (after one or two sunstrike attempts, or after using meteor to go for a kill or push lane) to keep you healthy and ready for anything. Special mention to wand and raindrop for those spellcasting mids, those can be invaluable against heroes like shadow fiend, tinker, storm spirit, etc.
4. Watch replays. Watch pros like miracle, pubstompers like sumiya, learn what they do and why they do it (emphasis on why they do it, reproduction of a certain ability and item build every game wont work every time) and watch your own replays. pay attention to the minute mistakes you might be making, opportunities you didnt capitalize on, bad item choices and why they were bad. Target your own weaknesses and improve on them.

I hope this block of text will be useful to you, ill post my dotabuff for credibility's sake and if you want to add me on steam you can do it through there, or just respond to this message idk. But id be glad to help a fellow invoker grow and improve in any way i can. I can offer much more knowledge than what you see posted here, but for the sake of everyone's eyeballs I will only offer more if requested to. Good luck!

Dotabuff: https://www.dotabuff.com/players/130997464/matches?hero=invoker&enhance=overview
Pay attention to the matches as of the start of 2018, this time period is when i improve as a player the most.

Archon 3 with the Pagelong Invoker advice.

Im afraid to read cuz I might get worse than I already am at that hero (42% winrate)

Invoker god here

Tips :-
●gitgud

you miss tribo's point. you don't learn to drive in a Ferrari do you? you start in a forgiving, simple vehicle so that you can concentrate on learning how to drive rather than spending all your time trying not to wrap yourself around a lamppost.

play it shit ton

@Divine.0wl Yes i know my rank isn't anything to write home about. But having 400 games as the hero, and having a 55.56% win rate in the last 3 months, 61.29% win rate in the last month, in the bracket where average win rate for invoker is about 45-49%... im not claiming to know it all or be the best but at the very least it should net results in the bracket the person who posted this thread is in. Plus most of what i said, i got from sources such as BSJ, RawDota, Sumiya, Pvgna, and other helpful players. These are concepts i am working on improving in myself, but concepts that apply regardless of rank.

@omni! you and I are the same, although last months i have not played a lot of invoker games, i too, have started to improve in dota itself and utilising my game impact properly. Fairly good at voker, my winrate says it, recently ive been trying support/offlane with quas wex build, just for fun in Unranked games ONLY. Never tried TOPSON build yet as a core, only as support. your point 3 is duly noted, forgot to add that in. Carrying around clarity is usually fairly good throughout the game for sf, storm etc who farms using spells. For invoker, its essential till you get that first regen item, yes.

@cavs_in_6 I would say its easier to pick invoker and get away with it in our bracket, especially in this patch where he is too greedy and comes online a little too late unless given a very good start.

@S1deFX.无路赛

Of course an archon invoker would get punished by a divine, no matter the hero that would be case. An Archon Invoker wouldn't need to worry about that possibility as it wouldn't happen very often (if ever). He's only interested in becoming a better invoker within his bracket, nothing wrong with that. This question was about a hero, and not a skill bracket, so stop getting distracted.

Well he askin advice... i think the best advice u can get is from someone in ancient or divine bracket with high winrate on voker rather then archon who has even less then 50% wr sorry if it kinda hurt ur feeling but its for the best tho

You're probably right, but I've got over 60% win rate with invoker and I'm a legend 5. so I feel as if I'm eligible to provide advice here as I've got over 800 games with him.

Why bothering learning such a difficult hero where you can just pressure enemies with any hero like: Lich and win games easily. People are very bad at playing vs agression, or playing from behind untill divine lvl.

Btw who cares if someone is a good injoker archont player when he makes fatal mistakes in crucial moments. Learn basics first IMO.

Tbh i am really bad at playing against aggression too,like playing against a skywrath mage that would spams skills.
How do i deal with a situation like this?

Buy 5 null talismans it makes u smarter

Against aggressive opponents, just get regen. wand and raindrop, tangoes and salves. also, do your best to keep creep eq as close to your tower as possible. constantly pull the wave close to you and keep it there to make harassing you unsafe for the opponent. Keep in mind you can use cold snap to cancel regen items at long range but it may not always be worth it, so learn to gauge that for yourself.

Don't even bother getting better at invoker

Once you hit puberty you will stop playing this childish hero and actually get good