Our Dota 2 Item Guide series continues and this time, we’ll be looking at one of the most skill-based items – Manta Style. It excels in both offense and defense, so keep reading to find out more!
Itemizing properly in Dota 2 can mean the difference between victory and defeat. We've already covered Blade Mail, Eul's Scepter of Divinity, and Abyssal Blade. Today’s topic is the famous Manta Style. How good is the item and when should you get it?
Oppa Manta Style
Let’s start with a short overview of the item:
- Patch of arrival: At some point in DotA (before patch 5.31)
- Total cost: 4600 gold
- Grants: +10 Strength, +10 intelligence, +26 Agility, +8% movements speed, +12 attack speed
- Active: Mirror Image – Creates 2 images of your hero that last 20 seconds. Melee images deal 33% damage and take 350% damage, while Ranged images deal 28% and take 400% damage. Cooldown increased by 15 seconds on ranged heroes.
What's So Great About It?
Manta Style used to have the Diffusal Blade effect at some point in the past before it was changed to its current state. With a gold cost of 4600, it’s one of the more expensive items you can get. Is it worth it? It depends.
Manta provides an overall nice boost to all of your stats with some extra movement speed, attack speed, and agility. The illusions created by the active benefit from some passive abilities like Anti-Mage’s Mana Break. Using the active also applies a basic dispel that can remove most debuffs like silence, slow, or damage over time. For 0.1 seconds after cast, you’ll be invulnerable, spell immune, and hidden.
In simpler terms, your hero doesn’t exist for 0.1 seconds and you can dodge absolutely every spell in the game. That’s certainly nice but the window of opportunity is kind of short, so you’ll need a lot of practice to be effective. In the worst-case scenario, you can always use Manta Style to disjoint incoming spells or attacks.
Who Benefits From Manta Style?
Heroes that will build Manta Style in almost every game include:
- Anti-Mage
- Spectre
- Terrorblade
- Phantom Lancer
- Naga Siren
- Luna
- Juggernaut
- Chaos Knight
Out of the whole list, only Luna is a ranged carry. Non-melee heroes will get 15 seconds extra on the active which makes it a lot less tempting to get the item. Every single hero on that list has a very good passive that the illusions synergize with or just stacks a lot of stats.
This makes their illusions quite powerful. Other heroes that might pick it over a Black King Bar are Morphling, Drow Ranger, and maybe Arc Warden (the Tempest Double can use Manta and push even longer with it).
When Should You Buy It?
If you’re playing one of the heroes mentioned above, Manta Style is rarely a bad choice. In almost every game, there’s plenty of debuffs you can dispel or projectiles to disjoint. Also, let’s not forget that the illusions can increase your farming speed by a decent amount.
In some cases, it’s still better to go for a Black King Bar. That’s usually when the enemy team has too many ways to lock you down or an insane amount of magic damage. Games like these aren’t that rare and having a Manta won’t increase your survival rate in those situations.
If there’s just a single major debuff you have to worry about like Global Silence, Manta is a much better choice than BKB. As a rule of thumb, the carries we’ve listed will naturally build into Manta first before considering a Black King Bar (if at all).
Anti-Mage is a great example since he already has Counterspell to deal with most single-target spells. PL has Doppelganger, Juggernaut has Blade Fury, Naga Siren has Mirror Image, and so on. In other words, these heroes already have a way to dodge spells and Manta just complements it.
In conclusion, buy Manta on the heroes that can utilize it well and in the meantime hone your skills and reactions with it. How? There's a training map where you can practice all sorts of mechanics called Training Polygon. You can find the map in the arcade section of Dota 2.
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