Gameplay

Playstyle
Enigma is a tactical spellcaster who is known for his incredibly powerful ultimate ability, Black Hole. Playing him well requires efficient farming, control of Demonic Conversion and good positioning to get the most mileage out of his gravitational abilities. A well-played Enigma can singlehandedly win a teamfight and possibly determine the outcome of a match by himself.
Pros	Cons
Efficient jungler. Strong pushing and team fight capabilities. Possesses early game ganking potential with Malefice and Eidolon damage. Black Hole is one of the strongest team-fight abilities in the game. Has two large area-of-effect abilities that bypass spell immunity, one dealing pure damage. Entry level hero for players who want to hone their micromanagement abilities. AoE tree destruction with massive radius. Can counter almost any hero when played well.	Rather lengthy cooldowns for all of abilities. Very long cooldown on his ultimate ability, Black Hole. Black Hole is a channeled ability with short range, thus making him vulnerable to long range disables, silences, or other hazards. Not naturally tanky. Most certainly will be in the jungle nearly every game, making him prone to ganks. Poor management of his Eidolons can give his opponents an edge in their farming. Low burst damage potential.

Jungle

Enigma starts off in the jungle, farming with an indescribable efficiency with his Eidolons and setting up ganks with those. After jungling, he transitions into pushing with Eidolons. His ultimate ability is probably the strongest team fight ability in the game, as it pierces spell immunity, deals pure damage and disables enemies for an incredible 4 seconds, and it has a large AoE. Not to forget, this is only his ultimate ability, he still has other tricks on his sleeve, like the bothering stun chain from Malefice and the health percentage damage from Midnight Pulse. In contrast, such strength comes with a huge price, as Black Hole and all Enigma's abilities cooldown and mana cost are high, he is semi-fragile, and his ultimate ability must be channeled, so good positioning and timing when casting are required. Due to this, Enigma's mandatory item is Blink Dagger, as it offers him the capability to gank, escape and, mainly, start a team fight by placing a scary Black Hole in the middle of the enemy lines. Having a Dagger on his hands, the other items may vary, but often, Enigma players rush a Black King Bar as a protective item against any ability that might cancel Black Hole's channeling and to any heavy nuke. Mekansm, Aghanim's Scepter, Radiance, Refresher Orb are some of the items that should be useful on Enigma's inventory. When not fighting, Enigma is jungling or either ganking an enemy with Demonic Conversion and Malefice.

Maxing out Demonic Conversion first is crucial for a jungling Enigma, as it makes his Eidolons more tanky and deal more damage against creeps, especially those in the medium and large camps. Midnight Pulse is mostly used to clear trees or just to add more damage to the jungling, but the next priority ability must be Malefice, as this ability has more effect in fights than Midnight Pulse. Keep in mind that Midnight Pulse's damage is percentage-based, meaning it will deal roughly the same portion of damage to all enemy Heroes, and its best use is only to add minor damage to fights, not as a zoning or killing-intent ability.

Offlane

When opt to the offlane, Enigma should still level Demonic Conversion to make Eidolons, helping him get last hits and maybe attempt to harass enemies. In general Demonic Conversion level don't matter as much as Jungler role, Eidolons supposed to cease at the hands of enemy creeps or their duration end before enemy claims a bounty on them. Eidolons can tank at least one ability thrown at them with their high magic damage resistance most of the time and they still come handy at last hitting. Player has the option to level Malefice over Midnight Pulse early on to threaten a kill on enemy heroes early on and participate in teamfights even when Black Hole is at cooldown or gank the safe lanes. Enigma is good in the offlane because he can use Demonic Conversion on his own ranged creeps, denying a lot of gold and experience to the enemies and destroying enemy Siege units stopping a rush in its tracks. Besides creep control advantage, Enigma can hit jungle to crash creep camps, push into river for rune check and hit up Roshan when playing Radiant side of off-lane.

Midst the laning stage, Enigma may opt to hit jungle when he has leveled the main sets of abilities to farm more efficiently. He may need to push the incoming creep-waves far enough, to jungle in between. Around level 6, hitting the jungle is essential for stocking up gold for an upcoming team fight. Enigma often gets Hand of Midas to accelerate his farm, getting him experience to boost levels for key talents and gold for important items. Preferably Enigma hits his first Black Hole at night time to be unnoticeable with lowered hero vision. After the laning stage, Enigma can push as usual with his Eidolons or help ganks with Malefice and Black Hole.

Ability Builds

Generic Enigma
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	20	25

Talents

Tips & Tactics

General

• Enigma can get Mekansm and Pipe of Insight quickly thanks to his jungling ability.
• Enigma can kill Roshan before the 10-minute mark, with the help of Level 3 or 4 Eidolons.An item commonly picked up is a Medallion of Courage, as it allows him to reduce Roshan's armor for a higher damage output. Begin the fight by tanking Roshan yourself, until your Eidolons have multiplied; let the Eidolons take over and apply a Healing Salve. Try to micro the Eidolons to distribute the damage that Roshan does to them. Re-cast Demonic Conversion on one of the Eidolons before they expire and repeat the process (tank, heal up, nuke). If executed properly, Roshan will fall within about one minute.
• Enigma works best with allied heroes that have strong AoE capabilities, such as Warlock, Magnus, or Queen of Pain_new.
• Due to Black Hole pulling enemies closer together, Enigma synergizes particularly well with heroes with strong but small AoE damage, be it physical (i.e. Sven with his cleave), or otherwise (i.e. Leshrac with Pulse Nova).
• Enigma is limited by his cast ranges and low mobility. The only option to cover this shortcoming is getting mobility items such as Blink Dagger, and situationally Force Staff.
• Being heavily reliant on abilities, Enigma is highly susceptible to silence and other debuffs. Any one of the basic dispel sources such as Black King Bar, Guardian Greaves or Lotus Orb should find its place on Enigma's arsenal as soon as possible.
• Enigma can sometimes get countered hard at the initiation thanks to his high priority for wrecking havoc with his Black Hole; lingering damage over time effects such as Venomous Gale, Arcane Curse can put his Blink Dagger on cooldown. Additionally, disables, especially BKB piercing disables such as Winter's Curse, Fiend's Grip, Global Silence, can cancel his Black Hole after he initiates. At these times, empowering his secondary role, damage over time abilities like Midnight Pulse and Malefice can get him some leverage.
• By the end game, the damage Enigma put out can be measured in thousands thanks to his massive disabler nukes and percentage based area denial abilities. Any sort of damage return makes Enigma receive nothing but a headache when he got himself killed due to reflected damage, which is why Enigma is highly reliant on Black King Bar. Enigma doesn't have to worry about reflected physical damage because he mostly deals magical damage, while physical damage from his Eidolons will not be reflected back onto Enigma.
• After the Black Hole combo ended or canceled early, enemies can and most likely will hunt down the Enigma, due to him expending all his resources and being defenseless. In these situations, further mobility items can greatly add to his survivability, and invisibility items such as Glimmer Cape will allow him to make a getaway.
• Enigma's talent tree is fairly straightforward:
  • Level 10 talents: The additional Black Hole damage is useful when Enigma decides to emphasize on dealing damage with his Black Hole. Effectively, it's an extra 200 pure damage added to Black Hole, if you can get off a full channel. Otherwise, taking the Eidolon Attack Speed is useful for pushing towers and improving Eidolons later on in your talent tree.
  • Level 15 talents: Additional Malefice damage is good when going for the Malefice build. Otherwise, going for the additional health can make him tankier and more difficult to bring down or dissuade, allowing him to land a good Black Hole easily if the enemy lacks disables.
  • Level 20 talents: The Midnight Pulse talent means you have a larger damage radius and can deal more damage after your Black Hole combo is over. Extra Eidolon damage will give you faster farming in jungle areas allowing Enigma to stack up gold and make Eidolons rather menacing against fragile carry heroes who lacks area nukes.
  • Level 25 talents: If Enigma can micro-manage his Eidolons very well, an additional five more Eidolons can increase his pushing and farming potential greatly, clearing camps and leveling towers at a much quicker pace. But care must be taken, for the additional Eidolons may appear to the enemy as free gold, especially if they have lots of area-of-effect damage abilities such as Crypt Swarm or Sun Ray. Malefice instances allow you to completely shut down carry hero at the end game phase and make a simple Midnight Pulse cast more intimidating than it normally was. Additionally, it will make Malefice completely cover its cooldown duration for chaining stuns against one target.

Abilities

Malefice

• Enigma's presence in encounters is greatly diminished while Black Hole is on cooldown, but he can make himself useful by saving Malefice for a crucial moment and also sneaking around to use Midnight Pulse within an area the enemies may try to escape through. A good combo is to use Malefice on an enemy walking through Midnight Pulse or any allied AoE damaging ability.
• Malefice can prove to be surprisingly detrimental to opponents with slow attack speed, such as siege units and Warlock's Golem, as the periodic stun will reset their attack animation and prevent their attacks from connecting with their intended targets.
  • Roshan in particular is hampered by this ability greatly, as this not only prevents him from performing basic attacks, but also greatly reduce the chances of him bashing.
• Take note that Malefice acts as a debuff that can be dispelled easily with any basic dispel.
  • Although Malefice can easily be dispelled, the first stun will always occur so long as the ability hits the target. The subsequent stuns/damage instances may not be important if the primary purpose of the ability is to disrupt channeling abilities.
• Will allow you to catch up highly agile heroes without investing too much into movement speed and will deny any juke attempt by running into the trees. When Malefice is on cooldown, movement speed and positioning become important.
• While most players skip the malefice damage per instance talent, it nets a near doubled damage gain. Paired with extra Malefice instances talent, it deals more than five times the Malefice damage compared to default.
• Spirit Vessel or Veil of Discord can increase its damage further with their debuffs.
• Use in tandem with your Eidolons to wreak havoc.

Demonic Conversion

• Use Demonic Conversion in the laning stage on allied ranged creeps to deny them.
  • The Eidolons can then help Enigma trade hits with the enemy laners or score last hits and denies.
• Eidolons have an innate 0.3/0.4/0.5/0.6 magic resistance, but have very low maximum health even when the ability is fully maxed. Any harassment fire in a bad position or area nuke can wipe a large team of Eidolons. With their high gold bounty, they are prime targets for farmers, and care should be taken to ensure that they are not recklessly sacrificed.
• While they have rather low health, they deal high damage, especially when you've manage to amass six of them after splitting. However they don't scale well into the endgame without amplifying their damage output and mobility.
• Eidolons deal Basic type of damage when they attack. Compared to Hero type, their damage is more effective against Structure units such as towers, at 70% efficiency compared to Heroes' 50% efficiency. Basic damage type has an efficiency penalty on Heroes too, making them only deal 75% of the written values which blows over heroes' armor further. That means they won't deal meaningful damage against enemy heroes unless you get the +40 Eidolon Damage talent at late game.
• Demonic Conversion instantly destroys enemy Siege Creeps when cast upon them, ruining the creep pushes against your structures.
• Coupled with items such as Drum of Endurance, Vladmir's Offering or Helm of the Dominator's summons, they become a force to be reckoned with. Without any of these items, their efficiency will be lost rather quickly.
  • For additional lane push power Crimson Guard or Mekansm are other preferred items to keep them alive against ranged carry heroes. This also means, you won't let them split push another lane for recovering space. Sitting by them and buffing their armor is important for their survival.
• Eidolons will always split and fully heal upon firing their Expression error: Unexpected < operator.th shot. Careful micro-management is key whenever you are using them for jungling or tower-pushing. Amplifying their attack speed pays up in short timespan spent for their split.
  • Counting their shots up to 5-6 upon normal creeps then sending them on the tail of a Siege Creep at around every five minutes is an effective way to crush down towers efficiently and split pushing. They can tank one area nuke with their high magic resistance and at the further shots they will heal fully on splitting.
• In sufficient number, Eidolons can be used effectively in encounters, as en masse their collective attack does significant damage by the help of talent tree. Timing their split at late game on unsuspecting pushing heroes for harassment can force them to retreat which you can manipulate for a gank.
• If you die in an encounter as you have upper hand and you have Eidolons still alive, use them to boost your team's damage a little. If you're losing ground, no need to feed enemy extra gold.
• While laning, decision about casting Eidolons on enemy or allied creeps must be considered upon position and cooldown of enemy's abilities. Even when they spawn as a team of three, a badly positioned bunch of Eidolons can feed the enemy some gold after achieving almost nothing. Try to be bold and send them somewhere out of sight to bait enemy into your jungling or rune-checking teammates by communicating.
• Keep Eidolons around you when there is a Pudge or Mirana on the enemy team, as it makes you difficult to be hooked or arrowed, which is important considering that Enigma is an easy prey for kills in the early game.
• When jungling, max Demonic Conversion to beef up your Eidolons and increase their damage. Also, micro your Eidolons to make sure none of the initial three Eidolons die to jungle creeps so that all of them can multiply. This increases jungling speed significantly. Do not be afraid to tank for your Eidolons either when clearing the big camps.
• Enigma can use Demonic Conversion on Eidolons as they are about to expire, useful when pushing or taking Roshan.

Midnight Pulse

• Allocating one point on Midnight Pulse will be beneficial when one or more opponents have a noticeably larger health pool by mid-game. Also, if the enemy has heroes which rely on trees, such as Hoodwink, Monkey King and Treant Protector, it is definitely worth taking one point into this skill, since it destroys trees in quite a large area. In particular, Monkey King will suffer a guaranteed 4 second stun if he's on a tree.
• Midnight Pulse damage will scale better compared to your summons or Malefice at the end of the game. Try to treat it like a wildcard when your ultimate ability Black Hole is on cooldown. When Black Hole is on cooldown, anticipate some debuffs and use it with conjunction with your teammates.
• Midnight Pulse deals magical damage with recent changes yet kept its trait of bypassing spell immunity. This means heroes who use Black King Bar will still take the full effect of the ability if they do not leave the area of effect. When not comboing with Black Hole, Midnight Pulse can be used to hold off important chokepoints such as tier 3 towers at the gates of the base, upon friendly teammates or Roshan for denying any engage from opposing heroes.
• Use Midnight Pulse before Black Hole to boost the damage done. However, you must use this at your discretion because there might not be a time to use it or it can make you miss out on crucial Black Holes. Try to initiate fast by using element of surprise; so you'll have time for a close up Midnight Pulse and start channeling Black Hole on top of it before enemy team can react.
• Unlike Black Hole, it possesses no crowd control abilities on its own. A chased target takes rather minimal damage from it by running away from you. Try to get a teammate to get a movement slow debuff effect or disable just for keeping an enemy inside its radius.
• Midnight Pulse does damage based on enemies current health, therefore ignoring their armor and raw HP. Magic resistance is still calculated and diminish the raw damage output of Midnight Pulse.
• Use Midnight Pulse to clear trees around towers during pushes, preventing enemies from using them as covers to launch surprise attacks on Enigma's team.

Black Hole

• Black Hole is a powerful disable that bypasses the spell immunity granted by Black King Bar.
• Lasting for 4 seconds, a successful cast will almost guarantee a team-wipe, especially if he has allied heroes who can deal heavy area damage like Jakiro or Sven.
• Black Hole is a channeling ability, so care and consideration should be kept in mind when looking at the opponent's hero lineup. You may need to invest in a Blade Mail Black King Bar or Linken's Sphere to lower the odds of getting interrupted.
• Invest in Blink Dagger and even Shadow Blade, as well as using trees and fog of war, to initiate with Black Hole, giving enemies little time to react. This stands true for night time where every most of the heroes get penalized on sight range.
• Refresh your Black Hole immediately after casting when you have the Refresher Orb, as a team fight can happen anytime, anywhere. Although, depending on the situation, Enigma may save Refresher Orb for the next cooldown, as a double Black Hole is devastating to the enemy team.
• Sometimes Enigma may want to refrain from using Black Hole to initiate on a single enemy hero, as having the ultimate ability available as a threat may dissuade the enemies from pressing their advantages at late game.

Items

Starting Items:

• Clarity provides mana to produce Eidolons in the early game.
• Tango provides some health regeneration to keep Enigma in jungle or hold the lane.
• Enchanted Mango grants mana to use Demonic Conversion in lane.
• Gauntlets of Strength a pair of those can easily turn into a Bracer or Soul Ring while also giving you survival on off-laning.
• Magic Stick helps in the jungle since it gains charges from neutral creeps casting their abilities, restoring health and mana to Enigma.
• Boots of Speed help Enigma get into position to use Black Hole.

Early game:

• Wind Lace can be kept for its movement speed bonus or can be worked towards any item recipe including it.
• Magic Wand is a cost effective upgrade from Magic Stick.
• Soul Ring is a great source of mana, allowing him to use his Demonic Conversion as often as possible. Enigma does not mind the health cost since he does not often go close to enemies as his abilities and Eidolons have good cast range and attack range.
• Arcane Boots is a small upgrade for Boots of Speed by providing extra mana and can be combined with Mekansm for Guardian Greaves. If you guaranteed a Soul Ring, alternatively, Arcane Boots can get disassembled for an Aether Lens later.

Mid game:

• Magic Wand is a cost effective upgrade from Magic Stick.
• Blade Mail will allow Enigma to return the damage to anyone who tries to attack him while also giving him good attack damage and armor. Blade Mail's ability to return damage can be used while channeling Black Hole, which can make enemies think twice before attacking Enigma while channeling Black Hole.
• Blink Dagger helps your positioning greatly and helps to pull off a good Black Hole. Might need to be rushed way early by pushing lanes with Eidolons.
• Aghanim's Scepter will allow Enigma's Black Hole to deal damage equivalent to 3.5% of the unit's Max Health per second and to do a non-interrupting that can pull enemy heroes towards it in a 1200 radius, at a rate of 175.
• Dagon can give Enigma spell lifesteal, allowing him to heal himself with his abilities and a magical damage burst to finish off enemy heroes if they survive Black Hole.

Late game:

• Black King Bar grants debuff immunity so the enemies cannot easily interrupt Black Hole. It applies a basic dispel on activation to shake off most simple debuffs like plain silence and prevent further disabler casts when heading out for the combo.
• Guardian Greaves allows a slot to be freed, provides a steady supply of health and mana regeneration to the team, and increases Enigma's survivability. Aside from healing and replenishing mana for the team, the Mend ability will apply a basic dispel that helps his team when they are disabled or silenced.
• Refresher Orb gives Enigma high health and mana regeneration. The active allows Enigma to use Black Hole twice in one fight.
• Octarine Core to reduce the cooldown of Black Hole, putting constant pressure on the enemies with the frequent threat of Enigma's dangerous ultimate ability. Can be an alternative to Refresher at late game depending on dominance over the safe lanes for a come back.
• Aeon Disk can be an alternative to Linken's Sphere to endure damage and position when paired with any sort of invisibility buff or spell immunity like Black King Bar. Can be a safety net for unique aggro deflect abilities like Winter's Curse, Berserker's Call or Duel at late game or halt ferocious carry heroes.
• Aghanim's Shard will allow Malefice to stun enemy heroes for a longer duration and to summon an Eidolon at every instance of Malefice stun. Bear in mind, however that the Eidolons who spawn like this will not multiply further at all.

Situational items:

• Aether Lens grants Enigma additional cast range, allowing him to land his ultimate ability perhaps at much quicker speed without having to walk toward the team and also to keep him out of harm's way if he can position at higher ground.
• Veil of Discord can give Enigma nice attributes, bonus mana regeneration and the active ability to make enemy heroes take more spell damage from his abilities.
• Hand of Midas rewards bonus gold and experience so Enigma can gain access to powerful items and talents sooner by early to mid game.
• Solar Crest can be used for disabling the enemy carry early on, to suppress them or rushing Roshan faster with Medallion of Courage.
• Pipe of Insight can be an alternative to Mekansm at early game, and can be considered when the healing cannot out-do massed area nukes in a late game push. At late game, it should be built to compliment area of effect healing provided by teammates or complimentary to other healing items you have.
• Ethereal Blade will give Enigma bonus intelligence and will also amplify his mana regeneration and provide him with spell amplification. Ethereal Blade can also allow Enigma to disarm enemy heroes and make them more vulnerable to Malefice's and Midnight Pulse's magical damage output.
• Linken's Sphere is an alternative to Black King Bar for when the enemy team has disables that ignore spell immunity, such as Primal Roar and Doom or long-ranged position juggling effects like Nether Swap. When paired with Guardian Greaves, Enigma will have a reliable dispel at his service and can maintain safe distance. Consider casting its spell block to the other initiator when they're leading.
• Revenant's Brooch will increase Enigma's armor, attack speed, intelligence and attack projectile speed while passively providing him with true strike every 9 seconds. Revenant's Brooch can be activated to make Enigma's next five attacks have true strike, deal magic damage that can ignore armor and weaken the affected enemy's magic resistance by 20% for 3 seconds, making them more vulnerable to Malefice's and Midnight Pulse's magical damage output, and it can also allow Enigma to attack ethereal units.
• Gleipnir can give Enigma more health, intelligence, attack damage, and the ability to root enemies in an area, making them easier targets for Midnight Pulse and Black Hole while also passively allowing his attacks to release a chain lightning that can bounce between enemies, damaging them.
• Force Staff allow Enigma to initiate while suffering damage over time debuffs or very long-ranged mini-stuns that can cancel out Blink Dagger. Force Staff can later be upgraded into Hurricane Pike for an additional attack range.
• Hurricane Pike can give Enigma good attributes, escaping and chasing tool, and it can also give him extra attack range.