Gameplay

Playstyle
Puck is an elusive hero who misleads and disrupts enemies with disabling items and abilities. Though vulnerable, Puck is able to initiate on enemy teams, silencing and locking down opponents before teleporting away in a glowing orb. A well-played Puck can escape nearly any situation, and return to repeatedly disable opponents for its teammates. However, Puck's arsenal of tricks and items require sharp situational awareness during teamfights, and may overwhelm newer players.
Pros	Cons
Hard to pin down. Extremely mobile. Good lane ganker. Extremely high burst damage at all points of the game. Amazing disables. Low cooldowns on spells. Good waveclear.	Highly vulnerable to disables, particularly stuns, silences and hexes. Requires multitasking. Mana problems early-mid game due to abilities costing high mana. Rather squishy. Easily killed if pinned down. Lacks single-targeted damage, making him a rather bad duelist. Weak against tankier heroes such as Axe, Huskar and Wraith King, as they are less likely to be bursted down. Less effective against heroes who can ambush him during Phase Shift like Arc Warden and Jakiro.

Ability Builds

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

Talents

Tips & Tactics

General

• Puck often plays in the middle lane, but can also play a solo lane against multiple opponents due to its slippery nature.
• As a mid hero, Puck has easy access to runes with Illusory Orb, and can gank the side lanes with Dream Coil.
• With Blink Dagger, Puck becomes a capable, albeit fragile, initiator.
• Puck deals significant magical damage in the early game with Illusory Orb and Waning Rift.
• Puck's abilities, as well as its tendency to buy items with active abilities, makes it a busy multitasker in teamfights. Knowing when to use which ability/item is key to playing well.
• A good initiation combo starts with Blink Dagger, then Waning Rift, then Dream Coil, then Illusory Orb through as many enemies as possible but in a safe direction, Phase Shift to hide, then Ethereal Jaunt to teleport to the Orb.
  • Waning Rift's silence is long enough to execute this combination.
• To escape, use Illusory Orb then Phase Shift right after, then use Ethereal Jaunt to teleport to the orb.
• Puck is a very versatile hero, and builds can vary depending on the game. For example you sometimes want to build nuke items if the enemy team consists of squishy heroes.
• Since you need level 4 in Phase Shift to be able to use it to safely blink away using Blink Dagger, you sometimes want to take the last point into phase shift at level 15 rather than taking one of the talents.

• More tips needed.

Abilities

Illusory Orb

• Use Illusory Orb in lane to harass opponents, or to get a few extra last hits.
• After using Illusory Orb, move in the opposite direction to present enemies with a dilemma, forcing them to choose one direction, while Puck escapes by choosing whether or not to Ethereal Jaunt.
• If Puck uses Illusory Orb just before dying, it can buy back instantly and return to the fight with Ethereal Jaunt.
• Puck can travel quickly with Illusory Orb because the orb moves faster than Puck, and can fly over cliffs and trees.
• Illusory Orb can function as Puck's initiation tool before it has a Blink Dagger.
• Puck often relies on Illusory Orb for survival, only use it to farm when it is safe, or use it to finish off the wave and jaunt away.
• Use it to stack multiple camps and farm them.

Waning Rift

• When initiating, use Waning Rift right after jumping in with Blink Dagger so enemies cannot disable Puck before it uses Dream Coil.
• If Phase Shift is on cooldown, use Waning Rift to silence enemies, giving Puck's escape mechanisms more time to come off cooldown without being disabled.
• The ability does a lot of damage in combination with Illusory Orb. Use them to burst down enemies, farm lanes and camps and kill enemies. However, do not rely exclusively on these 2 abilities, as Dream Coil does a lot of damage. Combined with your respectable right click damage, Puck becomes a very potent burster.
• Use to secure last hits.
• Use to interrupt channeling abilities.
• Keep in mind this spell teleports you as well, meaning it can be a good escape mechanism.
  • However, do not exclusively rely on it, as the teleportation range is extremely small.
• With Aghanim's Scepter, you can knock back enemies with it. Use it creatively to your team's advantage. For example, to push enemies into allies' abilities like Black Hole or Chronosphere, or to knockback enemies outside Dream Coil's range and forcefully trigger the stun.
  • Be careful, however, as the knockback may save enemies.
  • Use to deward and reveal invisible units.

Phase Shift

• During the early game, use Phase Shift to avoid attacks from towers and enemy units.
• Puck can harass the enemy heroes with attacks, then use Phase Shift to avoid taking damage from creeps by removing creep aggro.
• Use Phase Shift right after Illusory Orb to hide until the orb has traveled far enough to jaunt to.
• Level 4 Phase Shift's duration is long enough to wait out Blink Dagger's damage cooldown, allowing Puck to escape from many dangerous situations.
  • Puck must still turn in the direction it is blinking towards; note that Puck's turn rate is among the lowest.
  • However, doing so makes Puck vulnerable to instant disables like hex, so Puck should face its desired direction before using Phase Shift to increase its chance of escaping.
• With fast enough reaction time, Phase Shift may help Puck dodge an incoming initiation, allowing it to counter-initiate with Waning Rift and Dream Coil.
• Max level Phase Shift together with an arcane rune allows Puck to be essentially invincible, giving 100% uptime to Phase Shift. This can be used to make very aggressive plays and get out safely.
• With Aghanim's Shard, Phase Shift does instant attacks on all enemies within your attack range +200, which also works on buildings.
  • Keep in mind that the attack range can be increased with attack range bonuses, however, not cast range bonuses.
  • The attacks do not have True Strike.
  • Use it to trigger Witch Blade or Revenant's Brooch.
  • Use it in combination with Dream Coil's Level 25 to wreak havoc among enemies.

Dream Coil

• Use Dream Coil's leash to interrupt and prevent enemies from escaping with teleport abilities or items, like Town Portal Scroll.
• Dream Coil will catch enemies who are not in vision.
• Try to catch enemies at the edge of Dream Coil's cast radius, making it more likely that they will break the coil and be stunned.
• Dream Coil's relatively low cooldown means Puck can use it on high value single targets, such as an enemy carry.
• Level 25 Rapid Fire works quite a significant range from Puck's regular attack range.
  • Puck will still rapid fire even it is stunned, hexed, shackled, in ethereal form, or disarmed.
  • Rapid fire also works when Puck is activating Phase Shift. While going into a team fight with Illusory Orb and capturing enemies inside this coil, save Puck for the next 3.25 seconds with Phase Shift and Blink away. It will rapid fire all enemy in range and leave Puck unharmed.
  • Also works with attack modifiers such as Daedalus, Eye of Skadi, Diffusal Blade, Desolator, Mjollnir, and lifesteal items.
  • Having at least a Morbid Mask will keep Puck alive in the team fight since it heals Puck by the number of enemies coiled.
  • While rapid firing all enemies, activating Silver Edge will break all enemies in the coil upon the next rapid fire attack.
• With the other Level 25 , Dream Coil pierces Spell Immunity, and it lasts as long as Black King Bar once Black King Bar has been used a few times, essentially making it a counter to jump heroes who rely on Spell Immunity. Examples include: Phantom Assassin, Queen of Pain_new, and Riki.
  • You can also waste a majority or all of Black King Bar's duration with Dream Coil, either forcing enemies to stay near your Dream Coil or get stunned.
  • The initial damage does not pierce Spell Immunity, however.

Items

Starting items:

• Enchanted Mango allows Puck to use Illusory Orb more often in lane.
• A couple of Iron Branches give Puck a decent early game attributes boost and also later build into Magic Wand.
• Faerie Fire supplies an instant heal and attack damage, which may give Puck an edge in trading hits and killing creeps.
• Tango provides Health Regeneration, crucial to sustain in any lane.

Early game:

• Bottle helps Puck manages rune from the mid lane, as well as replenishing mana for its early game nukes.
• Null Talisman and its components gives Puck a decent early game attributes boost.
• Healing Salve helps keep Puck in lane. You can also use healing salve into phase shift to allow Puck to heal HP even while in combat.
• Magic Wand helps Puck sustain mana and health to keep active in the mid lane.
• Boots of Speed increase movement speed to help Puck get to runes.
• Town Portal Scroll helps Puck rotate to different lanes and help out allies.

Mid game:

• Power Treads help Puck in the early to mid game, as they supplement both Puck's small health pool, as well as its mana pool.
• Arcane Boots, an alternative to Power Treads, help Puck use its magical nukes more often in the early to mid game.
• Boots of Travel, another alternative to Power Treads, helps in split pushing and taking fights from across the map. Also, the extra movement speed is appreciated on Puck.
• Blink Dagger provides great synergy with Puck's abilities and further augments its evasive nature.
• Eul's Scepter of Divinity offers another disable, as well as keeping Puck safe for a few extra seconds until its other escape abilities come off cooldown.
• Witch Blade adds a very large boost to Puck's already high burst damage, and later builds into Revenant's Brooch.

Late game:

• Revenant's Brooch upgrades from Witch Blade and increases its already high burst damage. The active component is very useful for bursting down high Armor, low Health/Magic Resistance heroes. It also grants a lot of stats which are great help on Puck.
• Dagon increases Puck's damage output with magical burst and intelligence.
• Linken's Sphere makes Puck even harder to pin down, and provides great attributes and regeneration.
• Scythe of Vyse provides mana and mana regeneration, helping Puck use its expensive abilities. It also provides hex for Puck to disable the enemies.
• Ethereal Blade gives very good stats and Spell Amplification, the active synergizing very well with Revenant's Brooch and Puck's magical burst.
• Octarine Core reduces the cooldowns of all of Puck's items and abilities. Given the fact that Puck tends to buy a lot of items with active abilities and all 4 of its spells are active abilities, the Cooldown Reduction is very much appreciated, allowing Puck to spam its already low-cooldown abilities even more. The Mana/Mana Regeneration boost is also appreciated on Puck, who has very mana costly spells.

Situational items:

• Aghanim's Scepter grants attributes and makes Waning Rift knock back enemies and grant True Sight on them.
• Veil of Discord helps increase your team's magical damage output in the mid game.
• Force Staff gives Puck extra mobility. Puck can also use it to break Dream Coil and trigger a stun.
• Shiva's Guard increases mana pool and armor to resist physical damage. It also provides an area nuke and slow.