General DiscussionWas thinking about learning pl

pl as a safe lane is very good ... low hp early so you need to survive the 1st 10 mins while building pt aquila and drums(opt) but diffusal is a must
up 1 2 1 3 1 ulti
once u get a maxed spear should be easy to harass and win lane

he's pretty good against slark due to his mana burn plus slark's only aoe is dark pact which is nothing later into the game so it's worth learning given how popular slark is in this patch.

most of the time you don't want treads, just stay on brown boots and build travels later on to speed up your farm if you haven't already got travels as your first major item. early on you want some stat items to get you through the early game before getting travels, such as poor mans shield, ring of aquila, or magic wand. for regen you can go bottle (even in safe lane) or ring of regen (for drum), or if you're not being contested, your starting regen should be enough you can just get early travels and TP whenever you get low.

if you don't go travels as your first major item then your other options are drum or yasha. drum lets you fight early, yasha helps you farm. if you're needed in fights get diffusal afterwards. if not, go back for travels and then get diffusal blade afterwards. travels will boost your farm by a huge amount, so if you can afford to be slightly greedy, go for travels into diffusal. if the enemy is knocking on your high ground then obviously get diffusal. if their push is weak or you've got good heroes at slowing down pushes, go for travels so you can split push and keep up in farm. split pushing also slows down your enemy's pushes because it forces them to TP back and defend, giving you more time to farm up your diffusal.

after diffusal you want to get manta in most situations, gives you more stats and the active is like another doppel except it only hides you for 0.1s instead of 1s, but you can still use it to dodge stuns, remove most slows from you, et cetera. even if you're against like an ember spirit or earth shaker manta is still useful because those heroes are weak to mana drain anyway, getting manta means you have more ways to make illusions on demand and use them to drain their mana or zone them before a fight starts.

after that it's all situational but common late game items are skadi, heart, butterfly, diffusal 2, blink, abyssal blade if you need hard lockdown, linkens can be required sometimes, plus it gives 15 to all stats too.

if you do get travels as your first item you can join fights, but mainly to throw lances. don't be too aggressive unless you know there's stuff you can easily dodge or remove with doppelganger, and that the enemy has no follow up after your doppel is on cooldown.

skill build should be 4-1-1-1 by level 7, 4-4-1-2 by level 11. if the game is slow paced you can afford to get points into stats over more ponits into doppelganger but if there's any teamfights, you'd much rather have doppel with 10s cd than 6 extra all stats. the current meta is pretty fast paced that most of the time maxing doppel is better.

after 11, max doppel if you got stats at levels 8-10, by now you should have your diffusal blade even if you went greedy with travel + yasha before getting diffusal, so you'll want the extra points into doppel for fighting. if doppels maxed already, I prefer getting stats and keeping phantom rush at lv 1 although if you need to chase people that have good escapes, having the 4s cd is useful.

Fuck drum. These people are stuck on last patch.
Just go aquila for stats, keep brown shoes, build SnY so you can fight.

But if you want to be usless, rush that diffusal blade so you do no damage and afk farm for 35 minutes.

Ya'know, whatever your play style is, fam!

Happy laning!

it's not whether you choose between drum or aquila, it's whether you choose to get drum on top of it. PL's get aquila like 99% of the time because it's a good item regardless if you're going greedy and want to farm faster or if you're looking to help your team in early fights. if you get drum it's because you're looking to fight early and if you're looking to fight early, getting aquila too is a no-brainer.

drum's stats got nerfed but the aura and active was also part what makes it strong in the early to mid game and it still has that. the lowered stats mean that you're not getting free stats essentially from the first recipe, you're paying 875g or whatever it is pretty much only for the aura and the active.