Phantom Assassin
Through a process of divination, children are selected for upbringing by the Sisters of the Veil, an order that considers assassination a sacred part of the natural order. The Veiled Sisters identify targets through meditation and oracular utterances. They accept no contracts, and never seem to pursue targets for political or mercenary reasons. Their killings bear no relation to any recognizable agenda, and can seem to be completely random: A figure of great power is no more likely to be eliminated than a peasant or a well digger. Whatever pattern the killings may contain, it is known only to them. They treat their victims as sacrifices, and death at their hand is considered an honor. Raised with no identity except that of their order, any Phantom Assassin can take the place of any other; their number is not known. Perhaps there are many, perhaps there are few. Nothing is known of what lies under the Phantom Veil. Except that this one, from time to time, when none are near enough to hear, is known to stir her veils with the forbidden whisper of her own name: Mortred.
Base STR
19 +2
Base AGI
21 +3.4
Base INT
15 +1.7
Move Speed
310
Attack Range
150
Base Armor
1
Attack DMG
35–37
Projectile
900
Innate Abilities
Blur
Cooldown
45s
Mana
50
Phantom Assassin blurs her body, disjointing incoming projectiles, increasing her movement speed, causing her to be impossible to see until she comes near enemy heroes or towers.
DURATION:
30
VANISH RADIUS:
500
VANISH BUFFER:
0.8
BONUS MOVEMENT SPEED:
9.5%
- Attacking Roshan with a regular attack will dispel Blur.
Meditation allows a Veiled Sister to carefully anticipate her opponents in combat.
Abilities
Stifling Dagger
Cooldown
6s
Mana
30
Throws a dagger slowing the enemy unit's movement speed, dealing 65 / 70 / 75 / 80+30 / 45 / 60 / 75%% of Phantom Assassin's attack damage as physical damage and applying attack effects from items and abilities.
MOVE SLOW:
-50%
SLOW DURATION:
2.1 / 2.4 / 2.7 / 3
BASE DAMAGE:
65 / 70 / 75 / 80
ATTACK DAMAGE:
30 / 45 / 60 / 75%
- If an attack effect is chance-based, the chance of its application will be the same as its chance to occur.
- Spell-immune enemies are not affected by Stifling Dagger's slow.
- Stifling Dagger grants vision around its location while it travels and upon impact.
The first skill learned by the Sisters of the Veil often signals an incoming hit.
Phantom Strike
Cooldown
0.1s
Mana
35 / 40 / 45 / 50
Teleports to a unit, friendly or enemy, and grants bonus attack speed while attacking if it's an enemy unit.
BONUS ATTACK SPEED:
80 / 120 / 160 / 200
DURATION:
3
Mortred's silken veil is the last thing her unfortunate target sees.
Immaterial
Phantom Assassin focuses inward, increasing her ability to evade enemy attacks. Evasion improves with Phantom Assassin's levels. Stacks diminishingly with other sources of Evasion.
BONUS EVASION:
25 / 35 / 45 / 55%
Coup de Grace
Phantom Assassin refines her combat abilities, acquiring a chance of gaining Deadly Focus with each attack. When attacking with Deadly Focus, Phantom Assassin will consume the buff and guarantee a critical hit. Stifling Dagger has a bonus chance to cause Deadly Focus.
CHANCE OF DEADLY FOCUS:
17%
DAGGER CHANCE OF DEADLY FOCUS:
34%
CRITICAL DAMAGE:
200 / 325 / 450%
ATTACKS TO TRIGGER:
0
DEADLY FOCUS DURATION:
6 / 8 / 10
A divine strike, Mortred honors her opponent by choosing them for death.
Talents
Aghanim's Scepter
Fan of Knives
Cooldown
14s
Mana
80
Phantom Assassin releases sharp blades around her, dealing a percentage of each victim's max health on impact and applying Break.
MAX HEALTH DAMAGE:
30%
BREAK DURATION:
4
RADIUS:
550
A sister is generally given a single name, but powerful names often have plentiful allies.
Hero Performance
Median across all public matches · OpenDotaForm
50%
Win rate in recent matches
Performance
100%
KDA ratio (kills + assists / deaths)
Laning
62%
Last hits per minute over full game
Farm
74%
Average gold per minute
Fighting
40%
Average kills + assists per match
Experience
94%
Average XP per minute
Strategy
When to Pick Phantom Assassin?
"Situational" is the right word for PA right now—and I want to be honest about exactly what that means, because "situational" does not mean "bad." It means the conditions that make her good are specific, the conditions that make her terrible are equally specific, and the gap between those two scenarios is enormous.
The current meta is full of beefy strength carries—Lifestealer, Night Stalker, and Wraith King—and PA's primary damage output scales with Coup de Grace critical strikes that deal physical damage. Against a hero who has natural tankiness, Rage making him spell immune, or Feast sustaining him through the critical hits, PA needs to crit very fast and very hard or the fight drags on until the enemy carry's sustain simply outpaces her burst.
This is the core problem in the current meta—she is trying to kill tanky right-click carries before they kill her, and tanky right-click carries are exactly what this patch has the most of. Valve recognized this — patch 7.41b gave her direct buffs alongside nerfs to Spectre and Meepo, which tells you clearly that the developers looked at her position in the meta and decided she needed help.
She is described across multiple sources as the strongest hero in pubs when not countered properly—and that "not countered properly" phrase is carrying enormous weight right now because the current meta's carries very naturally build Monkey King Bar and physical damage resistance that specifically counters her evasion.
She is disgusting to drafts with squishy, HP-low, intelligence-dependent mids and supports who die to one or two Coup de Grace crits before they can do anything—Crystal Maiden, Jakiro, and Lion standing still in the backline are each one critical strike from being dead, and a PA with Blur active approaching from the fog gives them zero warning before the crit connects.
She thrives in lineups that have no reliable magic damage to bypass her Blur evasion AND no MKB to counter it—because a physical right-click lineup against a PA who procs 20% evasion on every hit while waiting for Coup de Grace is burning through attacks that are doing statistically less total damage than they should, and every missed hit is a window where PA might crit for triple damage back.
She pairs beautifully with heroes that can hold targets still long enough for multiple Coup de Grace crits to land—Bane's Fiend's Grip, Shadow Shaman's Shackles, Enigma's Black Hole—because a rooted target taking three Coup de Grace crits in rapid succession is a dead hero regardless of how much HP they started the fight with.
Avoid picking her into lineups that have multiple MKB users—True Strike nullifies Blur evasion completely, and a PA whose primary defensive passive is negated by a 5000 gold item that every carry in the current meta is already building against Spectre anyway is a PA who is dramatically frailer than her stats suggest.
Also terrible into Axe specifically—Counter Helix cannot miss, bypasses evasion entirely, and a PA diving into a duel-active Axe walking into Counter Helix procs while unable to Blink is one of the fastest ways to die on the hero.
Tips & common mistakes
- Phantom Strike's charge-based cooldown means you have multiple uses available simultaneously — most pub PA players use one charge and then treat the ability as having a long cooldown, not realizing that banking charges and releasing them in rapid succession during a fight gives PA multiple repositioning options within the same engagement. Save at least one charge for escape even when committing aggressively, because a PA with no Phantom Strike and no Blur proc available is a melee hero standing in the open with no defensive tool whatsoever.
- Blur's evasion is your primary defensive tool, and most pub PA players walk into fights at maximum evasion range and then get MKB'd for the entire fight, wondering why they are dying. Before committing to any fight, identify whether the enemy carries MKB. If they do, your Blur is meaningless against that specific hero, and you need BKB to survive rather than relying on evasion. Draft awareness around MKB is the single most important non-Dota mechanical skill on this hero.
- Coup de Grace crits apply to Phantom Strike's bonus attacks—which means landing Phantom Strike on a target at the same moment a Coup de Grace crit procs applies the crit damage to ALL bonus attacks simultaneously, creating a burst window that far exceeds what the base crit on a single attack would produce. The timing between Phantom Strike and Coup de Grace procs is not something you can control, but positioning to maximize the time spent attacking during Phantom Strike's bonus attack window increases the total crit opportunities available in each engagement.
- Stifling Dagger applies Coup de Grace crit on proc—which means at max level Stifling Dagger can deal enormous burst damage from range before the target even knows PA is nearby. Most pub PA players use Dagger purely as a slow to catch targets and forget it is also a ranged crit proc opportunity. Use it proactively before engaging to slow AND potentially deal a crit hit simultaneously, creating a situation where the target is already at 60% HP before PA has even closed the distance.
- The current patch 7.41b gave PA direct buffs—which means she is in an upward trajectory right now even if she was situational in 7.41a. Understanding exactly what was buffed and building around it gives you an edge over players who are still playing the previous version of the hero from muscle memory.
- Battle Fury on PA is still viable in matchups where you need faster farming and the enemy does not have reliable initiation that punishes an item-deficit early game — but Desolator into Daedalus is the kill-focused build that converts faster in fights. Know which build the draft demands rather than defaulting to Battle Fury because it feels comfortable.
- Phantom Strike gives PA bonus attacks and can be cast on allies—if an allied hero is being chased and PA is nearby, Phantom Striking onto the allied hero repositions PA to their location instantly, which is both an emergency save and a repositioning tool in fights that most players never use.
Summary
Phantom Assassin is situational right now — the current meta of tanky physical damage carries and universal MKB building directly challenges the two things she relies on most, and she is fighting uphill against a meta that was not designed around her kit. But Valve recognized this and gave her buffs in patch 7.41b while nerfing the heroes around her, which is a direct statement about where she is supposed to sit relative to the pool.
One tier list source says she is the strongest hero in pubs when not countered properly—and that qualifier is the entire game when playing PA. Draft her into squishy lineups without MKB. Build around the crit burst timing. Use Blur's evasion against the heroes who cannot counter it and BKB against the ones who can.
And make the enemy carry spend the entire draft phase deciding whether spending 5000 gold on MKB is worth it—because that gold not spent on damage items for their own carry is a decision tree that PA forces on the enemy team in every single game she appears in.
Popular Items
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