Dota 2 best counter to phantom lancer

How to counter Phantom Lancer: Items, heroes, and tips

Countering Phantom Lancer requires to identify the real hero, have enough AoE damage to deal with the illusions, and kill him before he can reset the fight.

In the current meta, Phantom Lancer is a tier 1 hero in competitive, and a powerful opponent at all ranks. He isn’t successful only against newbies: his pick rate spikes to 16% in the highest area of the matchmaking, while maintaining an impressive 55% win rate.

Valve started dealing with him only recently. From 7.16 Doppelganger can no longer be cast while rooted, which is a huge debuff against heroes with that crowd control effect, but still not enough to limit his dominance in pub and pro gaming.

PL is a strong hero even without his illusions. He enjoys good stats, lots of armor and agility (29 + 2.8 gain), a slow that works also as a nuke in the early/mid game, a tool to engage the target (Phantom Rush), and an escape (Doppelganger).

Countering his illusions is mandatory, but don’t forget that if you let him farm too much, the hero alone can punish easily most lineups. As usual, disablers are always welcomed to stop any physical dps.

Items

As an auto-attacker, you need items to gain or boost your AoE damage: Battle Fury and Maelstrom are the obvious choices. The Mjollnir’s active ability is useful if placed on a hero that PL will be forced to attack, such as Axe due to his taunt.

Radiance and Shiva’s guard are reliable choices for AoE magic damage. The former deals constant damage (to spot the illusions) and also causes the opponents to miss 17% of their attacks. The latter is helpful for the burst damage, the movement and attack speed slow aura, and the extra armor to limit PL’s damage.

Silence prevents any escape via Doppelganger, so you can use also the Orchid Malevolence. Heaven’s Halberd and Silver Edge block the spawn of more illusions, and also place an undispellable debuff on the hero, which helps to identify him during the fight.

I love the Crimson Guard because the 60 damage block is absurdly good against illusion-based heroes. Via the active “Guard”, you can extend the benefit to all allies during a teamfight for 12 seconds.

Heroes

Phantom Lancer relies on his army of illusions for survivability. He is able to generate them at an insane speed, so single-target attacks are pointless: you need to figure out who is the real hero, and destroy him before he can reset the fight with Doppelganger.

There are some abilities that ignore illusions and target automatically the real PL, such as Zeus and Spectre’s ultimate, Bloodseeker’s Rupture, and Skywrath’s Concussive Shot. The number is limited, and you can’t just rely on them to defeat him.

AoE is your best friend. Illusions generated by Juxtapose receive 500% extra damage, so you can easily spot PL among them. Instead, illusions spawned by Doppelganger might still cause issues because one of them is as tanky as the real hero.