The other day, I was playing Templar Assassin in the middle lane and actually doing alright. Is this dumb luck or a legit strategy?

Haha, TA used to be the mid of choice (by used to, I mean like 1 patch ago). Her burst damage potential is ridiculous and give her a blink dagger and she's pretty tough to kill. She a good mid hero that's countered by dots (i.e. gale, poison touch, battle hunger, etc) that burn through her refraction fairly quickly. She scales decently into the late game as well.

TA was one of the ether banned or picked in the first phase in pro games. She was top tier until refraction got nerfed. Even know TA is still a great hero in pubs. That said she is HIGHLY predictable as far as builds

bottle -> phase boots -> blink dagger -> desolator

Personally I either mid or surprisingly enough long lane TA. I generally don't like really burst orientated heroes but TA would probably be my favorite

But that's just my humble opinion

Fun pub build is armlet on her C:<

The phase boots build seems to be...phasing out . I've seen a lot of pros opt for treads recently. For new people, tread switching is great for heroes like TA whose spells aren't super expensive, but enough that tread switching would help, as well as have rather low HP.

I can see treads in the pro scene more because ta is starting to shift more towards hard carry than just a ganker (kinda like when bkb on qop became a thing)

Personally I like the run and gun mobility phase gives over treads although the case can really be made for either it just depends on you and your game

For sure, she's definitely transitioned to more of a mid-game carry than the burst damage dealer she used to be. I remember the build was basically: bottle, phase boots, blink dagger, deso, crit.

Now I'm seeing more treads, yasha/manta, etc.

Gotta say though the burst damage build seems to do better. Ta for an agi hero has very little staying power in fights if there is any kind of DoT that becomes next to 0. Pros will be pros (and im no pro) but I just dont think she has the skills to translate into the hard carry. - armor is good but it cant really win a fight.

Unless Kunkka proceeds to crit slap the whole team for whoever TA tries to burst down

I 100% agree, she definitely can't hard carry. I think the refraction nerf (as has been the case with all of the recent nerfs/buffs) really balanced her as a hero.

She's not a hard carry per say but she can definately carry. You shouldnt put all your eggs in one basket though, pick up another carry in addition to her. Never under estimate a deso daedalus mkb TA literally melts things.

See my semi carry quote. She fantastic at burst damage, much like QoP. They can both semi carry in the game very well, in the late game, they can hold their own, but nowhere near as well.

Since games are starting to trend to a quicker pace. If the situation arises, we're actually seeing QoPs safelane farm so they can carry late game. This is also awesome because they hit their damage peak way faster than alot of different heroes. so youll have your qop starting to hit really hard at a certain point well before the enemy's hard carry, however this also means that if you dont hit your timing for winning before the enemy carry is super potent then youll have to pull something fancy.

QoP hits her stride earlier, which means she peaks earlier and tails off later on.

The point is, TA and QoP are not hard carries, but can steamroll during the mid game where it's too hard for the enemy carry to catch up. Either way, TA is a good mid. /debate

I can testify to that so much. I had a game the other day where we were losing 19-3 at 20 min cause of qop. I was fortunate to random puck (my absolute WORSE mid hero) and I got rocked pretty hard. Her damage just couldnt carry tho we ended up winning at something like 45-50 min because our alch got HUGE.

Really fun game if you guys want to see the replay I would be happy to drop it down under the "Never give up" headline

Thats the thing with alch too, if you leave him alone he farms SOOOOOOOO fast. QoP can carry because she is strong early in the game like you said, but she keeps the other team from getting big and so in comparison she looks massive

The difference is, Alchemist can stand up to many late game carries (i.e. Sven, Naix, Luna, etc), whereas QoP cannot.

It all depends on in game situations, like depending on how fast she gets certain things and certain item builds the enemy carry goes... but yes she cant be even on farm with someone and expect to come out ahead most of the time

Match ID: 136175364

Thing is our alch basically jungled during laning. He had no early game(like every alch) and his mid game was non existent because of his start. They just never pushed the issue and we started getting winning trades and their higher xp and gold bearing heroes just let us snowball to victory

I'll have to find my Spectre match. Basically the same thing happened. Was in lane and was the constant target of gank attempts. Got a late Radiance and just farmed like a mad man for the next 10 min, using my ulti to come into teamfights at about halfway through to clean up some kills and really maximize my farming (with the assist gold changes in 6.75, this became a viable strat). Leaving any hard carry alone is a bad idea, esp ones that have AoE items/abilities to help clear creeps.

Im always of the belief that even a late radiance is a good radiance on spectre too, for that exact reason