The last week or so my hero of choice for DOTA 2 has steadily been focused on Templar Assassin. I've tried a few others as well. Heroes like Invoker, Shadow Fiend, and Viper as well. However, as I'm getting used to DOTA, I figured I'd stick it out with one hero per week just to get through all the good and bad matches and just to get an overall feel of the hero. I'll be honest though, I'm loving her.
She's got a great mix of skills. But her best quality is her ability to nuke the fuck out of any hero which she really chooses too at any time. However, conversely, she can also avoid a lot of damage and get out of a lot of sticky situations which other heroes may not be as fortunate to be able to get out of. It took me a while to really get a feel for how to use her properly though. I'll try to explain below.
Templar Assassin's skills are really a creative mix of offense and defense mixed into the same skills. It's just how you use them that defines the benefits you'll gain as a result. Such as her first skill: Refraction.
NOTE: All skill images below can be found on www.dota2wiki.com
Refraction is TA's bread-and-butter skill which she'll be using throughout the entire game. It's her ability which lets her deal out massive amounts of damage as well as avoid near certain death. At it's core, the ability lets her deal out additional damage per attack for a number of attacks after the ability is activated. To start, it's only 20 damage an attack, but it's over 3 attacks. So 3 X 20 = 60 damage at level 1, 160 at level 2, 300 and level 3, and 480 at level 4. It's insane how much she can do, and honestly wouldn't doubt if a nerf happened in the near future to correct this. But conversely, this skill also lets you avoid ALL damage from a certain number of hits up to the same amount of attacks. This is also, independent of the attacks themselves, which means that even if your defensive shield breaks, you still have your bonus damage. This is a major advantage when you're facing heroes that have giant single attack DPS skills like Lina or Lion. If she shield is up then all incoming damage, regardless of the strength of the attack is negated. However, this can also mean that when facing big DoT heroes like Venomancer or Queen of Pain could be a royal pain in the ass (no pun intended) as then can whittle away the shield and leave you defenseless and squishy.
Meld is another ability which depending on circumstances can be used both offensively or defensively. Offensively it allows her to nuke an opponent for a large amount of damage as well as reduce their effective armor granting bonus damage with every attack afterwards for 7 seconds so long as the opponent is in range of TA while she's melding. This is what allows her to nuke so well as the application time for meld is 0. Which means as soon as you activate this, you go invisible and can sap someone's armor. However, you do have to be within attacking range for this to be really effective, which means leveling this up along side with Psy Blades is pretty important as they grant you additional range. Especially since as soon as you move, you break the meld state. Meld is also great at avoiding heroes and potential ganks due to the permanent invisibility so long as you're not moving.
TA's 3rd ability, Psy Blades, is what makes her a great laning hero as well as gives her the additional flexibility to apply pressure to multiple targets without having to run around too much. To start, TA appears to be a melee hero with a minimal attack range. However, she in actuality is a ranged hero. But is the only ranged hero which you have to level up in order to be able to attack at range. Range, though, isn't the only thing this grants you. It also allows you to hit enemies directly behind whichever target you initially hit. The cone behind the enemy is very small, but the distance is huge. With some proper movement and setup, you can really cause a headache for enemy heroes at the start of the game who can't get within range to attack you, but your attacks can be hitting both creeps and the enemy at the same time.
TA's final ability, Psionic Trap, is somewhat unconventional of sorts as an ultimate compared to the ultimate abilities of a majority of other heroes in this game. Most other ultimate abilities provide a major boost in damage output or defensive ability in some way. TA's ability only slows an enemy which is caught within it's blast radius whenever the user chooses to detonate it. However, what it lacks in complexity, it makes up for with it's multi-purposefulness. To start, each trap lasts forever when it's placed, until it's detonated or is erased due to the max-trap limit being hit. And as the skill level increases, more traps can linger around the map at any one time. Second, each trap provides a limited sight range around whenever it was placed. This by itself is huge towards the ends of games where buying wards may not be as easy as before since your inventory will be filling up with items which you will need whenever a team fight occurs. And finally, each trap is invisible. So unless an enemy sentry ward is placed or someone is carrying a Gem of True Sight, they usually will not be destroyed that easily.
So to recap, I think TA is an extremely flexible hero which can provide decent offense and defense for herself, but as a team player is quite limited. She can push lanes very nicely. And once she gets a blink dagger or other initializing item which gets her quickly in range of enemy heroes can be a very good ganker. Against any DoT heroes though, she will struggle for a while as they severely disable her defensive abilities.
