Riki, or better known as Rikimaru in DOTA, is one of the most popular heroes standing at 21st place. It has a phenomenal 54.6% win rate, but there’s truly more to his incredible success than just being a great carry hero.
In fact, Riki is so absurdly broken today that he’s more effective as a Support.
Before we cover Riki Dota 2 guide, we have to understand Riki’s skill set which Icefrog revamped drastically. He’s a hero synonymous to invisibility, which his ultimate defines very well. It provides invisibility passively when Riki isn’t attacking. Additionally, Riki gets a bonus damage based on the multiplication of his agility stats when he attacks from behind.
Coupled with his skill, Blink Strike, Dota 2 Riki always deals backstab damage from his passive ultimate and bonus damage from this skill. There’s also his first skill, Smoke Screen, which causes enemies in the AOE to miss and get silence. Lastly, Tricks of the Trade is an AOE damage skill but is best for escaping from targeted spells.
While the mentioned skills don’t have great synergy, it’s Riki’s Aghanim’s Shard ability that truly makes him a broken Dota 2 hero. Sleeping Dart is a new skill obtainable from purchasing Aghanim’s Shard and puts a target to sleep.
During the 3-second sleep duration, it’s essentially a stun that prevents the victim from waking until the duration ends or 200 damage is dealt. This makes it a surefire skill to set up any combo, whether by Riki’s allies or himself.
Dota 2 Riki can place the Smoke Screen on top of the victim, so that he will be immediately silenced immediately.
Dota 2 Riki win rate and popularity stats from DOTABUFF
The best way to play Riki right now is Position 4. Regardless, this isn’t your typical meta abuse guide, whereby a Riki Dota 2 support player will surely win. Instead, it does get tedious for Riki Dota 2 support, who will spend most of his laning phase roaming. That includes ensuring your offlane isn’t getting harassed heavily alone and still gets decent level progression. While also ensuring the enemy support doesn’t pull their lane creeps and mess up the lane health.
A roaming Riki would involve contesting the midlane runes, which indirectly makes your enemy mid-player’s experience worse. And of course, the bounty runes every 3 minutes are good grabbing for an already-roaming Dota 2 Riki.
That’s the typical playstyle for the first 12 minutes since Riki’s skills just aren’t effective at this phase.
Read also: Dota 2 Support Tips & Tricks
Typical Riki item build for roamers would be the standard consumables, brown boots, and purchasing wards. As a roamer, he is already moving across the map, so dropping a ward or dewarding is efficient. At 13 minutes, Aghanim’s Shard is available for purchase, but chances are even a farming Riki Dota 2 support wouldn’t have 1300 gold yet. However, Riki is still useful at such timing as he would have Level 6 and invisibility. Go into the enemy jungles to place wards and block camps with sentries.
From there, you just have to be a nuisance to the enemy team by roaming, killing couriers with your Tricks-of-the-Trade (it hits 100% of the time if the courier is the only unit). While 60 gold might seem underwhelming for a courier kill, it’s a whopping 300 gold for the entire team.
You can wait around an enemy carry’s jungling spot and steal lasthits easily with backstab damage until you eventually get your game-winning item, Aghanim’s Shard. Furthermore, all these acts indirectly frustrate your opponents into mass-planting sentries, which is a blow to their economy.
With your sole item up, Riki Dota 2 players are a force to be reckoned with. A combo of Smoke Screen, Sleeping Dart and for your safety, use Tricks, would be detrimental to any enemy carry.
In this instance, we saw how Martin “Saksa” Sazdov from Tundra Esports, counter-played Entity’s Ember Spirit. Because Sleeping Dart slows the target after the sleep duration, Ember is stuck in Smoke Screen AOE for very long.
Unfortunately, this Dota 2 Riki Guide likely won’t be relevant after the next Icefrog’s nerf hammer. However, if you manage to win MMR with this broken Riki Dota 2 build while it lasts, then good on you.
Read next: Disruptor Dota 2 Guide to winning MMR
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