I don't understand what the confusion is. If I have enough damage to kill anyone in the game, but a disable will stop me, why wouldn't I build bkb and linken's? It's not like the abilities don't stack. It's not like the extra health or damage is wasted. They also serve different purposes. An intelligent team will ignore the guy in the bkb and wipe the rest of the time, it's a very selfish item and I can't rely on it alone if I am not strong enough to solo the enemy team after my team is dead. A linken's does the opposite, and encourages the enemy players to waste a spell on me to clear the linken's, which is a net gain for my team. A bkb simply redirects the spells to the rest of my team, while linken's actually removes them.
As far as vlad's and helm, despite zeze's terrible math it's actually a lot more lifesteal than vlad's + some random 1900 gold damage item. In the BH game, I was getting choked for farm and the game was incredibly close, almost equal kills all the way up to 30 minutes in, but with my 31% lifesteal I was able to easily solo rosh. After killing him, we pushed in the mid turret & rax, and the game was in cleanup mode after that, the radiant just couldn't recover. Radiance was just a quick choice for a luxury item with my incredible stockpile of gold after rosh and enemy team wipe and pushing down mid. It added some good damage and helped me push the side lanes in faster for the win. I actually just re-watched the replay because I was thinking about how much fun this game was, it's really my favorite sort of game when the game is fairly close or even when you fall behind but are later able to make some smart plays and turn it completely around.
Really, I don't even know why I am trying to justify my GAME WINNING item build, I guess you couldn't find a game where my item choices caused me to lose so you had to rip this one apart?
I thought you had me ignored. Go back to ignoring me please, your input isn't useful. Not a single person agreed with you when you said a wraith band + 3 branches doubled your stats. Not a single person agreed with you that a wraith band + 3 branches gave you 40-60% more hp than a naked hero.
Also. Everyone unanimously thought treant was garbage tier. Suddenly a pro team starts using him and he becomes one of the highest win rate heroes in the game. Excuse me if I don't put much value in what "everyone" thinks.
Sure, but I am not sure which your dota name is
Already explained above, but suggesting a heart instead of my second lifesteal item, really? The items aren't even remotely comparable, the reaver alone costs more than 60% more than either of my items, and the whole heart is WAY too expensive to buy until very late game or as a luxury item. The radiance was just that, a luxury end-the-game item, and it succeeded just fine in that role. 40 minutes in the enemy team should have had wards and dust and/or a gem so I don't think the sacrifices to my stealth were really as serious as you make them out to be.
Again, you are complaining about my game-winning build, as well I should mention I almost never play spectre, it's been a grand total of 4 games. Sorry I messed up the item build yet still managed to beat the enemy team, next time I'll pay more attention to following the conventional build even if it means I lose instead.
I don't like anti-mage, because I suck with him. I generally don't like manta on melee heroes because it's harder to manage the illusions, and I was thinking that if I blinked it would be pretty damn obvious which were the illusions.
But... "tried and true BFury > Manta > Heart/Bfly. "
I can't do that! The zeze gods would be angered that I built something from a RoH! Don't you know it's sacrilegious to suggest ever buying that item?
I am about 90% "johnny" and 10% "spike". I did always prefer to play my own deck, if I could build one that was viable, but not simply because of some sense that I had to be creative. I did it for the edge. The huge advantage of playing cards that not everyone knows and not having a completely predictable deck. My favorite decks were always control decks, but not the typical blue card draw counterspell decks. I liked mono black control, or jund control, running little to no creatures or only creatures that were especially resilient, making all of my opponents creature kill cards dead draws, winning slowly but surely through card advantage and threats that couldn't be dealt with easily. That said, there were times I just copied a current popular deck because it fit very closely to what I wanted to play anyway. For example I played a cruel ultimatum deck that was mostly just a copy of something I found online, and did pretty well with it.
In DOTA, I'm not yet at the point where I am even trying to be competitive. With 500 games played, you would think I was, but possibly because of my game choices or for whatever reason, there are still several heroes I have not even played once, just because they don't come up in all-random or when I see them in single draft there is some other role I need to play. There are also numerous heroes I have only played 2-3 times and while that is better than nothing, I know I am missing a lot of the nuances of the hero.
That said, since I feel that I am still in the learning phase, why would I limit myself to the popular strategies? It's the perfect time to test ideas and see what works. The lifesteal stacking you think is so bad, a couple months ago I didn't even fully understand the mechanics of lifesteal. Dota makes it stupidly complicated- lifesteal doesn't stack, but an aura lifesteal WILL stack, but an aura won't work on ranged, but a non-aura lifesteal WILL work on ranged, but won't stack with unique modifiers, except it will work with a proc effect. I'm sure it's all pretty simple and straight forward for someone who has played 1000 games, but I didn't understand any of that until I started playing a lot more often a few months back. So, in part of my learning attempts, I use what I learned and test it out, see if it is *worth* stacking it. In my games so far, it has been, despite whatever the common assumption of the general dota playing public.
I see a very common thing among my detractors, is that they always want to play the game the same way. I feel that is a flawed way of thinking. Every game is different, what works one game might not work in another. I am not planning to build double lifesteal when I start the game, but sometimes when I get to mid game and still don't have enough sustain I will decide to go with it.
All too often, I think the end-all strategy is to form up as 5 and push mid, win a team fight and finish the game. It's a great strategy about 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, the enemy team is stronger than yours and you lose the teamfight and often the game. I feel like I can do better than that. If I am not confident my team will win a teamfight, I'll just side push, farm, or solo baron. My item choices reflect this. I almost always go for some very strong sustain items, because I want to be able to push a lane down fast (using spells) and farm through the jungle and still be ready near full hp and plenty of mana if a team fight does break out.
When people talk about how you don't need any mana because your team will have mana boots I just want to face palm, that is only fine and good if you are so single-minded you can't think of any strategy other than pushing as 5. I'm sorry, I want to win. I'm not interested in going for a big 5v5 battle every single game without thinking or planning first.