Phantom Lancer

Phantom Lancer is perhaps the hardest hero to kill early and if you follow this guide shouldnt die more than 2-3 times a game. I do not know what he should be classified as. He can gank but not early unless they are weak or you have help. Hes not really a carry in the normal sense but I have carried with him many times. He can scout and those illusions create quite the distractions in pushes so that qualifies as support. I would say hes a nice mix of push/support/gank/carry to supplement in all those areas the rest of your team. His skills are all about creating illusions. Thats how he survives so well and confuses the enemy. As usual I will list the skill set first but will be adding a new section later in my guides now about counters to the hero/build.

SKILL SET
LVL1-Phantom Lance
LVL2-Dopplewalk
LVL3-Phantom Lance
LVL4-Dopplewalk
LVL5-Phantom Lance
LVL6-Dopplewalk
LVL7-Phantom Lance (maxed)
LVL8-Dopplewalk (maxed)
LVL9-12-Juxtapose (max it)
LVL13-15-Phantom Edge (max it)

Basically max the nuke and the invis escape skill first. Early on your damage and hp is too low for the images to be effective for pushing and killing. Level 4 dopplewalk lasts for 8 seconds with a 15 second cd and costs only 60 mana making you very hard to kill without some sort of invis detection and wont cut into your lance/nuke mana too much mid game. After these are maxed, max out Juxtapose and your ultimate which makes it better. This skill set is more concerned with ganking and survivability than farming early with images and that allows you to level faster and not die which makes up for not farming as fast early imo. Ok now for itme build. This build I have tested many times and has few weaknesses which I will discuss after.

ITEM BUILD
1-Quelling Blade
2-Perserverence
3-Boots of Travel
4-Bracer/Wraith Band
5-Diffusal Blade (Level 2 late game)
6-Damage item (MKB, Buriza, or Butterfly)
7-Finish Linkens with the Perserverence
8-Vlads if no one else made one or another damage item.(ditch the quelling blade)
9-Heart if game is an epic one (ditch the bracer or wraith)

My starting items are a robe of the magi and a tango. If its -ar I just get a ROH first. As soon as I get a few creep kills I purchase a quelling blade. This allows easy farming and the illusions get the quelling bonus too which is nice. Finish the pers get some boots and a wraith or bracer. Now get the BOT before you finish diffusal blade. By level 12 you should have a BOT, pers, quelling, bracer/wraith, and hopefully close to finishing diffusal blade. There is no reason you should be dieing with PL unless you are being stupid and taking excessive risks. He is a late game hero and failure to farm early and mid game will result in you being semi useless late game. The reason you are going bot and not treads or phase boots is for 2 reasons. First off if you use dopple mid game by now they will be getting dust and chasing you down. If they dont have any stuns you can simply tp away. If they do have stuns or disables to stop it you still have phantom lance to slow the lead chaser and later on purge also while you can run really fast with your bot to safety or to the fog then tp out provided you got some juking skillz. Second the BOT can be used to farm open lanes with the illusions. Make a few illusions then tp to another lane to help gank or defend. Set the illusions to patrol a creep. They will keep making more and push the lane until the other team comes to stop this. Also switch view back to that lane and re-patrol as more illusions are created if you have the chance. You wont get the exp from the illusions but you will get the gold and push that lane which helps the team while everyone deals with the other lanes. The later damage items you get all depend on what you need the most. If your not the primary dps then butterfly is very nice. Buriza and mkb are also nice damage items on him ( buriza if you need high dps or mkb if you need more attack speed and they have channelers as the illsuions can get that bonus 100 ministun also so its easy to stop channlers with many PL's having a chance to ministun ) Vlads is great on him cuz it doesnt interfere with the diffusal blades mana break orb and gives him and his illusions lifesteal and bonus damage. Linkens makes you nearly unkillable until they have very high dps for obvious reasons as it adds yet another escapability option in your repatoire.

Weaknesses/Counters
There is only really a few ways to stop a Pl late game from tearing through your team and your base. One is Radiance which vaporizes the illusions rather quickly.The other is mass aoe damage. Tide, Pitlord, Enigma, Tree, TC, etc. Combos of 2-3 of these can really stop PL from doing any pushing or massing images. Also Naga Sirens sleep will stop them all and they usually vanish once it ends as it lasts 7 seconds at level 3. If you do not have mass aoe then its gonna be rough and radiance is a MUST.
But the best way is to not let him farm. Keep ranged nukers on him early game. Don't ever let him free farm and check the woods and chase him off if he goes missing. Get dust early and a gem mid game, good on LEO or another WW hero who can hunt him (eg. BH with track or Bloodseeker if hes weak are nice options also.) Cleave heros with lifesteal are also somewhat effective like sven and magnus but they end up losing alot of their mana if not all once Pl has a level 2 Diffusal Blade. Admiral's Tidebringer also can clear them out rather quickly once he gets good damage and attack speed.

Yeah getting diffusal on him means that if you cast purge and lance, you get tons of attacks on a fleeing hero. Adding in the speed from boots of travel they just can't escape you without invisability or blink.

Nice guide, even complete with his weaknesses! =O GJ