General DiscussionAdvice for a soon-to-be Rubick player.

The best spells to steal are the ones that let you initiate: blinks and invis...until you have a blink dagger. Then the best to steal are low cd stuns. If you can manage to take an ultimate in a teamfight, try to use it as soon as you see a good time so you can get something else.

If you want to get a big ultimate like WL or Tide you need to hide as close as you can to the fight and look for them to cast, blink in right after they cast it and steal before they can cast again. If you are quick it is not really possible to protect a spell like that from Rubic because the casting animations take to long to cast another spell.

Force staff is good, but blink is really what you will need late game to get good spell steals.

Get mana boots as soon as you can while still maintaining ward vision. This is the same for lots of support heroes. Try to be saving up gold fast enough that extra gold above what is needed for wards is accumulating. This probably means you need to take some from stacked camps. Always be aware of the stack and pull clocks. When the time to stack (50-54 seconds depending on the creeps) is getting close be close enough to a camp that you can do it. Rubic can get a lot done roaming, but be sure to stack as you roam...otherwise its very risky. If your ganks do not succeed you will need those stacks to fall back on for xp and gold. Remember, all time you are off the map is time the enemy carry is afraid you might be about to kill him. He will miss cs just thinking about it. So whenever you move try to take a path that will not reveal what you are doing...know where enemy ward vision is. Know the edges of fog day and night. When you smoke, take a path that would be visible without smoke...no one will expect you to be where they should already see you. If you do a good job of staying off the map, it will feel like you are constantly smoke ganking. People will get paranoid and farm less efficiently and make mistakes.

if your enemies are stupid, you can steal sniper's ult and abuse it on enemies as harass

Hi there Shinji²,
I'm a diehard fan of Rubick

Regarding tides ultimate, i usually use it immediately after stolen. The reason being, people usually don't expect it right away a second time from the opposing team in the confusion on battle ofc depends a lot on the fight.

I don't always play good, mostly depends on the team too, but since i play mainly Rubick (check my profile) you can add me to get a general idea of how it should be played.

Also, stuns are overal good, a short list of the spells i like to steal the most (i might forget some) are the following:

Vacuum
Fissure
general low CD Stuns
Swap
Blink
SF, Tide, Bane, Warlock and Enigma (but also a lot others are useful too)

Keep in mind that also a lot of spells that are not ultimate are also very good escape mechanics or crowd controls

hope this post was useful for you

Steam: Yoshimitsu88

A high damage nuke/stun like Sven or CK basically means that Rubick can solo almost anyone.

Most important thing about rubick play is chainstealing.
Steal a spell, save it Eg. Icepath or sven stun.
use said spell, nuke them, disable them steal annother spell off them
and nuke them again with whatever spell you stole.

that way rubick has essentially 3 or so nukes, and at lvl 7 has essentially 3 lvl 4 nukes avaliable to him to rape face.

Zeus zap is the best thing you could possibly get in the early game.

Steal str morf from morphling, just awesome

Most of the time rubick is played as support, relatively rarely he is played as solo mid and dendi used to use it in competitive games as well as solo mid. However even as solo mid I don't think rubick should try and "solo almost anyone" if he gets a Sven or CK stun.

Generally I'd rate big team fight ults > best stun on the other team > best nuke on the other team, if you have blink dagger already. Otherwise a blink/shukuchi is very important, it can help you get into position to life/steal, and save your life while you are squishy/no escape to save up for the arcane boots/blink dagger/force staff/mek.

Rubick is great fun, GL.

Thank you for the input.

Regarding relentless's post, when it comes down to invis spells, I followed your advice and tried to steal spells like Weaver's shukuchi, or BH's shadow walk. I found these immensely useful for initiation purposes. With the boots, I sometimes prioritise them too much, while neglecting support items. Thank you for pointing this out, otherwise I would keep rushing the boots all the time and fuck up my carry's lane by not providing enough ward vision. Duly noted, thanks.

But the main thing I was doing wrong was not buying BD in mid-to-late game. Sometimes I skipped it altogether and went just with force staff. I'll try to always get it around the early-mid mark, unless I manage to steal blink from QoP or AM, of course.

With jungle stacking it's quite chaotic. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't. Ancient stacking has become a chore for me though, and I try to do it whenever I can. I'll try to stack the jungle as well.

The thing with the enemy carry being paranoid is very interesting. I never thought about it in that way. I will try to stay hidden as I roam.

"you can steal sniper's ult and abuse it on enemies as harass"
I managed to pull that off once. Fun was had.

Regarding Yoshi's post, I also use big ultimates like Ravage immediatly after stealing them, as I don't want to risk dying before finding "the right time". The confusion also helps, and I'm saying this from experience. I was playing against a Rubick and our Skywrath managed to get his ulti stolen. Imagine my surprise walking into mystic flare during a teamfight, thinking that I would be okay, just to get nuked for massive damage!

I would be delighted to add you. 500+ games as Rubick is impressive, and I will definitely watch as you play and learn from you.

With stuns, it became a given to me. Sven's gauntlet is probably my favourite stun to steal, since it has an AoE. Sometimes I try to go for the more "utility" types of spells, like NP's TP, to counter his erratic split pushing, or for OD's imprisonment, for a short INT boost and a guaranteed disruption.

Oh yeah, about morph: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcfXnAsBHRY
'nuff said, though I imagine STR morph would be great on Rubick, as he isn't all that dependant on agility.

Again, thanks for the replies.

@Safe Base:
I rarely ever play Rubick as solo mid, as people usually pick at least one mid hero. In case they don't, I try to go for an early bottle, a wand, and phase boots. Also, I try to gank often, because I found Rubick to be a great roamer. I don't fancy playing him on mid though.

Glad you found the info useful Shinji²,

don't expect too much pro play from me, as i mentioned, most of the times depends on team synergy, I've found some extremely good players that know in advance what you plan to do and when. That becomes important in big team fights especially

morph str helps you be more comfortable and helps you avoid dying thus BD comes earlier, if you find yourself mana starving a lot, make sure to try a blood Stone Mid to late game, especially if playing versus an AM or QoP where you got a blink

When you push a good Sentry ward in high ground nearby helps a lot too

as last info then ill stop spamming, most spells can be used against their original owners, try to time the steal on BH track and watch him suffer from lack of farm, it boost your team farming capabilities (trough bonus gold for the kills of the opposing team) a lot.
sometimes I've manage to track 3 or 4 ppl who got killed in sequence and it was a huge gold boost along with stopping invisibility from Mirana, BH, Riki or Nyx. Pudges hook is another example or the vacuum as described above

Have fun playing him, Rubick is really great

Don't think this as a critism but as a suggestion, I think you should not focus on playing rubick yet until you reach a higher MMR.

Not everyone wants to focus on improving their MMR, but I personally feel playing support is especially fun and rewarding in higher level games. In lower level pubs being way under leveled as a support often does more harm than help, and being extremely under geared doesn't work out that well either. I'm not suggesting you should not buy support items, I think wards should be bought every time it's off cooldown etc. However if you are always buying the wards, dewarding, smoke/dust, with the little farm that you get you will have almost no gear. While you are making as much investment into support items, your mid/carry are not able to make that much use from your investment. This results in an extremely squishy hero with no escape.

You seem like a serious and thoughtful players I think you would enjoy the game a lot more by moving into High/Very High bracket first then focus more on rubick and dedicated support. Meanwhile play support/rubick every 3 or 4 games and still do your fair share of supporting.
It's not impossible to get into higher brackets playing support but it's not the easiest if you believe you are improving quickly and able to get there. Tryhard for maybe 15-20 and win a decent amount of those with some pub stomp heroes, once you have stablized reached a higher bracket then play what you like and try to maintain a 50% win rate which will maintain your rating.
Or you can stack and play support that's also fun.

@Yoshi
"most spells can be used against their original owners"
You reminded me of a fun thing that happened to me, two days ago I think. I was playing against Necrolyte, and while I was running to mid to support my team, he caught me off guard and used his ultimate on me. The funny part is, he had about 50% HP, so while I got nuked for a whole lot of damage, I still managed to steal it from him and use it on him. He died, hilarity ensued.
BH track is truly a great spell to steal. Actually, anything with True Vision is great. Zeus Ulti/Bolt, Slardar's ulti,...

@Safe Base:
This is a great suggestion. Actually, I agree with you on all points. The situations with supports in normal bracket is really quite abyssmal, and it's quite rare to meet another person like me who likes to play hard support/semi support.

I have enjoyed playink Slark lately. I found him to be a great pub-stomper, so I guess I'll play him more often, while still playing Rubick. I'll probably mix my lineup with Vengeful Spirit, Lich, Elder Titan and Treant Protector, whom are all heroes I adore. I'll probably play Medusa, SB or LS from time to time though, because sometimes I get too fed up with support. You can't be lucky with teammates every time, I suppose.

I don't have a whole lot to say, just wanted to cover something I don't think I saw yet:

It's important to know that some spells stolen by Rubick have...quirks. Speaking from experience, don't try to Chronosphere a Faceless Void.

http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Spell_Steal_Interaction