Death Prophet is a very strong midgame carry with great pushing, which fits her nicely into the current metagame. Her ultimate does absurd amounts of damage, the problem is that she's naturally a rather squishy hero and thus can't effectively stay alive long enough for it to deal damage. She's also rather level dependent and has no escape mechanism, making her in a solo mid role extremely vulnerable to ganks, especially in high tier play. I almost exclusively take her solo mid despite this, however, as she needs the levels and gains a lot of effectiveness from rune control. She's also not great in 1v2 lanes, even the safe lane.
Starting items: 3 branches, +3 INT, +2 all, and Tangos. Rush yourself a bottle and then Arcane Boots as soon as possible, finishing the Talisman and Magic Wand when available. An alternative start is 3 iron branches, 2x +3 STR, and Tangos, which will let you get a quick Urn. Usually there's a better wielder on your team as she's not a great ganker, but this item is stupidly powerful and every team should have one, so pick one up if you don't expect anyone else to.
Use your Wave at x:50 or so to push the lane and control runes- this makes your opponent have to choose between experience from your now advancing creep wave or contesting the rune. If it's invisibility or haste consider ganking; if it's regeneration or illusion use it to gain an advantage in your lane, and if it's DD you can do either. In lane, try to use her Wave to pick up multiple last hits and harass at the same time- the range is enormous but it must be cast carefully. Be very wary of missing opponents and ask for wards if you don't have them, her early game needs to be strong or you'll have a weak midgame.
From there you'll be working towards a Bloodstone, typically picking up the Point Booster and Vitality Booster first and disassembling your Arcane Boots to complete the Soul Booster, which gives great regeneration in and of itself. (I just learned this last trick recently so you won't see it in the replays below.) If you're farming extremely well and don't feel that you need the extra HP, you can pick up the Perseverance pieces first to improve your farming even more. Turn your now plain boots into Phase Boots at some point during this time, or if your team really needs it get another set of Arcane Boots.
When you've finished Bloodstone, you want other stuff that's going to keep you alive. Against heavy physical damage opponents go Blademail, Shivas, or Assault Curiass. Against a singular hard carry go Sheepstick, Cyclone, or Ghost Scepter. Against heavy magic damage opposition go Hood, Pipe, or Heart. Extremely rarely you can consider a BKB, but since her ultimate isn't too affected by disables unless it remains uncast you usually shouldn't worry about it.
Typical skillbuild: QEQWQRQEEERWWW+R ... this rarely changes, the only possible difference might be swapping Silence and E at level 2/4.
In teamfights, her ultimate needs to be used aggressively, because as you pointed out, they can just run away from it. If they chose to run away, you should be getting a free tower, so only ultimate when you need to- if the threat of your ultimate is making the team wary of defending the tower, take the tower for free and keep going. You should be coordinating with your team during midgame to push as soon as possible, usually taking all Tier 1 towers before 15 minutes. The range on her ultimate is huge, you need to be focusing your spirits to deal damage to buildings from afar. If they want to initiate on you, they should have to go through your team to do it. Choose a key target and right click them: your spirits will attack whatever you do. Don't undervalue her silence, at 6 seconds and with an extremely large AoE she's formidable as hell in teamfights. The later the game goes, however, the weaker she becomes. Like most midgame carries, her effectiveness compared to other heroes peaks at level 16, and so if the game lasts more than 40-45 minutes you had best not be the only carry on your team.
I'm 10-2 with this hero, here are some example MatchID's of my play:
- 9235655: A 1v2 safe lane for a change: 5 minute Arcane Boots, 18 minute Bloodstone, 27 minute Heart.
- 8749900: a coordinated push team with friends after we saw our opponents take far too many carries.
- 8366759: rather typical game showing how strong she is in lane, even against the highly-valued Rhasta.
- 3391570: just a complete stomp.
- 3053432: a game against a lot of good counters of Krobelus that borders on going too long.
Unconvention jungling been done in various ways with:
- Luna, who can jungle with early glaives and abusing aggro resets - YouTube Guide
- Medusa, who can kill Radiant ancients with split shot - YouTube Guide
- Tinker, who can kill ancients with March - YouTube Guide
- Invoker, who can kill Radiant ancients (and Sunstrike!) with an Exort build - YouTube Guide
The problem with all of these heroes is that it's very easy to shut them down and steal their farm, and it's very conspicuous as none of the heroes are viable roamers or gankers early in the game. Jungling usually means doing so from level 1 and keeping pace somewhere between a dual laner and a solo in terms of experience.
To be complete, the following heroes can jungle (traditionally) reasonably well:
- Axe
- Batrider
- Chen
- Doom
- Dark Seer
- Enchantress
- Enigma
- Legion Commander
- Lifestealer
- Lone Druid
- Lycanthrope
- Nature's Prophet
- Ursa
The following heroes can jungle if it's absolutely needed but they're slow at doing so and thus probably shouldn't:
- Bloodseeker
- Crystal Maiden
- Huskar
- Phantom Lancer
- Sand King
- Shadow Demon
- Wraith King
- Troll Warlord
Best Answer
Dota2 is essentially a time-optimization game. If you can increase your strength faster than your opponent you will win.
What's important to realize is that pro-players are really good at optimizing. Furthermore they're a team, they play together a lot and they communicate a lot (headsets, not chat). This time efficiency is essential to flash farming.
A lot of things have to come together for flash farming to work:
MMR is an indication of how strong of a player you are. Dota2 has different elements that you can be strong at, such as: drafting, last hitting, fighting, warding and leadership. Maybe you are really good at last hitting and farming but you're not so good at fighting. If you play a game where your team is fighting a lot, or the opponents come to deny your farm (they roam/smoke your jungle) then you'll have a difficult game. Heroes like Anti-Mage and Spectre are notorious for requiring a lot of farm. This is because they have very powerful abilities. Anti-Mage is very mobile and can farm fast with blink and battlefury. Spectre can use his ultimate ability to join fights, which is really efficient for farming since he can farm right up to the point he is needed. Denying farm to these heroes is a valid strategy.
I'm around 3.8k and I watched a game of a friend of mine at 1.8k. What I noticed is that even at that low MMR (sub 25 percentile) the players are really good at the game. They understand drafting, items, roles and team strategy. But it's all about efficiency. If you can raise your GPM by 5% , if you can manage to die 1 less time or get 1 more kill in the early game, you'll win more games and your MMR rises.
What's also important to realize is that if your supports don't understand pulling and stacking, the opponents supports also don't understand it, so it's a level playing field. And maybe you do encounter a support that stacks camps, that probably means he's really bad at everything else :P
I can also tell you that even at 3.8k MMR pulling and stacking doesn't matter that much. Having vision and creating space is more important. I have a 5k friend and at that level stacking is expected. Also, jungle farming and pulling was nerfed over the last few patches so it's become less efficient.