Puck
Hero
Puck | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Puck, the Faerie Dragon, is a highly mobile ranged intelligence hero best known for being an extremely unpredictable and slippery target. Puck is commonly played as an initiator and ganker, with spells that are equally useful for super-aggressive maneuvers as well as daring escapes. Expert use of Puck's abilities will let you appear out of nowhere, suddenly leave your enemies crippled and disadvantaged, and get away in the blink of an eye - but mess up your timing or misjudge the situation, and there is little left to save this fragile Hero from death.
Contents
Bio[edit]
Play "I find myself strangely drawn to this odd configuration of activity."
Lore:
While Puck seems at first glance a mischievous, childish character, this quality masks an alien personality. The juvenile form of a Faerie Dragon, a creature that lives for eons, Puck spends countless millennia in its childish form. So while it is technically true that Puck is juvenile, it will continue to be so when the cities of the present age have sloughed away into dust. Its motives are therefore inscrutable, and what appears to be play may in fact indicate a darker purpose or just its endless fondness for mischief.
Voice:
Abilities[edit]
Illusory Orb
Puck launches a magic orb that floats in a straight path, damaging enemy units along the way. At any point, Puck may teleport to the orb's location using Ethereal Jaunt.
Notes:
- The orb emits red pulses for the last 650 distance, indicating that it is about to reach its maximum travel range.
- The orb has 450 range flying vision.
- The orb also spawns 7 (
10) vision fields with the same vision range every 279 (
273) distance traveled.
- These vision fields last for 3.34 seconds each.
Ethereal Jaunt
Ability
No Target
No Target
Affects
Self
Self
Teleports Puck to a flying Illusory Orb.
Notes:
- This ability is automatically learned whenever Illusory Orb is learned.
- This ability stays inactive until Illusory Orb is cast and turns inactive again once the orb of that cast is gone.
- Ethereal Jaunt disjoints projectiles upon cast.
- When two orbs are cast in succession, this ability only stays active for the duration of the first cast orb.
- However, it always teleports Puck to its last created orb.
Waning Rift
Cast Animation: 0.1+0.27
Radius: 400
Damage: 100/160/220/280
Duration: 2/2.5/3/3.5
Modifiers
With a mischievous grin, Puck spreads its enchanted powder which disrupts magical flow.
Notes:
- Despite the visual effects, the silence and damage are applied instantly in the entire radius.
- Waning Rift first applies the damage, then the debuff.
Phase Shift
Notes:
- Phase Shift disjoints projectiles upon cast.
- Certain items which do not cancel channeling spells (e.g. Shadow Blade or Shiva's Guard) do cancel Phase Shift.
- Puck is invulnerable and hidden during Phase Shift, turning it to an invalid target for every spell.
- The buff lingers for one server tick once the channeling ends or is interrupted, which allows using items while still invulnerable and hidden.
- Puck retains its collision size during Phase Shift.
- Puck can cancel Phase Shift at any time with any action.
Dream Coil
Creates a coil of volatile magic that latches onto enemy Heroes, stunning them for 0.5 seconds and damaging them. If the enemy hero stretches the coil by moving too far away, it snaps, stunning and dealing additional damage.
Cast Animation: 0.1+0.27
Cast Range: 750
Coil Latch Radius: 375
Link Break Radius: 600
Initial Stun Duration: 0.5


Modifiers
The Faerie Dragon sows confusion by forcing its enemies to vividly dream about their own mortality.
Notes:
- Every enemy hero within 375 range of the coil upon cast gets linked to it. The links last as long as the coil itself or until broken.
- Leashes all linked enemies, preventing them from casting certain mobility spells.
- Entering the area has no effect. The coil does not leash enemies after cast.
- If a linked hero moves 600 range away from the coil, the link breaks and stuns and damages the hero.
- It does not matter how far or how fast the hero moves away, the stun and damage always hit it, unless they are invulnerable.
- Dream Coil latches on invisible units and on units in the Fog of War. But the visible link draws to their last known location.
- Also latches on illusions and creep-heroes.
- The link break first applies the damage, then the debuff.
- Multiple instances of Dream Coil fully stack, with each cast placing its own separate debuff.
- When the level 25 talent is chosen, Puck performs instant attacks on all enemies who have the coiled debuff.
- The attacks are limited to Puck's attack range, and are not global.
- These attacks can proc any attack modifier and on hit effects normally.
- The attacks are performed even while Puck is disabled, hidden or even while dead. This means the attacks happen even during Phase Shift.
- Since the rapid fire is bound to the coiled debuff, removing it earlier causes the attacks to stop, even when the enemy is still linked.
- Multiple instances of Dream Coil on enemies causes Puck to attack multiple times, for each instance, with the interval based on when the debuffs were received.
Talents[edit]
Hero Talents | ||
---|---|---|
Dream Coil Rapid Fire | 25 | +420 Gold/Min |
+40% Illusory Orb Distance/Speed | 20 | -8s Waning Rift Cooldown |
+90 Damage | 15 | +15% Spell Amplification |
+5 Armor | 10 | +10 Intelligence |
Notes:
- The intelligence talent effectively grants Puck 120 mana, 0.5 mana regen, 0.7% spell damage and 10 attack damage.
- This attack damage talent is added as raw attack damage, so it does not benefit illusions, and is not affected by most percentage-based damage increasing or reducing effects.
- Gold granted from the talent is unreliable gold.
Recommended items[edit]
Starting items:
- Healing Salve helps keep Puck in lane.
- Clarity allows Puck to use Illusory Orb more often in lane.
- Null Talisman and its components gives Puck a decent early game attributes boost.
- Faerie Fire supplies an instant heal and attack damage, which may give Puck an edge in trading hits and killing creeps.
Early game:
- Magic Wand helps Puck sustain mana and health to keep active in the mid lane.
- Bottle helps Puck manages rune from the mid lane, as well as replenishing mana for its early game nukes.
- Boots of Speed increase movement speed to help Puck get to runes.
- Town Portal Scroll helps Puck rotate to different lanes and help out allies.
Mid game:
- Power Treads help Puck in the early to mid game, as they supplement both Puck's small health pool, as well as its mana pool.
- Arcane Boots, an alternative to Power Treads, help Puck use its magical nukes more often in the early to mid game.
- Blink Dagger provides great synergy with Puck's abilities and further augments its evasive nature.
- Eul's Scepter of Divinity offers another disable, as well as keeping Puck safe for a few extra seconds until its other escape abilities come off cooldown.
Late game:
- Dagon increases Puck's damage output with magical burst and intelligence.
- Linken's Sphere makes Puck even harder to pin down, and provides great attributes and regeneration.
- Scythe of Vyse provides mana and mana regeneration, helping Puck use its expensive abilities. It also provides hex for Puck to disable the enemies.
Situational items:
- Veil of Discord helps increase your team's magical damage output in the mid game.
- Hand of Midas helps put Puck ahead to obtain items and talents, as Puck does not require any particular item after getting Blink Dagger.
- Force Staff gives Puck extra mobility. Puck can also use it to break Dream Coil and trigger a stun.
- Shiva's Guard increases mana pool and armor to resist physical damage. It also provides an area nuke and slow.
- Aghanim's Scepter grants attributes and increases duration of Dream Coil to better control the enemies. It also prolongs the stun duration and pierces spell immunity, great if allies can force the stun. Combined with the Level 25 Rapid Fire modifier, Puck will have more time to fire extra attacks.
Gameplay[edit]
Roles: | Initiator Disabler Escape Nuker |
---|---|
Complexity: | ★★☆ |
Playstyle: | Hatched on the frond of the Undertree, Puck's youthful mischievousness belied inscrutable motives. Tricky and elusive, the neotenous Faerie Dragon launches a bright Illusory Orb, then reappears at any point along its path. It disrupts magecraft with a sprinkle of faerie dust, then Phase Shifts out of existence to avoid swords and spells alike. Equally adept at fighting and play, Puck binds foes to a single point with Dream Coil, forcing them to break their restraints and be stunned, or stay and face Puck's advancing allies. |
Audio[edit]
History[edit]
Equipment[edit]
|
Trivia[edit]
- Puck's alternate name was Kupu-Kupu, which means "moth" or "butterfly" in the Malay and Indonesian languages.
- Puck was introduced in Version 6.48 as a result of a hero creation contest held on the DotA-Allstars forum, in which players designed a new hero to suit the faerie dragon model from Warcraft III. This makes Puck the first and only hero created by the community.
- Puck pays homage to a character of the same name from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Aside from Puck's playful attitude, its line "A midsummer nightmare" is also an allusion to the play.
- Since Puck pays homage to a Shakespeare character, most of its lines are delivered in phrasing similar to iambic pentameter.
- The Version 6.87 Illusory Orb speed change was a developer's joke based on this reddit thread.
- This line Play "One Puck, two Puck, three Puck more!" is a reference to Eminem's final rap battle in 8 Mile movie (2002).
- This line Play "One and one and one is three!" is a reference to The Beatles' song "Come Together" (1969).
Gallery[edit]
The International 2014 artwork