PA Carry Guide

PA is the definition of a mid game carry. She has a strong laning stage that is easy to transition into a strong midgame and take over the game. She is one of the most snowball-y carries outside of perhaps Slark. She does have multiple glaring weakness though. She falls off tremendously in the late game and is perhaps one of the weakest carries vs either "King Bar", both monkey and black. She is also incredibly reliant on her own BKB. Unlike many other BKB carries, PA lives and dies by the charges of her BKB, and is almost entirely reliant on it to not just get disabled and one shot. She is also easily countered by a Silver Edge as well as Atos now lowering evasion chance. Despite this, if played properly PA can still be potent carry.

Strategy:

PA is a mid game carry and thus your strategy should revolve around a dominant mid game lineup, preferably with a second core to act as the "building hitter" due to PA's weak tower damage. The items you buy should also reflect this in that you want to avoid most farming items and instead focus on items that help you kill people or cover your weaknesses. A typical PA game should revolve around your BKB timing. That is, once you acquire BKB you should begin to try to teamfight and force objective fights and hopefully build up enough or a lead or even win the game while your BKB is still long. I will know if you don't read all of this. Generally you want to win your lane heavily in the early stage, PA is one of the best carries to either play aggressive or to stick in a 1 vs 1 lane. Thus you should almost always win your lane with a competent support. Following the laning stage, you should try to rotate into the jungle and free up space for your support, or simply farm both the jungle and the lane. You will almost always complete one tier 1/2 item before buying your BKB, whether that is your S&Y, Battlefury, or a straight Skull Basher rush is up to the game. Once you finish your BKB +1 item you should look to fight with your team agressivly on the map to secure map control and force objectives. It is during this time that you should begin to allow the other cores on your team to have more farm priority, that isn't to say you should stop farming entirely and gank 24/7 but you should begin to farm as a 2 rather than the 1. Following this, you should take Roshan and look to make a high ground push to secure your lead. Essentially, once you have taken the first set of rax victory should be assured.

Hero Pairings:
**Please not that this guide was written on the 3rd of February, 2016 and as such these hero pairing reflect the current state of the patch 6.86d.
Good Heroes to have on your team include, but are not limited to:
Invoker/Zeus- Can easily step in as the 1 position and has the necessary damage output to carry the game when you fall off. Do note that with this you will be fairly weak to BKB.
Lone Druid- Can fill the carry spot and is a fantastic "building hitter" to siege highground with.
Rubick/CM- Aggressive laning supports that can scale well with farm.
Shadowfiend/TA/Sniper/Medusa- Strong 1 position mids that can carry for you.
Witch Doctor/Dazzle/Shadow Demon(who?)- More defensive supports that can scale well and have strong laning presence
Tidehunter/Other teamfight offlaners- Having a strong midgame teamfight hero to back up your objective based pushes is almost essential.

Heroes to NOT Pick PA against include, but are not limited to:
Gyrocopter- The grand daddy of all PA counters is Gyro. Not only is he a natural BKB and MKB carrier, but his magic damage absolutly destroys you early game and can wreck you in lane.
Slark- You have no lockdown and very limited burst damage. Slark can easily force your BKB, disengage, then reengage and kill you.
Lion- Lion's plethora of stuns as well as his massive burst makes him horrible to play against once your BKB wears down
Any split push hero- PA lacks catch as well as means to clear creep waves fast making it nigh impossible to stop a split push. Additionally, split push counter her preferred style of a timing push.

Heroes to pick PA against:
Sniper/Drow- It is super easy to jump on and demolish either before they get their BKB
Strength Carries- Most are easily kited by PA and lack the magical burst to kill her. Additionally, their weak armor lets PA do significant damage to them.

Skill Build:

The standard skill build is
3-1-1-1 at 6
4-4-1-2 at 11

Dagger-You max dagger as it is your main farming skill as well as what makes you such a strong laner. In the early game is important to note that the mana cost goes down with each level, so you should use it sparingly in the early but begin to spam it later in the lane.
Blink- Blink allows you to gap close efficiently as well as is your main source of attack speed throughout the early-midgame. When doing Rosh, use Dagger to pop his Linkens then blink on him to get the attack speed.
Blur- One of the skills that she is most famous for is perhaps one of the worst skills in the game. It is quite effective at a simple value point and scales quite poorly and is easily countered. Remember that it makes you essentially smoked on the minimap which helpful when ganking.
Coup de Grace- The hero who's built around Crit has the worst passive crit in the game until level 16. This is your main damage output so just pray to RNGesus and hope you can kill someone.

Item Build:
*I'm not going to cover every item build or really even the "Standard" one as it is covered in the section titled "Strategy". This section will mainly focus on important choices, rather than outline a build.

Early Game:

Treads vs Phase: Treads are the standard due to better scaling with the attack speed and the ability to tread switch to help your tiny mana pool. Phase are good in a very aggressive lane/game to get early kills and be able to chase.

Basi/Aquila or not: If you get phase you must get a mana regen item. The flat, non percentage based mana regen from basi/aquila is especially good on PA due to her incredibly low int gain. If you go treads, aquila is not necessary, but can be worth it for the cheep stats and ability to skimp on tread swapping.

Very first item:
Stick: if you are being harassed by spamming spells
PMS: if you are being harassed by right clicks
Basi: if you want the mana regen and bought ring of protection from main shop
Quelling blade: If you need to get contested last hits
OoV: When you can be aggressive in lane, this is often time the default

Mid Game:

Drums/Wand: Value stat items like this can be picked up in a rough game where you understand that the enemy team will try to push or fight very early on

First major item:
S&Y: the default item, gives you the ability to farm and fight as well as increases your chasing potential.
Battlefury: DON'T BUY THIS SHIT WITHOUT SERIOUS THOUGHT. DON'T JUST BE LIKE "Maaaaannnn, this lane blows and I need some regen so I'll grab a ring of health to sustain and just go BF." FUCK THAT. FLY YOURSELF SOME GODDAMN TANGOES AND MAN UP. This is the most situational item on PA and should only be bought in ~10% of games. You should buy this when you are literally the only carry on your team and need to be 2 items ahead of the enemy carry to win. Additionally, if they have a ridiculous amount of creep push (Natures Prophet), and you lack depush it may be worth it. Please do remember that you can get it as a second item after, say S&Y, if the game takes a very late game route and you know you will need items.
Skull Basher: This is kinda the 3 position build where you need to be able to kill people and make space.

Alternate builds:

"Fear" Build
Normal items with aquila into basher, moon shard
This build allows you to kill people quicky in the mid game, but leave you without a BKB for a long time

Vlads/Deso
This build forgoes the normal HoD in favor of the armor reduction on deso. Another kill people build that allows you to one shot the squishies on the enemy team. Good when they have 3-4 low armor heroes.

Standard Build:
Just for reference the "Standard" build that you should replace various items in is
Tangoes + Salve + Stout Sheild + Mango -> OoV, Treads, Quelling, HoD, S&Y, BKB -> Abyssal, Satanic, Other item


Thanks for reading all this shit and I hope it helps you out.

God Bless,
Connor