Tips

• Spectre gets a 1 second grace period of free pathing after walking off a Spectral Dagger trail. So if you're trying to escape and don't need to create a huge gap, you can toss the Dagger at your enemies to slow them and then escape backwards over a cliff or across some trees.
• Spectral Dagger gives shared vision on every enemy that get hits by the projectile. This allows you to get basic vision on invis enemies.
• If your hero is within ~1800 range of a neutral camp, you can draw aggro and stack it if you damage the camp, like with Spectral Dagger. Any further away and neutrals won't aggro your hero when damaged and just keep sitting in their camp.
• Spectral Dagger can't be reflected by Lotus Orb and completely ignores Linken's Sphere for the primary target.
  • If you unit target Spectral Dagger, only secondary targets in the path's way will get their Linken's popped. If you ground target Spectral Dagger, no Linken's can get popped.
• Desolate damage is added as a separate damage instance from your actual right click.
• When farming neutral camps, kill the smaller creeps first. That way you can proc Desolate damage on the big creep.
• Dispersion reflects damage before any reductions are calculated. This means it will deal damage before calculating any armor/magic resistance/barriers.
• Spectre doesn't have a farming steroid like most carries. However, Shadow Step allows her to perpetually farm lanes or split push since she can instantly participate in a team fight on demand.
• You can use Reality multiple times during a Shadow Step cast.
• If a target dies, the corresponding Haunt illusion will vanish as well.
  • You can potentially outplay this mechanic by Daggering and whittling down an enemy with your hero and then Reality'ing their Haunt illusion back in to take the last hit with Desolate damage. That way you can quickly return back to where you were farming after killing an enemy without having to TP.
  • If you take the "Twist the Knife" facet, Haunt illusions won't vanish when a target dies.
• Casting Agh's Scepter Haunt can be a handy way to break enemy initiator Blink Daggers even if you don't have vision of them.

Counters

• Spectral Dagger creates a trail on invis units if you took damage from the spell.
• Haunt illusions have free pathing, but can be slowed and stunned.
• Any level of Dagon can instakill illusions. As do spells like Disruptor's Glimpse, Pudge's Meat Hook, Skywrath Mage's Mystic Flare, and any Hex.
  • Brewmaster's Storm Brewling with Dispel Magic deals full damage to all types of illusions.
• Enchantress can take control of enemy illusions with Enchant.
• Whenever she Shadow Steps, stand next to your creeps or give your teammates a hug. For most of the early to mid game her only Haunt illusion damage is coming from Desolate, so don't let it proc.
• Spectre's Desolate and Dispersion passives can be disabled by Breaks.
  • Breaks can be provided with items like Silver Edge or Khanda. Spells that Break include Hoodwink's Sharpshooter, Phantom Assassin's Agh's Shard Fan of Knives, Shadow Demon's Agh's Scepter Demonic Purge, Viper's Viper Strike, and a few others.
• Mage Slayer reduces all spell damage from enemies, potentially making it useful at mitigating Dispersion or Desolate damage from Spectre.
• Spectres generally don't like building BKB or MKB, so magic damage and evasion may prove to be more useful against her compared to other carries.
• If you have a spell that has the option between ground and direct unit targeting, be cognizant that different styles of casting the same spell may reveal you through fog. If you ever directly target an enemy unit, the enemy team will briefly get vision of your hero. If you ground target, you won't be revealed through fog.
  • For example, say you're a Lion using Earth Spike on a creep wave from fog to farm. If you directly target a creep, you'll be briefly revealed through fog and Spectre may immediately Shadow Step on you. If you ground target, you'll remain hidden.