Carl is badass. The original character from the Warcraft Universe is called "Kael'thas Sunstrider" but Valve designed their Carl or Karl even more badass than the good ol' Kael. Especially, the voice and more importantly the voice lines perfectly fit his swaggy arrogance.
Some of my favorites are (see here[dota2.fandom.com] for the complete list of responses):

• I am a beacon of knowledge blazing out across a black sea of ignorance.[static.wikia.nocookie.net]
  
  • This can be unlocked with Dota+ when reaching level 30 - what a nice reason to spam Invoker to level 30 Invoker, isn't it?!
• You'd have done better to clothe yourself in knowledge, for all the good your scraps of armor did you.[static.wikia.nocookie.net]
  
• Whatever that was, twas scarcely worth my notice.[static.wikia.nocookie.net]
  
• Like a match already dim and damp, your mind snuffs out.[static.wikia.nocookie.net]

This master of magic surely isn't an easy to play hero. More precisely, he is well-known for being one of the toughest to master heroes along with Meepo and Chen. Of course, all comes with practice. I know if you love him as much as I do, you will put the practice in. But to make things easier for you I composed some of the tricks I stumbled upon when watching worldclass invoker players.
So please, lean back and enjoy!

The Dota 2 wiki states: "Quas/Wex/Exort can be leveled 7 times, from level 1/3/5/7/9/11/13 on, respectively.".

But what does that mean?
It means that based on your current level you can only put round_up(level/2) points in an orb at max.
For example if you are level 7, then 7/2 rounded up is 4. So you can only have up to 4 points in one orb. And there you have all the variations if you chose to max Quas and have really spent all points: 4-0-3, 4-3-0, 4-1-2, 4-2-1.

What are my options for leveling up Invoker based on the situation I am facing?
This is the beauty of Invoker and can be overwhelming sometimes: You have to choose wisely based on the situation and for that you need to know some markers of these situations and how to react skillwise accordingly.
At first, this is a rough collection of thoughts with the end goal of having some sort of decision tree:

• Wex is really important for your Tornado range. While in laning stage 1 point is enough for melee opponents as they need to approach you to last hit creeps 2 points are needed at least when leaving the laning stage when you want to initiate with Tornado
  
• You need to have at least 3 points in Quas to let your Ice Wall slow enough to be really annoying. But the normal go to is to spend 4 points in Quas to align with the Sun Strike "Effect Delay" of 1.7 seconds. This is because with 4 points in Quas your Tornado's Cyclone Duration is 1.6 seconds. So you can cast Sun Strike right when the Tornado hits them in order to reliably strike them as they land
  
• You need to have at least 4-0-4 to unlock the second Forge Spirit. This means from level 8 on you can summon 2 Forge Spirits to gain serious pushing power. But be aware if you need to unlock Ghost Walk to escape. Then spending at least 1 point in Wex is advised.
  
• What are Quas-Wex and Quas-Exort and why not Wex-Exort Invokers? First of all, this naming convention is not precise enough. (more to come)

There are some games where a midas is the best choice for Invoker and other games were it's not. Let us elaborate a bit on this to make the decision easier for you:

Midas costs 2150 gold and let's you instantly transmute creeps into gold and xp every 90 seconds.
More precisely, using midas on an enemy creep will net you:

• 1.85 times the experience you would get killing that creep
  
• 160 gold

Thus, for getting the most experience it is best to use it on the creeps giving the most xp themselves. These are the large neutral creeps and they
will give you 95 xp times 1.85 = 175 xp.
Siege creeps come pretty close. They'll give you 88 * 1.85 = 162 xp.
These are the large camps we are talking about and I have the precious large boys colored and the ones you should not transmute shown in black & white:


And this is the siege creep aka catapult spawning every 5 minutes and your preferred midas target when closer to a lane than a large camp:
But like a two-edged sword, to get the most gold out of a camp, you would midas the smallest creep because it would give the least gold when killling it but using midas on it will always net you 160 gold.
This means for Invoker, always try to use it on the biggest creeps of the large jungle camps or on siege creeps (catapults) and when you reach level 25 use it on the smallest creeps to maximize your gold income afterwards.

Invoker is an experience junky. The faster you level up the more potent are your spells. Every Invoker player knows the situation when you successfully land a sun strike and it's barely not killing the enemy. "Would I only have one more level in Exort..."
Also, the power spike of Invoker unfolds when you finish your Aghanim's Scepter.
So in general, it is a very good idea to build Midas on Invoker, because you'll level your skills/talents and afford your Aghanim's faster. But, you have to factor in the following drawbacks:

• Getting Midas means farming 2150 gold. This means farming time where you are bound to be close to a big jungle creep and most importantly where you cannot buy anything helping your offense or defense - you only carry a pair "gloves of haste" giving you some attack speed
  
• Good players will check your inventory and play more aggressively when they see this pair of "gloves of haste"
  
• You cannot apply pressure on the map when farming your Midas. Make sure this has been taken care of in your pick screen
  
• Getting Midas is like shifting your game towards late game because it takes some time to get the item prize back - exactly 21 minutes or 14 midas uses every 90 seconds.

So, let me summarize:
Get Midas when:

• You have a lane opponent allowing you to quickly farm midas
  
• You have a strong late game and don't need to finish the game as quickly as possible
  
• The opposing team doesn't have heroes capable of applying early pressure onto you - or at least you have support heroes in your team capable of countering their early aggression

Otherwise, skip midas or get it after your core items when you have a lategame composition and the "pressure vacuum" to farm it.

• Invoke spells as early as possible to get Invoke off cooldown earlier
  
• Orb uses:
  
  • Put all orbs in Quas when you need to regenerate hp. Even in the laning phase between 2 last hits you should switch to triple Quas and back to Exort
    
  • Put all orbs in Exort when you are attacking to maximize your damage output
    
  • Put all orbs in Wex when you are running or want to attack quicker. Always chase people with triple Wex and depending on the situation try to Ghost Walk only with triple Wex.
    
  • You can prepare your orbs and even invoke during the following abilities (especially good for escaping with Ghost Walk):
    
    • Eul's Scepter's Cyclone
      
    • Outworld Destroyer's Astral Imprisonment
      
    • Shadow Demon's Disruption
• Train for a good sun strike awareness. This means checking the side lines constantly for low-hp heroes you can snipe. This enables you to get your farm and xp on lane and some additional gold and xp from your sun strikes.
  
• Sun strike uses:
  
  1. Invoke sun strike right after initially spawning and cast it on the opposing team's fountain entry to check for wards and other interesting items
     
  2. Use sun strike to get vision, e.g., for heroes juking through the trees
     
  3. Use sun strike on cliffs - especially the main warding spots require flying vision even when carrying a gem. Sun strike gives vision and you can remove those pesky wards.
     
  4. Use sun strike to scout the Roshan pit
     
  5. Use sun strike to apply burst damage on Roshan, Siege or ranged creeps (situational)
• Use Forge Spirits to improve your farming/denying ability. However, learn that in some matchups it's better to cast alacrity instead because some opposing heroes can easily destroy your spirits.
  
• Use forge spirit to approach mid lane from the side then attack upcliff: Enemy in mid lane will first only see you attacking with alacrity, then forge spirit joins from side and cold snap. Finish with meteor or deafening.
  
• If possible, have Forge Spirits invoked prior to other combos
  
• Deny forge spirits if possible or respawn them from a higher distance to make them disappear and prevent enemies from getting gold
  
• Forge Spirit Uses:
  
  1. Checking dangerous areas including the rosh pit
     
  2. Killing hard to get creeps by using the forge spirit to attack another creep than yourself in case you have 2 equally low creeps you wouldn't normally get both
     
  3. Deny your forge spirit with the second forge spirit or your hero to deny the xp/gold for enemy
     a. Deny it by recasting forge spirit from a farther range
     
  4. Deny yourself using the forge spirit (i.e. when doomed)
     
  5. Deny runes or get intel on what rune the opponent is getting (at even minutes, bounty all 5 minutes)
     
  6. Block camps
     
  7. Stack camps
     
  8. Hold wave at a certain point
     
  9. Pull wave towards you
     
  10. Get another cold snap trigger
      
  11. Siege towers and buildings (in combination with alacrity)
      
  12. Push out waves (+ alacrity)
      
  13. Farm without being there (like 12. but with more micromanagement). This is especially doable when you are either dead or having to run into base to regenerate.
      
  14. Interrupt a cold snapped hero when your hero is stunned
      
  15. Remove bane's sleep
• Use cold snap to cancel salves/potions/tps from distance
  
• Cold Snap has a long range and is devastating for towerdiving heroes (check which hero is attacked by tower) or heroes being attacked by your creeps
  
• When you just cold-snap the enemy from distance, they'd immediately run away. Cold-Snapping while your autoattack projectile is airborn to get that extra attack damage in
  
• Try this to improve your farm: you can quickly destroy a whole wave with meteor and keep killing jungle creeps with alacrity and forge spirits
  
• Use Force staff and/or alacrity on siege creep to apply enormous building damage. Using force staff pushes them on high ground getting rid of its 25% miss chance. Note that every 5 minutes (beginning at 5:00) a siege creep (catapult) is spawned. From 30:00 on 2 siege creeps are spawned.
  
• Against Templar Assassin using meld you can use deafening blast to push her away and therefore making her visible
  
• Use Tornado to purge rune buffs, urn, pipe, omni ult etc.
  
• Use Tornado to stack creep camps
  
• Try to cast tornado into the middle of small paths the fleeing enemy needs to move around to improve the probability of hitting it
  
• When tornado is on cooldown, use i.e. Meteor, Cold Snap into Deafening Blast
  
• When you have already casted some spells in a teamfight, try hitting EMP on multiple heroes for getting as much mana back as possible. This will let you sustain longer fights mana-wise. If the fight is stationary and the opposing team has already committed, you don't need a setup spell. Else use Ice Wall, Deafening Blast or Tornado to set up EMP
  
• Tornado/Deafening blast + Sunstrike combo to pick off long range targets or mid targets when no other spell is available off cooldown
  
• Consider buying a refresher orb for maximum pwnage. This opens a wealth of new combos. I personally like this one: Tornado -> Meteor -> Cataclysm -> Refresher -> Cataclysm -> Meteor -> Deafening Blast.
  
• Reason: Looks awesome. No, just kidding. Moreover, you can use the Tornado to hit both cataclysms when timed correctly. This is devastating. Additionally, two relentless meatballs are rolling over the corpses burnt to a cinder.
  
• Ghost Walk can be used while teleporting to either escape in a hidden way or attend a tower fight invisibly - to move fast while being invis, put all orbs on Wex before casting
  
• Keep in mind that Ghost Walk can dodge certain spells like svens or gyros stun
  
• When you have the time put all orbs to Wex before casting Ghost Walk to maximize your movement speed during invisibility
  
• Keep in mind that avoiding Quas makes you squishy since it gives strength to invoker
  
• Blink Dagger can help aligining your spells more effectively. Especially long ranged tornados can easily be dodged. If you blink to close range and use tornado you'd minimize the reaction time
  
• When having cataclysm ready, you can use tornado -> cataclysm -> meteor into ice wall. Ice wall will slow them so much that they get max damage from meteor and cataclysm. Effect is even better with refresher orb ;-)
  
• Ice Wall triggers Cold Snap every second if you have at least 3 levels in Exort. You need at least 3 levels because after reductions the wall needs to deal 10 or more damage in order to proc Cold Snap
  
• Obviously Euls Cyclone removes dust. That means if an opposing team carries dust, you have to invoke ghost walk first, wait till they dust you, cyclone into shift-cast ghost walk to escape. However, just stupid players would dust first. Use new cooldown reduction talent to have on such a short cooldown that you can approach ghost walking and when they dust you cyclone and ghost walk again
  
• Alacrity the main carry
  
• Just use invoke to counter Silencer's Curse of the Silent (obsolete)
  
• Try to remember the cooldowns of bigger spells: A lot of mis-invocations result from not keeping track of the cooldowns and invoke a spell in teamfight that is still on cooldown
  
• Use invokergame.com for improving muscle memory. Also there are some training maps available on the "Arcade" tab ingame. Check them out.

• Think about the order of spells. If the spell you want to use would be gone when invoking a new spell, swap it around before invoking. For this you need to understand how spells are swapped. As shown below, I first invoked Sun Strike and then Deafening Blast. Invoking a new spell would push this spell in from the left pushing the right one out of the 2 spells we have.
  
  This means that if we invoked Meteor, our Sun Strike would be gone as the following picture shows:
  
  Thus, if we wanted to have Meteor and Sun Strike, we have to invoke Sun Strike again to swap it to the left and then we can invoke our Meteor:
  
  
• Proper orb-alignment for quicker Invoking: Prepare your orbs in an order you can combo quicker
  
• My key bindings: r = wex, e = quas, d = exort, f = invoke, t = left/first spell, g = right/second spell.
  
• Example of a 5-spell combo with Aghanim's scepter and Octarine Core:
  
  1. Invoke tornado (rref)
     
  2. Invoke cold snap (eef) - note that you only need 2 quas orbs because you invoked tornado doing rre instead of err or rer
     
  3. Put all orbs to exort (ddd)
     
  4. Cast tornado and immediately invoke the in 3. already prepared sun strike (gf)
     
  5. Cast cold snap while tornado is flying towards your enemy (g)
     
  6. Invoke Meteor (rf)
     
  7. Based on quas level you have to properly time casting sun strike (g)
     
  8. Cast meteor immediately after sun strike but with a range of 3 cm (1 inch) in front of your enemy (eft)
     
  9. Invoke deafening blast and cast it (eft)
• In case you are hungry for nice combos, have a look at my collection of combos: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FtUKSLdia1KfEvZsJQfWRdpxbDbO6ey2xffZHblg4ao/edit?usp=sharing - if some of the spells are not shown, click on the empty cell and you'll see the name of the spell missing

In this chapter I want to share with you how I practice Invoker combos. I will go as deep into the details as possible to also pick up newer players. Just skip what you already know.

• In general, you can either use the Demo Hero Feature or create a Custom Lobby. Demo Hero is in most cases sufficient and really quick to set up whereas a Custom Lobby requires a little bit more preparation but also allows you to train stacking camps or checking day/night and ward vision ranges
  
• Also, if you need to in-depth analysis of your damage the combat log would be the best choice. Unfortunately, this log doesn't work properly in Demo Hero mode. Thus, open it up in a custom lobby. Don't know how? See the yellow box in the following screenshot: It is now hidden in the scoreboard. If you haven't set up a hotkey for showing the scoreboard, do so in Setup/Hotkeys/Scoreboard (on the right):
  
  And here is a combat log example:
  
  
• To start the Demo Hero Feature, just click on Heroes / Invoker / "DEMO HERO" (on the right)
  
• In Demo Hero mode the Heroes you spawn using the in-game overlay menu are not the same ones as the ones you spawn using cheat commands, e.g., by using
  
  -createhero axe enemy
  For instance, you can quickly level up the bots spawned using the command above by writing
  
  -levelbots <level>
  - so for example
  -levelbots 30
  for max level
  But for the ones you spawned using the menu you have to click 24 times on the "Level Up Enemy" button. Thus, if you need multiple bots, use the cheat commands to spawn them and level them all up at the same time instead of destroying your mouse button
  
• To start a Custom Lobby for training, I recommend to activate Cheats first, because you will need them sooner or later. You just need to enable the following checkbox:
  
  
• Commands I found helpful for training in Demo Hero / Custom Lobby:
  
  Commands in Lobby/Demo Hero Chat or Console

  Why to use it?

  -allvision

  You will kill the opposing dummy hero a thousand times. When it respawns, it's nice to have vision on it to just throw the next deadly combo on the poor fellow

  -disablecreepspawn

  Note that this has to be entered as

  -disablecreepspawn

  . When you want to test your combo potential on let's say level 7 and close-by creeps are getting killed you will sooner or later level up. If you don't want to level up, use this.

  -killwards

  If you play around for finding the best warding spots you might also want to destroy the wards.

  -trees

  Repawns all trees on the map.

  dota_range_display <range>

  This cannot simply be typed in like the other commands. You need to enter this into the console. For activating the console you navigate to your Steam Library, right click on Dota 2, click on Properties and then on "SET LAUNCH OPTIONS". Here you enter

  -console

  and (re)start Dota 2. Then in Dota 2 you navigate to "Settings/Hotkeys/To Advanced Hotkeys" and set up a hotkey for "Console" (second entry on the top right). Back in Demo/Lobby Mode you hit this hotkey and enter, e.g.,

  dota_range_display 1600

  Then you see a green circle around your Invoker which shows the range of an observer ward. This can help you getting a better idea of ranges of wards, certain spells or the fog of war at day and night time.
• A full reference for the available cheats in custom lobbies / demo mode can be found here[dota2.gamepedia.com]
  
• An enchantress dummy opponent with Black King Bar, 2 Eyes of Skadi, 2 Hearts of Tarrasque and a Dragon Lance has 5374 health points at level 25. She will die if you perfectly execute the following combo (editor's note: will add a video for you guys soon) and of course if she wouldn't pop BKB in time:
  
  1. Tornado
     
  2. EMP
     
  3. Sun Strike
     
  4. Meteor
     
  5. Deafening Blast
     
  6. Refresher Orb
     
  7. Meteor
     
  8. Deafening Blast
     
  9. Sun Strike
• In Demo Mode hit "Select Enemy Hero" and then choose Medusa as training dummy. Why? Because Medusa has the lowest strength gain of all heroes and according to gamepedia[dota2.gamepedia.com] no base regeneration. This allows you to get more precise damage values for longer combos. Because if a combo takes 10 seconds a level 25 Ogre Magi, e.g., would've already regenerated 140 of your damage during your combo.
  
• If you are training in a custom lobby, don't wait the time for the match to begin. Instead, use the little button I marked yellow to skip the waiting time and put it into more training time:
  

Sometimes you will meet Captain Obvious in this area. But sometimes I forget key points so for all the people not knowing or having forgotten something, here we go:

• Deny as much as possible (haha, just kidding)
  
• On radiant side you can place your hero right of the tower, to make all creeps spawn left of the tower. This makes it easier to block them
  
• Use Cyclone (Eul's Scepter) on yourself to remove silence or avoid huge burst damage
  
• Practice creep blocking on radiant and dire side to reliably have a better starting position. This way you don't need to attack creeps upcliff with a 25% miss chance.
  
• Watch a few youtube videos about "Creep Equilibrium"
  
• Use the courier as soon as possible in the early game to get your null talisman/wraith band and/or regeneration items
  
• Learn to understand creep aggro and how you can interact with it. There are 3 simple rules for this:
  
  1. Remove aggro from yourself by A-clicking friendly creeps under tower
     
  2. Keep enemy creeps from attacking you by A-clicking an enemy hero out of range then moving into attack range and harrassing him. For 2.5 seconds the enemy creeps won't attack you.
     
  3. Let enemy creeps attack you by A-clicking on an enemy hero in the aggro range of enemy creeps then move back to draw the creeps more towards your base (secure farming)
     
     • If the enemy creeps follow you upcliff at night there is ward vision
       
     • Advanced: Say your opponent wants to time their last hit. Draw aggro from the enemy's ranged creep attacking the creep the enemy wants to kill next to mess up their last hit.
       Effect: The opposing ranged creep stops attacking the creep and the enemy hero has not probably counted the lack of damage in and last hits too early and the creep survives making it immediately deniable for you.
• If you have a hand of midas, use it to quickly destroy siege creeps
  
• Use glyph to have own creeps attack the tower for a longer time or to disturb your opponent from getting key creeps (ranged creeps, siege creep)
  
• Check roshan with Scan, Forge Spirits or Sun Strike
  
• When roaming top with a haste rune but without enough mana, quickly buy a bottle from the secret shop to get more mana for your gank
  
• Use a smoke maybe even with prepared forged spirits to get key kills when the opposing team has warded well

Please don't miss my combo example of the Invoker-specific Tricks chapter. Here I will add some collected tips to ease your magician's ergonomic way your life.

• Change alt modifier key from alt itself to the space key. This is ergonomically way better because you don't need to move your thumb artistically under your hand and will reduce hand injuries
  
• Cataclysm and tp are the most important abilities that need a quick double tap to be cast as quickly as possible. But double tapping can be prone to input errors from time to time in the heat of battle.
  
• Maybe it's better to use the alt-key (space) and single press the cataclym/tp button. For cataclysm you can even cast sun strike on your hero portrait.
  
• Use Options / "Auto select summoned units" to have your freshly spawned forge spirits immediately selected
  
• Ideally you'd also bind "Select Hero", "Select All Other Units" and "Select All Controlled Units". With these three keys you can either only select your hero, only select your forge spirits or select all of them

This chapter is a collection of tricks to become more effective. I know that this won't help much if your decision making is bad. So, bare in mind that this is the icing on the cake. But while baking the cake you could start practicing creating a delicious icing. So, have fun:

• Prioritize ranged creeps for their additional gold/xp. You can even use sun strike to kill them ensuring an early edge over your opponent.
  
• To speed up the poor fountain regeneration - especially when your base is getting attacked and you run out of mana - consider using mana potions and salves inside the fountain
  
• Use time to tp or respawn time when dying carrying an aegis for swapping your items
  
• Mana-Cost management: Keep in mind both the invoke mana cost and the mana cost of the spell to be invoked (miscalculation means not being able to ghost walk away and probably die)
  
• Use the following trick with your inventory if you want to activate salve/mana potion: Swap it to a slot, wait for cooldown, drag previous item on salve/potion and before releasing mouse doubletap item slot of your salve/potion
  
• Let's assume you have this situation and want to use a mana potion:
  How would you get as much mana out of the potion as possible?
  Of course, the most efficient way would be to either drop the two null talismans or put them to your Backpack. But the latter one can be done either in the normal way or in the most efficient way.
  Normal way:
  
  1. drag&drop first null talisman to Backpack slot 1
     
  2. drag&drop second null talisman to Backpack slot 2
     
  3. drag&drop first null talisman back to previous item slot
     
  4. drag&drop secondnull talisman back to previous item slot
  Most efficient (at least to my knowledge) way:
  
  1. drag&drop first null talisman to Backpack slot 1
     
  2. drag&drop second null talisman to Backpack slot 1
     
  3. drag&drop second null talisman back to previous item slot
  Explanation for newer players: Items can give stats. There are 3 stats called strength, intelligence and agility. Dropping or backpacking the null talismans will lower your stats. In our example, we are interested in the intelligence stat because it provides mana. When you gain or lose intelligence, the fill level of your mana pool stays exactly the same. What changes is the overall amount of mana.
  Imagine these two glasses almost half full of mana. Let's assume you had the big glass
  but only half a liter of pure liquid mana. In case you were able to shrink that glass for 5 seconds, you would most likely first shrink it to reduce its size including the mana already in it. Then you'd pour in your precious mana and wait for the 5 seconds to be over and watch it expand again.
  
  
  That's exactly what happens when you put your items to your backpack and back to your inventory before activating the shrine: Decreasing your intelligence is like shrinking your glass of mana, then you use the 5 second duration of the shrine to fill it by a mostly flat amount of mana and then - boom - the inventory cooldown is over and your intelligence becomes active again, expanding your glass of mana again but now with the previously heavily raised level of mana.

will soon be created, check back from time to time

will soon be created, check back from time to time

• Consider buying a skadi/satanic/desolator on carry-voker. Also crits from daedalus + alacrity is a devastating combination.
  
• Consider buying a necro lvl 3 in conjunction with forge spirits and drums of endurance in conjunction with quas exort build for maximum pushing power.
  
• Try out Veil of Discord for the increased AOE damage. However, this is more a niche build.
  
• Buy linkens sphere against Beastmaster, Doom, Legion Commander, Hex, Batrider, Kunkka, Pudge dismember, Bounty hunter track, Tusk snow ball, Bara charge, Sniper assassinate, Necrophos Reapers Scythe, Tinker, Rubick's spell steal

Young one, you made it 'til here... thou are honestly a great person I must say!

Keep the following in your intelligent mind:

• I had pleasure doing this - And I hope you felt it. If so, I am happy about your thumbs up for this guide. If you have constructive feedback, feel free to add me, tell me and see how I correct this guide and give you credits for it!
  
• Carl is really old. Aurel, the gyrocopter, states in one of his voicelines that Invoker is 100 times older than Aurel. If Aurel is 80 years old, Invoker is 8000 years of age. What I want to tell you: No one is born a master. Our beloved Carl put much time & effort into his magics. You have to do the same for becoming a great Invoker. The Invokers I usually watch have all around 4000 - 8000 games played - just with Invoker. Don't get scared away by this. You can do great stuff with 50 games. But the good thing is: You can always improve and are not done learning after a few games.