Post #1 deals with Ophelia’s Stats, her Skills and a few Itembuilds.
Post #2 covers her role from early to late game, which minions to get during what phase of the game, counters to Ophelia and counter warding when certain spots in your jungle get blocked.
Post #3 shows how to push towers, gank in the early and mid game, how to solo Kongor as soon as you hit Level 6 and what heroes work best with/against her. There’s also a little guide that shows how to jungle in the beginning and how to pull neutral creepcamps.

So if you check the hero usage statistics you’ll probably notice that Ophelia is only picked in 0,6% of all the games played! Is it because she sucks? Definitely not, as most of the higher tier players love her to death.

It’s because she’s probably the hardest hero out there to play right. Why’s that? Because using her to her full potential means that you need to get your microskillz straight.

Strength: 20 (+1.5)
Agility: 15 (+1.1)
Intelligence: 21 (+2.8)

Range: 600
Damage: 43-53
Attacks/sec: 0.68

As you can see her stats aren’t that impressive, but if you play her right she’ll be jungling for ~15 minutes and only come out for an occasional gank or two.

Her role in the game is to push and to support. Ophelia is one of the strongest pushers in the game. She may get weaker as the game goes on and on, but her creeps are amazing for tanking and damaging a tower.
Also her support is pretty crazy, because with that global heal and the supportitems you’re going to get, you’ll end up as an awesome addition to almost every lineup.

Nature’s Wrath:

Type: Magic
Range: 600
Cast Time: 0.8 Seconds
Mana Cost: 100
Cooldown: 14.0 Seconds
Required Level: 1 / 3 / 5 / 7

Nature’s Wrath Effects
7 / 14 / 21 / 28% Damage taken
8 / 16 / 24 / 32% Movement Slow

Nature’s Wrath is a powerful single target spell. Ophelia can slow the targeted enemy AND amplifies the damage the target takes as well. If you’re sticking your head out of the woods to gank an opponent using Nature’s Wrath, having your buddy on the lane know whom you’re going for, will often result in a free kill because of the sheer amounts of bonus damage your debuff will make you inflict. It’s also good for preventing a hero to run away from a gank/in the aftermath of a succeded gankattempt.
The CD is pretty low for how impressive and useful this skill is, so use it every time you can.

Ophelia’s Judgement:

Type: Magic
Range: 600
Cast Time: 0.8 Seconds
Mana Cost: 175
Cooldown: 30.0 Seconds
Required Level: 1 / 3 / 5 / 7

Activation
If target is a player controlled enemy unit, deals {50-100,100-200,150-300,200-400} True damage.

If target is an allied unit that you control, it will be teleported to your spawn point instantly.

If target is an allied unit that you do not control, they will be teleported to your spawn point at the end of the channel time.

Allied units can avoid teleportation by moving more than 200 units away from their original position at time of cast.
A highly situational skill. You don’t need it early game, because you only control around 1-2 units and it’s not like you can’t get new ones. Yes, if you have 2 minotaurs sending the one that’s near death back to the base might be a good choice on the first look, but it’s actually a wasted skillpoint. You can port allies back to the base as well, which is actually very good, but you won’t need that until mid-/lategame.
And for the nuke: It’s actually horrible. You can try to nuke in the beginning of the attack, but KS’ing with Ophelia is horrible, as you don’t need the money. And if you think that you need money, you can get it by jungling.
Command:

Type: Magic Dominate
Range: 900
Cast Time: 0.8 Seconds
Mana Cost: 100
Cooldown: 30.0 Seconds
Required Level: 1 / 3 / 5 / 7

Activation
Dominates target, taking control of it permanently. Only allows control of 1 / 2 / 2 / 3 units. Applies aura to all minions under your control.

Aura Effects
Radius: 9999
Target: My Other Units
Increases your minion’s health by 75/150/225/300
That’s Ophelia’s bread & butter skill. I’m not kidding, you actually have to take it at Level 1 if you’re not aiming for a superexotic build no one ever uses.
It actually enables Ophelia to dominate an enemy creep (NEVER do that. I’m not kidding. Just don’t.) or one of the Neutrals. It may not sound like much, but those creeps are insanely strong in the earlygame and sometimes in the midgame. Lategame you can pick creeps like Ice Ogre or Wolf Commander, but more on that later.

The problem with this skill is that many people feel overwhelmed with controlling so many creeps. You actually have to group them right and use many of their abilities at the right time. Plus you need time to learn which creep has which ability.

To summarize: This skill is awesome!

Update as of the new patch: This skill is still awesome, but now you have to take it on Level 7 too, because only then you can dominate 3 creeps. The Magic Armor is gone too, so if their team is heavy on nukes, you’ll have to watch out and micro your creeps.

Ophelia’s Touch:

Type: SuperiorMagic
Cast Time: 0.8 Seconds
Mana Cost: 200 / 300 / 400
Cooldown: 120.0 Seconds
Required Level: 6 / 11 / 16

Activation
Heals all allied heroes on the map for 200 / 300 / 400.

Fully heals all minions under your control.

Ophelia’s Ultimate. Global heal, sounds boring, right? Well, it’s not. If you have a good map awareness and check your teams HP from time to time, you can save their asses with it. You don’t even need to be there, because it’s GLOBAL!
But that’s not all there’s to it. You can pop it in ganks too, basically giving your team a free Astrolabe-pop every 120 seconds.
Plus you can use it for pushes, when all your creeps are low from tanking the tower.
With Staff of the Masters the Cooldown gets reduced from 120 to a whooping 30 seconds. But there are other items out there that are better for Ophelia.

Level 4 Command gets left out, unless you’re facing a team of AoE nukers that aim for your creeps, in which case that +5 to your creeps Magic Armor could come in handy.
1. Command
2. Nature’s Wrath
3. Command
4. Nature’s Wrath
5. Command
6. Ophelia’s Touch
7. Command (now Command on Level 7 is a MUST HAVE, there’s NO WAY AROUND IT! You need it now to dominate 3 creeps, because the skill got nerfed.)
8. Nature’s Wrath
9. Nature’s Wrath
10. Ophelia’s Judgment/Stats
11. Ophelia’s Touch
12. Ophelia’s Judgment/Stats
13. Ophelia’s Judgment/Stats
14. Ophelia’s Judgment/Stats
15. Stats
16. Ophelia’s Touch
17+. Stats

So it’s basically like this: You get Command on Level 3 as soon as possible, and then you max Nature’s Wrath with one point in Ophelia’s Touch mixed in on Level 6. On Level 9 you can get one point in Ophelia’s Judgement to port your mates to the base after ganks. If needed. They can actually save a lot of time running back there or 135g for a Homecoming Stone.
Always take the Ultimate as soon as it’s available.

You actually have a lot of options as Ophelia. If nobody buys courier, you’re going to buy it. If nobody buys wards, you buy them. If your team is getting both of those things, you can go for an Refreshing Ornament and rush Astrolabe. The +2 Health Regeneration Aura is pretty nice. You’ll probably not notice it, but your creeps will stay alive a lot longer with it, if you know how to micro them correctly.
And if you have somebody in your team that’s already going for astrolabe ( ) you can save your money and rush a Puzzlebox.

So if you break it down, her items can look like this:

/ /

or

or

As mentioned above, always buy a courier or wards if nobody buys it. Also that Refreshing Ornament is only a viable option if your team wants you to buy Astrolabe (= nobody else is buying it).
Bolstering Armband isn’t actually that great. But on Level 1 you can tank for your creep, because it will be a little bit squishier without Refreshing Ornament. And it’s only a good choice if you’re rushing for Puzzlebox.

A note about the courier: It actually benefits from Ophelia’s Command aura. I don’t think that it helps, because if everyone’s favourite monkey is getting caught up by the enemy, he’ll die nonetheless because he only has a MS of 300.

or / or

Astrolabe is a great item on Ophelia, but if your team already has one, you can go for Puzzlebox. It’s great for pushing, it’s great for draining the enemies Mana, and it’s great for dealing damage. It also gives True Sight if you’re facing a team with heroes that can go invisible and one of the creeps has a nice aura that gives movementspeed to those standing nearby.

As far as boots go Steamboots are a good choice if you need that extra survivabilty, but Plated Greaves are awesome too, because they give everybody in a radius of 450 +2 to armor and a 100% chance to absorb 10 damage.

/ / //

Nome’s Wisdom is always great to have and some consider it to be a core item on Ophelia. But getting an early Astrolabe or a early Puzzlebox makes your team benefit even more than from Ophelia running around with Nome’s Wisdom. Sure, it has a nice Aura and the health and manaregeneration it gives are awesome, but so is the heal from Astrolabe and the Puzzleboxminions.

Totem of Kuldra and Stormspirit are an obvious choice if you’re having too much money, because more support is always good.

I know that Whispering Helm is a popular choice on Ophelia, but come on guys. Ophelia doesn’t need the damage or the life steal and yeah, having more minions is great, but that’s 1850g you could stuff into your Astrolabe or your Puzzlebox. It’s nice to have 4/5 or even more creeps with you, but the helm has a 5 minute CD, so it will take 10 minutes for you to have 5 creeps. 10 minutes is a long time in a game where your team has Ophelia, because you should be pushing.
Yes, you can get it. Yes, it’s actually pretty viable and useful, I just think that there are better items to get with Ophelia.

Unless you’re messing aro

Skeleton King:

1100 HP
550 Mana
Damage 32-36

The King’s Grip

Roots a target enemy for 1.5 seconds. (550 range)
Cooldown: 20 seconds

I love them. They don’t have great damage, but their ability is actually pretty good. It’s a ranged root and it helps TONS with positioning your minotaurs for that vital stun. I always get them early with 2 Minotaurs if I have the chance too.

Catman Champions:

1100 HP
300 Mana
Damage 65-73

Wildstrike

Deals 150 damage to targets in radius and applies WildStrike to targets for 3 seconds.
Cooldown: 20 seconds

The damage from Wildstrike is pretty nice early game, plus it slowes the enemy down by -25%. But I like to think of them as Minotaurs gone bad. The 2 second stun is just so much better. But if there are no Taurs around, feel free to go for Catman Champions.

Wolf Commander:

600 HP
- Mana
Damage 30-33

Damage Aura

+30% Base Damage Aura (500 range)

That aura is insane, even more so when your team already is farmed. Wolf Commanders are squishy, so you’re going to look out for them. It’s totally worth it tho.

The third creep you’ll be aiming for is of course a . The aura from the Commander doesn’t stack & the Ogre will have sufficient mana for buffing the team for a while. So that either leaves us with getting a Skeletton King or a Minotaur. I say that the Minotaur is the better option of those two. He has more HP and 2 second of AoE stun never go out of style.

If no creeps show up after 0:30 in one of the camps the enemy team has probably warded it up. What you need to do here is to counterward as soon as possible. Yes, 200g may sound much early on, but missing out on 5 spawns on creeps (if we say that the wards last from 0:30 to 6:30) is an even bigger loss. So buy some Wards of Revelation!

The newest patch buffed Command Level 4 so that it gives your creeps an additional +5 Magic Armor, but nukers are still a problem. You’re squishy and your creeps go down fast if 2 or 3 nukers are going apeshit on you and your party of baddies.
If there’s only one nuker around or their nukers don’t pair up to give your creeps the middlefinger, you’re good to go though. Keep that in mind.

Alchemist’s Bones:

You don’t see it that often to counter Ophelia, but if a team decides to get at least 2 of them, you’re officially ****ed. It has a high CD and you can dominate new creeps faster than they can use Alchemist’s Bones again, but everytime they come near you, you’re basically giving their carries (carries, because that’s the heroes that usually aim for it) huge amounts of gold for free.
If you encounter a team massing Alchemist’s, just try to play passive or use at least a few of your creep’s abilities before they get raped by an instantkill.

LEGION

und don’t get the following items:

//

These three are just examples. Also never ever get Riftshards or Insanitarius. If you’re wondering why I’m telling you this: Believe me, I’ve seen it all.

Basically all the heroes that are good pushers are your friends. Why? Because the enemy towers will fall like nothing over your awesome pushingpower! Also Engineer with Tinker will result in crazy pushes early on!

There are not that many enemies around, but basically they’re nukers and/or Behemoth and Legionnaire. Nukers can bring you or your creeps down easily (at least until you get Command Level 4) and Legionnaire will just port in and taunt you and your creeps for Maximum Whirling Blades.
And Behemoth’s Ultimate… I don’t think that I have to mention it will totally kill you. You will even die after you’re dead from all the damage it will deal.

+ Nukers. But there are too many to list them all.

For now there’s only one replay, but I’ll make sure to add more.

ID 27272724 (SD 1650+)

Well, my jungling was a bit off here, but my team was great and we had lots of good pushes thanks to defiler and her ultimate. There are also a few early kills in it. It should suffice for showing newcomers how to approach jungling with Ophelia and how you can gank with her.
Yes, there are a few messed up stuns in there.

ID 29058277 (SD 1700+)

This game was pretty good. Not flawless, but it shows an early Kongor kill, a bit of jungling in the enemy jungle, pushes, putting early pressure on the enemy team and so on. Actually it was AP, but nobody knew, because the game name said SD. And sorry for the “flame” in the end, but Zephyr called us “tards” for saying “gg”. Nevermind, just watch it.