Learning the hard carry role

1. Don't every play hard carries in pub. Ever.
2. If you're in a stack, remember 1 thing: Watch the map. If there is enemy missing, farm safely, ask your support to pull the lane back. Carry a Town Portal Scroll at all time. 135g is ~3 last hits, and it'll save your life, or you could Town Portal to farm in another lane.
3. Adjust your item build. Enemy team facerushing you as an Anti-Mage? Turn that Ring of Health into a Vanguard, build a Vladmir's Offering and Power Treads, go fight. Can't farm anymore as a Phantom Assassin? Turn that 3k gold into a Skull Basher/Black King Bar, go face them head on. Ganked a few times as Faceless Void/Spectre? Forget Battle Fury/Radiance, get cost efficient items like Phase Boots, Drum of Endurance, Maelstrom for Spectre, or Power Treads, Mask of Madness, Maelstrom, Crystalys, Armlet of Mordiggian for Faceless Void.

Easy carries for pubs: Lifestealer, Gyrocopter, Luna, Clinkz

All 4 requires minimal farm to fight, since their kit comes with alot of damage built in. Black King Bar is usually the first item build, except for Lifestealer (since he already has Rage ) and Clinkz (who can easily find pickoffs even 20-30 minutes into the game, and has an inbuilt escape mechanism). Special mention: Lone Druid. You need quite a bit of farm, but the bear is great for early engagement only with Phase Boots and Orb of Venom. You also pushes tower quite fast, and can jungle to an extent, so getting that Radiance isn't too hard, compared to Spectre.

Medium level carries: Phantom Assassin, Tiny, Weaver, Mirana and Sladar

You both require a bit of farm or levels, but much less than other hard carries to fight. With a medallion and Phase Boots, Phantom Assassin can fight pretty well. Slardar with Blink Dagger. Weaver with Power Treads. Mirana only really need levels, but you'll need to be able to accurately land arrows.

Hard carries to play: Anti-Mage, Faceless Void

They both require a good amount of farms, but they flash farm relatively well thanks to Battle Fury, and they can both fight early if it comes to that, thanks to Mana Break and Time Lock. For that build, Anti-Mage want Raw HP (Like Armlet/Vanguard/Skull Basher), Faceless Void want attack speed (Mask of Madness, Maelstrom, Armlet). Crit on both is a cost efficient item. Special mention: Spectre. She has a DPS steroid in Desolator, but she has no catch-up mechanism, and she need both Attack Speed and HP to fight early. Worse, Desolator is unreliable, since the target must be alone for it to proc.

Very hard carries to play: Medusa, Spectre

They both require massive amounts of farm, but the result is that they're the hardest carries in the game, dishing out AND tanking damage. Spectre want her Radiance as fast as possible, Medusa want to be 6 slotted as fast as possible. Split Shot reduces your damage quite a bit until you can get 1-2 damage items, so it isn't useful for catching up early on. The recent buff to Stone Form helps Medusa tremendously in early-mid game engagements, but its not as good as the hero listed in category 1 and 2.

Unmentioned: Alchemist, Doom and Razor

With how powerful Unstable Concoction is, there is no reason for you to be playing carry Alchemist. With Phase Boots and Medallion, you can deal a ton of damage early on. Razor is best played as a position 2/3 heroes, getting Mekansm and utility/survivability items instead of a number 1 farmer getting damage. Static Link is over 200 damage at level 7, so it'll last you a while. Same for Doom. Get survivability items like Assault Cuirass, Shiva's Guard and Heart of Tarrasque, get the Ogre Magi's Ice Armor. Enjoy your 50 something armors

HARD carries are very hard to play at the moment because the game has transitioned into being very 'fight' oriented

People want to fight from the very start, they want to get kills and push fast and not let that tempo drop which is a huge disadvantage to the hard carry who needs time and space in order to contribute to the game.

In this sense you see a lot of mid-carries like Mirana, Alchemist, Gyrocopter who can contribute a lot from the very early game or who can even be in that support position but transition by the mid game into a semi-carry. Heroes like Phantom Assassin and Anti-Mage are not so capable of being involved in the fights because it is generally not worth it to them and for the most part they can't even contribute too much.

Spectre on the other hand is a hard carry who can, she is able to farm her lane, farm the jungle and then haunt in on any teamfight. At level 6, Faceless Void can make big impacts on teamfights with Chronosphere and Lifestealer can get a lot of early kills with the help of his team.

But how to play one?

Well to condense down the answer as best I can, it goes something like this:

• Always farm. Never die.

Putting your carry into the safelane is not just because it is 'safe' but because it gives you opportunities to farm where you otherwise wouldn't be able to. You farm the creeps in your lane, but inevitably the lane pushes up to your enemy tower and it seemly becomes impossible for you to move up and get last hits without putting yourself in danger, but at this point your support has stacked a jungle camp and pulled the creep wave. It's okay for you to be selfish and go take all the last hits on that stacked camp while your lane creeps are pushed forward. That's 100's of gold that gets you quicker towards that first core item.

The jungle is your friend

If your creep wave has pushed right out to the enemy tower and you can't last hit there anymore, move into the jungle and just keep farming. If your lane is empty and the jungle is clear, do something productive, move to a different empty lane to farm that for twenty seconds before the jungle respawns. Something!

• If you are the kind of carry who picks up a Helm of the Dominator, use that dominated creep to stack the ancient camp. If you don't pick up a Helm of the Dominator, beg your supports to stack the ancient camp for you. Beg them to stack regular jungle camps when they can.
• If you are struggling to carry because the enemy team is getting too many rotation kills on you then you are probably not sitting under wards. Wards win games.
• If you are getting pressured out by your opponents in lane, like you say Silencer and Axe; someone who gives you a really hard time, appreciate that you have to play defensively and do the best with what you have until you can 'catch up' later. Get another support into your lane so you can kill them or at least pressure them out.

Overextending and feeding them is what lets them scale, whereas you scale through last hits and farm. Silencer for example scales best when he gets kills. If you don't give those to him then you will scale better. That being said, you can't just give up on your lane so turning the pressure around on him will make a difference; that is letting him overextend on you and then utilizing a support rotation or a mid rotation to punish his aggressiveness.

Don't ever stand around. Don't get into that position where you are all standing as 5 behind your mid tower waiting to engage on the enemy team or for them to engage on you. That is your farm time you are wasting, go somewhere else and teleport in if they need you.

Recognize when you genuinely can contribute nothing to a fight and selfishly ignore your allies

It is goddamn awful sometimes when you are losing a teamfight as a support or utility hero and the carry is ignoring you and farming in the jungle; not helping, but sometimes it's not worth throwing your life away when you need to be in catch up mode. Brush off the harsh words of your teammates; "OMG Anti-Mage AFK IN JUNGLE GG" and know that if they can just stall long enough; just give you enough time and space that you will make it up to them later when you are a fatass killing machine.

Lastly, know when you need to change up your item build and adjust your play style

One of my favourite carries is Spectre and I still like to build Hand of Midas -> Vanguard -> Radiance on her; but 1) that is greedy and 2) there are times when you need to abandon that plan. Saving up for a Radiance takes time and if you are too slow, or you are in the midst of saving up for it and get caught out alone in the jungle surrounded by three enemy players you just have to make a snap decision to scrap the Radiance idea and buy a Diffusal Blade instead. If it took you to 11 minutes to get your Hand of Midas and by 15 minutes you don't even have the Point Booster for your Vanguard then it's too late' get Drum of Endurance instead. You can't be stubborn about this. You can't say, well it's 25 minutes into the game but I REALLY WANTED THAT Vanguard... It's too late. The time has passed. You're not married to your initial item build; just buy something else.