* Ember Spirit can close the distance between Sniper easily with his Activate Fire Remnant and further keep Sniper in place with Searing Chains.
* With the help of Aghanim's Scepter, Sniper cannot outrun Ember Spirit or chase him, even if Sniper builds mobility items.

* Sniper has no natural escape and relies on his range and slows to keep himself safe, which you can bypass with Blink Strike and quickly deplete his miniature HP pool.

* Heroes with invisibility: (Riki, Clinkz, Nyx Assassin

* Sleight of Fist with Battle Fury deals a lot of damage to Nature's Prophet's team if they stand close to his Treants, as well as killing all of his Treants and getting lots of gold.
* Ember Spirit with Fire Remnant and Boots of Travel can teleport and defend tower whenever Nature's Prophet tries to push.
Additional:
* Ember Spirit can easily deal with Nature's Call by using his Flame Guard and with Battle Fury. He also has multiple ways of escaping Sprout. Additionally, Ember Spirit can break Sprout's trees with Activate Fire Remnant and interrupt Teleportation with Searing Chains.

* A pre-placed Fire Remnant allows Ember Spirit to escape Upheaval.
* Flame Guard blocks Shadow Word's damage.
* Sleight of Fist allows Ember Spirit to attack from range, ignoring Upheaval, and Searing Chains lets him interrupt it.

* Warlock is a very strong hero when positioned correctly, and his long cast range helps him with this. However, some Heroes might disrupt or sneakily pass through your allies and deal with you, preventing you from doing your job. Such heroes include Chaos Knight, Spirit Breaker, Riki, and some others.

* Frail heroes who lacks mobility: Crystal Maiden, Enigma, Dark Willow, Vengeful Spirit.

Additional:
* Smoke Screen prevents Dark Willow from using her close-range bursts with Bedlam.
* Blink Strike lets Riki jump past Bramble Maze.

* Flame Guard blocks Dark Willow's magical burst damage, and harms her if she tries to get close to attack with Bedlam.
* Sleight of Fist and Fire Remnant makes it hard for Dark Willow to fully disable Ember Spirit.

* Crystal Maiden is extremely fragile and she's an easy target for him. She has no real disables that can lock Ember Spirit down, and all of her skill damage can be negated with Flame Guard. The damage from Searing Chains, Flame Guard, and Sleigh of Fist can easily take her down.

* Smoke Screen effectively disables Crystal Maiden's channeling spell: Freezing Field.
* Due to her low health and armor throughout the game, Riki can kill her easily.

* Heroes with a high degree of mobility and invisibility are hard to catch with Meat Hook: Ember Spirit, Riki, Clinkz, Queen of Pain.

* Heroes with a high degree of mobility and invisibility are hard to catch with Meat Hook: Ember Spirit, Riki, Clinkz, Queen of Pain.

* Ember Spirit with Sleight of Fist and Activate Fire Remnant
* Heroes that can dodge Glimpse:
* Puck with Phase Shift
* Riki with Tricks of the Trade
* Phantom Lancer with Doppelganger
* Ember Spirit with Sleight of Fist and Activate Fire Remnant
* Chaos Knight with Phantasm
* Naga Siren with Mirror Image
* Tusk with Snowball
* Juggernaut with Omnislash
* Brewmaster with Primal Split
* Lifestealer with Infest
* Phoenix with Supernova

* Riki with Tricks of the Trade
* Heroes that can dodge Glimpse:
* Puck with Phase Shift
* Riki with Tricks of the Trade
* Phantom Lancer with Doppelganger
* Ember Spirit with Sleight of Fist and Activate Fire Remnant
* Chaos Knight with Phantasm
* Naga Siren with Mirror Image
* Tusk with Snowball
* Juggernaut with Omnislash
* Brewmaster with Primal Split
* Lifestealer with Infest
* Phoenix with Supernova

* Heroes with escaping and disjointing abilities can be good against Juggernaut: Riki, Queen of Pain, Puck, Storm Spirit, Ember Spirit, Slark etc.

* Heroes with escaping and disjointing abilities can be good against Juggernaut: Riki, Queen of Pain, Puck, Storm Spirit, Ember Spirit, Slark etc.

* Lifestealer cannot use Rage, Infest or Open Wounds when affected by Smoke Cloud's silence, and Feast cannot heal him effectively because of the blind, leaving him very weak both offensively and defensively.
* Infest ganks are harder when the enemy team has a Riki, as there are often only four heroes on the map that you can initiate on.

* He won't be around waiting for Medusa to Stone Gaze and pin him until she bears a true sight.
* With Smoke Screen, Riki will silence and catch Medusa in a surprise with high miss chance flushing her from positions easily in team fights.
* He can still deal huge amount of damage through Cloak and Dagger via backstabs, drying out Medusa's protection in a whim at random occassions.

* Disruption is not reliable enough to catch an Ember Spirit with a backup Fire Remnant.
* Sleight of Fist will also make quick work of the spawned illusions.
* Ember Spirit usually builds Eul's Scepter of Divinity to dispel Shadow Poison and Soul Catcher and Linken's Sphere to block Disruption and Demonic Purge.
* The best you can do against an Ember Spirit is to dispel his Flame Guard with your Demonic Purge.

* Riki has high damage and invisibility, meaning he can easily gank Rubick and kill him before Rubick has the chance to react.
* Almost all of Riki's spells are useless to Rubick.
* Smoke Screen is the only of Riki's spells that can be of some use to Rubick.
* Similar to Clinkz, Rubick has to buy a large amount of Sentry Wards to keep track of Riki due to Cloak and Dagger, preventing Rubick from getting better items.
* Riki is a common Diffusal Blade carrier leaving Rubick no mana to spam abilities from Spell Steal.

* Without Dust of Appearance or Sentry Wards, Riki is able to silence Witch Doctor with Smoke Screen, and is likely to build a Diffusal Blade, leaving Witch Doctor without mana to cast Voodoo Restoration, as well as Skull Basher to interrupt Death Ward.

* Cloak and Dagger's passive invisibility destroys Phantom's Embrace even when Riki is silenced.
* Smoke Screen prevents Grimstroke from shielding himself with Ink Swell.

* Sleight of Fist, allows Ember Spirit to destroy all of Phantom Lancer's illusions.
* Flame Guard also deals significant damage to illusions, and protects against Spirit Lance.
* Phantom Rush is unable to catch Ember Spirit when he teleports to his Fire Remnants.
Additional:
* Sleight of Fist is the natural counter to Phantom Lancer's army of illusions, especially when combined with Battle Fury.

* The high mobility provided by Fire Remnant makes it hard for Windranger to find a good position to land Shackleshot or a full duration of Focus Fire.
* Flame Guard deals considerable magical damage to Windranger.

* Ember Spirit's Fire Remnant is an easy way to escape from Clockwerk's Power Cogs.
* Flame Guard blocks most of the magical damage Clockwerk does.

* Due to his low health and armor, Riki can easily kill Skywrath Mage.
* Smoke Screen prevents Skywrath from using all of his abilities, as he does not tend to buy Black King Bar

* Flame Guard absorbs up to 500 magical damage (700 with Level 10 talents), which helps Ember Spirit survive and react to Storm Spirit's high magical damage.
* Searing Chains can root enemies up to 3 seconds, making Storm Spirit unable to escape with Ball Lightning.
* Fire Remnant deals high magical damage when casting multiple instances at once, granting Ember Spirit the damage to burst Storm Spirit down in the early to mid game.

* Smoke Screen prevents Storm Spirit from using his abilities once inside the radius. Riki can utilize this ability to allow his team to fight around Smoke Screen so that Storm Spirit cannot spam his spells to proc Overload.
Additional:
* Smoke Cloud prevents Storm Spirit from using any of his offensive and defensive spells, rendering him unable to effectively react to Riki's attack.

* Chen is basically your natural prey: he has little HP, low armor and relies on his persuaded creeps to fight, which in most situations will not save Chen from you. Just be wary of {U:Centaur Conqueror}, who can stun you outside of Smoke Screen and ruin your attempt at Chen's life.

* Smoke Cloud prevents Shukuchi and Time Lapse, leaving Weaver helpless against Riki.
* The Swarm is ineffective against Riki because invisibility instantly removes the beetles.

* Riki can detect early Roshan attempts because of Cloak and Dagger if he frequently checks the Pit.
* Ursa cannot Enrage when in Smoke Screen (Black King Bar will help though).
* Even if Ursa gets vision over him, Riki can Blink Strike away or use Tricks of the Trade after Ursa's initiation to avoid all Fury Swipes damage until Earthshock's slow is gone.
Additional:
* Riki can detect early Roshan attempts because of Cloak and Dagger if he frequently checks the Pit.
* Ursa cannot Enrage when caught in Smoke Screen and will miss his attacks (although Black King Bar will help with this issue).
* Even if Ursa gets vision over him and initiates with Earthshock, Riki can Blink Strike away or use Tricks of the Trade after Ursa's initiation to avoid Fury Swipes' damage until Earthshock's slow is gone.

* Searing Chains prevents usage of Timber Chain.
* Timbersaw is vulnerable to magical burst damage, which Ember Spirit provides with Fire Remnant and Flame Guard.
* Timbersaw's abilities deal pure damage, thus they cannot remove Flame Guard.

* Ember Spirit has much higher mobility in Fire Remnant than Void Spirit.
* Ember's Flame Guard is effective against Void Spirit's spells, as most of them deal magical damage.
* The root from Searing Chains prevents Void Spirit from using Dissimilate or Astral Step.

* Ember Spirit is evasive and can dodge close encounters with melee heroes like Chaos Knight. Ember Spirit can't be caught with the slow from Reality Rift, and Flame Guard and Sleight of Fist can bring Phantasm's illusions down quickly.

* Flame Guard makes Dark Seer not deal any damage with his skills to Ember Spirit.

* Smoke Screen prevents Arc Warden from initiating or helping his team, as he struggles to escape the silence with low mobility.
* With Arc Warden's low mobility, Tricks of the Trade is wide enough to deal decent damage to him.

* Riki is known for being a successful support killer, and not just for show. He can give you one hell of a time by constantly picking you off and/or forcing you to stick close to the rest of the team.
* Smoke Screen is particularly devastating to Shadow Shaman. With neither his various disables nor a solid health pool Shadow Shaman is usually dead. Consider a force staff if you find yourself in this scenario (to force yourself out of the cloud before shackling Riki) and buy sentry wards if you have the money.

* Ember's magic damage build is able to burst down Alchemist due to his low strength gain and Alchemist's normal item pick up.

* Riki is a natural Diffusal Blade carrier, and it doesn't help that he's easily capable of sneaking up on you due to Cloak and Dagger.
* Riki can use Smoke Screen on top of you as you're reincarnating, making you a sitting duck for your second life. In addition, the blind prevents Wraith King from landing critical hits from Mortal Strike.
* Wraithfire Blast is quite predictable, and players with good reflexes will disjoint it with Tricks of the Trade.
* There is also a chance he will become invisible again as the projectile travels, disjointing it.

* Sleight of Fist keeps Ember Spirit invulnerable until he hits every unit in its area of effect allowing him to stall for large amounts of time against Broodmother and her large amounts of spiderlings, or potentially damaging them enough if equipped with an item to improve wave clearing such as Battle Fury or Maelstrom to prevent her pushes entirely.
* Flame Guard will damage any of Broodmother's spiders in an area, deterring her from attempting to kill him. It can also be used during Sleight of Fist to amplify damage done.
* Fire Remnant allows Ember Spirit an escape from Broodmother that is unaffected by her Incapacitating Bite.

* Heroes that can easily bypass Io's allies to get to Io: Riki, Tusk, Clinkz, Sniper

* Frail heroes who lacks mobility: Crystal Maiden, Enigma, Dark Willow, Vengeful Spirit.

* Heroes with abilities or items that can silence or disable Anti-Mage for long periods of time will prevent him from Blinking away: Silencer, Shadow Shaman, Grimstroke, Clinkz, Riki, Faceless Void, Skywrath Mage, Puck

Additional:
* Anti-Mage can use neither Blink nor Manta Style to escape from Smoke Cloud.
* Even if he activates a Black King Bar, his Manta Style illusions will still be blinded by Smoke Cloud.
* Riki has a very small mana pool and generally doesn't buy many items that increase it, making Mana Void ineffective.

* Heroes with high mobility will be able to avoid Gyrocopter's area attacks: Storm Spirit, Morphling, Ember Spirit

* Careful not to blink into Riki's Smoke Screen or Night Stalker's Crippling Fear, as these field effects will instantly silence Earthshaker and prevent him from initiating.

* Heroes who can dodge Earth Spirit's abilities: Ember Spirit, Puck, Weaver

* Because Templar Assassin does not have escape potential in lane, any support hero with roaming potential and a Dust of Appearance can be great at shutting her down early game: Earth Spirit, Spirit Breaker, Tusk, Bounty Hunter, Riki, Warlock.

* Riki is another good hero to shutdown Death Prophet with Diffusal Blade as his core item. His Smoke Screen stops her from initiating and casting spells.

* Heroes with silence: Death Prophet, Riki, Drow Ranger.

* Heroes with considerable mobility can easily escape from a rolling Pangolier: Anti-Mage, Queen of Pain, Void Spirit, Storm Spirit, Ember Spirit, Earth Spirit, moreover, if a player is familiar with how Rolling Thunder work, they can adjust their movement to avoid it entirely and of course outplay the Pangolier player.

* Cleave heroes will clear her illusions. Such heroes include Sven, Magnus, Dragon Knight in Elder Dragon Form, Ember Spirit (via item), Phantom Assassin (via talent or item), etc.

* Heroes that have superior mobility that can easily catch up with Mirana even after she used Leap to escape: Anti-Mage, Queen of Pain, Storm Spirit, Riki.

* Riki: Smoke Screen can prevent Lone Druid from using True Form and Savage Roar, additionally it cause the spirit bear to miss on attacks which reduce the chances of getting rooted from it, with diffusal Blade, he can keep Lone Druid or the Spirit Bear inside the Smoke.

* Heroes with mobility/escape mechanisms to dodge Ancient Apparition abilites, or to easily jump on him: Riki, Queen of Pain, Phantom Assassin, Windranger, Bounty Hunter, Spirit Breaker, Night Stalker, Storm Spirit, Juggernaut, etc.

* Frail heroes who lacks mobility: Crystal Maiden, Enigma, Dark Willow, Vengeful Spirit.

Additional:
* Riki can potentially catch an Enigma out of position and prevent him from properly blinking and initiating, thanks to Cloak and Dagger used in tandem with Smoke Screen.

* Heroes that heavily depend on illusions or summons, (Naga Siren, Terrorblade, Phantom Lancer, Lycan,...) are vulnerable to Sleight of Fist and even more so if Ember Spirit has Battle Fury.

* Ember Spirit can deal devastating damage to illusion heroes like Terrorblade with Sleight of Fist. Terrorblade also has no way of preventing Ember Spirit from getting Activate Fire Remnant off. Additionally, Ember Spirit's ability to fight from long range as well as his wide skill set won't give many opportunities for Terrorblade to get Sunder off.
Additional:
* Ember Spirit can deal devastating damage to Terrorblade and his illusions with Sleight of Fist.
* Terrorblade has no disable to lock down Ember Spirit and prevent him from escaping with Fire Remnant. In addition, he doesn't like purchasing disabling items, which are the only solutions to deal with Ember Spirit.

* Smoke Cloud prevents Queen of Pain from using any of her offensive and defensive spells, rendering her unable to effectively react to Riki's attack.
* It's easy to dodge Sonic Wave by using Blink Strike & Tricks of the Trade.

* Bulwark is generally irrelevant against Riki as he primarily deals bonus damage from behind.
Additional:
* Blink Strike gives bonus backstab damage. Along with Tricks of the Trade it completely bypasses Bulwark.

* Searing Chains can stop Charge of Darkness if timed correctly.
* Activate Fire Remnant can be used to escape an approaching Spirit Breaker, or lead Spirit Breaker into a bad situation.
* Activate Fire Remnant and Sleight of Fist allows Ember Spirit to dodge Charge of Darkness if timed correctly.

* Riki usually buys Diffusal Blade to initiate, which renders Enchantress' movement speed useless, and is usually followed with Smoke Screen.
* Riki can effectively hit Enchantress by Tricks of the Trade alongside with Diffusal Blade and Smoke Screen's initiation. For a hero like Enchantress, 3 to 4 hits from Riki is a big deal, unless Enchantress built Force Staff earlier.

* Riki's Smoke Screen can make it hard for Spectre to escape or burst down Riki with auto attacks.
* Riki can build Aghanim's Scepter and jump inside an allied carry or offlane tank with Tricks of the Trade to do a lot of damage to Spectre while completely avoiding Dispersion.
* Riki is great at destroying supports which are often needed to keep Spectre safe until she comes online. He can take them down quickly in team fights, which will leave Spectre alone against your whole team, a fight that she will most likely not win.
* While on Tricks of the Trade, Riki does not take damage from Dispersion.

* Blink Strike gets Riki close to Drow Ranger and disable Marksmanship.
* Smoke Screen makes Drow Ranger miss her attacks.
* Cloak and Dagger lets Riki stay close to Drow Ranger without her noticing, disabling Marksmanship.
Additional:
* With Blink Strike, Riki can get close to Drow Ranger and disable her Marksmanship, and Smoke Screen will prevent her from using Gust.

* Fire Remnant allows Ember Spirit to escape Bloodseeker while Ruptured.
Additional:
* Fire Remnant allows Ember Spirit to escape while Ruptured.

* Riki and Disruptor: Smoke Screen and Static Storm can be thrown wherever Puck used Phase Shift, making Puck an easy target if it doesn't have Blink Dagger or is on cooldown. Puck is also very susceptible to Riki's high attack damage when attacking from the back. Glimpse also prevents Puck form escaping.

* Smoke Cloud prevents the use of Death Pact, Searing Arrows and Skeleton Walk, so Clinkz can neither defend himself against Riki nor fight back effectively.
* It's hard to gank Riki as you have to find him first.

* Heroes with blind of some sort can be a bad choice for Monkey King to go on: Broodmother, Riki, Keeper of the Light.