* 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.

* None of Spectre's spells are very good for Rubick to Spell Steal.

* Spectre can easily close the distance on Drow Ranger with Haunt and stick on her with Spectral Dagger, negating the bonus agility from Marksmanship.

* 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.

* 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.

* Haunt instantly allows her to get up and close with Sniper, and Spectral Dagger makes it difficult to escape from her.
* Spectre outcarries Sniper in the late game, so Sniper must try to end the game early before Spectre comes online.
Additional:
* Spectre can reach him easily in the backlines with Spectral Dagger or teleport to him with Haunt.
* He is usually a fair distance away from his allies, so Desolate will quickly tear Sniper down.

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

* Nature's Prophet can literally do nothing against Spectre, because she can chase him from anywhere with Haunt.
* Spectre, just like Naga Siren, loves buying Radiance, which can kill Nature's Prophet's treants, and grant her farm simultaneously.
Additional:
* Spectre can get to him anywhere on the map with Haunt.
* Spectre can pass through his trees with Spectral Dagger.
* Desolate's damage will melt him quickly, as he's alone most of the time.

* 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.

* Spectral Dagger can be used to traverse past Fissure.
* Haunt will usually disable Earthshaker's Blink Dagger prior to a teamfight, preventing him from initiating.
* On the other hand, Haunt will amplify damage done from Echo Slam. Use this to your advantage.
Additional:
* Spectre can use Haunt to intercept and disrupt Earthshaker's initiation attempts.
* Spectral Dagger can be used to traverse past Fissure.
* Earthshaker often travels alone when he is trying to initiate, so Desolate can be very effective against him.
* Beware that the Haunt illusions amplify the damage done from Echo Slam, which can prove fatal for Spectre's own team.

* 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.

* As Ancient Apparition likes to stay far away from the fight to get full effectiveness from Ice Blast, he is a very good target for a Haunt gank.
* Ancient Apparition also has no hard disables and escape spells, making him an easy kill for Spectre.

* 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.

* Squishy heroes without good escape mechanism: Crystal Maiden, Chen.

* Haunt can ruin Enigma's initiation with Blink Dagger, no matter where he is on the map.
* Dispersion reflects the damage of Midnight Pulse and Black Hole inflicted back to Enigma.

* 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.

* 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.

* Spectre can instantly escape Burning Army or hunt Clinkz with Haunt.
* Spectre can catch up to him with Spectral Dagger, even if he uses Skeleton Walk.
* Desolate allows Spectre to hit Clinkz through Skeleton Walk.
* Dispersion makes Spectre tanky and also reflects some damage back to Clinkz.
Additional:
* Spectre can catch Clinkz with Spectral Dagger, even if he uses Skeleton Walk.
* Spectre can instantly reach a ratting Clinkz with Haunt.
* Desolate's damage will melt him quickly, as he's alone most of the time.

* Spectral Dagger hinders Sven's low movement speed, and can be an easy tool to escape against his high damage.
* Dispersion makes it harder for Sven to burst down Spectre in one on one fights, and can reflect Sven's high damage back to him or his nearby teammates.
* Haunt and Radiance disables Sven's Blink Dagger.
* Desolate's pure damage ignores Sven's high armor.
* Spectre should not attempt to stand up to a full slotted Sven, since she will get shredded.

* Spectre can use Haunt to intercept and disrupt Magnus's initiation attempts.
* Spectral Dagger can severely slow down Magnus after he uses Skewer.
* Magnus often travels alone when he is trying to initiate, so Desolate can be very effective against him.
Additional:
* Spectre disables Magnus' Blink Dagger using her ultimate, and later into the game can usually outlive Reverse Polarity's duration.

* 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.

* Spectral Dagger and Haunt allow Spectre to get close to Lina.
* Desolate is very strong against Lina, who's usually a bit isolated in fights because of her high attack and cast range.
* Dispersion can mitigate a good portion of Lina's burst damage, allowing Spectre to turn on her afterwards.
Additional:
* Spectre can very easily close the distance on Lina with Haunt and Spectral Dagger, and due to Lina's abysmal mobility without a Blink Dagger and terrible health pool and armor, Lina easily gets slaughtered due Desolate.
* Dispersion can mitigate a good portion of Lina's burst damage, allowing Spectre to turn against her afterwards.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.
* However, if Skywrath Mage can easily kill Riki if he manages to root Riki with Rod of Atos or Gleipnir, followed by Dust of Appearance, Ancient Seal and Mystic Flare.

* Oracle's burst damage is ineffective against Dispersion.
* Disarm provided by Fate's Edict is not as significant debilitation for Spectre as it might be for other carries since She can do damage even without landing attacks.

* 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.

* Spectre can instantly escape Focus Fire or hunt a Windranger with Haunt.
* Spectre can catch up to her with Spectral Dagger, even if she uses Windrun.
* Desolate allows Spectre to hit Windranger through Windrun.
* Dispersion makes Spectre tanky and also reflects some damage back to Windranger.
Additional:
* Spectre can catch up to her with Spectral Dagger, even if she uses Windrun.
* Spectre can instantly reach a ratting Windranger with Haunt.
* Windrun's miss chance is countered by Desolate.
* Dispersion can reflect some of her damage, especially from her Focus Fire.

* 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.

* 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.

* As Crystal Maiden is squishy with very bad movement speed, Spectre can easily stay on Crystal Maiden with Haunt and Spectral Dagger.
* Late game, with enough farm, Spectre can withstand an entire Freezing Field, possibly even causing Crystal Maiden to kill herself from Dispersion.

* 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.

* 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.

* Heroes that build Diffusal Blade or can fit it well into their item build will also make Medusa much less tanky: Riki, Naga Siren, Terrorblade, Juggernaut, Spectre, Slark,Drow Ranger.

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

* 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 that can gank Shadow Fiend in the early game: Earth Spirit, Nyx Assassin, Riki, Spirit Breaker.

* Spectre's entire ability set is designed to get to and destroy heroes that stay in the backlines, both carries (like the aforementioned Drow Ranger and Sniper) and supports (like Dazzle and Shadow Shaman).

* Heroes with damage-increasing passive abilities, such as Viper and Riki, will usually kill Silencer in a short time before he even has time to set up his abilities.

* 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.

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

* 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.

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

* 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 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.

* 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 from escaping.

* 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.

* Spectre's entire ability set is designed to get to and destroy heroes that stay in the backlines, both carries (like the aforementioned Drow Ranger and Sniper) and supports (like Dazzle and Shadow Shaman).

* Heroes that rely on evasion are slightly countered by Desolate: Phantom Assassin, Troll Warlord.

* 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.

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

* His global teleportation with Boots of Travel and Rearm is easily countered with Haunt, and Spectre can reach him anywhere on the map.
* He is squishy, and if alone Desolate will kill him very fast.
* Laser's blind isn't reliable, since Desolate cannot miss.

* All assassin-type carries in a one against one situation: Meepo, Phantom Assassin, Riki, Ursa.

* Heroes that create illusions (such as Spectre, Shadow Demon, Phantom Lancer, Naga Siren, Chaos Knight, Terrorblade) or bring other units into the fight (such as Nature's Prophet, Lone Druid, Chen, Enchantress and the aforementioned Meepo and Arc Warden) can cause Eclipse to strike the illusions/summons unintentionally. (However, in many cases Moon Glaives can resolve this issue and eliminate them before activating Eclipse).

* Black King Bar is useless, since all of the Spectre's abilities go through spell immunity,
* Phantom Assassin's Blur cannot evade Desolate because its damage is a separate damage instance and is applied before the attack hits.
* Spectre's high durability provided by Dispersion and damage block items makes her one of the hardest carries to take down.
Additional:
* Dispersion makes it hard for Phantom Assassin to burst down Spectre while also reflecting back Phantom Assassin's high burst damage against herself.
* Desolate ignores the evasion from Blur.
* Black King Bar is useless against Spectre as all of her skills pierce spell immunity.

* Dispersion makes Spectre very durable, making it much less likely for Axe to bring her low enough for Culling Blade.
* Spectre can simply use Spectral Dagger to escape against an Axe gank.

* 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.

* 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

* Spectral Dagger maintains vision on Monkey King, and allows Spectre to chase Monkey King into the trees.
* Haunt will still spawn an illusion next to Monkey King while under the effects of Mischief, removing the disguise.
* Monkey King attack range is exactly 300. The best range for Dispersion buff.

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

* Spectre can instantly reveal Bounty Hunter's position on the activation of her ultimate Haunt. She can also semi-reveal( visible but not target-able) Bounty Hunter by hitting him with Spectral Dagger.