* If Storm Spirit isn't careful, he could fall into a trap set by Techies and another hero acting as bait.
* Stasis Trap roots Storm Spirit for 2/3/4/5 seconds, which could be the end of Storm Spirit since he can't use Ball Lightning to escape.

* 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.

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

* Techies is very good against roaming supports and gankers such as Bounty Hunter, Riki, Weaver, Earthshaker, Nyx Assassin, etc. that are constantly moving around the map.

* 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.

* Techies is very good against roaming supports and gankers such as Bounty Hunter, Riki, Weaver, Earthshaker, Nyx Assassin, etc. that are constantly moving around the map.

* 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.

* 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.

* Ember Spirit relies on his Fire Remnant to keep a steady push and then retreat to a safe distance. Keeping two or three patches of Remote Mines on a lane will severely impair him from pushing that lane without risking his life.

* 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.

* remote mines are frequently placed in trees, and can thus kill an unwary Hoodwink should she Scurry away due to her low HP pool.
* Blast Off! can clear out trees, denying the tactical advantages from Scurry.

* Morphling usually has low max health due to shifting strength into agility, making him an easy target to blow up.

* 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.

* 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.

* After using Snowball, Tusk can't control where he's going, allowing Techies to make him roll onto mines.

* Stasis Trap's root prevents Earth Spirit from using Rolling Boulder to escape.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* Proximity Mines and Stasis Traps can be placed near trees to detect Monkey King.
* Follow up with Blast Off! to destroy the tree, causing Monkey King to take high damage, fall from the tree, and become stunned.
Additional:
* Techies can turn his tree jumping ability against him, by placing Proximity Mines/Stasis Traps that will detect him near trees, and then destroying the trees around him with Blast Off!, stunning him and dealing high damage, on top of him being silenced when the stun expires.
* Monkey King's mobility is also severely limited around Techies' mines as he will almost always trigger them due to the cooldown time between tree jumps. Monkey King will be forced to take mine damage or escape with Primal Spring.

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

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

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

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

* 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

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

* Luna has low HP, low range and often stalks through jungle. She cannot properly disarm Proximity Mines and could fall victim to their traps.
* Of course, if Luna happens to catch Techies off-guard, they won't be able to survive for long against Eclipse, Lucent Beam, and right-clicks.

* Heroes with damage burst can often kill Chen or his allies before he can use Hand of God: Lina, Techies, Shadow Fiend, Pugna, Nyx Assassin.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* In general, heroes that provide vision will see Dark Rift coming: Techies, Templar Assassin, Treant Protector

* Techies is very good against roaming supports and gankers such as Bounty Hunter, Riki, Weaver, Earthshaker, Nyx Assassin, etc. that are constantly moving around the map.

* 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.

* 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

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

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

* Due to the nature of Divided We Stand and the playstyle of splitting up multiple Meepos across the map, Techies can limit Meepo's movement with mines forcing the Meepo player to either keep all Meepos together or be extra careful when moving each individual Meepo because clones cannot carry any True Sight-providing item.
* However, if a mine blast isn't enough to kill a Meepo, he can Poof to safety of another Meepo.
Additional:
* Stasis Trap can lock multiple Meepos in place and prevent them from Poofing.
* Proximity Mines, Remote Mines and Blast Off! can deal heavy magic damage to multiple Meepos.

* 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.

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

* Well planted Proximity Mines can lure Bloodseeker to his death during ganking attempts.

* 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.

* 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.