Cold Embrace negates all of Spectre's physical damage.Arctic Burn makes it nearly impossible for Spectre to juke into the trees.Battle Trance and Fervor mean Spectre will have a hard time fighting troll and cannot take him down, even with equal farm.Troll has high lifesteal from Battle Trance and Satanic, which help him survive the damage from Desolate should the break duration is over.Still, it offers protection against Blade Mail, a common item for Spectre in the mid game. However, Black King Bar is generally not very effective against Spectre as her skills can pierce the spell immunity. Black King Bar allows troll to bypass the damage return from Blade Mail should Spectre attempts to fight back Troll.Troll often buys Silver Edge and Monkey King Bar, which greatly countered Spectre's passive and item build (Silver Edge can disable passive while providing some damage, Monkey King Bar provides accuracy to counter Radiance and Butterfly miss chance).She has no tool to deal with troll warlord once he has his sight locked on her. Generally speaking, Spectre is a strong teamfighter but a weak manfighter.Doppelganger can be used to dispel the slow from Spectral Dagger, thus completely render it useless.With her low mana pool and complete dependence on it to catch enemy team, she will soon find herself unable to do anything significant once her mana pool is completely drained. Spectre often relies on Spectral Dagger as a pseudo-mobility skill.

Without any effective ways to quickly destroy illusion and reveal the real hero, Spectre has little availability to manfight Phantom Lancer at any points in the game.

Although Spectre is largely AoE oriented, unfortunately, they are damage-over-time (DoT) rather than burst AoE damage.In fact, Phantom Lancer will always have illusions with him at anytime, thus further exacerbated the problem.

Phantom Lancer is a natural carrier of Diffusal Blade and Manta Style, which is outright nullify Desolate.

Phantom Lancer has higher mobility and the ability to reset any fights with Doppelganger can be a nuisance for spectre to fight against.

Spectre game