As you know I am very vocal about getting impalement early on Torturer (to Maguile's dismay). Since it is thought to be mostly opinion I will attempt to back it up with mathz and logic based on how we play as a clan.
There are three "common" builds on Torturer.
First is the ever common Bonds + Chain Reaction build. It is the "safest" build with the largest burst.
1. Chain
2. Bonds
3. Chain
4. Bonds
5. Chain
6. Bonds
7. Chain
8. Bonds
9. Impale
10. Impale
11. Impale
12. Impale
This build provides you with a few bonuses. The obvious bonus is that you can safely harass enemy players by repeatedly using Bonds on ranged creeps to hit them. Lovely. The second is that you gain more bursty damage and a slightly longer stun (.75 seconds) than other builds. However, you do not gain tower strong pushing capabilities until ~lvl 10-11. I will explain why this is detrimental later.
The second build is the Chain + Impale build.
1. Impale/Chain
2. Chain/Impale
3. Impale
4. Chain
5. Impale
6. Chain. etc. etc.
This build swaps the power of harassment with the power of pushing giving you the ability to solo lvl 1 towers at level 7 in just under 10 seconds. You keep the 2 second stun which is nice and the damage from the stun stays high. However you cannot nuke enemy ranged creeps and hit the heroes every few seconds. Its a small trade off.
The last build is the one I advocate.
1. Impale/Chain
2. Chain/Impale
3. Impale
4. Bonds
5. Impale
6. Bonds
7. Impale.
8. Bonds
9. Bonds
10. Chain etc. etc.
Why do I like this build? Because it gives you everything you need early. Before a patch (of which the number escapes me) this build was not viable at all because the AoE on Chain Reaction grew from tiny tiny tiny to huge. Now its huge all the time. However you do not gain anything amazing by leveling it much further than 1. You get extra magic damage and .75 seconds on your stun (like Behemoth's Fissure which is often kept at level 1 for a large portion of the early game.).
With this build you also do not sacrifice the team/lane presence of Agonizing Bonds nor the Stun of Chain Reaction or the Godly pushing and killing power of Impalement. However, you use a large amount of mana, but this is a good thing. If you don't come out of teamfights with close to 0% mana early game then you are not doing all you could be.
"But Impalement sucks when there are multiple enemies"
This statement is not true. To start off Impalement is Physical damage instead of magic. This is very important because most early heroes (except Dr. Repulsor) will have a very low armor count that will average out to ~17% physical reduction, obviously less than the base 24.8% magic reduction all heroes have. Now, lets examine a situation. Both sides are at level 5.
Enemy team
2 enemy heroes
3 creeps at near full health
1 half dead creep
Your team
1 hero with a typical aoe stun/slow (~200 damage, you don't miss).
Creeps of they don't fucking matter.
If you leveled Bonds/Chain reaction then you would probably do 152 damage to each hero from Chain (lvl3) and 108 damage from Bonds (lvl2). The creeps all die, you may or may not have gotten a kill.
Now if you went with the third build...
Chain Reaction would deal 52 damage (lvl1) Bonds would deal 60 damage (lvl1). That seems insignificant. But, its in an aoe and would hit the enemy creeps. 1 Creep would die from your Allie's and your combined damage total of 312 magic damage. The other creeps would be brought down to a considerably low health and would likely die to your own creeps/ticks of impalement.
At level 3 Impalement does 900 physical damage total. Given that the enemy creeps will be at roughly 50-100 health they will most likely get knocked out after about a second into Torturer's impalement. This knocks down Torturer's Impalement to 782 damage. Now factor in physical resists (17%) and you get 650 damage to be split amongst the enemy heroes. That damage will get split evenly between the two for a total of 325 damage each. Already, that tops the original build in terms of damage output. Now, the downside is that this is over a period of 8 seconds. Assuming perfect stuns you could keep them locked out for 3.25 seconds total. If they have a stun combo they may try to stun you and run, however at those early levels often times they will not have boots or great escape tools and you can easily keep up with them to maintain range on your impalement.
Now that alone is not the entire reason as to why I advocate early leveling of this skill. I also base this on how we play as a clan. I can't even count the numerous times we have AMAZING early game but lose because we took too long to push. Around the level 8 mark is when we usually start thinking "ok, lets kill X tower". Problem is we usually don't have the damage to down it before backup arrives. We stall and lose too much time. By leveling impalement early we get the advantage of killing their towers quickly, efficiently, and keep them defensive. No offense to some of you but you are often times easier to gank than fresh noobs. By pushing early and keeping the pressure on their base they can't be bothered to gank because their inner tower is getting mashed in by a large creepwave and they "fear you". Its good to be feared, you aren't ganked as much and if you are its by a large portion of the enemy team (which is not exactly profitable.).
Oh and, any 1v1 or 2v2 in the forest means the enemy heroes go down FAST. Impalement hurts too much stand in it and a very hard to control behavior is to run instantly. If they are running, they aren't killing you. This is similar to how swiftblade works. You can't escape him when he spins, yet you still flee. Had you turned and attacked from the getgo you might have been able to kill him before he kills you.
My point here is to not be an opinionated asshole but to better educate you on my thought process. I think with numbers and rarely opinions.
