[Hero] Sand King

STR: 83 at 25 (18 + 2.6 / lvl)
AGI: 71.5 at 25 (19 + 2.1 / lvl)
INT: 61 at 25 (16 + 1.8 / lvl)

Health @ 1: 492
Mana @ 1: 208
Health @ 25: 2050
Mana @ 25: 1027

Starting Damage: 43 - 59
Starting Attack Speed: 0.7 / second
Starting Armor: 2.66
Range: 128 (melee)

Movement Speed: 300

Sand King is a STR hero which means that getting points in STR will increase your right click damage along with the normal health and health regen bonuses. His STR gain is pretty good for a STR hero at 2.6 / lvl, and his AGI gain is actually very high for a STR hero. Overall pretty well-rounded in the stats department.

Why should I play Sand King? Well, to put it simply:
- You can be useful in almost every lane
- You can be useful in every teamfight
- Can you say BEST STUN EVER?
- Good Str and Agi gains = good survivability
- You have very nice escape mechanisms
- He's a cutie. Look at his smile. Don't you want to be King of the Desert?

Sounds like my kind of hero--IMBA as FUCK. There's a catch right?
- His attack animation is fucking terrible. It even looks pitiful. Even with a very nice Str/Agi gain he really can't carry.
- Your ultimate can get fucked over in many ways, namely damage or stun
- Heavily mana-dependent
- AOE stuns rape you through Sand Storm (stop your channelling)
- Enemy pipe can almost completely negate your ulti
- If you have a Skeleton King on your team you can get really confused from people saying "SK do this ___"

Alright you've convinced me. He is pretty adorable. I picked him, now where the hell do I go? What's my role in the team?
On the 1-5 scale, Sand King can be played as either a 3, 4, or 5 (2 very very very rarely). You can be a:

- Mid lane ganker
- Trilaner / Roamer
- Dual laner

Unfortunately, SK can't clear jungle creeps until maybe level 8 or 9, so no jungle for him.

You should scout around with your team first to scout runes and try to figure out who is laning mid. If you don't have a set mid lane hero on your team already, you can go mid against any mid melee (e.g. Tiny, Bloodseeker, Riki, Pudge, or recently, Dragon Knight). Going mid vs a ranged burst damage / AOE hero (Storm Spirit, Invoker, Queen of Pain, etc.) is asking to die. Mid lane works well for Sand King because he has good ganking potential (Stun, Stun -> Ult) and can really use the levels and fast blink.

Sand King obviously has a hard time in a solo side lane because he's melee and not Dark Seer/Broodmother. Sometimes you can solo lane vs a solo broodmother because 1) you're both melee and 2) your skills all shit on broodlings: AOE stun/nuke or AOE DoT channel or AOE damage from a creep death. Any of the other typical solo side lane heroes will eat you alive, though.

Dual and Tri-lanes are great for SK because of his extremely reliable stun. It's not targeted (so you CAN potentially fuck up) but it's ranged and impossible to disjoint unless you're Puck or Storm Spirit. In a trilane, you can easily stun first -> another support stun / slow afterwards -> whoever needs farm takes the kill. In a trilane, your job will be to feed kills to your carry, pull or stack the jungle for exp denial / better farm later.

Once you have a few levels in your stun, you can decide to start roaming around while placing any wards you have and ganking whenever possible. Roaming with other semi-supports with good stuns (e.g. Lina or Lion) can be extremely effective in getting kills.

Burrowstrike
+ Show Spoiler [Tooltip] +

Burrowstrike is an extremely reliable stun that lasts for a total of ~ 2.7 seconds (Stun duration is 2.17 seconds but is only applied after the units sent flying up have actually landed) and that can be used as an escape mechanism. You can burrowstrike up / down cliffs or into trees to get away, or even use it to disjoint targeted spells since the starting animation for it is very short. Leveling up Burrowstrike is going to be your #1 priority in early game as it also serves as a decently powerful nuke. Combine that with a teammate and whatever crowd control / damage output he has and you should be netting fairly easy kills in lane whenever an enemy hero gets out of position.

Stunning enemies shouldn't be too hard, as it almost acts as a targeted stun because of how fast it is. It should be noted that there still IS a burrow speed (i.e. it isn't instant) so if you Q + click an enemy hero that is at the very edge of your range and is running away from you, you will probably stop just short of them at the end of your Burrowstrike. So if you're not sure if you're actually in range to hit someone you're chasing with Burrowstrike, then Q and click slightly in front of them. You can Q in front of them just in preparation to bodyblock as well.





Sand Storm
+ Show Spoiler [Tooltip] +

Another useful skill for escaping. You can channel this invis for quite some time, and while at first the damage / range may seem negligible, at lvl 4 its mana cost is very low and actually does quite a bit of damage. 80 damage per second is better than Radiance burn. This means that in the middle of a teamfight, after using up your other skills you can just sit in the middle of the enemy team and channel this. (Obviously if someone needs to be focused you should help your team secure the kill)

At lvl 4 you can also use this skill as a 1.5 second invis if you just press W and continue to right click due to the "fade time" of the Sand Storm invis. Very useful for disjointing targeted spells.



Caustic Finale
+ Show Spoiler [Tooltip] +

Caustic Finale is a lane farming tool in the midgame or a melee harassing tool in the early game. If you're laning against a melee hero who needs farm (Broodmother, Anti-mage, Faceless Void, Juggernaut, Riki, Dragon Knight, etc.) then an early level of caustic finale can easily force them out of lane or at the very least prevent them from last hitting. Once you have burrow strike maxed and 2 or more levels in Caustic, you can start farming waves of enemy creeps at a time by blowing up the ranged creep and then blowing up the rest in one attack.

The poison debuff lasts for 8 seconds, which means you can actually set them all to detonate if they're low enough on health. There are some pretty cool vids (I know this was definitely in one of DotaCinema's weekly Top 10 videos) of SKs poking each enemy creep a few times then blowing them up as soon as an enemy hero jumped him, often instant-killing them.

Very cool info on getting Caustic vs ranged heroes that have small autoattack ranges:



Epicenter
+ Show Spoiler [Tooltip] +

Your greatest asset, Epicenter is a huge AOE initiation ultimate that, coupled with blink, is very hard to stop and can easily take down half of all of your opponents' HP in the span of 2-3 seconds. Each pulse does 110 magic damage, with up to 12 pulses with Aghanim's Scepter. That's scary. The damage starts in a fairly small AOE but ripples outwards every pulse, so it's important that you're next to the hero you want to kill as soon as epicenter damage starts.

Epicenter, if you're not careful, becomes much less effective once the opposing team starts to all get Black King Bars or has someone with a Pipe of Insight. If you know they have a Pipe up, target the person holding the pipe when you blink in to Burrowstrike. If pipe is already activated, just wait until the pipe duration is over to channel -> blink in. You don't want 400 damage from your ulti to be blocked.

GREEN = Q = Burrowstrike
BLUE = W = Sand Storm
RED = E = Caustic Finale
BLACK = R = Epicenter

Standard Dual / Tri Lane / Roamer
----------------------
1 Burrowstrike
2 Sand Storm
3 Burrowstrike
4 Sand Storm
5 Burrowstrike
6 Epicenter
7 Burrowstrike
8 Sand Storm
9 Sand Storm
10 Caustic Finale / Stats
11 Epicenter
12 Caustic Finale / Stats
13 Caustic Finale / Stats
14 Caustic Finale / Stats
15 Stats
16 Epicenter
17+ Stats


Mid / Side Lane vs Melee / Low Range Hero
----------------------
1 Caustic Finale*
2 Burrowstrike
3 Burrowstrike
4 Sand Storm
5 Burrowstrike
6 Epicenter
7 Burrowstrike
8 Sand Storm
9 Sand Storm
10 Sand Storm
11 Epicenter
12 Caustic Finale / Stats
13 Caustic Finale / Stats
14 Caustic Finale / Stats
15 Stats
16 Epicenter
17+ Stats

*Judgment call. Normally you don't want to be using your level 1 Burrowstrike unless you're going for first blood, as its damage is pretty low and your mana pool can't really sustain it. For this reason, I often get that earlier point in Caustic Finale for more melee harass. Depending on the hero(es) you're laning with and laning against, Burrowstrike first then Caustic at level 2 can be better.


Heavy Pushing / SOLO vs Melee / Low Range Hero
----------------------
1 Caustic Finale*
2 Burrowstrike
3 Burrowstrike
4 Sand Storm / Caustic Finale
5 Burrowstrike
6 Epicenter
7 Burrowstrike
8 Caustic Finale
9 Caustic Finale
10 Caustic Finale / Sand Storm
11 Epicenter
12 Sand Storm
13 Sand Storm
14 Sand Storm
15 Stats
16 Epicenter
17+ Stats

Before you have your blink up, you can Q your enemies (make sure to target the ones with stuns) then spam R to channel as soon as possible. Most of the time they won't be able to land their stun in time and your Epicenter damage + slow will net you some easy kills in ganks/lane.


+ Show Spoiler [a video showing this] +

If you're not using your ulti (or you just don't have it yet), you should Q PAST your opponent then try to body block them as they run away while your lane parter does extra damage.

The most basic blink initiation is R -> shift queue blink -> Q to try and stun as many people as you can -> W for some extra damage if you've landed your stun on a lot of people. If they start running, chase after them with BKB activated.

The best way to escape with SK is to first use Q away / up or down a cliff, W to not get damaged for the next 2 seconds, then blink out. If you don't have blink, remember that W can disjoint most targeted skills. You can always Q -> W -> walk out and let fade time of the W invisibility do its thing.

In rare cases, if you happen to find a bit of cover behind trees or you know none of the present enemies have any stun or ministun, you can channel R first then Q into them.

Blink -> Q is always great if you're chasing someone.

Starting:

Courier / Tangoes / Salve / Ironwood Branches x4



Tangoes / Salve / Stout Shield / Ironwood Branches x3



If you need to buy wards:
Observer Wards / Tangoes / Salve / Ironwood Branches x3


Hard support + Smoke gank @ lvl 1:
Wards or Courier + Smoke of Deceit / Ironwood Branches x2
OR

If you randomed Sand King, you can Bottle / Tangoes / Ironwood Branches x3 as mid.
If side lane, Tangoes / Salve / Stout Shield / Circlet / Ironwood Branch x2



Core:

Midlane: Bottle -> Boots -> Bracer -> Blink -> Boots of your choice



The idea in mid lane is to rush bottle for regen and better ganking efficiency through runes. If you have bottle, you can skip the Arcane Boots and go for Blink Dagger first (getting your choice of boots afterwards)


Sidelane: Boots -> Bracer / Urn -> Arcane Boots -> Blink

OR

The standard item build here. You turn your Gauntlets of Strength into either a Bracer for overal stats or an Urn of Shadows for regen. I recommend the Urn as long as nobody else is picking one up. Afterwards, Arcane Boots is the next priority because it gives you the mana pool and mana regen for you to be relevant in every team fight. It also helps you farm up your Blink Dagger, which is really the one item that makes Sand King a strong initiator.


Alternative: Boots -> Bracer / Urn -> Arcane Boots -> BKB rush

OR

I've seen high level players who get extra farm early game rush Vanguard into BKB before Blink. My guess would be that this allows them to catch more people in the Burrowstrike -> Epicenter, since you don't need to wait 2 seconds for ulti channel. Vanguard is an item that would help with laning and jungling at level 7+ but I don't think its necessary, as it would really delay the BKB and you might as well get a Blink Dagger instead.




If you choose to build Bracer (e.g. when another teammate is getting Urn already), you should definitely pick up a Magic Wand for clutch regen. Magic Wand is a viable addition to any build.


Extension:


Aghanim's Scepter is amazing on Sand King. It gives him extra stats all around (HP, HP Regen, Mana, Mana Regen, Armor, & buff on Epicenter). I'd say this is pretty core on Sand King but you should still prioritize wards and maybe dust/smoke above finishing this item.


Black King Bar allows you to channel your Epicenter uninterrupted. With BKB, you can actually blink in first, land a better stun, and then channel Epicenter. I still prefer to channel ulti first but BKB is nonetheless extremely useful for the stats it gives + magic immunity in teamfights so you don't get bursted down too hard.



LUXURY: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Teamfight Damage


Shiva's Guard slows the enemies caught in your ulti even more (I believe the slows stack, but I'm too lazy to test it), along with doing a bit of extra damage. It also gives you a nice armor upgrade and extra mana regen, hoorah!


Veil of Discord causes all enemies around you (800ish AOE range) to take extra magic damage. Your Epicenter and Burrowstrike do magic damage, along with any other nukes your team has. Veil is pretty cheap so you can also consider it as an alternative to Aghanim's if your team has a lot of magic damage output. All in all, works really well on SK even if its just him.


Disables


Scythe of Vyseprovides loads of extra mana regen and is an extra disable. If you're super farmed and need to focus down someone really hard, Scythe of Vyse (Sheepstick) can do it.


Eul's Scepter of Dvinity is also an extra disable, though it only removes them from the fight temporarily (i.e. your teammates cannot attack someone in Eul's active). You can Eul's yourself to kill blink cd and blink away.


Survivability


Heart of Tarrasque gives you buttloads of health and health regen as well as increasing your damage a bit. You can tank towers and be at constant full health, and you can regen all your health in Sand Storm while your opponents go focus someone else (if they don't have gem / sentry wards that is).


Blade Mail will return some right-click damage as magic damage to the attacker, and can thus be used to either kill the people focusing you or deter them from attacking you. A bit situational, mostly in cases where the enemy team has someone who is carrying really hard.


Linken's Sphere provides overall stat boosts and a spell shield. If your opponents aren't careful, they could easily waste a much needed nuke / stun on you.


Support / Utility


Pipe of Insight blocks 400 spell damage for the next 10 seconds, allowing you to trade a lot of teamfight damage efficiently. Situational pickup if no other supports have it.


Mekansm heals your team. You're primarily an initiator, but you're also supporting the rest of the team. Situational pickup if no other supports have it.


Drum of Endurance can be built out of Bracer, so if you choose to go bracer then you should think about getting a Drum. It's not too expensive and provides very nice auras for chasing / running away / fighting.


Situational:


Vladimir's Offering is an EXTREMELY SITUATIONAL item that you can get when there's just a bunch of melee carries on your team. For example, if there's a Lone Druid and Nightstalker playing with you, Vlad's wouldn't be too bad of an idea. Not the best item, but it can work.


Gem of True Sight is useful when there's enemy heroes that are constantly invisible (e.g. Broodmother / Rikimaru / Bounty Hunter). Normally you would want a ranged support to pick up Gem since they can actually counterward the common ward spots. Very situational.


Boots of Travel can let you push several lanes very quickly, and can act as your slot for TP scroll as well. This is an item you should consider only very very late into the game and after you've picked up a big intelligence (mana regen) item, since you'll be replacing Arcane Boots.


FINISHED ITEM BUILD:
Arcane Boots / Blink Dagger / Black King Bar / Aghanim's Scepter / Heart of Tarrasque OR Shiva's Guard OR Veil of Discord

OR OR

If you've gotten enough money for Shiva's or Sheepstick (that is, your mana is no longer an issue) you can consider switching to Boots of Travel to free up a slot from TP scroll. If you want to hit REALLY HARD with your ulti and the game has gone on for long enough, Shiva's + Veil of Discord does wonders.

The most important part of teamplay is that you actually play as a team. That means you have to COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR TEAM. Don't Epi the entire enemy team only to die by yourself and look around wondering where the hell your team was. If your team isn't doing what you want or expect them to do, it's probably because they can't read your mind. Communicate that you're about to ulti in, say beforehand that you'll ping when you want to go in, use the in-game mic to tell everyone that you're about to ulti, etc.

To initiate properly, you need positioning and follow-up. Watch the minimap. If your team has warded properly and you're paying attention to the minimap, you should be able to figure out where the enemy team is headed. Get in a spot where you are well within blink range but also behind some trees or a cliff or something. If you need to save a tower or a straggler getting picked off and your team is about to go in as well, feel free to initiate first. Often, it's better to have the rest of your team go in first so that the enemy starts to clump up more and more, making your ulti more powerful.


Blink mechanics:
-If you take damage from Roshan or an enemy Hero, Blink will be disabled for 3 seconds.
-Double tapping blink will blink you towards your fountain. Useful in some escape situations, can also fuck you over if you accidentally double tap, so be wary.
-Blink can disjoint a lot of projectiles.
-Using blink outside of its max range (1200) will actually decrease the distance you blink by about 1/5
-If you get trapped in a non-damaging stun (e.g. Naga Ult or Eul's) and you need to escape, then SPAM THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THAT BLINK BUTTON and most of the time you'll be able to get away scot-free.

ALWAYS. CARRY. TP. I cannot stress this enough. There's no reason not to have a TP around unless you have 6 godly items already. Don't you want the assist gold and exp??? Don't you want to be able to escape into the trees and instantly TP out???

When do I buy wards?
After your blink dagger is up, your farming needs are really pretty much gone. Buy wards as long as there are no other supports or heroes willing to get wards. Ward the middle of the enemy jungle, plus rune spots in river.

Do I get Urn?
You should probably be the one to buy urn. If someone else REALLY wants urn, then just get a bracer. Urn gives you nice STR stat + some desperately needed mana regen + essentially a free salve every time you gank.

How about Mek? Pipe?
Only if you're absurdly farmed and there's no other support on your team. It's really a judgment call at that point and depends heavily on what kind of damage the other team is dealing to you. Usually your priority should be a good initiation, and there should be another support on your team to geth those items.

Smoke? Dust?
If you have blink already and there's no harder support in your team, then sure. Obviously both those items are dependent on what playstyle your team is going for.

Stacking and Pulling in the Jungle
You can pull your jungle creeps whenever the in-game timer is #:15 or #:45. This means you want to be walking into the jungle creeps at #:15 and walking towards your lane so that your allied creeps will get aggro'd onto the jungle. This serves to deny your lane opponents EXP and push the lane towards your own tower so that whoever is in your lane can farm more safely.

Whenever you get the chance, you can also start stacking the jungle creeps so that you or your carry can get a bit of extra farm. For any jungle camp, you want to aggro them at #:52 and just run away. The game checks if the jungle creeps are in their camp spot at every minute (#:00) so this way you can start getting extra creeps that you currently would not be able to farm. Jungle camps can be easily stacked 3-4 times.

If you have a blink dagger up, you can actually stack two camps at once. Stacking for 2 camps is usually pretty reliable, but 3-4 camps (2 places at once) becomes a bit iffy. You would aggro one camp at #:51 and try to blink to another camp and aggro by #:53 then do your usual thing. Easy+hard camps on both Radiant and Dire sides work very reliably (and no mud golems so you can actually clear them). The hard camp that's farther from the easy camp on Radiant side is too hard to double stack with but the two medium camps can easily be stacked together with blink + walk off to the right side. Haven't gotten around to trying Dire side medium camps yet.

Sand King is a relatively farm-independent hero. That means that your damage output / utility comes primarily from the levels you have in your skills, and you should therefore be giving most of the farm in lane to someone who needs it more (i.e. carry / semicarry). Don't be afraid to steal (or, even better, ASK for) some CS to finish up that blink dagger, however. Your teamfight utility increases dramatically once you finish your blink, as you're able to safely channel ulti without fear of interruption.

If you have points in Caustic Finale, your pushing power goes through the roof. Combined with Arcane boots, you can farm really well in the mid-lategame (as long as your carry/carries don't need the lane farm). Burrowstrike through all the creeps into the ranged creep, one shot it, one shot the rest of the creeps, arcane boots, repeat.

If you're farming well / ganking through midlane and not feeding really badly, you should try for a 15 minute blink at the very least. A 20 minute blink on side lanes is pretty good IMO, and if you're support really hard with wards and dust and smoke then your teammates shouldn't expect you to be able to blink ult.

Farming the jungle becomes fairly easy once you've maxed out both Burrowstrike and Sand Storm (lvl 8~9+), now that Valve fixed the Sand Storm-not-hitting-jungle-creeps thing. You want to try to stack as many camps as possible for either you or your carry--if you happen to get farm your jungle, you can Burrowstrike then move back a tiny bit and let Sand Storm do 80dps on all of the creeps as they wander around wondering why they're dying. Obviously, if you have enough points in Caustic Finale you can just right click them one by one as well.

You are best buddies with Leshrac, Lina, Lion, Mirana, Shadow Shaman, or basically anyone with a stun that they can chain onto yours, making for easy ganks / kills.




A few heroes to watch out for:
Tidehunter - just be wary of the range on ravage, you don't want your epicenter to be interrupted while channeling because you stood too close.
Pugna - his Nether Ward has pretty insane range, and can disable your blink from far away.
Spectre - her global ult can disable your blink from anywhere.
Silencer - his global ult can... yeah you know where this is going.

For shits and giggles: Pyrion Flax's guide to Sand King


DotaCinema's guide to Sand King


FiercE's guide to Sand King


Burrowstrike -> Epicenter Positioning Tips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ4MeywErBk

2009's guide to Sand King (DotA 1)

Buy courier, basic lane healing items + Ironwood Branches that you will build into a Magic Wand while getting Boots + Bracer or Urn. Go side lane, buy boots and turn that into Arcane Boots once you have the money, which will give you nuke spammability AKA good farm in lane. Farm Blink Dagger as quickly as you can. Skill priority should be R > Q > W > E.

Once you have Epicenter and blink, you want to stay hidden, then initiate teamfights with R -> shift queue blink -> Q stun as many people as you can in a teamfight. Wards once you have blink unless someone else is doing so already. Lategame items are Aghanim's Scepter, Black King Bar, or fast Veil of Discord for extra ulti damage. Luxury I would go with Veil, Heart, or Shiva's depending on the teams.