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On January 18 2013 04:33 iokke wrote: if you have 4 levels in Sandstorm, which gives you 1.5 sec invis after sandstorm is over, is it viable to press W then disjoin by ultying, so 1.5 out of the 2 channeling secs you are invis and effectively the enemy only has .5 secs to stun you? edit - nm I imagine casting a spell reveals him
I don't think the channel reveals when you start casting. It's reverse invis fade, the invis buff takes the 1.5s to fall off.
Anyone who says leveling sandstorm doesn't do much is bad. Lowered cd/mana cost, nearly doubles the area of effect and gives a 60% increase in invisibility fade time on top of the 33% increase in damage and duration. Seriously, if there was no change other than the cd reduction from 20 to 10 secs, it would be well worth getting level 4, and you get all the rest on top of that. Side note: if you have level 4 sand storm at level 9 and want to do max damage on a target that's locked-down, you should auto-attack once and then sandstorm.
Outside of solo lanes, caustic is a farming ability. It lets you get your blink dagger up fast in the mid-game (as a 3/4) without burning all of your mana or having to wait while your sandstorm slowly kills creeps. Don't pick it up over maxing burrow/sandstorm/ult unless you have a really good reason.
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United States47024 Posts
Caustic farms lanes faster if you're playing a primary role, but as a 4th position support, Sandstorm lets you farm large stacks losing no HP and almost no mana. Far more efficient than using Burrow+Caustic to clear them, which takes more mana, and causes you to take more damage.
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eh, you can farm perfectly fine by placing caustic properly w/o burrowstrike. iono I don't like playing 4/5th as sandking I mostly play 2nd or 3rd as I don't trust these pubs to do their job.  Caustic to clear lane and push then swing around to gank is really good tempo
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United States47024 Posts
On January 18 2013 08:55 evanthebouncy! wrote:eh, you can farm perfectly fine by placing caustic properly w/o burrowstrike. iono I don't like playing 4/5th as sandking I mostly play 2nd or 3rd as I don't trust these pubs to do their job.  Caustic to clear lane and push then swing around to gank is really good tempo You can't apply this to jungle camps because most of the larger creeps have enough HP that you need to Burrow to kill them. And you will take damage while doing so.
Honestly, 10 second CD Sandstorm is just really damn good.
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yeah but sandstorm farming jungle is a little painful as well to watch them walk around haha. Fyi my favorite jungle camp is the troll one that summon little skeletons :D
I'm finding I really only use sandstorm to dodge spells and in battle I rarely have enough HP left to sandstorm a second time. I tend to max sandstorm from just a lvl 1 sandstorm after I get 1-2 points of caustic and 1-2 points in stats. If I'm doing well I just max caustic over sandstorm from then, leaving it at lvl 1 or 2.
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I just don't understand how you can play an effective SK with sandstorm on a 30 or 40s cd.
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United States47024 Posts
Sandstorm rank 4's AoE is actually large enough that even though the neutrals try to run away from it, they still often reach the edge of how far they'll go and still be in the Sandstorm if you place it right. The fact that they try to run away is almost totally irrelevant if you know where to position yourself in the camp when you cast it.
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Am I missing something? I thought they had patched it so you could no longer kill neutrals with Sandstorm alone, it only works if they are fighting something else, in which case they never run away from the Sandstorm anyways.
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United States47024 Posts
On January 20 2013 00:57 Potatisodlaren wrote: Am I missing something? I thought they had patched it so you could no longer kill neutrals with Sandstorm alone, it only works if they are fighting something else, in which case they never run away from the Sandstorm anyways. They run away from the Sandstorm, but the higher ranks of Sandstorm have a large enough AoE that they don't run all the way out of it (the creeps have a limit on how far they run from the camp).
Also partly depends on the camp how many places they have to run.
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On January 20 2013 00:57 Potatisodlaren wrote: Am I missing something? I thought they had patched it so you could no longer kill neutrals with Sandstorm alone, it only works if they are fighting something else, in which case they never run away from the Sandstorm anyways. A bit late to respond, but there was originally a bug where the jungle neutrals would just sit there and take the sandstorm damage (making SK jungle too easily), so they made sandstorm do no damage. They later fixed it so that the jungle creeps correctly run away from invisible damage sources, then return to the camp after a bit.
On January 18 2013 09:47 evanthebouncy! wrote: yeah but sandstorm farming jungle is a little painful as well to watch them walk around haha. Fyi my favorite jungle camp is the troll one that summon little skeletons :D
I'm finding I really only use sandstorm to dodge spells and in battle I rarely have enough HP left to sandstorm a second time. I tend to max sandstorm from just a lvl 1 sandstorm after I get 1-2 points of caustic and 1-2 points in stats. If I'm doing well I just max caustic over sandstorm from then, leaving it at lvl 1 or 2. I don't really agree with this. Lowered CD sandstorm is incredibly handy for the disjoint / invis->blink away, plus max sandstorm actually does quite a bit of damage around lvl 9~11 if you sandstorm up in the middle of the enemy team and they're stunned then slowed by epicenter.
Even with arcane boots, you don't really have the mana regen to support burrowstrike-caustic to jungle.
On January 18 2013 06:10 scorch- wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2013 04:33 iokke wrote: if you have 4 levels in Sandstorm, which gives you 1.5 sec invis after sandstorm is over, is it viable to press W then disjoin by ultying, so 1.5 out of the 2 channeling secs you are invis and effectively the enemy only has .5 secs to stun you? edit - nm I imagine casting a spell reveals him I don't think the channel reveals when you start casting. It's reverse invis fade, the invis buff takes the 1.5s to fall off. Tested this, casting epi reveals him without regard to the lingering invis.
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One thing I'm gonna add to the guide is how to use blink dagger to stack two camps at once. 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.
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A friendly hero who is a lot of fun with SK is wisp. I'm not sure whether or not burrow strike disables tether, but with a bit of practice you can teleport on top heroes and greet them with an epicenter. Wisp deserves special mention!
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On February 07 2013 07:33 eskashaborn wrote: A friendly hero who is a lot of fun with SK is wisp. I'm not sure if burrow strike disables tether or not, but with a bit of practice you can teleport on top heroes and greet them with an epicenter. Wisp deserves special mention!
LOL that's interesting tactic for sure hahahaahahahahah
I guess you could do it easy if you teleport away and you get a hero camping the spot u left, tether up a sandking and port back haha
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the wisp TP doesn't interrupt channeling so its a good way to defend towers but other than that its a bit hard to relocate to the exact spot you want. very useful tactic pre-blink for sure though
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28088 Posts
What is a good blink timing if I get it after just brown boots? Considering that it's the type of game that allows me to leave my carry and actually stack/sandstorm the jungle.
I got it in about 10-11 minutes. Is that a fine timing? I don't think I can go any faster unless I abandon the safe lane from minute one.
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On January 20 2013 00:57 Potatisodlaren wrote: Am I missing something? I thought they had patched it so you could no longer kill neutrals with Sandstorm alone, it only works if they are fighting something else, in which case they never run away from the Sandstorm anyways. About a year and a half ago, neutrals didn't take damage from sand storm. They did that because neutrals weren't properly avoiding damage. Once they implemented neutrals running away from damage, they allowed sand storm to do damage to neutrals again.
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On May 26 2014 23:49 TheEmulator wrote: What is a good blink timing if I get it after just brown boots? Considering that it's the type of game that allows me to leave my carry and actually stack/sandstorm the jungle.
I got it in about 10-11 minutes. Is that a fine timing? I don't think I can go any faster unless I abandon the safe lane from minute one. The fastest I've seen it is a dual lane sand king that got level 3 from lane and pulling, then jungled continuously. They got the blink around 9 mins but that seemed like an ideal situation to me.
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do you skill level 2 sandstorm when you are having a passive game and just stacking jungle or does burrowstrike come first always?
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On May 27 2014 04:39 NeoRussia wrote: do you skill level 2 sandstorm when you are having a passive game and just stacking jungle or does burrowstrike come first always? You probably want to get lvl 2 sandstorm if you have a stack you can clear (lvl 2 sandstorm is where you can start clearing jungle camps pretty quickly). There's pros and cons obviously, but if you can make use of the level 2 sandstorm then chances are you'll get the next level pretty quickly so missing out on the extra level of stun for 30 sec doesn't make a big difference.
hehe I need to update this thread... so outdated LOL
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On May 27 2014 05:06 synapse wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2014 04:39 NeoRussia wrote: do you skill level 2 sandstorm when you are having a passive game and just stacking jungle or does burrowstrike come first always? You probably want to get lvl 2 sandstorm if you have a stack you can clear (lvl 2 sandstorm is where you can start clearing jungle camps pretty quickly). There's pros and cons obviously, but if you can make use of the level 2 sandstorm then chances are you'll get the next level pretty quickly so missing out on the extra level of stun for 30 sec doesn't make a big difference. hehe I need to update this thread... so outdated LOL If you have a stack ready to clear you will probably hit level 4 (level 2 burrow) off the stack alone.
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On May 27 2014 10:53 tauon wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2014 05:06 synapse wrote:On May 27 2014 04:39 NeoRussia wrote: do you skill level 2 sandstorm when you are having a passive game and just stacking jungle or does burrowstrike come first always? You probably want to get lvl 2 sandstorm if you have a stack you can clear (lvl 2 sandstorm is where you can start clearing jungle camps pretty quickly). There's pros and cons obviously, but if you can make use of the level 2 sandstorm then chances are you'll get the next level pretty quickly so missing out on the extra level of stun for 30 sec doesn't make a big difference. hehe I need to update this thread... so outdated LOL If you have a stack ready to clear you will probably hit level 4 (level 2 burrow) off the stack alone.
Thats true. i gotta say crix is quickly becoming my fav supp
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