The sands of the Scintillant Waste are alive and sentient--the whole vast desert speaks to itself, thinking thoughts only such a vastness can conceive. But when it needs must find a form to communicate with those of more limited scope, it frees a fragment of itself, and fills a carapace of magic armor formed by the cunning Djinn of Qaldin. This essential identity calls itself Crixalis, meaning 'Soul of the Sand,' but others know it as Sand King. Sand King takes the form of a huge arachnid, inspired by the Scintillant Waste's small but ubiquitous denizens; and this is a true outward expression of his ferocious nature. Guardian, warrior, ambassador--Sand King is all of these things, inseparable from the endless desert that gave him life.
Sand King is one of my favorite heroes, primarily because he's fucking adorable. Also he has amazing initiation in teamfights, is an extremely versatile hero, etc. I don't claim to know everything about Sand King, but I've played him the most out of the current hero pool and I'm going to share what I've learned so far.
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:
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.
Sand King burrows into the ground and tunnels forward, damaging and stunning enemy units above him as he resurfaces. Range: 350/450/550/650 Radius: 150 Stun Duration: 2.17 Damage: 100/160/220/280 Cooldown: 11 Mana Cost: 110/120/130/140
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.
On September 08 2012 11:57 r.Evo wrote: Your burrowstrike stun is sligthly longer than the max range. If things are REALLY close you can stun slightly behind your enemy and still catch him.
CHANNELED - Sand King creates a fearsome sandstorm that damages enemy units while hiding him from vision. The invisibility remains for a short duration after the sandstorm ends. Radius: 275/325/375/525 Channeling Duration: 20/40/60/80 Damage Per Second: 20/40/60/80 Delay Before Reveal: 0.3/0.6/0.9/1.5 Cooldown: 40/30/20/10 Mana Cost: 60/50/40/30
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.
Sand King's attacks inject a venom that causes enemy units to explode violently upon death, spreading area damage. Explosion Radius: 400 Debuff Duration: 8 Explosion Damage: 90/130/170/220
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:
On September 08 2012 13:29 Percutio wrote: Another underrated aspect of SK is his power solo vs low ranged heroes. Once you have a stout you can trade very efficiently with certain low range heroes thanks to caustic doing such high damage. It also gives you the unique ability to farm a whole creep wave quickly with caustic giving you a window of freedom against a low range hero like Luna or Morphling.
Obviously many of these heroes should still come out with an advantage against SK, but caustic is definitely a tool that can be utilized against those at the lower end of the spectrum.
CHANNELED - After channeling for 2 seconds, Sand King sends a disturbance into the earth, causing it to shudder violently. All enemies caught within range will take damage and become slowed. Each subsequent pulse increases the radius of damage dealt. Initial Radius: 275 Slow Duration: 3 Number Of Pulses: 6/8/10 (8/10/12*) Pulse Damage: 110 Movement Speed Slow: 30% Cooldown: 140/120/100 (120/100/80*) Mana Cost: 175/250/325
* = With Aghanim's Scepter
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.
On September 08 2012 11:57 r.Evo wrote: If you burrowstrike in a way that you end up behind an enemy it's often possible to burrow -> epi even vs stunners because they have to turn first to interrupt your ult. If you burrow so that you end up in front of them they can cancel your ult easily.
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.
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)
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.
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.
On September 08 2012 11:16 Ottoxlol wrote: if you get bkb, go for veil instead of agha, it gives more dmg and your allies benefit from it too.
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.
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.
On September 08 2012 13:03 TheYango wrote: Sand King + Ancient Apparition was actually somewhat popular for a time in Chinese DotA. Burrowstrike leads into Cold Feet, Ice Vortex adds to your combo damage, and well-coordinated cross-map ganking can be absolutely devastating.
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.
On September 08 2012 11:16 Ottoxlol wrote: heroes to watch out for-> Zeus, Slardar/Gondar, any aoe stun makes your life harder.
I think anyone with just a bit of dota experience can play sand king decently, but it's important to take the time to try out his combos in a bot match since ult-> stun etc. You don't want to be trying your ulti stun combo for the first time in a real match.
Gonna re-emphasize this! Positioning is CRUCIAL. You don't want to be seen when you're about to initiate, because a smart team will sent a nuke your way and disable your blink, rendering your ulti useless.
Your escape is good but not Anti-mage level good. Don't push your lane too far into enemy territory. If you do find yourself about to get fucked, try to Q into the trees or blink into the trees and immediately TP out. Again, TP is very important.
Don't be terribly stingy with your stun in early game. As SK, you should be the one initiating the stunning / nuking. If you see someone slightly out of position and your teammate is close and has the mana to nuke or stun as well, then by all means go for it. You don't need to hit both enemy heroes in your lane for your stun to be cost effective.
Dont be terribly stingy with your ulti -- it has a long cooldown but that doesn't mean you shouldnt use it to catch 2-3 people off guard.
Remember that you're initiation and not carry -- don't just jump into the other team with a nice ult if you don't have followup from your team ready.
Don't forget to check if you have enough mana to pull off your full combo. At level 6, your Burrowstrike into Epicenter will cost you 305 mana. Level 3 Epicenter + blink + Burrowstrike can take up like 600 mana, and your mana pool isn't that big (especially if you decided to not get Arcane Boots).
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.
Please comment with any questions / comments (haha) / corrections / advice / arguments / etc. Of course, I give my thanks to everyone who took the time to read this guide--I'm still updating the formatting with more pictures and possibly screenshots for examples. Not flamewheel level yet <3
If an enemy hero has linkens and you target the ground, not him, linkens wont pop from your borrow and you stun him, otherwise it will just trigger linkens like a targeted spell.
On September 08 2012 10:11 Aineko wrote: Maybe add 1 thing to burrow strike:
If an enemy hero has linkens and you target the ground, not him, linkens wont pop from your borrow and you stun him, otherwise it will just trigger linkens like a targeted spell.
instead of a gauntlet get more branches or circlet if you plan on going bracer so you can stun 2x lvl1-> ez first blood if you get bkb, go for veil instead of agha, it gives more dmg and your allies benefit from it too. heroes to watch out for-> Zeus, Slardar/Gondar, any aoe stun makes your life harder. pipe is only 400 dmg for the love of god, pls dont epi burrow when the fight just started and 3 of the enemy heroes are in bkb, wait 5 sec.
On September 08 2012 11:16 Ottoxlol wrote: instead of a gauntlet get more branches or circlet if you plan on going bracer so you can stun 2x lvl1-> ez first blood
? I don't really understand what you mean here. What does bracer have to do with stunning twice?
if you get bkb, go for veil instead of agha, it gives more dmg and your allies benefit from it too.
I normally prefer getting Aghs first for the survivability, but this is definitely an option.
heroes to watch out for-> Zeus, Slardar/Gondar, any aoe stun makes your life harder.
Yup. Added!
pipe is only 400 dmg
Oops! nice catch on the typo haha I had it right in the items section xD
for the love of god, pls dont epi burrow when the fight just started and 3 of the enemy heroes are in bkb, wait 5 sec.
I don't remember advocating that, but yeah definitely. Same deal as when you see pipe up, just wait for it to disappear.
Some things I'd like to add: -I agree with more branches instead of gauntlet as starting items, especially when you have to start courier or wards. They're way stronger than a gauntlet early on. -Veil > Aghs for damage is correct afaik. -For items personally I love the urn -> arcanes build. If you're getting rather free farm you might want to consider Treads -> Drums -> Blink for a way stronger early game (2009 suggests this build). In his video he suggests a followup with Battlefury into more damage/tanky items. Might be a fun variation for playing him as a #2 in pub games.
-If you burrowstrike in a way that you end up behind an enemy it's often possible to burrow -> epi even vs stunners because they have to turn first to interrupt your ult. If you burrow so that you end up in front of them they can cancel your ult easily. -Your burrowstrike stun is sligthly longer than the max range. If things are REALLY close you can stun slightly behind your enemy and still catch him.
-If you want to be a real badass, you could add a section about juking. The most fun about sandking imo are the ways you can easily start playing him but can pull off incredibly strong jukes when you know what you're doing.
Adding this to the welcome guide, thanks a lot for putting it together. <3
Here are solid videos about SK (FiercE's is probably better for most people but 2009s should be around somewhere in this thread, too): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRVYQjwwML4
Agreed with branches start on support. If you're buying courier/wards/smoke appropriately, you shouldn't be able to get gauntlets as your starting items.
If you're playing 3rd position and not buying support items at the start, then you should get Stout+3 Branches. Stout is infinitely better than any of the stat items for a melee during laning.
On September 08 2012 11:57 synapse wrote: ? I don't really understand what you mean here. What does bracer have to do with stunning twice?
Branches or Circlet give +intelligence level 1. Gauntlet doesn't. It affects your level 1 max mana.
On September 08 2012 12:06 TheYango wrote: Agreed with branches start on support. If you're buying courier/wards/smoke appropriately, you shouldn't be able to get gauntlets as your starting items.
If you're playing 3rd position and not buying support items at the start, then you should get Stout+3 Branches. Stout is infinitely better than any of the stat items for a melee during laning.
Also, you should add Ancient Apparition to one of Sand King's good lane buddies. Sand King + Ancient Apparition was actually somewhat popular for a time in Chinese DotA. Burrowstrike leads into Cold Feet, Ice Vortex adds to your combo damage, and well-coordinated cross-map ganking can be absolutely devastating.
I really like BoT on SK in this meta. Yeah you do need some kind of intelligence item and that takes quite some farm, but the split push he provides is incredible because the size of the creep wave pretty much doesn't matter thanks to caustic. Another underrated aspect of SK is his power solo vs low ranged heroes. Once you have a stout you can trade very efficiently with certain low range heroes thanks to caustic doing such high damage. It also gives you the unique ability to farm a whole creep wave quickly with caustic giving you a window of freedom against a low range hero like Luna or Morphling.
Obviously many of these heroes should still come out with an advantage against SK, but caustic is definitely a tool that can be utilized against those at the lower end of the spectrum.
On September 08 2012 13:29 Percutio wrote: I really like BoT on SK in this meta. Yeah you do need some kind of intelligence item and that takes quite some farm, but the split push he provides is incredible because the size of the creep wave pretty much doesn't matter thanks to caustic. Another underrated aspect of SK is his power solo vs low ranged heroes. Once you have a stout you can trade very efficiently with certain low range heroes thanks to caustic doing such high damage. It also gives you the unique ability to farm a whole creep wave quickly with caustic giving you a window of freedom against a low range hero like Luna or Morphling.
Obviously many of these heroes should still come out with an advantage against SK, but caustic is definitely a tool that can be utilized against those at the lower end of the spectrum.
Very cool stuff, didn't realize so many heroes were <400 range, added!
the shield thing depends, if you're gonna farm in lane you can open double gauntlets to get a quick urn and roam early on don't bother with bracers, either get an urn if you're farming or skip those items completely if you're support go boots + magic stick > arcanes or bottle > blink, generally sandking is really tight on farm and the blink is really important
also in certain lanes (especially in mid, for example against SF or puj) going stun>caustic can be really good
As someone that has played a thousand games with SK, I personally hate it when I see people go BKB after Blink. You don't need survivability in team fights. Your job is to kill everyone on the entire team or at least get them low enough that the rest of your team can. BKB does not accomplish that. After Blink I always go straight AGH, and then Veil.
On September 08 2012 14:56 nosliw wrote: video where SK instant kills a hero due to finale?
On September 08 2012 14:42 ItsMeDomLee wrote: As someone that has played a thousand games with SK, I personally hate it when I see people go BKB after Blink. You don't need survivability in team fights. Your job is to kill everyone on the entire team or at least get them low enough that the rest of your team can. BKB does not accomplish that. After Blink I always go straight AGH, and then Veil.
I don't think it's wrong to go for some survivability. Burrowstrike has a low enough cooldown to justify a longer teamfight presence. Even just a second stun on an important enemy can really change a teamfight around. If the enemy team has 2-3 squishies that you can instantly take out or very nearly kill with aghs/veil then I think prioritizing damage would be the right call, but most of the time you won't be able to pick off heroes with just an ullt-stun.
On September 08 2012 14:42 ItsMeDomLee wrote: As someone that has played a thousand games with SK, I personally hate it when I see people go BKB after Blink. You don't need survivability in team fights. Your job is to kill everyone on the entire team or at least get them low enough that the rest of your team can. BKB does not accomplish that. After Blink I always go straight AGH, and then Veil.
BKB is essentially for those few edge case scenarios where you need that flexibility to get off good Epis (e.g. Pugna is in the game, so without BKB you can never Epi->Blink because Pugna Ward zaps you right when the Epi channel finishes). Practically speaking, picking SK into those situations sucks to begin with, but you can't really always get ideal scenarios in pub games, so its better to just bite the bullet and buy BKB rather than never being able to get a good Epi off.
On September 08 2012 20:10 Kipsate wrote: Caustic finale on multiple creeps then burrow striking for like ~400 damage+auto's makes sand king so much fun.
Don't forget to get those autos in during your ult combo too. If you gib any supports the caustic effect will take their allies with them, it is nearly another burrowstrike of damage in a generous AOE.
What really irks me about a lot of pub SKs I see is that their mentality, ESPECIALLY after they get their blink is that they need to ult blink stun everytime from the start of a battle
A lot of times it's more beneficial, especially when your team is in good position, to just rather blink and stun 2-3 heroes and get out of the way. You will have enough mana mid game to use your ult later if you see it necessary.
SK is really all about staying alive. He has 2 incredibly powerful escapes in his stun and sandstorm. After you blink in and stun, please, for the love of god, do not sit around and autoattack if you're surrounded by enemy heroes. He's way more useful if you can stay alive for a few more seconds outside of threat range, and then blink stun 2-3 heroes again when your CD is off. You can dodge so many different spells with sandstorm and stun, so your priority is to 1. disable as many enemy heroes as possible, and 2. stay alive as long as possible so you can continue to be a threatening presence for the WHOLE duration of the teamfight.
I personally like buying utility items after blink (if i can get some farm), so during the period where you're waiting for your CD to cool off, you can assist the team, even if it just means to forcestaff targets accordingly
Blink Dagger, Cyclone Stick, and Force Staff is so amazing with Sand King.
BKB is still a great item on him, but I honestly dont see it to be "core". BKB is a situational item in general. Against a 5-stun wonder team it would be fucking fantastic. But there are still a lot of stuff that can go through it. So its always better to think twice about what you want to spend 3900 on instead.
Cyclone stick is cheaper and offers invulnerability to yourself or allies (OP as fck). Or it can also be used as a chasing mechanism.
Force Staff. *Tap tap--CYA FUCKING LATER! Its so good, I dont get why more people dont get this item on ALL supports. Serves same purposes as Cyclone stick in escape or chasing utilization.
Blink, cyclone, forcestaff, sandstorm, burrowstrike. Sand king is like the ultimate fcking ninja on the battlefield. One of my most favorite heroes as support.
So... fucking... good...
10/10 Would bang.
Edit: Oh the shame... Yes, I used to play HoN.... -_-
On September 09 2012 13:21 Emnjay808 wrote: Cyclone stick is cheaper and offers invulnerability to yourself or allies (OP as fck). Or it can also be used as a chasing mechanism.
yeah i agree cyclone stick is an amazing utility item for support heroes
just one correction though, you can't euls allies. you could in hon but cant in dota
On September 09 2012 13:21 Emnjay808 wrote: BKB is still a great item on him, but I honestly dont see it to be "core". BKB is a situational item in general. Against a 5-stun wonder team it would be fucking fantastic. But there are still a lot of stuff that can go through it. So its always better to think twice about what you want to spend 3900 on instead.
Cyclone stick is cheaper and offers invulnerability to yourself or allies (OP as fck). Or it can also be used as a chasing mechanism.
I don't think anything past Blink Dagger and Arcane Boots is really core on SK. You're right, BKB is really expensive but in general works pretty well so I listed it plus Aghs under "Extension." As I see it, the idea behind BKB is if you want to have the best initiation possible or be able to counter-initiate properly. If you're playing SK as a 4 or 5 support chances are you won't get BKB. And yeah I'm pretty sure you can't Eul's teammates.
Playing Sandking - leshrac dou lane makes for some REALLY easy wins especially if you're not in high / very high skill matchmaking where people have no idea how riddicolous the sk lesh combo is.
Lesh is SK's best friend in a dou / trilane, I highly recommend it
On September 08 2012 10:11 Aineko wrote: Maybe add 1 thing to burrow strike:
If an enemy hero has linkens and you target the ground, not him, linkens wont pop from your borrow and you stun him, otherwise it will just trigger linkens like a targeted spell.
I tested this recently, and it no longer works. Burrowstrike activates linkens even when you hit through AOE and not target.
On September 08 2012 10:11 Aineko wrote: Maybe add 1 thing to burrow strike:
If an enemy hero has linkens and you target the ground, not him, linkens wont pop from your borrow and you stun him, otherwise it will just trigger linkens like a targeted spell.
I tested this recently, and it no longer works. Burrowstrike activates linkens even when you hit through AOE and not target.
This!
Was bugged, then changed like the way was meant to be. Still a nice bug to fool around XD
Does anyone know if there were any changes to the caustic finale skill from dota to dota2? Maybe it was just me low skill level but I never managed to combo the killing of creeps to deliver the deathblow like in vids above.
On September 15 2012 17:15 cheeseosaur wrote: Does anyone know if there were any changes to the caustic finale skill from dota to dota2? Maybe it was just me low skill level but I never managed to combo the killing of creeps to deliver the deathblow like in vids above.
i don't remember the effect lasting longer than maybe a few seconds, so you couldn't keep more than like two effects on creeps active at once. Maybe they changed it in a patch or something? Or maybe i just didn't pay attention to the skill well enough in dota1
On September 08 2012 10:11 Aineko wrote: Maybe add 1 thing to burrow strike:
If an enemy hero has linkens and you target the ground, not him, linkens wont pop from your borrow and you stun him, otherwise it will just trigger linkens like a targeted spell.
This is not true. Burrow strike will always trigger Linkens. Also burrow strike is not targetable in Dota or Dota2.
On September 08 2012 10:11 Aineko wrote: Maybe add 1 thing to burrow strike:
If an enemy hero has linkens and you target the ground, not him, linkens wont pop from your borrow and you stun him, otherwise it will just trigger linkens like a targeted spell.
This is not true. Burrow strike will always trigger Linkens. Also burrow strike is not targetable in Dota or Dota2.
It is targetable, if you click on a hero out of range it will walk up to him even if he moves away. Remember, back in Dota1 you could work around linkens with stunning next to the hero- linkens used to only block if you target it on the holder. They changed it so even if you doesnt target the linkens holder it blocked it in early dota2
On September 08 2012 10:11 Aineko wrote: Maybe add 1 thing to burrow strike:
If an enemy hero has linkens and you target the ground, not him, linkens wont pop from your borrow and you stun him, otherwise it will just trigger linkens like a targeted spell.
This is not true. Burrow strike will always trigger Linkens. Also burrow strike is not targetable in Dota or Dota2.
It is targetable, if you click on a hero out of range it will walk up to him even if he moves away. Remember, back in Dota1 you could work around linkens with stunning next to the hero- linkens used to only block if you target it on the holder. They changed it so even if you doesnt target the linkens holder it blocked it in early dota2
Are you sure? If so that's something they changed because it wasn't like that always in Dota2. It used (and I think it still is, but then again I never play SK) to not be targetable.
On September 08 2012 10:11 Aineko wrote: Maybe add 1 thing to burrow strike:
If an enemy hero has linkens and you target the ground, not him, linkens wont pop from your borrow and you stun him, otherwise it will just trigger linkens like a targeted spell.
This is not true. Burrow strike will always trigger Linkens. Also burrow strike is not targetable in Dota or Dota2.
It is targetable, if you click on a hero out of range it will walk up to him even if he moves away. Remember, back in Dota1 you could work around linkens with stunning next to the hero- linkens used to only block if you target it on the holder. They changed it so even if you doesnt target the linkens holder it blocked it in early dota2
Are you sure? If so that's something they changed because it wasn't like that always in Dota2. It used (and I think it still is, but then again I never play SK) to not be targetable.
Its always been this way (in Dota1 and Dota2 from november when I got my key), they only changed Linkens interaction
On September 08 2012 10:11 Aineko wrote: Maybe add 1 thing to burrow strike:
If an enemy hero has linkens and you target the ground, not him, linkens wont pop from your borrow and you stun him, otherwise it will just trigger linkens like a targeted spell.
This is not true. Burrow strike will always trigger Linkens. Also burrow strike is not targetable in Dota or Dota2.
It is targetable, if you click on a hero out of range it will walk up to him even if he moves away. Remember, back in Dota1 you could work around linkens with stunning next to the hero- linkens used to only block if you target it on the holder. They changed it so even if you doesnt target the linkens holder it blocked it in early dota2
Are you sure? If so that's something they changed because it wasn't like that always in Dota2. It used (and I think it still is, but then again I never play SK) to not be targetable.
Its always been this way (in Dota1 and Dota2 from november when I got my key), they only changed Linkens interaction
It 100 % hasn't always been targetable. It used to be in HoN and it was one of the changes I noticed the most (I used to play a lot of SK).
On September 08 2012 10:11 Aineko wrote: Maybe add 1 thing to burrow strike:
If an enemy hero has linkens and you target the ground, not him, linkens wont pop from your borrow and you stun him, otherwise it will just trigger linkens like a targeted spell.
This is not true. Burrow strike will always trigger Linkens. Also burrow strike is not targetable in Dota or Dota2.
It is targetable, if you click on a hero out of range it will walk up to him even if he moves away. Remember, back in Dota1 you could work around linkens with stunning next to the hero- linkens used to only block if you target it on the holder. They changed it so even if you doesnt target the linkens holder it blocked it in early dota2
Are you sure? If so that's something they changed because it wasn't like that always in Dota2. It used (and I think it still is, but then again I never play SK) to not be targetable.
Its always been this way (in Dota1 and Dota2 from november when I got my key), they only changed Linkens interaction
It 100 % hasn't always been targetable. It used to be in HoN and it was one of the changes I noticed the most (I used to play a lot of SK).
Then maybe my memory has it wrong, I DO remember it. In Dota1-2 it can miss due to when you hit it on a target out of range it walks up to maxrange, casts it, but the extra aoe of the stun is only 150 so the target can dodge it if he moves fast enough, in HoN it has better aoe. AFAIK. I've played a shitton of SK-Magmus for a lot of years and I think it always been targetable
I can tell you with 100 % safety that it has not always been targetable in Dota2. Intended, not intended. It hasn't - maybe since you've started playing (I started playing just after TI1 in September), I can't say that though. Even Dota2 wikia says it's target point and not target unit.
However, what's most important is that it is targetable now but people can actually avoid your stun by just running if you have it on them as a target. When you start the burrow, it takes a little bit of time before you actually end up at your stun location and if they are fast enough, they can run out of the aoe you are stunning in even though you targeted it on them.
All sandking need is mana. His hp shouldn't be a problem in battle as he is THE ninja. Core like someone said is purely arcane boot and blink dagger. All items beyond that is luxury
Sandking most cases don't need bkb. You have blink, sandstorm, and all the good stuff. I just read the justification on force-staff though, I might give it a shot tonight and tell you how it goes!!
well i watched the chinese video and went carry sandking. it worked pretty well... i think overall i'm 3-1 tonight with carry sandking ahahaha he's actually rly good carry, once your early gank evened up the pacing of the game, you can outfarm a lot of carries easily.
been trying to practice ulting pre-dagger. It's difficult. You have to hide in the best spot that is: A) hidden, they can't see you and can't stun you out B) close by, you need to be able to reach them by either walking or burrow-strike
It's very very rediculously hard. A lot of time you'd hide there and try to predict if they'd walk your way, cast the ult, and sometimes you predict their movement wrong and your team call you nub
if ur wondering why not just stun in then ult, it's because 1) you are playing support, squish as hell 2) many disables on enemy team that they can't miss
so sometimes much better to ult in some secret place and burrow-strike in
On September 25 2012 14:31 evanthebouncy! wrote: if ur wondering why not just stun in then ult, it's because 1) you are playing support, squish as hell 2) many disables on enemy team that they can't miss
so sometimes much better to ult in some secret place and burrow-strike in
Times when I find stun-ult to be doable are when you're tping to another lane to help gank/defend so your team can stack stuns with you or if youre getting dived and the opponents have already burned their stuns (epi lasts after youre dead and the slow keeps them in tower range longer). But otherwise, yeah stun-ult is hard to pull off vs. decent opponents
On September 25 2012 14:31 evanthebouncy! wrote: if ur wondering why not just stun in then ult, it's because 1) you are playing support, squish as hell 2) many disables on enemy team that they can't miss
so sometimes much better to ult in some secret place and burrow-strike in
I think I wrote it somewhere in the thread, but due to turning animations you can often get away with stunning someone so you end up behind them and then channeling ulti. Obviously doesn't help against guys like Invoker against like a Venge or CK you'll be fine.
Apart from that learning all the juke spots and little places behind trees where you can hide really works wonders.
Somebody (disclaimer: too lazy to verify with own math) told me that Veil is gives more epicenter damage than scepter does, as well as help your team's nukes. That should be mentioned somewhere in the guide.
On September 26 2012 00:43 beef42 wrote: Somebody (disclaimer: too lazy to verify with own math) told me that Veil is gives more epicenter damage than scepter does, as well as help your team's nukes. That should be mentioned somewhere in the guide.
Math isn't hard, seeing as Veil = 25% more damage, and Aghanim's doesn't give 25% more pulses. However, Agh's reduces cooldowns and gives you more stats than Veil does.
On September 26 2012 00:43 beef42 wrote: Somebody (disclaimer: too lazy to verify with own math) told me that Veil is gives more epicenter damage than scepter does, as well as help your team's nukes. That should be mentioned somewhere in the guide.
On September 25 2012 14:31 evanthebouncy! wrote: if ur wondering why not just stun in then ult, it's because 1) you are playing support, squish as hell 2) many disables on enemy team that they can't miss
so sometimes much better to ult in some secret place and burrow-strike in
Times when I find stun-ult to be doable are when you're tping to another lane to help gank/defend so your team can stack stuns with you or if youre getting dived and the opponents have already burned their stuns (epi lasts after youre dead and the slow keeps them in tower range longer). But otherwise, yeah stun-ult is hard to pull off vs. decent opponents
I stun-ult doable in a lot of situations if you can hit someone with a stun. According to dota2wiki, the stun lasts for 2.17 seconds including air time, and the channel is only for 2 seconds. SK has a 0 second cast time, so if you spam ult as your burrow goes off, it should work pretty often.
Also something to note is your epicenter continues from the point of your death if you die after it finishes channeling. So your ult damage gets off even if you die!
On September 26 2012 00:43 beef42 wrote: Somebody (disclaimer: too lazy to verify with own math) told me that Veil is gives more epicenter damage than scepter does, as well as help your team's nukes. That should be mentioned somewhere in the guide.
Math isn't hard, seeing as Veil = 25% more damage, and Aghanim's doesn't give 25% more pulses. However, Agh's reduces cooldowns and gives you more stats than Veil does.
Aghs gives 25% more pulses if you're not lvl 16 yet just be super farmed!
Can someone confirm for me when SK's ulti triggers Pugna's ward? I was in a game where I was casting epi, Pugna dropped a ward and I got zapped when casting finished and sat there looking very silly with blink on a 3-second CD. Don't have any friends on to check right now. Either way, something else to be wary of.
On September 26 2012 06:42 elt wrote: Can someone confirm for me when SK's ulti triggers Pugna's ward? I was in a game where I was casting epi, Pugna dropped a ward and I got zapped when casting finished and sat there looking very silly with blink on a 3-second CD. Don't have any friends on to check right now. Either way, something else to be wary of.
On December 03 2012 13:05 synapse wrote: Bumping to link a very good vid I found on midlane SK + setting up caustic kills vs melee / short range heroes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6BywUWwzNk
i think i lost count of how many pudges i ruined in mid. they NEVER suspect it. They think they can still go up and last hit, then you burrowstrike him with 2 creeps and it's all over
it does not work too well against skilled range heros. SK has really, really low base armour, he cannot be harassed at all, so just be careful of that choice.
some comments from experience: 1) burrow-strike's early lvl dmg is not too high, a lot of times you think you have a chance of setting off chain reaction, but you don't unless the creep is relatively low health.
2) taking point 1 into account, you should still be slightly more defensive early game. Do not ever attack the other hero or trade blows, that is not how you deal damage. Concentrate on hitting creeps and set off the explosion. SK also has pathetic auto-atk damage and not the best animation, so please do take that into account. A lot of time you try to set off the reaction, they just hit you a lot and you still yet to get a creep down to half hp.
3) I used to still get sandstorm, but this guy is correct that you don't need it in mid. I would actually put some points in yellow, for extra mana as he's advocating rushing dagger (which I agree, you will get it very very very easily if you can free farm mid)
I'm on a 7 game sandking streak and a few of those have been mid-solo sandking into bruiser. Drum+Tread+MagicWand makes you incredbly beefy and your auto atk actually hurt. The item of choice after that is always a majonir for me, it gives you damage and atk speed, and a lightning ability which shield you in team-fight, and a chain-lightning ability let you push lane super fast w/ caustic (epic farming!). Then do w/e u want. Heart/Curass is powerful.
Couple things I learned: 1) Few level in sandstorm is enough. Not that useful. When you are mid get more caustic in place of sandstorm, and get more stats in place of sandstorm allows you to push the lane and grab rune. 2) When you solo-mid every time your ult is on CD you should look for a kill. It is OKAY if it's a solo kill. Your combo does 1k damage after reduction (burrow + ulti + 2 auto-atk), nobody should be alive for it. 3) Orb walk when your ult is dealing damage. Walk, atk, walk, atk to get even more hits in. Your ult has a slow, but most people overlook on how to exploit it. 4) Safest way to land ult in a hectic teamfight(pre dagger) is to stay outside range, ult, then burrow in. you will inevitibly lose 2 pulses, but sandking has 6 pulses total. Losing 2 pulses is nothing compared to having it stunned out. This is perhaps the most crucial sandking skill to have, as you have most impact early game, and your often don't have dagger early game. Best time to ult is if one of your teammate is running away toward you
Thanks for this guide, and the video links! I got sand king in SD, but was unfortunately forced to go mid against SF. Despite the bad matchup, I got two early kills on him, one using the trick where you prime multiple creeps with caustic and then burrowstrike into him, and the other by beating him to a DD rune and then chopping him down. Unfortunately, our other lanes lost badly and eventually we just weren't able to keep up. Not to mention he got every last hit after level 7 or so
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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!
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
So I've recently been playing this hero a lot (and by a lot I mean like 5 games) and doing pretty well. Fun hero and potentially very high impact even with little farm. To begin with, I'm a fairly casual player. I probably play like 10-15 games a week (mostly on my weekend) and I'm pretty scrubby. My Dotabuff matches alternate between very high and high skill (dunno what MMR that is), which honestly surprised me when I first saw it. I thought I was more of a baddie than that.
Anyways, at my level, I frequently end up being the solo support with 4 cores or 3 cores and that 1 "support" that never actually buys courier or wards or smokes or dust. So here's some questions:
1. Assuming the above situation and me being forced to buy both courier and wards at lvl 1, what should I prioritize with my remaining gold? Obviously boots first is now out of the question. I've been going tangoes, 2x clarity, branches.
2. Assuming I'm not solo offlane (which I actually really liked the one time it happened), is there a point where I just need to ditch whoever I'm supporting and go stack and jungle. I mean, unless the other lanes are snowballing hard and getting towers (at which point it's probably moot), I will probably never get a blink in lane or even from stacking and pulling considering I'm buying all wards, upping courier, etc. And dual lane vs dual lane, pulling often is iffy.
3. I've been going brown boots -> blink (sometimes stick first) -> arcane -> aghs or veil or force staff depending on team comp and need. I've built a mek in one game and sometimes a bracer early. Should I be picking up an urn assuming no one else on my team builds one? If the game goes late, what should I prioritize? Shiva's?
4. Any general advice would be much appreciated. Assume a hard game where I'm solo support (most often the case :p)
-SK is typically played as a roaming support, and can be paired with another strong roaming support due to lacking damage. So basically staying off the map and looking for gank opportunities and jungling in between.
-He's not a very good lane support, though he can be part of a tri-lane. His stun is the same duration at all levels but short range at early levels, so it's better as a follow-up to another stun early on.
-A lot of times all it takes is to ask the other support to buy courier/ward/etc. early so you can get your Blink faster, then you can help with support items after. Even pubs know a fast Blink is needed on SK.
-Urn is pretty good on SK yes. Get it after Blink. Shiva is good on SK but a luxury.
If you have terrible lanes and no one is supporting your safe lane spectre or something, don't join him. Just stay in the jungle and get your blink. Thats becsuse you contribute nothing in that lane, give up on potential gold, and steal exp. Unless of course your other lanes have some kill potential, in which you may want to roam instead.
Yeah, low level all-pick pubs (most of my games) generally don't end up with great lanes or support duos. Of course the same usually applies to the enemy team as well.
On July 11 2014 10:18 Skyro wrote: Yes Blink before Urn but Urn's component pieces are nice way to get rid of your unreliable gold before you die though.
most of your gold will be unreliable when farming up to a blink though.
sidenote: even if you are full out farming neuts a set of wards is always helpful if the other support is too poor to afford them, also flying courier is a must at 3min. those are 2 of the items i would delay blink for.
Be very careful how you play this guy, it's quite easy to screw your team over early on. Ever since the patch I've found SK to be a terrible hero to have on your team unless he's actually in that upper tier of support players (5k+). Almost all the 4k-5k SKs think they're Enigma and will do nothing but jungle the first 10 minutes, except when Enigma has 70-80 cs + a kill the SK will have 30-35 and no impact. Even less help than that stereotypical useless jungle Doom without a bottle and with unlucky creep spawns since at least devour gives you lots of free money. SK's a fantastic roamer but you have to balance stacking with contribution, and avoid farming single camps unless there are no openings or weaknesses present.
As you're probably only going to pick SK with a dual support lineup (otherwise you can't use the jungle), here's a basic plan to stand by every game:
1) If your other support is cooperative, start boots first. SK is a monster ganker, his only weakness being low initiation range at early levels, and boots first solves that. It also is crucial for letting you move between roaming and stacking. 2) Check rune and try to scout out their initial obs placement. It's crucial to see if a) offlaner has vision of possible ganks and b) if their mid can you see you moving from safelane to gank him. If they have wards and you don't have sentries, then you'll either need to bring them out early or bypass them with smokes. Most offlaners will feel very secure with an undisturbed ward showing no supports and are easy pickings for a dual smoke gank wraparound. 3) Try for FB on the offlaner by hiding in the trees and walking behind if he's brave enough to walk to creep wave. FB'ing mid is also possible, particularly if it's some weakling like SF and your mid blocks well, but it's more reliable to control the safelane. 4) If offlane is playing scared/has ward, stack hard camp. If you gank and miss stack timing, go double pull then gank or stack hard camp. If a gank opportunity surfaces, do it, if not stack again. If you mess up timing and can't stack hard camp, stack medium camp and pray for no golems. 5) If rune appears in the safelane spawn location and your mid doesn't need it, take it after stacking and gank mid or their offlaner. 6) Keeping threatening ganks on their offlaner but if it doesn't work out make sure you are back to stack the hard camp by :52. If you're being thwarted by a possible ward, smoke. If your other support is competent and your moron carry can't control the wave equilibrium, consider doing a backstab behind their T1 tower (depends on offlaner). Getting that early kill and level 2 will help immensely. You really want to get level 3 by the time you have a quad hard camp stack (3-6 mins) 7) Once it's nighttime, consider ganking mid. Depending on the matchup your other support might not even be needed. It's extremely difficult for most enemy mids to get into a safe position against even a lvl 4 or 5 boots SK burrowstrike during night. If creeps are in the river/your high ground you can even just run up the lane. Even better with a good rune. 8) Once you have a quad hard stack and lvl 2 sand storm, kill the quad stack. If you can stack the other hard camp or a medium camp afterwards do it, otherwise choose between threatening a gank/pulling depending on the scenario. 9) Once you kill the quad stack and theres no good ganking opportunity, kill your other dual medium/hard stack. 10) Alternate between ganking and stacking hard camp again until you get Blink. Don't bother killing anything less than a dual stack, and ideally wait for a triple. If any of your ganks went well, the Blink comes surprisingly fast.
(Also note that if you get level 3 with a 3-4 stack hard camp, level sand storm as you will get level 2 burrow from killing it anyway.
I don't have the replay anymore, but just for numbers sake, Fy''s SK in a pubs shows how efficient the hero can really be: http://dotabuff.com/matches/661336831 . I believe he got an 830-9 min Boots Blink smoke with 3-4 ganks, whereas your typical pub SK will have 0 ganks and still get a 10-11 min Blink.
On July 11 2014 10:18 Skyro wrote: Yes Blink before Urn but Urn's component pieces are nice way to get rid of your unreliable gold before you die though.
most of your gold will be unreliable when farming up to a blink though.
sidenote: even if you are full out farming neuts a set of wards is always helpful if the other support is too poor to afford them, also flying courier is a must at 3min. those are 2 of the items i would delay blink for.
Obviously I was talking about early on when you are roaming around and stacking camps, when you are actually putting yourself in danger by attempting ganks. You really shouldn't be afk farming jungle for 10 min with SK from the get go.
On July 11 2014 15:27 Ver wrote: Be very careful how you play this guy, it's quite easy to screw your team over early on. Ever since the patch I've found SK to be a terrible hero to have on your team unless he's actually in that upper tier of support players (5k+). Almost all the 4k-5k SKs think they're Enigma and will do nothing but jungle the first 10 minutes, except when Enigma has 70-80 cs + a kill the SK will have 30-35 and no impact. Even less help than that stereotypical useless jungle Doom without a bottle and with unlucky creep spawns since at least devour gives you lots of free money. SK's a fantastic roamer but you have to balance stacking with contribution, and avoid farming single camps unless there are no openings or weaknesses present.
As you're probably only going to pick SK with a dual support lineup (otherwise you can't use the jungle), here's a basic plan to stand by every game:
1) If your other support is cooperative, start boots first. SK is a monster ganker, his only weakness being low initiation range at early levels, and boots first solves that. It also is crucial for letting you move between roaming and stacking. 2) Check rune and try to scout out their initial obs placement. It's crucial to see if a) offlaner has vision of possible ganks and b) if their mid can you see you moving from safelane to gank him. If they have wards and you don't have sentries, then you'll either need to bring them out early or bypass them with smokes. Most offlaners will feel very secure with an undisturbed ward showing no supports and are easy pickings for a dual smoke gank wraparound. 3) Try for FB on the offlaner by hiding in the trees and walking behind if he's brave enough to walk to creep wave. FB'ing mid is also possible, particularly if it's some weakling like SF and your mid blocks well, but it's more reliable to control the safelane. 4) If offlane is playing scared/has ward, stack hard camp. If you gank and miss stack timing, go double pull then gank or stack hard camp. If a gank opportunity surfaces, do it, if not stack again. If you mess up timing and can't stack hard camp, stack medium camp and pray for no golems. 5) If rune appears in the safelane spawn location and your mid doesn't need it, take it after stacking and gank mid or their offlaner. 6) Keeping threatening ganks on their offlaner but if it doesn't work out make sure you are back to stack the hard camp by :52. If you're being thwarted by a possible ward, smoke. If your other support is competent and your moron carry can't control the wave equilibrium, consider doing a backstab behind their T1 tower (depends on offlaner). Getting that early kill and level 2 will help immensely. You really want to get level 3 by the time you have a quad hard camp stack (3-6 mins) 7) Once it's nighttime, consider ganking mid. Depending on the matchup your other support might not even be needed. It's extremely difficult for most enemy mids to get into a safe position against even a lvl 4 or 5 boots SK burrowstrike during night. If creeps are in the river/your high ground you can even just run up the lane. Even better with a good rune. 8) Once you have a quad hard stack and lvl 2 sand storm, kill the quad stack. If you can stack the other hard camp or a medium camp afterwards do it, otherwise choose between threatening a gank/pulling depending on the scenario. 9) Once you kill the quad stack and theres no good ganking opportunity, kill your other dual medium/hard stack. 10) Alternate between ganking and stacking hard camp again until you get Blink. Don't bother killing anything less than a dual stack, and ideally wait for a triple. If any of your ganks went well, the Blink comes surprisingly fast.
(Also note that if you get level 3 with a 3-4 stack hard camp, level sand storm as you will get level 2 burrow from killing it anyway.
I don't have the replay anymore, but just for numbers sake, Fy''s SK in a pubs shows how efficient the hero can really be: http://dotabuff.com/matches/661336831 . I believe he got an 830-9 min Boots Blink smoke with 3-4 ganks, whereas your typical pub SK will have 0 ganks and still get a 10-11 min Blink.
This guide should help me a lot when I play with my really prissy/needy carry friend
Okay I need up to date info on how to play to his hero as a support. Tired of playing games without support at 3k so I thought I'd play a hero that has an escape, big teamfight impact and the farming capabilities to pick up wards and still have item continuation.
I'm wondering what items I go and in what order generally? I rushed blink in some games but I was manastarved to the point that I could barely ult and stun. Mana boots first felt better, players at my level are bad at managing mana so the item was often very critical to the team as well, but I was wondering whether soul ring tranquils would be better?
I usually follow up with veil or blade mail according to what I feel is useful. Should I pick up glimmer or forcestaff over those?
Any tips on stacking/ efficiency/ timings? I like to try and stack the big camp and check the rune at 2/4/6 mins. I usually try to get quick boots from the sideshop and see if there's potential for a kill lvl 1, then I pull until lvl 3 and kill a stack if the safelane is secured. I wonder how I can get to 3 asap? When I stack and pull the camp doesnt die at all, is single pull and connect the way to go? Should I go gank mid when night hits or is killing stacks and getting to my items more impactful?
The thing I usually do is blink and then mana boots, followed by force staff. I think that is a pretty generally strong build and should let you live to pull off multiple stuns in a fight (which is really strong especially at lower mmrs)
On July 11 2014 00:38 Conquest101 wrote: So I've recently been playing this hero a lot (and by a lot I mean like 5 games) and doing pretty well. Fun hero and potentially very high impact even with little farm. To begin with, I'm a fairly casual player. I probably play like 10-15 games a week (mostly on my weekend) and I'm pretty scrubby. My Dotabuff matches alternate between very high and high skill (dunno what MMR that is), which honestly surprised me when I first saw it. I thought I was more of a baddie than that.
Anyways, at my level, I frequently end up being the solo support with 4 cores or 3 cores and that 1 "support" that never actually buys courier or wards or smokes or dust. So here's some questions:
1. Assuming the above situation and me being forced to buy both courier and wards at lvl 1, what should I prioritize with my remaining gold? Obviously boots first is now out of the question. I've been going tangoes, 2x clarity, branches.
2. Assuming I'm not solo offlane (which I actually really liked the one time it happened), is there a point where I just need to ditch whoever I'm supporting and go stack and jungle. I mean, unless the other lanes are snowballing hard and getting towers (at which point it's probably moot), I will probably never get a blink in lane or even from stacking and pulling considering I'm buying all wards, upping courier, etc. And dual lane vs dual lane, pulling often is iffy.
3. I've been going brown boots -> blink (sometimes stick first) -> arcane -> aghs or veil or force staff depending on team comp and need. I've built a mek in one game and sometimes a bracer early. Should I be picking up an urn assuming no one else on my team builds one? If the game goes late, what should I prioritize? Shiva's?
4. Any general advice would be much appreciated. Assume a hard game where I'm solo support (most often the case :p)
Even if you're the only "support" in the game, still consider going boots first, burrow strike if your team chances of securing bounty rune and/or first blood is pretty high. If several kills happen down the river and you're part of the assist gold, its gives you a better start and more effect than minute 0 wards.
If you miss, or didn't decide to go boots + burrowstrike, just farm asap, stack and guard the runes. Pull small and large camps. Have the mindset that you will eventually get the blink by really supporting your cores get ganks. Meantime, arcanes first and getting good map vision is probably the safest bet.
In general you should really be efficient and not sacrifice needlessly or always running back to the fountain. Can consider building veil of discord from components in the side shop. Goes without saying its better for a high magical damage draft. Aghs is kind of luxury where the game is more or less in your lap. Just get max damage blink epi.
Forcestaff is another great item, Sandking doesn't really need the extra armor from Shivas. You did start of as a support and if the team played well, you wouldn't be in a position to need to buy Shivas.
What's people's opinion on aether lens with this hero? I tend to lean towards veil and aghs after blink but there seem to be quite a few SK's that build aether at different points in the game.
Edit: also, since the last post in this thread is so old, I feel the new aghs is pretty much a core item on SK now.
I'm pretty meh on it. If you get arcane boots then it's maybe worth disassembling it for Aether lens when you get higher level and your mana pool is large enough (either if you can't afford aghs because you can't find farm, you don't want aghs, or after you complete aghs & force staff).
But it seems like tranquil boots are gaining in popularity with Sand King and I think if you go that route you don't want it at all (both force staff and aghs would be better pick ups).
I don't think there are many situations where Aether lens would make a difference in a fight over other items like Veil, Aghs, or Force Staff.
I don't know that Agh's is core either, at least not before force staff. It's very fun and probably pretty solid, but the two main things you want are long initiation range and to stun as many people as possible. I think often force staff gets you that more than long range burrow strike. If you need a 2k range initiation then Force staff is faster than burrow strike (I think to the point of having more epi pulses hit) and if you want to maximize the # of people you stun I feel like often times Force staff's ability to get a better angle on your burrowstrike will outshine the extra epicenter range. At some point your initiation range is going to be really situational, there's no point in a 3k distance initiation if you just end up fighting 1v5.
Where Aghs would shine is if you expect to get big caustic finale bursts off of your burrowstrike or you want to be able to stun chase some slippery heroes. That or just after force staff when it would really maximize your ability to be all over the enemy team.
Aether is useful but not essential imo, and not usually something I'd get after blink.
SK's post-blink decision tree is a matter of what he needs at the time, like any other hero.
If you're struggling for initiation range, consider force (+600), aether (+400) or aghs (+650). If you're not living to get extra rounds of burrowstrike off post-epi, consider force or euls. If you're wrecking fools with epi and they're inexplicably not buying BKB, consider veil.
There's not too many situations I'd want aether over a force staff, since force gives way more utility. I might skip force to go straight for aghs if I found myself with a big pile of gold, but I think that's pretty greedy. Being able to divorce your repositioning from your stun gives you a lot more options.
I do think a later aghs is core though. Even if you don't need a 3k range initiation every time, it opens up so many opportunities that wouldn't exist otherwise. This only gets more important as picks on key heroes become more critical. If you go all the way, the eventual quadfecta (??) of blink-force-aghs-aether makes him an omnipresent nightmare. Caustic aoe and the extra heroes you can stun per burrow are just icing on the cake.
It's also worth noting that there's an arms race that goes on as your opponents get more and more equipped to hunt you while you're charging epi, and SK consequently wants to be further and further back. The old choices like shivas are still nice, and maybe I'm under-valuing them, but aghs is really freaking good and aether helps too.
Whatever you do don't be part of that plague of aether-instead-of-blink SKs that were wandering around when it first came out.
It feels like you can make a case for many items, I looked up high ranking SK players and there's not much overlap beyond blink aghs in their item builds. Some always go euls, some dagon eth blade, some aether force, some urn hex hearth, some veil octarine. It's pretty cool there's that much diversity even at the highest levels of SK play.
Personally I build blink into tranquils, veil, aghs, octarine, blade mail. Unless there's obvious reasons to build something else. SK becomes so tanky that you can be really in their face and tank for your DPS'ers. You have such nice stat gain that I feel you're much better off frontlining late game rather than afk sandstorming after stun.
Aether is not needed on SK. It delays your blink unnecessarily. SK is a hero who's impact drastically changes the moment he gets a blink. Furthermore unlike lion, you can very reliably farm a blink at a good timing.
After blink, aether is no longer attractive too. Force provides greater initiation range plus additiomal mobility. Agha is flat out superior for double its cost. I'd generally lean towards force, as I view Agha to be a luxury item. After force (and Agha), I find aether to be an overkill.
Then there's euls and Bkb. Euls make you more slippery because it means dust don't work against you. Bkb is required for certain games.
I don't like octarine on SK, feels like sandstorm and burrow CD are already decently short, while epi is not his most important spell. I also don't quite like veil or Shivas (I personally view Shivas as a crap item on all heroes). I prefer additional utility in the form of hex and refresher. Alternatively you can get ac for your team. Eblade dagon 5 has special mention because it is very underrated as a late game luxury item.
The first couple times I did Aether aghs and blink and I had more mobility than an Antimage but then I realized I didn't need the Aether to keep that exact same experience but could instead devote that to BKB, force or Euls.
Do people still max Burrow then Sand then Caustic? I've been favoring caustic against melee cores over more than a value point in sandstorm that i basically only use to escape. Caustic is actually so good during the laning stage if you can get 1 hit on each creep and then finish one of them off.
Caustic is generally only good if you lane SK, which means you're 1-3 position. 4-5 SKs generally gets blink from the jungle, at which point you ignore caustic completely. If jungle, you likely want to level Sand over Burrow a little at start. Being 1-2-0 at 3 and 2-3-0 at 5 helps jungling a lot. Then you can go back to Burrow > Sand after or something.
For laning SK im not sure, its so uncommon. But im guessing 1-2 value pts in Caustic then Burrow > Sand > Caustic and get your blink from lane creeps/kill and not jungle.
I think the new veil is just so good. 18 Int and bonus stats, 6 armor, great regen, it helps your entire team's DPS (if magic ofc) and it has great build up. It's just so superior stat and build-up wise to force. With tranqs veil on a good timing you're already so tanky that you can bridge your spell CD's without dying. With the added perk that you never have to go back to base for health.
I usally go a value point in caustic now, it slows for 30% so you can chase down that low target that doesn't quite die. You can also double stack some camps by aggro'ing at :40 and tapping a creep as they run back to the camp around :47. When I don't need to get burrowstrike as a safelane support I use it to stack both small and big camp every minute.
I'm not really sure about Octarine, you get an 8 second CD ravage and you become almost unkillable, it's the point where I start feeling like a god as SK so maybe that's why I like it. The combo with blademail also seems really good at that stage where all BKB's are 5 second and you have 100% uptime of either burrow, blademail or sandstorm. Hex seems very good in the same category though, I just like tanking DMG.
So there hasn't been any posts in here in awhile. How is Sand King now after all of these buffs?
I heard offlane SK is a thing, and how viable is he as a roaming support? He needs a few items to be really effective, and I'm not sure he can really "solo" support in pub games effectively if you are the sole source of wards for your team.
6.88b Reduced Sand Storm cooldown from 40/30/20/10 to 34/26/18/10. Reduced Epicenter mana cost from 175/250/325 to 150/225/300.
6.88 Increased base strength from 21 to 22. Reduced Epicenter cooldown from 140/120/100 to 120/110/100.
6.87 Increased attack range from 128 to 150. Rescaled Sand Storm max channel time from 20/40/60/80 to 50 on each level.
On July 29 2016 06:24 VandenPlause wrote: So there hasn't been any posts in here in awhile. How is Sand King now after all of these buffs?
I heard offlane SK is a thing, and how viable is he as a roaming support? He needs a few items to be really effective, and I'm not sure he can really "solo" support in pub games effectively if you are the sole source of wards for your team.
6.88b Reduced Sand Storm cooldown from 40/30/20/10 to 34/26/18/10. Reduced Epicenter mana cost from 175/250/325 to 150/225/300.
6.88 Increased base strength from 21 to 22. Reduced Epicenter cooldown from 140/120/100 to 120/110/100.
6.87 Increased attack range from 128 to 150. Rescaled Sand Storm max channel time from 20/40/60/80 to 50 on each level.
Navi has been running him offlane and mid and crushing. The offlane SK is a dual lane though. Game two of Navi vs EG at Starladder shows the power of offlane SK.
Navi has been running him offlane and mid and crushing. The offlane SK is a dual lane though. Game two of Navi vs EG at Starladder shows the power of offlane SK.
Thanks for the info. If anyone is interested, here is the game.
On August 09 2016 21:43 Torte de Lini wrote: I just played a Sand King who went mid and maxed Caustic Finale.
We won despite losing mid to this hero hard, how do you beat this because it was just insane the amount of damage he was outputting.
He's spamming this hero too and almost never loses.
A ranged midder should be able to at least not die vs him. What "wins" the game vs. him should be everything elese that wins against a fat midder: crushing the other lanes and not giving him to many free kills once he has blink.
He's not popular as much right now but Zeus shits on SK pretty hard. Bolt cancels W and reveals. More importantly, ult cancels sk blink and wastes his ult often. I'd imagine he's among the better Laners vs sk cause you never have to go near the wave, and sk's more or less going to farm regardless of your ability.
beat sandking is so easy... i have 1k games on him and have done mid / support / offlane the whole shit
his starting armour is shit. if you're a range hero with some poke it's so easy to shut him down. caustic only works if:
1. mid lane 1v1 against a melee 2. offlane 2v2 with a strong support and enemy has melee carry
any ranged core shit on him so hard with any form of poking. People just don't know how much damage caustic does when it goes off in a chain reaction. as long as you stay out of it you'll be more than fine.
definitely a situational pick, although with the current emphasis on roaming supports and jungling rather than babysit safelane he has been picked more
Let’s talk about this hero some more. His new sandstorm made his laning stage so much better. I’ve only been running him as a 3 though. Seems every time I tried 4 SK, I just feed too much.
Imo he's just not good as a 4 anymore. Borrowstrike lvl 1 and 2 is still very weak for roaming, caustic lvl 1 is still shit and sandstorm might be a good defensive spell now, but hardly enables any pressure plays as a 4. Like once he's lvl 3+ he's okayish and once he gets blink he's pretty godlike, but getting there as a 4 while having impact is pretty hard.
One of the top offlaners in divine/immortal from what I see.. lanes very well, farms and pushes fast and safe, extremely high magic damage mid game, scales well with talents, offers initiation, can build all utility...
He kinda acts like the old Broodmother Spider Web in the lane. He can't actually be harassed too much with Sandstorm active without forcing the opposing support into a sentry fight. Difference is that the carry takes a good amount of damage just by standing in the zone which can force awkward repositions and deny last hits. I notice in a lot of pro games, a value point is taken in Caustic Finale to double down on the farming and harass and I like that.
EPT![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/images/e/e5/Sand_King_Large.png)
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valve needs to solve this by making him king of sand and not sand king :D
