Simple Questions, Simple Answers - Page 107

Lycanthrope Guide

Skill Order
Max wolves first and take ult when you can. This is pretty much non-negotiable. Between Howl and Feral Impulse, you take Feral Impulse at early levels, as mana prohibits your Howl usage, and it's not really well-used farming jungle. Usually I'll take one rank for pushing or doing Roshan around level 8-9 though.


Items

Starting
The two most reasonable starts are either:
Tangoes+3xClarities+2xBranches+QB
or
Tangoes+Clarity+Branch+RoP+QB

The first is the most standard start played in competitive games. QB gives you the greatest ability to do camps fast, and the consumables keep you going until you get Basilius. With 3 clarities, you also have some wiggle room with regard to mana, if you need Wolves for an early scuffle or get unlucky with camp spawns.

The second item start is geared toward a faster Basilius, but is decidedly more fragile. Basilius lets you cast Wolves every time they run out and not run out of mana, but if you get hard camps and your wolves are dying faster than that, your mana will get somewhat strained, and you might need to ferry more clarities out.

After that, my followup will look something like this (each set of items represents 1 trip on the courier out to you):
Starting->Basilius->Sobi Mask+RoR->Vlads->Medallion

Vlads and Medallion are pretty much non-negotiable as your first major items. The early 2nd Sobi Mask is to smooth out your mana management so that by the time you're levels 6-8, you can afford to use Howl/Ult for ganks/pushes. Boots and TP generally will have to fit somewhere in there, but there's no need to finish Treads until after these two items because Lycan's ultimate gives him max movespeed. Grab Stick/Wand if you feel you need it at some point, but it's not really a high priority.

After this, you have two primary core item choices. You get one or the other, and you generally choose based on which is more fitting for the game in question (though both can be fine)

BKB - The natural big followup for a strength carry. Gives you damage, gives you beefiness, and gives you magic immunity. Not much to say.
Necronomicon - You're not quite as beefy, and you don't hit quite as hard, but there are a couple utility advantages of Necronomicon over BKB:
- True Sight--the obvious one. The Necronomicon 3 Warrior has true sight, so as soon as you get to it, this can be very useful against stealth heroes (or just for de-warding).
- Feedback/Mana Burn - again, pretty obvious. The Warrior has Feedback, the Archer has Mana Burn. These can be extremely valuable against key heroes that are mana-reliant but don't get enough of it.
- Pushing power - The Necronomicon summons are GREAT for pushing towers. Not only do they add two more bodies to hit the tower with, the Archer's 9% MS/AS aura synergizes well with Howl, and ups the rate at which you demolish towers even further.
- Mana - Necronomicon gives a Strength hero a pretty respectable amount of Int to work with. Obviously it's not the most amazing stat for you, but against certain heroes that can dig into your mana (e.g. Invoker, Anti-mage), it's useful to buffer your pre-fight mana pool a bit, so you don't get screwed.

After that, it's on to lategame luxuries:
Assault Cuirass/Heart - Survivability items that also give you (and your wolves, in the case of AC) a nice chunk of damage
MKB - Usually my choice for a lategame damage item. It's cost-efficient, and scales well, especially since you'll probably need it against Butterfly-wielding Agi carries.
Desolator - Another damage option. This one is slightly weaker, though it can still be nice due to its synergy with the Medallion -armor and the fact that your damage output is entirely physical. It tends to fall off lategame once people start buffering their armor values high enough to make -armor less scary.
HotD/Satanic - Expensive, but can be pretty good if you finish it. HotD is nice to keep for a while because having a max-movespeed Centaur to set up an AoE stun can be pretty ridiculous (all summoned units gain max MS during your ult).
Sheepstick - Uncommon, but can be a good choice. It ends any potential mana issues you could possibly have, and vastly improves your solo-killing power by giving you CC to work with.
Manta Style - Also uncommon, but can be quite fun. The Agi gain isn't great, but you get a nice chunk of good stats, and the Illusions are great with your ultimate (since they gain the movespeed boost as well). Be sure to have it with Necronomicon and HotD for the ultimate zookeeper Lycanthrope.


Basic Jungling

Before continuing, read this if you haven't: http://www.playdota.com/learn/jungle. Basic jungling mechanics that you'll need on any jungling hero.

Jungling on Lycanthrope takes a bit more finesse than the other junglers currently in the pool. Done right, he can outpace almost all of them (out-leveling even the solo lanes), but he has to be a bit picky on camps to not put himself in danger.

Scout with your wolves at level 1. Spawn a set of wolves at ~55 seconds till lane creeps spawn and again at ~25 seconds till lane creeps spawn. If you can't make the first timing (because you took too long to decide on your hero or something), just spawn a set at ~40-45 seconds till spawn (so they last long enough to see the rune). Use your wolves to scout into the enemy jungle--you can often determine their lane arrangements based on which side of the jungle people are waiting for the rune spawns on (which your team may or may not choose to adjust for). Try not to let your wolves die, since they are worth gold and XP, and make sure to get them back to the rune spawns before 0:00. If a teammate isn't coming to get the rune, you actually can order your wolves to attack and destroy the rune, preventing enemy heroes from taking it.

Spawn a set of wolves in the fountain at 0:09, and wait about a bit for mana. Then tell all your units to go to the hard camp near mid. This gets you there precisely at 0:30 when they spawn. Note: Your wolves will get there slightly before you--make sure they wait for you somewhere that doesn't have vision of the hard camp, because if they have vision at 0:30, they will block the camp from spawning.

What happens next depends on whether you lucked out and got Trolls at the hard camp. If there are Trolls, you can do the camp, hit 2, then move to the easy camp. If there are not trolls, then you'll have to skip this camp and come back later. In that case, start with the easy camp.

For all camps, the mechanics of doing the camp are pretty much the same--let your wolves tank the creeps (if possible--some creeps aggro automatically to you), then move Lycan + the injured wolf away when they get low so that the creeps aggro to the other wolf. In general, the wolves' HP is more significant than their damage, so you want them to do the tanking. That said, there may be situations where you have surplus tangoes and tanking some creeps to keep a set of wolves longer may be worthwhile.

After the easy camp, it starts to get a bit tricky, and goes by experience. Your next move is to go to one of the medium camps (the pull-able one if the laners stacked it and are OK with you taking XP/gold from the pull, and the other one if not). If the other hard camp has Trolls, you can do that camp as well. In general, you're going to be rotating between the easy, medium, and hard camps, getting some gold/xp from the pull-able hard camp as the laners' stacking/pulling allows. If they're not stacking/pulling, then feel free to do the camp yourself.

Send your items to yourself as soon as it's possible using the courier. Send extra consumables to yourself if you need to. Use your clarities often, but make sure you don't get them interrupted (see the camps guide below for the mechanics of that).

After you get Vlad's, you can do Ancients fairly easily. You can also send your wolves to do separate camps (obviously this doesn't kill the camps faster, but if you focus on a few camps that are close together and let your wolves do stuff like killing the easy camp, you can squeeze out more camps and therefore more gold every minute). After you get Medallion, make sure you use Medallion on jungle creeps to speed up the process of killing them.

Pulling/Stacking:
In general, you don't really want to wait on stacking camps yourself. If you're about to do a camp at x:52, and you think you can manage the stack, it can get you a little extra XP to stack that camp before doing it, but don't go out of your way to go and stack camps you won't get to for a while. You have no AoE creep-killing ability so you still take a while to clear stacked camps.

If the short lane is not pulling, go ahead and do their medium camp. If the short lane did a stack->pull, take some XP/lasthits if they're OK with it. Don't bother if they just did a single pull. It's not worth your time to split an un-stacked medium camp's XP with someone. If your short lane is waiting to stack, DON'T DO THE DAMN CAMP. Wait for them to stack first, THEN see if they're OK with you sticking around for the XP/gold. Doing a camp that the short laners were about to stack fucks with their lane controlling ability and doesn't get any extra XP for you because it'd still be 2 camps worth of creeps.


A brief overview of the camps
In the interest of conserving space, I'm not going to go over every single camp, and what they are, but just mention camps briefly and how hard they are/what you should keep in mind. Probably the most relevant things to keep in mind about each camp are the abilities, and the aggro patterns.

Easy camp - all easy camp spawns are pretty much the same for Lycan. Doable at level 1, nothing special. Kobolds, Trolls, and Banshee camps have normal aggro patterns, so you can clarity on them. Harpies aggro to melee heroes attacking them, and Gnolls apply poison to all targets before choosing to stick to one, so don't clarity on those camps.
Troll camp (Hard) - Probably THE best camp spawn for you in terms of difficulty vs. reward. Gives good gold, gives good XP (enough to get you to level 2), and doable from level 1. Getting Trolls at both hard camps from the start puts you on pace to get something like level 9 in 9 minutes. Note that the Dark Troll Warlord aggros to melee heroes attacking him, so again, you can't clarity on them.
Golems/Ogres/Satyrs (Medium) - All these medium camps are sort of the same--average difficulty medium camps that have no special AoE abilities and default aggro patterns. Doable at level 1-2 with some finesse, and takes no real effort after level 3.
Wolves (Medium) - Like the above, except that the big wolf has an aura (so you should kill him first), and the wolves have an aggro pattern that favors attacking low-HP heroes (so you can clarity on this camp if you're careful about it).
Centaurs (Medium/Hard) - Can spawn at either the medium or the hard camp. Not terribly hard after level 3, but bear in mind that the big Centaur will stomp once 3 targets are in range (if you micro it properly, you can dodge the stomp). It also re-acquires targets after stomping. You can clarity on this camp, but be somewhat careful about it.
Wildkin (Hard) - These are pretty manageable at 4 or 5, since they don't have AoE abilities. The big one aggros to melee heroes and hits pretty hard, but if you have tangoes left or your RoR already, it shouldn't matter. Just don't clarity on this camp.
Satyrs (Hard) - Doable at level 1, but often will take too much damage for it to be worth it till level 3. The big Satyr aggros to you if you're at low HP, and tries to shockwave when it's under attack by 2 or more units, so using clarities is unreliable. If you arrange yourself and your wolves in a triangle around the big Satyr, he can only shockwave one of you at once.
Furbolgs (Hard) - Without question the hardest camp for Lycan. Doable at 3-4 with 2 sets of wolves (e.g. start the camp with a set of injured wolves to tank the stomp, and summon a fresh set when they die). Even at level 5-7, before you get Vlad's you or your wolves will take a big pounding doing this camp.


Midgame and Lategame
Midgame is where Lycan really shines. Particularly around the 12-15 mark, when you become Roshan-capable, that's the point in the game where Lycan starts to take over the game, maintaining his presence until he gets BKB and after he runs down his BKB uses.

Roshan
You can solo Rosh the moment you get Medallion+Vlads. Technically you can do it with just Vlad's, but this takes much longer, requires more micro, and gets you to lower HP, and is therefore not recommended. Medallion makes doing Rosh fast, easy, and safe (you take ~30 seconds, are full HP the entire time, can keep your ult on reserve as an escape, and require no special micro).

Start Rosh with a reasonably fresh set of wolves (fresh meaning they've both got 3/4+ HP, and won't run out before they die, but the wolves CD is almost ready). Also make sure that Howl is not on CD. You don't have to have your ult up, but having it ready as an escape is good if you get caught.

Always keep Medallion debuff up on Rosh. Let the wolves tank the damage. You can do some cute shit trying to juggle aggro, but doing it incorrectly (or even Rosh getting a bunch of bash procs on you) will just end up slowing you down, and it's really not necessary. When your first set of wolves dies, immediately spawn a new pair. Rosh should die before your 2nd set of wolves dies, or shortly after (depending on how fresh your first set of wolves was). That's it! You'll gain 1-2 levels, a TON of gold for your team, and the Aegis.

Ganking
One mistake that many starting Lycans will make: ganking too much too early. Lycan's kit is not that good for ganking, particularly before level 6. Help your teammates in sticky situations and go collect free kills in lanes, but take note of your development. Lycan is a very tempo-dependent jungler--if he gets rolling he can spiral out of control, but if you screw up your early development, it will burn you a lot later. Prioritize your development, at the very least until you get Vlad's at which point you get a lot more flexibility.

Pushing
The other thing that Lycan is an absolute MONSTER at doing. So much so, that you can actually get to the point that if you're solo-pushing, you can often push faster than even 3 heroes on the enemy team. Lycanthrope takes towers INSANELY fast. Look for open towers with good creep waves pushing to them, pop Howl, and go to town. If the enemy doesn't TP quickly, the tower will drop in almost no time at all.

Suppressing Enemy Carries
Despite his strongly-scaling physical DPS, Lycanthrope still is awkward lategame against true hard carries (Faceless, Anti-mage, Spectre, etc.). As such, it is important to abuse his strong midgame 1v1 power to suppress the enemy carries. Remember this: during the midgame, almost NOBODY can 1v1 you as Lycanthrope, and if you have Aegis and your ultimate up, and scout carefully with your wolves, you are insanely hard to gank. Use this to your advantage. Find the enemy carry, harass him, and fight him. Make it uncomfortable for him to farm. If he shows up in lane, go to that lane, force him off the lane, and possibly just shove down the tower to make his farming less safe. If he's in the jungle, scout him out with your wolves, and force him out of his jungle. Once you have the Aegis, suppressing the enemy carry and taking towers go hand in hand to make up Lycanthrope's midgame--build up your team's gold advantage (through towers and Rosh), and make it hard for your opponents to close up the gold gap (by suppressing their ability to farm).

Teamfighting
Not a whole lot to say for Lycan's teamfighting. Midgame, you're a carry with the power to kill anybody. Lategame, you focus on chasing down kill-able targets. Remember to use your item actives (BKB, Nec, MEDALLION, etc.), activate Howl and ultimate as the fight starts, and look for high-priority targets to hunt down.

Don't underestimate the killing power of your wolves on their own. Against a support who's under-leveled, the Wolves can virtually chase them out of the fight by themselves.