[GSTL] NSH vs. Fnatic Season 3 Round 1 2012 - Page 19

Rhasta is one of the slowest heroes in the game, slightly faster than Crystal Maiden, Invoker (280) and Goblin Techies (270), tied with the other slow-ass'ed Tiny, Viper, Morphling, and a few others.
His sight range is standard, and he has good attack range. Last hitting with Rhasta isn't very hard, his animation is pretty straightforward.
Animation cancelling is extremely important with this hero, if you don't do it after casting a spell you'll have to wait a full second to cast another spell, which is bad on a hero with a spell combo based gameplay.



Low/average STR and AGI gains, but high INT gain makes his spammable spells even more spammable.
Speaking of spells :











Rhasta can be built in dozens of ways, you can play 10 games and use 10 different item builds.

- Standard starting build :



No big explanation needed here. If you're solo mid you can sacrifice some regen for a faster bottle, and if you need to buy wards or a courier you can skip the gauntlet of strength.
Gauntlet or mantle ? Most pro players playing a solo mid Rhasta will buy a mantle first. Even if you solo mid, I'll recommend you get a gauntlet instead. The extra HPs on a very fragile and slow hero are invaluable, and you'll be able to build an urn or some drums later. If you're not facing a pro player mid, buy a gauntlet =)

The item development depends on your role :

- Solo mid Rhasta :



Your goal is to get your arcane boots and dagger the quickest way possible, then to gank and push where possible. Most of the time you'll kill your mid opponent as soon as you'll hit 6 or 7, and the best way to do it is to push your lane near his tower with an ether shock (try to hit the enemy hero !), then hex him near his tower, ward trap him, and shackle him (don't forget to select your wards and make them attack your enemy !). When this combo works you'll kill him then you'll kill the tower with the help of your wards, giving you a big lead. This scenario won't happen 100% of the time against a smart and cautious opponent, it's up to you to look for an opportunity to place your combo and to make it happen. Be careful to not right click him before you shackle him, or the tower will beat your sorry face during the channeling time. This scenario is the ideal one, aim for it but if you can get one of two (hero kill or tower kill), go for it.
Note that I included a TP scroll in the item build, this one is important on every hero but it's crucial on Rhasta, your mass disables allow you to punish any dive hard by TPing then shackling someone under tower fire for instance, or to TP and zap a fleeing, low HP hero.

- Offlane Rhasta :



Why a force staff instead of a dagger ? An offlane Rhasta will have less levels and less gold than a solomid Rhasta. If you buy nothing to boost your mana pool, your gameplay will consist of TPing to a lane, killing stuff, walking home to replenish your mana, repeat, and you'll find the "walking home" part to be a terrible waste of your valuable time. I find the forcestaff to be a core item, but this is where you can start to build more or less any utility items and still be right.



You can build any of those cheap items (the pipe is a little more expensive) if needed. As I always start with a gauntlet, I'll always make either a drum or an urn, sometime before the force staff. Basically if you managed to save 1k gold quickly, go with the force staff, if you struggle, start with either (or both) the urn or the drums.

- Luxuries :

Necronomicon is an excellent item for Rhasta. If you want to solo gank, if you're facing invisible enemies, necrobook is what you want . Hex your enemy, summon your 2 little friends, right click him, shackle him (mana burn him during the channeling time !), zap him, and he'll be dead unless you're in late game, in which case you want to ward trap him while he's hexed. Basically a necrobook allows you to solo gank without using your ultimate. If you went for a medallion, consider Necronomicon as a next item as the minus armor has very good synergy with your 2 minions. It also helps you push even harder, even without any creep as your wards will kill the tower long before the tower will have killed your necro units.

Another disable, some much needed movement speed and some mana/mana regeneration. Another excellent Rhasta item ! More than the obvious benefits, this item can allow you to hit a "double combo". Zap, (ward trap if solo), hex, shackle, cyclone, walk close to enemy, zap, then your hex will very soon be ready to use again. Mana is the limit, and this item provide a lot of mana.
In dota 1 EUL's Scepter was mostly used because it allowed to land a perfect ward trap while the target was in the air, this is a non factor in dota 2 as ward trapping is as easy as clicking on a hero.

Good overall item, gives you a lot of HP and mana, the mana regen won't be useful without a good +INT item tho. That is, unless you gain a lot of charges =) If your game has a lot of teamfights, consider picking this. Rhasta is often making people angry for some reason, and you'll notice a strange "everyone is focusing me !" trend. This item will allow you to live longer, and will even make your death useful !

Helps you stay alive, add another small nuke, a bunch of INT, good overall item. The slow can allow you to place a "double combo", aka using your first 3 spells twice without any possibility of escape for your victim. You do that by activating your Shiva at the end of the first combo.

Good item overall, more for the stats and the raw life/mana than the added ultimate damage tho. Useful for your ultimate to stay relevant late game, and good item if you consider farming a...

Double wards and/or double necro units, good regen, nice item overall. Don't use it just to refresh your wards tho, use a full combo then refresh it, especially useful to push t3 towers. Most of the time buy this if you went necrobook or Agha, 5300 gold is way too expensive if you only use it to refresh your ultimate every 150 seconds. With a huge 375 manacost, only consider buying this item in the very late game after at least 2 other luxury items.

Perhaps you start to see a trend here, most of these items work as a pair. If you pick a necrobook, you'll be better picking an EUL next (you can start with an EUL then pick a necro too), if you pick a bloodstone, picking a Shiva next will be the most logical choice (Shiva's high INT will make the 200% mana regen of the bloostone very useful, and the +15 armor will turn the high HP gain of the bloostone into very nice effective HP), and if you pick an Agha....you'd better pick a refresher, but not as a next item, please build something in between, unless you're already level 22+ for some reason.

- The strange case of doctor BKB :
"Hey !" you will ask, "What about a ?"
BKB is in some ways a "bastard" item on Rhasta. The STR is nice, the right click damage is useless, and the immunity is often a non factor. What will happen in teamfights is, you activate your BKB, you shackle someone, and their morphling/whatever still kills you in 5 seconds of right clicks. When channeling your shackle, the immediate reaction of everyone will be to right click you, BKB or not. So you have to learn who to disable, where to position yourself, and most of the time a BKB would not change the outcome, especially in pubs. Most support Rhastas in pro-games will build a BKB after their core, because they can rely on their teammates to take care of anyone who focus them during a shackle. I find this to be false in pubs, but I leave this one up to you, this is all situational. A BKB isn't a bad Rhasta item, I encourage you to test and decide by yourself.



I'll be brief here. If you're mid, you want to have 3211 by level 7. Most of the time you'll do QWQEQRW, aka zap, hex, zap, shackle, zap, wards, hex, this will allow you to get a kill at level 6 or 7 most of the time. Then max zap, hex and shackle in that order, taking wards each time it's available.
If you duo an offlane, you'll find that a second level of shackle will give you a lot of kills, so QEQEQRW aka zap, shackle, zap, shackle, zap, wards, hex. If your lane partner can't benefit from the shackle time (ie if he's a caster like you and not a right clicker), then replace one shackle level with a hex level, because at least you can also right click too during a hex. Max zap at level 8, then alternate 1 point between shackle and hex, taking wards each time available.

In short, zap over shackle = hex with shackle before hex. Wards at 6, 11 and 16.
Shackle is more an offensive tool and hex more of a defensive tool. Every level of both spells adds 0.75 second to the duration, so except for the first level, leveling one or the other won't extend the total disable time of your combo.



Any strong right clicker, any stunner will make a fantastic duo lane. As I mentionned before, an Ursa-Rhasta lane is incredibly frustrating to play against, as you'll die instantly if you enter shackle range. But Rhasta is also very good with Antimage (ask him to level manabreak early), Morphling, Skeleton King, Sand King...you see the trend here.



This one is easy again, any xxx-Rhasta lane is supposed to win the lane, unless you face some disable heavy or very tanky combos. Any combination of Lion, Tidehunter, Slardar, Enigma and healers like Dazzle or Omniknight will survive your disables then make you pay hard for trying to kill them. Later in the game, any hard/semi carry will make your life miserable in team fights, especially if they have a BKB. The force staff comes in handy here. You'll have to learn who to disable first. Most of the time you'll want to hex a support (so your allies kill him quickly), zap somewhere it'll hit a lot of people, ward trap a poor soul who can't blink, then shackle their right click carry.
Pugna deserves a special mention, a level 4 neither ward will often instagib a Rhasta using his full combo.



The core of your gameplay is this : find a lone farming hero, jump on him, zap him, cancel the backswing animation (important !), hex him, cancel the backswing animation (still important !), autoattack him once or twice while he's hexed (cancel the backswing animation !) depending on hex's level, then ward trap him, autoattack once or twice again, then shackle him. He should be dead, if not your zap will be off cooldown to finish him. Note how I heavily insist on animation cancelling; those few added autoattacks are often the difference between a kill and a close escape.

- In games when you're the solo mid, you'll use this combo as soon as you'll hit level 6 or 7 against your mid opponent, trying to ward trap him near his tower so you can destroy the tower after you killed him. Then you either keep farming or go help your side lanes, doing the same there, except you won't have to use your wards to kill people as you won't be alone, so you'll be able to use them to kill the tower.

- In team fights, you'll quickly notice you act as a magnet. This is because you're extremely annoying to play against and very easy to burst at the same time. If a team fight happen, hex, zap and ward trap someone then try to blink/forcestaff away as soon as possible so your opponents will focus someone else, then come back to do your thing. People who started to kill someone tend to ignore everything as long as their target is alive, which will give you some precious seconds to launch your spells. Use your judgement, if you can get away with shackling someone do it !

- If you duo/trio a side lane, try to kill people as soon as you'll hit level 3, at such a low level one zap then one shackle + your lane partner's spells and right clicks are enough to eat the small HP pool of most heroes. Don't forget to harass them a little in preparation when they try to last hit. In most 2vs2 lineups, you'll be the aggressors and you should be the ones to seek for kills.

- Farming ancients :
When playing a long duo lane (never long lane solo with Rhasta, you're too slow and you'll just die repetitively), or when playing a difficult game you can pull and stack your ancients camps and kill them with your wards. Pull at least 2 times, then place your wards when pulling the 3rd time. You don't want to place your wards in front of the ancient camp or they'll just attack and destroy them. Place your wards near the place where the ancients stop following you when you pull them, which is near the stairs South of the Radiant camp and North of the Dire camp. Then just hit and run the ancients, they'll follow you and ignore the wards as long as you're here to draw their aggro.

See the spoiler for an approximation of where to place your wards :
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Thanks for reading my guide, if you note any errors please notify me !