In-Game Standard Hero Builds Project - Page 243

On November 30 2015 02:28 TheYango wrote:
He's also a hero where most of using him well has nothing to do with items. What items you buy has much less impact on your usefulness to a team relative to how well you use your skills, and by the time you've played the hero enough to be proficient at using his skills, you have enough experience to be able to make those item decisions without a guide.

It's just not a really good guide hero in general.

On November 30 2015 02:28 TheYango wrote:Regarding NS: Cookie-cutter skill order should have his Silence before the first night time. Delaying it or not is situational, but in the case of someone who does not know when to skip it, it is far worse to skip it when you shouldn't than to have it when you don't need it.

Most of the time NS isn't really played mid anymore because he doesn't suit how mid plays in the last few versions. He's a mediocre laner and doesn't farm off effectively against most of the common mids. He's largely used as a support or offlaner in recent versions, so his items are much more geared toward ganking, map control, and supporting the team (usually something like Urn+Agha). How you want to approach this for mid is hard to say.

Midas is very often correct but I would hesitate to put it in a guide for new players because there's a huge association for new/bad players that Midas = farm, when this is not the case. For NS, Midas is not really an item for farming but one for evening out his gold-level balance since XP is vastly more important for NS in the early-midgame than gold, so spending 2k gold purely to accelerate his leveling is worth it.

Treads are significantly more common than Phase Boots (NS is super mana-gated early game and with the lack of early +stat items like Bracers/Drums, Treads are appealing), but Phase is fine. Phase is stronger in ganking/combat during night time, but Treads maintains higher overall efficiency during daytime farming phases when Hunter in the Night deactivates.

On November 30 2015 06:26 Buckyman wrote:


It's for harassment in the safe lane:

"This is actually a disaster for an Earthshaker. Any time you are even in experience range, you're going to be getting hit by flak cannon" (DreamLeague S4 4CL vs. Vega Squadron game 3)

Of course, this only works if you have the support coordination to depush the lane despite the flak. I wouldn't recommend it in pubs.

On November 30 2015 09:11 Buckyman wrote:


Warlock middle is still real, and different enough from lane support Warlock that you might want to support both. (E: Actually, it looks like the Warlock builds have converged to be only two skill points, wand vs phase boots, and some starting items apart. You could merge them into a single guide with a 'starting items - mid' section with little lost)

Your Shadow Shaman middle guide doesn't make sense. The fast experience lets him push out waves with Shock and bring down towers with his ult, at a timing when the other team won't be prepared to deal with it. The gold from being mid gets him a blink dagger for hex initiations. This is good so far. But the guide falls apart later; it gets little new teamfight power for the next 10k gold. The player can't even audible into damage items, because they max Shackles next and spend 5 seconds every fight hugging someone and trusting their teammates. If you want to keep this guide, revise everything after early game so there's a reason to give the Shaman some farm priority.