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Dota 2
- Thread starter Fishin
- Start date
I'm bored. Have a Skeleton King guide.
SKILL BUILD
1. Hellfire Blast
2. Stats
3. Hellfire Blast
4. Stats
5. Hellfire Blast
6. Reincarnation
7. Hellfire Blast
8. Critical Strike
9. Critical Strike
10. Critical Strike
11. Reincarnation
12. Critical Strike
13. Vampiric Aura
14. Vampiric Aura
15. Vampiric Aura
16. Reincarnation
17. Vampiric Aura
18+. Stats
Grab two levels of stats early to give yourself more mana. You max out Hellfire Blast first as it's your stun and the other two abilities aren't good early. You can choose to grab a level of Vampiric Aura instead of Critical Strike if you really need the lifesteal but it's not advised as you'll push your lane too much.
ITEM BUILD
STARTING ITEMS
DIFFICULT LANE (REPLACE QUELLING BLADE)
Get a mixture of health and mana regen and Iron Branches for stats. Grab a Quelling Blade for easier last hitting or a Stout Shield if you're not going to have a very fun lane.
EARLY GAME
Boots are mandatory on every hero. Magic Wand is used to sustain yourself during the lane phase and to get an emergency burst heal/mana in teamfights. We grab a Soul Ring so we have 150 mana for emergencies (Hellfire Blast and Reincarnation both cost 140 mana).
CORE ITEMS
Power Treads give you stats and attack speed. Switching from STR to INT to regenerate mana is very useful as well. Force Staff is used as an escape/gap closing mechanism and to give yourself a little bit of HP/mana regen. Armlet is used to hit people really hard in teamfights and to save your life by Armlet toggling.
LUXURY ITEMS
Hand of Midas and Battle Fury are purchased if you're farming well and want to continue to snowball. Desolator and Assault Cuirass are bought to reduce the enemy's armour and to give yourself some extra punch. Black King Bar and Heart of Tarrasque are purchased to give yourself some extra tankiness (and immunity to most magic in Black King Bar's case). Monkey King Bar is purchased if your enemy is building Evasion or whenever you just need some damage and attack speed on the one item.
THE NEXT TEAMFIGHT IS GOING TO DECIDE THIS GAME AND I HAVE WAY TOO MUCH MONEY
If you buy this stuff, you're an idiot, I swear.
DON'T PICK SKELETON KING VS THESE HEROES
They burn your mana away. Anti-Mage is literally worse than Hitler to Skeleton King.
SKILL BUILD
1. Hellfire Blast
2. Stats
3. Hellfire Blast
4. Stats
5. Hellfire Blast
6. Reincarnation
7. Hellfire Blast
8. Critical Strike
9. Critical Strike
10. Critical Strike
11. Reincarnation
12. Critical Strike
13. Vampiric Aura
14. Vampiric Aura
15. Vampiric Aura
16. Reincarnation
17. Vampiric Aura
18+. Stats
Grab two levels of stats early to give yourself more mana. You max out Hellfire Blast first as it's your stun and the other two abilities aren't good early. You can choose to grab a level of Vampiric Aura instead of Critical Strike if you really need the lifesteal but it's not advised as you'll push your lane too much.
ITEM BUILD
STARTING ITEMS
DIFFICULT LANE (REPLACE QUELLING BLADE)
Get a mixture of health and mana regen and Iron Branches for stats. Grab a Quelling Blade for easier last hitting or a Stout Shield if you're not going to have a very fun lane.
EARLY GAME
Boots are mandatory on every hero. Magic Wand is used to sustain yourself during the lane phase and to get an emergency burst heal/mana in teamfights. We grab a Soul Ring so we have 150 mana for emergencies (Hellfire Blast and Reincarnation both cost 140 mana).
CORE ITEMS
Power Treads give you stats and attack speed. Switching from STR to INT to regenerate mana is very useful as well. Force Staff is used as an escape/gap closing mechanism and to give yourself a little bit of HP/mana regen. Armlet is used to hit people really hard in teamfights and to save your life by Armlet toggling.
LUXURY ITEMS
Hand of Midas and Battle Fury are purchased if you're farming well and want to continue to snowball. Desolator and Assault Cuirass are bought to reduce the enemy's armour and to give yourself some extra punch. Black King Bar and Heart of Tarrasque are purchased to give yourself some extra tankiness (and immunity to most magic in Black King Bar's case). Monkey King Bar is purchased if your enemy is building Evasion or whenever you just need some damage and attack speed on the one item.
THE NEXT TEAMFIGHT IS GOING TO DECIDE THIS GAME AND I HAVE WAY TOO MUCH MONEY
If you buy this stuff, you're an idiot, I swear.
DON'T PICK SKELETON KING VS THESE HEROES
They burn your mana away. Anti-Mage is literally worse than Hitler to Skeleton King.
fixed that for youDON'T PICK ANYONE VS THIS HERO
That's to RaRe's awesomeness I played my first game.
I had no idea what the hell I was doing despite reading a plethora of LoL to DOTA2 conversion guides. The shop is the most confusing thing in the world. Is there a color-blind mode? I have to play with lowest settings so I can't tell between green and red at times. Also last hitting is hard as hell.
I had no idea what the hell I was doing despite reading a plethora of LoL to DOTA2 conversion guides. The shop is the most confusing thing in the world. Is there a color-blind mode? I have to play with lowest settings so I can't tell between green and red at times. Also last hitting is hard as hell.
You get used to it. Generally, last hitting is easier on melee due to the faster attack animation (clinkz/drow are at 0.7) and the fact that if you opt to buy a quelling blade, it has a much greater effect on melee heroes.
Shop is easy and intuitive. you can search for an item yourself by typing the name in. When you find the item you want, shift-click it and it'll sticky the components of the item. You can then buy them instantly by right clicking on them above your item slots.
Never really thought of Force Staff's utility for SK. It sucks when I have no mana for Hellfire and the enemy walks away with a sliver of HP. Think I'll try it out in a pub game after Armlet and see how it goes.SgtWoo said:CORE ITEMS
Not sure about ref. orb but I don't think there's anything wrong with divine rapier. You can buy it for overkill purposes (i.e some barracks down and you and your team are camping the enemy spawn point) or you got super fed from all the creep and hero slaying.SgtWoo said:
If you buy this stuff, you're an idiot, I swear.
Other than that, solid alt-tab guide!
I like this guide better.
Admittedly Skeleton King is the only hero that Rapier could work on more often than not but even with a free life it's just way too much of a risk for me.
That guide single-handedly got me into Skeleton King in the first place but it is really REALLY out of date.
The shop is really all about memorizing where items are. If you didn't already, you should switch the shop into paneled mode (there is an icon at the top right of the shop window). Also, you should set a hotkey to open the shop for quick purchases.
An useful feature of the dota 2 shop that I didn't even know about is quick buy. You probably see the town portal icon in a little black rectangle right above your items. You can drag items from the shop into that box and then buy them later by right clicking. If you drag an item with multiple components, the components you do not already own will appear in the box. A not-so-well-known fact is that you can do this while the game is paused, so if you need time to find an item and buy it before you die (assuming you will no longer have enough money after you die), you can pause the game, find the item and drag+drop it, and right click it as soon as the game is unpaused. This is EXTREMELY obnoxious for the other players in the game so use it sparingly.
Regarding last hitting, it can be extremely difficult with certain characters (drow ranger, crystal maiden, naga siren, etc). Since you're just starting out it might be better to try characters with better animations and base damage. Undying is a good choice. Besides the ease of last hitting, he is also difficult to kill, easy to play, and quite strong (due in part to his slightly glitched E).
I've never understood force staff on SK. You're trying to farm up to carry, not gank midgame. That 2400 (? it just got changed) gold is very nearly an armlet, which is useful for both staying alive and DPS. SK has the same problem as naix and ursa where the opponent just runs away and you cant stop them. The solution isn't to sacrifice durability and DPS for mobility, the solution is to have teammates that can keep your enemies stunned/slowed while you attack them. Phase boots is a much more acceptable option (though still worse than treads).
Refresher is really just a joke item if you are way way ahead. Considering you could have a heart instead, there is no reason to have refresher.
hahah oh my god this is crazy. A few things worth noting.
- Batriders strength gain nerfed. I was really enjoying crazily broken batrider for a while there :(
- Centaurs stampede sounds so fucking sexy. Losing that strength bonus isn't so bad when you consider his base strength gain was increased by 1.2
- Drow ranger possibly just got the biggest buff so far. Seriously, an aura that gives 26% of your agility as damage to both allies and creeps, along with the agility bonus given by marksmanship doubling when no enemy heroes nearby.
- Jakiro got nerfed back down to an appropriate level. It's a shame, seeing him at the top of the winrate stats was really nice to see.
- Meepos aghanims upgrade. WOW. Enough said.
- Ogre magi's Multicast now increases cast range of Ignite by 150 per level, this is in addition to the existing AoE increase. This is pretty nifty, not sure how much of an impact it will actually make though.
- Silencer got some massive buffs too. Too many to summarise, but he will be the first hero I play after the patch.
- Sniper got some disgustingly good range buffs to his ult, increased by 500. Headshot is also a lot more deadly, with ministun duration 0.25 at all levels and its dmg increased. Shrapnel also gives vision.
- Templar assassin got a well needed nerf to her psionic trap, so that its slow now increases to its maximum over some time.
- all forms of boots got nerfed, losing 50ms. Slower heroes :(
finally, TAG TEAM MODE FUCK YES. Sounds like a lot of fun.
- Batriders strength gain nerfed. I was really enjoying crazily broken batrider for a while there :(
- Centaurs stampede sounds so fucking sexy. Losing that strength bonus isn't so bad when you consider his base strength gain was increased by 1.2
- Drow ranger possibly just got the biggest buff so far. Seriously, an aura that gives 26% of your agility as damage to both allies and creeps, along with the agility bonus given by marksmanship doubling when no enemy heroes nearby.
- Jakiro got nerfed back down to an appropriate level. It's a shame, seeing him at the top of the winrate stats was really nice to see.
- Meepos aghanims upgrade. WOW. Enough said.
- Ogre magi's Multicast now increases cast range of Ignite by 150 per level, this is in addition to the existing AoE increase. This is pretty nifty, not sure how much of an impact it will actually make though.
- Silencer got some massive buffs too. Too many to summarise, but he will be the first hero I play after the patch.
- Sniper got some disgustingly good range buffs to his ult, increased by 500. Headshot is also a lot more deadly, with ministun duration 0.25 at all levels and its dmg increased. Shrapnel also gives vision.
- Templar assassin got a well needed nerf to her psionic trap, so that its slow now increases to its maximum over some time.
- all forms of boots got nerfed, losing 50ms. Slower heroes :(
finally, TAG TEAM MODE FUCK YES. Sounds like a lot of fun.
I like everything but the forcestaff change. Changing the damage and attack speed for minor regen is a pretty solid nerf, but to increase the cost of the recipe to 1k just hurts it too much. It was a really great item, lots of clutch plays happen because of it and they nerfed it against certain heroes like clockwerk enough so that I thought it wouldn't be changed further, seems I was wrong.
I already questioned IceFrog's decision to give a hero a spell that grants max. movespeed to all allied heroes, but it stuns them as well? I honestly think he should just make it a skill exclusively for Centaur, or at the very least give it at 900 AoE with a slow instead of a stun. It'd be easily fixed if it wasn't global, but for some reason he really wants it to be in there:
Even if it isn't exclusively for centaur, at least make it so heroes need to be near him to get the buff. Then at least there is some vulnerability when setting it up. Even with the 6.76c nerfs he's going to be a top tier hero due mostly to his ult's initiation power.
And speaking of globals, the reworking of Drow Ranger's aura is absurd. The damage it provides to Drow herself is good, but the effect it has on allied heros and creeps really takes it over the top. You can constantly push lanes at no risk, your supports gain harass and gank power, and your ranged solos (invoker, windrunner, sf in particular) gain a big last hit/deny advantage. It also helps enigma quite a bit in the jungle. I have seen multiple Drow rangers go no points in frost arrows, 1 point in silence, max aura and ultimate. The damage output is so high that passive-only Drow Ranger is actually really good =/
But hey I guess this is the point of keeping them out of captain's mode for now!
I think the issue was no so much that it was overpowered for the cost but that it was good for the cost on nearly every hero. The nerf to it doesn't impact the overall cost, but it really makes it more of a support item, and makes it so that you are paying more for the active ability (which carries do not want to do).
I'm getting really fucking sick of seeing drow and centaur every game. They are completely dominating the pub metagame, and you have to either instapick them or dedicate a counter to them if you feel like having a chance at winning. This would be fine usually, but when I feel like solo queuing and dont feel like losing to a landslide victory the job always falls on me, making games really tedious and definitely not fun.
/rant
/rant
being totally serious here: queue captains mode. I queue it quite often even by myself, and in general the experience is much better than all pick because people actually play for the team rather than themselves and the teamcomps are fairly even, barring a stupid captain.
The downside is that you probably won't get to play certain heroes (though the only things i have NEVER had picked in my cm games are axe, meepo, and visage), and the queue time is a little longer. But in general the CM queue is only a couple minutes longer now than the AP/RD queue, so it isn't too bad. And hey you won't have to deal with that drow/centaur/ta team megasmashing your necrolyte/sniper/axe team!
The buff to centaur is global so it actually feels like a stampede, which is a theme of the character. Bkb counters centaur pretty well, he is still incredibly strong but can be dealt with. From what I can tell already, he's not first ban material like darkseer is.
Drow's aura is still very strong, but Drow herself is still relatively easy to shut down. Especially with her base armour taking a hit, you're just going to have to put more into shutting her down early. She still lacks an escape mechanism, a way to increase her farm (like AM blink) and if the waves are continuously pushed out it means less for drow to farm. I'd like to see her in competitive games first.
Drow's aura is still very strong, but Drow herself is still relatively easy to shut down. Especially with her base armour taking a hit, you're just going to have to put more into shutting her down early. She still lacks an escape mechanism, a way to increase her farm (like AM blink) and if the waves are continuously pushed out it means less for drow to farm. I'd like to see her in competitive games first.
