Forsaken Archer

Forsaken Archer is a new hero in HoN beta Patch 0.1.58.  Forsaken Archer is an Elf that rides a skeletal beast and closely resembles Priestess of the Moon from Dota.  It is a HoN-unique ranged agility hero with a some abilities that are similar to others in Dota and some that are completely new.  Let’s take a look at the abilities and find out how to play this hero:

Crippling Volley (q)

Forsaken Archer fires a massive volley of arrows into the sky at a high angle.   When these arrows land a short time later, they deal damage in an AOE and immobilize units caught within them.  This spell is a bit like casting Pyromancer’s Dragonfire stun, where you need to figure out where an enemy hero will be in the near future in order to correctly catch them in it’s area of effect.  This is Forsaken Archer’s most versatile ability, and should be leveled up first.

Split Fire (w)

This ability is analogous to Medusa’s Split Shot ability in Dota.  Forsaken Archer splits an attack into as many as four separate shots at reduced damage per shot.  This ability has limited utility early in the game when you are more focused on last-hitting individual creeps than increasing your overall damage output, and should not be leveled up until after Call off the Damned and Crippling Volley are maxxed out.  Also consider that, for now, orb effects work on every single one of your split arrows, so if you get an item like Frost Wolf’s Skull (Skadi),  it will frost all four targets that your split arrows hit!  This is likely to be changed in the near future, but for now orb effects work great with this ability.  Also: lifesteal items appear to be gaining life from each arrow but actually only steal from the main target you’ve selected.

Call of the Damned (passive)

Forsaken Archer raises skeletal warriors from the corpses of any units she kills.  These little guys are really cute and are sure to make to make Forsaken Archer a fan favorite.  The skeletons are uncontrollable, but follow Forsaken Archer and attack nearby enemy units or buildings.  Similar to Dirge’s Tombstone ability in Dota, Call of the Damned is great for harassing enemies and especially for pushing.  Level this up early to push towers; works best if you are good at last-hitting.

The skeletons also burn mana of whatever unit they are attacking, which is is why they are extra good for harassing early game.  However, they are also easy to kill and give 5 gold per death so be careful about giving your opponent too many free kills early.  You may just want to get stats/Crippling Volley to avoid feeding them if you don’t have enough control of your lane early.

Piercing Arrows (ultimate) (channeling) (r)

“Fueled by the rage in her heart”, Forsaken Archer fires a continuous stream of arrows that travel through and deal magic damage to all enemy units in one direction for several seconds.  This is essentially like Windrunner’s Power Shot ability in Dota, except that it is channeling and keeps firing arrows off instead of just shooting one at a time.  This spell is really effective if your team has a lot of disable and is able to hold the enemy in one area, like with Tempest’s ultimate for example, so that you can keep blasting arrows through them for the duration of your spell.  Otherwise you should use this directly after your own Crippling Volley spell in order to channel it while the enemy heroes are immobilized from the arrows.  Since this ability does a constant magic damage instead of scaling in some way with Forsaken Archer’s attack damage like one might expect for an agility hero, Forsaken Archer is less of a carry hero and more like an intelligence ganker.

Strategy

Early Game

Forsaken Archer has a very long ranged attack very similar to Valkyrie that consequently makes it a good solo hero.  The disabling and nuking ability of Cripping Volley and her long attack range also make Forsaken Archer good at harassing in and controlling a multi-player lane and a good semi-solo with a lane partner that is pulling creeps and occasionally comes back to gank.

Go for items like Soulscream Ring (Wraith Band) that will increase your attack damage for harassing and last-hitting from long range and also give you some more hit points and mana to use Crippling Volley.  If you are soloing mid, you will likely want to quickly get boots and a bottle to control runes and gank with Crippling Volley and your ultimate.

You should max out Crippling Volley first and probably put some early points into stats for best control of your lane.  Call of the Damned generally just feeds your lane enemy gold early and you shouldn’t get it early unless you are doing a push strategy.  Split Fire is useless until late game when you have more items.

Mid Game

Steamboots (Treads) and Shrunken Head (BKB) might be ideal items to improve your survivability and attack speed in ganking, and for channeling your ultimate safely in team battles.  Alternatively, you might select Post Haste (BoT) and an Assassin’s Shroud (Lothar’s) for farming outside lanes, pushing towers with summoned skeletons from your Call of the Damned ability, and evading ganks.  A whole host of other items can be effective mid game on Forsaken Archer like Frostburn (S&Y) or Shield Breaker (Desolator); consider that you might want to play this hero very much like Valkyrie (Potm) for ganking or Broodmother in Dota for pushing.  Remember though, that Forsaken Archer doesn’t have as good escape mechanisms as Valkyrie, so you really want to think about Assassin’s Shroud or some other way to get away if you are getting caught while farming or pushing outside lanes.

Late Game

At this point in the game you want to start focusing on dishing out as much damage as possible to the other team with your Split Fire ability in every team battle.  This lets you hit four enemies at one time at 75% damage each, which means you are doing (4*.75 = 3) three times your normal damage output just by turning this skill on as long there are four enemy targets in the vicinity.  This has the potential to be a massive game-changer, which is why you want to make sure your hero is built to seriously shit damage straight onto people’s faces.  If you didn’t grab a solid damage item like Shield Breaker in mid game, then get serious with something like Savage Mace (MKB) to really up the ante.  Otherwise just go straight for a Wingbow (Butterfly) to enhance whatever damage item you already got.  You should also be getting something like Frost Wolf’s Skull (Skadi) to tank up and a lifesteal item so you can sustain your health while duking it out in long late game battles.

Tags: forsaken archer, hero guide, HoN, HoN beta

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 11:08 PM by daggius and is filed under Guides: Dota. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.