HoN Pollywog Priest Hero Guide

Pollywog Priest

Pollywog Priest is a ranged Intelligence hero in Heroes of Newerth based on the Dota hero Rhasta, the Shadow Shaman.  Pollywog Priest is a supporting hero with a couple of very useful disables and an ultimate that is great for pushing buildings or defending your own.  This guide makes use of the remade abilities and spell names that will be released in HoN patch 0.1.67.  Let’s take a closer look at the hero:

Electric Jolt (q)

Electric Jolt delivers a spray of magic damage in a cone in front of Pollywog Priest, hitting a target and several units around it as well.  This is useful early game to last hit creeps in your lane while simultaneously harassing enemy heroes.  It is also very effective in team battles to damage large parts of the enemy team at a time.

Morph (w)

Morph turns the target into toad for several seconds during which they are silenced, perplexed, disarmed, and have a reduced movement speed.  The effect is equivalent to that of Witch Slayer’s Miniaturization spell and the Kuldra’s Sheepstick item.  This is one of the best disable spells in the game and is very useful in ganking and as a means to neutralize strong enemy carry heroes late in the game.

Tongue Tied (channeling) (e)

Pollywog Priest grabs a target with his tongue and holds onto it for several seconds during which that target is immobilized, revealed, and cannot cast spells or attack.  The target also takes a small amount of magic damage over time.  Tongue Tied is another very useful disable for Pollywog Priest, great for making opponents suffer early game when they are over-committed to a battle or just in a bad spot with a wave of your creeps going after them.  You can also set up your allies for easy kills, especially if you have a nasty melee hero on your side like Swiftblade or Magebane who can rip into them for several seconds while you channel Tongue Tied.  This is also a great spell for holding enemies within the wrath of your Voodoo Wards ultimate.  Remember that since this is a channeling ability, you should queue up another spell like Morph or Electric Jolt on a hero you are grabbing if you know they are going to survive longer than you can hold them for.  You can do this by holding shift then clicking the spell on them.  The spell will then be cast as soon as Tongue Tied finishes channeling.

Voodoo Wards (ultimate) (r)

Pollywog Priest drops a pile of Tiki statues that use ranged, physical attacks on nearby enemy units.  These attacks do splash damage!  These Voodoo Wards can also be selected and controlled to target the unit of your choice (either double click a ward to select all nearby wards, control click a ward, or drag box around them).  Voodoo Wards are great for pushing enemy towers and other buildings or defending your own base.  They also work well in combination with your Tongue Tied ability to kill off individual enemy heroes in a battle.  Another great use of these wards is to stacks of Ancient creeps (the splash damage works wonders on stacks).

Strategy

Recommended Skill Build

1. Tongue Tied (1)
2. Electric Jolt (1)
3. Electric Jolt (2)
4. Morph (1)
5. Electric Jolt (3)
6. Voodoo Wards (1)
7. Electric Jolt (4)
8. Morph (2)
9. Morph (3)
10. Morph (4)
11. Voodoo Wards (2)
12. Tongue Tied (2)
13. Tongue Tied (3)
14. Tongue Tied (4)
15. Stats
16. Voodoo Wards (3)
17. Stats -> Level 25

Explanation: Tongue Tied is essential at Level 1 so you can grab enemy heroes that are over-committed near your tower or a pushing creep wave so that your lane mate can put damage into them.  From Level 2 on we switch the focus to maxing out Electric Jolt and Morph as soon as possible.  Not putting further levels into Tongue Tied at this early game stage is a tradeoff that will benefit us in the middle game as a stronger ganking/disabler with a high level of Morph.  Going from Level 1 Morph to Level 4 Morph increases the duration of the disable by 180% (1.25 s to 3.5s), while increasing Tongue Tied from Level 1 to Level 4 only increases it’s duration by 90% (2.5s to 4.75s).  This is not to say that other Pollywog Priest skill builds will not work.  Some players will argue fervently for maxing out Tongue Tied 1st at the cost of leveling Electric Jolt (mainly to hold people for longer in their ultimate), while others prefer a 100% disabling build by maxing out Tongue Tied and Morph at the beginning and neglecting Electric Jolt.  Clearly there are a number of different combinations that will work and what’s really important is picking a build that you are confident with and will therefore be able to execute smoothly with in pressure situations.

Early Game

Recommended Early Game items:

+ or  or

Marchers + Fortified Bracelets or Talismans of Exile or Glowstone

Pollywog Priest has one of the slowest movespeeds in the game and really needs some shoes to gank and make effective use of his disabling abilities.  For this reason you should grab an early pair of Marchers and maybe even Enhanced Marchers if you want to become really nasty with chasing heroes down.

Pollywog Priest also needs a large mana pool to use his ultimate and one or two disables plus his nuke all in one battle starting at Level 6.  He also needs some more hit points since he is an Int hero and you will be putting all your skill points into spells and not into stats to help his hit points with more Strength.  For this reason, Talismans of Exile or Fortified Bracelets are a good choice early game.  If you are farming easily enough early game then these can be neglected as you go straight for Glowstone.

Mid Game

Recommended Mid Game items:

Staff of the Master

Staff of the Master is exactly what Pollywog needs.  More hit points, a larger mana pool, and a boost to his ultimate that gives it more wards and a shorter cooldown.  This makes Pollywog a lot harder to kill and a base-pushing machine.

Other decent choices:

, ,

Storm Spirit, Portal Key, Post Haste

If you are looking for a less blunt approach and some more versatility, Storm Spirit is a popular choice.  You can cyclone enemy heroes and put your ultimate down (they will be trapped when they come back to the ground).  Probably a better option than this if you really want to gank a lot is Portal Key, which lets you catch enemy heroes that are out of position so you can disable them with your abilities.  Another good item to have in the middle-late game is Poste Haste, which lets you farm outer lanes and counter-push the enemy base with your ultimate.

Late Game

Recommended Late Game items:

Restoration Stone

Having a Restoration stone and a Staff of the Master makes Pollywog a complete base destroyer.  Two sets of Voodoo Wards will drop a set of raxes in a matter of seconds or rip up enemy heroes in a battle.

Counters

Early game Pollywog Priest is slow and has low hit points.  Gank him a lot with nuking heroes like Witch Slayer or Thunderbringer.  Later in the game if you are being disabled a lot by Pollywog, consider a Shrunken Head especially if you are playing a carry hero.  Otherwise, make sure you disable Pollywog before he can disable you.  For example, with Chronos you should catch him in your ultimate and kill him or he will merely Morph you during your ultimate, making you completely waste it.  Also remember that Voodoo Wards do physical damage not magic, so use armor to reduce the damage you take from them.  You might also consider purchasing Barbed Armor or Void Talisman.

HoN Thunderbringer Hero Guide

Thunderbringer

Thunderbringer is a ranged Intelligence hero in Heroes of Newerth.  Identical to Dota’s Zeus, he is an all-out nuking hero killer with an ultimate that hits enemies on any part of the map.  And thanks to his Lightning Rod ability, which scales directly with increasing hit points throughout the game, Thunderbringer does not peak early like other nuking Int heroes and remains relevant late into the game.  Because of this he is always one of the highest overall damage-outputting heroes in every match.  Here is a look at his abilities:

Chain Lightning (q)

Chain Lightning is a low damage, low manacost spell that bounces between many targets.  The main use for this, early in the match, is to get last hits on creeps while simultaneously harassing the enemy heroes in your lane.  This makes up considerably for Thunderbringer’s short-range, low damage attack, which also has a lousy animation and makes last hitting quite difficult against any skilled opponent.  Later in the game, Chain Lightning becomes invaluable as a way to continually proc your Lightning Rod passive to massively reduce enemy heroes’ hp in an AOE around you, as Chain Lightning can be spammed every TWO seconds with one of the lowest cooldowns of any spell in the game!

Blast of Lightning (w)

Blast of Lightning deals high magic damage to a single target and mini-stuns it.  This is a great way to drop heroes hit points quickly and get kills.  The cooldown is relatively short (only 7 seconds) so you can also use this once and walk alongside the target until it is up again in order to use it twice against one hero you are trying to kill.  This is a good way to take down beefier heroes provided you have the mana capacity.  Also consider that Blast of Lightning’s mini-stun can be used to cancel channeling abilities and enemy heroes’ teleportations.  In addition, Blast of Lightning reveals invisible units in an area around it for several seconds.  Either use this on a windwalking hero before they go invis to keep track of them, or on a nearby unit if they have already gone invis and you need to find them.  You can also use this to detect wards on the battlefield and clear them.

Lightning Rod (passive)

Lightning Rod procs additional damage (between 5-11% of enemy hit points based on level) to nearby enemy heroes every time Thunderbringer casts a spell.  Since the cooldown on Blast of Lightning and especially Chain Lightning are so short, this allows Thunderbringer to absolutely punish the health of the enemy team as long as he can stay alive and keep spamming in team battles.  Also consider that since Lightning Rod scales with hit points it is great into the late game when heroes have tanked up and have 2000 hp or more.  Every two seconds you can cast Chain Lightning which only does 130 damage, but the passive effect of Lightning Rod will add 220 more damage to all nearby enemy heroes every time.  This type of scaling allows Thunderbringer to remain very relevant in late game unlike many other Int heroes.

Lightning Storm (ultimate) (r)

Lightning Storm does a medium amount of magic damage to all visible enemy heroes.  Any invisible heroes will be revealed for several seconds but not damaged.  Using this ultimate is a great way to help your allies get kills in other lanes without having to leave your own (whether you killsteal them or get an assist is up to you).  You can also kill heroes that are getting away with very low health or prevent heroes like Behemoth or Magmus from blinking in on you with Portal Keys at the beginning of team fights.  Lightning Storm also gives you vision of all enemy heroes, so you can use it to check if the enemy team is killing Kongor or ganking your woods, etc.

Strategy

Recommended Skill Build

1. Chain Lightning
2. Lightning Rod
3. Blast of Lightning
4. Blast of Lightning
5. Blast of Lightning
6. Lightning Storm
7. Blast of Lightning
8. Lightning Rod
9. Lightning Rod
10. Lightning Rod
11. Lightning Storm
12. Chain Lightning
13. Chain Lightning
14. Chain Lightning
15. Stats
16. Lightning Storm
17. Stats -> Level 25

Explanation: At Level 1, we want a level of Chain Lightning to last hit creeps and simultaneously harass enemy heroes in our lane.  At Level 2, we grab Lightning Rod, which adds 5% of their hp in damage to nearby enemy heroes every time we cast a spell.  At the beginning of the game when enemy heroes have about 600 hit points this adds 30 damage to every nuke we use (23 after which correct for 25% natural magic resistance), which is better than (twice) the +15 (+12 corrected for magic resistance) damage against heroes we’d get for having a second level in Chain Lightning, and it also works when we cast our other spells.  At Level 3 we start maxxing out Blast of Lightning which will be our main hero killing spell and push this through to Level 7 when it is maxxed, grabbing our ultimate at Level 6 along the way.  At Level 7, unloading a quick combo of Level 1 Chain Lightning + Level 7 Blast of Lightning + Level 1 Chain Lightning + Level 1 Lightning Storm with our 1 Level of Lightning Rod included will deal (85+30) + (350+30) + (85+30) + (210+30) = 850 damage to any one target (613 after magic resistance reductions), which is more than enough to kill any Agility or Intelligence hero early in the game that you have been keeping harassed with Chain Lightning up to that point.

After Blast of Lightning is maxxed out, we max out Lightning Rod since it adds more total damage to enemy heroes than getting more levels of Chain Lightning, then finally max out Chain Lightning last.

Early Game

Recommended Early Game Items:

+ + +

Mana Potions + Bottle + Marchers + Fortified Bracelets

Mana Potions are a no-brainer, especially if you aren’t soloing mid and won’t be able to as easily refill a bottle to keep your mana supply healthy while spamming Chain Lightning for last hits and harass in your lane.  If you are soloing mid, then Bottle + Marchers are essential to control the runes and gank with early game.  A Fortified Bracelet will also help if things are getting scrappy and you’re taking a lot of heat.

Mid Game

Recommended Mid Game Items:

Ring of Sorcery

Thunderbringer needs to spam spells pretty much nonstop every battle to make use of Lightning Rod and drain enemy heroes hp as much as possible.  This means two things: he needs a larger mana pool, and he needs faster mana regeneration.  The best item for your buck to take care of this is Ring of Sorcery, which increases your mana pool by 300 and recovers about 200 mana a minute for a total cost of only 1700 gold.  There are plenty of other options that will increase your mana pool and regeneration if you dont want to/can’t get Ring of Sorcery (many leagues/tournaments limit it to one Ring per team).  Some of these possible choices are: Nome’s Wisdom, Stormspirit, Sacrifical Stone, and Null Stone.  Staff of the Master is a less favorable choice since it doesn’t give very much mana or any mana regen for it’s considerably massive price (4400), and improving your ultimate isn’t nearly as important as being able to spam spells nonstop in team battles to drain health with Lightning Rod.

You also might want to think about increasing your versatility with items like Enhanced Marchers or Portal Key.  These can make you a lot more aggressive of a hero killer if you are finding the money in the middle of the game.

Late Game

Recommended Late Game Items:

+

Kuldra’s Sheepstick + Behemoth’s Heart

Kuldra’s Sheepstick is the best late game item on Intelligence heroes and adds some much needed disable to Thunderbringer’s abilities.  The added mana regeneration, hit points, and Intelligence increase are all very welcome to Thunderbringer as well.  If the game goes really late then you might want to think about a Behemoth’s Heart.  You can’t go wrong with -15% skill cooldown and +30 cast speed on a hero that loves spamming, and the added hit points don’t hurt either.

Remember that in team battles your goal is to stay alive and keep spamming as long as possible.  You need to get close enough to enemy heroes to cast on them and make your Lightning Rod passive work on them, but not so close that they are able to focus you and take you out of the battle before you’ve unloaded massive damage.  Try to wait for them to commit to fighting other members of your team, or have your team initiate first, so that you can operate smoothly without getting focused by some turd on the other team.

Counters

The best way to deal with Thunderbringer is to grab a Mana Battery or Power Supply if you are laning against him early in the game.  This will give you a charge every time he spams Chain Lightning (which is a lot), allowing you to maintain your health and giving you mana to spam back at him.  Also make Bracers, Strength Steamboots, or whatever it takes to increase your hit points to keep him from nuking you to death early in the match.  Later in the game pick up a Shaman’s Headress or Barrier Idol and the amount of damage you take from him will decrease immensely.

HoN Corrupted Disciple Hero Guide

Corrupted Disciple

Starting Attributes

Str – 21 – 1.9 per lvl

Agi – 22 – 2.5 per lvl (primary attribute)

Int – 19 + 1.8 per lvl

Range – 475

Damage – 44-57

Armor – 2.1

Movement Speed – 295

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Spells

Electric Tide

The Corrupted Disciple unleashes an Electric Tide from his Orb, dealing damage to everyone around himself as the Tide expands and contracts.

Activation
Deals 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 to 70 / 105 / 140 / 175 Magic damage to enemies who get hit by the moving Tide. Enemies take more damage the further away they are and damage is dealt on both expansion and contraction of the Tide.

Type – Magic

Radius – 700

Mana Cost – 125

Cooldown – 16 seconds

Probably one of the most annoying early game spells which compliments Corrupted Disciple’s range.  Basically shoots out a circle from the hero and the farther they are from you the more damage they will take.  You often can pick off heroes running away with this spell properly timed and placed.

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Corrupted Conduit

Type – Magic

Range – 600

Cast – 1.0 seconds

Mana Cost – 20/30/40/50

Cooldown – 45/40/35/30 seconds

Such a fantastic spell at all points in the game especially on those DPS heroes and on forest ganks since it gives you vision of the target.  It drains the damage from the target hero and gives the damage to Corrupted Disciple.  However you have to be in a certain amount of range for the link to stay active meaning it should be a late-game fight when people stand or chase/attack or laning early it’s good to walk-attack.

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Static Discharge

The Corrupted Disciple’s Orb charges his body with electricity, enhancing his movement speed while shocking enemies who try to cast spells on him.

Static Discharge Effects
80% movement speed slow, decreasing over 0.3 / 0.6 / 0.9 / 1.2 seconds.

Passive Ability

3 / 6 / 9 / 12% Movement Speed

Any spell that is able to target a hero basically applies these effects to the hero targeting Corrupted Disciple making him a tad harder to kill.  It also increases his move speed which compliments his other abilities.

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Overload

The Corrupted Disciple overloads his armor with electricity, jolting the lowest health target around him repeatedly, lowering its armor in the process.

Type – Physical

Cast Time – 1.0 seconds

Mana Cost – 100

Cooldown – 80/70/60 seconds

Jolted Effects
Armor Per Charge: -1

Great 1 on 1 skill, removes 1 armor per lightning attack and deals damage.  Not that useful in a huge amount of creeps though since it most likely will be hitting the creeps before it hits any heroes in the vicinity.

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Skill Builds

1. Electric Tide

2. Corrupted Conduit

3. Electric Tide

4. Static Discharge (or Corrupted Conduit – see Early Game section)

5. Electric Tide

6. Overload

7. Electric Tide

8-9. Corrupted Conduit

10. Corrupted Conduit (or Static Discharge if Conduit is maxed by this level)

11. Overload

12-14. Static Discharge

15. Attribute Bonus

16. Overload

17-25. Attribute Bonus

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Item Recommendations

I prefer Ghost Marchers for the phase ability.  It gives extra movespeed for better chasing and his spells Overload and Corrupted Conduit and allows you to run through units also better for chasing as well as running away.  With his Static Discharge as well he gets more movement speed.

Frostburn gives more movespeed, slows the target being attacked which compliments all of his spells as well as his hero concept overall.  Probably a MUST item for him during the mid or early stages of late game where there is a lot of chasing and ganking being done.

Behemoth’s heart adds a great chunk of health which increases Corrupted Disciple’s survivability as well as Static Discharge since a lot of spells in this game are single target.  As well it increases Corrupted Disciple’s damage as a carry hero.

Wingbow is THE best damage item for agility heroes when the opposition is not hugely spell based.  Gives damage, agility, attack sped and evasion.

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Early Game

I would highly suggest soloing middle, and in doing so go for Static Discharge at level 4, you only need Corrupted Conduit for vision.  Unless you are highly dominant in your lane and have a huge advantage I would stick to playing passive-aggresive.  This means that you should look for opportunities to last hit with Electric Tide as well as hitting the enemy hero and attacking the hero for a short few whacks before retreating.  If you are in a dual lane with a slower/stunner or someone who you can play super aggressive with I would pass on Static Discharge and max Corrupted Conduit ASAP.  A great early item is Helm of the Black Legion, it gives you health and blocks a bit of damage allowing you to chase farther and dive towers a tiny bit.  Regardless of solo or dual lane you should focus more on farming while looking for opportunities to kill.  If you are solo middle and have a bottle look for chances to gank either side with runes, especially haste and invisible runes.

Middle Game

You should be doing now what’s called Gank-Farming.  That is ganking a lane and then farming the lane once the target dies or has to back off.  You should carry around a teleport to counter gank or look for opportunities for clean-up on huge team fights, you should not be rushing into a huge fight like a barbarian.  Once you have HotBL/Frostburn & Ghost Marchers you should focus more on ganking, you can deal a great amount of DPS with Corrupted Conduit and Overload.   Remember that you gain a lot more gold and XP from killing heroes than killing creeps.

Late Game

By now you should just be roaming with the team either hunting the opposition or pushing lanes.  If you have to turtle make sure there are wards up for your farming spots and make use of static farming.  Kongor is always a good option if you are in a good spot, however be wary of the other team, I’ve seen many many games be lost over the desire to obtain Token of Life.  Remember to use Corrupted Conduit on an enemy DPSer in order to reduce their damage and increase theirs, however you should not necessarily focus on them first, without damage they may not be able to do much so instead you should focus on killing someone who’s more team oriented like Magmus, Tempest, Witch Slayer etc. so that it will be easier to kill the DPSer without being disabled etc.

How to add people to buddy list without HoN Client

Such as now, if the buddy list system for HoN is broken and down it creates problems for people who come along and you can’t keep track of them.  The buddy list system in HoN just won’t allow you to add them onto your buddy list, fear not there is a solution.

Step 1 : go to www.heroesofnewerth.com/buddies

Step 2 : login to your account

Step 3 : input your buddy’s in-game name and submit

Step 4 : restart your HoN client if you have it open while doing this and VOILA your buddy has been added

It also can be used to remove buddys, just check the box next to a name and click “remove checked” next to the submit button

How to watch old Dota replays

Frozen Throne only allows you to watch replays played under the current patch, which is very restricting considering there is a new patch every few months.  So if you want to watch old Dota replays, you have to re-install Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne, then patch to the correct old version in order to watch the replay.  There is an easier way to watch old replays, but you still need to have the old patches and Dota maps available.  First, download Ever-Craft here (original link is missing): http://warcraft.ingame.de/downloads/?file=27187

What is Ever-Craft?  It lets you change between B.net patches without having to re-install Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne each time.  Read more here: http://www.wcreplays.com/scene.php?get=126

Download old Battle.net patches from the Blizzard ftp site here: http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/

The date of each patch is indicated in the ftp list.  Compare with the date created on your replay to figure out which patch you need.  You can also load replays into Ever-Craft and it will tell you which patch version they are for.

Download old Dota maps here (goes back to to version 6.48 from 06/23/2008): http://www.getdota.com/map_archive/map/249/lang/en

If you need older Dota maps, search Google.

Also thanks to this post for more help:

Alright, for those of you getting this run time 53 error read here:

I DL’d the program, trying to view the awesome match up of grubby vs Zacard – http://www.wcreplays.com/replays.php?get=7407&lc=true – but couldn’t get the program to switch to the other version. SO, here’s what I did:

1) use ever craft to back up
2) download patch (blah blah) do all that crap the read me says
3) switch to any version – for some reason it defaults to 1.13 or something – at which point it gives you an error. You EXPECT the program to switch to the version you want, but it just screws it all up.
4) after that, run the stand alone patch by double clicking it – NOT THROUGH EVER CRAFT

Some of these programs and methods are ancient and barely working, but I tested the above method 2/12/2010 and it works!