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.

HoN Zephyr Hero Guide

Zephyr

Zephyr is a HoN-unique melee Agility hero.  This big, bad owl is a master of jungle and has been known to carry even the heaviest KingRavens on your team.  Let’s take a close look at his abilities:

Gust (q)

Zephyr “summons a gust of wind in the direction of his choosing,” which pushes, damages, and stuns an area of units.  Zephyr lost some chasing and escaping power in the 0.1.66 patch with the removal of his Leap ability, but in its place Gust has given him a much greater team-fighting spell.  The combination of forced movement on multiple units, damage, and even short duration stun all in one spell is so powerful that Gust will likely be nerfed heavily in future patches, so enjoy it while you can.  Gust is also a very unique ability as it is the only one in HoN or Dota cast by first clicking then dragging to pick the start location and direction of the gust (direction is indicated by the arrow in the upper left image).  This is pretty simple to do, but requires you to act quickly so that enemy units don’t move out of the targeted area while you are still cautiously aiming the direction arrow.

Cyclones (w)

Zephyr summons a small cyclone around him with every last hit.  These cyclones patrol around him and deal magic damage to enemy units they touch.  They may also be consumed one by one to heal Zephyr for 30 life a piece, or will automatically be consumed after several seconds to heal him for only 15 life.  In the 0.1.66 patch, Cyclones were changed to no longer require mana to consume and no longer give mana back when consumed.  At Level 4, the Cyclones ability allows 8 cyclones to be active at one time, which will deal a great amount of damage in a small area around Zephyr and allow him to quickly kill creep camps or any enemy heroes to which he can stay close enough.  The Cyclones ability is complemented well by items like Mock of Brilliance or Frostfield Plate that can add further damage or slow to an AOE around Zephyr so he can continue to put out high damage.

Wind Shield (passive)

Zephyr “uses his control of the wind to create a protective barrier around himself”, which grants increased movement speed, evasion of melee units, and a chance to deflect an incoming ranged attack.  These passive abilities only trigger for a few seconds after Zephyr lands an attack, so he must be actively involved in a battle to make full use of it.

Typhoon (r) (ultimate)

Zephyr “creates a mighty Typhoon”, which slows and damages enemy units based on their distance from its center (with most damage and slow being dealt at the center).  Similar to Tempest’s ultimate, this is a great AOE spell for team battles.  Typhoon also resets Zephyr’s Cyclone count to max so he can quickly dish out even more AOE damage or consume them to recover life.

Strategy

Recommended Skill Build

1. Cyclones
2. Gust
3. Cyclones
4. Gust
5. Cyclones
6. Typhoon
7. Cyclones
8. Gust
9. Gust
10. Wind Shield
11. Typhoon
12. Wind Shield
13. Wind Shield
14. Wind Shield
15. Stats
16. Typhoon
17. Stats -> Level 25

Explanation: Cyclones and Gust are essential early game and should be maxxed out quickly.  Typhoon is useful early to help generate kills if you are ganking your lane, but you can also hold off on learning it till Level 9 if you see yourself sticking to the jungle and just not using it early game.  Wind Shield is not needed until later in the game when Zephyr will be absorbing a lot of punishment in team battles, and can learned after Gust and Cyclones are maxxed.

Early Game

Recommended Early Game items:

+ +

Logger’s Hatchet + Iron Shield + Helm of the Black Legion

So much of Zephyr’s success is dependent on getting last hits to generate more Cyclones, so make use of Logger’s Hatchet early to help you get creep kills and denies.  An Iron Shield will also help with creep kills by adding 6 Agility, and will give you some much needed damage protection from harassment during the time you spend in lane.  Early game you should be pulling creeps until you are strong enough to hit the jungle, come then gank your lane periodically if your teammate needs help.  Grabbing an early Lifetube from the side shop will help you keep your hp up and not return to base while farming, and can be turned later into Helm of the Black Legion, which will let you kill any level of creep camps and tank you up to start being more aggressive to get on top of enemy heroes to get kills with Cyclones.

Mid Game

Recommended Mid Game items:

+ maybe

Mock of Brilliance + maybe Shaman’s Headdress

Mock of Brilliance is a lot of work to farm but once you get it you are almost certain to carry your team.  Mock adds a ton of AOE damage to the AOE damage you will already be doing with Cyclones and Typhoon in team battles.  You should also consider getting a Shaman’s Headdress or Barrior Idol if the other team is putting out a ton of magic damage, but you will probably need to also get more hit points to make this worthwhile.

Late Game

Recommended Late Game items:

+ or or

Behemoth’s Heart + Barbed Armor or Daemonic Breastplate or Frostfield Plate

Late game it is time to tank up so you can get to the center of battles and stay alive while dealing as much damage with your Cyclones and Mock of Brilliance.  Behemoth’s Heart is essential, and one of the above three armor items.

HoN Soulstealer Hero Guide

Soulstealer

Soulstealer is a ranged Agility hero in Heroes of Newerth based on the Dota hero Shadow Fiend.  An aggressive lane-controller, Soulstealer lies among the best of all solo heroes in the game and is also destructive later in the game with a powerful AOE ultimate and massive potential to carry.  Here is a look at his abilities:

Demon Hand

This spell is actually three different AOE nukes with separate cooldowns.  This means you can unload three individual Demon Hands in rapid succession to quickly dish out 900 damage when Demon Hand is Level 4.  That kind of power absolutely demolishes enemy heroes early game.

Set your secondary ability keys to something easy to use like Z, X, and C (what they are for Shadow Fiend in Dota).  Demon Hand won’t be effective if you are clicking it with your mouse instead of using hotkeys effortlessly.  Then try to remember Z-close range, X- medium range, C-far range so you don’t use the wrong distance later on.

New players have a lot of trouble landing Demon Hands, but it’s actually pretty simple.  Don’t over-think it.  Just make sure you are facing the direction you want to nuke before you cast the spell.  Sometimes this is as easy as first attack-clicking the hero you want to nuke, or right clicking in the vicinity of that hero right before you cast.  If you realize you are facing the wrong direction after you already hit the spell hotkey, or your opponent has juked to the side, you still have a little over half a second to push S (stop) to cancel the animation and try the spell again.

Soulsteal (passive)

Soulsteal increases your attack damage every time you make a last hit.  Increased damage is exactly what you need early game to dominate the last hitting in your lane and harass enemy heroes.  As the great Raider134 once said, “my grandmother can last hit with Shadow Fiend”.  This is totally true; when fully loaded at Level 4, Soulsteal gives you +60 base damage, which is like having a free Sword of the High (3800 cost) in your inventory!

Soulsteal needs to be fully loaded for your ultimate to do full damage.  Also, half your souls are lost when you die.

Dread (passive)

Dread is a passive aura that lowers the armor of nearby enemy units.  This complements  heroes like Andromeda and Pestilence who can lower armor even more, and works well with Shield Breaker, an item which also reduces armor.

Soul Burst (ultimate) (r)

Soul Burst is a devastating AOE ultimate which can be used effectively on groups of players in team battles or to quickly kill individual players who are alone on the map.  The ultimate does damage and slows enemy units based on the distance between them and Soulstealer, which makes it ideal for use right after blinking in or sneaking in with Assassin’s Shroud.  Depending on the makeup of your team, either you should either use this to initiate or to wipe out several heroes after an initiator like Tempest or Legionnaire sets you up or something else has happened causing the enemy to commit to a battle.  After unloading a high damage Soul Burst, mop up any survivors with Demon Hands or your ridiculously high attack damage.

Strategy

Recommended Skill Build

1. Soulsteal
2. Demon Hand
3. Soulsteal
4. Demon Hand
5. Demon Hand
6. Soulsteal
7. Demon Hand
8. Soulsteal
9. Dread
10. Soul Burst
11. Soul Burst
12. Dread
13. Dread
14. Dread
15. Stats
16. Soul Burst
17. Stats-> Level 25

Explanation: Soulsteal is necessary at Level 1 and 3 to gain attack damage for last hitting and lane control.  After this point Demon Hand becomes more important, since at Level 4 and 5 you can easily start comboing a couple Demon Hands and attacks on your opponent to generate kills in your lane.  Soul Burst (ultimate) is more or less useless until later in the game (unless you’re really crafty), so we hold off getting it until Level 9 or 10 in order to max out the essential Soulsteal and Demon Hands abilities.  By level 11 we should have either an Assassin’s Shroud or Portal Key and so we want to have Soul Burst leveled up so we can use it effectively.

Early Game

Recommended starting items:

+ + + +

Duck Boots + Pretender’s Crown + Minor Totem + Healing Potion + Runes of the Blight

The first three of these items will raise your attack damage by six, which is essential for last hitting creeps at Level 1 before Soulsteal is giving you much bonus damage.  This also gives some added hit points and can be made into a Soulscream Ring later.  Soulstealer’s base damage is very low without Soulsteal, so if you don’t start out with some damage-boosting items you will have trouble building up souls early game.

You should solo mid.  Focus solely on last hitting for Levels 1-3 in order to raise your soul count, but by time you are Level 4 or 5 Demon Hand is strong enough to start getting kills if you start landing combos on the enemy hero in your lane.  This is as simple as landing a close or mid-range Demon Hand spell on them (easiest to do by moving forward and using it while when they are trying to last hit a creep and therefore are motionless).  After you land the first nuke, you can attack them, then land the longer range nukes for the kill as they retreat.  If your opponent lets you get close enough for a close-range nuke, then they are almost surely dead since you can land the two farther range nukes on them when they run back.

Recommended early game items:

+ 

Bottle + Marchers

Grab these as soon as you can and start controlling the Runes to keep your hit points full, help you gank faster, and have enough mana to keep using Demon Hand.  An early invis or haste rune will get you ganking kills, while double damage and illusion runes will make it easier for you to control your lane.

Mid Game

Recommended mid game items:

or then

Portal Key or Assassin’s Shroud then Post Haste

Portal Key and Shrunken Head is the combo of choice at more competitive levels where players will be getting gems or putting Wards of Revelation on the battlefield to prevent someone from sneaking in with Assassin’s Shroud to Soul Burst.  With this combo, you can simply tell your team “I’m going in”, activate Shrunken, blink into a clump of enemy heroes, and let your ultimate rip them up.  This sets up a battle for your team to come in and mop up (all enemy heroes are heavily damaged and slowed), and you’ll probably even survive thanks to Shrunken Head’s period of magic invulnerability and the added hit points it gives you.  Alternatively you can wait until they have committed to the battle instead of initiating yourself, then go in and Soul Burst at this time.

Assassin’s Shroud is a viable alternative to Portal Key and can often be better especially in lower level games.  This will let you sneak in and Soul Burst from directly underneath a hero who will have less time to react and will be standing closer and take more damage than if you blinked in with Portal Key.  Once you have Post Haste and Assassin’s Shroud it’s really easy to teleport to outer lanes, sneak in and kill anyone trying to farm with your ultimate and a couple attacks or Demon Hands to finish them off.

Late Game

Recommended Late Game items:

or or  then or then

Shrunken Head or Behemoth’s Heart or Frost Wolf’s Skull then Wingbow or Daemonic Breastplate then lifesteal

You need to tank up to survive team battles after getting in the middle of them to use your ultimate.  Shrunken Head is the best option for consistently getting your ultimate off, but Behemoth’s and Frost Wolf’s have some nice bonuses; Behemoth’s will increase all damage by 10% (including Soul Burst damage) and allows you to continue to be able to kill creep waves with only two Demon Hands until late in the game; Frost Wolf’s adds some hit points and makes it really hard for anyone to run from you.

After this you should grab either a Wingbow or Daemonic Breastplate for the attack speed and to solidify your newly increased hit points with either evasion or armor.  After this you should, as always, get some lifesteal for late game to be sustainable in long battles.  Alternatively you could go for a Symbol of Rage to combine your tanking up and getting lifesteal needs into one item, but then you’ll need to get some additional attack speed as well to make use of Soulstealer’s high attack damage.