Pestilence — HoN Hero Guide

Art by Kingaby

Pestilence

Pestilence is a Melee Strength hero in Heroes of Newerth equivalent to Slardar in DotA.  Pestilence is a strong ganker and initiator, tank, and counter to enemy heroes with invisibility.  Here is a look at his abilities:

Flight (q)

Flapping his wings Pest gets increased movespeed at the cost of amplified incoming damage.  At a constant +10% damage (any level) this is almost negligible, while having +40% movement speed at Level 4 is huge.  Use this to quickly initiate battles with your stun, catch enemies in bad positions, and chase them down.

Impale (w)

Insects impale the ground in a radius around Pestilence, damaging and stunning nearby enemies.  Radius is constant at all levels (and large), while damage and stun duration increases with level.  This is the great spell that lets Pestilence initiate onto several enemies at once and disable them so his team can wipe them out.

Gore (passive)

Pest stabs a unit with his horn giving bonus damage and a stun.  This gets more and more important as the game goes on and your attack speed continues to increase, allowing Pest to continuously stun and disable important heroes on the enemy team and effectively take them out of the battle.

Swarm (ultimate) (r)

Pest unloads a swarm of Locusts which temporarily lower the armor of an enemy unit and make it visible.  Needless to say this is the best counter to any hero with invisibility in the game.  The mana cost and cooldown are extremely low (only 25 mana, 10 seconds at all levels) which means you can keep spamming it on every enemy hero, making them die much quicker to attacks.  This also combines extremely well with items that reduce armor like Shield Breaker and Daemonic Breastplate, and heroes abilities that do the same, like Andromeda’s Aurora and Pandaomnium’s Flick.

Strategy

Recommended Skill Build

1. Impale
2. Flight
3. Impale
4. Flight
5. Impale
6. Swarm
7. Impale
8. Flight
9. Flight
10. Gore
11. Swarm
12. Gore
13. Gore
14. Gore
15. Stats
16. Swarm
17. Stats -> Level 25

Explanation: Impale is your main utility and should get maxed out asap.  Flight should be taken before Gore since this allows you to chase down heroes and land Impales which gets you a lot more kills and facilitates ganking early game.  A common noobie mistake is to level Gore instead of Flight which makes you a stronger fighter but with a lot less ability to initiate and make any battles happen where you will actually be able to fight.  At most you could get a single level of Gore early in lieu of a level of Flight which could give you some chasing/initiation speed in combination with the chance to proc an occasional Gore stun for additional killing power. Or get a couple levels of Flight then a couple levels of Gore.  Just remember that Flight is pretty important even though it looks like a shitty skill at first glance.  You might even prioritize it over maxing out Impale.

Early Game

Recommended Early Game items:

Steamboots

An Iron Shield and/or Logger’s Hatchet can help you farm in lane at start of game if necessary.  If farming is difficult then just try to get Steamboots.  If it’s easy you could just go Marchers straight to Portal Key and get Steamboots later.  Steamboots are the best choice of footwear on Pestilence because they give increased hit points for tanking and attack speed for Gore stun procs.

Early game you should focus on last hitting in your lane.  Whenever an enemy gets in a bad position you can kill them with your Impale stun and a few attacks.  Pest works best in a lane with someone like Demented Shaman who can slow an enemy enough (with Entangle) for you to get an Impale stun off, before healing you for more damage onto the enemy.

Mid Game

Recommended Mid Game items:

+

Portal Key + Shrunken Head

Portal Key is essential as it allows Pestilence to deftly initiate and pick off enemy heroes.  Once you have this item the combination of Portal Key/Flight and Impale makes Pestilence a very effective ganker and initiator for team battles.  Take advantage of this and pick off the carries and puny support heroes on the other team to give your team the advantage.  Make sure to use your ultimate as much as possible to give vision and make enemy heroes die quicker.

A Shrunken Head activated before blinking in to a group of enemy heroes to stun them makes a big impact on a battle if your team is good enough to follow up.  Pestilence will usually survive and be able to chase down any remaining heroes with Swarm and Flight for the Genocide.  You might consider a Shaman’s Headdress instead of Shrunken Head (later turn into Barrier Idol), or even a Nullstone or Barbed Armor in certain situations.

Late Game

Recommended Late Game items:

+ +

Shield Breaker + Daemonic Breastplate + lifesteal

Shield Breaker combines well with the armor reduction of Pestilence’s Swarm ultimate to really accelerate the death of any thing he hits.  Daemonic Breastplate is a great item on Pestilence as it adds armor to a Strength hero making him extremely difficult to kill, attack speed to proc more Gore bashes, and even has an armor reducing aura to further combine with Swarm and Shield Breaker to wipe out enemy heroes in almost no hits.

After this Pest is a fighting machine and the last thing to do is get lifesteal.  If you already have an attack modifier (like Shield Breaker) then you want to get Abyssal Skull because it gives lifesteal as an aura.  Otherwise get Whispering Helm and do it big.

Counters

You basically want to Hex or disable Pest in some other way to keep him out of your grill.  Killing him early when he’s saving money for Portal Key is very good.  If he’s able to farm unchecked and get Portal Key and Shrunken Head early in the match then you are in serious trouble and need to follow his position closely on the minimap so he doesn’t pick you off.

SPEEDPAINT: Zephyr vs. Pestilence

Kingaby is disgustingly talented. He won the Steelseries HoN mousepad contest with this.

HoN Banning Draft (BD) Hero Picking and Bans Guide

Overview

Banning Draft (BD) is a new game mode in HoN where two captains first ban four picks from a pool of 24 random heroes, then alternate 10 picks from the remaining pool of 20 (in 1-2-2-2-2-1 fashion).  BD is generally regarded as the most balanced game mode available (least amount of luck involved), so the better team of players should win in this mode more than in any other mode.  This, of course, is only true if your captain makes the right picks and bans.  This process can be rather complicated, but if you understand the concepts of premium heroes and counters, it becomes simple to make the best possible choices.

Premium Heroes

It is important to understand that there are certain heroes in HoN that captains will try to first pick every single game.  These “premium” heroes are generally dominating AOE heroes that can turn the tide of any team battle.  In BD, the team that gets to ban the first hero also gets the first pick after bans.  If you don’t have the first pick, then realize that the other team will get one of these heroes with their first pick if you don’t ban it.  These heroes are (in rough order of importance): Tempest, Jereziah, Behemoth, Demented Shaman, and Magmus.

Second Bests

Here are some versatile heroes that are going to be in high demand after the premium choices are gone:

• Plague Rider: dominates team battles and ganking with a slowing, splash nuke and slowing, splash nuke ultimate, and gets a free deny and mana every time Extingiush is up.  Statistically the winningest hero in HoN.
• Pestilence: incredible ganking power with speed boost and stun abilities; dominant late game with a bash and armor-reducing, invis-revealing ultimate.
• Sand Wraith: dominant late-game carry with two escape mechanisms that make it extremely difficult to gank.
• Hellbringer: massive AOE ultimate stun that can break up any team formation.
• Magebane: another dominant late-game carry that is nearly impossible to gank.
• Puppet Master: versatile disabler carry that can fill many roles and has a crushing early game harass.

Counter Picks

Often it is okay to let the other team have a premium or other great hero if you know there is a counter pick in the pool that you can make directly afterward.  For example, if you have second pick, you can not ban Tempest, and then pick Hellbringer right after the other team gets it (Hellbringer’s ultimate stops Tempest’s ultimate, even if he has a Shrunken Head).  If they see this coming and don’t first pick Tempest, then you can pick Tempest and Hellbringer with your 2nd and 3rd pick, thus getting both the premium hero and it’s counter out of the pool in one picking round.  Here are some examples of good counters:

• Hellbringer, Pharoah counter Tempest (their ultimates stops Tempest’s ultimate from long range)
• Electrician counters Jeraziah, Hammerstorm (Electrician’s ultimate removes Protective Charm aka Repel and Hammerstorm’s ultimate)
• Vindicator counters Magmus, Tempest, Torturer, any channeling heroes (Vindicator’s ultimate silences all heroes)
• Pestilence, Rampage counter any heroes with invisibility (Pestilence’s ultimate exposes invisible heroes, Rampage’s Charge does as well)
• Thunderbringer counters heroes that initiate with blink (Behemoth, Tempest, Magmus, etc.) (must have good timing with ultimate and vision)

Other Guidelines

Make sure you pick a solo hero.  In general, don’t have more than one melee hero per lane.  Make sure you pick at least one carry hero and not too many.