HoN Keeper of the Forest Hero Guide

Keeper of the Forest

Keeper of the Forest is a supporting Strength hero in Heroes of Newerth.  This hero grants you controlling vision of the map and is ideal for initiating and disabling enemies in team battles.  Recently, in the 0.1.60 HoN Patch, the Hon-unique ability Nature’s Vengeance was removed and replaced with Nature’s Protection, which is equivalent to Living Armor in Dota.  Additionally, Keeper’s Tree Sight ability no longer grants regeneration, but detects invisible units just like in Dota.  These changes make Keeper of the Forest just like Treant Protector in Dota, with the slight exception that Keeper has the advantage now of being allowed to use any of his abilities without breaking invisibility.

While Nature’s Vengeance was an attempt at making Keeper a capable fighter, Nature’s Protection is something more practical that greatly increases Keeper’s capabilities early game, adding armor and hit point regen, which is really what a melee hero needs to survive harass in order to stay in lane and farm early game.  While the damage bonus of Nature’s Vengeance made last hitting easier, Keeper already has an unusually high base damage which makes this unnecessary.  The ability was never really in line with the hero’s role anyway (why would a friend of the forests be ripping up trees?).

Thanks to these changes, Keeper can competitively lane again and farm up the items he needs to be a total menace as an initiator/disabler mid to late game.  Let’s take a look at Keeper’s abilities and discuss how to dominate with him.

Camouflage (q)

The Keeper camouflages an allied unit, giving it invisibility so long as it stays near (within 375 range of) trees.  The invisibility ends if the unit attacks or uses an ability (except for Keeper, who can now use all of his abilities without breaking camouflage).  This is a useful spell to have one level of early game as it can save you or an ally from an incoming gank or help set up a gank of your own.  Later in the game Camouflage is great for setting up Keeper’s or one of his teammate’s ultimates.  Also consider the cast range on Camouflage is only 300 so you must be very close the target you want to invis, which is very important in situations where an ally is dying and needs to escape fast; position yourself wisely.

Tree Sight (w)

Keeper “links his mind with a tree, sharing its vision”.  Tree Sight is an underrated skill that can give you vision of large portions of the map and really hurt your opponents’ map control, if you are patient enough to keep placing these “eyes” in useful spots whenever the cooldown goes off.  Great spots to use Tree Sight are at the Rune spawns, at the other team’s neutral spawns (it will prevent them from spawning), wherever the enemy team might walk to gank, and at Kongor.  Use Tree Sight in inconspicuous or hard-to-get-to locations that will make it harder for your opponents to notice them or make them waste more time trying to get to them to knock them down.  Tree Sight is not just for map vision since it also detects invisible units, so use it in battles against invisible heroes or to clear out an the other team’s wards as well.

Nature’s Protection (e)

“The Keeper grants part of the forest’s power to the target ally, increasing their armor and regeneration for a period of time.”  It also leaves a nice trail of leaves on the ground behind them.  Nature’s Protection should be maxxed out early game to allow you and your lane partner to stay near the creeps and get as many last hits as possible while tanking harass from the enemy.  The spell lasts 40 seconds with only a 7 second cooldown, which means later in the game you can keep your entire team protected at the same time, which is a great advantage, basically like buying each person on your team their own Platemail and Lifetube.  You can also use Nature’s Protection on buildings like your Tower when the other team is pushing.

Root (ultimate) (r)

“The Keeper calls upon the roots in the ground”, which grab onto all enemy units around the Keeper, damaging and disabling them for several seconds.  Heroes caught in the roots cannot attack or move and are revealed until the spell is over.  This spell is extremely important and allows Keeper to be a massive game changer in mid to late game team battles.  Use this ultimate to initiate battles for your team by quickly getting close to as many enemy heroes as possible before using it.  Your Camouflage ability is great for setting this up.

Strategy

Recommended Skill Build

1. Tree Sight
2. Nature’s Protection
3. Nature’s Protection
4. Camouflage
5. Nature’s Protection
6. Root
7. Nature’s Protection
8. Tree Sight
9. Tree Sight
10. Tree Sight
11. Root
12. Camouflage
13. Camouflage or Stats
14. Camouflage or Stats
15. Stats
16. Root
17. Stats -> level 25

Early Game

Learn one level of Tree Sight and get quickly to a rune spawn (top river is easiest) and place an eye near here to give your team control of that rune.  After this, just get to your lane and level up Nature’s Protection and use it as much as possible to keep your hp up while you are last hitting.  This ability along with Keeper’s naturally high base damage make it a very good option as a solo hero as well.  You should try to farm for a Sustainer (Perseverance) which will let you keep spamming spells and give you even more hp regen.  When you hit level 6 you may be able to catch your lane opponents off guard and grab a quick kill with Root, otherwise just keep farming.

Mid Game

Stay in lane and keep farming towards a Restoration Stone (Refresher).  Keeper is very hard to kill and your opponents will likely not put much effort into ganking you, or will simply attempt it unsuccessfully.  Restoration Stone is a phenomenal item on Keeper as it allows you to use Root twice in team battles which leaves your opponent disabled for a whopping 10 seconds.  It is also easy to build even if you ARE dying, with none of its individual components costing more than 900 gold, other than the recipe.  Also help your team out by using Tree Sight whenever it cools down in order to get as much vision of the map as possible, which will give you rune control and frustrate the gankers on the other team.  Carry a Homecoming Stone (TP scroll) and get involved in team battles with your ultimate.

Other possible builds are Elder Parasite (MoM) to quickly smash opponents with your high base damage while they are Rooted (just like with Chronos when opponents are  trapped in Chronofield), or Mock of Brilliance (Radiance) and Frostfield Plate (Shivas) to add AOE damage to your ultimate. However, these builds are more risky and always worse than getting Restoration Stone unless your opponents are unorganized and bad, in which case why are we talking about hero builds?

Late Game

Once you have Restoration Stone you need to increase your mana pool in order to get two ultimates off in a battle.  Intelligence Steamboots (Power Treads) or Talismans work well for this.  You may also want to get Portal Key (Blink Dagger) to better quickly initiate battles with your ultimate when the enemy is clumped up.  At this point you should push, force team battles, and end the game, because you can.

Counters

Make use of Logger’s Hatchet, Runes of Blight, or any ability that can knock down trees to rid the map of your opponent’s Tree Sight eyes, especially in key locations like near Kongor, the rune spawns, your neutrals, and areas you will pass through to gank the other team.

In team battles, Shrunken Head can be used to escape from Keeper’s Root ultimate, but must be used after Root is cast.  Nullstone also works.

The Puzzlebox item is great for getting vision of Keeper and burning off his mana so he cannot use his ultimate.

Dubious item choices lead to 115 minute game

THANKS A LOT IFLEE. We could have ended the game at a LEISURELY 70 minutes, but instead you went off to rice Butterfly and Mjollnir ON TREANT PROTECTOR! Then you’d show up every battle after we already died, feed 1v5, say something emo and go back to farming.

Summary of idiotic builds that resulted in a two hour game:

kinpin: Soul Booster, Guinsoo & half a Shivas (Zeus)

daggius: mass Wraith Bands & Vladmirs (Syllabear), Power Treads & five Gloves of Attack (Bear)

iFlee: Boots of Travel, Refresher, Guinsoo, Heart of Tarrasque, Mjollnir, Butterfly (Treant Protector)

Ridiculous build by iFlee

Kinpin lends his opinion

Although my build was indeed terrible and may or may not have resulted in me dying 18 times, my super-fast-attacking Entangle Bear actually kept their ridiculously-farmed Razor from ballin’ out of control. Yep, three Guinsoo’s and Double Roots just weren’t cutting it.

Shitty but amusing Syllabear build

One thing you learn from a game like this is that the Roshan that spawns at 100 minutes really doesn’t take much shit from anybody. He’s fucking huge.

19000 hit point Roshan says No Thank You to our Bounty Hunter

Props to prawnage and the Scourge for their tireless efforts, and to awwwyea for being the only person on Sentinel who didn’t pull a useless build. You can check out the replay of this game here.