[?] Armadon?

[Jeffbelittle]

:arma:

What is with this character? Not to start off a question thread with a bland one liner but yeah. I've never played the hero before, and he looks interesting enough; however, I just don't even understand the premise of the hero...

Prodex's description of Armadon is a "Tanky Carry", which I imagine is because past 38 minutes it takes like 3 heroes to actually kill him because he's pretty much a brick wall; however, how does he really kill anyone? It seems like he has 0 damage output in the late game, his early game superiority is if the opposing team doesn't buy a power supply, and I haven't seen him too useful mid-game comparative to say Wretched Hag or Valkyrie.

Then you have the Mini Guide to all 79 heroes saying Armadon is a Mid-Game Carry yet under "Power" in the mid-game he's given a 2/5

Now I played against many Armadon's yesterday as I'm in the 1400 bracket and a new skin came out for him and aside from one game where a guy went 12-4 as him, it seemed like we would just kill the entire enemy team and just leave him be shooting stuff at us while we killed the towers because it didn't seem like he had any damage output.

My questions really kind of go like this:

1) What is Armadon really? Just kind of some really big meat shield or does he serve a purpose? Can he actually carry?
2) When do you pick Armadon in a line-up?
3) What build and skill order do you like on Armadon?
4) Is Armadon a good hero choice in 2-1-2 set-ups or is as useless as :bloo:
5) How do you actually play Armadon?

I hope you can understand my confusion. Hearing he is a carry and then seeing him not be able to touch anyone is like (O_o'?) for someone legitimately trying to learn to transform his play from 1280 up into the 2k bracket one day.

[BOXl]

Armadons main source of damage is his spines, they stack up for everytime you get hit by one, increasing the damage for every spine.

[Tom]

1) What is Armadon really? Just kind of some really big meat shield or does he serve a purpose? Can he actually carry?

He's a carry. But a very weak one. Armadon is the definition of a hero that carries through tanking. Slither is another example of this. When he gets tanky enough, he carries just by being alive in teamfights. When armadon gets so tanky to the poit of where it's just dumb to target him, he can stand in the teamfight uninterrupted shooting out spines, picking off easy supports, and to some degree killing carries after that. There are stronger tanky carries, but I'll talk more about that later.


2) When do you pick Armadon in a line-up?

Just don't. He's not worth picking up. You have much better options for tanky carries. Defiler, torturer, zephyr, predator, pestilence, soul reaper, and gladiator are just some examples of heroes that accomplish armadon's role better. The way I look at armadon is that he is a hero thats a jack of all trades, and only a master at one. I'd say he's the hardest hero to kill late game, personally, but thats his only claim to fame. Other than that, he doesn't bring much to the table. His ult doesn't scale very well, and it's not particularly useful early game. Your auto attacks will do more late game than spine burst usually, but you're going to want to spam it anyways in order to do AoE damage. If you want a tanky strength carry, pick gladiator.


3) What build and skill order do you like on Armadon?

Both are dependent on the game. I usually get both helm of the black legion and a shaman's headress, because your job is to stay alive. After that, you can pretty much do anything you want. If you want to get more tanky, get items like behemoth heart. You can get daemonic if you want to reduce their armor while making yourself slightly more tanky. There are a lot of other options, but I won't bother going over them, because enerally speaking it's common sense.


4) Is Armadon a good hero choice in 2-1-2 set-ups or is as useless as :bloo:

I haven't seen armadon much in trilanes, but in theory he's decent in trilanes. I won't bother going into that though, because there are better heroes to put in a trilane by far. He's good in 2/1/2. But really he's so easily countered. If you need to know more about countering him, just ask me. A huge counter to armadon is hellflower though, I'll tell you that much. A silenced armadon can't do much, and taking +20% damage is a huge deal.


5) How do you actually play Armadon?

It depends on how the game is going. You usually want to just spam your spine burst whenever it's off cooldown. You can build armadon in a lot of ways, but you should probably pick up something to aid you with some mana regeneration. Bottle is viable, however I don't agree with it as much anymore since the nerf to ferrying. You're better off picking up a ring of the teacher, and then you can make a nomes. Nomes, hotbl, and headress are my core on armadon generally.

If you want to get out of this bracket, you shouldn't be playing joke heroes. Armadon is a pretty big joke hero when in an unexperienced player's hands.

The only time I actually pick up armadon is when I'm randoming. A good player can make armadon powerful, but a good player can make any hero strong. I could play armadon with you all the time and absolutely destroy games. It depends on who your opponents are, how you take advantage of your strengths, and fill in the gaps of your weaknesses.

[Pepperz]

All you ever wanted to know about armadon: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=221355 .

I won't go into a lot of specifics, but Armadon can be extremely powerful because of his stacking slow and aoe damage output. Once he has helm, shamans, and boots hes pretty much good to go. After that I usually go barrier idol, and then daemonic for more -armor with goo and to make spines more effective.

It also boosts your effectiveness if they choose to let you stay in a team fight. If they choose to ignore you in the team fight you are providing your team + armor and attack speed, while also reducing the enemies armor. Want to see your carry destroy someone, just keep the goo on them so they can't run and are at a serious armor disadvantage. After your core defensive items, buy items that punish the enemy for leaving you in a fight. Items like Daemonic, Frost field, astrolabe, Mock, etc.

Also make sure you animation cancel and get in as many auto attacks as possible. His ult makes his auto attacks hit pretty hard without any damage item investment. Getting in your auto attacks while spamming your spells is what makes the difference between a good and bad armadon.

A lot of times armadon won't get the kills in a team fight, but her certainly makes a lot of the kills happen. Had a game awhile back where I was 5/6/41, but the turning point in the game was when I got my tanking core done and had barrier idol. They couldn't kill me no matter what they did and the rest of my team finally caught up in levels and items.

[LudaBaba]

Try laning with kraken. Hella fun.
Armadon is very annoying hero to play against. If played good.
Theres lot of situations where he can easy tower dive and kill 2-3 people early.
But theres better picks.

[Pepperz]

A good support hero is the best type of hero to lane armadon with. Nymph may be the best because of her stun and mana regen that she can provide. Lets you spam your spines to your hearts content without much threat of dieing. Glacius, VJ, and DS are also good heros to lane with. Andromeda with her swap, stun, and -armor aura can be a decent lane partner too.

[Tom]

All you ever wanted to know about armadon: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=221355 .
No offense that guide sucks

[K355U]

Try laning with kraken. Hella fun.
Armadon is very annoying hero to play against. If played good.
Theres lot of situations where he can easy tower dive and kill 2-3 people early.
But theres better picks.
Agreed 100%. Especially with the Kraken :D

Have been there, done that, lost the game after raping our lane with m8 :D

[Pepperz]

No offense that guide sucks

Show me a better one, or a better way to play him thats different. No guide is 100% accurate all of the time. It's easy to shoot something down without offering any counter evidence. I'm always open to better things, but for a basis that is the best I've found.

[FylleClauze]

5) How do you actually play Armadon?


1.Spec Armadillo.
2.Put back against enemy base.
3.Win.

[Tom]

Show me a better one, or a better way to play him thats different. No guide is 100% accurate all of the time. It's easy to shoot something down without offering any counter evidence. I'm always open to better things, but for a basis that is the best I've found.
Any guide on armadon that reccomends always getting his ult at level 6 isn't really very good.

Also, saying the stats on nomes suck for armadon is just silly. Armadon absolutely needs more mana regen. This is the best way to do it, as it also slightly increases his survivability, something else very important.

Vindicator is food for armadon. 3.5 second silence means nothing when you can attack him twice and bring him down to half life. The typical pub build for vindicator is maxing lore, so lets go by that. Incantation is a different story, but I don't see that much in pubs, but lets put it this way. If you lane a vindicator against an armadon, vindicator is going to get the **** stomped out of him, more so if it's a 2v2 lane.

Hotbl shouldn't be bought over some other items if you are against a team of 5 high magic damage heroes. Blindly buying the item is silly. The extra HP is nice, yes, but there are other better ways to counter a team that has 5 high magic damage heroes on armadon than a hotbl. Headdress should be gotten before hotbl against 5 casters. Keep in mind health trinkets are sold at the outpost, just like lifetube (although you can make headdress out of either).

I could go on about it, but yeah.

[Pepperz]

I will agree with you about the Nomes, but if you read further in the guide he conceeds the point on nomes and says that it can be a good item for armadon. I agree that arma does need more regen, which is why my first item on him is usually a Ring of the Teacher.

I will agree and disagree with you on the vindicator point though, 3.5 second silence when its just you vs him is not a big deal i agree. But in the middle of a team fight when you want to be spamming your 1.5 second slow and 3 second spine it is a big deal. You just went from being able to cast 3-4 spells to 1 spell in that time frame. It severely limits your aoe damage output, if you wan to be casting your slow at all.

I will agree with you on buying Shamans before hotbl in certain cases, but I guess I expect everyone to take a guide with a grain of salt and adapt it to the situation at hand. One could argue that hotbl gives you survivability vs both magic and physical damage, where as shamans only gives you survivability against magic. Early in the game sometimes sheer HP wins out over damage reduction. Also higher hp means more procs of spine burst from the rear quarter which can turn things around for you too as an Armadon.

So I guess I would not say that the entire guide is bad. Are there some things in it which don't make sense all of the time, yes. But its a guide, not the end all be all.

[Theburned]

think I saw him once in competitive play recently he went helm + shamans... he deals a lot of damage if he can just spam spines and auto attack the **** out of people, think they won the game though due to some semi carry

[Anakha]

For reference, I need to update quite a few things on the Armadon guide for mine. The only time he's really been consistently seen in the competitive scene was when spines were stacking incorrectly, so that says something about how viable he is atm.

[yyr_]

Aramdon is somewhere between a tank and a semi-carry. He works as a decent anti-carry (although people are bad and dont play him as one) and can be used to pick off supports. The tankiness is obvious so i will overlook that for the moment. His ability to semi carry comes through with him being able to deal easily 500-1000 physical damage in an AoE over 10 seconds per player at level 7 onwards, which will decimate supports. Because it doesnt need line of sight it means that good support players cant just rely on fog. This inconjunction with getting at least +60 damage from his passive (thats better than soulstealers passive, and his base damage isnt crap) and being unkillable makes him a decent semi-carry.
He works as a good anti-carry because Goo goes through magic immunity meaning that it is a way to really slow down bkb'd carries. Also when he picks up a Frostwolf (WHICH IS AMAZING) its spell-orb procs of snot. This means that he can get 40%+ slows just from ONE snot on a target meaning he can autoattack one person to slow them and being toggleing between two other people. He is probably the only character that can potentially perma-slow 3 targets. Also he is one of the few characters that can justify getting a basher as he is unkillable and late game due to his massive int gain with slight supplement has a large enough mana pool.

You skill build is literally determined by your lane. You should adjust is every game.

Much much better than BH. Any character with permaslow that can intiate is better than BH.

[Roefl]

Armadon, Best tank in the game appearantly.
His spines to a lot damage early and mid game, also in teamfights you can dominate.
Armadon is one of the most annoying heroes to play against imo.

All you need to know is, Mock.
Edit: lane with Nymphora. xD

[Teroof]

All you need to know is, Mock.
Edit: lane with Nymphora. xD

Mock is only good if you can get it fairly early on him - aka around 30m at the most, after that the magic damage becomes a bit neglible compared to Breastplate and the like, which give him more damage from spines as well as more tankiness, which is never to be ignored.

Edit: Glac works too :)

[Horizon]

chalice -> lifetube -> shamans/hotbl (skip shamans if they've got little to no magic damage, which is rare) -> plated boots -> Frostfield Plate or Demonic Breastplate or Sac Stone -> Heart.

skills are quill -> snot -> quill -> armor -> quill -> armor or ult-> quill -> whatever you feel like, but max armor before snot, your ult can wait till 10 and 11 if you want.

You probably won't get to heart, but if you do, congrats, you're probably winning.

[ForevarAlone]

One thing.

Spike + Spike + Spike + Spike + Spike = Kill.
:arma:

[Droggeltasse]

Any guide on armadon that reccomends always getting his ult at level 6 isn't really very good.

Also, saying the stats on nomes suck for armadon is just silly. Armadon absolutely needs more mana regen. This is the best way to do it, as it also slightly increases his survivability, something else very important.

Vindicator is food for armadon. 3.5 second silence means nothing when you can attack him twice and bring him down to half life. The typical pub build for vindicator is maxing lore, so lets go by that. Incantation is a different story, but I don't see that much in pubs, but lets put it this way. If you lane a vindicator against an armadon, vindicator is going to get the **** stomped out of him, more so if it's a 2v2 lane.

Hotbl shouldn't be bought over some other items if you are against a team of 5 high magic damage heroes. Blindly buying the item is silly. The extra HP is nice, yes, but there are other better ways to counter a team that has 5 high magic damage heroes on armadon than a hotbl. Headdress should be gotten before hotbl against 5 casters. Keep in mind health trinkets are sold at the outpost, just like lifetube (although you can make headdress out of either).

I could go on about it, but yeah.

I would not call a guide bad only because it ignores nomes after it was buffed again. You could have easy added this as a comment and it would have been fine.

Your other points are valid in a way that the guide does not discuss "situational" items in detail. But if that makes a guide "bad" you could delete 90% of the premium guide section and flame S2 for creating in game guides that have no space for situational items at all. (the second should be done anyway *g*)

And with vindi it depends: Carry vindi is great against armadon with his true damage and aura (after laning phase) while support vindi is not that usefull.

[Jeffbelittle]

So Armadon: Joke hero or legitimate hero pick in 1800+?

[Dorathor]

So Armadon: Joke hero or legitimate hero pick in 1800+?

Armadon like all DotA heroes has its usefulness against certain lineups but is definately not for ever lineup.

If the opposing team has a lot of heals and armour boosts, Armadon is certainly not your hero. Is like all other physical spelldmg heroes very easily countered by getting lots of the little armour items.
The simple things like getting armour boots + getting nome's/Astrolabe etc. etc. etc. all those little items that give +5 armour really stack up.

[Epidemilk]

And with vindi it depends: Carry vindi is great against armadon with his true damage and aura (after laning phase) while support vindi is not that usefull.

support vindi is NEVER 'that usefull'

(in the long run, i mean.. obviously he's ****ing annoying to lane against with a lot of heroes..)

[DarkAgonizer]

He is very powerful in push setup you just constantly sit in front of enemy tower
get the creep wave if they initiate on you your teammates should come
+ if you get some crazy farm like :PlatedGreaves::HelmOfTheBlackLegio:BarrierIdol::B ehemothsHeart::DaemonicBreastplate:FrostwolfsSkull :
its like yea go kill me

[Droggeltasse]

support vindi is NEVER 'that usefull'

(in the long run, i mean.. obviously he's ****ing annoying to lane against with a lot of heroes..)

Support vindi still is a pain for certain initiators or support heroes that need to chain spells. (of course his ulti is always awsome) Its just that you focus him down in 2 secs, but there are alot of heroes that cant do that and nerfing a :temp: or :behe: that much makes him still a valid support pick.

[Teroof]

Support vindi still is a pain for certain initiators or support heroes that need to chain spells. (of course his ulti is always awsome) Its just that you focus him down in 2 secs, but there are alot of heroes that cant do that and nerfing a :temp: or :behe: that much makes him still a valid support pick.

I find that even if playing support vind, you should never go hardcore support (As in have only boots and bracers), for the sole reason the team benefits so much just from him being around with his aura to silence as well as remove int from dead heroes (Which evidently isn't much - But helps against int carries or mana hungry heroes).

[Jeffbelittle]

Could we get back on track with Armadon please =/

[yyr_]

Epidemilk has some intense hatred of Support vindi... i have seen him hating on it in like every second thread i read ><

[EGNesTea420]

Armadon is a great hero, especially in pubs.

Get an early helm and a level advantage (go mid) and you're almost unkillable lol.



Even later on you can make short work of squishier heroes by just spamming and getting hit from the back.

[NinjeeChop]

Oh my god, what happened to Armadon recently?

Arma used to be my favourite 1v1 hero and one of my favourite 5v5 heroes.

But now, his spikes do **** all damage compared to before.

He is pretty much a tank now rather than a carry.

[Phoenix_NZ]

Oh my god, what happened to Armadon recently?

Arma used to be my favourite 1v1 hero and one of my favourite 5v5 heroes.

But now, his spikes do **** all damage compared to before.

He is pretty much a tank now rather than a carry.

AFAIK his spike damage hasn't been changed? Other than bug fixing for how many times it could stack and when it triggered? What you're saying is that he was your favourite hero when he was broken. Was Chronos and Legionnaire your second favourite heroes?

[NinjeeChop]

AFAIK his spike damage hasn't been changed? Other than bug fixing for how many times it could stack and when it triggered? What you're saying is that he was your favourite hero when he was broken. Was Chronos and Legionnaire your second favourite heroes?

If you think like that, there are many heroes that are broken right now.

Armadon was still beatable before that 'bug'.

I don't know how it changed but now his spikes don't hurt until you spam it for minutes.

[Sweating]

not sure if srs...

arma is THE most ANNOYING hero in the game

1.Takes forever to kill
2.Doesn't need much farm to get tanky( more is better obv)
3.Hard to run away from - find yourself alone vs arma and you have no hope of killing him or running away w/o invis

[NoBo1]

You run around shooting spines and win