damancy
11-30-2009, 01:10 AM
Glacius is by far the hardest int heroes to not feed with. With a low starting stat and stat gain, horrible attack animation (compare to other heroes in HoN, not dota) and sub par movement speed, its not hard to imagine why a lot of people fail with him miserably. Yet he remains one of the best support heroes by having a global mana regeneration passive skill. This guide is intended for non-em use only. I don't believe that glacius should be used at all in EM mode simply because he loses power way too fast to be useful. I personally also hate guides that cover their lack of content with pictures (a personal grudge that is) so there is going to be no pictures.
Glacius is for the people who like to play the team support. The best glacius should have a few kills, 0 deaths and insane amounts assists. If you don't like to help your team and want to pad your stats, turn away now.
Basic Stats Analysis:
Base walking speed: 290
Lucky for us Glacius users, this have been buffed. However it is still sub par compared with the rest of the heroes. You will have a hard time running to or away from a fight. This is why portal key is essential. It helps with the chase, it helps you get away, especially against melee attackers as you can use any of your 2 disables, walk away for 4 second and then blink onto a ledge. This is also why it is important that YOU DO NOT BUY STEAM BOOTS ON HIM. You do get 10 points of strength, which turns out to be 170 hp, but you will still wont be able to get away from anybody 80% of the time. The attack speed boost is wasted since you shouldn't be relying on your attack on any heroes at all. A better choice on him is either post haste or plated grieves. I personally prefer plated grieves since it helps with the survival by giving you +5 armor which glacius desperately needs and also it gives +3 stats to everything. Not only that, it gives 70 MS as opposed to the 60 MS that steam boots gives you. You will need that extra move speed to kite around the forest if there is some one chasing you. Of course if you were able to farm a post haste with no problem you should always go for it as it gives you the most MS and it will help you with ganks, defs, and kiting.
Starting Armor: 1.24
Again this is pathetic compared to other heroes. You will only have 6.9% reduction against any auto attacks off the top and each level will only give you .8% more. This is why I favor the plated grieves as my boot of choice. By having played grieves your armor reduction will be boosted to 29% before activating it. After activating the grieves, it will become 34.2% reduction. To put it in perspective, every 4 hits you take with the same damage, one of the hits will be negated. This is huge especially when glacius have horrible starting strength and strength gain.
Starting Strength: 16 Strength gain: 1.7
Both his starting strength and his strength gain is horrible. There is no way you would survive till later on with out some sort of stat boosting item from the start. He starts off with 454 hp and next to 0 armor. That means if the opponent hits you with 9 hits consecutively, you will die at level 1. This is extremely easy to do with a help of a stun. Having a low strength also means that the HP regeneration rate is horrible so unless you have some regenerative items you will be going back to the fountain a lot and lose a lot of gold and exp.
Starting Agility: 16 Agility Gain: 1.6
Again this is horrible, but considering that he does not attack much, this can be safely ignored.
Starting Intelligence: 21 Intelligence gain: 2.9
Comparing this to most intel heroes, this is pretty right in the middle. Not too shabby, and not too good. With his chilling presence though, you and your team mates will hardly go back to fountain just for mana.
Other informations:
Cast point/backswing: 0.3/0.24
Damage point/backswing: 0.45/0.75
Sight range day/night: 1800/800
Missile speed: 1000
Turn rate: 0.45
His attacks is simply horrible. Coupled with his low starting damage and slow missile speed, it will be a miracle if you can get gold in lane.The only one with a slower missile speed then glacius is defiler and even with defiler, her back swing time is a lot faster. That is why that during in lane, it will be your job to harass with your attacks. Take advantage of your long 600 range and force the other sides to move back if they are melee. This is also why who ever plays glacius should be the control tower for the team. You should keep an eye out on all lanes, stay back (but within the exp range) and let your team know who is missing. You should not be concentrating on last hitting at all. Any decent player will out last hit you any way. Why bother trying when you can help your team more by keeping and eye on the mini map then getting more gold and denies.
Skill Analysis:
Tundra Blast:
It is a classic AoE slowing nuke, dealing 280 damage at max level. Now whats interesting about this nuke is that it has a really fast cast time so you will not have to predict where the opponent will end up like the other aoe stuns and slows. You can easily use this through the trees as this have a long cast range and radius (700 range + 400 radius which means that it can hit something that devours gutting hook cant). Personally I like this spell a lot more then Ice imprisonment as a first level spell simply because ice imprisonment is not a true stun. They are rooted in place for only 1.5 seconds but still can cast stunning spells which will save them from a low level kill attempt. With tundra blast however, even if they use a stun spell while slowed, it is going to be a lot easier to catch up to them if they are slowed for 4 second. Not to mention that you can use this spell to last hit and harass at the same time if you really need the extra gold. Like any other nuke, it loses its luster at mid/late game. Then this spell becomes purely to help your carries to finish their job. Also note that you should almost never use this spell on an ice imprisonment target. wait until the imprisonment is over before casting tundra blast. That way you maximize the length that they have a snare debuff on them.
Ice Imprisonment:
This is weaker then your classic click and stun spell since they can still cast spells during the imprisonment. The interesting point about this spell is that if you use this on a creep, they will be frozen for 10 second, taking 700 damage total. By no means you should use this spell to jungle though, but if you are going to go back to base to heal up, you should cast this on a random neutral creep so that you get some extra gold. You can also use this in between ganks to boost your gold as this spell only have a 10 second cool down. I like to keep this spell at level 1 at low level because of this reason. At level 1 it is only 115 mana to cast and you can regenerate it all back really quickly with his aura. This spell deals 210 damage to the target at max level (another reason to max your tundra blast over ice imprisonment first).
Chilling presence:
This is the most important skill that you have. Max this skill out ASAP. There is no reason for you not to do so. 2 mana per second might not seem a lot but it adds up.
Glacial Downpour:
I hate this spell. It costs way too much mana and does random damage. This is still a good spell to use as a clean up spell after a team fight where everyone is running. Never use this spell to initiate as 10 million stuns will be targeted at you.
Skill build:
lvl1 Tundra blast
lvl2 chilling presence
lvl3 Ice imprisonment
lvl4 chilling presence
lvl5 chilling presence
lvl6 Tundra blast/ice imprisonment
lvl7 chilling presence
lvl8 tundra blast/ice imprisonment
lvl9 tundra blast/ice imprisonment
lvl10 Ice imprisonment/tundra blast
lvl11 ice imprisonment/tundra blast
lvl12 ice imprisonment/tundra blast
lvl13 Glacial downpour
lvl14 glacial downpour
lvl15 stat
lvl16 glacial downpour
Tundra blasts is gotten first. I find that 4 second of slow is a lot more useful then 1.5 seconds of imprisonment. while being ice imprisonment is useful, they can still stun you and your lane mate back. Not to mention you can use it to last hit creeps and harass at the same time for a low cost of 100 mana. It also cost 10 mana less then imprisonment so you can use it more often then imprisonment.
At second level, your team mates would have most likely at least used 1 spell and the chilling presence will keep them nice and topped up.
At third level ice imprisonment is gotten just so that you have 2 disables at your disposal in case you need it.
Chilling presence is maxed at this point first because it will help your team overall to cast a lot more spell then the opposing team.
Glacial downpour is never good at level 6, you simply do not have the mana pool to support casting this spell. As soon as you cast this spell you will have next to 0 mana. It will be more benificial to your team if you casted either tundra blast or ice imprisonment a few more times.
I personally like to max tundra blast next as it gives the most burst damage, but if your team needs it, you can also max ice imprisonment first for maximizing the disable time.
After level 13, you would have a larger mana pool to support the mana intensive glacial downpour so it is maxed at this point. Still refrain from using it unless it is necessary since it will still consume a large portion of your mana pool. I find the best way to use glacial down pour is to use it to draw fire power away from your half dead teammates and force your opponent to focus on you instead. Just to be sure that you activated both your grieves/astrolabe/barrier idol first though as you do not have that much hp.
Item build:
You are the support. You should make items that benefit the team and at the same time it needs to be cheap because you cannot last hit or farm. Hence i bring you the totem hoard.
Minor Totem X4 212G
Runes of blight X1 90G
Health PotionX1 100G
Monkey courierX1 200G
-----------------------------
602G
Monkey courier can be replaced with ward of sight if someone else got the monkey already. You should buy at least 1 set of wards on the courier at all times for your teammates to use.
Minor totem is the most cost effective stat boosting item in the game, having 4 of them only cost 212G as opposed to 2 pretenders crown which will cost 370 gold. Also minor totem can actually turn into things that are beneficial to the team which brings us to the core build.
Astrolabe 2306G
Plated Grieves 1503G
---------------------------
Total 3809G
What you get:
250hp Burst heal
8 intelligence
8 agility (which gives you 1.12 more point in armor)
8 strength (which gives you 152HP and 0.24HP regen)
10 Armor
4 additional armor after activating both
block 10 damage each hit after activating
3hp regeneration per second
70 Movespeed
Astrolabe gives your team 250 hp burst heal and coupled with plated grieves armor boost, it gives your team +4 armor and 10 damage more damage reduction. The only thing that is wasted is the +8 agility
Lets also compare this with the standard build
Fortified bracelet X2 1020G
Steam boots 1450G
Shrunken head 3900G
---------------------------------
Total 6370G
What you get:
22 Strength (which gives you 418 hp and 0.66hp regen)
6 Agility (Which gives you .84 armor)
6 Intelligence
+25 attack speed
+24 damage
Magic Immunity for 5-10 seconds
Compared to my build, you save 2561, that is almost half the price of of the traditional build. By going my build you also get +14 armor,250 hp burst heals, 2 intelligence, 10 damage reduction, save 2 more item slots, it is easier to build up, 3 hp regeneration per second and also 10 extra move speed.
The things you lose by going my build:
25 attack speed<<< useless to you since you are a caster
24 damage <<<< same as above
14 Strength <<< you lose 266 hp, but you get a 250 burst heal and 14 armors to boot.
Magic immunity
Granted, magic immunity is helpful while you are casting your ultimate, but the thing is IT DOES NOT HELP YOUR TEAM MATE AT ALL. In fact, I find that shrunken head is counter productive. All that you are gonna do by activating shrunken head is to let another high dps team mate get focused on by stuns and spell instead for 5 seconds. Last time I checked Glacius is a support hero, not a carry. You want to draw a target on your head. It is your job to help your carry survive.
After getting these 2 items, you can either just be a ward ***** or start to work on the other important items.
Other important items:
Barrier idol 3653G
Portal Key 2150G (hey look, its the money you could be saving with geico insurance.... i mean with my build)
After these 2 items, you should go for either go for Barrier Idol or portal key.
Barrier idol helps with your survival against nukes since you have plenty of armor to ward of physical damage now, second it helps your team mate soak up some magical damage in team fights. Along with astrolabe, your team goes into battle with 600 + hp which is huge.
Portal key is just portal key. It helps saves your lives, helps you initiate ganks, or just to get to a lane faster to farm. This item have way too much versatility and it is considered one of the most influential item in both HoN and Dota. You will need this on Glacius especially since his move speed is so slow.
Luxury Items:
Behemoth's Heart 5500G
Staff of Master 4300G
Totem of Kuldra 5675G
Storm Spirit 2800G
These are the 4 Luxury items that you can consider after building the core and other important items. Personally I like Storm spirit the best out of this list as it is easy to build up, gives you extra movement speed and probably the most unknown use of all, it can semi-counter a shrunken head (when someone with activated shrunken head is chasing you, use the item on yourself to buy some time for your disables). Behemoths heart lowers your cool down and helps you tank a few more spells when you casts your ultimate, Staff of master boosts your ultimate and your tank-ability, and totem of kuldra is always good to have on the team.
Glacius is for the people who like to play the team support. The best glacius should have a few kills, 0 deaths and insane amounts assists. If you don't like to help your team and want to pad your stats, turn away now.
Basic Stats Analysis:
Base walking speed: 290
Lucky for us Glacius users, this have been buffed. However it is still sub par compared with the rest of the heroes. You will have a hard time running to or away from a fight. This is why portal key is essential. It helps with the chase, it helps you get away, especially against melee attackers as you can use any of your 2 disables, walk away for 4 second and then blink onto a ledge. This is also why it is important that YOU DO NOT BUY STEAM BOOTS ON HIM. You do get 10 points of strength, which turns out to be 170 hp, but you will still wont be able to get away from anybody 80% of the time. The attack speed boost is wasted since you shouldn't be relying on your attack on any heroes at all. A better choice on him is either post haste or plated grieves. I personally prefer plated grieves since it helps with the survival by giving you +5 armor which glacius desperately needs and also it gives +3 stats to everything. Not only that, it gives 70 MS as opposed to the 60 MS that steam boots gives you. You will need that extra move speed to kite around the forest if there is some one chasing you. Of course if you were able to farm a post haste with no problem you should always go for it as it gives you the most MS and it will help you with ganks, defs, and kiting.
Starting Armor: 1.24
Again this is pathetic compared to other heroes. You will only have 6.9% reduction against any auto attacks off the top and each level will only give you .8% more. This is why I favor the plated grieves as my boot of choice. By having played grieves your armor reduction will be boosted to 29% before activating it. After activating the grieves, it will become 34.2% reduction. To put it in perspective, every 4 hits you take with the same damage, one of the hits will be negated. This is huge especially when glacius have horrible starting strength and strength gain.
Starting Strength: 16 Strength gain: 1.7
Both his starting strength and his strength gain is horrible. There is no way you would survive till later on with out some sort of stat boosting item from the start. He starts off with 454 hp and next to 0 armor. That means if the opponent hits you with 9 hits consecutively, you will die at level 1. This is extremely easy to do with a help of a stun. Having a low strength also means that the HP regeneration rate is horrible so unless you have some regenerative items you will be going back to the fountain a lot and lose a lot of gold and exp.
Starting Agility: 16 Agility Gain: 1.6
Again this is horrible, but considering that he does not attack much, this can be safely ignored.
Starting Intelligence: 21 Intelligence gain: 2.9
Comparing this to most intel heroes, this is pretty right in the middle. Not too shabby, and not too good. With his chilling presence though, you and your team mates will hardly go back to fountain just for mana.
Other informations:
Cast point/backswing: 0.3/0.24
Damage point/backswing: 0.45/0.75
Sight range day/night: 1800/800
Missile speed: 1000
Turn rate: 0.45
His attacks is simply horrible. Coupled with his low starting damage and slow missile speed, it will be a miracle if you can get gold in lane.The only one with a slower missile speed then glacius is defiler and even with defiler, her back swing time is a lot faster. That is why that during in lane, it will be your job to harass with your attacks. Take advantage of your long 600 range and force the other sides to move back if they are melee. This is also why who ever plays glacius should be the control tower for the team. You should keep an eye out on all lanes, stay back (but within the exp range) and let your team know who is missing. You should not be concentrating on last hitting at all. Any decent player will out last hit you any way. Why bother trying when you can help your team more by keeping and eye on the mini map then getting more gold and denies.
Skill Analysis:
Tundra Blast:
It is a classic AoE slowing nuke, dealing 280 damage at max level. Now whats interesting about this nuke is that it has a really fast cast time so you will not have to predict where the opponent will end up like the other aoe stuns and slows. You can easily use this through the trees as this have a long cast range and radius (700 range + 400 radius which means that it can hit something that devours gutting hook cant). Personally I like this spell a lot more then Ice imprisonment as a first level spell simply because ice imprisonment is not a true stun. They are rooted in place for only 1.5 seconds but still can cast stunning spells which will save them from a low level kill attempt. With tundra blast however, even if they use a stun spell while slowed, it is going to be a lot easier to catch up to them if they are slowed for 4 second. Not to mention that you can use this spell to last hit and harass at the same time if you really need the extra gold. Like any other nuke, it loses its luster at mid/late game. Then this spell becomes purely to help your carries to finish their job. Also note that you should almost never use this spell on an ice imprisonment target. wait until the imprisonment is over before casting tundra blast. That way you maximize the length that they have a snare debuff on them.
Ice Imprisonment:
This is weaker then your classic click and stun spell since they can still cast spells during the imprisonment. The interesting point about this spell is that if you use this on a creep, they will be frozen for 10 second, taking 700 damage total. By no means you should use this spell to jungle though, but if you are going to go back to base to heal up, you should cast this on a random neutral creep so that you get some extra gold. You can also use this in between ganks to boost your gold as this spell only have a 10 second cool down. I like to keep this spell at level 1 at low level because of this reason. At level 1 it is only 115 mana to cast and you can regenerate it all back really quickly with his aura. This spell deals 210 damage to the target at max level (another reason to max your tundra blast over ice imprisonment first).
Chilling presence:
This is the most important skill that you have. Max this skill out ASAP. There is no reason for you not to do so. 2 mana per second might not seem a lot but it adds up.
Glacial Downpour:
I hate this spell. It costs way too much mana and does random damage. This is still a good spell to use as a clean up spell after a team fight where everyone is running. Never use this spell to initiate as 10 million stuns will be targeted at you.
Skill build:
lvl1 Tundra blast
lvl2 chilling presence
lvl3 Ice imprisonment
lvl4 chilling presence
lvl5 chilling presence
lvl6 Tundra blast/ice imprisonment
lvl7 chilling presence
lvl8 tundra blast/ice imprisonment
lvl9 tundra blast/ice imprisonment
lvl10 Ice imprisonment/tundra blast
lvl11 ice imprisonment/tundra blast
lvl12 ice imprisonment/tundra blast
lvl13 Glacial downpour
lvl14 glacial downpour
lvl15 stat
lvl16 glacial downpour
Tundra blasts is gotten first. I find that 4 second of slow is a lot more useful then 1.5 seconds of imprisonment. while being ice imprisonment is useful, they can still stun you and your lane mate back. Not to mention you can use it to last hit creeps and harass at the same time for a low cost of 100 mana. It also cost 10 mana less then imprisonment so you can use it more often then imprisonment.
At second level, your team mates would have most likely at least used 1 spell and the chilling presence will keep them nice and topped up.
At third level ice imprisonment is gotten just so that you have 2 disables at your disposal in case you need it.
Chilling presence is maxed at this point first because it will help your team overall to cast a lot more spell then the opposing team.
Glacial downpour is never good at level 6, you simply do not have the mana pool to support casting this spell. As soon as you cast this spell you will have next to 0 mana. It will be more benificial to your team if you casted either tundra blast or ice imprisonment a few more times.
I personally like to max tundra blast next as it gives the most burst damage, but if your team needs it, you can also max ice imprisonment first for maximizing the disable time.
After level 13, you would have a larger mana pool to support the mana intensive glacial downpour so it is maxed at this point. Still refrain from using it unless it is necessary since it will still consume a large portion of your mana pool. I find the best way to use glacial down pour is to use it to draw fire power away from your half dead teammates and force your opponent to focus on you instead. Just to be sure that you activated both your grieves/astrolabe/barrier idol first though as you do not have that much hp.
Item build:
You are the support. You should make items that benefit the team and at the same time it needs to be cheap because you cannot last hit or farm. Hence i bring you the totem hoard.
Minor Totem X4 212G
Runes of blight X1 90G
Health PotionX1 100G
Monkey courierX1 200G
-----------------------------
602G
Monkey courier can be replaced with ward of sight if someone else got the monkey already. You should buy at least 1 set of wards on the courier at all times for your teammates to use.
Minor totem is the most cost effective stat boosting item in the game, having 4 of them only cost 212G as opposed to 2 pretenders crown which will cost 370 gold. Also minor totem can actually turn into things that are beneficial to the team which brings us to the core build.
Astrolabe 2306G
Plated Grieves 1503G
---------------------------
Total 3809G
What you get:
250hp Burst heal
8 intelligence
8 agility (which gives you 1.12 more point in armor)
8 strength (which gives you 152HP and 0.24HP regen)
10 Armor
4 additional armor after activating both
block 10 damage each hit after activating
3hp regeneration per second
70 Movespeed
Astrolabe gives your team 250 hp burst heal and coupled with plated grieves armor boost, it gives your team +4 armor and 10 damage more damage reduction. The only thing that is wasted is the +8 agility
Lets also compare this with the standard build
Fortified bracelet X2 1020G
Steam boots 1450G
Shrunken head 3900G
---------------------------------
Total 6370G
What you get:
22 Strength (which gives you 418 hp and 0.66hp regen)
6 Agility (Which gives you .84 armor)
6 Intelligence
+25 attack speed
+24 damage
Magic Immunity for 5-10 seconds
Compared to my build, you save 2561, that is almost half the price of of the traditional build. By going my build you also get +14 armor,250 hp burst heals, 2 intelligence, 10 damage reduction, save 2 more item slots, it is easier to build up, 3 hp regeneration per second and also 10 extra move speed.
The things you lose by going my build:
25 attack speed<<< useless to you since you are a caster
24 damage <<<< same as above
14 Strength <<< you lose 266 hp, but you get a 250 burst heal and 14 armors to boot.
Magic immunity
Granted, magic immunity is helpful while you are casting your ultimate, but the thing is IT DOES NOT HELP YOUR TEAM MATE AT ALL. In fact, I find that shrunken head is counter productive. All that you are gonna do by activating shrunken head is to let another high dps team mate get focused on by stuns and spell instead for 5 seconds. Last time I checked Glacius is a support hero, not a carry. You want to draw a target on your head. It is your job to help your carry survive.
After getting these 2 items, you can either just be a ward ***** or start to work on the other important items.
Other important items:
Barrier idol 3653G
Portal Key 2150G (hey look, its the money you could be saving with geico insurance.... i mean with my build)
After these 2 items, you should go for either go for Barrier Idol or portal key.
Barrier idol helps with your survival against nukes since you have plenty of armor to ward of physical damage now, second it helps your team mate soak up some magical damage in team fights. Along with astrolabe, your team goes into battle with 600 + hp which is huge.
Portal key is just portal key. It helps saves your lives, helps you initiate ganks, or just to get to a lane faster to farm. This item have way too much versatility and it is considered one of the most influential item in both HoN and Dota. You will need this on Glacius especially since his move speed is so slow.
Luxury Items:
Behemoth's Heart 5500G
Staff of Master 4300G
Totem of Kuldra 5675G
Storm Spirit 2800G
These are the 4 Luxury items that you can consider after building the core and other important items. Personally I like Storm spirit the best out of this list as it is easy to build up, gives you extra movement speed and probably the most unknown use of all, it can semi-counter a shrunken head (when someone with activated shrunken head is chasing you, use the item on yourself to buy some time for your disables). Behemoths heart lowers your cool down and helps you tank a few more spells when you casts your ultimate, Staff of master boosts your ultimate and your tank-ability, and totem of kuldra is always good to have on the team.