Urto
12-02-2009, 10:24 AM
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
In this guide, I will be discussing how to effectively utilize Ophelia. This is my favorite hero and my most played, and there is a lot of things I probably do different from most others, so do not take this guide as an end-all to how to play this hero.
In this guide, I will use a lot of lame idioms for doing well that likely sound as if they belong on some weird 80s sitcom that features Clint Eastwood as a father character. Don't get too freaked out when I mention ripping their bags, fixing their wagons, buttering their bread, or fixing their car.
Introduction
Speaking forthright, Ophelia is not a popular hero. Due to an unconventional style of play, more than half of the people I see playing her do very poorly. Even when understanding the basics of how to play her, she is the most micromanagement intensive hero in the game, which sends playing her into the upper echelons of difficulty. As of the writing of this guide, Ophelia is the least represented hero in the game, showing up in only half a percent of all matches.
Now, I can help you with understanding the basics of how to play her, and I will be sure to mention what ideas here are strictly matters of personal preference and what ideas are a bit more globally accepted. Getting your micromanagement up to par is something I cannot help directly, but there are about a million tips that can really help which I will impart in this guide.
Ophelia takes the cake in terms of diversity, thanks largely to creeps giving her more than four abilities. To this extent, there's a lot of ways to play her. I will try to cover the most common paths a game can take you down based on circumstance, but if you happen to find a niche you like more, don't feel you are doing anything wrong as long as it works! With so many build routes, you are far from limited.
Pros and Cons
PROS
Ophelia has one of the most diverse repertoires out of any hero. Without even touching what you can do once you start selecting creeps, you have a gigantic heal that affects the entire map, a physical variable nuke, one of the most awesome kill assist skills ever, and an ability which allows you to teleport your allied heroes back to the fountain. Add in creeps, and you get a ton of crowd control, as well as the potential to break your support role if the nature of the game dictates that you need do so. Beyond this, you will be able to solo Kongor earlier than any other hero (my record sits at a little under 9 minutes in non-EM games). Being able to jungle from level 1 allows a good laner to really rip it up with the double XP they get! Finally, as an extra bonus, the very fact that she is so underestimated oftentimes will let you take opponents by surprise if you can play her well.
CONS
Ophelia is not perfect and does have quite a few weak points. One big issue for her is that what you need to buy and do is very dynamic. It will change as the game progresses, and making the wrong decisions can be damning. Also, if handling more than one unit in an elegant manor is difficult for you, your allies will suffer as a result. Next, you should be aware that while a good Ophelia can take your foe by surprise (especially in public games), you can just as easily be taken by surprise if your opponent is aware of your cheap tricks. A few cheap investments are the downfall of an underestimating Ophelia. Finally, Ophelia's unique style makes her one of the most direct-to-counter heroes that there is.
WHEN SHOULD I PICK OPHELIA?
Never, ever willingly take Ophelia in a game against a hero that will benefit from your increased firepower. Your team will hate your creeps for making Behemoth's ultimate hit harder or for helping to feed Legionnaire. Glacius is not such a direct counter, but use caution when picking Ophelia against him. If you happen to find yourself being matched up against these heroes due to the game being random or last minute repicks, I'll be providing some pointers in this guide about how to handle poor situations, but as a general rule of thumb, just try to avoid this.
If your team needs a support, take Ophelia. If you're not quite sure what your team lacks, be it damage or tanks or whatever, Ophelia can fill in all the cracks in the pavement. If you need a pusher, Ophelia is unmatched. And if the team is well-balanced and you're already pretty good at Ophelia, go right ahead. She can work well in a lot of games as long as her hard counters aren't present.
SKILL ORDER
1. Command
2. Nature's Wrath
3. Command
4. Nature's Wrath
5. Command
6. Ophelia's Touch
7. Nature's Wrath
8. Nature's Wrath
9. Ophelia's Judgement
10. Ophelia's Judgement / Command
11. Ophelia's Touch
12. Ophelia's Judgement / Command
13. Ophelia's Judgement / Command
14. Ophelia's Judgement / Command
15. Stats
16. Ophelia's Touch
17+. Stats
We take command first because in an ideal game, we will help spread lots of experience around for the whole team by having two solo lanes right from the start. Ophelia can use command to handle the jungle from level 1, no problem.
Nature's Wrath is what we level up at the same time for a couple reasons. First, Ophelia can do ganking very early. Any foolish foe who happens to be hanging around with his life a bit too low will find you coming in from the side of the lane that is supposed to be his escape route, using this to slow him and make him take extra damage. You will also likely have a creep to help butter his bread and as an extra form of crowd control. Second, it's a slight boon to your ability to escape if they come looking to gank you in the jungle.
We do not take the fourth rank of command before the third and fourth rank of Nature's Wrath because it does not allow Ophelia to control a fourth creep and only gives a minor boost to her existing creeps. We put a point in Ophelia's Judgement because, if done right, you will hit level 9 or 10 off Kongor, which is now going to put you into the game a lot more heavily. This can now be your nuke, your instant save for a precious creep, or a save for your ally now that the ganking phase is a bit more pronounced. If you find that you aren't using it as a nuke too much, then grab rank 4 of command whenever you see fit, but always take one point in Ophelia's Judgement first.
THE CREEPS
CATMAN CHAMPION
A generally good creep. High on health, damage, and armor. No crowd control, but has an AoE physical nuke that also slows movement and attack speed. Three of these guys blowing this ability at once can result in some serious bread buttering.
ICE OGRE
These guys are pretty weak. Their ice armor ability is utterly devastating in some cases, but for the most part, you're better off just taking another creep. The most important thing to keep in mind is that if you don't get a Whispering Helm, you will need an Ice Ogre as one of your three command creeps to solo Kongor before 10 minutes transpires
MINOTAUR
Without exception, no solid team is complete without a minotaur. This guy comes with high damage and survivability, a short-ranged AoE stun, and a 15% attack speed aura. I've actually managed to stun certain unfortunate people for nearly 20 seconds straight using a large gaggle of minotaurs.
SKELETON KING
Skeletons Kings have great survivability but poor damage. With a ranged root, they have what is arguably the best move out of any creep. A couple of these and a Snotter Boss will ensure that a lot of your enemies will be failing to escape you.
SNOTTER BOSS
Squishy as all hell, but that movement speed is aura is unmatched in greatness. If you find yourself running away a lot, I suggest a Snotter Boss before boots, unless you like getting away only to have your enemy kill your creeps.
VULTURE LORD
These guys suck in every conceivable way. When a Vulture Lord spawns, it means God hates you. I cannot stress enough that the only time to ever get a Vulture Lord is during your early jungle phase, when it doesn't actually matter what your first creep is, so long as it can take since it will likely die anyways. Vulture Lords have a tornado ability that is easily countered, easy to outrun, and annoying as hell to control. To make matters worse, actually fighting them will often cause them to summon this tornado right on top of your creep army, and it will kill them quickly, meaning you need a minotaur to engage them or to just run away and wait nearly 30 seconds... but the tornado will keep chasing you during that time, so don't try to fight anything else while you wait! Yeah, Vulture Lords suck.
WILD HUNTER
If the creep spawns were cards being randomly drawn from the deck, then getting Wild Hunters is like drawing the card that teaches you how to play poker! You cannot cast Command (or any spell, really) on Wild Hunters. Still, they don't have any annoying abilities and the bounty for killing them is decent, so Wild Hunters are better than a Vulture Lord.
WOLF COMMANDER
Wolf Commanders are squishy, but their damage is alright and they give a 30% damage aura to you, your creeps, and your allies. Your carries will kiss the very ground you walk on, especially if you have the 15% attack speed aura of the minotaur, too. These guys are a massive help in certain setups for soloing Kongor at 10 minutes, which I will discuss later.
THE BIG DEBATE: WHISPERING HELM
Despite the obvious synergy of breaking the cap on your maximum creep counter, Whispering Helm is one of the most controversial items for Ophelia. In fact, I'm likely to be hung for even mentioning it here. Most people will tell you that Ophelia is meant to be played as pure support and that this item is pure garbage. In some cases, this is true. Blindly buying this item is foolhardy.
However, you need to know when you should buy, and the truth of the matter is, I do actually find in my own experience that this is the majority of the time. It helps you push lanes, it helps support the team by making your large army disrupt their lanes (when they see an army of 8 or 9 creeps coming at them, they will scatter), and it allows you to get the three deadly auras offered by creeps (Snotter Boss, Minotaur, and Wold Commander) and still have room for lots of crowd control from skeletons kings and secondary minotaurs. In other words, yes, this item generally rocks, and aside from my starting items, it's usually the very first thing I buy.
Now, even with this out in the open, you do need to accept some brutal truths. First off, no matter how deadly you become as a result of this item, all roads are still leading you down the path of a support hero. In one of my more statistically pleasing matches (http://replays.heroesofnewerth.com/match_replay.php?mid=13956978) as Ophelia, I have gone 17-0 and gotten a legitimate Annihilation kill (and I say legitimate because it wasn't just five kill steals) as Ophelia thanks to the deadly power offered by Whispering Helm, and yet I was still purely support by the time the game was over. When your carries fall behind a bit, the extra creeps you get can and will fill in, but in a perfect world, they take backstage and you spam your powerful support abilities like there's no tomorrow.
Finally, do not get a whispering helm in a game with a behemoth, unless maybe you suspect the behemoth is a complete noob. Don't get other items that increase your creeps, too, such as Puzzlebox (which is appropriate to get against certain stealth heroes, as you will learn). You do not want to find out the hard way that Behemoth's ultimate hits harder than any standalone attack in the game when you're staring him down with fifteen or more creeps and your four allied heroes. There's not many faster ways to send your team home on the shameful genocide road... and to lose about 40 minutes invested into collecting those creeps.
If you do decided to get a whispering helm, remember this golden rule. Because the whispering helm has a much longer cooldown than your command spell and because there is no limit to how many creeps you can control at once with it, your creeps from whispering helm are infinitely more precious than your creeps from command and you should strive to protect them.
Firstly, if you're getting any creeps that die easily (Snotter Boss, Wolf Commander), take them over with control. You don't want to bank your precious five minute helm investment on the creep that is more likely to die.
Next, put all of your non-command creeps and all of your command creeps into two separate control groups. You do this for two reasons. The first reason is that in an emergency in which your creeps may start dying, you can take control of the less precious creeps and use them to distract your foes while your more precious creeps escape to safety. Second, you do this so that if a creep which you took control of with command dies in the midst of a chaotic battle, you can pull up your control group of creeps dominated in this manner, and see that you are missing some, letting you know it is safe to replace them. Otherwise, you just have to play guesswork (the aura from command will affect ALL units under your control that are not Ophelia, so this is the only way you can tell them apart) and cast command to see if one of your existing creeps dies... which can result in you losing a slightly more rare creep that you actually wanted to keep.
As long as you understand what you're supposed to be doing, how to use it, and the rare occasions when getting it is a bad idea, Whispering Helm is a deadly and effective purchase.
THE EARLY GAME: OVERVIEW, ITEMS, CREEPING, GANKING, KONGOR
OVERVIEW
As Ophelia, you will not be seen in the lane at the start. You will buy proper items, head directly to the jungle, take control of a tanking creep with command, and get some serious cash and experience. You will help your friend in the lane next to the jungle gank if the chance arises, in certain cases, you will assist this friend in other ways which I will mention. Finally, you will go solo Kongor, and take the token of life, and then either creep in the jungle for more money or join in on the ganking and pushing phases.
This is all good and fun, but it's not normal for most heroes and so communication is key. Let your allies know you will be in the jungle from the start. Let the person in the lane next to you know that their MIA calls are more important than ever, as you have very little time to react if they decide to go hunting for you in the woods (Try to keep your eye on people who may be coming to gank you yourself, though. It is a very hard thing to call with such short notice). Ask them to let you know if a good chance arises for you to flank the foe with them. Let your allies know you will be killing Kongor very early and that you do not wish to be assisted (because it makes you far more likely to be caught and because you want the gold, experience, and token for yourself). Overarching point? DON'T JUST EXPECT PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE DOING BECAUSE THIS IS THE LEAST UNDERSTOOD HERO IN THE GAME.
ITEMS
So what do you buy first?
You have a lot of options, and you should consider who will be soloing the lane next to you as a factor in this. If you think they may get stomped based on the lineups, consider purchasing a good amount of healing potions and non-stealth wards. Use the wards to forewarn of gank attempts on you or to help cover the rune near you (now aren't you a nice support). Use the healing potions if an important creep gets low (although keep in mind it is alright to let your first few die, which is why taking a vulture lord as your first creep or two is acceptable) or if an emergency comes up with you. Otherwise, save them for when your buddy in the lane has to fall back to the tower cause they are at low life. They'll love you like no other when you pop out of the woods and heal them to full.
Another option is to buy... nothing. Kongor can actually be soloed from any level if you have 4 creeps (courtesy of Whispering Helm) that include an ice ogre, and the extra gold you get for this will really be helpful. If you do go this route, I suggest a mana potion or two at the very least just in case the going gets rough and you have to cast command one time too many. In my own experience, this is the route you will need to go if you wanna kill Kongor as early as 9 minutes.
My personal choice is to just blow all your starting money on a refreshing ornament. To your friend in the lane, it means nothing, and it won't help too much with Kongor, but when you find your two preferred creeps, properly micromanaging between them as tanks with this item will ensure you can keep them alive as long as you want. Beyond this, you mustn't forget that your role is undoubtedly going to be support eventually, and this is how you can start out with the first piece of your astrolabe done.
There's a lot of options for Ophelia in terms of starting items. On this one, you can try what I listed above and it will work decently, or you can experiment and have fun!
CREEPING
So creeping is the big part of the early game for Ophelia thanks to command. You will always be able to tell when an enemy Ophelia is bringing down her team because... well, you'll be able to see her... right there in the lane. In particularly bad cases, you will even see her taking control of lane creeps. Do me a favor and kill her for me.
You, however, are wise and will now learn all there is to know about creeping in the jungle as Ophelia. First off, don't let the jungle stop you from blocking creeps. You may not know it on account of the fact that you never usually go there so early, but the first jungle creeps do not spawn until the 30 second mark, so get back near the barracks, help block your creeps early, and then head to the jungle.
So just to begin, you should familiarize yourself with the creeps I listed up there. These are all the creeps that are going to matter to you in some way or another. I list Wild Hunters because not being able to actually take the spawned creep is of note, of course. Some of these spawns with other creeps that you should never, ever take control of (because they are just weaker versions). There is also those adorable little half-foot tall werewolf guys that spawn where the Snotters sometimes do, which have no good reason for you to take them over. Finally, there is the two types of creeps that you can't take over where the red dots are. In other words, there are more creeps than what is listed up there, but you shouldn't worry too much about them as they're strictly for killing.
You will also notice that there are, aside from the red dots, three colors of dots for creep camps on the minimap. What can spawn at any given camp is based on the camp's color.
The lone camp that is nearly green in color can only spawn Snotters and (what seems to be more likely) those adorable little half-foot tall werewolf men that I just love so much. The fact that that each forest only has one location a Snotter Boss can spot at and that he shares this location with another creep means that S2 Games hates you and that the Snotter Boss is precious creep (and precious is about how I'd describe him with how awesome his aura is and with how quickly he dies.
Next up, there are two camps with a more medium yellow-orange dot. These are the only places where wolf commanders, wild hunters, and ice ogres can spawn. In addition, these will sometimes spawn minotaurs, just because S2 Games hates you and wants to lower your chances of getting wolf commanders and ice ogres even more than if they had just stopped after adding the wild hunter.
Finally, the two dark orange dots are camps that can spawn the creeps that are just awesome. Your beloved tanks/damagers/crowd controllers are all here! The minotaur, the skeleton king, and the catman champion! Unfortunately, S2 Games does still hate you and so this is also where vulture lords spawn.
Hit up the first orange camp right after the 30 second mark. Take control of the primary creep there. It doesn't matter what it is. If it's from an orange camp, it can tank for you. Have him kill his former allies and move along.
If you got a minotaur or catman champion, creeping just got a bit easier. Head to the single weak camp and have them blow their AoE, then rip the monsters in two before your creep can lose any health! Now you're zipping right along!
If your first creep dies, it's fine. It happens all the time. You're focusing on speed early on, so it really doesn't matter.
If you are planning on buying a whispering helm, be sure you put all the creeps you take over with command in their own control group. Also, while you're at it, make a ton of control groups for your different creature types! Your various abilities are a bit more effective when you don't have to tab through your creatures to find the one you want to cast.
Eventually, you will gain rank 2 of command. Both of your creeps should still be orange camp creeps (unless you get a minotaur from one of the medium yellow-orange camps) as you still will lack the offensive firepower and high-ranked aura to not have to worry about incoming creep damage. Here, it all comes down to alternating between the two creeps you own as tanks so that they quit dying. If you run out of mana from having to replace them too much, then you're gonna have to make a trip back to the fountain, putting more time on your Kongor kill.
This process of creeping just goes on and on, broken only by when you either avoid or attempt a gank, or when you are ready to go kill Kongor. When you have three creeps, your problems with them dying should be well and over. If you can find one, I suggest a wolf commander or an ice ogre for your third creep. The wolf commander you will keep, the ice ogre you will replace when you kill Kongor most likely.
Hitting level 6 means your creeps are pretty much invincible while tanking now. Your ultimate will heal all of your creeps to full health. Still, don't be a self-absorbed idiot. Your allies are more important than your creeps since this ability is on a long cooldown without staff of the masters.
GANKING
Ganking comes in two forms: incoming and outgoing.
In terms of incoming, poor communication, poor eyesight, and an overzealous nature are all you have to fear. With a good team and some good intuition (or possibly some well-placed wards), you will be able to avoid incoming ganks from the lane. It sucks having to back down from creeping just to hide for a bit, but consider the fact that it just means they're hunting around for you not getting experience either while your buddy in the lane is getting the double experience still.
Use common sense when deciding whether or not to fight back for an incoming gank attempt. In the jungle, you've truthfully got the advantage, and decent micromanagement will allow you to stomp most people in a fight where they thought they were just going to get you while some creeps wailed on you. Still, don't stick your neck out too far, especially if the people hunting you have got some hardcore nukes and stuns with mana to spare.
If you have wards about, you might see them attempting to take your creeps, which is not only an offense that merits death as a punishment but also a very bad choice on their part, as now they're just waiting to get their teeth kicked in.
In a bad gank situation, try to suicide to the nearby neutrals (hopefully even spending all your money first) and get your creeps to safety.
Outgoing ganks require you to judge the situation fairly and be honest with yourself a lot. Don't run from the far end of the jungle just because one of the two enemy heroes is at half life while standing just on the near side of the river. Just remember that a successful gank is great, whereas an unsuccessful one just takes time out of your creeping and possibly gets you killed.
When you go for a gank, make sure to check the enemy heroes in the other lanes really quick. Some people will go through some tricky baiting measures to keep Ophelia down early in the game. If you feel it's safe, move through the jungle and come out between the target and the road to their base. If your laning buddy advances from the other side, all for the better. Send your creeps in first, cast nature's wrath on the target, then use some creep crowd control to lock them down. Those orange creeps hit hard and you're just making them hit harder, so on a good day this will be enough for a successful gank. Then you can return to the jungle, a job well done.
KONGOR
Everything you do in the early game is building up to a solo Kongor kill. Before I discuss how to kill Kongor, let's cover a few things regarding why you want to do it so badly. You want the token Kongor has. You want it badly. If you're going for a more offensive Ophelia role, people will want you dead. They will blow mass nukes on you, ignoring your creeps, just to get you, and so you need that token. You can also go hardcore support. Teleport your allies back to base, heal them, transfigure your foes... at which point you also need the token cause the only person you'll have a hard time keeping alive is yourself.
Ophelia also has some serious mana issues. Unless you can really get stacked on stats and mana regeneration, getting a staff of the masters ult and an astrolabe will drain you pretty quickly. Luckily being killed with token of life will fully regenerate your mana. Naturally, you don't want to strive to die, but since people will try to kill you anyways as a support, this will likely already happen when you run out of mana. Beyond this, the third Kongor kill drops the cheese, which will send your mana issues down the drain for one solid advance on the enemy base. The sooner you get the first Kongor kill, the sooner you get the third one.
The best reason to kill Kongor, though, is the experience and gold. As if having two solo lanes and a jungler wasn't making this easy enough on experience, soloing Kongor so early will give you 2-3 levels easily.
There are a few ways to handle Kongor, all largely based on the creep party you are using. Be wise about your creeps. Skeleton Kings aren't a great choice for Kongor because there are creeps with just as much survivability that hit harder. It's okay to bring one skeleton king, but no more. Snotter Bosses should not be considered at all. Vulture Lords are okay because their stats are up there with the rest of them, but you need to get rid of them very soon afterwards, as you'll likely be engaging in the lanes more after this. Minotaurs are just awesome, as they help all the other creeps, are excellent tanks, excellent damage, and can stun Kongor if a creep is about to fail to escape him. Catman Champions are also awesome for the equal stats, the nuke, and the ability to slow his attack. Wolf Commanders can't tank too well, but the damage they give to you and your other creeps ensure that they work in a four-creep party. Ice Ogres slow the living hell out of Kongor's attack and give a ton of armor to his target. They are awesome and are necessary to kill Kongor before 10m without using a Whispering Helm to get a fourth creep. Understand these roles for the creeps in your solo Kongor attempt or you will fail.
To me, the simplest method is to blow the first 1850 gold you make creeping at the outpost on a Helm of the Victim and a Hungering Spirit, thus getting you a Whispring Helm. Head back into the woods, take your fourth creep, heal up at the fountain, then go take Kongor down using the methods I'm about to mention. With this setup, it doesn't really matter what creeps you use too much or what level Ophelia is, though having her at level 6 in case of an emergency is always a huge help.
In this guide, I will be discussing how to effectively utilize Ophelia. This is my favorite hero and my most played, and there is a lot of things I probably do different from most others, so do not take this guide as an end-all to how to play this hero.
In this guide, I will use a lot of lame idioms for doing well that likely sound as if they belong on some weird 80s sitcom that features Clint Eastwood as a father character. Don't get too freaked out when I mention ripping their bags, fixing their wagons, buttering their bread, or fixing their car.
Introduction
Speaking forthright, Ophelia is not a popular hero. Due to an unconventional style of play, more than half of the people I see playing her do very poorly. Even when understanding the basics of how to play her, she is the most micromanagement intensive hero in the game, which sends playing her into the upper echelons of difficulty. As of the writing of this guide, Ophelia is the least represented hero in the game, showing up in only half a percent of all matches.
Now, I can help you with understanding the basics of how to play her, and I will be sure to mention what ideas here are strictly matters of personal preference and what ideas are a bit more globally accepted. Getting your micromanagement up to par is something I cannot help directly, but there are about a million tips that can really help which I will impart in this guide.
Ophelia takes the cake in terms of diversity, thanks largely to creeps giving her more than four abilities. To this extent, there's a lot of ways to play her. I will try to cover the most common paths a game can take you down based on circumstance, but if you happen to find a niche you like more, don't feel you are doing anything wrong as long as it works! With so many build routes, you are far from limited.
Pros and Cons
PROS
Ophelia has one of the most diverse repertoires out of any hero. Without even touching what you can do once you start selecting creeps, you have a gigantic heal that affects the entire map, a physical variable nuke, one of the most awesome kill assist skills ever, and an ability which allows you to teleport your allied heroes back to the fountain. Add in creeps, and you get a ton of crowd control, as well as the potential to break your support role if the nature of the game dictates that you need do so. Beyond this, you will be able to solo Kongor earlier than any other hero (my record sits at a little under 9 minutes in non-EM games). Being able to jungle from level 1 allows a good laner to really rip it up with the double XP they get! Finally, as an extra bonus, the very fact that she is so underestimated oftentimes will let you take opponents by surprise if you can play her well.
CONS
Ophelia is not perfect and does have quite a few weak points. One big issue for her is that what you need to buy and do is very dynamic. It will change as the game progresses, and making the wrong decisions can be damning. Also, if handling more than one unit in an elegant manor is difficult for you, your allies will suffer as a result. Next, you should be aware that while a good Ophelia can take your foe by surprise (especially in public games), you can just as easily be taken by surprise if your opponent is aware of your cheap tricks. A few cheap investments are the downfall of an underestimating Ophelia. Finally, Ophelia's unique style makes her one of the most direct-to-counter heroes that there is.
WHEN SHOULD I PICK OPHELIA?
Never, ever willingly take Ophelia in a game against a hero that will benefit from your increased firepower. Your team will hate your creeps for making Behemoth's ultimate hit harder or for helping to feed Legionnaire. Glacius is not such a direct counter, but use caution when picking Ophelia against him. If you happen to find yourself being matched up against these heroes due to the game being random or last minute repicks, I'll be providing some pointers in this guide about how to handle poor situations, but as a general rule of thumb, just try to avoid this.
If your team needs a support, take Ophelia. If you're not quite sure what your team lacks, be it damage or tanks or whatever, Ophelia can fill in all the cracks in the pavement. If you need a pusher, Ophelia is unmatched. And if the team is well-balanced and you're already pretty good at Ophelia, go right ahead. She can work well in a lot of games as long as her hard counters aren't present.
SKILL ORDER
1. Command
2. Nature's Wrath
3. Command
4. Nature's Wrath
5. Command
6. Ophelia's Touch
7. Nature's Wrath
8. Nature's Wrath
9. Ophelia's Judgement
10. Ophelia's Judgement / Command
11. Ophelia's Touch
12. Ophelia's Judgement / Command
13. Ophelia's Judgement / Command
14. Ophelia's Judgement / Command
15. Stats
16. Ophelia's Touch
17+. Stats
We take command first because in an ideal game, we will help spread lots of experience around for the whole team by having two solo lanes right from the start. Ophelia can use command to handle the jungle from level 1, no problem.
Nature's Wrath is what we level up at the same time for a couple reasons. First, Ophelia can do ganking very early. Any foolish foe who happens to be hanging around with his life a bit too low will find you coming in from the side of the lane that is supposed to be his escape route, using this to slow him and make him take extra damage. You will also likely have a creep to help butter his bread and as an extra form of crowd control. Second, it's a slight boon to your ability to escape if they come looking to gank you in the jungle.
We do not take the fourth rank of command before the third and fourth rank of Nature's Wrath because it does not allow Ophelia to control a fourth creep and only gives a minor boost to her existing creeps. We put a point in Ophelia's Judgement because, if done right, you will hit level 9 or 10 off Kongor, which is now going to put you into the game a lot more heavily. This can now be your nuke, your instant save for a precious creep, or a save for your ally now that the ganking phase is a bit more pronounced. If you find that you aren't using it as a nuke too much, then grab rank 4 of command whenever you see fit, but always take one point in Ophelia's Judgement first.
THE CREEPS
CATMAN CHAMPION
A generally good creep. High on health, damage, and armor. No crowd control, but has an AoE physical nuke that also slows movement and attack speed. Three of these guys blowing this ability at once can result in some serious bread buttering.
ICE OGRE
These guys are pretty weak. Their ice armor ability is utterly devastating in some cases, but for the most part, you're better off just taking another creep. The most important thing to keep in mind is that if you don't get a Whispering Helm, you will need an Ice Ogre as one of your three command creeps to solo Kongor before 10 minutes transpires
MINOTAUR
Without exception, no solid team is complete without a minotaur. This guy comes with high damage and survivability, a short-ranged AoE stun, and a 15% attack speed aura. I've actually managed to stun certain unfortunate people for nearly 20 seconds straight using a large gaggle of minotaurs.
SKELETON KING
Skeletons Kings have great survivability but poor damage. With a ranged root, they have what is arguably the best move out of any creep. A couple of these and a Snotter Boss will ensure that a lot of your enemies will be failing to escape you.
SNOTTER BOSS
Squishy as all hell, but that movement speed is aura is unmatched in greatness. If you find yourself running away a lot, I suggest a Snotter Boss before boots, unless you like getting away only to have your enemy kill your creeps.
VULTURE LORD
These guys suck in every conceivable way. When a Vulture Lord spawns, it means God hates you. I cannot stress enough that the only time to ever get a Vulture Lord is during your early jungle phase, when it doesn't actually matter what your first creep is, so long as it can take since it will likely die anyways. Vulture Lords have a tornado ability that is easily countered, easy to outrun, and annoying as hell to control. To make matters worse, actually fighting them will often cause them to summon this tornado right on top of your creep army, and it will kill them quickly, meaning you need a minotaur to engage them or to just run away and wait nearly 30 seconds... but the tornado will keep chasing you during that time, so don't try to fight anything else while you wait! Yeah, Vulture Lords suck.
WILD HUNTER
If the creep spawns were cards being randomly drawn from the deck, then getting Wild Hunters is like drawing the card that teaches you how to play poker! You cannot cast Command (or any spell, really) on Wild Hunters. Still, they don't have any annoying abilities and the bounty for killing them is decent, so Wild Hunters are better than a Vulture Lord.
WOLF COMMANDER
Wolf Commanders are squishy, but their damage is alright and they give a 30% damage aura to you, your creeps, and your allies. Your carries will kiss the very ground you walk on, especially if you have the 15% attack speed aura of the minotaur, too. These guys are a massive help in certain setups for soloing Kongor at 10 minutes, which I will discuss later.
THE BIG DEBATE: WHISPERING HELM
Despite the obvious synergy of breaking the cap on your maximum creep counter, Whispering Helm is one of the most controversial items for Ophelia. In fact, I'm likely to be hung for even mentioning it here. Most people will tell you that Ophelia is meant to be played as pure support and that this item is pure garbage. In some cases, this is true. Blindly buying this item is foolhardy.
However, you need to know when you should buy, and the truth of the matter is, I do actually find in my own experience that this is the majority of the time. It helps you push lanes, it helps support the team by making your large army disrupt their lanes (when they see an army of 8 or 9 creeps coming at them, they will scatter), and it allows you to get the three deadly auras offered by creeps (Snotter Boss, Minotaur, and Wold Commander) and still have room for lots of crowd control from skeletons kings and secondary minotaurs. In other words, yes, this item generally rocks, and aside from my starting items, it's usually the very first thing I buy.
Now, even with this out in the open, you do need to accept some brutal truths. First off, no matter how deadly you become as a result of this item, all roads are still leading you down the path of a support hero. In one of my more statistically pleasing matches (http://replays.heroesofnewerth.com/match_replay.php?mid=13956978) as Ophelia, I have gone 17-0 and gotten a legitimate Annihilation kill (and I say legitimate because it wasn't just five kill steals) as Ophelia thanks to the deadly power offered by Whispering Helm, and yet I was still purely support by the time the game was over. When your carries fall behind a bit, the extra creeps you get can and will fill in, but in a perfect world, they take backstage and you spam your powerful support abilities like there's no tomorrow.
Finally, do not get a whispering helm in a game with a behemoth, unless maybe you suspect the behemoth is a complete noob. Don't get other items that increase your creeps, too, such as Puzzlebox (which is appropriate to get against certain stealth heroes, as you will learn). You do not want to find out the hard way that Behemoth's ultimate hits harder than any standalone attack in the game when you're staring him down with fifteen or more creeps and your four allied heroes. There's not many faster ways to send your team home on the shameful genocide road... and to lose about 40 minutes invested into collecting those creeps.
If you do decided to get a whispering helm, remember this golden rule. Because the whispering helm has a much longer cooldown than your command spell and because there is no limit to how many creeps you can control at once with it, your creeps from whispering helm are infinitely more precious than your creeps from command and you should strive to protect them.
Firstly, if you're getting any creeps that die easily (Snotter Boss, Wolf Commander), take them over with control. You don't want to bank your precious five minute helm investment on the creep that is more likely to die.
Next, put all of your non-command creeps and all of your command creeps into two separate control groups. You do this for two reasons. The first reason is that in an emergency in which your creeps may start dying, you can take control of the less precious creeps and use them to distract your foes while your more precious creeps escape to safety. Second, you do this so that if a creep which you took control of with command dies in the midst of a chaotic battle, you can pull up your control group of creeps dominated in this manner, and see that you are missing some, letting you know it is safe to replace them. Otherwise, you just have to play guesswork (the aura from command will affect ALL units under your control that are not Ophelia, so this is the only way you can tell them apart) and cast command to see if one of your existing creeps dies... which can result in you losing a slightly more rare creep that you actually wanted to keep.
As long as you understand what you're supposed to be doing, how to use it, and the rare occasions when getting it is a bad idea, Whispering Helm is a deadly and effective purchase.
THE EARLY GAME: OVERVIEW, ITEMS, CREEPING, GANKING, KONGOR
OVERVIEW
As Ophelia, you will not be seen in the lane at the start. You will buy proper items, head directly to the jungle, take control of a tanking creep with command, and get some serious cash and experience. You will help your friend in the lane next to the jungle gank if the chance arises, in certain cases, you will assist this friend in other ways which I will mention. Finally, you will go solo Kongor, and take the token of life, and then either creep in the jungle for more money or join in on the ganking and pushing phases.
This is all good and fun, but it's not normal for most heroes and so communication is key. Let your allies know you will be in the jungle from the start. Let the person in the lane next to you know that their MIA calls are more important than ever, as you have very little time to react if they decide to go hunting for you in the woods (Try to keep your eye on people who may be coming to gank you yourself, though. It is a very hard thing to call with such short notice). Ask them to let you know if a good chance arises for you to flank the foe with them. Let your allies know you will be killing Kongor very early and that you do not wish to be assisted (because it makes you far more likely to be caught and because you want the gold, experience, and token for yourself). Overarching point? DON'T JUST EXPECT PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE DOING BECAUSE THIS IS THE LEAST UNDERSTOOD HERO IN THE GAME.
ITEMS
So what do you buy first?
You have a lot of options, and you should consider who will be soloing the lane next to you as a factor in this. If you think they may get stomped based on the lineups, consider purchasing a good amount of healing potions and non-stealth wards. Use the wards to forewarn of gank attempts on you or to help cover the rune near you (now aren't you a nice support). Use the healing potions if an important creep gets low (although keep in mind it is alright to let your first few die, which is why taking a vulture lord as your first creep or two is acceptable) or if an emergency comes up with you. Otherwise, save them for when your buddy in the lane has to fall back to the tower cause they are at low life. They'll love you like no other when you pop out of the woods and heal them to full.
Another option is to buy... nothing. Kongor can actually be soloed from any level if you have 4 creeps (courtesy of Whispering Helm) that include an ice ogre, and the extra gold you get for this will really be helpful. If you do go this route, I suggest a mana potion or two at the very least just in case the going gets rough and you have to cast command one time too many. In my own experience, this is the route you will need to go if you wanna kill Kongor as early as 9 minutes.
My personal choice is to just blow all your starting money on a refreshing ornament. To your friend in the lane, it means nothing, and it won't help too much with Kongor, but when you find your two preferred creeps, properly micromanaging between them as tanks with this item will ensure you can keep them alive as long as you want. Beyond this, you mustn't forget that your role is undoubtedly going to be support eventually, and this is how you can start out with the first piece of your astrolabe done.
There's a lot of options for Ophelia in terms of starting items. On this one, you can try what I listed above and it will work decently, or you can experiment and have fun!
CREEPING
So creeping is the big part of the early game for Ophelia thanks to command. You will always be able to tell when an enemy Ophelia is bringing down her team because... well, you'll be able to see her... right there in the lane. In particularly bad cases, you will even see her taking control of lane creeps. Do me a favor and kill her for me.
You, however, are wise and will now learn all there is to know about creeping in the jungle as Ophelia. First off, don't let the jungle stop you from blocking creeps. You may not know it on account of the fact that you never usually go there so early, but the first jungle creeps do not spawn until the 30 second mark, so get back near the barracks, help block your creeps early, and then head to the jungle.
So just to begin, you should familiarize yourself with the creeps I listed up there. These are all the creeps that are going to matter to you in some way or another. I list Wild Hunters because not being able to actually take the spawned creep is of note, of course. Some of these spawns with other creeps that you should never, ever take control of (because they are just weaker versions). There is also those adorable little half-foot tall werewolf guys that spawn where the Snotters sometimes do, which have no good reason for you to take them over. Finally, there is the two types of creeps that you can't take over where the red dots are. In other words, there are more creeps than what is listed up there, but you shouldn't worry too much about them as they're strictly for killing.
You will also notice that there are, aside from the red dots, three colors of dots for creep camps on the minimap. What can spawn at any given camp is based on the camp's color.
The lone camp that is nearly green in color can only spawn Snotters and (what seems to be more likely) those adorable little half-foot tall werewolf men that I just love so much. The fact that that each forest only has one location a Snotter Boss can spot at and that he shares this location with another creep means that S2 Games hates you and that the Snotter Boss is precious creep (and precious is about how I'd describe him with how awesome his aura is and with how quickly he dies.
Next up, there are two camps with a more medium yellow-orange dot. These are the only places where wolf commanders, wild hunters, and ice ogres can spawn. In addition, these will sometimes spawn minotaurs, just because S2 Games hates you and wants to lower your chances of getting wolf commanders and ice ogres even more than if they had just stopped after adding the wild hunter.
Finally, the two dark orange dots are camps that can spawn the creeps that are just awesome. Your beloved tanks/damagers/crowd controllers are all here! The minotaur, the skeleton king, and the catman champion! Unfortunately, S2 Games does still hate you and so this is also where vulture lords spawn.
Hit up the first orange camp right after the 30 second mark. Take control of the primary creep there. It doesn't matter what it is. If it's from an orange camp, it can tank for you. Have him kill his former allies and move along.
If you got a minotaur or catman champion, creeping just got a bit easier. Head to the single weak camp and have them blow their AoE, then rip the monsters in two before your creep can lose any health! Now you're zipping right along!
If your first creep dies, it's fine. It happens all the time. You're focusing on speed early on, so it really doesn't matter.
If you are planning on buying a whispering helm, be sure you put all the creeps you take over with command in their own control group. Also, while you're at it, make a ton of control groups for your different creature types! Your various abilities are a bit more effective when you don't have to tab through your creatures to find the one you want to cast.
Eventually, you will gain rank 2 of command. Both of your creeps should still be orange camp creeps (unless you get a minotaur from one of the medium yellow-orange camps) as you still will lack the offensive firepower and high-ranked aura to not have to worry about incoming creep damage. Here, it all comes down to alternating between the two creeps you own as tanks so that they quit dying. If you run out of mana from having to replace them too much, then you're gonna have to make a trip back to the fountain, putting more time on your Kongor kill.
This process of creeping just goes on and on, broken only by when you either avoid or attempt a gank, or when you are ready to go kill Kongor. When you have three creeps, your problems with them dying should be well and over. If you can find one, I suggest a wolf commander or an ice ogre for your third creep. The wolf commander you will keep, the ice ogre you will replace when you kill Kongor most likely.
Hitting level 6 means your creeps are pretty much invincible while tanking now. Your ultimate will heal all of your creeps to full health. Still, don't be a self-absorbed idiot. Your allies are more important than your creeps since this ability is on a long cooldown without staff of the masters.
GANKING
Ganking comes in two forms: incoming and outgoing.
In terms of incoming, poor communication, poor eyesight, and an overzealous nature are all you have to fear. With a good team and some good intuition (or possibly some well-placed wards), you will be able to avoid incoming ganks from the lane. It sucks having to back down from creeping just to hide for a bit, but consider the fact that it just means they're hunting around for you not getting experience either while your buddy in the lane is getting the double experience still.
Use common sense when deciding whether or not to fight back for an incoming gank attempt. In the jungle, you've truthfully got the advantage, and decent micromanagement will allow you to stomp most people in a fight where they thought they were just going to get you while some creeps wailed on you. Still, don't stick your neck out too far, especially if the people hunting you have got some hardcore nukes and stuns with mana to spare.
If you have wards about, you might see them attempting to take your creeps, which is not only an offense that merits death as a punishment but also a very bad choice on their part, as now they're just waiting to get their teeth kicked in.
In a bad gank situation, try to suicide to the nearby neutrals (hopefully even spending all your money first) and get your creeps to safety.
Outgoing ganks require you to judge the situation fairly and be honest with yourself a lot. Don't run from the far end of the jungle just because one of the two enemy heroes is at half life while standing just on the near side of the river. Just remember that a successful gank is great, whereas an unsuccessful one just takes time out of your creeping and possibly gets you killed.
When you go for a gank, make sure to check the enemy heroes in the other lanes really quick. Some people will go through some tricky baiting measures to keep Ophelia down early in the game. If you feel it's safe, move through the jungle and come out between the target and the road to their base. If your laning buddy advances from the other side, all for the better. Send your creeps in first, cast nature's wrath on the target, then use some creep crowd control to lock them down. Those orange creeps hit hard and you're just making them hit harder, so on a good day this will be enough for a successful gank. Then you can return to the jungle, a job well done.
KONGOR
Everything you do in the early game is building up to a solo Kongor kill. Before I discuss how to kill Kongor, let's cover a few things regarding why you want to do it so badly. You want the token Kongor has. You want it badly. If you're going for a more offensive Ophelia role, people will want you dead. They will blow mass nukes on you, ignoring your creeps, just to get you, and so you need that token. You can also go hardcore support. Teleport your allies back to base, heal them, transfigure your foes... at which point you also need the token cause the only person you'll have a hard time keeping alive is yourself.
Ophelia also has some serious mana issues. Unless you can really get stacked on stats and mana regeneration, getting a staff of the masters ult and an astrolabe will drain you pretty quickly. Luckily being killed with token of life will fully regenerate your mana. Naturally, you don't want to strive to die, but since people will try to kill you anyways as a support, this will likely already happen when you run out of mana. Beyond this, the third Kongor kill drops the cheese, which will send your mana issues down the drain for one solid advance on the enemy base. The sooner you get the first Kongor kill, the sooner you get the third one.
The best reason to kill Kongor, though, is the experience and gold. As if having two solo lanes and a jungler wasn't making this easy enough on experience, soloing Kongor so early will give you 2-3 levels easily.
There are a few ways to handle Kongor, all largely based on the creep party you are using. Be wise about your creeps. Skeleton Kings aren't a great choice for Kongor because there are creeps with just as much survivability that hit harder. It's okay to bring one skeleton king, but no more. Snotter Bosses should not be considered at all. Vulture Lords are okay because their stats are up there with the rest of them, but you need to get rid of them very soon afterwards, as you'll likely be engaging in the lanes more after this. Minotaurs are just awesome, as they help all the other creeps, are excellent tanks, excellent damage, and can stun Kongor if a creep is about to fail to escape him. Catman Champions are also awesome for the equal stats, the nuke, and the ability to slow his attack. Wolf Commanders can't tank too well, but the damage they give to you and your other creeps ensure that they work in a four-creep party. Ice Ogres slow the living hell out of Kongor's attack and give a ton of armor to his target. They are awesome and are necessary to kill Kongor before 10m without using a Whispering Helm to get a fourth creep. Understand these roles for the creeps in your solo Kongor attempt or you will fail.
To me, the simplest method is to blow the first 1850 gold you make creeping at the outpost on a Helm of the Victim and a Hungering Spirit, thus getting you a Whispring Helm. Head back into the woods, take your fourth creep, heal up at the fountain, then go take Kongor down using the methods I'm about to mention. With this setup, it doesn't really matter what creeps you use too much or what level Ophelia is, though having her at level 6 in case of an emergency is always a huge help.