Torturer
"I came to bring the pain"
Strength: 16 + 1.5 per level
Agility: 23 + 1.7 per level
Intelligence: 26 + 3.0 per level
Damage: 45 - 49
Armor: 3.22
Movement Speed: 305
Attack Range: 600
Fluff
Many years ago, the Torturer was just a dying man who made a pact to serve the Hellbourne in exchange for eternal life. However, to ensure his loyalty without the distraction of physical temptations, the Hellbourne stripped the man of his physical body leaving the pure energy of destruction, agony, and hate.
Table of Contents
- What you need to know
- Pros/Cons
- Skills
- Skill build
- Items
- Strategy
- Skill use and Synergies
- Friends and Foes
What you need to know
Int heroes in general trade their health and survivability for powerful abilities. Torturer takes this idea to the extreme. He has a low str gain while being most effective at close range. At the same time, he has 4 high-damage nukes and a huge mana pool to draw from.
The key to a dominating Torturer is a good early game. A Torturer who picks up a few PK's (player kills) or good farm in his lane will get his items and just roll the enemy team. However, the triple threat of low health, close range abilities, and lack of escape mechanisms means that a Torturer can get "locked out" of his item buildup. Each death delays the items he needs to stop dieing.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Versatile laner with a good presence
Scales well early-late
Extreme damage dealer from multiple sources
Can push towers effectively
Cons
Easily ganked and shut down
His stun is pretty bad
Item dependent for an int hero.
Skills
Chain Reaction
The Torturer summons powerful chains at a target location which whip nearby enemies, damaging and stunning them.
Target ground
Mana: 100/125/140/165
Cooldown: 9
Range: 650
AoE: 225
Level 1 - Deals 70 magic damage and stuns for 1.25 second.
Level 2 - Deals 140 magic damage and stuns for 1.5 seconds.
Level 3 - Deals 210 magic damage and stuns for 1.75 seconds.
Level 4 - Deals 280 magic damage and stuns for 2 seconds.
A powerful AoE stun. Many aspects of it increase with levels, so it's very important to level this quickly. It has a delay longer than Pyromancer's stun. This, combined with it's low AoE before it is leveled, make it very hard to land on enemies in the early game.
Impalement
The Torturer constantly summons many blades around him for a duration, impaling random enemies and structures near him.
Self-targeted
Mana: 95/120/135/155
Cooldown: 30/28/26/24
AoE: 500
Duration: 8
Level 1 - 9.375 physical damage to a random target, 300 total damage.
Level 2 - 18.75 physical damage to a random target, 600 total damage.
Level 3 - 28.125 physical damage to a random target, 900 total damage.
Level 4 - 37.5 physical damage to a random target, 1200 total damage.
Deals the listed damage to a random enemy target in it's AoE every .25 seconds. It has a huge total damage total, but it's damage will be dispersed with lots of enemy targets. It is most useful against solo heroes and enemy towers.
It can hit invisible units and is not channeled. It will continue if Torturer dies on his location.
Agonizing Bonds
The Torturer wraps an enemy with constricting chains, damaging it and nearby enemies.
Target enemy + visible enemy units
Mana: 100/115/130/145
Cooldown: 6
Range: 700
AoE: 650
Level 1 - 80 magic damage, 3 targets.
Level 2 - 145 magic damage, 5 targets.
Level 3 - 205 magic damage, 6 targets.
Level 4 - 265 magic damage, 7 targets.
The chains drag all units hit for 200ms at 740 speed towards the main target.
A useful harassment tool. It has a very short cooldown, and hits multiple units.
Torment
The Torturer forces his Torment onto nearby enemies every second, damaging them. This ability is boosted by Staff of the Master.
Self-targeted
Mana: 110 to activate, 20/40/60 per second while toggled.
Cooldown: .75
AoE: 300/350/400
Level 1 - 66 (88) magic damage per second.
Level 2 - 100 (133) magic damage per second.
Level 3 - 144 (177) magic damage per second.
Another self-targeted AoE spell. It can deal an extreme amount of damage, but costs a lot of mana and requires you to be very close to your enemies to be effective.
Skill Build
- Chain Reaction
- Impalement
- Impalement
- Chain Reaction
- Impalement
- Chain Reaction
- Impalement
- Chain Reaction
- Agonizing Bonds
- Agonizing Bonds
- Agonizing Bonds
- Agonizing Bonds
- Torment
- Torment
- Attribute Bonus
- Torment
- Attribute Bonus
- Etc.
Chain Reaction is your stun, so you'll obviously be taking that. Impalement does a huge amount of damage, making tower kills, ganks, and rune control very easy for Torturer. Torment is much more useful on a farmed Tort, while Agonizing Bonds is very useful for team fights and disruption.
Agonizing Bonds gives additional lane control in the form of harass. It also gives him much more power in a team fight setting earlier. However, it sucks up Tort's mana pool at an amazingly high rate and denies him Impalement, which decimates towers and wins 1v1's in the woods. I personally never level it before Impalement successfully.
Items
Basic
2 runes of the blight - 180
2 mana potions - 100
2 minor totems - 106
1 monkey courier - 200
Total - 586
If an ally is buying the courier you can go with either a Crushing Claws, Pretender's Crown, or Wards of Sight.
Torturer needs hp in a hurry. So you'll want 1-2 Fortified Bracelets and a Power Supply. I usually pick up a Bottle, as well. If you farm well, your first purchase could be flying courier+bottle. After this, ferrying yourself your hp items and Marchers shouldn't take long.
My favorite choice for boots on Tort would be Steamboots set to Strength. Plated Greaves are a good choice as well, given his squisheyness and pushing capabilities. Ghost give good speed and damage, but nothing for either our health or mana pool, the most important early game statistics. Post haste would be nice if you could afford to delay your items that long.
Core
Power Supply - 603
Fortified Bracelet - 510
Steamboots - 1450
Bottle - 600
Homecoming Stone(s) - 135+
Flying Courier - 400
Total - 3695+
Tort is somewhat more item dependent than your average Glacius or Witch Slayer, but in many cases you'll be the optimal choice on who's going to be paying 200g for wards every 6 minutes. You can farm that up with 2 spells, so it's not a big deal.
Afterward
With the core I've set down you'll have enough hp for your early-mid game. When you get your core, look at the enemy team. Decide whether their magic damage or physical damage scares you more. Build either a Void Talisman or Shrunken Head based on this decision. Sometimes you will want both.
OR 
At this point, you have two choices for your following items:
Damage Soaker - Helm of the Black Legion on the way to Sacrificial Stone, followed by Behemoth's Heart. Possibly a Barrier Idol.
A Null Stone can be an effective alternative to a Sacrificial Stone if you need protection from single-target spells.
Why?
While it's true there aren't real tanks in HoN, Torturer is a popular target for enemies, and many players simply attack the closest hero. The strategy behind this build is to give your hero as much hp as possible and mitigate enemy damage. This is a good choice if your team lacks initiation power or could use a meat shield.
HotBL can be disasembled, and all but 300 of the gold spent turned into Sac Stone. The bonus to this strategy is it gives you a 20 damage block in the mid game, where pushing towers with Impalement is most useful. It can then be turned into Sac Stone when 20 damage becomes insignificant and pushes are usually done as a team while the enemy heroes are reviving.
Sac Stone gives a hefty boost to hp and mana regen, Tort's favorite stats. It also heals allies on your death, which will often happen early on in fights.
Barrior Idol is a damage mitigator. And a huge part of HoN is staying power. When vsing high magic-damage teams, considering picking this up along the way.
Null Stone gives good mana regen and stats in addition to eating a nuke every 20s. An alternative to Sac Stone.
Int Support - Stormspirit, Totem of Kuldra, Puzzlebox sometimes.
Why?
If your team has initiation covered, you can focus on support items. My favorite mid-game item in this situation is Stormspirit, which makes landing Tort's stun much easier, or can take an enemy out of the fight briefly. I would go directly to Kuldra afterward.
Which items you'll want with Torturer will vary from game to game. For instance, Puzzlebox is a very good item for Torturer, but I usually only pick it up when the enemy has 1 or 2 stealth heroes. My favorite two items on Torturer, Void Talisman and Shrunken Head, very in effectiveness depending on the enemy lineup.
When in doubt, you can't go wrong with hp and mana regen.
Alternative - Portal Key. I usually only pick this up if my team lacks initiation of any sort, but it can be a powerful tool in getting those stuns off, along with a myriad of other uses.
Strategy
General Strategy
When to play Torturer
Torturer does best in a lane with a fellow nuker, or as a mid solo. He fits well into a push lineup, and can help turtle with his ability to clear creeps in a hurry. He lacks a good initiation ability, however, but is a good follow-up to an enemy team that's been disabled by stuns already.
Don't pick torturer if your team needs a babysitter, as it's the only role he doesn't fill in the laning phase.
Torturer generally has two modes of play in a fight:
Defensive - Before a fight has initiated, you'll do best harassing with Agonizing Bonds and trying to land a good Chain Reaction. I've seen worse ways to start a fight than 2-3 stunned enemies in a small AoE. Generally, though, the idea is to harass the enemy but not aggressively enough to get caught.
Rush Down - When a fight begins, blow everything. Bonds-> stun, and then rush in with Impalement, Torment, and Shrunken, if you have it.
Laning
Torturer does well as a solo mid, or in an aggressive side lane. I wouldn't suggest using him alongside a hero with poor lane control, or as a babysitter. While he can harass reasonably well with his good attack point, long range, and judicious use of Agonizing Bonds, he is quite fragile and needs a good amount of farm in his lane.
His three basic skills are all quite powerful in the laning phase. Chain Reaction is a powerful but hard to land stun, making him a good choice for dual-stun lanes as the follow-up. You can use Impalement and a Ward of Sight to practically guarantee rune control if you opt for mid solo.
Solo mid - My usual strategy, if everything goes well, is to fight for creep kills until I get enough money for Bottle. You'll need to adopt a more aggressive strategy against heroes such as Soulstealer, Arachna, Pebbles, and Blood Hunter, as these heroes will outcreep you and win middle. Once you reach level 4-5 and have your Bottle, you can go for my favorite Torturer tactic, the gank+push. It's really as simple as it sounds. You drink your Bottle, pick up a beneficial rune, gank one of the side lanes, and then use Impalement (might have to wait for it to cool down) to kill the enemy tower. Successful ganks of this type will secure a HUGE early game advantage for your team.
Side lane - Impalement becomes less useful in a side lane, but Chain Reaction and Agonizing Bonds effectiveness rises with every additional enemy hero in the AoE. In most cases you'll want to wait for your allied stunner to initiate, and then drop a Chain Reaction. Impalement is much more useful if the stuns clear the creep wave or the enemies choose to run, at which point you will run alongside them, waiting for cooldowns. Agonizing Bonds pull is not strong enough to set up your own stuns, though you can pull a hero back enough for an ally to hit them.
Torturer excels in lanes where he can play aggressively with Impalement. However, his spells eat up mana extremely quickly, making Mana Battery, Bottle, and a monkey to bring it to you very important. Rune control provided from Wards of Sight is essential to winning mid with just about every hero, Tort included.
Skill use and Synergies
Chain Reaction
Torturer dances for a short while, and then stuns an AoE. The skill has many variables that advance as levels are put into it, making it very important to max by 7/8. The cast time is extremely long, and a large part of skilled Torturer play is how well you can land Chain Reactions.
Impalement
While active, a random enemy target within 500 range will get hit every .25 seconds. It is much better to maximize the damage by having only a few targets in it's AoE to focus the damage dealt.
Most useful against solo targets and towers. The greatest part of the ability is that it works independently of your actions once cast, so it's more or less a fire and forget damage boost in a 500 AoE. Essential to your early game, as it turns a ganker into a ganker+pusher.
Using Impalement to down the first 3 enemy towers will give both you and your team a gold advantage in the early game.
Agonizing Bonds
A useful tool for harassing and disrupting enemies. Most useful alongside allied AoE's, as it can group enemies together for easy aiming. However, the pull itself is not usually enough to set up your own stuns, since the cast time on Chain Reaction is so long.
Torment
This spell will eat up your mana pool VERY quickly. However, the damage it can deal is extreme given the correct circumstances.
Of all of Tort's spells, it is perhaps the most item dependent one. It doesn't scale with agi, or anything, but a Torturer with Shrunken Head and a huge mana pool will destroy entire teams with this spell, while early game it's rarely worth the mana you could have spent on a stun.
Synergies
+ Draw them close for the stuns.
+ HUGE AoE dps based on your location.
+ + Draw enemies into close range.
Really, with 4 nukes the synergies are pretty basic.
Friends and Foes
Friends
Stunners
Example: Hammerstorm
Torturer's favorite lane partners, a fellow stunner will make landing Chain Reaction much easier, and will often guarantee you some early PK's.
Initiators
Example: Behemoth
Torturer is not a good initiator without Pkey, but is a good follow up with the massive amount of AoE damage he can do.
Pushers
Example: Defiler
Torturer fits well into a push-themed lineup, as he can destroy a good chunk of tower hp with his Impalement in addition to clearing creeps with ease.
Foes
Tanks
Example: Soul Reaper
Heroes with a huge hp pool to draw from will be a tough enemy for Torturer to kill, since his damage does not scale as well as a physical DPSer's would.
Burst DPSers
Example: Pyromancer
Before getting >1000 hp, burst dpsers can shut Torturer down with ease. Try to avoid these heroes in a fair fight until you get those Steamboots and a Fortified Bracelet.
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