Non-cookie cutter builds

[yyr_]

I get bored of generic cookie cutter builds very quickly so like to trial different builds for heroes. That being said im not claiming to be doing anything crazy or be creating new builds, just give insight to some of the less common builds out there for some heroes that you may not have seen yet.

Some of the builds in this thread may be good, others strange and some just plain crap. These are just some builds i would like to try or have tried with some success. I am not claiming to be the first to have run them.

Feel free to comment on how effective you think they would be or how to improve them, if you have run any other good builds.

This is my current selection of ones to try / i enjoy running.

:chro: - Going bottle/powersupply/ports but playing him as a ganker

Avoid sitting in a lane farming pretty much from lvl 6 onwards. Most fun when you have a decent teammate who enjoys ganking or playing aggressively with you. I personally hate ricing on any hero, and as his ultimate is amazing for ganks (3 seconds of unavoidable disable?) and having a massively ranged slow make it decent. (Tried it, it works okay and is more interesting then ricing)

- The ward *****.

Bottle/powersupply/chalice ---> striders ---> Wards ---> Blink ---> WARDS ---> WARDS ---> MOAR WARDS.
Very offesive warding similar to those in Ms Muffin and Nigma's prelane guide make ganking very easy during the laning phase. It also is great for rune and map control and allows your supports to buy some items for a change as well as keep your team safe. As Deadwood is a hero who can pretty much remove a hero from the fight every timefight without items i dont really see why you /need/ to get them. It also allows you to keep pressure up really easily. This is my prefered method to play deadwood. Not sure what the normal cookie cutter is for him. If this is it, my bad >< Tried and tested and is very effective

- Rush Blink.

Think it might be fun. Her nuke is better than thunderbringers in nearly every way except sight (Which is pubs isnt very important). Also blink + ultimate just seems amazing. If it works maybe SotM but id feel dirty picking it up. Dont remember testing it, been wanting to run it for a while. Probably wont work, good for a laugh.

- Economy Build

Steamboots/Steamboots/Elder Parasite/Insan/Shrunken. Super cheap costing only 12k for 5 slots worth of items and all relatively easy to build with only 1 component costing more then 1500g.
20 seconds of magic immunity makes you very hard to keep down and this magic immunity out lasts the duration of Elder parasite so its "safe" pick up. I am going off memory for the item stats, so its something allowing the following:
~65 str (~1250hp)
400+ MS before your ultimate, faster then most things
~180 attackspeed
~110 damage (including str)
And the ability to toggle for mana
My prefered build for predator. I normally only pick pred against a disable heavy team because they generally are up **** creek when there disables dont work. Also most other carries arent as effective against these teams

- HotBL or SnY + Puzzlebox

No longer super squishy due to the +hp and the puzzlebox adds a **** tonne of active DPS as well as allowing you to manaburn somebody incredibly fast. Play him as a mid game ganker (you may have noticed i hate farming ) Have yet to try, just thought it would be interesting. I dont know much about Magebane so im not confident this wouldnt just bite dick. It would be hilarious to drain with though. Your minion drains 75 per hit, you drain about the same and as soon as you blink + puzzlebox get the ranged one to mana burn another ~250ish as well. Within 1-2 seconds they lose close to 400 mana, pretty rough. Thats also an "instant" 400 damage AoE nuke at lvl 16.

- core ---> FWS

Whilst it isnt really a very uncommon build im pretty sure it is the "best" generic build. What it gives you:
- ~700hp
- ~500mp
- 3 armour
- 25 attackspeed and damage
- 0.75hp/sec and 1mp/sec
- Fairly easy build-up and a cheap slow
- Has mana/hp in its buildup
- Your attacks slow MS and IAS so you can reduce there carries DPS
- When you get your heart, as the regen as based on your HP pool, skadi is pretty close to the same as having "2 hearts" worth of regen.
- Guu becomes a 46% MS slow, 20% IAS slow, -2 armour ... AT 1 application... After 3 applications ~400 MS becomes ~115 and at 5 applications they are pretty much at ~100 MS even with 552 MS. You can autoattack one person to 30% slow them, then being slowing two other people 46% and be keeping it up...
IMBA!!!!! Unless your team needs an item like Barrier Idol i pretty much think this item is the best pick up availiable.

Puzzlebox ---> Void if needed ---> Heart

This is the current build im running with at the moment. It seems to be working fine. I am currently sitting on 7-1 win:loss in stat games of average PSR 1650, my KDA is better with this build then playing her with geometers ><
The reason i like this build is that you throw the spider on them, set the minions on them and they will die. puzzlebox + spider is about 450 DPS alone. 450 DPS... this is enough to shred most heroes.

The spider makes them slow enough that the puzzlebox minions can just autoattack them to death, even if you have to bail because they call on reinforcements.

The minions have MS auras to make you run faster and as you manaburn it they dont have much opportunity to do much. Even if they stun or disable you they still get torn apart. It also makes it hilarious if they have a invis heroes because you can pop the puzzlebox see them and them spider them.

The optional void talisman is so that if they have a couple of heroes that jump you you have your magic armour +35 and your physical immunity making you borderline untouchable for those 3-4 seconds. The heart gives 10% damage to all sources. This increases the damage of the minions as well as your spider. Also makes you tanky as hell and as your base DPS is awesome due to her awesome agi gain and aura you still hit pretty hard.

KDA with Geo's (6 games, 5 wins 1 loss): 6.7 - 5 - 9.9
KDA with puzzlebox (2 games, 2 wins): 5.5 -3 - 10

Whispering Helm ---> Puzzlebox

Somebody elses idea i read recently, should be viable:
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=172171

Purge stick

Darklady gains bonus damage from her blades from base damage. Allows her to keep a target slowed long enough to shred it. Great for changing targets when your other slow is on cooldown. Thinking it would be an interesting item to try rush. (no dirty cleave farming).

Corrupted + Slow has synegy; keeping them still for conduit and your ultimate. Probably wouldnt get it until i have my tankish core items.

Swiftblade: I just have this images of rushing purge. Purge + Spin + Ultimate = kill.
These are untested.

[[CPT]Omnigrunt]

Stormspirit Torturer ... movespeed doesn't hurt, works well with Impalement, never miss a stun again.

Harkon's Pyromancer ... the manly way to semicarry, not too difficult to farm either with those nice AoE spells.

Also, a pure ganking Chronos should acquire Staff of the Master.

[Liability]

Portal Key is fun on a lot of heroes. One day I'll try PK Zephyr and just Typhoon bomb them.

Also, while nothing groundbreaking new, I like to use Post Haste on Pollywog to abuse every time a creepwave comes close to a tower.

[painkiller`]

Interesting builds are actually pretty interesting. I wanna try puzzlebox and purgestick :P

Also, the blink+ is something Testie did a week or two back. He did really well, his team didn't. I don't know if it was Testie or the build though.

I wanna give a +1 to harkon's . 1 auto + blow your nukes = dead anybody (really, anybody).

Another purgestick candidate is . Purge + arrow is a guaranteed hit; proceed to kill. If you go on to build a manta from there, you're draining someone's mana really fast.

[[B3T]Maraxus]

Imo TB's nuke is better than MQ's, also it scales with the char, unlike MQ.
A semistandard pickup on mq when going on ulti is shroud and thats just a poor mans PK, try it but i wouldnt bet on it.

Been playing purge TDL a couple times before and its ok if you want to gank, actually its really good, but it takes money away from your main concern, the carriying.
If it works god bless, but if it dosent you pretty much 20 min behind in farm.
Also worthy of note TDL got a boost to her hp, dont know when but i was measuring her hp to that of a enemy magmus and we where close in lane so a ganking TDL might work. all her gimmicks work except theres no 450 where her dmg numbers should be.

Puzzle arachna is actually a sound choice, sometimes even better than the standard builds, you dont even have to ulti the poor fukker, just webb him and rape with minions, that way you have two ultis. Works well if the enemy team is not to beefy.

A ganking magebane should get stats really early like one lvl of blink, max drain and stats till 10 or summin (first lvl of ulti is not that strong if you dont need it to stop early channels) but still a geo is better than puzzle on him, as it gives more than just hp, and as he dosent have a dependable snare.

Ganking chrono is the way to go if you know what you are doing, hes pretty strong and most of his spells have a good early game potential, but still requires you to know how to execute it.

I dont like to afk farm either, so allways go some ganking route with my carrys, it can be done but you need to know what you are doing.

Tanky andro is my adittion to this non standard build thread
Going stun and stats all the way gives her alot of hp + armor and she can really take a pounding, then either thunderclaw, crit, geo, some dmg item and your done.
She as all of the rest of +dmg aura toons, dosent need it early as it adds pitiful amounts of dmg, and since aurora is like an overloaded nuke at only 10 % strenght its not worthi it imo. ( i know what its used for but there are ways aound it so i dont get it)

[Nevyll]

Puzzlebox on voodoo?

[[nX]BOXl]

Puzzlebox on balphagore?

[man_guy]

Show me more.

Been wanting to try Nullfire on either Swiftblade or Magebane, but really don't like Swiftblade and know there will be rage for getting Nullfire on Magebane.

I've been on a Puzzle Box kick recently and been wanting to try putting it on carry type heroes instead of the standard damage items. Will try next time I play Arachna.

[[DrE]robbiek1]

Puzzlebox on ophelia?

~Robbie

[nDynamite]

1. Get a puzzle box
2. Leave it at rank 1
????
3. Profit

[Lasagna]

1. Bearless Wildsoul
2. More items for you
3. More stats for you
5.?????
9. 72% TOTAL PRODUCTIVITY

[yyr_]

Also to add to the purge list is scout after his cleave. Purge + Eye silence allows you to get those last couple of hits to finish them off without having to blow an orb on sny

With respect to ophelia i having been thinking about a non-creep focused build as her nerf to lvl 2 creep was lame. Something along the lines of getting lvl 1 creep only then maxxing slow and nuke. This doesnt change her nuet farm rate until she reaches level 5. Getting slow at lvl 3 means your creeps now outrun the players. Not maxing creeps means your a more DPS focused as your nuke is leveled faster. Try building her alchemist ---> Phase ---> Hellflower. Hellflower + Slow = MASSIVE damage multiplication. Her pure damage nuke could be hitting for like 600... Also her agi gain is 2.1 which i think makes it the highest agi gain for a non-agi hero. As her int gain is also strong her natural DPS is quite high. Possibly DPS hero waiting to be found.

[[URAV]benkofk]

if you want to try something different, what i wanted to try was play chronos as a tank in a lower skilled game. people love focusing him, he's got a great passive to scale with the idea and he's got a fking bubble.

[[Sav2]Qwernakus]

Frostwolf Skull on

You remember how it procs on single target spells? 30% slow on a 2 second cooldown (perma)... Long range slow on 7 second cooldown... And seeing as globals also procs Frostwolf: Teamwide 30% slow on your ult. IN ADDITION TO THE -ATTACKSPEED.

[[RawR]Ghidoran]

I made a thread a while back on Portal Key + Puzzlebox on Arachna. Basically playing her as a ganker as opposed to a hard carry. It's a really, really fun build, definitely worth trying out.

Also, multiple Steamboots/Icebrands.

[[PM0N]latetext]

i want to try the ganker build with chronos just cause he is one of my fav herores... I saw potential for something like that a few weeks ago when we had an inexperienced ally playing as chronos who couldn't really do much. We just told him to time walk into enemies drop chronosphere to initiate and we'd come in and clean up...

What do you mean by ports though? portal key?

[yyr_]

What do you mean by ports though? portal key?

Scrolls. So you can teleport to lanes easily for saves and ganks.

[[Wolf]Acinod]

1. Bearless Wildsoul
2. More items for you
3. More stats for you
5.?????
9. 72% TOTAL PRODUCTIVITY

That is like saying I prefer 4v5 because everyone gets more gold individually.

Frostwolf Skull on

You remember how it procs on single target spells? 30% slow on a 2 second cooldown (perma)... Long range slow on 7 second cooldown... And seeing as globals also procs Frostwolf: Teamwide 30% slow on your ult. IN ADDITION TO THE -ATTACKSPEED.

How do you even farm Frostwolf Skull with TB? His core is usually Bottle/Blood Chalice/Power Supply/Striders and then the remaining money is spent on TPs and Wards.

Besides if you have money, is it not better to get hex?

[[S0K]shibbidydoo]

If at all possible, you should not ever make tb the ward whore. He NEEEEEEDS items to stay relevant. Not as much as a carry, but enough to dish out max possible damage.

As for Frostwolf vs. Hex, both are good choices, and should be looked at individually per game to see what your team needs most. Need to disable that carry? God hex. Need more survivability? Make frostwolf. Frostwolf simply gives TB so much health and mana and on top of that gives him a pseudo disable with chain lighting and a global slow with his ult.

Suggested build:

Core: Bottle>Chalice>Striders>Power Supply
Luxury based on need: Storm Spirit, Port key, tablet of command, Sheepstick, Frostwolf.

[[iDmT]laserblade]

Geometers Bane + Puzzlebox on Dsham. Force the opponent into a group of units and heal bomb.

And I always try to get a Pkey on Thunderbringer. Cleans up red hps without having to ult. :] And you can nuke and port.