Skills: Unholy Shackles, Death Boil, Life Void, Summon Malphas
Disclaimer:
Format stolen from Trainingday!
Note that this build and play style is one hundred percent geared towards public game play and in no way should be used in serious matches, although some tactics may apply. This build is for when your opponents (and team mates), in typical pub fashion pick awful heroes and play badly.
Skills:
Notes: Your pretty bog standard movement/attack speed slow, with a whopping 60% slow for 5 seconds. Perfect for allowing you, your allies, and your Malphas to beat on the enemy, it also royally screws carries.
Notes: This is your primary source of damage which, at level 4, deals 360 magic damage total. Not much to say about this, it's excellent for harassing and making sure that fleeing hero dies.
Notes: Life Void is one of Hellbringer's most powerful abilities, this is what makes you and your allies nukes do ridiculous amounts of damage, makes you an almost unkillable target in team fights and prevents you from having to leave your lane early game due to harassment.
Notes: This is your big gun, useful for ganking, pushing, initating, saving your ass from ganks and just about everything else. The most important thing to note about Malphas is that the stun when he is summoned DOES go through magic immunity, making him an excellent counter for heroes with channeling ultimates that like to get Shrunken Head.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Core Analysis: Hellbringer has very reasonable starting stats (apart from agility, but that's a non issue) and stat gains, his base damage is good, and 600 range is always welcome. His attack animation isn't the best, but certainly not the worst. He has incredible lane staying power with life void and can harass and take down pretty much any opponent thrown at him in a lane.
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Skill build:
1: Death Boil
2: Life Void
3: Death Boil
4: Life Void / Unholy Shackles
5: Death Boil
6: Summon Malphas
7: Death Boil (maxed out)
8: Life Void
9: Life Void (maxed out)
10: Unholy Shackles / Life Void (maxed out)
11: Summon Malphas
12-14: Unholy Shackles (maxed out)
15: Stats
16: Summon Malphas (maxed out)
17-25: Stats
Explanation: Death boil is your nuke and should be maxed early to make the most it, played correctly it can give you a quick bloodlust against an unwary opponent. Life void is taken second as it greatly increases your damage from all spells and allows you to stay in your lane almost indefinately. One level of Unholy shackles can be taken at level 4 to make a kill with malphas easier, but doing a combo of all your spells will require your whole mana pool. Most of the time I stick with life void and get shackle from 10 onwards, but this is a personal choice.
Malphas is taken at 6/11/16 which is pretty much a no brainer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Item build: The goal of this build is to abuse the hell out of your typical pubber (who will often forgo basic stat items in favour of rushing damage items)
- 1 or two Talismans of Exile
- Codex
- Marchers
- Items after core include Restoration Stone, Barbed Armour, Frostfield Plate, Null Stone, and Basically anything you think would help.
Starting items should be 2x Mark of the Novice, 1x Pretender's Crown and 2x Minor totems. Hellbringer has no need for health or mana regeneration (Life void is all the healing you will ever need) and unless you spam boil a lot you will never run into mana problems. However, mana potions may be taken in place of the minor totems.
Your first item you will be getting is Codex level 1. Codex, combined with life void deals a massive amount of damage (and gives you a sizeable heal). If you are farming well you can get this as your first item, then marchers. Complete the Talismens whenver you feel like it, and continue to upgrade codex. If there is a stealther on the opposing team A bound eye is a reasonable choice for hellbringer as he is rather difficult to put down, however, if your team is completely unreliable, go with dust or wards.
Once Codex level 5 is complete you can move on to other items. My preffered item path is getting a sustainer (which solves all mana problems), then post haste, then Restoration Stone (games rarely go this long, however).
Other fun items are Barbed armour, which synergises nicely with life void and frostfield plate, which offeres the aoe nuke to go along with life void for some really nice damage and healing to yourself.
Codex Mathcraft:
Life void, at level 4 removes 8.3 magic armour, on a normal hero with no additional magic armour, it ends up INCREASING the listed magical damage by 15.7%! This means that codex (and any other magical damage will be doing more than thier listed value).
From looking at this you can see, with a life voided codex and a death boil, very few heroes are actually going to survive this, especially if you've recently dropped a malphas on their heads.
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Laning: Ideally you want middle lane solo. You have good base damage and can comfortably beat defiler/thunderbringer in a last hit contest, their spam is also rendered fairly inneffectual against your ridiculous healing from life void. Soulstealer is slightly more of a problem as he has high damage to last hit better than you and can spam quite well, however, with all these heroes, make sure to deny them runes if they have a bottle, if you do this, you will almost certainly win the lane.
One thing likely to happen if you dominate your lane mid is you will have ganks called on you, so, once you get around level 6 or so, it's very important to keep near full mana so you can survive if you're surprised by stuns/invis heroes.
First off, immedaitely cast Life Void where it will hit the most creeps/heroes, then follow up with malphas, the damage done will heal you for a good chunk of life, then, boil the lowest hero (preforably one with life void) and follow up with malphas's flames. Combine with your auto attack you can normally take down one of the heroes ganking you and also escape with most of your health. Of course, if two or 3 stunners are ganking you, your chances are slim, but hopefully you'll have enough map awareness to notice them missing.
Ganking: You will likely not be participating in ganks untill you at least have your codex. In a gank, simply shackle, life void, death boil and codex your target, at this stage in the game, almost no heroes will survive this devestating combo, and if they do, drop a Malphas on them and use his flame breath.
Team fights: Keep back from your team, especially if your opponents have blink heroes, your job is to not get disabled so you can initiate with Malphas when you can stun a good portion of the enemy team. When you do so, select a target, life void and codex them to immediately eliminate a hero making it a 5v4.
Other: The most important part of Hellbringer is managing your spells. You need to make sure to shackle running enemies, life void as many heroes/creeps as possible so you don't die, position your cast of malphas, micro malphas, keep an eye for low hp targets to codex and so on.
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Overall, Hellbringer can be a tricky hero to play to his full effectiveness but is hilariously fun to play once you get it down. Seeing an enemy scout pop out of vanish only to be immediately gibbed from full hp by a void/codex combo is second to none in terms of entertainment.
Last edited by Randominity; 09-22-2009 at 07:29 AM.
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