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#1
GUIDE TO ZEPHYR
Zephyr is god of wind and stuff. He is the ultimate in lane control and pushing for someone who knows how to play him. This has been my build in a few games but it by no means a final solution I have built him in many ways to try go against the other team. I believe playing zephyr can make you a better player because how well you do relies on how well you deny and last hit early on in the game.
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Abilities:
leap
Zephyr Leaps toward targets. Dealing damage in a line and pushes away effected targets
Target: Position
Damage type: Magic
Range: 550/700/850/1000
Mana cost: 100/120/140/160
Cooldown: 20/19/18/17 seconds
Deals 75/125/175/250 Magic Damage and pushes targets back
This is a great spell for which to take advantage of your primary tornado ability. getting the creeps low and then using it as a method of last hitting
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Cyclones
Zephyr spawns a small cyclone for every kill/deny he makes. Spawned cyclones patrol and damage in the area around him. activating the ability calls the tornadoes back for a health.
Target: AOE Patrol
Damage type: Magic
Range: 700/900/1100/1300
Mana cost: 75
Cooldown: 25/22.5/20/17.5 seconds
spawns cyclone which lasts 20/30/40/50
maximum # 5/6/7/8
deals magic damage for 15/20/25/30
heals 50health
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Wind Shield
Zephyr creates a shield which improves evasion and has a chance to return projectiles
self
type:magic
mana cost: 120/110/100/90
cooldown: 45/40/35/30 secs
applies for 10/15/20/25 secs
wind shield effects
15/20/25/30% Melee evasion
15/20/25/30% chance to return projectile based attacks using this ability just before your last creep dies when pushing a tower will allow you to tank it a bit for a final hit and possibly return its own damage towards it.
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Wind Control
Zephyr creates an area oh high winds increasing movement and attack speed for Allies and decreasing for enemies
Target: position
Range: 600/800/1000
Radius: 550
Mana cost: 150/200/250
Cooldown: 120 seconds
uplifting wind effects
+30/40/50% movement speed
+20/30/50 attack speed
harsh winds effect
20/30/40% reduced movement speed
-20/-30/-40 attack speed
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Skill build order:
1. Cyclones
2. windshield
3. cyclones
4. leap
5. leap
6. cyclones
7. clyclones
8. windshield
9. leap
10.leap
11. Wind control
12. windshield
13. windshield
14. wind control
15. stats
16. wind control
17. - 25. Stats
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What you should do:
1. Early game
Items:
Punch Dagger 500 and Runes of Blight 90
Broadsword 1200
Rift shards 500
the idea behind this is that last hitting will be come far easier for you. You will start out by denying your creeps to get your first cyclone out. then continue to last hit and deny. doing this better than the other person is the only way zephyr will have a good game. You have cyclones so if you get too low you can heal yourself but you want to avoid taking to much damage and focusing on getting your cyclones out to help you fast and take out their creep waves.
getting regen could be good too because using your cyclones for healing will basically leave you open to being rushed and killed quickly.
2. Midgame
New items:
Hellflower 5025
Thunder Claw 3250
Runed Axe 4350
Brilliance Mock 5325
here is where you will need to make decisions based on countering the other team. Hell flower requires 3 steam staffs which will increase your attack speed and abiltiy to last hit and will allow you to silence an enemy who needs spells to be effective. ie countering fairy or torturer Thunder bringer... hell flower will also give you the mana and regen you need to pretty much never run out of mana
Runed Axe Thunder Claw and Brilliance mock are all items designed to help you cut through creep waves. in combo with your leap you will annihilate a creep wave instantly giving you cyclones.
Mock or Runed Axe is probably the best choice if you can manage to farm for one, and dont need to buy something else for countering. Aquiring Mock early will allow you purchase pretty much any item you will want or need for late game.
3. Late game
New Items:
barbed armor 2200
Frost field 5050
Totem of Kuldera 5675
by the end of the game your tornadoes may or may not be doing enough damage to keep the team down you will need more survivability or disables to keep tanks down and "one hit" casters at bay.
barbed armor could be more of a mid game purchase if they have alot of melee units its always a good choice.
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Other notes:
countering the bird: early game preventing owl from getting last hits will shut him down he attacks slow doesnt have much hp and has low damage.
his cyclones are magic damage and so is Mock so for low hp heros its probably pretty important to get a shamans headdress. if you notice their team going for headdress you should attempt to switch and go for runed axe and hell flower
Heroes to watch out for:
Legionnaire: a good Lego will sit behind your creeps wait for you to go in for a last hit or deny and then taunt and counter attack you preventing any good cyclone creation early on.
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Feel free to comment and suggest your own ideas on how to use the ultimate in pushing technology.
Last edited by S2Cracky; 06-18-2009 at 09:51 PM.
R IS FOR RAGEQUIT
Key thing for zephyr (and soulstealer) - try and start solo, the character is mostly about outlevelling, outfarming. It's perfectly equipped to do that, however only with a good enough start so that if needs be you can drop back to the forest for some early neutrals.
Warning to all new players out there. Zephyr is maybe the single most hardes char to play. I just played a round and I was doing FAR FAR FAR worse then my first game of HoN I ever played. I couldn't even kill creeps. Zeyphyr gets realy good starting lvl 16. But my guess is that new players will stand no chance and never reach that high up.
He's fragile. He's a MELEE INT HERO. Plus, you shouldn't be out going toe to toe with creeps anyway; that's why we last-hit. You give yourself a buffer with cyclones first so you can recall them for health and mana if needed. Once you get a few cyclones going they're INSANE damage early game.Originally Posted by RedStone
I know I tried to creep neutral creeps as lvl 10 and died like a chiprel. All I want to say is that this hero aint for new players. So keep you fingers away from him until you feel comfortable with the game.
yeah zephyr looks like a fun hero to play, but if you are in a game where you are going to dominated by early game heros, you might as well throw in the towel. I can see Zephyr being a hidden gem, and I can also see him being the feeder in a game. Sort of like Goblin Techies, sometimes you own, most of the time you do not.
Good new creative idea for a hero, can't wait to see what else you guys have.
#8
My $.02 - Zephyr probably has the highest learning curve out of all the HoN heroes at the moment. It's not that he's hard to play - although he is harder than many heroes - he just requires a slightly different approach than most other heroes.
Out of all new HoN heroes Zephyr is my favourite. His model/voice are awesome as well as his spells have great synergy effects. He can even compete in lategame if he manages to farm through early/mid game. Many ppl underestimate him. Hurricanes sometimes act strange tho and unforunately dont deal damage while chasing someone :/
he was the first hero i played
i adapted to his skills within seconds, but his ultimate is such a worthless pos...it would be fine if the AoE was bigger OR that the effects last for 2-3 seconds after leaving the cloud
his other skills are nice though
#11
Id like to see the AOE slightly bigger also. I often feel like by the time i've placed it down i'm already on the other side of it and no longer being effected by it.
however i have used it several times where it has saved my life and several times when i've gotten a kill from using it so i don't think its completely useless
possibly just effecting the vision of enemies while inside of the cloud could be nice too.
(obviously nothing is going to change with out a lot of thought and testing from people smarter than I)
From a new players POV - definately a char that challenged me - didin't really get it at first and only got to level 12 before end of game. But I had a solid team which enabled me not to die so much. I did do a lot better when I moved from mid, to top, and was able to farm alone.
This was the single best XP I had at learning to try and last hit and deny - great hero, love the gfx and will most definately pick again over others.
I really enjoyed playing Zephyr, very original and interesting hero. However I do think the ultimate could be a little larger as well, I definitely noticed that it was as affective as it seemed like it should be.
I think the ult is fine. While it's radius isn't huge, it essentially gives your carries a free kill zone. When pushing/defending towers/bases it's a massive boon for the team fight.
I played a few games with zephyr trying different item builds out.
Here's what I did and how it worked.
Game one was easy I was laned against 2 melee heros so I could freefarm right from the getgo. I went:
+Stat newb items (crowns etc, i don't know the HON equivalents)
Marchers
Mock Brilliance
Heart
Heart
I went supertank comedy option just to see how well plain ol' HP worked on him and let my cyclones/mock do the work and it did pretty well.
Game two was a bit more tricky I was laned against puppet master and pestilence with a newbie teammate. Up until level 6 it was pretty slim pickings until someone came and ganked. I couldn't go straight to mock brilliance due to a couple earlygame deaths so I opted out for:
Marchers
Helm of the Black Legion
Mock Brilliance
Heart
Wingbow
By the time I got the mock brilliance up I was roaming around the map destroying people despite lackluster support. Once the game was said and done I could stand in the fountain for ~15 seconds with 3 of their team swinging at me including their fed earlygame arachna with a shieldbreaker on. I may skip heart completely in the future and go straight for wingbow as the stacking dodge between his buff and wingbow is quite absurd. Given that he has leap I may end up dropping Marchers, though I always loves me some marchers.
Skill Build I've been taking is
Cyclones
Leap
Cyclones
Evasion Buff
Cyclones
Evasion Buff
Cyclones
Ultimate
Evasion Buff
Evasion Buff
Leap
Leap
Leap
Ultimate
Stats
Ultimate
Stats ad infinum
Last edited by Liquidsword; 06-22-2009 at 04:53 PM.
Definitely a hero that needs to farm and last hit early as everyone has said. I also found that building him to tank was very effective. A helm of the black legion, as well as frost plate, in addition to his cyclones, evasion, and ultimate, made him virtually unkillable. I tanked a fed moon queen late game and killed her, while surrounded by enemy creeps. I used the frost plate much like mock of brilliance - to take out lanes. A mock would be more or less as effective, but I like the armor and enemy attack reduction. Different opponents might call for a different build. All in all, he can be a strong support in team battles, and one on one, his evasion, cyclones, and a leap to finish are all very effective.
I kinda wonder why this hero is int rather than str. I see no point in getting ANY real caster/int items on the hero instead of tank/carry stuff. He cant even spend his mana with his int growth in end game o,o
Can anyone give me stats on Stat Gain and base stats? Melee int has been known to work well in the past (dark seer). Skill synergy looks promising, though it's clear he will be slightly item dependent, namely a slow/stun mechanism. I'll be testing this hero tonight with a high level team to see what goes down.
Str 17 (+2.5)
Agi 18 (+1.8)
Int 19 (+3.0)
The thing is, he has a ridiculously high int growth for the amount of mana he can spend. Compared to Dark Seer from DotA (who has just slightly more int growth, although much more base int [29 + 3.1]), who has 2 low cooldown, high mana cost and 1 spammable low mana spell, Zephyr has only mid cooldown spells which dont even have such a big mana usage. Its just odd to me that he is int because the few times Ive seen people play it, its mostly been used as a tank/carry with stuff like Heart/Lifesteal/Cleave/AC etc.
I would hate to try to carry with anyone with that ridiculous base str. That's very very close to what would be the worst starting str in dota. I'm thinking of AM. The str gain is pretty good, but there are better heroes for tanking IMO.
The int gain and lack of mana based skills leads me to believe that when we test him tonight we'll find that his skills need to require more mana than they do (they look OP on paper) and he'll be very very good for active int items (refresher's high mana cost comes to mind, shivas, orchid, eul's) though each of those tends to lend it's own mana to the equation (again refresher is absurd though). Probably needs to have mana cost on skill increased.
I can see the mana cost needing to go UP instead of DOWN when leveling Wind Shield, and perhaps tornadoes have some kind of autocast function that can be toggled where the creation of tornadoes is automatic but still uses mana from the manapool (similar to visage revenants)
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