Pebbles' Starting Items

[[DPSM]Scarth]

Hello,

I've been using the 4/4/0/0 build on Pebbles and am about to start using the 3/4/0/1 build.

The other thing I need to sort out is my starting items. I go for:

Runes
Health Potion
Mark of the Novice
Crushing Claws
Minor Totem
Minor Totem

Build order is Bottle -> Marchers -> Chalice -> Power Supply -> Striders/Steamboots -> Pkey -> Spellshards -> Posthaste -> Frostfield

Thoughts on stuff to replace my starting items with?

[tailSPACE]

chalice is overkill if you have bottle + powersupply.
find it to be a pretty bad item overall too, tbh. get an axe instead of mark+claws.
get spellshards if you believe you can still burst stuff down for another 10min, otherwise a hellflower/daemonic/kuldra would be better.
building attack speed is usually core on pebbles, due to his base damage.

[[Mana]Farosarg]

Against ranged shield+regen, against melee either claws+regen or Hatchet+regen depending what you are against. And Chalice is brilliant on Pebbles. He doesn't need the hp to kill people with the combo anyway.

[Chawster]

*WARNING WALL OF TEXT INCOMING*

Well, this is the best situation you can get out of Pebbles according to me.

Starting items - One stack of Runes, Mark of the Novice, Minor Totem x2, Hatchet
If you have a good farm and the enemy (presuming you are mid) is giving you an easy time with no harassment go for Steamboots directly, because during fights you can swap them to Intel/Str depends on what you are in dire need of in the moment. If you are being harassed very hard and you have hard time farming, grab a bottle instead and try to have rune control to kill an enemy early game. The 3rd option is to play aggressive if your enemy is giving you an easy void for you to land him a few hits because you can use your combo from level 2 due to the Mark of the Novice, so @ level 3 if you land a few hits (with the high damage of Pebbles early game) you can probably land a kill on some Intel hero.

As in for late game, would skip Spellshards TOTALLY. It's not a worthy item for meta game and it's useless waste of money. If you are a team player, and your team is in dire need of mana, you can consider making Ring to keep the overall mana boost of the team as a whole. This is situational, if your team is not planning to early rush/pub train you always go for PK after bottle and start farming kills. While you get your Ring/PK done, you check if there is someone else making a Bulwark in the team and go for that immediately if no one is making it, if not go Frostfield/Sheepstick without thinking depending on the situation and enemy team of course.

About the skill build early, it's situational as well, 3/4/0/1 is better if you go Steamboots first with high rune control because the higher hit you can land with faster attack speed is more worth it then a little more damage of Stalagmite - 4/4/0/0 is if you are going bottle first with PK because you don't have the faster attack speed to land additional hits while the target is stunned/tossed.

[PrestonLee]

chalice is a monstrous pickup on pebs in combination with steams stat-manipulation and bottle. I wouldn't take it out of your build if you're already used to getting it, basically what chalice does is makes your bottle sips WAY more efficient as you'll be getting 170 mana per sip instead of 70 (with steamboots stat swapping you basically get a combo for every bottle sip/chalice activation while losing no health, just make sure you use chalice on strength steams, sip bottle on agi steams, and use spells on int steams).

Using chalice+steamboots+bottle for pebs is very efficient and opens up the flexibility of your build much more (for rushing daemonic as an example) because that's all pebs needs to keep his mana going, coupled with rune control you should never have mana problems, and when you insta-gib people with combo it's easy to get the health back from an emergency chalice use anyway.

In my opinion Pebbles is THE best user of chalice because honestly chalice is a pretty shitty item, but it only shines when you use it with bottle+steams and pebbles should be getting both. The only other hero I would personally get chalice on is Hag for the same reasons because she's so mana hungry, I personally don't think it's worth it on any other heroes for different reasons (mainly a lot of mana hungry heroes don't core steams, it's arguably good on healers/parasite but I would rather get rott/RoS/other mana regen items).

but tl;dr - chalice is always a good pickup if you have steams+bottle as long as you stat swap, it's good stats and is a very efficient way to keep your mana up early on.

[[xBM]Ackwell1]

I would start with shield, 2 totems and regen against ranged, against melees 2claws, 2 totems and regen.
First item bottle ofc, then marchers and psupply. The game have then advanced enough so you should be carrying tps all the time. Imo steamboots and locket are must + chalice situational. Then pk and something situational like hellflower, sheep, daemonic, shivas or tablet. Make sure you always get steams, locket, pk, psupply and bottle. Also spellshards should be skipped, theyre not as good as other items.

E: maybe replace 2 claws with pretenders crown for faster bottle and more int. Its up to you.

[Jenova26]

1 Runes, 1 (whatever that 185g thing is in a bracer), 2 Minor Totems, 1 Mana Pot

Builds into ring and power supply and leaves some gold for a faster bottle.

Build order:
Bottle
Marchers
Talisman of the Exile
Steamboots
PK
Finish Ring

Then build whatever the hell you want. Frostburn/Sol's; Spellshards/Codex; Assassin Shroud/Codex; Hellflower/Elder Parasite. The list goes on.

[[HExR]TheShiny]

What matters is that you will want to get 240+ mana asap without putting an ability in stats. After that all you have to really worry about is what to do with all the money.

[[DPSM]Scarth]

Thank you for the replies.The general feeling I'm getting is that buying a powersupply is pointless, is this correct? I generally only use it in teamfights or after towerdiving to save myself.

I think I will switch to Steamboots permanently from now on, as you guys have said the extra attack speed and resource manipulation with a bottle is insane.

Thank you guys for your help.

[[Mana]Farosarg]

Powersupply is rarely pointless. It's an option depending who you are playing against in mid or otherwise. Generally Bottle+Chalice is good enough though.

[Pwnograhpy]

I like Steams over striders 90% of the time. I buy shield or hatchet based off who I'm expecting mid, hatchet vs melee and shield vs ranged. Then I grab stats + regen or just some plain regen and rush a bottle.

[[lolD]Nobreakz]

Spellshards is really cust effictive on pebbles, when you think of the fact that for 1000 more gold you can pretty much get a daemonic or hellflower or frostburn, whichever you prefer. Frostfield too, kuldra for just another k.

What i get is guardian ring (this hero has 0 armour,) couple totems and runes of the blight, early bottle, get RotT, marcher, pk, steams, and then the luxuries.

[Jenova26]

Thank you for the replies.The general feeling I'm getting is that buying a powersupply is pointless, is this correct? I generally only use it in teamfights or after towerdiving to save myself.

I think I will switch to Steamboots permanently from now on, as you guys have said the extra attack speed and resource manipulation with a bottle is insane.

Thank you guys for your help.

Powersupply is almost never pointless. As a general rule, I tend to get Mystic Vestments and Powersupply on almost every hero regardless of lane. However, if you are getting Bottle and Chalice, you CAN skip Powersupply. Generally, you only want Powersupply, Chalice AND Bottle on squishy, super mana-intensive heroes like Hag or Bubbles, but that's still situational.

Long story short, my rule of thumb: Bottle & Chalice OR Bottle & Powersupply. All three is purely situational and often excessive.

[Fairy_]

3x minor totem + 1x runes of blight
1x shield + 3x minor totems + 1x rune of blight
1x hatchet + 3x minor totem + 1x rune of blight

[Juicenewton]

as long as you dont go shield + hatchet (and not have enough mana to combo early on) you're fine, usually as a mid i would just go shield or hatchet + 2 totems + tangos

[Leetard]

i personally like (for mid)

tango, 3 minor totems, hatchet or shield

[tailSPACE]

Powersupply is almost never pointless. As a general rule, I tend to get Mystic Vestments and Powersupply on almost every hero regardless of lane. However, if you are getting Bottle and Chalice, you CAN skip Powersupply. Generally, you only want Powersupply, Chalice AND Bottle on squishy, super mana-intensive heroes like Hag or Bubbles, but that's still situational.

Long story short, my rule of thumb: Bottle & Chalice OR Bottle & Powersupply. All three is purely situational and often excessive.

you never skip power supply in favor of a chalice, ever.
power supply is by far one of the strongest items in the game. if you get a chalice instead you're stupid.
okay if it had hp/mp regen like in dota, but ours is just crap.

[Juicenewton]

please for the love of god dont build spellshards on pebbles (or any other hero that isnt named thunderbringer), the item is just inferior to hellflower in every single way

[[DPSM]Scarth]

Ok, cool, I'll skip spellshards.

So a Daemonic/Shiva's/Hellflower to replace that.

The general concencus is that Power Supply is a situational item, I assume when playing against ability heavy heroes such as Armadon, Monkey King etc?

Thank you for all your help once again, I'll be sure to experiment.

[PrestonLee]

power supply is always good on any hero, it's not really situational as pretty much all heroes will use spells throughout the game and especially in teamfights.. though yes vs some heroes it's even better. It's just you don't need to be spending too much on cheap stats, you can usually get away with either chalice or psupply, or neither and get RoS for your team. It's really up to what your preference on buying cheap stats is. Keep in mind you get more out of psupply charges when you stat-swap to agi steams as well.