Item choices
EARLY GAME
Stout Shield Provides some protection from the creeps you will probably be tanking or harass
Iron Branch Some extra stats for dem GG goodness
Observer Ward Lets face it,sometimes you don't get many supports. That's where you man up and sacrifice your gold for that vision. Usually you would want to place this on their easy camp to prevent pulling and on the rune.
MID GAME
Boots of Speed GOTTA GO FAST,LIKE SANIC!
Bottle Should be your first item to go,provides good regen for constant awesomeness
Urn of Shadows Provides you with some good tankiness and mana regen. Urn charges are amazing as well,allows you to constantly roam as you don't have to worry about HP. Also helps with killing enemies or healing allies
Force Staff For saving you or your allies from sticky situations. Combos well with rolling boulder
LATE GAME
Boots of Travel Provides good global presence.If a fight arises without you,joining the fray could turn the tides of battle. Get this after your aghanims
Aghanim's Scepter Gives the skill Enchant Remnant. This skill can be used offensively of defensively. More info later in the guide
Situational
Mekansm If your team has no support (which isn't rare in low tier pubs), this item could be considered!
Blink Dagger This works well with
Enchant Remnant! Blink in,Enchant remnant some out of position scrub,then pull them and kick them into your team. Ez kidnapping
Power Treads If you think that you might need a little bit more auto attacks and tankiness,this is your go to item
Observer Wards You don't require a lot of items to be effective. If your team has no vision of the map,you know what to do.
Blade Mail If you find that you are having trouble against those strong right clickers you roll into,this item is always good to have. Especially if the enemy has strong magic damage as well.
Dagon Sometimes that burst damage can really seal the kill on a hero
Heart of Tarrasque Soaking up damage is your job if it goes into late game
Ghost Scepter An item to pick up if you are against strong right clickers! DO NOT GET THIS if the enemy has a skywrath mage or anything with
HIGH MAGIC BURST DAMAGE
Lion
Lina
Veil of Discord A good item to increase the damage of your
Magnetize. Also helps when your team has a lot of spell casters!
Scythe of Vyse Well I personally did not get this item much. But I can see why others would get it,being able to Hex a low priority target before them slaughtering your face seems nice.
Laning and mid-game
Laning Phase
Offlane (optimal)
IN ALL CASES,CARRY A
Town Portal Scroll if the enemy dives the other lanes,you can come in and get some kills and much needed levels!
If the enemy is playing solo safelane (you are either solo or in a dual lane)
What you wanna do in the laning phase is roll using
Rolling Boulder into the hero in the lane and sneak in a few auto attacks on them,dealing a hefty amount of harass damage.
This forces him to take distance from the creeps and thus prevents him from farming. Note,does not work with some tankier heroes or heroes that can actually destroy you at level one
Axe
Huskar
Gyrocopter
Juggernaut
If the enemy is playing a dual/trilane (you are solo or in a dual lane)
If the enemy has a squishy support or a combo that won't be able to kill you at level one,just
Rolling Boulder into the squisher support to force him off the lane.
However,if they have a lot of killing potential,please just stay back and last hit using
Boulder Smash while hitting the enemy hero to harass.Once you have hit level 4 with two levels in
Geomagnetic Grip,use that to secure last hits and harass instead since it costs less mana with the same amount of damage as
Boulder Smash
Midlane
Earth Spirit is actually also a viable mid laner! With early levels,once he reaches level 6,with
Magnetize,someone is going down for sure. I do not recommend rolling into the enemy as much in mid as the tower is really near and if you were to miss the roll,you are probably going to die to the tower.
Other than that,last hit with
Boulder Smash and
Geomagnetic Grip. Use these skills to harass the enemy hero as well. Once you reach level 6,you should at the bare minimum have
Boots of Speed and
Bottle.
If you manage to kill the enemy mid laner with your sick killer combo (below),proceed to roam and ask someone else to take mid (presumably a hero that needs fast levels)
Safelane
Same as offlane pretty much,except your carry probably needs this lane more than you do.
The Killer Combo at low levels
The combo goes like this
Boulder Smash a rock into the enemy and
Geomagnetic Grip it after it has hit the target hero]]. After the pull,straight away
Rolling Boulder into the enemy and the enemy just took a ton of damage.If you are level 6,follow this up with
Magnetize and that guy is pretty much dead.
Assuming you are level 5 when you do this,the enemy takes 125 + 100 + 200 = 425
unreduced magic damage in this instant. Not to mention the 2-4 auto attacks you would managed to hit.
Of course,this combo can be a bit difficult to land considering you have to pull the rock in the middle of
Boulder Smash.
If you find it too difficult
another option would be getting closer to the enemy and
Geomagnetic Grip the enemy followed by a
Boulder Smash,then rolling into the enemy.
Now,I find this a bit more unreliable as the enemy can dodge the
Boulder Smash and you might also have to use an extra stone to roll into the enemy if he's further away.
Another option
would be to roll into someone in the fog,then proceed to
Geomagnetic Grip and then
Boulder Smash a rock into him or kick him back. This way,you can get more auto attacks in. A way to prevent heroes like
Weaver or any hero with an escape skill from escaping is to pull a rock while you are using
Rolling Boulder so that they can't react fast enough to run away.
[NOTE] DO NOT PULL THE ROCK WHILE ROLLING WHEN YOU CAN BE SEEN. If you try to roll into an enemy where you can be seen,it's pretty easy to avoid and you would have probably taken a ton of damage from auto attacks when running back to your creeps.
How
Magnetize should be used!
It should usually be used after
Rolling Boulder into an enemy. However,if you were to miss that,you could also do the
Boulder Smash and
Geomagnetic Grip combo then walk to the enemy to
Magnetize them.
After that, what you do is follow the enemy and every 4-5 seconds,place another remnant near them. Make sure not to stay too close to them and make sure they are in a 1100 AOE around you,so that you can place another rock near them to refresh
Magnetize If you have urn charges,use one on the enemy right after Magnetizing him.
With this combo,including an urn charge,you should be able to deal about 100 + 125 + 275 + 50*6 + 150(urn) = 950
UNREDUCED DAMAGE! And,if you refresh
Magnetize duration every 5 seconds lets say,2 times,it amounts to a whopping 950 + 50*6*2 = 1550
UNREDUCED DAMAGE!
In a teamfight,this could be
devastating
and obviously at
level 7,when you can do this amount of damage,it would completely destroy anyone. Not to mention anyone affected by
Magnetize is affected by the silence or slow from
Geomagnetic Grip and
Rolling Boulder.
Mid Game
At this phase,you would be roaming and at least level 6. The plan is,to kill a lot of people and make space for your carry.
ALWAYS carry a
Town Portal Scroll in case of a fight going on.
Of course,don't forget to remind your team of objectives,such as pushing towers after a fight or telling people to be as awesome as you,since your KDA right now is probably 6/0/9 or something now.
This is where all the big game changing teamfights occur,so make sure you are always there as
Magnetize and
Geomagnetic Grip can really turn the tides of a fight.
This is the time where you are probably going to be low on stones. If you have 1 or 2 stones left and you are low on HP or Mana,just walk back to the fountain and heal up instead of teleporting back. By the time you return to a lane (walking most preferably),you would have two extra stones and ready to rumble!
Also,stone management is important!
With 6 stones,don't be afraid to use one stone to clear creep waves with
Geomagnetic Grip and
Boulder Smash.
With 3-5 stones,you should probably be getting ready for a fight somewhere or maybe even start one yourself
With 1-2 stones,tell your team that you're low on stones and that you shouldn't really fight now,unless your team is sure they can win it without the extra
Magnetize duration. Also,you wouldn't be able to escape as fast if things were to go wrong as you would have no more stones to
Rolling Boulder away.
Positioning
Usually you would want to stand WAY behind your team as if someone gets initiated on,you cna pull them out of danger using
Geomagnetic Grip.
If you are initiating,standing in the fog or far away so that they won't see you is IMPORTANT as your
Rolling Boulder is extremely easy to dodge,as quoted earlier. All this will get you is dead when 9 million enemy heroes land their nukes on you.
Your team would also call you a noob which sucks as well. Of course,when that happens to me,I either buyback immediately as a fight will probably ensue or say "I baited the spells,NOW IS THE TIME TO FIGHT".
If you do manage to hit the rolling boulder,
Magnetize immediately and spread it to the entire enemy team using a stone and then
Geomagnetic Grip anyone,this would silence all the people affected by
Magnetize. After that,
Force Staff out of the fray and just keep extending the duration of
Magnetize every 4 seconds or so.
However,most likely,you will be hit by their spells before you can silence them if you were too slow to silence them. (Happens occasionally)
Thats where your team follows up and saves you. Remember! Dota 2 is a team game!
Ending before the 40 minute mark is optimal in games with earth spirit
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