You should not play Rook to his speed, its true that you will never catch an UB or REG but he ius not suposed to, so im cool with that.

True hammer slam cant hit anything that moves, but you dont have to, just go with your towers and you should be fine.

I play Rook usally
and i must admit i dont remember a game where i lost with Rook
the first 5 lvls i hunt for creeps and with hummer slam i just kill them all with one hit
and move to the next wave, i gain lvl 5 by the time others get only lvl 3
by the time im lvl 5 or 6 i got enough gold for heart of life so now i dont have to teleport all the way back
I kill most of DGs by smashing them to 50% hp with 1 hit and then they run so it dosnt matter
i just chace them to death as i got boots of speed and this idol of speed thats enough to catch them

The only problem i had is when 1 DG is becked up by other, so when 1 is running the other hitting me
i dont have enough HP to wistand 2 DGs attaks one after another so usally i teleport

The thing is that Rook got a strong psychological factor on the battlefield
when a player loosing 50% hp with 1 hit he panics and run
some of them are trying to heal but by the time they heal i got hummer ready to bash again

Other factor is the support waves, as rook i always go in with a wave, killing enemy wave with 1 hit
and its me + my wave vs 1 DG, a DG without AOE such as UB usally outnumbred and runs away

Another problem is the archer, he drops maxed out mines and shoot me, when i go to him i step on the mines

heavy damage and then he use fury on me and when i see im too weak and run he just snipe me
and thats how i usally die...

All other factors are minor, Spit do damage but with my high HP its not bothering me
cyrcle of fire dont bothering me as well and this vampire could bearly scratches me

And there are those fighting spots when usally 2 or more DGs metting each other and fight
i usally after battle spam them with towers and just waiting (and killing creeps)
when the enemy DG returns he just go into all my towers and my hummer slam

and the support archers and laser of the Rook are very usefull, espacialy on chaising DGs
i had lots of times when a running DG was too far for melee and my laser finished him
(the lasers on the Rooks sholders)

start out with scaled helm(+ mana +mana regen is important) + 2x telescrolls + 15% movespeed circlet(favor) and go take a tower + wave (hammer 1 hit wave) now your level 2.

1:hammer slam

2: archers

3:tower

4:slam

5: lazer/tower/boulder (depending on game)

6: see 5 but make sure you have lazer

7: hammer slam

8: tower/catapult

9: make sure you have boulder else get more towers/up damage if pushing

10: hammer slam

11: second level of boulder

ensure getting insane amounts of mana regen either by heart or an early vledemich or whatever its called helm (15 mana regen is nothing to joke about)

not hitting boulder/hammer when their close is really shameful ... i feel bad if i miss , and hammer slam is not impossible to land just dont hit straight on them, if theyre running away from your tower intercept with a hammer , now if they want to juke they need to go back , take side damage from hammer + towers + archers/lazer and you can chase them down with archers/lazers in a lot of cases .

use your teammates stun if needed to place a hammer .

if they keep away from you and you get time of start putting up a grid , 1 hit the creep wave and start hitting the tower with

your creeps throw another hammer when next wave is underway ( make sure you hit the tower) and repeat the process . if you have heart you can push 1-2 towers per min and they will have to come to you , always maintain mapcontrol and tele out if you feel a gank coming.

rook is really powerful , being able to do alot of roles at early/mid/lategame , watch out for erebus and tower spam regulus 

quick edit: ive lost 1 game total with rook and that was because my teammate feeded 10 kills then left after 7 mins

/agrreee

Now I can't speak for organised team games but from my experience and from what I've read the Rook only has 1 effective build... Tower spam. He can't go toe to toe with any demigod as they can ALL kite him with ease and some (vampire lord, UB, Oak) can beat him in melee without kiting him.

So Tower spam is Rook's only effective build, but the problem with only having one effective build is that its very easy to counter. A good fire TB or Regulus can shut down tower spamming Rooks by having greater range then the towers or Huge DPS.

My argument: Tower Spamming Rook is a good build but as a whole the Rook right now is weak because he really only has 1 effective build. I could be very wrong (I haven't been able to play lately cause of a RAID 0 error on my PC) but thats what I see the Rook's problem as.

Thank you! ~8% dmg reduction is totally not Rookish!

Also, him gaining +100 armour is like half an attack (76ehp) at level1. :/

i just had a rook tower his way into my base. and there was nothing we could do about it really

sedna (me. man would i have killed for AOE)

TB

Oak

vs

Rook (towers)

Reg (didn't do a whole lot, really)

UB (ended up quitting, turned into an AI that we didnt bother to kill. perhaps we could have used the gold in the end?

You will notice that whatever Demigod is getting the most love on the forums is the one who ends up in first place on pantheon. Its because since we all use our brainpower and time figuring out effective ways to play the char, all the scrubs and copy cats out their read our posts and jump into pantheon to see if they can make it work. Rook posts started poping up last weekend. At that time UB was top (as the week before everyone was talking about UB). Im sure in a few days a new guide will be posted or new information will come out or a player like myself will release his build for his favorite character and all the peons will go try him out.

Its just the way these things work. Its also compounded by people checking whiuch demigod is top and going for that one.

Point being if you want to see your demi as top, get the community talking about him!

That is the same build as i did recently, its fantastic.  The thing that people forget about Rook is that he benefits the most of any character from +attack speed% items.  He has the highest base damage by a HUGE margin (530 vs UB's 291 at lvl 20 assuming god strength).  What this means is that his auto attack is the most powerful in the game, since UB hits the speed cap (2 attacks per second) without TOO much difficulty. 

I am going to test out the numbers real quick, but the last time i tried i had rook doing ~1850dps with his auto attack, and UB doing ~1200-1300 (with the absolute best items).

What i want to do is find exaclty how much it takes to reach the attack speed cap for each character, to see how much they benefit from haste (which is a % multiplier, unlike +damage items)

FYI it takes 160% haste to get Rook to the cap, maxxed out my rook has 2044 DPS  It would be 2124 if i had Mards hammer as a favor item =D

UB needs ~60% to reach the speed cap, which does give him a pretty solid advantage, as it frees up some slots for durability increasing items.  UB is overall the better character, as his peak is higher (due to the frenzy-type ability), though his auto attack maxes out at 1666 DPS or so.

I will say the highest hit i have ever seen as well as the highest listed dps number (9245 and 3277 respectively) were both with UB.  Though that is using both the cooldown frenzy ability as well as the artifact that adds 300 to the characters attack damage.

To sum it up, UB is probably still technically the better character, but its pretty darn close.  And i know this is all subjective, but Rook "felt" more powerful when making those numbers, as he had quite good %hp drain, so his shoulder turrets would constantly feed him health regardless of what he was focusing on.  UB seemed much more reliant on draining health from his main target, and so would have a harder time with fortifications.  I would conclude that these two are by far the best if you take a stat-based rather than an ability based approach to killing your enemies.