Rook is all about map control. Taking and holding an area is his specialty with a slow march forward. He is not weak at all, you just can't play him as agressively as a lot of people do. He's a walking castle, so be a castle! His towers ability is great in the early mid-game and if you get proper mana regen you can slowly take a lane and keep pushing forward. Keep spamming towers and create a farm of them around you. As the old towers die, you keep moving them up the map while slowly forcing your enemies back. Late game tele scrolls and flag locks can be really annoying. Create your tower farm, lock a flag, and jump away. Can easily turn the tide.

A lot of people tend to over extend themselves as rook, if you do so you will probably die without support. Rook simple isn't fast enough to escape. Make the enemy come to you and force them to drive you back. I know you're asking for a good rook player (I'm far from one). I just thought I'd give you some points so you know a good rook player.

A tower-spamming Rook with Hammer Slam makes Unclean Beast a very unhappy pooch.

Rook only scares me when he's controlled by a person.  AI rook or any other DG for that matter just sux.

If you are going with mana regen with rook, you are doing it wrong. Rook does not have very good stats, it justifies in no way his ultra slow movement. He he has low armor but high max HP (seriously, who care about max HP? It's good for tower hunting and fighting TB and Regulus early when their nukes are powerful, but by the end, all you want is max damage, max armor and max hp regen). His towers would be good if they didn't go down by themselves after 1 min or so. 

Past level 10, the beast is superior to him in almost every way possible. Superior armor, superior movement and attack speed, melee attacks that slow down (something poor rook only get with his poison arrow at the very end). Both get a stun attack, rook's is ranged and is AoE, but beast's is stronger and drains hp.

You simply do not need a character specced for tower destruction. You do not grind into towers early, you go for the flags until mid-game and hit the towers only once you are strong enough to kill them quickly and have priests for healing.

Aye.  They might of overnerfed him SLIGHTLY.  All I think he needs is +100 more base armor(it was reduced 200).  But he's not like unplayably bad or anything.

Heh. I just played a game (sadly 3v2) with Rook. Well, I'm pretty sure the enemy was rather surprised as I took down 4 of their towers and stole one of their spawns (map was Prison). I was only level 8. :]

im just gonna go ahead and say it: they nerfed his armor too much. rook is a bit too delicate these days for a character designed as the biggest tank in the game. 

purplepaladin

yeah, exactly...and twice i played as erebus with rook in my team and lost just because it was me vs 2 DG...he didn't do anything

Eh, none of the characters are so badly balanced that a good players can't do well with them. Jut like any other DG, The Rook has a certain role to play in the game, as is determined by his strenghts and weaknesses. If you can understand them, you will do well.

That said, balance could always be better, and the Rook is slightly but definitely under-powered at this point compared to other DGs. I'm sure that balance will be further tweaked along the way,

Who is "we," and what about Erebus or Oak, or even Sedna as a healer/support?

Ok, I tried Rook myself and totaly Roocked, seems those teammates simply didnt know to use his abilities.

After playing it several times I think it's one of the best chars

He's great at holding flags and seiging but when it comes down to duking it out with other players I can never seem to catch those overwhemlingly popular ranged heroes. Even with the + speed favor item, boots of speed and a wand of speed I just can't lay a finger on them. All I can do is get assists with boulder throw.