Maxsteel32

Join Date 04/2009

Maxsteel's Ganktacular Demon Assasin Build

Made some updates to my build. Added some new uses for the powers swap and warp. Updated some replays to better ones including the elusive piggy back of the warp strike while and enemy teleports. I got the kill been trying to do that for weeks now.

Ok so I have been playing DA in the majority of my games for some time now. This is my build im sure some people do well with other builds, but I have found this one to work best for me. Its super fun to play. You will have a respectable 4000-5000+ health for most the game but you are not going to be out there auto attacking and holding a lane all day. 2 things to remember when reading and playing this build. They can't kill you if they can't catch you, and the Gank is greater than the Tank.

1. Spine

2. Warp Strike

3. Save

4. Spine/Warp Strike

5. Swap

6. Save

7. Spine/Warp Strike

8. Save

9. Save

10. Swap/Spine/Warp Strike

11-13. Demon Speed I-III

14. Save

15. Swap III/Warp Strike IV

16-19. Precision Striking I-IV

20. Free

I don't get warp area. The only thing i have ever found it to be good for is going against a Rook's hammer slam cause you take no damage and thats the only power slow enough to pull it off 99% of the time (sometimes you come out of the warps early because there are not enough enemies and then you get hit ). The thing is Rook uses the roll then slam and in that case warp area is worthless. No you don't lvl with it faster and yes you might get some more money from it, like 50 gold for the whole game... Not worth it.

Favor Item

Swift Anklet

Starting Items

Scaled Helm

Banded Armor

Gear

1. Unbreakable Boots

2. Nature's Reckoning

3. Nimoth

4. Vlemish (sell Scaled Helm)

5. Wand of Speed

6. Plenor Battlecrown (sell Nature's Reckoning at lvl 10)

7. Journeyman’s Treads (sell Banded)

Consumables

Totem (early game)

Teleport 2+

Gadget (only early to mid game should have been dropped by lvl 10)

Caps Lock

Sigil (when gadget is no longer effective)

When teleporting try to port to a flag/building behind whatever tower that you want to defend so you can swap the enemy behind that tower and give it more time to do the damage.

Artifacts (if it gets here)

Girdle of Giants

Cloak of ElfinKind

Bulwark

Ashkandor

Death Bringer

All Fathers

I like the Girdle first cause of the area effect it gives (health and damage are nice too). If you are buying artifacts chances are there are at least cats on the field and the area effect from girdle on your auto attack will allow you to eat grunts like candy as opposed to the beat down DA usually gets from grunts.

Cloak is an interesting pick. Sometimes I get it sometimes not but the extra speed makes you a huge pain in the ass. With journeyman’s, anklet and wand you can constantly put pressure on all portals and make the other team with their stacked damage and health chase you all day with no success. (just don’t get stunned J) If you are going to go speed might as well get all fathers before Ashkandor. (Who ever gets this far in pvp?)

Abilities

Warp Strike

This is a great power insta cast with a short cool down and at lvl 15 it is one of if not THE alpha strike in the game.

Don’t forget that you can use this to not only run people down but you can use it to get away. Try to keep a tower or grunts in the path that you want to return by. Warp strike will allow you to put that much needed distance on your pursuers. If you are crazy with your timing you can also follow a teleport with warp strike. Basically it works because there is time while traveling in the attack much like a teleport. So if you time it so you are in motion without landing the blow when they port out you will follow them until the attack lands. (I have a replay later)

Spine Attack

Pretty straight forward it does allot of damage with short cast. Even with its longer cool down for most of the game this will be your bread and butter attack. At lvl’s 1, 4, and 7 the spine attack is one of the most powerful attacks in the game, and 1150 at lvl 10 is not something to sneeze at either.

Swap

Ok Swap is why DA is a total badass.

When someone is taking pot shots at your towers, give them a closer look.

Did the opposition bite off more than they can chew? Don’t let them run away.

Put them on mines if you can.

Swap is your interrupt.

Trying to teleport away? Swap them; the timer is faster than the tele. (if you wait too long you will end up where they were headed, maybe you will want a sigil if you are going to be doing this yes?)

Early game you want to try to maximize the time your victim spends next to a tower.

Later on save your swap to keep people from trying to tele/run away.

Swap people to pull them off your teammates if they are killing them.

Swap if you have gotten too deep and the enemy is trying to trap you.

On some maps you can swap around corners and even over gaps and then warp strike back to put them in a world of hurt.

Strictly speaking this move did change the game don’t waste it.

Oak Shields and ports just count to 2 (patiently) and cast. the key is to time it so that your cast time his happening while he is actually in the act of teleporting.

If you see someone porting accross the map for the gank on your teammate you have 2 options interrupt it or time it right (just like an oak port swap) run the table on them making it a gank for your team.

Use this same type of swap to get an easy portal ninja. If someone is almost dead they most likely will port back to the crystal.

One thing I should say about using swap as a port piggy back is that the demigod will face where they are going to port. If they are facing somewhere you want to go then hey make the other team fund your ride.

General Tactics

Early game just try to protect your towers grab flags and level as quickly as possible because you really want swap.

You have a vested interest in the towers as they give you more kills, thanks to swap, so make sure you buy the tower upgrades at the cit, health and damage 1, early.

Patiently waiting at your towers if you are alone in a lane and can’t hold it someone will usually get close enough for you to swap them in, and at least give you the chance to scare them enough to leave the lane in if not kill them. (TB, REG always trying to kite the towers even beast)

Mid game you want to open with a swap either into your teammates or as deep as possible into your towers.

The later the game gets you have to be a little more careful with your swap cause as other dg get more powerful they can run away more easily and swap is your only interrupt to stop them.

You are not going to be the awesome lane holder a rook, ub, ereb, ect... are. So with that in mind play to your strengths (speed and damage burst)

Be patient, DA is like a hunter, soon enough a weakling in the herd will show up. The key is to be fast enough to swoop in before they know what’s going on and then not let them get away.

For the most part it’s straight forward GANK. Look for opportunities to get the drop on your enemy. You will be faster than most if not all other dg on the map so try to hide in the fog as much as possible when closing in on an enemy. (Don’t port to somewhere they will see, you can run them down if they don't get that big head start from seeing your port)

Some Individual DG Tactics

Ereb

He will bat away from a fight/gank, try to anticipate when this will happen, usually he will run a step to maximize his bat or mist then bat. Coming out of mist is easy to catch you just have to wait, but if they break to run know bat is happening now SWAP.

Oculus

He will try to blast off to run. Same deal as bat just easier to catch.

Oak

When encountering Oak spine first. If you warp in first they know the spine is coming and will get the shield up causing you to waist your more powerful move. If he doesn’t shield then warp in and start swinging.

Oak is my favorite to kill late game. He thinks he is invincible with a debuff shield and teleport. DA is the only one that can stop him. When you see the shield go up wait for the tele.... count to 2 then swap, they will port out and then your swap will bring them back from anywhere. Now helpless in a place he obviously wanted to leave your friends or towers can kill him or you can just run him down/teleport back and finish the job. (only do this if you are going to be able to live running from their crystal, that’s probably where you are going, BRING A SIGIL and/or teleport).. If you pull it off killing an oak this way is the best move in the game imo.

Beast

Ooze hurts so try to keep him at a distance as long as possible. Swap or Spine depending on your surrounding don't warp in first unless you are getting the kill right now with your burst or he is running and you need to close the distance to set up the swap. It’s a good idea to also bring friends to this fight.

Sedna

I hate fighting sedna probably more than any other dg. You have to try to out tank her, not gonna happen, cause unless she has already been hit hard she will laughed off a burst of damage with a heal. With sedna, as other big tanks, you need to play the role of support to your teammates. Help with the damage and don't let them run from the fight when they start losing bad.

Just know until lvl 15+ you most likely will not be able to put down enough damage to take her 1v1, unless you can somehow pull her deep into some towers.

Regulus

The only thing to worry about is his mines. If he is not moving Reg is probably standing on mines, spine attack and try to get him to move don’t swap or warp till you know you can either take the hit and kill him, or there are no mines. If you see him laying down mines warp in to pass the mines, very few if any Reg actually put the mines where they are immediately standing so warp striking in while you see him placing is probably the safer bet.

Really just try to get him away from his mines and don't follow him into them thats all.

I hope this helps and I hope to see some awesome DA play out there in the future. GL HF

Replays

Warp Striking the Tele!

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This is roughly what I do in terms of the skill order except I pick up one point in demon speed a bit earlier. This takes my base spe ed to 6.3 which, is slightly faster than most other dgs on the map.

I have a lot of differences in terms of items I go with.

Your item build is fail.

Favor: Staff of Renewal

I spine and warp a lot more often than you, therefore, I do a lot more damage than you.

BotF and swift anklet are 'training wheels' before you start using SoR.

Getting swift anklet is a bit meh, seeing as you can warp to the targets location anyway, and you can warp out of the targets location by targeting say a tower or an enemy creep.

Items:

1. Banded Armour

2. Scaled Helm

3. Vlemish Helm

4. Unbreakable boots

5. Nimoth Chest Armour

Then I can sell the scaled helm to get a Plenor at some point. I sometimes get unbreakable boots before vlemish, it depends on the demigods I'm facing.

I agree gadgets are better than sigils for DA early game.

Also, I agree about always holding ports and locking flags. DA can't hold a lane for shit :/ Even with monk support.

Your artifact choices are completely wrong as well. DA's weakness is that he has no AoE. So my first artifact is always either Cloak of Flames or Orb of Veiled storms. This means I can do massive amounts of instant damage to enemy demis i.e. warp, spine, orb/cloak of flames, Autoattack, warp, spine and now hopefully dead Also, bear in mind that SoR makes the cooldown for these artifacts better as well.

Another good tactic for DA is locking the enemy cooldown flag. This makes him seriously more powerful. Once you are able to spine every 6 -7 seconds, under those circumstances DA can almost 1v1 a lot of enemy dgs.

Edit: What I should be saying here is I get Orb instead of getting things like mega armour or overpriced speed boots etc...i.e. I get orb in a normal cataract game.

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Actually, the best favor item for DA is Essence of Magic since you can Spine Attack, Warp Strike and Swap if you time it right. Since DA's biggest weakness is massive mana cost per spell and having large cooldowns, you can typically use EoM, blow 2k worth of mana out in abilities, you have the mana pool to use 3 or 4 abilities, and then typically by the time you just oom yourself your EoM is just coming off of cooldown.

For AoE you get Nature's Reckoning. Stack HP like a mofo since between EoM and the small mana boosts you get from NR and Unbreakable Boot's you should be fine.

Using Staff roughly increases your damage by 15% (cooldown reduction is 20% so you increase the damage output from skill by 25% but that doesn't take into auto-attack) but you have to stack 2 helms which is both expensive and also means you're going to have HP issues (he isn't Rook and DA already eats Sigils like Hard Candy you got from glitching).

Best artifacts are Girdle of the Giants or Akshandor. Girdle gives massive HP and Cleave (sell NR), Akshandor gives insane DPS.

It's a holy war of when to get Demon Speed (at 2/3 and postpone Warp Strike, at 11 (after maxing out Swap, Strike and Spine), and whether to just get one point at 11 or max out the tree(Speed I - II versus Speed I + Warp Area I + II. Either way you need Swap III, Strike V @ 15 which means you're saving 14). All depends on your playstyle and who you're playing against and how the game is working out.

That said, I have seen Swift DA's work decently well: they are gank machines and work quite well against unprepared teams since you can never run from him.

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You're talking about stacking health, but are getting natures reckoning? So that's 3 hp items, 1 helm and natures reckoning? I'll stick with 2 helms and faster spines thanks

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I like the idea you have Shred for SoR but i think your are putting to much into manna early on and not enough into health. Yes you will do more dps with SoR (about 20-45 dps depending on level and when and if you get deamon speed)but you don't have the health to have the staying power to make your cooldowns matter. If you get demon speed earlier putting you up to 6.3 Anklet will still be faster at 6.9 couple that with the facts that you have less health and less of a damage burst and you will be running from fights before your SoR is relevent especially early in the game . The only problem is that you will also be slower so you will not be able to run = dead. Now if you stacked some more health sooner you might have something there. If every fight was 1v1 you probably would do better but there are few fights in 3v3+ that are completely 1v1, i try to maximise the number of 2v1 fights my team gets by being more mobile.

AoE is the reason i get girdle of giants. It is the best item for DA. So you are doing around 50 dps more with SoR Girdle gives 50 damage. It also gives 1600 health +20 health/sec which helps with DA's health issue. Finally it has 100% cleave thats area effect all the time no cool downs with it you will be doing the 500 damage of the orb every 3 sec or less and the 800 damage of CoF in around 4 sec With no Cooldown add precision on top of that and you are mowing grunts down. you might want to look into it.

Im with Shred on this one I dissagree with the EoM completely. I would definatly play SoR before EoM if i was giving up my anklet. Mana is not that hard to come by that you need EoM, and I don't know what kind of fights you are getting into that 45 sec cooldowns matter.

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What you need staff of renewal for if you will be out of mana all the time

A agree with hedgie - being able to cast all 3 of your spells whenever you want it is really important for DA. I also agree that he is maniac of nature reckoning I personaly dont like that itmes i think it should be buffed bit more to be any usefull. Maybe if you add Gloces of Fell-Darkur later on (20% chance on hit to unleash a fiery blast, dealing 175 damage) that would give you 35% to do AOE. But again this items is only usefull on generals (specially ereb and bit for oak to raise their armies quick and to buff them)

Swift anklet is not so good here too. Most of the time you will spend next to towers anyway (since wrappin enemies into them is your biggest advantage) I found that wand of speed is more then enough for da (buy it after u get lvl 5-7) I also dont know how will you get 4000-5000 hp out of those 2 items Unbreakable and nimoth chest. more like 3-4k when everyone will walk around close to 6k if the go blood of falen.

Out of SoR, Swift and Esence I definetly choose essence. Like I said befoe being able to cast your skills any time and not having to worry about your mana at all. That means you can stay in field more and xp more (specially when you get monk support) Also ables you to jump into any ganking oportunity that you will otherwise pass since you got no mana.

"You're talking about stacking health, but are getting natures reckoning? So that's 3 hp items, 1 helm and natures reckoning"

LOL no helmet at all. 4 hp items and natures reckoning. Say banned, nimoth chest, unbreakable and Duelists Cuirass. Later change them to banned-->narmoth ring (for extra hp, lifesteal, and hp regen) and nimoth chest-->groffling warplate (for insane armor bonus, good for any minion build or tower rook). For me i really dont like natures reckoning I would gladly swap it for Wyrmskin early game or Juyrneman threads late game. But that just me:)

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Quoting shred_demon,

reply 3

You're talking about stacking health, but are getting natures reckoning? So that's 3 hp items, 1 helm and natures reckoning? I'll stick with 2 helms and faster spines thanks

No. Nature's Reckoning, no helms and 4 hp items (Unbrekables, Nimoths, Haubrek->Duelists, Banded->Narmoths).

Part of the reason I am a maniac for NR is because I have insane, ridicious luck with it and reliably get it proc'ing 3,4 times in a row. This is because it is bugged and I know how to exploit the bug.

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If you are going to be without a helm EoM is the only option. I can now see that working, but really you are saying get EoM so you can have Nature's Reckoning and still beable to health stack. Is nature's reckoning really worth that much?

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Replayz!

No guide is complete with a shit-ton of replays.

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Quoting Maxsteel32,

reply 7

DA has one of the best attack rates in the game (and, furthermore, it's not nearly as bugged as other characters. His only main AA bug is after using Warp Strike he stands there like an idiot). He has a .74 intial Attack Rate +.0168/level means at level 10 you have an attack speed of .9 which means you execute a full attack every 1.11 seconds. NR has a proc % chance of 15% which means that it will proc every 7.4 seconds. 250 damage / 7.4 is 33.8 dps AoE for no mana. This is assuming that you aren't using the proc-bug that NR has, which would make it fire every 1.11 seconds for 5 seconds.

It also marks creep waves for no mana which increases your gold flow and also serves to cover one of DA's weakness: no AoE. You can always spend skills points and get Warp Area instead but then you're giving up something else (Speed, Spine or Strike). And Warp Area costs mana. Further more, if you kill their minotaurs/monks with NR (and they aren't Erebus, the bastard) your creep waves will walk forward and contribute to the fight as well giving you a further dps advantage (NR one-shots archers so if nothing else, one proc of NR will give your creepwave a 20 dps advantage).

It also gives DA /pool/ which is what he needs (not regen). Sure, it's not a lot of mana but it is enough for one more ability, and the damage you deal with that one ability is roughly equal to the additional HP you would have had getting say, Haubrek of Life instead.

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" This is assuming that you aren't using the proc-bug that NR has, which would make it fire every 1.11 seconds for 5 seconds."

Please tells us more

does it do somethin with: "It procs off of abilities (pounce)." ?

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does it do somethin with: "It procs off of abilities (pounce)." ?

No, and I'm not 100% sure it's bugged how it is. However, there are several... very particular situations that's happened multiple times in a row that I can't reject it not being accurate. The particular instance is when I'm fighting Erebus as ... anyone and he has one point in Cover so his 8 little minions and 2 monks and him. If I proc once in that battle I will proc over and over until his minions are all dead.

NR is "bugged" in that is has an unlisted limit of only being able to affect 10 units (if I recall correctly. If might be 12 or something around there). However, there is an issue with how it calculates whether or not to spread to another unit that is triggered after you do another autoattack.

To be be clear, if NR is still chaining (there are at least 10 targets) and my demigod successfully executes another autoattack while it is chaining it will automatically rechain again. I think that the chain also has to be within chaining distance of your demigod (so it can't be down the creepwave hitting archers and catapults).

Basically, I can think of a bazillion times where I'm Sedna fighting Erebus and he has his swarm of minions and I proceed to get multiple procs in a row to kill them all. It seems statistically unlikely that that same event would happen over and over so reliably.

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Errr.... Ummm... don't do it Cinders... don't do it...

...ihatewhenmaxsteelisonmyteamheisaliabilityandrequireshisteammatestowinforhim...

don't doooo ittt... oh wait. nvm. sry!

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Okay, I'm still a noob after all of this time, but I have to say, the DA is a self-indulgent choice. This is a team game and as the teams improve, kills are more difficult to get. The DA can do little to increase income (for himself or others), cannot hold a flag by himself, and generally isn't buying citadel upgrades early (because he must overcome his squishiness).

When I see a DA on my team, I generally assume that we are going to have to carry him until level 15. OF course he is very deadly then, but it has been a long fight to get there. I think you should have to ask your teammates if they are okay with you going DA. I am open to opposition here.

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you are right Tesser. I am working on getting replays posted.

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How the heck do you use SoR effectively without OOMing every 20 seconds?

Yeah, EoM is hands down the best favor item for DA. I've heard rumors that BotS is ok.

They can't kill you if they can't catch you, and the Gank is greater than the Tank.

This is patently absurd. I could care less about killing you as long as I get to stand on your flag. Speed stacking was shown to be crap ages ago. Lose the swift anklet and get EoM.

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I have posted a few replays for your viewing pleasure and critique. I need to post more but this is all I have right now (I haven't been saving as many replays as I should lately).

Any comments or tips for me to improve my play are appreciated.

Cind3rs, we used to be cool i just played Regulus 1 time and you raged befor the game was even really going. Everyone needs their teammates cause 1 weak link does really ruin it for everyone. Maybe thats why you hate Reg so much, cause most of the time people playing really don't help out that much and/or feed.

Watch this replay of my rook and tell me my team had to do everything for me.

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In a nutshell, EVERY time you play it's DA (used to be Reg everytime). At least in my games, it was an uphill fight to keep the team alive. You didn't purchase cit upgrades, you worried about you getting kills.

The logic of: Reg/DA gets kills = gets gold = gets cit upgrades is great.

But the logic of: the team suffers and has no flags for half the game while DA/Reg tries to get a kill and does not buy upgrades, nor can he hold a flag, nor does he help the slugfest over the flag is much more likely and more important.

Generally, if you're ganking the crap outta them, they suck anyway. When you're not ganking cause they're good, then you're useless. So it's 3v2 with reg/da running in a for a "pew pew pew! OOM! RTB!!!"

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Yay Replays!!

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Cind3rs sums up Maxsteel's playstyle quite well, if I recall, from when I played against him in a public game the other day. He WAS getting quite a few kills in, but in the end all my team had to do was adapt to his strategy which boils down to "I attack an enemy Demigod, the DA will warp in momentarily, I will start running away now... Yep there he is, too bad he can't get me now." Summed up it is a one trick pony build that once figured out has few legs. He still got his kills but we still had flag and by extension, giants sooner.

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if it was a 2v2 i could understand maybe even a 3v3, but a 4v4 and all your team had to do to win was stop the DA? yeah whats that really saying?

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Heheheh well in the upcoming tourney the best queen/da/reg are prbly gonna be the team that wins

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Updated my build some and swapped out some replays for better ones. Oh yeah and check out the warp strike of the teleport.

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You have a vested interest in the towers as they give you more kills, thanks to swap, so make sure you buy the tower upgrades at the cit, health and damage 1, early.

Damage 1 reduces the amount of dmg towers do. You don't want to get this (goes from 100% to 10%)

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you know i have been curious about that ever since Hedgie claimed that it reduces the damage. I just tested it and the idea that it reduces the damage done by the towers ten fold is totally bogus. I set up a game on lan between 2 computers so i could see the damage before and after the upgrade had been bought. Using sedna at lvl 20 without added armor, but added health so i could see allot of attacks without her dying, one light tower by itself was doing around 320 to 350 damage per attack. After the upgrade had been bought it was doing 350 to 380 damage, pretty much exactly what you would expect out of a 10% upgrade. If it was as everyone is saying right now it should have been hitting for 35 which was just not the case at all. on purchase of all the upgrades that one tower scaled pretty much as the percentages were stating. at the end the tower was hitting for over 400 which is what you would expect as 25% of 320 is 80 making 400 when put together.

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The splash damage is reduced from 100% to 10% I believe.

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