Demigod Forums
Does anyone know any good Rook Builds? If so post a reply.
I was gonna post one and then got lazy, and then the forums went down which made me lose even more motivation.
You just get Structural Transfer and stats, nothing else until level 10 of course.
This is what I do 90% of the time
Now, here's why I do this build so often. Early game, you need towers, they're extremely strong. The shoulder upgrades do a lot more damage than you think. Rook and Sedna don't work like the other 8 demigods where you can just do
You can try it all you want, but rook does not have enough mana for slam and towers until at least level 10 (unless you have quite a few kills) Trebuchet is a very good skill, but it misses a whole lot when you aren't standing still. It also upgrades your shoulder upgrades, but transitioning into the hammer for late game is quite important. Once the catas are out you'll need your slam and longer stun. (Level 4 slam rapes face in a 3v3, and an extra half second on your stun lets you pull it off much better.)
For a favor item, I get either blood, vial, or staff of renewal. BotS rook can work pretty well, but it's just not as good IMO. If you take blood you'll be very hard to push, but after level 5 or so vial becomes a better option as you are always the target. If you have 1 general or no generals, vial is definitely the best choice. Staff is very good at level 10 because you can push very hard with your towers. Staff will also probably let you put up an extra tower before you get vlemish.
Best tower Rook by Obscen
PoT I
Arrows
Save
PoT II
ToL + Boulder Roll
Slam I
PoT III
Trebuchet
Slam II
PoT IV
Slam II
Slam III
Slam IV
Boulder II
Whatever
Reason: Hold lane (HP flag on cata), XP up. Late game, fighting you in a tower farm is fatal vs your Boulder Slam. You can often 2vs1 at level 13+ in your farm.
Situational Stuff
Favor 3vs3+ BotF: Exception: Enemy Rook or Reg, and you have a general on your team that attaches a monk, then you take Crimson Vial to control lane vs enemy Rook or counter Snipes.
Favor 2Vs2: Crimson Vial, holding a lane 1on1 or 2on2, crimson vial is stronger on Rook then BoTF. Especially later when you sigil and then vial.
Treb @ level 8 is amazing in good games, always the level 8 choice eg: Chances are you cannot safely push the gold towers on Cata by yourself, but trebs will take them out while you lane safely for XP while controlling the HP flag.
Warning. Doesn't matter how good you are as Rook, you need a good support team. If you get caught in a 2vs1 or 3vs2 against people who know what they are doing, you are going to die when things are equal if there is no inbound TP for support. I've died many times as tower rook to a strong push, as well have killed many good players with a strong push against their rook. When you yell HELP, you better get a teammate inbound or you will start feeding the enemy.
On the flip side of the coin, when things aren't equal, Rook can be godlike with higher gear. 10K+ life on a sigil and 2000+ uncounterable damage? Real hard to overcome.
Another problem I've noticed with this build: You must get some time to lane alone before level 10 once your farm is setup. If you constantly have a backup DG in your lane, you are going to be level 7-8 and the rotating enemies will be level 10. This is catastrophic.
Awareness: When your tower farm is setup, Do not be afraid to TP in to boulder a 1vs1 fight when the enemy is about to need to withdraw. This will allow your teammate to chain stun for a kill.
Weakness: Occ rapes this build. You need to go hammer Rook vs Occ.
Versus a good Oc or Ice/Hybrid TB you need to take Hammer III over Towers III, but that's all I'd change.
Trebuchet is a great skill and all, but at level 8 the first set of towers is probably long gone, and to be in range to kill for the gold/celerity flag towers you have to be overextended. Besides, when are you going to be alone in your lane standing on the enemy side of the map for a long enough period to take down a tower. 9 games out of ten, getting hammer slam earlier instead of treb will help you win fights. The game is about fighting enemy demigods, and an extra rank of hammer will help you do that more than trebuchet. Also, boulder roll II is amazing, I wouldn't wait until level 14 to get it...
Mostly agreed, but when you have 6 towers in play you are not really over extended to be in Treb range on the gold towers.
eg: drop 2 towers past the original downed tower and step back to max treb range with 4 surrounding towers. It is hard for even TB to attack you 1on1 effectively. Occ is a different story though, frontal towers do not delay his attacks against you at levels 7+ since lightning + minions negate tower damage completely. You need a different build then the one I recommended.
You are also right vs TB and I should have added more: Until PoT III, you cannot be standing past your side of a flag vs TB unless you want to be taking damage you cannot retaliate against. Vs TB before level 7, the tactic is to drop towers and then fallback so TB cannot fireball/RoI you without being in tower attack range, which means the flag can be contested 1on1 by TB.
You may also think you are OK 1on1 vs TB, but the second a DG pops in lane 2vs1, you have a huge ass problem if you are standing past the flag without 6 towers in play to cover your retreat, In that case, you might die in a push, but an enemy is not escaping vs TP in if he has to traverse back through your farm after scoring a kill. This is where strong teamplay come in if you are extending past a flag as tower rook.
Well, if you don't have teammates who are ready and willing to port to you, you'll get killed a lot sitting at that dangerous intersection where a tower once stood. Treb will help take out towers, but I think it's much more important to be able to win fights for portals and such.
I find the longer I stay on the enemy side of the map, the more likely I am to die as rook. Even with good teammates you still might not get ports if it's on cd or it gets stunned by someone somewhere else on the map.
Yeah, I think this is where teamplay comes in.
I remember our last 2 games... your build vs my build. When my team was stronger, my tactic worked just fine and shut down your team from contesting the HP flag, and ate your gold towers safely, which has obvious benefits when my team fights your team.
On the flip side of the coin, my tower rook couldn't hold vs a better team and eventually you could simply kick us out of lane and then rape our towers directly instead of my more cautious and patient approach.
My opinion, when you are playing with a strong, good team... tower rook beats offensive rook unless you are facing Occ.
Well, I take all ranks of towers as soon as they're available, but I get slam earlier because TBH, it wins fights.
If you have teammates that are dependable, it's better to prioritize hammers - because stronger hammer = win ganks. If you have completely useless teammates, then prioritize towers.
I would always prioritize towers UNLESS there is an oculus or a hybrid/ice TB on the other team. If there are both, pick another character. I've started delaying trebuchet because the extra burst damage is great. After Towers IV, you have enough mana to cast all of your abilities all of the time with two helms.
Try a build with boots of speed+poisoned dagger on rook. No tower. Just go hammer+passive+attribut
Rook can't autoattack while moving (see Uberfix). Poison Dagger is useless.
Are you quoting this from Obscenitor somewhere? The skill set seems about right but I don't remember him picking anything other then staff of renewal.
Nope, always towers, then hammer, especially if you're facing a hammer Rook.
And that's definitely not what your beloved Orcun - the best Demigod player of all time - would say.
But like I said, you have to have competent teammates. If they're useless (like 99% of them are) then forget it.
Oh also, Obscenitor quit playing right about when Occulus users started to shine - try his build against an Occulus and it'll fail miserably.
http://www.gamereplays.org/demigod/replays.php?game=51&show=details&id=129164 There's a tower Rook dominating vs Occulus and Rook. We played this one untraditionally though, I solo'd with Rook on mana until I outlevelled everyone making the game much easier. It's not exactly Obscenitors build but it's tower focused. I delayed boulder for towers and hammer, missed one kill because of it but gave me greater pushing power.
And I disagree, have you spoken to Orcun directly about this, I'm pretty sure he understands the power of the tower. He would say it's bad vs Occulus is true, but it dominates a hammer Rook. The only thing you have to be careful of is a hammer Rook is more likely to port and gank. So if your teammates don't realize you'll be staying where your towers are and pushing, it can go badly, like in this game http://www.gamereplays.org/demigod/replays.php?game=51&show=details&id=128471 where Cow was porting everywhere hammering people since he couldn't touch the HP flag and my team wouldn't back out because they expected me to come.
thanks for all the good builds guys ill make sure to try them all out.
My replay doesn't even work anymore and I'm not going to make an effort to make one - but a hammer rook does a better job crushing an Occulus than a tower rook.
1. Tower I
2. Shoulder I
3. Save
4. Tower II
5. Boulder + Shoulder II
6. God Strength
7. Tower III
8. Shoulder III
9. Save
10. Boulder II + Tower IV
11. God Strength II
12. Stats
13. Stats
14. Save
15. Boulder III + Shoulder IV
Favor: Staff of Renewal
Items:
Scaled Helm + Banded
Vlemish
Unbreakable Boots
Scaled -> Plenor
Banded -> Nimoth
Haburek
The point: All the mana that people would usually use for Slam I use for Boulder. I use it constantly throughout the match as my primary weapon. Towers will always be between me and safety and strung out. At tower I, one tower is on the flag, another between the flag and the map tower. At tower II, one will be just in front of the flag, another just behind, and two closer to the map tower. These positions are critical because you want your own towers to be in range if you need to fall back to the map tower. Taking the Staff of Renewal means that you can pump out towers every six seconds and a boulder every eight (assuming you have your cooldown flag).
This is totally a lane control rook. You can assist on ganks primarily by stunning the crap out of the other team all the time, but no slam will limit you here. Starting at level seven, though, your towers are strong enough to rip up enemy map towers. Run in, plant one, and run away. Repeat six seconds later. That can usually kill a tower with FS1 right there. Trebuchet makes it trivial. If you can see the tower (no fog of war), trebuchet will hit about 90% of the time, so stand so your target is just barely visible. Even on double towers, you can plant one of your own towers so that it will only have to fight one map tower at a time.
If you find you're fighting a dedicated anti-tower build from Occ, Reg or TB, you should abandon this build at level 5. You'd want a build centered around slam. Against DA, your real concern is getting swapped away from the safety of your towers. Make sure you're deep enough in your farm if you see DA in the neighborhood. Against melee fighters, though, you should excel. A boulder when the even approach your tower farm can easily deal 800 to 1000 damage total if only two towers are in range at the time. That's not going to kill anyone, but it will force them to retreat. You can build towers faster than they can kill them. You'll also do better against super-minion builds (oak and erebus) than a slam rook as it is difficult to slam a large number of minions. You can stun them with a boulder though and let your towers do the work. Still not great, but better than slam.
But remember, this build will not work all the time. There will be some match ups where a slam rook (or not even choosing rook) is the best option. In other cases, this build can dominate. For example, the last thing I'm afraid of when doing this build is a slam rook 
Any build that doesn't max out hammer slam and towers by level 15 is just completely wrong. Any build that does not get shoulder upgrades is completely wrong. Rook is one of the few characters who has enough useful abilities for 19 levels along with Oak and Sedna. Stats on a Rook is really kind of unnecessary when you can hammerroll someone standing in the middle of all of your towers.
Erebus. He has several nice level 15 skills.
I think the only ones who really "struggle" to build a complete tree is Occulus, DA, and Queen. Occulus because most of his passives are either useless/don't scale or simply don't work. DA can build Precision, which really isn't too bad, but not THAT much better than Stats. Queen is well known so imma just gonna leave that there.
I thought the same thing too. But I find that in a tower-slam-boulder build you're going to have mana to do two of those three things well or do all three poorly. The build I used to use was identical to Obscen's, but I tried dropping slam for God Strength and found my game improved. I think because:
1. I pay much more attention to exposure without Slam. I will always have my towers built and retreat lines open. I am forced to play more conservatively. If there is any DG that will be punished for not being conservative it is Rook. If you take a risk with him and it doesn't pay off, your chances of survival are grim.
2. I always have mana for towers and boulder. Plenor+Vlemish+UbBoots+SoR give me enough mana that I will be able to always plant a tower and only after a long heated battle will I run out of mana to spam boulder as well. If I tried to mix in Slam I would either run out of mana or be caught trying to Slam when I should have been bouldering
3. Long range boulders from behind a tower farm creates hesitation. Hesitation creates time and adds to your war score. Essentially it intimidates at a much greater range than slam
4. Boulder is more versatile in ganking than slam. Boulder will keep enemies from escaping, allow your teammates to escape and can deny reinforcements from saving a teammate.
5. At decent level of play, you're never going to get the opportunity to slam someone in your farm unless DA swapped them in there. You will get plenty of opportunities to boulder someone at the fringes of your farm and you can do that from safety.
So there's nothing wrong with slam, it's a great skill. But the build I like, especially against melee/minion teams emphasizes using boulder as often as possible. Taking Slam instead of GS and stats gets you pretty close to the same build, but if you play in my *style* you'd find yourself rarely with a good chance to use Slam. If you want to play a Rook using slam as your primary weapon, choose a Slam build, but you won't be throwing as many boulders as I would in a match.
actualllllyy... qot has 16-17 useful skills.. and if you want to include tribute (which is usually what I'll go for earlier), 20 useful skills. Hooray for posting builds on random pages!!
1. Shield
2. Ground Spike
3. Shambler
4. Ground Spike II or Shield II
5. Mulch
6. Ground Spike II or Shield II
7. Ground Spike III
8. Shield III
9. Save
10. Mulch II / Ground Spike IV
11. Shield IV
12. Entourage
13. Entourage II
14. Save
15. Mulch III / Super fucking amazing ability that I can't recall @ end of spike / shield tree
16. Entourage III
17. Tribute
18 - 20. Finish spikewave
Hard to write since you can change so many things up.. like getting 2 shamblers earlier if you mulch often.. or getting a point in spikewave earlier if you find yourself needing the slow. Entourage isn't really useless when you get it either, and it leads up to tribute which is nice.. definitely late, but it's still slightly helpful and not a bad skill. Oh, ya.. why entourage isn't really useless: It helps your shamblers stay alive longer and do more damage so if you summon 2 of them, they stand a better chance of staying alive so you can mulch 2x! 
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