Quote (prickster @ Mar 3 2011 08:28pm)
He's pretty much a solo mid hero with semi carry potential.
Early game
Standard starting build
1x runes of blight
1x health potion
2x minor totems
2x duck boots
Lately i've been finding out I don't really need that health potion. Not buying the health potion means you get your bottle one creep wave sooner. If you don't get that health potion, you might have to play a tiny bit more passively than if you had it.
Don't pick a skill at the start. Wait to see who your opponent is. If it's melee, skill conduit. Get in a good position and try to drain their damage the first wave. You pretty much get the first wave free or you take out 1/4-1/2 of their health. Then after that you want to max the nuke first. It gives easy CS, easy harass, great burst early levels. Most nukes start at ~75 damage and scale up to 280-300. If you're good at positioning, his nuke does 140 damage at lvl 1, and 350 at lvl 7.
It's somewhat personal preference what skill to max next. Ideally you'd max conduit second. Ideally your team would have some stuns to help you get the most out of conduit. Though really haste rune is like a free kill with this hero and conduit.
The skill build would look something like this
1) nuke/conduit
2) nuke/conduit
3) nuke
4) conduit
5) nuke
6) ult
7) nuke
8) conduit
9) conduit
10) passive
11) ult
12-14) passive
15) stats
16) ult
There might be better builds for different situations. Say if you're mid vs TB, you might want the passive to hurt him back, especially if you just are going to stay mid and farm and not gank side lanes.
Since you're trying to get the most out of conduit, you're going to want ghost marchers to get the movespeed you're missing from skilling your passive last.
After you get your bottle, you want ghost marchers, maybe a power supply if they have a lot of spell spammers.
Mid game
The next item to get is situational. Most of the time you're going to want a shrunken head. There could be other times where the other team doesn't have much disable, so a frostburn would be better. If you're having a hard time farming, maybe a hotbl with mystic vestments would be better. You don't need damage items on him, since he has decent burst with the nuke, and his damage increases the longer the fights last. That's why you get defensive items on him. As it goes into late game, filling up your last 1-2 slots with damage items like riftshards/savage mace/charged hammer is fine.
the ideal item build is something like this
0) standard start items
1) bottle
2) ghost marchers
3) shrunken head
4/5) frostburn -> geo/frost wolf
luxury items
You get frostburn/geo/wolf to maximize his kite-ability, and to keep conduit on as long as you can. Plus those items give good defensive bonuses. Something like a mock doesn't really help his other spells.
Tips
A late game tip I could give, is that you might be better off putting conduit on a (non mobile) support hero than the enemy carry. Someone like madman, or pred, or a range hero like archer is going to be hard to build more than 3 charges. Putting it on a non mobile hero like accursed, or jer, or even a zephyr is probably a better choice, since you'd get a lot more damage. And doesn't magic immunity remove it? Plus if you put it on the jer or accursed, they're not going to blow their shield/charm removing the conduit on themselves. So you're going to build up at least 5-7 charges.
His ult has a short cooldown compared to others, 80/70/60, so you can use it to farm neutrals, even dragon ancients.
The hardest part of this hero is the positioning of the nuke. All his other stuff it set it and forget it. Once you master the nuke, he's pretty easy to play. And since you go for defensive items, he doesn't die that often.
i've never tried conduit built
i always nuke/passive and it works good for me
maybe i should try conduit mid