Rookie Player Guide (3.2+)

I know there's a couple of other posts that do a rough job of this, but I feel we need a collective and detailed guide for new players to go through. From constantly hosting public games I've noticed that about 60-70% of people have absolutely no clue of what their doing, 20% kind of do, and the rest of us bend these people over like fresh meat in prison showers then they rage-quit witin the first 3 duels. This makes for a very boring playing experience, as most of us don't have time to explain how to play while were microing our own game, it's is also starting to make an "elitist" type of game and damaging expansion and getting additional people into the game. Now I realize their is an unending amount of posts detailing this information, but their mostly scattered among all the other posts and most people don't have the time to troll these boards just to get the basics down. I'm typing this at school during my spares so it's going to be semi-incomplete and constantly edited. If you have anything to add please do, I won't be going to specific builds so please keep those to the builds board.
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Pre-Game Factors:

To be competitive within this game there is a number of factors in which must be decided before hand. Your Hero, Skill Build and Item Build are the 3 central figures which decide your "build". Now many people always ask "well what should I get" .. THIS IS COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE, that is, it COMPLETELY depends on your personal playing style. I've swapped builds, step for step with decently skilled players and we have failed with each others build. So THINK FOR YOURSELF and adapt a build to how you would like to play.

Your Hero, Skills Build and Item Build are not separate from each other, but they all function off each other so they all must be made and selectively edited for each other. Some builds wont work with some heros, some heros won't like some item orders etc. So if you want to play an Agility hero, pick items and skills that will complement agility to the max. That is, if you pick Illidian or the Hunter (no mana to start) do not pick all intelligence orientated skills and then attempt to supplement their lack of mana with items.

The most annoying thing for seasoned hosts is players getting randomed and then demanding to restart the game because they "didn't have enough time to choose their skills". Please read the boards, Sami_Gurl has posted an awesome list of items and skills, as well as you can re-host playing solo if you toss a computer on player 2, this applies to people who are behind a firewall. So please, have a general idea of your skills before you begin a game.

One more factor that I'll expand in later in the items section is the importance of ARMOUR, whether your Intel, Str or Agi, armor keeps you alive plain and simple. Play defensively first, staying alive is your first concern, not damaging.

Lastly, Don't be afraid to experiment with new builds, skills, item builds, heros. Nearly all the times I've been utterly destroyed has been from the most wierd and obscure builds, there is a lot of hidden spells and strategies, and the element of surprise is one of your best friends in this game.
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The Hero:

Stat gain, Base Attack Speed and Base Move Speed are hugely important. Again this post is going to be long enough so I'll leave the number crunching to you, or I'll expand this later. Basically though, if your going to be healing mana or health at the town a lot get a hero with fast move speed like timmy, if you can tank and barely have to heal you can sacrifice this for stat gain and use items to increase attack speed and move speed. This is mostly common sense stuff that will very with each build, Characters with low move speed and attack speed generally have higher stat gain and vice-versa. As I said before, solo host a few games, write the numbers down and do some math. If you want to get decent at this game it does take a little effort and planning on your part to find a system that works for you.

The innate ability of your hero can play a huge role in your build as well. For example, the Demon Hunter has innate bash for 10% proc. In one of my bash builds I combine this innate bash, with the misc. Bash and a Staff of Deathbringer. All of these STACK, thus I have a 45% probability on every hit to cast bash, late game when you have mass attack speed, and every 2-3 hits stuns you can effectively cast a passive stun lock. Or Say the I won't go into detail of specific innate on each hero, but pay attention, your entire build should all work as one unit complimenting each other, having a hero with an innate ability that does nothing to help your other skills will not further your cause.

Agility:
Think of agility hero's as the Ninjas of the game, they focus more or less on attack damage, speed and critical strikes. A few passive abilities is a MUST when playing agility, casting spells takes away from you attacking with your hands and thus undermines your archetype. In my opinion, good Agi players only use castable skills that will complement their offensive strikes or defense, Corrupt Flesh is one of the best spells you can have with agility, it literally strips your opponent of their armour, allowing you to wreak massive amounts of damage very quickly. Disabling spells such as Soul Burn, Hex, Befuddle etc, are also good as they keep you alive which is . Direct Damage spells like Frost Nova, chain lightning, etc are not recommended as normally, (This guide is for rookies please remember, I realize that a seasoned player can make this work) as you will not have the mana pool to support it and you will be giving up the reason for being agi (Fast hand to hand damage). The exception is a farming spell, which I will be explaining in the next section. Also try and focus on a concept with Agi builds, Go with mass crit build, Bash build, etc. Until you've gained some skilled mix and match builds are generally hard to play with and have more ways to screw up, when your starting out, uniformity is golden.

Suggested Heros for Agility:
Timmy: This little tike has pretty deadly move speed and attack speed and decent stat progression. Good all around hero.
Demon Hunter: Wickid Awesome for bash builds with innate bash, decent stat progression.
Hunter: Absolutely killer hero. Sprint innate allows for quick healing and flagging, Awesome stat progression if you don't need intelligence. When using this hero don't be scared to get a skill or two that requires mana, but leave them till endgame when you get the +all stats...

...To Be Continued
Strength:

Strength builds are the linebackers of the CHA game. The central idea is to chip away at your opponent and outlast them. Health and Armor are extremely important on this front. Strength is beauty for end game as tomes add health and damage in one go. Play style follows a lot of the same lines as Agility, but the focus is on Armor, Damage and Health as opposed to Attack Speed, Damage and Armor. That being said, attack speed is still an important factor in strength builds, but should not be a complete focus as it is in Agility. Again, your playing like Washington in the revolution, OUTLAST your opponent through massive defensive structures.

Suggested Skills:
Look at the Agility suggestions, they follow a lot of the same lines. The main difference between the two will be in item structure and skill combination.

Intelligence:


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Skills

The skills you choose decide how fast you'll be able to farm, how well you'll be able to kill your opponent and how long you'll stay alive to do it. Balance is the biggest part of this game and this if you get all amazing starter skills, your going to be in a hoop if your opponent lasts till mid game, on another side if your build is completely end game ... how are you going to get to the end of the game?

There's a few sub groups of skill builds which I'll detail below:

I) The Super Farmer - This consists of 2-3 farming spells (I don't regularly suggest 3), a good example of this is Glorn's psychotic Siren Farm build which has the potential to reach level 23 before the first duel.
Siren
Frost Fall
Mana Absorb
Acid Rain
Valcano
-This build gives you 2 main farming spells so you never have to wait for cooldowns, mana absorb to keep up efficiency, Volcano allows you to farm much higher creeps and Sirens innate Sprint and quick move speed, allows for quick healing and quick traveling between spawns. See how all the skills all feed into one purpose? This is what you want.
-Super farm builds are meant to be extremely early game spells, but where it makes up end game is that you'll be so far ahead level wise and item wise that it doesn't matter what your opponents skills are, when your double - triple their level, they don't have much of a chance.

II) The Balanced Build.
This is to concept I try and make most of my build around, it's a mix of everything. They are the jack of all trades, master of none. The flexibility allows you to deal with whatever is thrown at you. Usually I try to consist this of 1 Farming Spell, 1-2 Defensive or Disabling Spell, An offensive spell if I only went with 1 Def or Dis skill. And an ultimate that is usually avatar, reincarnation or terraptus. An example is my Timmy Corruption Build

Corrupt Flesh
Evasion/Hex
Acid Rain
Avatar
-Corrupt Flesh allows me to quickly kill bosses and opponents alike, evasion and hex keep my weaker agility character alive long enough for me to wreak my insane burst damage, Acid Rain farms the creeps for gold and items, and avatar gives me that bonus health and armor and in addition gives me complete protection again intel builds. Timmies move speed also allows for quick farming and mana healing to support acid rain.
Agility:
Suggested Skills For Agility:
(Offensive)
-Death Strike: Great huge crits. DAMAGE SPELL
-Soulburn: Reduces attack damage, Slows move speed and disables spell casting, arguably on of the best disabling skills in the game. DISABLING SPELL
-Stormbolt: Long stun and medium CD, great for bash builds. DISABLING SPELL
-Shockwave: Have never personally played with this much, but I have heard it works great for ranged farming. FARMING SPELL
- Thunderclap: AoE damage, and diasble's move speed. Decent for melee farming. FARMING SPELL.
- Corrupt Flesh: One of my personal favorite spells, drastically reduces your opponents armor, it works well throughout the game (First duel till last), and is also very useful for farming archons and elemental bosses, as well as the tough creeps such as dragons. DISABLING SPELL
- Fire Ward: Can be used nicely for farming with some practice.
-Pulverize: This is one of the most under-looked skills in the game. This skill is completely useless with little attack speed, but with fast attack speed it procs regularly, think of it as a useful fire orb. This nice thing about this is it is passive, thus The Hunter and Illidian with no mana has a useful farming spell which allows them to farm without sacrificing gold for mana items. Remember, ATTACK SPEED and a MELEE hero are absolute musts when using Pulverize.
-Frostfall: This is nice for Agi and Str because its nearly instant cast, Its all in one shot so your not waiting for 2 seconds every cast like flamestrike, has a large radius, medium Cooldown, Decent Damage and reasonable mana cost. FARMING SPELL
-Feral Spirit: I have personally always despised summon builds because they become useless in duels if your opponents have any AoE cast spell, but this seems to work for some people. Your minions will do damage and tank for you blah blah... FARMING SPELL
-Breath of Fire: Great agi farm spell. Short Cooldown, Low Mana cost, fast cast. Although low damage, if used repetitively it can become a staple. FARMING
-Dragon Punch: Stun, Damage. I'll have to update this after I get some more info. DAMAGE/DISABLING

(Defensive)
-Evasion: One of my staples, keeps you alive in all situation at level 12 its 48% I believe, theoretically thats 1 out 2 times you won't be hit, now cutting your opponents damage by half is a plus in any situation. Keep in mind that evasions DO NOT stack, whatsoever, your highest evasion will be used. DEFENSIVE SKILL
-Combat Master: I'm not much of a fan of this as the low evasion can't be stacked with the item evasions, though the combination of crit and evasion could be useful. HYBRID SPELL
-Spiked Armor: Extra Armor is ALWAYS a good thing, repeat Extra armor is a good thing. Not only does this provide you with a nice bonus armor, but it also transfers a percentage of your opponents attack damage back to them if their melee. DEFENSIVE SKILL
-Mana Vortex: The low cost raping of any intel build, even though it sacrifices your mana along with your opponents it will usually end any terraptus, mana shield or general intel build. DISABLING SPELL
-Hex: Disables your opponent completely for x number of seconds. Now this is very useful because it has NO CAST DELAY, some spells take a second to cast, hex does not. This is really useful for screwing up avatar builds. If your quick on the gun you can run up at the start of a duel and hit them with hex before they can cast avatar, giving you an etra 4-8 seconds to pop all your castables before they become spell immune. DISABLING SPELL
-Windwalk: Everyone knows what this is, use sparingly and only to support other spells like rejuvenation, or ganking other players. DEFENSIVE SKILL
-Slow Ward: Good counter for the melee vs. ranged issues, or for kiting, EXTREMELY USEFUL IN GLAD MODE for ranged players kiting melee. DISABLING SKILL
- Stun Field: Nice AoE stun with a little damage, useful for large games, runners and survival in creeping, or a nice extra for stun lock builds. DISABLING SKILL
-Befuddle: Attacks Miss. DISABLING SKILL

(Miscellaneous)
-Darkness: Awesome disabling spell, Disallows abilities such as crit strike, opponents attacks miss, and its AoE, so you can screw their entire team over at once. DISABLING SKILL
-Endurance Aura: Awesome for early game ganking, waste of a skill late game with speed set, auoric etc. Be careful. HYBRID SPELL
-Immolation: Useful farming spell for melee low mana builds. Not extraordinary but useful nonetheless. FARMING SPELL
-Guardian Ward: Great spell when used right, especially early game. Decent damage to single targets as well as giving an array of useful auras. HYBRID SPELL
-Goblin Horde: Again not a fan of summons, but goblin can be used nicely to farm.FARMING SPELL
-Acid Rain: One of my favorite farm spells, high damage, quick cast and efficient enough for low mana builds. FARMING SPELL
-Attribute Bonus: Self explanatory, you can never go wrong with extra stats. HYBRID SPELL
-Bash: Passive stun, extremely useful for agi, as quick attack speed procs more often. Stun is defiantly your friend. DISABLING SKILL

(Ultimate)
-Crit Master: Not a big fan since it doesn't stack with other abilities, still extra damage with every hit is never a bad thing.
-Mirror Image: Creates many of your hero, images do reduced damage. Haven't personally experimented with this but on paper it seems half decent.
-Death Orb: Huge damage and long ass stun, b-e-a-utiful for bash builds. Avatar cancels the damage BUT NOT THE STUN.
-Reincarnation: Age old staple, 2 lives is better then one.
-Avatar: One of the most popular spells, useful for bonus damage, Bonus armour and Spell Immunity. 45 Second spell immunity is sexy against intel. Don't get caught up with avatar for everything though, it is one hell of a flexible spell but others can have a greater effect in some builds.


Still In Progress...

LOVE IT! this is really useful! bump this up for more new players to see!

This is a fairly good guide I can add it to my best of forums list.

Thanks guys, like i said its going to be a work in progress over the next couple weeks, hopefully this will get some people skill though...

From what I have seen, Mirror images can also bash.

also, funny thing about images that i noticed in 3.1b...if u get images (at least the immorts gloves images) and u have a weapon with a corruption orb effect, the orb effect stacks twice, like if u have doombringer its -90 armor. It only stacks twice tho, even if u have more images, but also, if there are only 2 images atking it still stacks twice

ever underestimate someone in a pub n then get ur butt kicked late game?? i have...


it sucks =*[

not really if i'm playing solo, but I have said fuck it to pooling a pub team mate because they weren't to bright and figured i could 2v1, 3v1 the entire game. Works well up until late game when spell reduc and massive armour get fucky. I've also completely forgot that the noobs turned on unlimited weapons and then proceed to rush sword. Damn, 3 Unlimited Corrupt swords suck the fat one in 3v1 lol.

well...also pubs have very late game builds generally...how about the one we all remember?
slithy
soul burn/fire ward
eva
blood bath/bash
bash 2
ava

get some of the late game str items, get the omega axe/sword, grab a lifesteal scepter, then stack tomes. Unbelievable...the tomes give bonus hp and extra damage = increased lifesteal = HUGE lifesteal, you lose hp so slowly

tomes also increased hp regen lol.

no tomes didn't, glorn put that up somewhere, that the lowest value you could set for hp regen was too much, so it doesn't affect regen...hover over the skills icon and you will see in the str tooltip that it does not affect regen

i swear i read that in the tool tip at one point... maybe i got real warcraft and cha mixed up again.

it was in the tooltip in 3.1b i think.... but yeah glorn ruled regen op

Agility:
Think of agility hero's as the Ninjas of the game, they focus more or less on attack damage, speed and critical strikes. A few passive abilities is a MUST when playing agility, casting spells takes away from you attacking with your hands and thus undermines your archetype. In my opinion, good Agi players only use castable skills that will complement their offensive strikes or defense, Corrupt Flesh is one of the best spells you can have with agility, it literally strips your opponent of their armour, allowing you to wreak massive amounts of damage very quickly. Disabling spells such as Soul Burn, Hex, Befuddle etc, are also good as they keep you alive which is . Direct Damage spells like Frost Nova, chain lightning, etc are not recommended as normally, (This guide is for rookies please remember, I realize that a seasoned player can make this work) as you will not have the mana pool to support it and you will be giving up the reason for being agi (Fast hand to hand damage). The exception is a farming spell, which I will be explaining in the next section. Also try and focus on a concept with Agi builds, Go with mass crit build, Bash build, etc. Until you've gained some skilled mix and match builds are generally hard to play with and have more ways to screw up, when your starting out, uniformity is golden.


nononono you are lying to them! passives on an agility hero is asbolutely suicidal you get passives from items in every agi item build thinkable theres no need to waste skill slots. disabling spells are necessary you need at least one or people will kite/spell you to death. agi is prolly the hero of choice to use ams on it makes you immune to your biggest weakness (int dps whores) you need a good farming skill and the innate of choice will be either sprint life boost or spell reduct. if you have a slower agi hero get sprint because you dont want to have to waste ur money on something like tometic or speed set because your getting outrun by a siren with bombs nova and banish. if you have a low life agi hero you can get life boost and anti magic shell combo to make you strong against both physical attacks and magic attacks. if you have a competely average agi hero like the melee panda or swiftblade then you want spell reduct because you dont get very much of it in an agi item build. as for dd skills like nova and chain these are actually really good for agi but if you get them you have to focus on the int+agi items instead of the str+agi or just plain agi items. thiefs mask, archmagus cloak, shroud of theif god, speed set, and mastery of the ring are your best friends when you try this. corrupt flesh is a pretty good skill for agi but if you get it you need to get hex or a frost staff so they wont run away after you cast it. dont necessarily focus on damage, it more or less just comes with every agi item build. what you wanna focus on is armor and speed because this is what will allow you to over creep your opponent and kill bosses faster than him while still letting you pvp just as well as if you were focusing damage. now i understand this is a rookie guide but ingraining into rookies heads that they should be using passives on agi and not be experimenting with unique builds is rediculous thats exactly what we dont want to be doing.

As far as I'm concerned Imso is completely 100 % correct :/ though passives like combat mastery and bash might be very tempting to get on agi, spells like ams are essential. In fact one of the hidden strengths of an agi hero lies in the fact that they can get away using dmging spells, stuns, and disables to their advantage to improve their early-mid game while still maintaining the high mid-late dmg output given to the agi cast of heroes due to the properties of their attribute. Some of the best agi builds i've used involve spell dmg augmented by disables and ams. That being said passives are not terrible for agi since their attack speed and stat gains tend to complement the idea of increasing the percent of a passive procing but in order to obtain a higher understanding, level of play, and appreciation for the agi heroes of the game creating builds such as those described in the post above is absolutely necessary. I understand this is a rookie guide, but I believe that pubs have the understanding that agi is just a passive whore and that really needs to be changed in order to progress above the level of standard deadbeat public gamer.

on an off note you can now edit in on crit master that it works in conjunction w/ MEA and Mark of the Warrior

the only viable passive whore for agi involves using the hydra and magic enhanced attacks and death strike. just go to the top spawn and sit there all game and let ur allies do the work til late game where u win

Off topic is it me or has the use of Immolation almost been extinct as of late? I mean in my last 10 games Ive not seen it used once. Eh its doable I mean I went FeedBack, Static, Bash, Element on DH doing practically the same thing humping top, stealing mid every once in a while.

(Keep in mind back when this was written heroes had innate skills not pick your own innate skills so cut epic some slack some stratagies have changed since some skills where nerfed/buffed/introduced)

I dunno I hardly see it either. Theoretically cant it be seen as somewhat of a close ranged static shock? noo... its getting kinda replaced by things like bloodbath though. I did see it alot in 9 and 10

immolation is outclassed by bb imo maybe when one target is attacking you the dps is equal but considering that when you have 3 guys or more or even a full creep spawn attacking you bb becomes exponentially better

The skill needs a buff that much is for certain. perhaps increase on range and dmg would make it more appealing?

The key to immolation out classing BB is less attacks fools. Clap and Immo is a strong combo countered hard by nubatar. Actually I wouldnt mind it recieving the buff it had in 3.1. Just funny it went from main stream to almost extinct lol.

Sharky wrote:

Just funny it went from main stream to almost extinct lol.

Yeah; I didn't nerf it either... In fact, I increased the AoE on it, and allowed it to hit air units... It isn't a bad skill, but bloodbath holds much better late game value.

You cannot make an argument between BB being procced more, and immo. If 6 guys are proccing your BB, then 6 guys would be hit by your immo. However, IMMO has 2-3X the AoE on it, and you dont need to be hit for it to work, it is there 100% of the time. Really, it is MUCH stronger, if not for taking spell damage reduction into account. Most pubs have no idea what spell redux is anyway though; which makes it even stranger that no one uses this...

Personally, I play ranged heroes with a high mana pool... so, immo is unusable by me... I feel that 2 outta 3 people stick to ranged, once again, making immo pointless. Most people who go melee, go some form of tank, or late game hero. late game, immo does nothing.

If you think it is weak though, imagine a good 4v4, where 4 people pick it... at the first duel that is what... 60-70 DPS? More damage than auto attacking, while you continue to auto attack and cast your other spells.. even late game, at ~80ish a second... with 4 people using it, thats 320 damage a second... in a 30 second duel, you have ~10,000 damage. Of course, that is a case which would never happen; you cannot argue that 10k damage potential isnt good, in a medium sized game. Assuming 1 guy had it, that is still 2500 damage, no mana, no cast time, no nothing. it is ~the same damage per second of breath of fire... 880, every 10 seconds... about 2640 in 30 seconds. But, you have the cast time and mana cost to worry about.

well does immolation actually stack with itself? i never really thought of that but if it works across 3 different people then it actually is an okay skill choice

yah, immo stacks with itself. you can also have immo, along with immo from fire shield. however, fire shield immo's will not stack (intentional)

Oh ya, im re-writing this guide for 4.0, stay tuned. If anyone has anything they want in it give me a shout ... brentcolmandesign@gmail.com