My crit master build

First of all thanks for all of the feedback on my first build post.

*edit* (still refining this build through your feedback and my ideas based on how it is playing for me in real pub and priv games.) *edit*

I just went 14-1 (creep death) on this build and it was a pub match but I felt pretty good about it.

Second of all I will try and slow down and take my time on this post to make it more enjoyable to read and easier to understand without all of the complexities which are described better by other people in other appropriate areas on the forums.


Hero: Hump-Free

Innate: Armour


Skillset in order of priority.



Ultimate: Crit master

Misc: Acid Rain

Offensive: Magic Barrage

Defensive: Pick ur own. I choose mana vortex here to keep the build well rounded.

Item Build: Basic Mage Set (name is off ill have to double check it)
Weapon: Axe or sword. Crits dont stack from sword and its weaker BUT you have the benifit of increased attack speed. which could be invaluable to you if you have lifesteal or just because someone can do 2k hits doesnt mean u might not be doing 2.4kdps.

Looking forward to your feedback

Honestly if your going with something like crit master and be focusing on attacks I would lean more towards instant cast spells as oposed to channels. Pick up a disable somewhere I would say slowward would prove the most useful against annoying early game kitting. Due to the nature of farm skills I would recommend picking up a semi farm skill as your second farm spell. For example if you want to farm heavy clap and acid. Or Barrage and Scream, Fire Ward and Gaurdian Ward as examples Note that the other spells have a use with scream you also have a silence, with clap you have a more relyable slow, with gaurdian you have some nice auras that help aid you in staying alive.

Priest has a bad BAT, so it is silly to rely on crit master as an end game.
Evasion the skill, and evasion from items doesn't stack. (combat master would though)
Two main farming skills is never a good idea.

Change your hero to someone who attacks faster (2.1 on some ranged int) and swap out one of your farming skills, for an "off-farming" skill.

How a build works in pub games isn't always a valid representation of what it can do. This build also relies on the idea that extreme creeps, unlimited weapons, and most likely, leavers/increased kill count happens. combined with the prayer that no one has vortex, AMS, potions, AMS potions, mana burn, feedback, or anything else that makes your dual-nuke system pretty useless, thus taking your entire early-mid game strat away.

hmm bergie me thinks you tried to add acid rain into your build after our game last night

magic barrage and acid rain is redundant as others have said, also if your going to go crit master you really need to go melee and fastest BAT you can unless your POSITIVE your opponent is not getting avatar, in which case ranged is ok.

assuming you do switch to melee you then have to have some way of countering kiting. i do this by getting static shock because it does dmg to them based on THEIR attack. plus it works out to be a decent counter to bash. slow ward can work too and evasion isnt a terrible idea either although if you know your planning on getting the agi ring that gives evasion there isnt much point.

my CM build is currently deathstrike, static shock, acid rain, and combat mastery on either slithery or timmy (i prefer slithery because he is a bit easier to keep alive early but timmy is better for early ganking). item wise essentially you want to mass whatever your main skill is either agi or str. i also usually get an axe instead of the sword so i dont have to worry about remembering to put it down and pick it up every time i level crit master although im not sure if the math works out that the extra dmg the axe gives you EVERY hit outweighs the crits from the sword.

so in summary IF its the extreme creeps, extra kills against pubs, then the 2 nuke system works fine as long as you have the mana to continuously use them. otherwise you probably need to tweak it some but i have found that it CAN be used in non-pub games with no bonus settings. It CAN be countered but generally it does pretty well.

@Verti- Yes i worked in acid rain after our duel. I mean i have'nt used every skill setup so far and if you found a skill that was very effective in keeping you stunned/very good chance for high damage early/mid-late game espically to an area of creeps/heros would you use it? I am not afraid to say that I think my builds can always be improved upon and dont mind changing them based on new information.

Mana hasnt been a problem with both of the main farming skills. But assuming it really is THAT bad to have 2 main ones since 2 of the best people are telling me so what would you swap for magic barrage?

@Glorn I dont feel like this build requires unlim wep or leavers or extreme creeps. heres why

My first game with this build unlim wep was not on. by the end of the game *it did go longer which in and of itself is either a testament to how much my build/item build is lacking or how good my opponents were* I was doing 4k crits and 7k sword crits.

Leavers. Why does this matter to me? 1v1/2v2 and 3v3 I will still have enough creeps to feed me as well as the opposing side. Ill just be able to do it faster.

Extreme creeps. Yes my build would do better with this mode but in games where it is not turned on I believe this could be a wonderful early gank build or just farm the creeps on the other teams side if you cant chase them down. chances are one of them will think its offensive to have you on their side and there you go *whack* job done.


*edit*

Perhaps I should have mentioned. Because of the enormus lack in the BAT on priest it is necessary to get time benders by or shortly after level 8. Myself after chasing some int stats down for mana and damage i got my shield and my weapon (axe for damage or sword)

One big big problem I have had in some of the games with this build is armour. Some games it seems like I dont even have to pay attention to it. Others it seems like im retarted because i have massive health and maby 20 armour. Considering priest starts out with 0 maby a diff hero is called for. The reason I chose him is beacuse +6 int once again is the best way to get mana and dmg esp with the starting (40 i think?) stats.

That being said maby pali? if i remember correctly he has good starting stats 9 armour and 4.5 int gain.

Still behind on all of the acronyms. BAT (basic attack speed?) Kiting AMS are all foreign to me and therefore only context clues gave me an idea of what you were talking about.

replace barrage with soul burn or some other good disable...also you keep mentioning that you got a sword, which is bad. If you have crit master, you want to get the axes, because stacking crits when you have a 100% crit is not good. Also, I would encourage you to put this on a melee hero, because range crits have odd mechanics, and they don't proc on magic immunes. For defensive i would recommend hex because it stops their evasion and lets you do a bunch of damage fast. However, this setup could be a little to late game, but you can work on that. BAT is base attack speed, the lower the better. AMS is anit-magic-shell, it absorbs spell damage, and kiting is running from your opponent. Also, if you are not going to use barrage, you don't need the hure int reserves you are talking about in your item build. An agi or str hero would probably be best, just get a crown of ages and you will have all the mana you need. Look at undead-boy's old admiral build, that will help you figure out the concepts of using crit master a little better

the problem with having 2 nukes like that is IF you get countered your countered 100%. and honestly 2 nukes in a normal game is usually overkill as the spawns just cant keep up with the speed with which u can clear them

" do know that int is easy to get evade for but it does stack and it is nice to have late game."

No it doesn't.

I should do some more homework on this before i just go out and say stuff. thanks epic. i forgot to edit it before but i was corrected i think.

Item build would not change for the int hero no you would'nt need all the mana coming at you but it cant hurt to be able to run from spawn point to spawn point without needing a mana recharge and dont forget as an int hero it is your source of damage.

Also one pro/con

U have enough mana to where if someone tries to vortex you early game you can still cast your spells. Mana burn wont leave you empty on mana even thou it has a short cooldown. Your mana regen is higher this way so that when vortex does start hitting you for 50% mana you can regen after it nukes u to 0 or maby even avoid getting nuked to 0 mana.

one con that i can see right off the bat is that mana burn and anything else that deals damage throu mana will have all the mana it wants.

Brit Crit Master is the only Crit that can cut through avatar on range. Im not knocking double farm but in a case where there are no blown assignments (very ultra rare in pubs) You end up finding that one nuke is more then enough. The whole premise of a double farm build is blown creep assignments if theyre not there you practically have a useless spell on your hands.

Edit to clear some misconceptions somebody said they needed to drop their swords over and over after they level Crit Master you dont need to do that. Crit Master is the first crit achieved from the very first skill point even if when leveled it still registers as the first.

^now i know, i thought that crit master didn't proc thru ava

Sharky wrote:

Edit to clear some misconceptions somebody said they needed to drop their swords over and over after they level Crit Master you dont need to do that. Crit Master is the first crit achieved from the very first skill point even if when leveled it still registers as the first.

what?

some people think that when you level a crit, it gets stacked on top of other crits, this is untrue. first point into it is the only point that counts. items are considered "obtained" every time you pick them up; thus, items are generally on top.

Also, berg, this build I am sure works on pubs... but, I randomed arthas, with chain light, mana flare, banish, and puppet master.. I was the top level all game, and ended up going 24-0. I also randomed the paladin with stormbolt, combat master, bash, bash innate, and doom roots.. and went 20-1. So, what your build can do against pubs, means nothing. you can throw a melting pile of shit at the wall, and somehow, beat a pub while doing so. Swear to god, try it.

Swap out evasion for holy light, swap out barrage for death strike, soul burn, or corrupt flesh.
^^ you'll do about 30% better on average.

hmm how bout....

for a crit build

Deathstrike

Spiked carapace

Acid rain

critmaster

level acid rain as your farmer and spiked as your off hand until around acid rank 6 or 7. then level spiked as your main and alternate w/ deathstrike. if i'm doing that right critmaster should work out w/ ds allowing you to do some pretty sick dmg... though i'll give it a try later to see if it works... it'll prolly fail to a good build or a kite build but ya it's just off the top of my head and its one of the few builds i havent copied or at least not that i know of.

anyone would kite you. armor beats you. evasion beats you. spells beat you. ranged beats you.

Not a really bad build though, but uhhh... switch out death strike. No offense to the skill, but if you are stacking crits, the more you stack, the less DPS you get per crit. with DS, which crits 10% of the time, you lose 10% of the damage from combat master. which is only ~4%, but still... Why not get soul burn offensive? you then cannot be kited, it is harder for someone to spell stomp you.... it is better for bosses.... better for multi-player games... better for avoiding ganks... And well.... it lowers their attack by much more than DS increases yours.

sounds good since i was looking at your original critmaster move thread I thought adding ds would add to the dps of critmaster. If i'm mistaken my bad

they work together, they stack... it is said in about 700 places on this forum... search for it... It is just stupid to stack a lot of crits, especially if they are SKILL crits. Get a sword to stack with crit master if you want, or better, a ring. Having DS with it though, is just a silly waste, IMO.

piss i actually used that exact build earlier, it did not end well for the other guy

Its a shame nobody uses Mark of the Warrior +40% to yourself and two other allies gets down right nasty.

agreed i have also used that on a crit master build it gets pretty ridiculous

But its so short lasting I feel like i spend more time making sure the autocast is using it on me and my allies than hitting things. Also I just used deathstrike in my crit build trying new things out and normally when i use deathstirke with res or w/e ulti i have it hits huge for like 4 5 6 k depending on how far along i am usually i see a very large percent decrease in the enemies health as well. used ds and crit master today and i felt like every crit was the crit master and not the ds even though i was seeing the 2000 inbetween the 800's or w/e it was. Maby im just ignorant. Also whevever i use a skill such as bloodbath or static shock or elemental master i feel like i get no gold when it does the finishing kill. is the strike not registered to my hero? I really dont understandn exactly whats under the hood there but im sure you guys do so help me out.

its always possible that if there is any creeps that do splash damage that they will steal your kill. its nothing to do with those skills in particular, if anything those increase your chances of getting the kill as your getting in more hits/sec. as far as the DS thing i experienced similar thing yesterday and wouldnt mind testing this some time.

uhh if only i could somehow synergize mark and mea on critmaster. that'd be destuctive on epic proportions the only thing is theres almost no such thing as defensive farming. ss is too inconsistent to be used in such a way

The only thing about mark is that it can be purged and if anyone see's that you're getting so much damage from a buff you can bet your ass they're going to find a way to get rid of it. But i guess just like rock paper scissors there is always going to be a problem with every build. If there wasn't then it would be OP.

actually, on rare occasion, you might not get gold from a creep that dies to the shadow bolt. I only keep dummy units on the map for 2 seconds for that skills (usually 1 second for others) but the shadow bolt lasts for 5 seconds, so, if that... very minor damage, in the last 3 seconds of the bolt, scores the kill, it might not register that your unit killed it, because the unit has been removed. you still get the EXP though, oddly enough.

^^Ive seen this a couple of times, considering changing the dummy to last for 5 seconds, but I don't wanna spam the map with dummies.... Might nerf the skill a bit, if I do, then I will make sure you get the extra gold from those 1/100 kills.