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Gloves of Haste
Maelstrom
Boots of Speed
Mask of Madness
Power Treads
Divine Rapier
Crystalys
Mjollnir
Daedalus
Divine Rapier
Cloak
Hood of Defiance
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10 |  |
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1 | 3 | 5 | 7 |  |
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6 | 11 | 16 |  |
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2 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 17 | 18 |
Windrunner is great in this mode, but you certainly can't play her as you would in a traditional DOTA game. The usually very effective shackle and powershot offer very little in wraith night for reasons I will explain shortly; windrun and focus fire (Zephyr in this mode) however, are 2 of the best skills available to any hero in the restricted pool and can easily win the wave for your team.
Pros
What I've found in wraith night is that it's very important to get you first big item asap, hence why I recommend purely rushing maelstrom to start with. It'll give you the AoE you sorely need and allows you to sustain dps a bit better outside of Zephyr. I don't recommend going straight to Mjollnir as the additional attack speed and active aren't worth the cost at this stage.
Note I also wouldn't even pick up boots since you won't need to kite this early and windrun will allow you to escape quickly if you really need to.
Once your maelstrom is complete I pick up boots so you can start to respond to calls from team mates quicker and still have windrun available to tank when you get there. No need to upgrade them at this stage as MoM is much more important.
Your second "core" item will be MoM, the active allows you to maintain excellent dps whilst Zephyr is down, and if used in conjunction with windrun, you won't even have to worry about the increase in damage taken. The lift steal will also mean that during a MoM/Windrun combo you'll heal a significant portion of your health bar and be able to keep yourself in the fight much longer.
Next you'll want to finish your treads and set them to int for a cheap dps boost, then focus on getting your first Rapier. Now I know rapier is usually a risky choice, and yes you will still drop it on death, but it remains locked to you and the NPC won't steal it from you so in wraith night, its absolutely brilliant. I would get this first over daedalus as your crits wont be that impressive without it.
Finally I'll pick up a crystalis, with a rapier the damage boost is great and if your team has done particularly well you'll be able to upgrade it to the daedalus too. Quite often I find myself not in this situation though and I'd rather save the cash for a buyback just in case things go horribly wrong, but that's just preference.
I've mentioned cloak/hood as it does have it's uses for tanking the hits you cant windrun through (rosh/kings aoe/stun etc) but as all of that damage is pretty easily dodge-able, I'd skip it. Pick up only if you haven't learned the attack patterns for those waves (7, 11 and 13 in particular).
Changes
If you hadn't already noticed, a lot of the skills in wraith are altered slightly, for windrunner, the follow changes have been made:
WAVE 1: Kobolds, Kobolds Everywhere!
Get to a tower and stay there, this wave is a pain for you as you don't have much dps yet and windrun is low level, if you get low on health use windrun to tank the kobolds down, focus on the healers and ranged creeps first as they're the only ones likely to cause an issue. Kite if necessary and you'll make it out alive. Windrunner will not seem like a great pick at this point but stick in there!
The most important thing to remember is pick up everything that drops, windrun through to pick up gold and if you're doing well then you can sell all the clarities/salves you pick up or pass them to someone who needs them.
WAVE 2: Left 5 Dead
This wave can be very easy or very difficult depending on how well people keep up the kill priority. Undyings need to go down first or they will continually summon adds that occasionally go berserk and charge at you, they dont do much damage but if you're running around on low health they can catch you by surprise and ruin your day.
The only time you shouldn't be focusing an undying is if there is a glowing green zombie next to him, if there is then focus it as it will explode clearing out the other small zombies and dealing reasonable damage to the undying (this is magic damage so you can't windrun tank it).
As long as you keep the undyings under control this wave shouldn't cause any issues.
WAVE 3: The Ugly Stick
Easy wave for you since you can windrun tank everything except the large ogre's stun, fortunately that's easily dodge-able, just bait the attack and move out of the way so you can attack freely.
One thing you should do here that not enough people do is pull the enemy off the towers, don't just tunnel vision the lane you're at, keep an eye on the mini map and keep those towers up for the bonus gold! Glyph if you have to.
WAVE 4: Smashed to Slithereens
The slarks here are very annoying, make sure you've got windrun ready to soak the leap spam and it will quickly drop you if you're not paying attention. Also note that the slardar stun can't be windrun tanked so keep your distance, if you have to then windrun and soak it, you'll at least be protected by the follow up attacks.
Again, watch your towers, you should really have at least maelstrom by now so the procs from that should make light work of the slarks.
WAVE 5: They Speak for the Trees
First real chance of failure here. Your sole goal here it to KILL NATURES PROPHETS! If you don't then you're going to be completely overwhelmed by treants and constantly stuck in sprout, this is the one wave I sometimes wish I had powershot to break out. Seriously, I can't stress this enough; fortunately windrunner is great for this as you can run through all the treants, activate windrun a take the the prophets down and get out, try to kill them quickly as they like to run away into the safety of their tower+. Don't stop to kill the adds, move straight on to another lane with prophets and take them out!
As long as your whole team is doing this, then the wave isn't too bad. It's probably worth noting that the large treants pack a huge punch and will cast living armour on the prohpets making them more of a pain to kill. They are very slow though so just kite til you've dealth with your main threat.
WAVE 6: I Lost Count - Mini Boss
Here's your midway mini boss, pretty easy as long as your team focuses correctly. Now a lot of the people you pug with will say to get rid of the eggs as they spawn a lot of adds; and while this is true, they're pretty easy to aoe down with your maelstrom procs and zephyr so you should focus solely on the Broodmother. Leave the eggs to a someone with reliable AoE (like Drow), if none of your team has that then just all focus brood mother and deal with the adds later, remembering to pull them off towers as you chase the Broodmother, if you can get them to her then zephyr/maelstrom will deal with the majority of them.
If your whole team ends up single targeting the eggs, you'll be on this wave for days only killing adds, so get them to focus appropriately based on your team composition. Of course sometimes you may be with people who won't listen, in this case as long as you stay on Brood (survive with windrun/MoM) then you'll still win the wave...eventually.
WAVE 7: Burn Notice
Huge magic damage being dished out in this wave, so windrun won't help you much here. The roshlings fire breath can easily kill you if you get caught in the entire duration. Standard MMO practice applies here, don't stand in the fire! Along the same lines, make sure you dont stay in the dark red circles that appear on the ground as they indicate a leshrac stun, and it'll usually be more than one coming.
The Roshshlings are slow so as long as you stay aware of where they are and when they're preparing to use their fire breath then they can be fairly safely ignored in favour of dealing with the leshracs.
I prefer to deal with the leshracs first but as all the damage in this wave is fairly easily dodged (except leshrac auto attack which is minor) you can just deal with whatever you're nearest to. Chances are you wont be able to get a rez of in this round so try not to die!
Wave 8: Compound Interest
Golems will arrive in packs of 2, and each golem killed with explode in smaller golems, which will also explode into even smaller golems (can't remember the exact numbers). This means unless you have heavy aoe damage in your team you should generally focus on only popping one big golem at a time and dealing with the smaller ones before moving on to the next.
Remember to pull other packs off your towers as they arrive and lead them to the rest of your team (if they can handle it, otherwise just kite)
WAVE 9: Bear Force One
If you manage to save all your towers here then you probably don't need to be reading my guide. The bears will rip towers down incredibly quickly and it'll be up to you and your speed to roam the map pulling everything off the towers (don't stop to kill them or you'll lose another tower). This starts off easy but as the numbers ramp up and the Lone Druids and Ursas arrive it's not so simple. You'll need a very co-ordinated team to manage tower protection as although your speed makes you one of the best for it, windrun also makes you the best for tanking the Ursa and reviving allies as you wont be able to pull off all of them at once.
If you don't love windrun after this round, windrunner isn't for you. Run up to the Ursa, pop windrun/zephyr and casually solo him and his adds before resuming tower protection.
Not to difficult a wave to beat, but a hard one to get max gold.
WAVE 10: Chin' Choppa Chin' Choppa!
This is the wave I'll pick up a rank in shackleshot for, the Pudges will use the tried and tested hook/dismember combo on you and your team and it's very handy to ahve a reliable interrupt to save your team, just hope they do the same for you as you cant windrun tank this.
The Pudges have a lot of health but spend most of their time force staffing and running around so as long as everyone interrupts dismember, this is a very easy round to win with max gold. If one of your supports was nice enough to pick up a medallion (great item for wraith night) then this is even easier.
WAVE 11: Danger Zone
Very annoying wave, but fairly easy if everyone is kind enough to attack the Gyro rockets.
The stun rockets the Gyro's fire move very slowly but pack a hell of a punch, so if you see an ally being chased by one (highlighted by the usual animation above their head) then make it your goal to destroy that rocket. As this is magic damage you can't windrun tank it so you have to hope your team does the same for you, or that you have an omni to repel you.
If your team is good at dealing with the rockets then focus clockwerks as they will ignore you and focus down your middle towers. If they aren't then focus the Gyro's as they can easily cause a wipe if ignored.
WAVE 12: Stay Frosty!
Nice easy wave as long as your team doesn't derp the lich ult (I think he only fires this if there are 2 of you in range) pull the satyrs off towers if you need to or just mow them down with zephyr, if you see an AA ult come in then go hunt him down.
Not much to say here other than don't get caught in chain frost.
WAVE 13: Reborn - Boss Wave
Boss wave. A few simple mechanics to be aware of then the rest is easy. The king with resurrect twice so you have to kill him 3 times, each time he comes back, he gains a new ability.
First time he spawns, jsut tank and spank. He will occasionally do 1 of 2 things; either a large green circle will appear around him which will hit for heavy magic damage and a stun after a couple of seconds or he will face a hero and pull his arm back and release a piercing hellfire blast that does heavy magic damage too. Both are easily avoided, just stay max range and not on his front, this way if he targets you with a stun it will be obvious as he'll turn to face you so just side step it.
Second time you have to kill him he'll gain the ability to surround himself with adds that buff his attack speed, kill these asap (they go down quickly) so your tank doesn't get overwhelmed and resume the battle as normal.
Third time you fight him he'll have everything above, plus he will occasionally summon a gravestone (same animation s his stun so keep an eye out for it) this will quickly spawn adds that heal the wraith king when they reach him. Preferably a ranged dps (you) should hunt these as soon as they span and destroy them, making sure to deal with the adds as well. As long as someone is on top of this, you'll take down the boss without much trouble.
Ok so that about sums up my experience with Windrunner in Wraith Night. Thank for reading, I hope it at least held a few bits of information that will help you move on to the New Game+/++/+++ difficulties.
This was my first guide so apologies it's not as pretty as it could be! I welcome any feedback to improve it and will hopefully get round to writing some more.
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