Bovine Blitzkrieg - "It's Moo time, motherf&#%er!"

Foreword

Do you hate farming? Do you always want to fight? Then Spirit Breaker is a hero for you.

"But Triumph!" You say, "My Cow style looks like this. #sadface"




Not a problem! We can transform you in 5 simple steps and $19.95 payments. When you look like this:




You can do this solo:



Yeah, let's show you how to #******** all over your opponents.

Step 1: I am not a carry, and that's ok.

Realise that Spirit Breaker isn't a carry. He hasn't been for a while. Alot of players are stuck in a routine going back to when Empowering Haste also improved attack damage. With a Mask of Madness you could get +80 damage hitting with MoM's 100% IAS, it was psychotic even before factoring in Greater Bash.

So why are people still buying MoMs and Daedalus and other carry items? Short answer: They're ding ****s. There are alot of ding ****s in Dota so just roll with it.

The thing to notice about Spirit Breaker is he is naturally very tanky. 700+ HP at level 1 with 5 Armour as well. Throw in a stout shield and he's considerably durable.

What are you? You're a brawler, a ganker, a tornado that rampages through the middle of a fight causing a mess. You initiate ganks, strike fear into losers trying to farm, and come teamfights you pick the most valuable opponent and lock him down. He wants to do something? Too bad, you're in his face punching him. You might not have the firepower to kill him yourself but that's ok. You're going to just punch him in the kidneys until someone who does helps you out. The main point is to stop him doing from what he needs to be doing.

So this is why we're building for cost effective durability. MoM is like steroids, you'll feel tough in the short term but it'll just give you cancer and make you sterile in the long run. Same for Armlet and Daedlus. These are items of a past version of Spirit Breaker.

Aghanim's gives fantastic stats for you and more importantly guarantees you'll have nether strike available for fights. Anytime you think you can help get a kill you can cast it. Sometimes you'll manage to use it 2, sometimes even 3 times during an engagement.

Black King Bar is self explanatory. Alot of stuns/nukes? BKB is your friend. In the same vein a 550g investment of a Cloak can go miles with your naturally high health.

Somebody is going to ask why Drums are only listed under situational. They're a great item but they're close to half an Aghanim's Sceptre. And a Sceptre is way, way, better. I only get drums when the game is off to a really really ****ty start and I need a quick pick me up. Otherwise pool what gold you have into that Sceptre because you won't be doing much farming at all.

Step 2: Farming is for suckers, I just need EXP

So where do you lane? Spirit Breaker is a hero that can lane anywhere. You're kinda tough to harass out and you don't really need to last hit that badly. With that in mind the preferred position to place you is in the hard lane, even if it's solo. High priority mid heroes like Storm, Puck, Tinker are a better choice to go there and as we've discussed you're not a carry. A carry should be in the safe lane with a support.

You get the **** lane because you're tough enough to take it. You're the hero your team needs in about 2 or 3 levels.

With that said:

• Nobody has a mid hero? Go mid, the solo mid EXP is really good for Spirit Breaker.
  
  
• Nobody picked a carry? Go to the safe lane. You're still not a carry but you'll get more EXP out of the safe lane. Also Spirit Breaker isn't great at getting kills in a dual lane at early levels. You're relying on ******ed bash chances, so it's better to send a kill combo like Sand King/Lina to put pressure on the opponent's carry. Don't worry it'll be your job to ruin his day later.

So what do you do if the worst case scenario arises and you're a solo hard lane against something really ****ty like a try hard trilane?

Don't panic. For starters switch your skill build to Charge at level 1, then Bash as level 2 and carry on as normal. Charge simply acts as an escape mechanism. If you're being ganked wait out the stuns then charge anything in mid to get some distance.

Now focus on getting level 2. You're going to get it eventually. Even if your opponents go into a perfect try hard mode and literally pull every single creep wave you can just go to your jungle and do a pull to get level 2. If you're on the radiant pull the close hard camp, if you're the dire stack the easy camp and pull that.

Once you have charge your options open up. The thing is when you're being given a solo side lane that means your team is prioritizing farm in the Jungle, Safe Lane, and Mid Lane. Your opponents are effectively getting the same. Your job is to now destabilize this relationship and help your other lanes snowball. Charge mid, help your mid player win and make sure he gets ahead. Charge the safe lane. Sure they might already be winning that lane but setting up easy kills gets you money and levels. Make sure you go back to the hard lane though when it's being pushed, you need to tap easy EXP to get to level 6 safely.

Step 3: How does I charge hero?

First thing you need to consider when charging is your angle. You need to avoid being seen.

With this in mind:

• Don't charge from a place in LOS with the enemy. Take the time to walk out of sight.
  
  
• Consider towers and incoming creep waves.
  
  
• Also watch out for Roshan. I can't count the number of times that ******* has bashed me out of a charge.
  
  
• Consider where the enemy wards are placed.

On that last point a big bonus to going to the hard lane at the start of the game is it's much much easier to charge mid before the 6 minute mark (typically when solo mid gets their ult). Now that you can only get 1 set of wards for the first 6 minutes most of your opponents will spend those wards protecting their own hard lane and blocking neutral pulls. This gives you complete freedom to charge the opposing mid player. If you see them getting out of position go ahead and charge them.

Your goal is to punish opponents that split up. If they split up across the map you pick an easy mark and savage them. You keep doing this until your opponents group up. If they group up as 5 so you can't gank any of them? Then you're winning. Your team is going to outfarm them if they do that. If they're all hanging around their jungle and their safe lane they're not tapping as many sources of income as your team is, and that's going to hurt them in the long run.

If you force your opponents into holding hands to stay alive as 5 now is the time for you to sneak in some of your own farm. Keep in mind as soon as they get cocky and split up again you go and show them this isn't allowed.

Step 4: Rampaging into team fights

Spirit Breaker's goal in fights is to disrupt your opponents, get their attention and create space for your allies to get their work done. With this in mind figure which opponent is the most crucial asset to their teamfight abilities. Do they have a Warlock? Then I'm going to focus on locking him down and preventing a good ult and fatal bonds. Do they have an Enigma? Then I'm going to hang back and counter Black Hole with Nether Strike. Figure out your goal in the fight and work it.

Also recognise that Charge isn't a great initiation spell. It's far too easy for your opponents to stun you out of it. If you have a better initiator on the team like Puck or Tidehunter it's better to let them handle the job then pick on a priority target.

With that said once you have Aghanim's you can throw away ults without too much worry due to the increased cast range and dramatically increased cool down. If you see a high priority target get out of position it's very viable to initiate the fight with Nether Strike then charge them (or a nearby opponent so it hits both of them) and allow your team to strike from there.

Most importantly stay the course and don't be afraid of dieing. Did you charge, Nether Strike and then ate an entire Omnislash? Good. You've already expended the majority of your firepower for the next 20 seconds and somebody else on your team didn't have to take the damage. Unless you can clearly and easily escape in the majority of situations you're usually better off doubling down and just auto attacking whoever is trying to kill you. I cannot count the number of times somebody has thought they've got me, then I've just held on and procced back to back Bashes which buys time for somebody else' stun to come through.

Remember your entire game plan has been around helping your priority heroes like your solo mid and carry player snowball. Now you want to buy them room to put that snowball to use in a fight. If people are attacking you they are not attacking the players that are going to kill them.

Step 5: Talk the talk so you can walk the walk

Microphone, get one. Typing is for losers. If you can quickly and easily communicate you're going to have a much easier time playing Spirit Breaker.

And you need to. Spirit Breaker doesn't solo kill heroes half as easily as he used to. You need help to kill your opponents and your allies want your help to win their lanes.

People need to know what you're doing. You want to charge bottom? Great, but somebody needs to be ready to take advantage of that. Tell them you're about to charge bottom and to TP there. Pinging a hero rapidly doesn't communicate ****. On the other hand if you say "I'm healing then charging Leshrac bottom." People can TP in to be ready to help, existing players in the lane will hold their spells until you're about to arrive, and players with globals will be ready to use them. Ever find yourself thinking "I would've had that ****ing kill if dumbass Tree had healed me!" Well, if you didn't tell dumbass Tree to heal you that's mostly your fault.

Dota is a game measured in split seconds and VOIP improves coordination and reaction speeds. Get a microphone you ding ****.

Closing statements

I play by myself in standard matchmaking. All my my experience comes from that. I very rarely, if ever, play with a party. The majority of my Spirit Breaker games are played in the hard lane, often it's a suicide solo lane when team mates decide to trilane or jungle.

• These are not the be all end all items for Spirit Breaker. There are plenty of other good choices like Urn, Mek, and Orchid. This, however, is incredibly robust and fits just about any opposing line up.
  
• Factor Resistances into your survivability. Enemy got lots of -Armour effects? Buy some cheap armour instead of that Cloak. Is their lineup a crazy mix of Physical and Magic damage or lots of Pure damage? Just buy more raw HP. Faster Point booster, bracers, etc.
  
• If you have questions leave them in the comments.