GreenMan's guide to solo mid Kunkka!

Introduction

Hi and welcome to my guide to Kunkka!Kunkka is a strengh Initiator/Carry that can possibly destroy an entire enemy team in one swipe. Kunkka is one of my favourite heroes because of his skillshots and all the funny cleave kills you will get on some people you didnt even plan to kill. The guide is based on my personal experience of over 40 games with him, including captains mode. I'll focus on my style to play Kunkka, but I try to show you other options as well. Have fun!

Pros / Cons

Pros:
+Free harassment with Tidebringer
+Tanky, thanks to 3 strengh gain
+HUGE cleave radius with bonus damage
+Excellent teamfight power with Torrent and Ghost ship
+chasing power with X marks the spot
+Good lategame potential, good farmer
+Ghost ship stun goes through BKB
+HUGE CLEAVE!!!

Cons:
-Small mana pool
-Hard-to-land skillshots (Torrent and Ghost ship)
-Easily outcarried lategame
-No real escape mechanism (allthough Ghost Ship can be essential to survive)

Skills

Summons a rising torrent that, after a short delay, hurls enemy units into the sky, stunning, dealing damage and slowing movement speed.
Torrent is casted on the ground. After a 2 second delay a water Torrent will rise, stunning everyone in a 215 radius for 1.53 seconds and dealing 120/180/240/300 magic damage. After the hit, the targets will have their movement speed slowed by 35% for 1/2/3/4 seconds.

-The spell has a huge 1500 cast range. This allows you to initiate from far away or stopping fleeing enemies.
-Never use Torrent only to farm, you dont have the manapool for it. Make sure you always have mana for Torrent and Ghost ship if possible.
-If you cast your Ghost ship right after the Torrent, you will have a guaranteed hit (if the enemy has no escape like blink).
-Torrent is mostly used as a followu-p stun to ensure the hit



Kunkka's legendary sword grants increased damage and cleaves a large area of effect in front of him for a single strike.

Tidebringer is your bread and butter throughout the game. Every 13/10/7/4 seconds, Kunkkas attack will deal 15/30/45/60 bonus damage and cleave in a 500/500/500/600 radius behind the target.

-With Tidebringer you are able to harass in a big range allthough you are melee, which makes you a viable mid.
-The cleave damage is not reduced by armor, this means the unit affected by the cleave will actually take more damage than your attack target.
-Sometimes it takes good positioning to kill escaping heroes with your cleave.
-Tidebringer is the source of your lategame damage.



Targets a friendly or enemy Hero, marks their position with an X, and returns them to it after several seconds. Kunkka can trigger the return at any time during the duration.

X Marks the Spot marks is cast on a hero and will return him to the castpoint after 1/2/3/4 seconds. The cast range of this spell is 500/650/800/950 units.

-X marks the spot allows you to let you and your team catch up to a running enemy
-It is a very good setup for your Torrent
-If the target activates BKB, he will not be pulled back.
-It will interrupt channeling spells.



Summons a ghostship to cut a swath through battle, causing damage and stuns to enemy units as it crashes through. Allies are doused in Kunkka's Rum, receiving bonus movement speed and a delayed reaction to damage.

Ghost Ship

Gameplay

First of all, this is a solo mid guide, so you want to go solo mid and possibly get a good creepblock. Your first skill will be Tidebringer, which gives you an nice harassement tool and increases your damage and therefor your possibilities to get last hits.

To prevent the lane from pushing too hard, you should deny as much creeps as possible when your Tidebringer is up (the bonus damage lets you deny easily) then cleave through the enmy creeps. Alternatively you can also just hit the enemy ranged creep, so you wont cleave on the whole wave, but for this you have to walk close to your enemy which might be dangerous.

Position yourself correct so you hit most of your Tidebringer cleaves on the enemy for a constant harassment.

You will most likely stay in the mid lane until you're level 6 (maybe you have to join fights near you earlier). Level 6 or 7 means ganking time. If your team is slightly decent, the lane you gank will have a setup stun or slow, to make sure you hit your Torrent and Gost ship. If you have enough setup, you can have maxed Torrent at level 7. This means you have the same magic burst as a Queen of Pain(!) if you land your combo! If you dont have any crowd control in your team, it might be good to take 2 levels of X marks the spot on level 7 and 8.

If your sidelanes are winning and dont really need a gank, then DO NOT GANK! Unlike a Night Stalker for example, whose purpose is ganking the **** out of the enemy, Kunkka scales very good in the mid/lategame with good farm! If this is the case you might want to max Tidebringer at level 7 before torrent (a 3-3-0-1 build can be fine as well). I will give you an excellent farming mechanism and it drives your opponent out of the lane (with level 4 Tidebringer and phase boots you will deal 150 pure damage every 4 seconds).

After you recheached level 6, always carry some TP scrolls with you. Your presence in early teamfights is huge!
If the enemy mid hero is missing, you can easily destroy creepwaves and push the mid tower.
If you get ganked in middle, THROW! YOUR! BOAT! 10% movementspeed and 50% damage reduction is your chance to survive, it doesnt really matter if the boat hits anything

You have the choice to get 4 levels in X marks the spot or leave it at 2 until level 24. 2 levels means you can instantly cast torrent after, and get an easy hit. If you have some expierience though, i recommend taking all 4 levels by level 14. The timing gets a little harder, but the increased cast range (from 650 to 950 in levels 3 and 4) can make a huge difference whem chasing enemies.

Later in the game your team and the enemy will most likely be grouped up. If you should catch a lonely support though, just X them and throw your torrent and ship on them, you should have enough damage to kill the squishier heroes.
In teamfights throw your Torrent and your Ghost shipwhere you think your enemies will be in 2 seconds, depending if they are engaging or running from you. Just fire and forget, latgame your Tidebringer will be the main part of the damage. Remeber though the stun goes through BKB in case you have to cancel a blackhole for example.


General rules:

-THROW! YOUR! BOAT! The damage reduction alone might save the life of your teammates, and the cooldown is only 60/50/40 seconds. Never be afraid to use it, even though it isnt that nice to hear "Now that was a fail-boat! "

-Pay good attention to your positioning, a well placed torrent or tidbringer in the right angle can seal the deal (Quote: Ayesee) of this low live weaver that just got away.

-Thou shalt pray to the RNG-Gods before every Tidebringer for you will be critting hard and often.

Items

I usually go for a Healing Salve, a Tango, a Gauntlets of Strength and one Iron Branch. The salve and tango give you enough regen to survive your early levels in the lane where you will take some harassement. The gauntlet and branch give you +4 damage for better last hitting and +76 hp. Later you can build them into a Magic Wand and a Bracer This leaves you with 210 Gold.

You CAN go for a fast Bottle, but it is not necessary in my opinion. Kunkka does benfit from the regen, especially the mana. But: Kunkka has no rune control against very mobile mid heroes like Puck, Queen of Pain or Storm Spirit and the only rune thats really strong is double damage.

With no bottle to delay me, I like to rush Phase Boots. Phase are the boots of choice because they provide you with +24 attack damage, which applies to your Tidebringer. And they have an amzing active which lets you chase enmies and get into perfect position for the fight with no collision.

I like to have a Magic Wand since bigger fights are your place to be and ther you will get the charges. An early Magic Stick is also nice against spell spaming mid heroes like Batrider or Magnus.

Town Portal Scrolls are always important to join fights to have especially on a Hero with such damage output like Kunkka.

The Shadow Blade is one of the two core items which you should buy almost every game. It provides you with +22 damage and some (unnecessary) attackspeed. But the amazing thing is its active. With Shadow walk, you can go invisible for 18 seconds, which gives you a good initiation and an escape mechanism (of course you should not rely on beeing invis as the enemy team can buy detection). But the main point is the 150 bonus damage when attacking out of invisibility. In a teamfight this means +150 pure damage to possible 5 targets. Use it mainly for the bonus damage.

Friends and Foes

coming soon!

Mid Matchups

coming soon!

Changelog

22.08.2013 1st release (not finished)