Gyrocopter - The Flying Artillery

Introduction

Hello, to that one lady and the other gentlemen. My name is Kripthmaul and this is my first guide. I am by no means skilled in the art of writing, so bear with me.

This guide will be about an alternative way to play Gyrocopter, other than the usual carry build. I have played it a couple of times and when in the right team, can bring down hell upon your opponents.

This is NOT a guide that will show you how to play Gyrocopter, but only an explaination on the actual build I'm presenting.

This set-up is good, but can be garbage if the odds are against you, as it relies HEAVILY on magical damage/amplification.

Pros / Cons

This build is very fun to play, as it takes you away from the high right-click damage carry Gyrocopter and let you be a semi-support/initiator/ganker. Your opponents will have a WTF face when your team pick other carries.

Pros : Likely to get first blood Can harass most hero out of lane Global presence once Aghanim's Scepter Magnificent in teamfights with Call Down Can farm somewhat efficiently High burst with Rocket Barrage Powerful ganker in mid game

Cons : Mana reliant until core items Octarine Core Squishy if caught out of position Render useless by silences and mana burns No right-click Requires a minimum of set-up to be effective Can't Roshan

Items

The itemization of this build is pretty straightforward. You are going to spam your spells, so you need base your items around mana. But rather than a huge mana pool, you will want to get mana regen to help you spam the hell out of Rocket Barrage and Homing Missile

Starting items : Pretty standard Tango. The important part here is the Boots of Speed. They will allow you to catch up/keep up with your fleeing opponent and finish them off with another salvo of Rocket Barrage, making first blood easy.



Laning phase : Here, you start to get mana to spam your spells. Homing Missile starts to become more of a threat to your opponents. With a good teammate, you can start to rack up the kills to secure fast core items.


Core Items : The items should be gotten in the order they are presented.


First your Aghanim's Scepter. This will give you a bit a survivability, more mana, increase the damage of your ultimate and make it global.

With this you can "participate" in every teamfights, when you are late to the party.


Second comes the Octarine Core. This item is the core of the core items. It will make Rocket Barrage almost 100% uptime. The cooldown of your Homing Missile will be so short you will be able to use it to gank, and use it again on fleeing heroes. And the most important, it will make the Cooldown of Call Down very short. Allowing you to use it at the start and end of a teamfight.


Third is the Refresher Orb. This little beauty will allow you to simply wreck with your Call Down and allow you to do your "finish-him" Homing Missile-> Call Down-> Refresher Orb-> Homing Missile-> Call Down-> Rocket Barrage SPAM.
In a creep-less teamfight, this will produce effective destruction for everyone near/not near you. Merry Christmas.



The situational items :

Black King Bar This item is only for games where you get chained stunned, being unable to launch any of your spells. Usually this won't happen as you start in the back, launch your abilities and then move in for the Rocket Barrage. The stuns should already have been used by then.


Veil of Discord The veil is only chosen when you have one or more teammates who will benefit from it . ex.: Earthshaker, Venomancer, Lich, etc.


Shiva's Guard Shiva's can be picked up if you are too squishy to right-click damage and need a way to gain more survivability. This is good because it adds to your AOE presence in teamfights.


Rod of Atos This item should only be picked when playing against very fast hero, ex.: Lina, Bloodseeker, Skywrath Mage, etc. It keeps them in the range of your Call Down and makes you a good bit more tanky.


Orchid Malevolence This is similar to the Veil of Discord situation. Pick this item when a certain hero is countering your hard, ex.: Silencer. Give you a way to initiate on him and lock his global/single silence. Like Veil of Discord, it increases the damage of all your abilities, making ganks more successful.


Boots of Travel This is only an extension. Many times, I have kept my Boots of Speed until the end of a game. If you have extra money or a need for heightened mobility to counter pushes, you can get this.
NOTE: You should not need this because with your ultimate global, you can push a lane every 30 sec.


Silver Edge This beauty is when you face pesky tanks like Bristleback and you need to break their passive.
Note: If you break while Flak Cannon is on, only the main target's passives will be broken.

Skills

Here I will explain Gyrocopter's abilities and when/how to use them, considering this build.



Casting Method: Active
Targetting Method: Instant
Allowed Targets: Enemy Units
Launches a salvo of rockets at nearby enemy units in a radius around the Gyrocopter. Lasts 3 seconds.

Radius: 400
Duration: 3
Number of Rockets: 30
Damage Per Rocket: 11 / 15 / 19 / 23
Mana Cost: 90 Cooldown Time: 7 / 6.5 / 6 / 5.5(4.1) with Octarine Core

Note :
Rocket Barrage can't hit units Gyrocopter has no vision over.
Affects mechanical units.
Total damage {330/450/570/690}.

This skill is your main source of damage in early to mid game. As a level one ability, it is disgusting if you manage to single out one hero. The Boots of Speed are for that purpose, allowing a possible second salvo of rocket on fleeing enemies. It last for 3 seconds, and with Octarine Core the Cooldown is 4.1 seconds, which is awesome, and deadly.

Furthermore, this ability is great to "escape". If you're getting chased down by a melee hero, run and use this. They SHOULD disengage, as the damage is hard.

Later on, with your Rocket Barrage having a 1 sec between each use, and with Octarine Core Spell lifesteal, you can take a good amount of damage.

Casting Method: Active
Targetting Method: Unit
Allowed Targets: Enemy Unit
Fires a homing missile to seek the targeted enemy unit. The missile gains speed over time, and deals greater damage and a longer stun the farther it has traveled. Enemy units can destroy the missile before it reaches its target.

Cast Range: 1050
Stun Duration: 2.2 / 2.4 / 2.6 / 2.8
Minimum Damage: 50
Maximum Damage: 125 / 250 / 375 / 500
Mana Cost: 120 / 130 / 140 / 150 Cooldown Time: 20 / 17 / 14 / 11(8.25 with Octarine Core)

This is your stun, and what enables you to get in range for your Rocket Barrage. For a 8.25 Cooldown, 500 damage and almost 3 sec of stun is very very good. I takes a bit of positioning to land, so it doesn't flyby all the enemy heroes. Against low health hero, this will harass them out of lane easily.





Casting Method: Active
Targetting Method: Instant
Allowed Targets: Enemy Units
Gyrocopter's attacks hit all enemy units in an area around it for a limited number of attacks. Only the main target of attacks will receive attack bonuses such as Critical Strike. Lasts 15 seconds or until the attacks are used.

Radius: 1000
Duration: 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 attacks, or 15 seconds
Mana Cost: 50 Cooldown Time: 30 (22.5 with Octarine Core)

Note : Only the main target of your right-clicks will be affected by effect from items. ex.:[silver edge]'s break.

This ability is somewhat irrelevant for this build, has we don't rely at all on right-click damage. It can be usefull to farm/push but that's it.




Casting Method: Active
Targetting Method: Point
Allowed Targets: Enemy Units
Call down an aerial missile strike on enemy units in a target area. Two missiles arrive in succession, the first dealing major damage and major slow; the second dealing minor damage and minor slow.

Range: 1000 (Global*)
Radius: 600
Duration: 2 / 4
Missile One Damage: 250 / 300 / 350
Missile Two Damage: 100 / 150 / 200 (175 /225 / 275*)
Missile One Movement Speed Slow: 30%
Missile Two Movement Speed Slow: 60%
Mana Cost: 125 Cooldown Time: 55 / 50 / 45 (33.75 with Octarine Core)

Note : The missiles impact 2 seconds and 4 seconds after Call Down is cast.
Will slow Black King Barred units but not damage them

This skill is your teamfight skill. From bot to top lane, you can participate in fights. You should initiate with this, and if the fight last long enough you can use it a second time to finish your limping enemies and replenish your hp, thanks to Octarine Core life steal.

Harrass, kills and lanning

Laning Stage

In the Laning stage, you and your partner need to harass the other heroes and keep them at around 75% of their HP. At some point, let them push the lane in, go around the trees, drop Homing Missile + friend stun, if available, and fly in for a salvo of Rocket Barrage. DO NOT commit to a tower dive for a kill. Your goal here is to harass them out of lane. If a kill occurs, great. If not, it's okay, you are winning the lane.

Try to keep rune control on your side. You can even gank mid early, if your mid has good awareness.

Early Mid game

When you get your Arcane Boots, is when you need to get kills opportunities, to get an item advantage over the other team. An early Aghanim's Scepter can save a mate from a gank ( they will think you are close). The faster you get your Octarine Core, the faster you'll be online and furthering the lead.

The point here is that with an early Octarine Core, your abilities have low CD and you have good sustainability. The more you wait, the more the enemy heroes HP pool will increase, and it will get harder to gank/scare them.

Late Game

In the late game, your team needs to stick together. You will be **** on if caught by yourself without Shadow Blade and I don't recommend going for it.

At this point, you just hit all your buttons and aim at the enemy. If you have half-decent teammates, you should win teamfights.

Friends and Foes

You have two types of friends. The mana friends and the set-up friends.

Mana friends



With her Arcane Aura, you can spam all your abilities more in the early game.




With his Chakra Magic You have infinite mana. Weeh!




This would be a strange lineup, but if he comes in lane to help you out, it will provide more mana regeneration. Thanks to Tether

Setup Friends

These hero are the ones that can stun, group enemies up, slow, swap, etc. As there are many, I will only put the most notable ones here.



With his Reverse Polarity, Magnus group the enemies and stuns them and makes your Call Down easy to land.



A good Berserker's Call will make your life easy ;)




Vacuum, same as above, stack 'em to kill 'em.




His signature move, Black Hole sets the stage for you to wreck havoc in.




Dream Coil assures ultimate will hit.




Nightmare Disruption are very good early game to make sure you land all those Rocket Barrage rockets.




Both of their ultimate, Ravage and Overgrowth have good synergies with Call Down.





Then there are those hero who completly **** on your dead body. I will not had all the hero that can be annoying, but only those who counter you hard.




He will take reduce damage from Rocket Barrage with spell shield and will deplete your precious magical ressource with Mana Break.




You can't hit what you can't see




All the hero that have a silence early are your enemies as you will run in for your Rocket Barrage and they will silence you, leaving you helpless.




The damage from Rocket Barrage is split among the enemies around you. The more there are, the less damage it does per enemy




Rocket Barrage Homing Missile, pfft, I'm Repeled

Summary

In summary, this build is fun because it takes you away from the usual Gyrocopter. It will surprise your enemies and provide good damage for teamfights.

It relies on staying alive and harassing the enemy out of the lane / deny them farm.

This was my first guide ever.
\('o')/ I hope it will help some people have fun with Gyrocopter \('o')/


Shoutout to the guide of jhoijhoi that helped me make this more fun to read ( I hope)
This guide

Leave your comments please, I will try to further develop this guide if stuff missing are pointed out.

- Kripthmaul