Help Support Our Growing Community

DOTAFire is a community that lives to help every Dota 2 player take their game to the next level by having open access to all our tools and resources. Please consider supporting us by whitelisting us in your ad blocker!

Want to support DOTAFire with an ad-free experience? You can support us ad-free for less than $1 a month!

Go Ad-Free
Smitefire logo

Join the leading DOTA 2 community.
Create and share Hero Guides and Builds.

Create an MFN Account






Or

41 Votes

Step lively now, your Admiral is on board! A Kunkka guide!

February 20, 2013 by depparted
Comments: 17    |    Views: 125927    |   


Armlet + Lothar's = fun!

DotA2 Hero: Kunkka




Hero Skills

Torrent

2 4 8 9

Tidebringer

1 3 5 7

X Marks the Spot

10 12 13 14

Ghostship

6 11 16

Talents

15 17 18


Step lively now, your Admiral is on board! A Kunkka guide!

depparted
February 20, 2013


Introduction!

Kunkka, the Admiral is a carry/initiator strenght hero that can **** up and entire team with just a well placed hit.
He's one of my favorites hero, and he's amazingly fun to play (watching you kill someone you couldn't even see with a random crit is amazing!)
I used to play him more the cookie-cutter way, but I did some research and this build is amazingly useful.
So be ready to have your mind blown by the best Kunkka guide ever!

Pros and Cons

Pros:


- Largest cleave in the game, and it comes with a nice damage boost;
- Great strenght gain (3 per level) meaning that getting tanky will come naturally;
- Amazing teamfight ultimate;
- Great chaser with X marks the spot and torrent;
- Can initiate a full teamfight from far away;
- Ultimate's stun goes thru BKB;
- Free harass in laning stage.


Cons:


- Torrent and Ghost Ship can be quite difficult to land;
- No escape mecanism;
- Blade mails **** you up if you don't get BKB
- Naturally pushes lane in laning stage
- Very mana intensive.

Skills


Kunkka's first skill is Torrent. When cast, after a 2 second delay, a 215 radius area will be torrented up, and any enemy caught will be tossed in the air and be disabled for 1.53 seconds. Units tossed still recieve damage from every other source.
With a 1500 casting radius, this is an amazing ganking and initiation tool.


His only passive is Tidebringer. This is what makes Kunkka such a threat in teamfights, since it gives you 100% cleave in a 600 radius, so if you get lucky and score a crit, everyone will be hurt badly. This is trully a tide turner in a teamfight.


X Marks the Spot is a simple single targeted ability, that after a while will bring an enemy to where you marked him. Pretty straightforward. Great for chasing and even better to make you land easy torrents. Some people will only level this twice, since that's all you need to make the timing with torrent, but I level it up all the way because this makes for a great escape tool too. While the skill itself is simple, it has many uses. You can mark yourself (or any ally), tp to base, regen and get back to the fight, you can mark an enemy chasing you and keep runing, and the enemy will just go back after a while, you can mark an ally initiator, so he can jump, initiate, and get back to safety... this thing has many many uses.


Ghost ship is Kunkka's ultimate, and oh what a great ultimate.
It has many parts to it, so I'll explain it nicely.
First, and most obviously, it'll launch a big ****ing ship into the field, damaging and stunning people in a 425 radius AOE where it crashes. One thing to notice is that the stun affects magic immune targets.
Secondly it gives a 10% movement speed bonus to all allies that are close to you.
And finally, it gives you and your allies a delayed reaction to damage, meaning that you'll only take 50% of the damage when you have the buff, and the other 50% will come after the buff wears off. But it comes much softer in a HP removal mode, that doesn't dispell healing and doesn't kill you.
As I said it, great ult.

Gameplay

Early game/Laning stage



Easiest stage of all. Tidebringer + quelling make farming incredibly easy. Plus your tidebringer will harass your enemies for you. In short, Kunkka's laning stage is amazingly easy, if you're having trouble, you're doing something wrong.


Mid Game



Kunkka's mid game might be a bit different from other carries... Since your ghost ship brings so much to a teamfight, you wanna be part of them all, instead of just go afk farming.
After you get your shadow blade and battle fury, farming is even easier, since going invi and hitting a creep will probably clear the entire wave. Nothing much to say here, just keep fighting and farming whenever possible

Late Game



Oh, Kunkka's late game is awesome! You'll cleave the entire team if you have the right items! Try to place some nice boats and torrents. And remember, just because you can win a teamfight by yourself, doesn't mean you should go running 1v5 and killing yourself. Play smart, wait for the enemy to make a mistake and profit on it, because that's how games are won.

Items!

This is where my guide will differ from most people.
I'll explain the reason behind every item I put up.

First and foremost, quelling blade deserves a very special mention here.
The Tidebringer passive cleaves everyone for 100% of your damage in a huge AOE right? What most people don't know, is that cleave doesn't hit every target with sepparate attacks, the damage dealt on the AOE, is the same damage dealt to the first target! So I tend to keep my quelling blade up until the very last moment! With a little of practice, you'll remember to hit creeps when you have tidebringer up, since the 35% extra damage REALLY hurts, specially since creeps have really low armor!

Phase boots is a waaay better choice over Treads for 2 reasons: 1: you don't need the hp or attack speed from treads. 2: phasing + x marks the spot makes chasing a piece of cake.

Battle Fury gives you nice damage, great hp and mana regen, and is an amazing farming tool, what's not to like?

Drum of Endurance is one of those basic but really great items. It gives you great stats (really helps with your mana problems early on) and a nice aura for you and your team! Chasing enemies with the active is almost unfair!

Shadow Blade is picked up not for escape purposes, but to initate. Coupled with tidebringer, shadow blade grants you an amazing burst damage on the whole team.

Armlet of Mordiggian: I know this is a bit unortodox on Kunkka, but it works wonders. On a perfect world, you'd just need one hit to rampage the whole team, but DotA never works like this. Armlet gives your auto attacks a great buff, and it also makes your shadow blade initiation much btter: turn on your armlet, go invi and hit something, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Daedalus: Obvious choice on such a damage dependant hero. Turn on your lothar's, and pray to the crit gods to grant you one of those 1k cleaves on the entire team you so much desire. This is the item that makes you finish a teamfight before it even starts.

Abyssal Blade: 100 damage? Hell yeah! Plus the active is also amazing for you to land torrents! But remember, skull basher does little for you, so always start by buying the relic, you're looking for raw damage, and since you don't rely on auto attacking over and over, basher will be left for later.

BKB is pretty obious. Avatar makes you immune to magic. Plus the stats are good, and it's not such an expensive item.

Tarrasque is the ultimate item for any strenght hero, gives you a ****load of HP and HP regen.

Assault Cuirass: I usually don't pick this up, but Kunkka's a great holder of AC. The armor reduction will make tidebringer even deadlier, specially if you're comboing with another armor reduction (Tidehunter, Lanaya, SF and so on...)

MKB: Daedalus is much better than MKB on Kunkka, but this can still be considered if there's an evader on the other team. Just remember: aside from Void's backtrack, you can't evade your cleaves. Plus, if you have Daedalus AND MKB your crits will be insane.

The end!

So this was my Kunkka guide, hope you liked it!
If you have any suggestions/complaints just post them below and I'll be happy to read them and maybe change the guide!
Thank you for reading it all!
Bye bye!

Quick Comment (18) View Comments

You need to log in before commenting.

Similar Guides
Featured Heroes

Quick Comment (18) View Comments

You need to log in before commenting.

DOTAFire is the place to find the perfect build guide to take your game to the next level. Learn how to play a new hero, or fine tune your favorite DotA hero’s build and strategy.

Copyright © 2019 DOTAFire | All Rights Reserved