Unfinished guide, please ignore for now :) "If at first you don't succeed, stand closer, shoot again." A guide to position #2 Mid or Solo Offlane Windranger.

Introduction

Hey, my name is Bunkansee and this is my 3rd guide! My favourite hero in the game right now is Windranger, so I thought I would write a guide about her. There are a lot of really good Windranger guides on the site already, but I figured I'd put own builds and stuff into a guide anyway.

Windranger is an incredibly versatile hero that is able to fill nearly any role on her team, in this guide I'll be covering a Position #2 Semi-Carry Windranger that is primarily played in the Mid or Offlane. Windranger is a Medium to High difficulty hero, that require awareness of your positioning, quick thinking and fast reflexes to be played at her full potential. Although you can pick up the basics easily enough, her true potential comes out when you learn all the tricks you can pull off.

I'll explain item choices, skill builds, and how to use her abilities and items to their maximum potential. I'll also go over counters, and good teammates that you can have. I might include a small game-play section, but it probably won't be massively detailed.

So who is Windranger?

Windranger is a Ranged Intelligence hero that has a great early game presence and has the ability to transition into a semi-carry later on in the game. I'd recommend you play her Solo Mid or Solo Offlane, as both of these roles suit her best.
She is relatively level dependent, as you want to get both your Shackleshot and Powershot maxed out as soon as possible. If you are interested in Windranger's past, here's the lore:

The western forests guard their secrets well. One of these is Lyralei, master archer of the wood, and favored godchild of the wind. Known now as Windranger, Lyralei's family was killed in a storm on the night of her birth—-their house blown down by the gale, contents scattered to the winds. Only the newborn survived among the debris field of death and destruction. In the quiet after the storm, the wind itself took notice of the lucky infant crying in the grass. The wind pitied the child and so lifted her into the sky and deposited her on a doorstep in a neighboring village. In the years that followed, the wind returned occasionally to the child’s life, watching from a distance while she honed her skills. Now, after many years of training, Windranger fires her arrows true to their targets. She moves with blinding speed, as if hastened by a wind ever at her back. With a flurry of arrows, she slaughters her enemies, having become, nearly, a force of nature herself.

Her skills, what they do, and how to use them

Windranger has a very versatile skill set that includes, stuns, slows, evasion, lane clear, nukes, escape, tower push and attack speed increase. With just 4 skills she offers a lot of utility, and high killing and pushing potential.

So here are her skills, what they do, why you should level them and how to use them efficiently.

Shackleshot

Type: Targets:

Active Enemy Units

Shackles the target to an enemy unit or tree in a line directly behind it. If no unit or tree is present, the stun duration is reduced to 0.75.

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Shackleshot is a powerful stun that stuns 2 heroes, units, or any unit and a tree together. It lasts for almost 4 seconds at max level, so it's one of the best stuns in the game. However such a good spell does have some downsides. It's not too difficult to learn how to use this stun, but the spell is... crazy to say the least, and is often very unpredictable. Sometimes when it realllly looked like the stun should've hit, it doesn't, and sometimes it shackles to a tree miles away.

This ability is the reason I recommend Blink Dagger. The spell requires some positioning, but when you actually land it, it almost guarantees a kill.

I recommend maxing this skill second, as the spell doesn't do any damage on it's own. Later on in the game this ability will be your best friend when setting up ganks and fighting, a two man Shackleshot has the potential to win a teamfight all by itself, depending on who you stun.

Early on Shackleshot doesn't do much on it's own, it's a meager 1.5 second stun that doesn't do any damage. However early on if you see the opportunity, you can Shackleshot into Powershot which guarantees at least 270 damage. Coupled with a few right clicks, it's likely to bring down a squishy hero. Which brings us to our next skill!

Powershot

Type: Targets:

Active Enemy Units

Windranger charges her bow for up to 1 second for a single powerful shot, which deals more damage the longer it is charged. The arrow damages enemies and destroys trees along its path. For each enemy that Powershot hits, its damage is reduced by 10%.

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Powershot is Windranger's primary source of damage in the early game. It fires a large arrow in a line at a long range, which deals damage to all units it passes through. Although it just appears to be a simple aoe nuke, it has a lot of versatility. You can use this skill to push and farm waves, get last hits from afar, and harass the enemy out of lane.

This skill is one of the highest damage nukes in the game dealing 270 damage to a single target (after reductions). You should use this spell to get kills, and last hits in lane. Windranger's mana pool is very low at the start of the game, so make sure you get full use out of this spell by getting last hits, and dealing damage to the enemy laner all at once.

You can also use this spell to clear stacked jungle camps, but keep in mind the damage is reduced by 10% for each enemy the arrow passes through, so 2 or 3 stacks are the quickest to clear. You can stack camps with Powershot as well, but you have to be within a certain range of the creeps, or they will not aggro to you.

Item Explanations

Windranger is a very flexible hero, and because of this, it's often hard to figure out what items to buy and when.

Early Game/ Boot Options

In terms of boot choices I think there is only one primary option, and one pretty situational option.



Phase Boots are the most common choice of boots for Windranger. They provide you with bonus damage, which is nice because the damage goes straight to increasing you ultimate in the early game. The speed boost is good when used after using Windrun, because it will increase your MS to maximum, meaning you should be able to run away from most sticky situations.



[{Power Treads]] are an unconventional pickup on Windranger, she doesn't really benefit from the attack speed, but if you really need to get some HP early, don't be afraid to buy these. They allow you to farm slightly faster, and give you a little more mana to go around. Recommended only if the game is going south and you need to survive longer.

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Personally I think Magic Wand is one of the best items in the game. It provides really good stats, only costs 400 gold, and can heal you for quite a bit of HP whenever you need it. I highly recommend you buy this for the stats, and the heal.



Bottle is great on almost any midlaner, allows you to constantly regen mana and HP in between ganks. Windranger's low mana pool and high mana cost spells make her a bit of a mana leak, but bottle helps you sustain yourself in lane, and after ganks. Can also be used to heal a little while close to death, which can help massively in certain situations.

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Mid game

Around the 20 minute mark, you want to hopefully have your Aghanim's Scepter, because the item is just so good on Windranger. It gives you nice stats since both Windranger's mana and HP pools are relatively low at this point in the game. The main feature of this item is the upgrade to her ultimate, Focus Fire. Which reduces the damage reduction to 30/15/0% (!!) and reduces the cooldown from 60 to 15. If you are struggling in your game, and can't manage to farm, or get kills, I recommend you buy one the the below items:

Before Aghanim's there are a couple of items that are worth considering. You want to only buy items with proc effects at this point, because the damage is not reduced. There are only 2 primary options and one situational option, in my opinion:



Maelstrom is your best friend if you are struggling to get any money. It gives you faster farming, pushing and gives you nice burst damage when you are in need of killing heroes. Against enemies who have high magic resitance, or magic damage block (like Ember Spirit or antimage) it's better to not bother with Maelstrom.

The second option I think is Crystalys, the damage it provides is nice for focus fire, and you also crit for slightly more damage than a Maelstrom proc does. With Phase Boots, Magic Wand and Ring of Basilius, your crits with level 1 Focus Fire deal around 115 damage to an enemy with 5 armour. Recommended against enemies with relatively low armour, also builds into Daedalus later.