Leviathan the Tide Hunter

8/14/2019 Leviathan the Tide Hunter

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Strategy Guide for Leviathan the Tidehunter

by thisisBob (as of v6.60)

Visit http://planetdota.blogspot.com/ for your Dotaneeds.

What does Tidehunter do?

Tidehunter has respectable strength gain coupled with a slowing nuke and a smack passive thatmakes him a tank that nobody can ignore. Ravage doesn't stun for too long but is excellent insetting up smaller AoEs from your other teammates. The problem is that his lategame tank capability shrinks, and his only staple disable comes from Ravage which has an unreasonablylong cooldown.

Skill Progression

1 Gush2 Kraken Shell3 Gush4 Anchor Smash5 Gush6 Ravage

7 Gush8 Anchor Smash9 Anchor Smash10 Anchor Smash11 Ravage12 Kraken Shell (Stats?)13 Kraken Shell (Stats?)14 Kraken Shell (Stats?)

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15 Stats16 Ravage17+ Stats

Kraken Shell and Anchor Smash is interchangeable, Kraken Shell against obvious debuffs or when early game physical damage is dominant, anchor smash otherwise. If you did grab anchor smash first, you may wanna consider not leveling shell, but it really doesn't make too big of adifference.Tidehunter’s performance will start to drop as dps heroes out-damage your durability.

Item Build

This is the cookie cutter build, focusing on his ganking aspect and early/mid tankage to succeedin skirmishes. Bottle for lane survival and roaming, bracer/str treads for fast tankage, and hoodfor obvious purposes. Exchange hood for another bracer if magic is not dominant.



With that cheap setup you're already ready for the entire midgame ganking and tanking. You getto choose between the two cookiecutters: Assault Cuirass against those dps who happened to armseveral hammers and have +100 damage at this stage, or Sange & Yasha if you need that extrastrength and movespeed, coupled with a maim in the face right after your initial setup.

Alternate builds such as shiva-refresher or arcane-refresher works, I'll give you that. Though Iwon't be covering those controversies in this cookie cutter guide. Caster tide build offerssomething completely different and we won't tread into that.

further justification for your cynicism and bashes

If you're tanking and ganking, your best bet is that you won't always walk out of there alive.Which is why I'm presenting a cheap and fast item build that comes in small pieces. I do notrecommend Tidehunter to stay back and farm up to whatever's suitable on him, because eventhough he has passives and actives that aids his fighting power, he's huge, melee, and does notlive up to a real lategame hero.

Yes you can stay back and have some success with ricefarm Tide wearing cuirass, wielding bfuryand choking on HoT, but that comes at the expense your teammate's wealth and your opponentnot getting harassed the same way. Simply put, tide is not lategame, he's an early/mid tank andhis only lategame contribution is ravage.

Gameplay

Jungle?

Do not jungle.You can, but you shouldn't. You could creep pull as much as you want but do not dedicate your life to jungling, it will not work. Jungling requires you to level both your passives and even thenyou're not a magnificent jungler. Whats the use of your beard if you can't splash a good gushearly? Nothing. You need to be a pissed off hulk, and not a ricefarming pussy.

Lineups

Tidehunter can setup things, though another source of damage is needed to fully utilize whatravage can do. Heroes like Lina or THD are great buddies who compliments your everycontribution. Clean-up crews such as Zeus or Lycan are also much needed after successfulravages and the like. Basically, most heroes who requires a meatshield compliments you nicely.

Melee teammates will probably hate you though, they'd spend the majority of the time being pushed behind your ass while chasing a gushed hero.



Laning

Tidehunter's best partner would be those with a staple stun like VS. Second best would be thoseAoE stunners who needs some flank to aim that stun. Otherwise a preferred setup would be aranged+melee(being tide) combo, so nobody gets in another's way during a gush chase. Finallyand obviously, laning with another weak melee is a one-way ticket to feeder hell.

I'm new to this and I need help Bob, how do I control lane?

If you have the aforementioned stunning butt buddy, aim gush after the stun, and focus on theisolated target.If you have AoE nukers like lina or leshrac, use gush to suppress the opponent for a clear aim.

As a melee you should pick side lanes, preferably the long lane so you can creep pull.When laning, use your bottle and trade nukes. Load an earlier RoR if they pose a problem. Rightclick on enemy hero then immediately draw back so their creeps come closer for you to last hit.



Take turns creep pulling or run off to whore a rune when opportunity arises.

When you're lv5 or above, putting an enemy down below 400 will scare the piss out of them.

How do I bottle? I drink it 3 times then it becomes trash lulz

During lane, use bottle to regain health, but in the mean time use gush to last hit or harass for itsextra mana. When the bottle charges are down, you should stroll down to the nearest rune spotnear the spawn time which is every 2 minutes of the game. If rune didn't spawn there it's at theother spot, so ask the nearby teammate to pick it up in the spare time.

Bottle sips should be taken in cover, behind tree or while the enemies are all dizzy from your recent ravage. Even if your lv4 kraken shell neglects all creep damage, they can still knock off your healing status, so don't drink one next to a creep.



it's simple, really.

Ganking

You're good to go after lv5 or above. You don't have Sven's imba hammer, but you do have gush,movespeed, and a shitload of health. Creep diving, tower diving and frontline skirmishes are all part of your responsibilities. You should absolutely go gank when when ravage is up, it's almost aguaranteed kill. Otherwise, when you see messages like "goddamn mid needs a gank" or "that SFis getting buff", you should be on the move.

Skirmishes

When I say skirmish, I'm talking about cluster-fucks happening in the forest including you,several teammates, and several victims from the other team.Your role is to be in the front, and hopefully they will toss spells at you in hopes of you backingoff. This allows your teammates behind you to stand up and start shooting.



When you spot an enemy, you should open up with Gush. Gush's range is amazing and its 4second snare is enough for other nukes to catch up to him. Ravage should be reserved until either side goes "oh fuck FUCK FUCK RETREAT RETREAT!!!!11", which is when you activate thatasshole of an ult and make the best out of it.

Group Fight during tower raid

At one point of the game there will be a 5v5 fight by the tower. Both sides will stare over the hill,hurl some long range nukes if available, and eventually get down and beat the living shit out of each other.



Your best bet is to take advantage of your 1600 fat obese tanking power before any dps herogathers the power to knock you down. You should be pushing hard because no one can tank better than you and draw as much fire in the mid/early game phase.

When fighting in a 5v5 clusterfuck, Ravage is best done in the middle of action.You should only initiate with ravage if you have teammates who can follow up with other closerange AoEs. After Ravage, mark a primary target with Gush, right click enemy, and watch asthey awe before your mighty beard.



what kind of combos could be done?

Aside from being an absolute combo breaker, Ravage leaves an opening for the majority of AoEnukes, for their aiming pleasure.Specifically, it combos well with chronosphere (thanks to impale's goddamn recode), every



stomp in the game, and isolate-kill skills like eclipse and barrage.

Honorable mention goes to Enigma, who, without ravage, will never pull off midnight pulse+blackhole effectively.

Final push into the racks

The outcome really isn't decided here, but rather how you fared in skirmishes/teamfights during



those early/mid game eras. Dps heroes will wear you down easily regardless of your 1800 health,and you're really down to a ravage as your only contribution to the team.

What to I buy after the core?

Whatever you get after lv18 won't stop that opposing troll from punching you to the ground -unless you are the best lategame-hero out of the 10 heroes in the game, which hardly ever happens. If you really farmed beyond core+cuirass+s&y then you're either spending too muchtime farming, killing over 20 heroes, or the game has dragged miserably long. Neither of thosesituations should be put into a scenario, so make your own judgement.

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Leviathan the Tide Hunter