Item Build

The post is Gladiator Item Build for RTS Game "HoN"

Chalice Gladiator



Easy buildup into chalice and enough health regen to last until you farm a lifetube. This build lacks a Buckler, so your resilience to harassment will not be as great as one that had that. You have to spend 350 gold on a trinket before buying your Lifetube, so it's pretty possible that you'll get harassed out of your lane when going with this build. I don't recommend using this build unless you expect an extremely easy laning phase.

Farmer Gladiator
In most cases, you want to set yourself up to be able to stay in the lane for a long time. This build allows a better build-up into Helm of the Black Legion, which makes you impervious to lane harassment. After a lot of practice I tend to favour this starting build to others because it allows you to get the necessary farm in to set yourself up for the mid-game farming routine.




This is to make last-hitting as easy as possible while making enemy harassment minimal. You can drop by the outpost to pick up a Hatchet if you feel like you're having trouble landing last hits. This is the safest and in general best item build to take when weighing the risks against benefits. If you think you're really in need of regen, swap out the Minor Totems for another Health Potion.

This is your core build-up for almost every situation. You will have plenty of mana with Blood Chalice, and Helm of the Black Legion gives you health regeneration early game (lifetube) but more importantly, extremely good survivability. If you start with the farmer Gladiator build you can quite easily have the Helm of the Black Legion finished at around 6-7 minutes. Once you have level 7 and a Helm of the Black Legion you're able to push almost any heroes out of your lane with Flagellation, and they can't really touch you at all. If you laned in the vertical lane, once you have your Helm you should head off to the horizontal one to begin farming. Gladiator can farm with exceptional speed once he has a Helm, since neutral creeps don't damage you at all. Simply push the lane into the tower and head off into the jungle until the lane is pushed pushed, rinse, repeat.

You don't have to build a Chalice in every occasion. It's a 650 gold dump which only gives mana that in most cases a Mana Battery has you covered for.

Mana Battery is overpowered, 'nuff said.

Boots are a matter of personal preference. Phase Boots make ganks a lot easier, since you can catch up to running enemies a lot faster and your whip does more damage. However, the survivability from Steamboots is important whenever you aren't doing too well. The attack speed from Steamboots is also extremely useful since your agility gain is really poor, and it makes farming much faster. Personally I can't stand playing with Phase Boots, and am in general very disappointed with them whenever I purchase them. Steamboots are extremely versatile, and the selling point of Phase Boots is cut short by the fact that you're going to buy a Shroud anyway.

Core Continued
Once you've finished your Helm of the Black Legion, you're going to want to start building up some damage for Flagellation to really start hitting hard. In most cases, you're going to want to opt in for an:

Assassin's Shroud

Cost: 3300

• Steamstaff: 800
• Broadsword: 1100
• Recipe: 1300

Passive Bonuses
+10 Attack Speed
+38 Damage

Activation
Target Type: Self
Mana Cost: 75
Cooldown: 18 seconds
Applies Stealth to self for 9 seconds

Stealth
+20% Movement Speed
Unit Walking
Invisibility
The first attack out of stealth will do +125 damage

Assassin's Shroud's bonus damage will apply to all the targets of Flagellation. This means that you can dish out an extra 120 damage to every enemy hero by doing an invis whip. Not only this, but it serves as a good escape mechanism. Not only this, but if you later build a Riftshards, the +120 damage can be multiplied by a critical hit, dealing damage capable of wiping out entire teams.

Even against Pestilence, Arachna and Keeper of De'Forest, Shroud is still a good idea. The bonus damage it gives is extremely powerful when combined with your whip.

Runed Axe

Cost: 4150

• Broadsword: 1200
• Broadsword: 1200
• Sustainer: 1750
  • Lifetube: 875
  • Manatube: 875

Passive Bonuses
+55 Damage
6 Health Regeneration
150% Mana Regeneration
40% Splash in 225 radius

Does not grant splash to ranged attacks

This is an item that a lot of Gladiator players seem to favour. It is definitely a nice item, giving both a high amount of damage and added splash damage. The splash also stacks with Flagellation additively, however it is not as simple as that. If you have Runed Axe and rank 4 Flagellation, units within a 450 radius circle 450 units in front of Gladiator (refer to Flagellation's description) will take 100% of Gladiator's damage, and units within a 225 radius circle 225 units in front of Gladiator will take 40% of the damage dealt to the main target (totalling 100% true splash and 40% of the damage dealt to the main target). The two splashes are separate entities and do not conflict or influence each other in any way.

Stacking splash is mostly a gimmick, but this item is still solid. It's cheap, gives good damage, good regen, makes your farming even more insane, and makes your close range whips even strong. If you're planning on getting this after Shroud, it's perfectly reasonable to skip the 650 gold dump that is Blood Chalice and go straight for a Manatube.

Riftshards

Cost: 5500

• Broadsword: 1200
• Punchdagger: 500
• Recipe: 950
• Recipe: 950
• Recipe: 950
• Recipe: 950

Passive Bonuses
+45 / 55 / 65 / 75 Damage
10% / 13% / 16% / 20% chance to do a 1.8 / 2.0 / 2.2 / 2.4x Critical Strike

The reason to pick this item up should be obvious. Nothing is more gamebreaking or amazing than a whip-crit that half kills everybody on the enemy team. Since critical hits work with Flagellation, there's hardly ever a time where there's a better item to get than this.

The huge weakness of this item is unreliability. In most games, you'll be the hardest carry on your team and taking up the majority of the farm. With that farm, you should be expected to do a lot of damage. The problem with Riftshards on Gladiator, unlike Riftshards on any other carry hero, is that the whip-crit is a one chance deal. You either hit or you miss, and the difference between the two is huge. Other carries that attack ~2 times per second will inevitably have the average DPS ironed out by statistical predictability when using a Riftshards.

Once you've completed the continued core, you will want start looking in to buying some luxury items.

Demonic Breastplate

Cost: 5550

• Ringmail: 550
• Platemail: 1400
• Warpcleft: 2100
• Recipe: 1500

Passive Bonuses
+40 Attack Speed
+10 Armour

Aura
Target Type: Allies
Radius: 900 units

Aura Effects
+5 Armour
+15 Attack Speed

Enemy Aura
Target Type: Enemy units and structures
Radius: 900 units

Enemy Aura Effects
-5 Armour

The main reason for picking up Demonic Breastplate is that being the amazing farmer Gladiator is, you will likely have more items than any other carry in the game. Demonic Breatplate fixes what Gladiator lacks with his low Agility gain - Attack Speed and Armour. With the vast amount of damage you should have, Demonic Breasplate allows you to fight toe-to-toe with carries. "But this item gives you nothing for your whip", you say. Once you have Assassin's Shroud, Runed Axe and Riftshards there honestly isn't any items left that can make your whip that much stronger (sans Doombringer), and giving yourself some defensive power after buying all that pure damage is rather necessary.

Shrunken Head

Cost: 3900

• Mighty Blade: 1000
• Rockhammer: 1600
• Recipe: 1300

Passive Bonuses
+10 Strength
+24 Damage

Activation
Target Type: Self
Cooldown: 80 seconds
Applies Magic Immunity to self for 10 seconds and dispels debuffs.

The cooldown and duration of the activation are reduced by 5 seconds and 1 second respectively after each consequtive activation, with a minimum of 55 seconds and 5 seconds respectively.

Shrunken Head allows you to survive through teamfights and deal damage unempeded. This is only really necessary if you're facing a lot of heroes with Area of Effect stuns or stuns that won't go through immunity. If you're finding yourself unable to maneavour through team fights due to the number of stuns being thrown around, then picking this up would be a respectable choice. This also adds a total of 34 damage since Gladiator's main attribute is Strength. I only find myself needing this in very few games, and only as a luxury after Shroud/Rift.

Doombringer

Cost: 5800

• Sword of the High: 3400
• Slayer: 2400

Passive Bonuses
+250 Damage

Drops on death

Riftshards + Doombringers + Flagellation = ???
...you know you want to.

Lifesteal is useless. You don't deal damage through constant auto-attacks, you deal damage through whips and boats [chariots]. I can't see any reason to get Lifesteal, that's just not how Gladiator plays effectively.
Armor reduction is also useless, since the whip damage is true damage to everything except your main target.
Attack speed is not very effective, since Flagellation doesn't come off cooldown any faster than once every 4 seconds, and even Pebbles attacks fast enough to make use of that. It's still good once you're extremely farmed though, since Gladiator has pretty poor agility gain. When you have low attack speed, due to the diminishing returns nature of +Attack Speed it's still quite effective DPS wise to invest in an attack speed item such as Demonic Breastplate as a 4th or 5th item.