Introduction :
Earthshaker is one of the best initiators in the game, and a fairly good lane support. His power comes from fissure, his bread and butter move, and the fact that every single on of his moves can be a stun.
I will talk about how he is played, and heros to love and hate, items to get and what problems you have.
[size=50]WARNING: THIS IS A WALL OF TEXT!!!!![/size]
[color=#ff0000]Pros and Cons : [/color]
Pros: large burst damage, has 3 stuns, good move speed, good strength growth, doesn't need a lot of items
Cons: Not very tanky for being a strength hero, mana problems, no comeback potential, bad spell animations
Abilities :
Q: [color=#ffa500]Fissure[/color]
Fissure is a long range nuke and stun that makes an area of impassable terrain.
Range: 1400 (line)
Radius: 225
Duration of impassable terrain: 8 seconds
Stun duration: 1/1.25/1.5/1.75
Damage: 125/175/225/275 (magical)
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Manacost: 125/140/155/170
Notes: This move is very powerful when used right, it can block of paths so people can't escape, or block a path so your team can escape. This is also the source of all your mana problems. This move is a point and click move that is so powerful, I have first hand experience of a rubick stealing it, then wreaking my team, this move is just too good.
W: [color=#ffa500]Enchant Totem[/color]
This is a self buff move that makes your next hit really good.
Damage bonus: 100%/200%/300%/400% (base damage only)
Duration of buff: 14 seconds or 1 attack
Cooldown: 5 seconds
Manacost 50
Notes: This move is great when paired with your next one, aftershock. This is good when pushing towers, after you initiated so you can hit the carry, and is very spam-able, makes you feared in a one on one confrontation.
E: [color=#ffa500]Aftershock[/color]
This makes your two moves that arn't a stun, stuns.
Radius: 300
Stun duration: 0.6/0.9/1.2/1.5
Damage: 50/75/100/125 (magical)
Notes: This is a passive move that make makes Enchant Totem very scary to fight, because of that stun duration. Makes your initiation very good. This passive is so signature to Earthshaker, it makes Earthshaker who he is, it is like PA's Crit.
R: [color=#ee82ee]Echo Slam[/color]
This is your initiation move, does a TON of damage in a good AOE.
Radius: 525
Initial damage: 160/210/270
Echo damage: 40/55/70
Cooldown: 150/130/110
Manacost: 145/205/265
Aghs upgrade: Makes it each twice per unit
Notes: The damage seems bad on this move, but when used right, this thing will get you a rampage. The "Echo damage" is damage added onto the initial damage of the move based off each unit hit. This makes it really good when you catch 5 heros in a creep wave of 4. A level 1 ult like that will do 160+(40*9)=520 damage to EACH unit in the radius. This is also the only Earthshaker spell with an INSTANT cast time.
Skill build: You will always max out Fissure first, I can't see a reason not to. Your skills to level 7 should be
1.Q
2.E
3.Q
4.W
5.Q
6.R
7.Q
From here it gets a little different, you can chose to max Enchant Totem now, or Aftershock, it comes down to how the game is going and what you are trying to accomplish. In most cases though I would say max Aftershock second.
Roles : Earthshaker is a support and initiator, so play him as such. He goes into the safe lane with your carry and will do stacking and pulling, normal support things, but you have an arsenal of stuns, and that means you can be very aggressive in lane. Due to his aggressive nature, he is very viable in an aggressive tri-lane.
Some people like playing [.color=#ffff00]"Carry Shaker"[/color.]. This is a situation where you would max out your Enchat Totem before Aftershock. This build is mainly different in item choices, witch I will talk about in the next section, for Carry Shaker you may want to head mid.
Item choices :
Starting items: Tango, Salve, buy courier or wards not both, gauntlet or mantle (ill explain later), clarity
Early game: Brown boots, Bracer or talisman (so close to explaining), Upgraded courier.
Core:
Arcane boots: Self explanatory I hope
Blink dagger: This is for your Echo Slam initiation
Drums of endurance or Veil of Discord: This is explanation time! This item choice comes down to preference, I personally like the stats that the Drums give, but the Veil is arguably the better choice, due to the magic damage amplification
Late Game:
Aghanim's scepter: The double echo damage is really good for your initiation, also the HP and Mana are great to have.
Refresher: If there team is just too tanky, a refresher makes your initiation 2X better!
Bloodstone: Mana, Mana everywhere
Heart: Sometimes, you need to be tanky
Shiva's guard: Now you can initiate, then re-initiate
[color=#ffff00]Carry shaker[/color]:
Phase boots
Shadow blade
Daedalus
Congrats with these three items, you can one shot most heros in the game if you crit.
Hint: Enchant totem, then shadow blade, hit a person, then Enchant totem and hit them again.
Game Phases:
Early: Just make sure your carry gets farm, if they have a stun, you can go for kills, pretty straight forward, you want to hit level 6 fast though, do try not to leave lane too much. Roaming isn't your strong suit, but you can gank the mid lane a little if an invis rune spawned and you got it.
Mid: TEAM FIGHT, TEAM FIGHT, TEAM FIGHT! You are a scary good team fighter, abuse that fact if you managed to get you ~15 min blink dagger, this stage of the game should be a walk in the park. Just play 5 man dota, push and force team fights, because you will win them.
Late: If the game managed to go on for 40+ min then I hope your hard carry is better than theirs, but you do not lose your potency in team fights, so just try team fighting still.
Heros:
Heros good on your team: Any team fighter, CM (BONUS: she solves your mana problems), Magnus, Enigman, ETC...
Heros good on their team: Pushers/illusion heros, PL, Meepo, Naga, ETC...
Heros bad on their team: We do not like Tiny or Antimage, antimage can take your initiation to the face and still walk away from it, and tiny will kill you so fast if you make one mistake.
Problems : As i have said, mana is a problem for Earthshaker throughout the game, but thankfully your core helps solve it, arcanes will solve it for the most part single-handedly. Earthshaker also has problems with counter initiators, namely silencer, if knows what is going to happen before you do it, he will silence you, kill you, and make your mana problems even worse.
[color=#0000ff]Knowledge[/color] : If you are behind, I can not stress this enough, team fight, I have won games while behind because of team fights. Keep in mind that you are playing one of the best team fighters in the game, abuse it. If you look at my dotabuff profile, you will notice the lack of Earthshaker games, the reason I am making this guide (and why you should trust me) is because ES was the first hero I learned how to play well, he was the first hero I was like "wow, I did something", and even though i don't have a lot of games as him (or at all) i have very good knowledge of the game and how thing work, I very much enjoy theory crafting, so I can tell you exactly how to do something, but suck at it myself.
Assumptions: Things i am assuming are that you are buying TP scrolls, wards, and that you have knowlage of the game so you know what im taking about if i abbreviate some things
Suggested material : Watch Purge's youtube, he is a high level player who know what he is doing, just watch his videos and learn more from them than you did from reading this. His videos are how I learned dota, so I encourage people to watch his videos, because I still learn from them, and I feel that I know the game really well.
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZsM8MOy0VC9blj_wBkbo-g
Introduction :
Earthshaker is one of the best initiators in the game, and a fairly good lane support. His power comes from fissure, his bread and butter move, and the fact that every single on of his moves can be a stun.
I will talk about how he is played, and heros to love and hate, items to get and what problems you have.
[size=50]WARNING: THIS IS A WALL OF TEXT!!!!![/size]
[color=#ff0000]Pros and Cons : [/color]
Pros: large burst damage, has 3 stuns, good move speed, good strength growth, doesn't need a lot of items
Cons: Not very tanky for being a strength hero, mana problems, no comeback potential, bad spell animations
Abilities :
Q: [color=#ffa500]Fissure[/color]
Fissure is a long range nuke and stun that makes an area of impassable terrain.
Range: 1400 (line)
Radius: 225
Duration of impassable terrain: 8 seconds
Stun duration: 1/1.25/1.5/1.75
Damage: 125/175/225/275 (magical)
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Manacost: 125/140/155/170
Notes: This move is very powerful when used right, it can block of paths so people can't escape, or block a path so your team can escape. This is also the source of all your mana problems. This move is a point and click move that is so powerful, I have first hand experience of a rubick stealing it, then wreaking my team, this move is just too good.
W: [color=#ffa500]Enchant Totem[/color]
This is a self buff move that makes your next hit really good.
Damage bonus: 100%/200%/300%/400% (base damage only)
Duration of buff: 14 seconds or 1 attack
Cooldown: 5 seconds
Manacost 50
Notes: This move is great when paired with your next one, aftershock. This is good when pushing towers, after you initiated so you can hit the carry, and is very spam-able, makes you feared in a one on one confrontation.
E: [color=#ffa500]Aftershock[/color]
This makes your two moves that arn't a stun, stuns.
Radius: 300
Stun duration: 0.6/0.9/1.2/1.5
Damage: 50/75/100/125 (magical)
Notes: This is a passive move that make makes Enchant Totem very scary to fight, because of that stun duration. Makes your initiation very good. This passive is so signature to Earthshaker, it makes Earthshaker who he is, it is like PA's Crit.
R: [color=#ee82ee]Echo Slam[/color]
This is your initiation move, does a TON of damage in a good AOE.
Radius: 525
Initial damage: 160/210/270
Echo damage: 40/55/70
Cooldown: 150/130/110
Manacost: 145/205/265
Aghs upgrade: Makes it each twice per unit
Notes: The damage seems bad on this move, but when used right, this thing will get you a rampage. The "Echo damage" is damage added onto the initial damage of the move based off each unit hit. This makes it really good when you catch 5 heros in a creep wave of 4. A level 1 ult like that will do 160+(40*9)=520 damage to EACH unit in the radius. This is also the only Earthshaker spell with an INSTANT cast time.
Skill build: You will always max out Fissure first, I can't see a reason not to. Your skills to level 7 should be
1.Q
2.E
3.Q
4.W
5.Q
6.R
7.Q
From here it gets a little different, you can chose to max Enchant Totem now, or Aftershock, it comes down to how the game is going and what you are trying to accomplish. In most cases though I would say max Aftershock second.
Roles : Earthshaker is a support and initiator, so play him as such. He goes into the safe lane with your carry and will do stacking and pulling, normal support things, but you have an arsenal of stuns, and that means you can be very aggressive in lane. Due to his aggressive nature, he is very viable in an aggressive tri-lane.
Some people like playing [.color=#ffff00]"Carry Shaker"[/color.]. This is a situation where you would max out your Enchat Totem before Aftershock. This build is mainly different in item choices, witch I will talk about in the next section, for Carry Shaker you may want to head mid.
Item choices :
Starting items: Tango, Salve, buy courier or wards not both, gauntlet or mantle (ill explain later), clarity
Early game: Brown boots, Bracer or talisman (so close to explaining), Upgraded courier.
Core:
Arcane boots: Self explanatory I hope
Blink dagger: This is for your Echo Slam initiation
Drums of endurance or Veil of Discord: This is explanation time! This item choice comes down to preference, I personally like the stats that the Drums give, but the Veil is arguably the better choice, due to the magic damage amplification
Late Game:
Aghanim's scepter: The double echo damage is really good for your initiation, also the HP and Mana are great to have.
Refresher: If there team is just too tanky, a refresher makes your initiation 2X better!
Bloodstone: Mana, Mana everywhere
Heart: Sometimes, you need to be tanky
Shiva's guard: Now you can initiate, then re-initiate
[color=#ffff00]Carry shaker[/color]:
Phase boots
Shadow blade
Daedalus
Congrats with these three items, you can one shot most heros in the game if you crit.
Hint: Enchant totem, then shadow blade, hit a person, then Enchant totem and hit them again.
Game Phases:
Early: Just make sure your carry gets farm, if they have a stun, you can go for kills, pretty straight forward, you want to hit level 6 fast though, do try not to leave lane too much. Roaming isn't your strong suit, but you can gank the mid lane a little if an invis rune spawned and you got it.
Mid: TEAM FIGHT, TEAM FIGHT, TEAM FIGHT! You are a scary good team fighter, abuse that fact if you managed to get you ~15 min blink dagger, this stage of the game should be a walk in the park. Just play 5 man dota, push and force team fights, because you will win them.
Late: If the game managed to go on for 40+ min then I hope your hard carry is better than theirs, but you do not lose your potency in team fights, so just try team fighting still.
Heros:
Heros good on your team: Any team fighter, CM (BONUS: she solves your mana problems), Magnus, Enigman, ETC...
Heros good on their team: Pushers/illusion heros, PL, Meepo, Naga, ETC...
Heros bad on their team: We do not like Tiny or Antimage, antimage can take your initiation to the face and still walk away from it, and tiny will kill you so fast if you make one mistake.
Problems : As i have said, mana is a problem for Earthshaker throughout the game, but thankfully your core helps solve it, arcanes will solve it for the most part single-handedly. Earthshaker also has problems with counter initiators, namely silencer, if knows what is going to happen before you do it, he will silence you, kill you, and make your mana problems even worse.
[color=#0000ff]Knowledge[/color] : If you are behind, I can not stress this enough, team fight, I have won games while behind because of team fights. Keep in mind that you are playing one of the best team fighters in the game, abuse it. If you look at my dotabuff profile, you will notice the lack of Earthshaker games, the reason I am making this guide (and why you should trust me) is because ES was the first hero I learned how to play well, he was the first hero I was like "wow, I did something", and even though i don't have a lot of games as him (or at all) i have very good knowledge of the game and how thing work, I very much enjoy theory crafting, so I can tell you exactly how to do something, but suck at it myself.
Assumptions: Things i am assuming are that you are buying TP scrolls, wards, and that you have knowlage of the game so you know what im taking about if i abbreviate some things
Suggested material : Watch Purge's youtube, he is a high level player who know what he is doing, just watch his videos and learn more from them than you did from reading this. His videos are how I learned dota, so I encourage people to watch his videos, because I still learn from them, and I feel that I know the game really well.
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZsM8MOy0VC9blj_wBkbo-g