General Discussion [Guide Competition] A Storm Spirit Guide by Farmer

[SIZE="22"][COLOR=#f4b94e]How to play Storm Spirit, by Farmer[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE="20"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Introduction[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Storm Spirit is a hero which offers you high mobility combined with lethal combos. He is an excellent ganker and works well as semi-carry/carry. He has a great melee nuke, no-cd Blink and to top it off, a disable. But it is not all good, with his amazing arsenal of spells comes mana issues. One who does not master Storm's mana will never master Storm.

In this guide I will try to give you a good foundation on how to play the hero. I will try to explain and comment on the crucial mistake people do and how to make the hero work in higher tier matchmaking.

[SIZE="18"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Skill Build[/COLOR][/SIZE]
I am working under the assumption that you know how Storm Spirit skills work and won't explain them here. If you want a detailed guide I suggest you check out a website like this.

1. Static Remnant
2. Overload
3. Overload
4. Electric Vortex
5. Overload
6. Ball Lightning
7. Overload
8. Electric Vortex
9. Electric Vortex
10. Static Remnant
11. Ball Lightning
12. Static Remnant
13. Static Remnant
14. Electric Vortex

[COLOR=#4A9EDB]Short version:[/COLOR] QEEWEREWWQRQQW

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Justification and alternative builds[/COLOR][/SIZE]
This is my favorite build and the one I consider the strongest in public games. There are of course alternate builds and Storm Spirit can be built in many ways. A popular alternative and one that works better in professional games is the build that maxes out or takes three points in W first with one point in Q and E each. Three points in W is enough to guarantee a Static Remnant hit right after.

What makes my build strong is the fact that it provides the highest overall damage from your hero with proper use of your ultimate to proc Overload. It's also extremely strong on lane because of the harassing potential. Keeping Static Remnant on level one ensures that you will have less mana issues because the mana cost increases as you level up Static Remnant.

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Tips and tricks[/COLOR][/SIZE]
It's is crucial that you between every spell cast attack your target to use the Overload charge. If you don't do this, the damage output won't be high. This is done by repeatedly spamming your Ball Lightning with small jumps. Try to use your ultimate in such a way that you get into a position to use your Static Remnant to proc another Overload. Static Remnant is more efficient to use to proc Overload if you can hit the Remnant, otherwise you should use your ultimate.

Overload is a buff on your hero. This means you can throw an attack on the enemy and as your projectile is in the air you can use Q and that attack will proc Overload and slow the enemy.

[SIZE="20"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]What role does Storm Spirit have?[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Middle lane[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Storm Spirit is played most often on the middle lane. He is a semi-carry/ganker type of hero and he need levels. Middle lane gives him this. He is also a very good Bottle user. This is the role this guide will focus on.

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Safe lane[/COLOR][/SIZE]
He can also be played on a safe lane. Playing him on the safe lane is usually because you want another hero in your middle lane and your team strategy is to snowball before the enemy hard carry out carries your Storm. Generally, a safe lane Storm gets his first major item earlier which can have quite some impact in some games.

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Jungle[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Jungle Storm is a public game thing and what people do when their lane gets taken. It's extremely volatile simply because of the RNG of the spawns. Mud Golems makes it extremely inefficient. It’s still decent in terms of levels if you stack hard camps and kill them with Smoke but you are susceptible to ganks and don't provide anything to your team until you reach level 6, which happens between 6-8 minutes depending on how lucky you are.

[SIZE="20"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Item Build[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Core[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[IMG]http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/6/6b/Power_Treads_icon.png[/IMG][IMG]http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/9/90/Null_Talisman_icon.png[/IMG][IMG]http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/6/63/Bottle_icon.png[/IMG][IMG]http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/a/ad/Orchid_Malevolence_icon.png[/IMG][IMG]http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/5/5a/Bloodstone_icon.png[/IMG]

[SIZE="12"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Orchid of Malevolence vs Bloodstone[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Orchid of Malevolence first is one of the most popular builds out there on Storm Spirit. Some people say that Bloodstone first is stronger and one of the common mistakes I think public players do. Rarely is it the best choice and only works in some situations. It has a worse build-up than Orchid. An Oblivion Staff gives you mana and regeneration on top of damage.

But the main thing about Orchid is that it synergizes perfectly with the way Storm Spirit is played. You are a ganker, you want to pick people off. The Silence gives you the extra burst but also disables your opponent from disabling you or run away with escape spells.

Bloodstone is a good second item though. It will allow you to snowball out of control and make you never have to go back to base to regenerate. I do think that BKB is better overall if the enemy has good lock down but in public games you can avoid most of those disables by just good positioning and timing.

[SIZE="12"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Null Talis[/COLOR][/SIZE]
They’re lane winners. Buy them if you need cheap stats and want to be an RTZ slayer.

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Late Game[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[IMG]http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/5/54/Scythe_of_Vyse_icon.png[/IMG][IMG]http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/b/b6/Shiva%27s_Guard_icon.png[/IMG][IMG]http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/7/72/Black_King_Bar_icon.png[/IMG][IMG]http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/dota2.gamepedia.com/2/23/Linken%27s_Sphere_icon.png[/IMG]

[SIZE="12"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Scythe of Vyse[/COLOR][/SIZE]
As for late game, Scythe of Vyse is generally the best choice. Orchid loses its effectiveness as carries get BKB or Manta Style. Scythe provides you with a solid disable for them and it makes it so that you are able to keep picking people off even though they got BKB or Manta to counter your Orchid. Of course, it also gives you extra mana and regeneration. Overall a good item.

[SIZE="12"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Shiva's Guard[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Shiva’s Guard is situational. While the intelligence you get from the item is good and the armor and aura helps you survive a bit it usually doesn't outweigh the disable from Scythe. You can build it after Scythe if you want.

[SIZE="12"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]BKB vs Linken's Sphere[/COLOR][/SIZE]
In professional games you see Storms sometimes build BKB directly after they got their core Power Treads. You play much more for your team in a professional game. Sometimes you have to initiate and wreak havoc with BKB up so your team can go in or you have to jump that important squishy hero in the back. BKB allows you to jump in and ignore everyone. No one can really hit you because of your ultimate and you can't get stunned with the exception of those few spells that go through BKB.

In a public game BKB often isn't needed. People won't be as coordinated and you want to play more selfishly in public games as you can't be 100% sure your teammates are as good as you. If I really need some kind of item to increase my survivability in pubic game I tend to go Linken's Sphere as it gives me mana and regeneration.

[SIZE="12"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Soul Ring[/COLOR][/SIZE]
EternaLEnVy likes to go Soul Ring on Storm Spirit. What this item does is that it's gives you insane mana to mana pool ratio. Since the mana you get from Soul Ring is a fixed number and not percent based and Soul Ring doesn't increase your mana pool, you will be able to jump very far with your ultimate for the mana it gives. Your ultimate is percent based, which means the larger mana pool you have, the more it will cost. But if you don’t increase your mana pool but increase the mana you have, your ultimate will use less mana and allow you to jump further for the same amount of mana.

There is also this trick where you drop your mana items like Orchid and Bloodstone and use Soul Ring and then pick them up again. This will give you a lot of mana for the duration of the Soul Ring buff. If you want further explanation on how it works, check this.

I don't usually go for Soul Ring but it has its strength. I just think it delays your Orchid too much and does nothing to your damage or health pool.

[SIZE="20"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Gameplay[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Laning phase[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Laning middle as Storm Spirit is quite straight forward. How you play depends completely on which hero you are facing. If you face a Queen of Pain you have to play more passive whereas if you for example face a melee you have to destroy him.
What I can say though is that you want to focus on getting last hits with Remnant and harass with Overload. You want that Bottle as soon as possible. Use Remnant to push out the lane when a rune is about to spawn so you don’t miss out on experience when you go get the rune.

I want to tell you about a trick you can do in middle lane that I see very few middle players use, even at top MMR. It's to use creep aggro to hit your Static Remnant. Let's say you want to go a bit aggressive on their middle laner and you walk up to his ranged creep. Now, the melee creeps will not stand at his ranged creep but you want to hit your remnant on all of the creeps. What do you do? You right click the opponent hero and be within 500 range of the melee creeps. This will make the melee creeps run to you and you can now hit your remnant on all the creeps. The same thing can be used defensively. You can pull a melee creep towards you by right clicking the enemy and put your remnant further back where you are less susceptible to harass.

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Moving past the laning phase[/COLOR][/SIZE]
You usually want to start leaving your lane and go ganking and fighting at level 6-8. Now, this of course depends completely on what you are facing and if it’s worth it. You have to assess the situation. Sometimes it can be best just to stay in lane if you feel you got control of it and farm your Orchid before you really start moving. But in most public games getting level 6 is your queue to start moving. This is where the fun begins and it’s when you can jump on people and initiate ganks. Runes are crucial for any ganker and Storm is no exception.

Storm is both a strong ganker and counter-ganker. You can easily jump on a hero due to your massive initiation range but you are also good at coming in and counter-gank for the same reason. It’s not easy to disengage from a fight with a Storm on your back. That’s why you should always have a TP scroll to assist your team. If there is a fight, you want to be there always as Storm Spirit.

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Using Fog of War and Presence to your advantage[/COLOR][/SIZE]
There is one concept that I think is crucial to being a good roamer and ganker and one of the most common mistakes I see low-mid MMR players do. It's a concept about presence and how the minimap vision works and how good gankers take advantage of this.

A hero can be on or off the map. What is being "off the map"? It's being in fog of war for your opponent which makes them unable to see you on the minimap. A Storm Spirit wants to be off the map very often because else you can’t gank. “Duh, everyone knows that”, you might say. But what so many people overlook is the presence you have. Even when you’re not ganking you want to be off the map. Why is that? Because it forces your opponents to be afraid and move together.

Imagine you are playing Sniper and you are facing a Storm Spirit. You know you'll die if Storm Spirit jumps on you. As the Sniper you should be constantly watching the minimap and the moment Storm is missing you have to play careful, right? A normal pub player Storm Spirit will only be missing from the map when he is ganking and you can easily avoid his ganks because it's so predictable. If the Storm Spirit isn't ganking he will go back to a lane to farm a bit. By showing himself the Storm Spirit is telling you: "Hey, I'm farming on top lane. Feel free to farm bot without me being able to gank you".

Now imagine that you instead faced this god-tier Storm Spirit and you never see him on the map. What does this force you to do as Sniper? You have to either farm the woods where he can’t see you and go gank you or you have to have teammates babysit you. Either way, the presence the Storm Spirit has on you is massive. He could very well be AFKing at the fountain and you still have to hug a tower, have supports sit behind you or farm in jungle, which is way slower.

The presence a ganker like Storm has on the enemy team by being off the map is huge and you should focus on that when you play storm. Don't farm lanes too much during the mid game. Rather farm in the jungle where they can't see you. I'm not saying to never farm lanes. There are situations where you can't do anything or won't apply any pressure on the opponent by being off the map and that's when you can farm on a lane.

This concept isn't exclusive to Storm Spirit. Heroes like Rikimaru, Nyx Assassin, Bounty Hunter and Clinkz should be played this way too. Every time I see a Rikimaru farm on lane a lot after he got his level 6 I know he isn't experienced.

[SIZE="20"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Why are you losing?[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Difficult lanes[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Storm can have laning issues against strong laners such as Queen of Pain, Shadow Fiend, Tinker. The key to deal with this is to just try not to die and get to level 6. You have to realize you can’t win the lane but that doesn't matter if you can secure level 6 and go gank instead. Storm is generally not a lane winner except if he faces melee hero but winning lanes isn't his strength. He just wants that level 6.

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Stuns, stuns and stuns[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Disables are of course one of the main ways to shut down a Storm Spirit. Doom, Global Silence, Orchid, Hex or any kind of instant disable is very annoying to deal with as Storm Spirit. You just have to be cautious about those spells and try to avoid them to the best of your abilities. Don't jump in first against a Doom, stay back and force him to waste it on your team and then you're safe to go or disable him before he can use it. Get a BKB against hexes. Use Ball Lightning to make it harder to target you with stuns.

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Mana = Health[/COLOR][/SIZE]
As a Storm Spirit your mana is your health. The moment you run out of mana you are a creep. Mana management is extremely important and that comes with experience. By just playing a lot you will get a feel for if you have enough mana to kill a hero or how much it costs to jump x distance.

[SIZE="20"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Final Words[/COLOR][/SIZE]
Storm is an excellent hero in public games. His ability to pick heroes off and snowball is what makes him one of the best heroes to stomp with. He is also very fun because he provides a completely unique play style with Ball Lightning and mana management.

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Who am I?[/COLOR][/SIZE]
I'm a public player who follow the competitive scene and specialize in the mid role. I have been playing DotA since 6.17b and played Storm for as long as I can remember. In Dota 2 my MMR is 5.5k solo.

[SIZE="14"][COLOR=#4A9EDB]Other resources[/COLOR][/SIZE]
If you want some tips on good Storm players then watch ^^DragonFist^^, a top MMR player with a 73% win rate on the hero with over 300 games. Qojqva from Liquid is also known for his Storm. Last but not least we have also have Na'Vi Dendi.

Awesome play by Dendi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66b3t7ytkKM