[Lycanthrope] Comprehensive guide to Lycanthrope

[zaphodbrx99]

~Table Of Contents

1. Story
2. Introduction
3. Info and Stats
4. Skill Usage
5. Skill Build
6. Item Build
7. Strategy
~7b. Key Points
8. Hero Synergy
9. Conclusion
10. Replays
11. Credits

1. Background Story

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Banehallow is an avatar of bestial fury created by the scourge. For years he has dwelled in the dark forests of the world, hunting innocents that wander therein. Now he is called to aid his masters. He revels in blood and battle, using his wolfish persona to draw the feral beasts to his side and imbue his allies with his flesh-shredding strength. He is also unnaturally quick and agile. Some say he can even transform into a giant wolf, giving him more durability and the speed to gouge and maim with near impunity.

2. Introduction

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Well I noticed that there weren't any guides on Lycanthrope so I decided to write one. Lycan is a powerful midgame DPSer and carry, and also has some pushing potential. Lycan has no stun or disable, no AOE or single target nuke so in this respect he suffers a bit compared to other carry/semicarry heroes. This guide is mainly meant for newbies and public players because I don't play competitively and Lycan is not much used there anyway ( because of his above mentioned disadvantages ). This is my first guide.

A bit of history: Lycan was used quite extensively in the 6.5x era because he was somewhat overpowered back then, his wolves had bash, he and his wolves had more armour, his ulti lasted longer and so on. But he suffered a series of nerfs and fell out of favour in the competitive scene.

Lycan is a bit of a 'noob autoattack hero'. If you are looking for cool spell combos and hard to place stuns, you came to the wrong place. Having said that I think he is quite interesting to play and not very hard either.

3. Lycan's Info & Stats

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Strength: 22+2.75
Agility: 16+1.9
Intelligence: 15+1.55

Main attribute: Strength.
Lycanthrope is found in the Scourge Strength heroes tavern.

Lycan's stats are OK as we can see above, not exceptional but not low either. His main strengths come from his skills as we shall see before.

Pros:
[+] Lycan has very high midgame DPS and steroid skills
[+] He can buff up other heroes and their summons through howl
[+] Can jungle early on and solo Roshan

Cons:
[-] No disable
[-] No AOE or single target nuke
[-] Is reliant on ultimate

For complete stats, click below:
Lycanthrope hero details

4. HERO'S Skill Usage

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Summon Wolves

Banehallow summons two wolves to fight his enemies. This is your main skill in early and mid game. The wolves start off quite weak but become quite strong, at level 4, the two wolves combined are stronger than a hero. They help you jungle and roshan early, and lategame they are still useful for farming and scouting.


Howl

An eerie loud howl grants an inner strength to all player controlled units. This is an additional DPS skill, not only for yourself and your summons, but also your allies and their summons. We will be maxing this out last since it isn't as useful as his other skills.


Feral impulse

This increases the attack speed and damage of Lycan and his units. It is a powerful steroid skill. We will be maxing this out second ( over howl ), because it is a passive and requires no mana early on.


Shapeshift

Lycanthrope's signature ultimate. This transforms him into a big badass wolf with extra hp, attack speed, critical strike and gives max speed to all your units ( also you cannot be slowed ). At level 3 of ultimate it lasts for 16 sec with 40 sec cd so you can use it quite often.

5. Skill Build

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All of Lycanthrope's abilities are very useful and it would be a huge mistake to take stats instead of any of them. In almost all cases you should be following this skillbuild ( exception being a pushing strategy with allied summons, in which case you will be maxing out howl ).

Level 1 - Summon wolves
Level 2 - Feral impulse
Level 3 - Summon wolves
Level 4 - Feral impulse
Level 5 - Summon wolves
Level 6 - Shapeshift
Level 7 - Summon wolves
Level 8 - Feral impulse
Level 9 - Feral impulse
Level 10 - Howl
Level 11 - Shapeshift
Level 12 - Howl
Level 13 - Howl
Level 14 - Howl
Level 15 - Stats
Level 16 - Shapeshift
Level 17+ - Stats

Wolves are your most important early game skill and thus must be maxed first. Although theoretically howl gives about the same, or more DPS than feral impulse early, in practice it is almost always better to get feral first because it doesn't cost any mana or have a cooldown. Howl is then gotten and of course you get your ultimate whenever possible.

6. Item Build

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Core item build



Lycan's power comes from his high DPS in midgame. Therefore the above items are recommended as core, as they are cheap and easy to build, and complement the Lycanthrope's skills very well.

Vladimir's aura builds up from the early Ring of basilius, it gives lifesteal and extra damage to you and your wolves ( add 16% dmg to the 25% from feral impulse and it is 41% dmg aura ), mana regeneration to spam your spells and extra armour to you and your team. Very useful for neutralling and Roshaning, Lycan is a natural vlads carrier. This should be your first item.

Power treads are your boots of choice. The extra 10 str and attackspeed are very useful and the parts are cheap. I used to go phase boots earlier, but the current version of phase boots are not very good at all.

Cranium basher is required to solve your main problem, your lack of disable, even though the bash is somewhat unreliable it can be very effective. It has a STR component, adds quite a lot of damage and goes very well with his high attack speed. Basher has a cooldown, so you can't perma-bash. The basher also prevents people from TP'ing out on you.

Black king bar makes you immune to disables and spells, as well as giving a lot of useful stats ( str and dmg ). This will be required in most cases.

After playing a lot of games, I have come to the conclusion that Magic stick is a core item on Lycan. Why? For one reason only. Shapeshift cost 100 mana. Sometimes you will be in a fucked up position that you don't have mana for your ultimate for one reason or another. Magic stick saves you from looking like a giant moron in these clutch situations. No need to upgrade to wand, just leave it at stick.

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Alternate item build



Sange and Sange'n'Yasha are alternate means of getting a disable if you don't want basher, and the stats from Sange are very good for Lycan. The maim orb doesn't have a cooldown thus you can perma-maim unlike basher, the downside being that slow is much less useful than a stun. You can skip Yasha if you want and keep it at just Sange, Lycan doesn't benefit much from the Yasha, already having max ms and high attk speed.

Armlet gives you a lot of extra damage and hp, the con being the life degeneration, though lifesteal makes up for it when you are in battle. In my opinion armlet isn't a good item for Lycan since a lot of the times you will be going on prolonged chases and the degen hurts quite a bit, besides if you go for an early armlet you are not getting Basher/Sange/BKB, meaning you are giving up your disable or will be disabled. Getting armlet after core is quite stupid because by then it is already lategame and you might aswell get a costly luxury item.

Phase boots is only gotten if you're having troubles constantly getting blocked by creeps ( since Lycan has lower collision size in ulti, this is not likely to happen ). Otherwise treads are almost always better. Boots of Travel will be needed in lategame for pushing.


For version 6.68+, Orb of venom is really good on him. Don't bother to upgrade to skadi though, it isn't worth it. Get it some time after vlad and treads and sell it when you need a bigger item or another orb ( deso/mjollnir ) later in the game.

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Late game luxury items



Desolator adds a huge bunch of damage via the corruption orb ( don't get this if you already have Sange ). MKB is another high damage item that gives ministuns as well as True strike, which can counter evasion users. Battle fury gives cleave, which is pretty good lategame and may be necessary against illusion heroes, though the regen is kinda wasted. Assault Curiass gives you a bunch of armour, -armour aura, and extra attack speed which is very useful due to Lycan low BAT in wolf form and especially if you get MKB or basher because it make them proc more. ( thanks bekyuubi ). Mjollnir gives high attack speed, chain lightnings and a lightning shield that could be useful in some situations.

Typically your best extension would be either deso or MKB. Heart, satanic and curiass promote more of a tanking role which isn't exactly a great idea on him, however they are decent in case you are over-fed.

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EXTRA/SITUATIONAL ITEMS



I don't think these items work very well on Lycan but you can get them if you want..



I used to like these items but now I think that they're not that useful. Lycan is not a tank and don't make him one. Concentrate on dealing damage.

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Funny ( zoo ) build



This item build focuses on the fact that ALL units owned by Lycan will get the benefits of howl, feral impulse and the max ms from his ulti. It is a funny build but it can work in a sort of pushing strategy.

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7. General Strategy

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Early Game

Picking Lycan:

In most cases, jungle is the best option for him. Lycan is absolutely useless in a lane being melee and having no slow/stun, and the benefits of having two solo lanes and getting more money from jungle is too great to be overlooked. I would suggest picking Lycan when your allies have two good solo heroes and are arguing over who should solo mid. Lycan jungling opens up top to be a solo lane, but bear in mind that some solos who can do well in mid ( against a single hero and with bottle rune ) will suffer against a dual lane ( examples are Pudge, clockwerk ). A perfect choice for solo top ( top on scourge bot for sent, the short lane ) is a ranged hero who benefits greatly from early fast levels and gold ( eg. Puck, Mirana ).

You should also make sure that your allies have quite a few stuns/disables, because Lycan is a bit dependant on allied stuns. If your allies picked Troll+void+sniper+Bara.. well it may not be worth picking Lycan.

Starting items:



These are the best starting items for Lycan to jungle effectively. I tested various builds such as stout, QB, gauntlets, branches etc. but none of them are good enough. The mana regen from basilius allows you to get more summons, and the armor is very good for you and wolves. Also it builds into vlads. You could get salve instead of tango, but that means you would be going dangerously into red hp in order to make full use of it.

Jungling:

You must start jungling right from level 1. A common mistake I see is going to the side lane, staying till lvl 3 and then going jungle. This is very wrong. Why? because this means your lane partner will get fucked once you leave, because he is the same level as your opponents. A solo requires additional levels to be able to handle a dual lane.

Where should you jungle? In your own side jungle. Lycan is not an aggressive jungler like Engima or Chen that he should be in the enemy jungle- there is no way he can gank the sidelanes.

Just the game starts, summon your wolves and put them on the two runespots, this way your allies benefit from an early rune. If there is a techie on the other team, run your wolves over the popular mining spots to blow them up. The neutral creeps spawn at 0:30 . Summon your wolves and take out the easy camp ( tank the dmg on your wolves ).

Some time later, go to the pullable medium camp and do a creep pull. The way this is done is: when your lane creepwave is at the 2nd tower, attack the creeps and move back into the lane, your allied creeps will start attacking the neutrals. Last hit the neutrals to get the gold. This is easier to do on the scourge jungle because on the sentinel side there are trees blocking the way. Only 1 pull is required for Lycan. Go to the easy camp again and kill it. You should now be level 3 ( lvl 2 wolves ), or close.

At this point, you begin neutralling with care. Tank damage alternately on your hero and wolves. Whenever a wolf reaches yellow hp, pull it back and let the creeps hit something else, then send it back to fighting. This prolongs the life of your wolf. Also when your wolf is nearly dead, back it out and send it to search for a rune/ scout around. A DD or regen rune is very good for you, while the others are good for your allies ( alert them ). Don't be afraid to tank some damage on your hero, he has natural regen after all. Consume your tangos from time to time. Your main enemies are the satyr trickster and centaur khan. When facing the satyrs send your hero first and make sure the purges land on him instead of wolves. The centaur will stomp when there are 3 units near him. To avoid this, just send your wolves first, and then when one dies, send your hero. Avoid the furbolg and wildkin camps till you have lvl 4 wolves because those buggers do way too much damage.

Continue on like this till you hit lvl 6 ot 7 and then go back to the base to heal and pick up your vlads and boots ( you should be able to farm this much ). Remember you are in maximum danger around lvl 5 when you're low hp and the opposing solo starts looking for kills. Keep an eye on the lanes and don't rely on your allies to call miss because they probably won't.

The level 4 wolves are incredibly powerful and without any help from you they can take out a hard and an easy camp. After reaching lvl 7, you should neutral away from your wolves, this gives you a lot more gold. After lvl 7 you can easily take out the ancients as well.

Early items :



I don't think these items are particularly good on Lycan.. they are generally completed from starting items such as branches and gauntlets, but you're starting out with RoB and tango. Bottle is quite useless as the only good rune for Lycan is DD. So you might as well head for the big stuff. Lycan's core items are neither costly nor hard to build anyway.

Ganking/killing :

You are completely useless at lvl 1-5 so don't even think about it. But at lvl 6 and 7, Lycan's power increases drastically. Your level 4 wolves at lvl 7, are, combined, as powerful or more than the Lycan himself, they are equivalent to like one and a half heroes. Lycan is the most powerful DPSer at this point and you can take on anyone 1v1, so it would be foolish to waste his potential. Start looking for kills. The wolves themselves are killers.. even without the help of the Lycan they can chase down and kill puny INT heroes like Zeus and Techies at this point. It depends on the situation but I highly recommend aggresive towerdiving, it can really pay off.

You should easily be able to get a few kills at this point and with the help of your allies. Aim to get your vladimir's and treads as soon as you can. If all goes well, you should be level 9 soon and have vlad + treads.

Get these ASAP.

So, you're level 9 and have your vlads and treads. Now you know what you're going to do. Yep, it's going to be...

Solo Roshan! :



That stone bugger deserves his comeuppance. Lycanthrope is one of the best solo roshaner's in the game ( second only to Ursa warrior ). Unlike Ursa though, it's not a "right click press overpower/enrage piece of cake, but takes a bit of micro.

Summon your wolves and head over to him ( summon them beforehand for the cooldown ). If you find a DD rune, all the better, but it's not needed. Start attacking Roshan with your guys. Now here's the tricky part. Whenever a wolf reaches yellow ( ~60% life ). back it away and let the others tank, then send it back to lifesteal it's hp. Same for your hero, tank the Roshan, then back off, let it attack a wolf, then lifesteal back. Get the most out of your wolves as you can but don't retreat a red hp unit as Roshan will target it automatically. You will generally need 2 sets of wolves though I am sure it could be done with just one ( you'll need 3 if you don't micro properly or get unlucky with the bashes ). Beware of the lethal bashes and remember that unlike your wolves, your hero is not expendable.

If all goes well, you will emerge out of your Roshan duel with full hp. It might be a good idea to bring a salve in case you get unlucky with bashes. Soloing Roshan gives substantial benefits: 105-600 gold bounty, an additional 200 gold for the team, two levels of experience ( you'll shoot straight from lvl 9 to lvl 11 ), and of course, the sparkling aegis of the immortal. If any of your noob allies want to help you, tell them to gtfo. You don't need their help.. they will be stealing gold, exp, maybe even the aegis, but most importantly the large numbers of heroes missing will alert the enemy as to what you are doing.

Thus concludes the early game.

Mid Game

Ganking or farming? Farmganking:

As I have mentioned before, Lycanthrope excels in midgame DPS with the combination of his howl, passive, ulti and wolves. So it is clear that you should be killing heroes. But Lycan also need farm, so what do you do? Solution: farmganking. Gank while you farm, farm while you gank. Lurk around in the woods ambushing enemy heroes with your allies, and while you're at it, kill neutrals as well. Help your team push down towers so that you have map control. Constantly deny access to the enemy jungle. The enemy jungle is a great place to chill out.. you can gang the sidelanes or a person attempting to neutral, and push their towers. If a team is unwilling to fight, force the issue by pushing a tower. You should be having an aegis so that you can do suicidal things like towerdiving while pushing a tower. Try to get all the towers down as soon as you can.

Farming/scouting with wolves and using howl:

Your wolves slowly start losing their usefulness for DPS. They are still excellent for creeping and scouting as they can clear out jungles very quickly adding to your gold income. Remember they are permanently invisible and fast. Scout runes, Roshan, the enemy jungle. They are good tanks while pushing a tower. A little bit of micro can go a long way.

If you are seeing a fight far away that you cannot arrive at, use howl. A bit of damage goes a long way.

Team fights:



You should farm for these items as you will now be needing them. Your role is simple. Summon wolves, howl, shapeshift, BKB, rightclick. No problem at all.

Keep a mental track of when you killed Roshan so that you can kill him again 10 min later. Suicide-push a tower if you want to get rid of the aegis as Roshan will claim it 10 min later, there's no sense in wasting it.

Late Game

Lycanthrope's Late game depends totally on his early and mid game. If you farmed well and were able to gank and shut down the lategame carries, you will be having a full item set while they will be having 2 wraith bands. If you failed and feeded, you'll be having no items while your opponents have their butterflies and such.

Lycan also has troubles with illusion heroes as he has no AOEs. Make sure that your allies have enough AOE to deal with them, or buy multiple battle furys.

Buy whatever luxury item you want depending on the situation. In my experience if I can get my core items, the game is pretty much won by midgame and there is no 'lategame', or if there is, it's totally onesided.

Lycan push strategy

You require allies with a lot of summons for this. Examples are:



The basic strategy is to max howl fast as it adds a lot of power to your ally's summons and go for fast pushing.
The zoo build is a good idea to go for in this case.

Obviously you can only do this in an organized game.

7b. Lycan's Key Points

Wolves should be used for farming, scouting and killing

You should always have your wolves up. Send them to the jungles if you don't particularly need them at your side. Don't feed your wolves if you can help it. Sometimes even after your Lycan is dead, you can use them to grab a kill.

Roshan

Keep an eye on Roshan, he is an important aspect of your game.

Tower pushing

Push down enemy towers to gain map control and stop the enemy from farming. Eventually he will be stuck in his own base, at which point you can push down the raxes and end the game.

Help your allies

Howl helps all your allies directly. They can also directly benefit from wolf scouting ( such as runes ).

Lycan push strategy

This strategy involves using howl on allied summons for fast pushing.

8. Hero Synergy

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Lycanthrope has a good synergy with every disabler/stunner in the game. Lycan provides the DPS, they provide the disable.

If going for a push-heavy strategy, Lycan howl has great synergy with summon heroes like Broodmother, as explained before.

10. Conclusion

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Lycanthrope is a powerful DPSer who reaches his peak much before most other carry heroes. He lacks disables, AOE and nukes and is thus a pure DPSer, a bit dependant on his allies disables. Lycan can jungle early on and solo Roshan as well, giving his team obvious benefits.

11. Replays

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1. Lycan replay

Garena public game

What to do when things go wrong? Everything can't be perfect. I make a lot of mistakes, like buying belt at the start, having axe solo against a strong lane, not microing correctly during Roshan. Still it demonstrates the power of Lycan and is quite an interesting replay.

2. PDGG game

PDGG Lycan game

This game was kinda messed up by sentinel rushing dagons, but imho a fun and enjoyable game to watch, see the wolf micro.

3. Fear vs PGG

http://www.playdota.com/forums/20776...e-fear-vs-pgg/

Superb play by Puppey. Very standard item build though.

12. Credits

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Credits for Ramomar's guide template which I am using for this guide

13. Changelog

6th Feb 2010
- Guide created
7th Feb 2010
- Replays added and content updated

[zaphodbrx99]

All right, most of the guide is done. I still haven't fixed the anchors, but please leave your comments on it.

[Burninglegion]

Skill build and item builds are pretty nice, but you might want to provide more reasons why to get items like SnY. Also you should add some screenshots and replays to make this guide more "belivable"

[zaphodbrx99]

If anyone finds a good ( pro ) replay of Lycan, please let me know.. he is almost never picked in comp. games. I have only found one.

[Burninglegion]

If you cant find a replay, then make your own replay, all you have to do is click on the save replay when you've finished playing a game(when the scores shows up) and then posted it on the replay section on this site.

[zaphodbrx99]

Omg wtf. The whole guide vanished when I tried to edit it from the main page. I'll see if I can get it back up.

help! Can anyone tell me how to reverse edits?

[zaphodbrx99]

Thankfully I was able to restore the guide, ( thanks Cp6uja_ ). It is now ready for publishing.

[kawumm]

eh... in that replay the lycan player doesnt accidentally die to creeps, its on purpose. noone playing in comp. is THAT bad at DotA... reason being the 2 roamers pretty much limit him to one fairly safe camp and 2 with medium safety, while the rest is just not accessable. unfortunately the safe camp is damn hard so he pretty much has to suicide for HP and mana. if you watch closely im sure he buys stuff before he dies.

[Nerevarie]

Dude, vlads first? what is this shit.

[zaphodbrx99]

Originally Posted by The-Shaman

Dude, vlads first? what is this shit.

Vlads first is a shitty build for pub players who rush vlads on heroes like Rikki , Gondar, Specter , Kunkka etc. But the fact is that vlad is just perfect on Lycan and read my explanation as to why, and therefore it should be gotten as first item.

Originally Posted by kawumm

eh... in that replay the lycan player doesnt accidentally die to creeps, its on purpose. noone playing in comp. is THAT bad at DotA... reason being the 2 roamers pretty much limit him to one fairly safe camp and 2 with medium safety, while the rest is just not accessable. unfortunately the safe camp is damn hard so he pretty much has to suicide for HP and mana. if you watch closely im sure he buys stuff before he dies.

Well.. dying to creeps on purpose is called suicide jungling. I don't recommend suicide jungling, because you WILL lose gold ( there is almost no way you can buy items with exactly the amount of gold you have ), there is no necessity to do so. As well as the fact that doing so in pub games will make you appear like a huge noob to your teammates.

I don't have a solution to what that Lycan player ( lia^lia ) should have done in his case. IMHO it was abundantly clear that his jungle had been ruined by the 2 roamers very early in the game and he should have just headed for the dual lane.

[Spell_It_Out]

The guide is pretty good,but i tnink you can put Vanguard on the build

[lancette]

Generally a good guide.

You might want to mention that for those who are good at micromanagement, they can consider to use spirit wolves to block the escaping hero.

Basher is a debatable item here since it is not very cost-effective. I prefer to get a teammate to stun for me. I prefer S&Y since it gives you chasing power with Maim, HP, AS and MS(which might come in handy when your ult times out.

A little bit more pictures to illustrate your points maybe? It looks like a wall of text to me.

[zaphodbrx99]

Vanguard? Not a good idea. If you want hp get Sange which gives the a little more hp for the same price, as well as a bunch of dmg and maim. Regen is unneeded as you have lifesteal and dmg block is not important.

lancette: basher has : 25% chance to stun ( which is more useful than slow )
Sny : 15% chance to maim ( less useful than stun ).

So I prefer basher, but Sange is an okay choice.

[bekyuubi]

I played extensively using Lycan, and I can tell you that it's rare to see PA or troll having more farm than Lycan unless the lane is totally dominated by them. Also, basher + hyperstone usually = perma bash troll on ultimate form. MKB counters evasion also. The only hero that truly beats lycan is Void. His ultimate combined with bash simply counters Lycan too much. Unless void is hexed in that period, Lycan is most likely dead. Ursa also beats lycan in terms of overall prowess. Faster roshaning speed, faster to kill a hero if used right. In all my games, unless a blademail + good allies are there, it's game over.

I also tried Wolves/howl (before impulse) + bottle/dedicated crow (I can assure you that there's mana shortages if you just go vlad's, needs another void for all-time wolves summon), and other items later (Vlad + boots). If I recall correctly, a lvl 9 lycan can take down roshan (with howl or impulse). Another thing is that hyperstone is completely necessary at some point. Reason? You have only 5 seconds of late game BKB, and you want to do a ridiculous amount of DPS possible. Lycan benefits more from hyperstone than most ofter heroes because of his 1.4 BAT.

Having high HP is pointless because you're supposed to be another late game DPS-er. In fact basher/BKB gives you approximately 2.5k HP at lvl 25. Add +20 armor from cuirass + another 5 seconds of magic immunity? Not necessary to get heart at all. You can also run away in your ultimate form if necessary. Who cares if your allies die?

Another reason to get Hyperstone is because of the basher synergy. In his ultimate form + hyperstone, he roughly attacks twice in 1.2-1.3 seconds, setting up at least 38.75% chance to stun the opponent. I permabashed butterfly troll to death with basher/mkb/cuirass/HOTD(sold away vlad to upgrade to satanic)/battle fury/treads.

I also tried armlet/desolator, but I assure you if the game isn't over in 35 minutes you will lose; you're stuck with subpar items fighting against carries with better items.

Imo, BKB/MKB (see, there's pesky people who farms really well and gets butterfly pretty fast, and Basher just sucks. Trying to catch up after buying a basher is a nightmare, so MKB first.)/Hyperstone. If you don't get the hyperstone, you can't activate the 100 bonus (magical) damage as often. Basher can be gotten later, and the stun should be basher's length. Bonus damage from both items should apply as well.

Remember to pick up your basher last every time, I think that ensures your stun length to be always basher's. Imo, this hero is very situational, he's really, really powerful when his wolves still had 700HP and armor. The summons can clear out all 3 green camps while he lanes, making him earning 400 over creep kills in 1 hour. Now he's just a slightly better than average hero (can be said to be better than troll/PA at late game if farmed correctly)

I think I calculated DPS in the past to be around 350 pure damage (already accounted for armor reduction, and is a REALLY conservative estimate), due to MKB + Basher bonus damage + critical + cuirass negative aura vs other weapons damage. I placed fury in there too for enemy targeting, so a 2 seconds stun would be sufficient to get the entire team to half life. Best overall build for DPS, at least back 6.64. Even better than divine really (another analysis)

[zaphodbrx99]

Originally Posted by bekyuubi

I played extensively using Lycan, and I can tell you that it's rare to see PA or troll having more farm than Lycan unless the lane is totally dominated by them. Also, basher + hyperstone usually = perma bash troll on ultimate form. MKB counters evasion also. The only hero that truly beats lycan is Void. His ultimate combined with bash simply counters Lycan too much. Unless void is hexed in that period, Lycan is most likely dead. Ursa also beats lycan in terms of overall prowess. Faster roshaning speed, faster to kill a hero if used right. In all my games, unless a blademail + good allies are there, it's game over.

I also tried Wolves/howl (before impulse) + bottle/dedicated crow (I can assure you that there's mana shortages if you just go vlad's, needs another void for all-time wolves summon), and other items later (Vlad + boots). If I recall correctly, a lvl 9 lycan can take down roshan (with howl or impulse). Another thing is that hyperstone is completely necessary at some point. Reason? You have only 5 seconds of late game BKB, and you want to do a ridiculous amount of DPS possible. Lycan benefits more from hyperstone than most after heroes because of his 1.4 BAT.

Having high HP is pointless because you're supposed to be another late game DPS-er. In fact basher/BKB gives you approximately 2.5k HP at lvl 25. Add +20 armor from cuirass + another 5 seconds of magic immunity? Not necessary to get heart at all. You can also run away in your ultimate form if necessary. Who cares if your allies die?

Another reason to get Hyperstone is because of the basher synergy. In his ultimate form + hyperstone, he roughly attacks twice in 1.2-1.3 seconds, setting up at least 38.75% chance to stun the opponent. I permabashed butterfly troll to death with basher/mkb/cuirass/HOTD(sold away vlad to upgrade to satanic)/battle fury/treads.

I also tried armlet/desolator, but I assure you if the game isn't over in 35 minutes you will lose; you're stuck with subpar items fighting against carries with better items.

Imo, BKB/MKB (see, there's pesky people who farms really well and gets butterfly pretty fast, and Basher just sucks. Trying to catch up after buying a basher is a nightmare, so MKB first.)/Hyperstone. If you don't get the hyperstone, you can't activate the 100 bonus (magical) damage as often. Basher can be gotten later, and the stun should be basher's length. Bonus damage from both items should apply as well.

Remember to pick up your basher last every time, I think that ensures your stun length to be always basher's. Imo, this hero is very situational, he's really, really powerful when his wolves still had 700HP and armor. The summons can clear out all 3 green camps while he lanes, making him earning 400 over creep kills in 1 hour.

Maybe you played Lycan a while ago? Most of your comments are true but some of them are wrong.

Basher has a cd. You CANNOT permabash. There goes your AS/hyperstone arguments. Lycan already have very high AS, there is no need for more. A lot of the time you will simply be chasing, in which case all the AS goes to waste.
You want basher EARLY, for ONE lucky bash. You don't need multiple bashes.

Heart is very much luxury ( I usually get satanic ). Rushing MKB is not a good idea because of it's horrible build, you want the most out of your midgame and that's why you need basher/sange early. People rushing butterflies? Oh please. You should be able to own the crap out of noobs who try to rush butterflies.

Of course Ursa > Lycan in terms of overall DPS but he has no chasing skill. He can roshan faster? I suppose so, though I have often beaten Ursa's to Roshan.

Void > Lycan in lategame only if he has farm. Void is actually the best hero in lategame because chronosphere and permabash are simply too much for most heroes to handle. Lycan midgame power makes it easy to shut down these heroes from farming higher tier items.

This is a cool game if you want to see void vs. Lycan ( attached )
( I am playing void , 1.24b, 6.65, -APSO).

Also if you note, nowhere in my guide did I say that Lycan is a monster top tier hero who is unstoppable.. Infact I would say he's underpowered atm. because other heroes can do his job better. This guide is simply to get the most out of him as he stands.

[bekyuubi]

It's true that Basher can't perma bash (2 seconds cooldown, 1.4 sec bash stun), but you must also consider the fact troll has to take 0.X seconds to counter attack, where lycan is in a lead. You just recovered from bash stun, and Lycan is already preparing to hit with a possibility of next stun, and the difference in making a counter attack happen is so negligible that it actually seemed as if I did a perma bash on troll. Also, mini-stun from MKB also interrupts Troll, therefore giving me an EVEN higher chance of interrupting his attack animation or his regular attack (I dunno which.) and giving me a psuedo-effect of perma-bashing.

Before you claim, there goes my argument, Try. It. I played over 200 games with him, and he interrupts enough to stop a lot of heroes, and it comes as a first hand experience.

I already did a true DPS calculation as well as the attacks per second in the past and before you tested it out, you tried to argue with me stating you *don't* need more attack speed? Sigh. I'll do this one more last time (People argued on my previous lycan guide before. I deleted it because I wanted to keep my secrets. Won't be too much fun if it people started mimicking me.).

Class! Here's some things you might want to pay attention to.

BAT (base attack time) of lycanthrope shapeshifted = 1.4 seconds.

What's BAT? This is the amount of time it will take in between each attack. But how do we calculate the true number of attacks Lycan has? You need to use this formula.

BAT/(1+IAS)

IAS stands for Increased Attack Speed. It is generally found as a percentage. Each point of agility increases IAS by 1. Most abilities that affect attack speed deal with IAS.

1.4/ 1+ [(61+20+25+25)/100] = 1.4/2.31 = 0.6061 seconds

1.4/ 1+ [(Base agility at lvl 25 + 20 stats gain + 25 feral impulse gain + 25 treads gain)/100]

Hyperstone included.

1.4/2.85= 0.4912 seconds

Plus MKB.

1.4/3.00 = 0.4666 seconds

FYI, 1.7/2.31 = 0.73 seconds, 1.7/2.85 = 0.596 seconds. 1.7/3.0= 0.5666 seconds. Just extra trivia, I do not know what you can make use of this information. 1.7 = most heroes' BAT.

If damage is placed as 250, and 0.6 seconds is used, you get 416.6666, if you buy a hyperstone, your damage increases to 509.164, + MKB IAS (without including MKB's damage) = 536.480 DPS. Add in a battle fury, and the graph actually curves with additional attack speed.

And I haven't included the supposed bonus damage. Critical, additional bash damage...

Look at this. First of all, a heart is even harder to get than one hyperstone. You also need to understand a critical, a bash, a mini bash relies on attacks per second to activate. So what if you get a heart? You gain a measly 50 damage and doesn't even help in attack speed. Satanic's lifesteal is amazing and all, but doesn't help vs Troll or void bashes. Therefore you want to CUT THEM DOWN before they CUT YOU DOWN.

If you wish to win me over in arguments, please place your theoretical analysis as well as a replay so I may be convinced.

I also calculated troll's attack speed, unfortunately that bugger has around 0.3x per second attack, and I mostly pray that his 10% stun never stuns and I stun him first instead.

[Spell_It_Out]

zaphodbrx99 yes you're right,if you have Vladmir Vanguard is not needed.that was stupid idea.

[zaphodbrx99]

Originally Posted by bekyuubi

It's true that Basher can't perma bash (2 seconds cooldown, 1.4 sec bash stun), but you must also consider the fact troll has to take 0.X seconds to counter attack, where lycan is in a lead. You just recovered from bash stun, and Lycan is already preparing to hit with a possibility of next stun, and the difference in making a counter attack happen is so negligible that it actually seemed as if I did a perma bash on troll. Also, mini-stun from MKB also interrupts Troll, therefore giving me an EVEN higher chance of interrupting his attack animation or his regular attack (I dunno which.) and giving me a psuedo-effect of perma-bashing.

Before you claim, there goes my argument, Try. It. I played over 200 games with him, and he interrupts enough to stop a lot of heroes, and it comes as a first hand experience.

I already did a true DPS calculation as well as the attacks per second in the past and before you tested it out, you tried to argue with me stating you *don't* need more attack speed? Sigh. I'll do this one more last time (People argued on my previous lycan guide before. I deleted it because I wanted to keep my secrets. Won't be too much fun if it people started mimicking me.).

Class! Here's some things you might want to pay attention to.

BAT (base attack time) of lycanthrope shapeshifted = 1.4 seconds.

What's BAT? This is the amount of time it will take in between each attack. But how do we calculate the true number of attacks Lycan has? You need to use this formula.

BAT/(1+IAS)

IAS stands for Increased Attack Speed. It is generally found as a percentage. Each point of agility increases IAS by 1. Most abilities that affect attack speed deal with IAS.

1.4/ 1+ [(61+20+25+25)/100] = 1.4/2.31 = 0.6061 seconds

1.4/ 1+ [(Base agility at lvl 25 + 20 stats gain + 25 feral impulse gain + 25 treads gain)/100]

Hyperstone included.

1.4/2.85= 0.4912 seconds

Plus MKB.

1.4/3.00 = 0.4666 seconds

If damage is placed as 250, and 0.6 seconds is used, you get 416.6666, if you buy a hyperstone, your damage increases to 509.164, + MKB IAS (without including MKB's damage) = 536.480 DPS. Add in a battle fury, and the graph actually curves with additional attack speed.

Look at this. First of all, a heart is even harder to get than one hyperstone. You also need to understand a critical, a bash, a mini bash relies on attacks per second to activate. So what if you get a heart? You gain a measly 50 damage and doesn't even help in attack speed. Satanic's lifesteal is amazing and all, but doesn't help vs Troll or void bashes. Therefore you want to CUT THEM DOWN before they CUT YOU DOWN.

If you wish to win me over in arguments, please place your theoretical analysis as well as a replay so I may be convinced.

I also calculated troll's attack speed, unfortunately that bugger has around 0.3x per second attack, and I mostly pray that his 10% stun never stuns and I stun him first instead.

First off, I don't play a perma-bashing Lycan. You're calculations are probably right ( isn't Lycan wolf's BAT 1.3? ) Second you will not always be playing Troll or void. Your own calculations that adding a hyperstone increases DPS from 416 to 509. To me that's quite negligible. You won't always be exchanging blows with anyone, so often the AS will just go to waste. Finally, how many items you have? If you have MKB, basher and hyper, that's already three slots. Assuming you won't forsake BKB/vlad/treads, you have no slots for TP, not to mention that's a rediculous amount of farm.

IMHO, such a discussion is just theoretical. By the time you get that many number of items, the game is determined by strategic pushing/timing/ positioning/ buybacks/teamplay. Rather than items. Practically speaking for me if I get my core items and totally dominate in midgame, the game is ended right there.

Btw, you can have a look at the void vs Lycan replay to see how items don't really matter when it goes into uber late game, but what is more important is teamplay and positioning.

[bekyuubi]

It's 1.4 seconds, even now as of 6.66b. Item build is this,

Bottle/Boots/vlad/str treads/BKB/TP/Dust (if necessary, counter early invis heroes), 6 items.

Once enough for Demon edge, take away dust. 6 items, complete MKB. Sell bottle to make room for hyperstone.

Treads/MKB/BKB/Vlad/Hyperstone/TP (take away this when you're lvl 16). From here, it's dependent of enemies. If they are image-oriented, Fury is used, else basher. Depending on how serious it is for late game, I'll sell Vlad and go for both basher + fury. Negligible lifesteal gain, especially when the enemy has illusions and you can't suck the life from the illusions.

And NO. Lycan is VERY dependent on items. He has only one goal, and that's to deal enough DPS to force the enemy to die within his 5 seconds of magic immunity, and remaining 11 seconds of ultimate to do even more damage. During that period, it's completely necessary to force to enemy to at least suffer 1 hero death so the team may push or defend.

His whole game is buying correct items to cater to the game, and he will always be fighting someone with on a team clash. Desolator doesn't necessary give more damage than a hyperstone, nor does heart/satanic, and I don't understand what you mean by "the AS will go to waste". His goal is supposed to break towers asap, or kill a hero asap, or going to roshan and killing it asap. All that attack speed adds up to something.

A 93 damage boost is negligible? Wow. That's more than 20% increase in damage... And again, I haven't added in additional status attacks like critical, bash, cleave.

It's possible to hit 250-300 CS in one hour for me, also pretty easy if there's a push team involved. Lycan is always about farm and items to kill heroes/rax. Nothing else.

[FruitLord]

I disagree with the skill build and the idea that Lycan is useless in a lane. Instead of the passive, howl is better early on. +22 damage at level 4 for your entire team is far better that early than a slight passive increase to your already miserable attack and move speeds. Lycan can harass the enemy while simultaneous keeping them back enough so as a melee he can get last hits and denies. Couple it with howl and suddenly the wolves are 2v2'ing the lane while you farm.

Armlet and desolator much better fit his role(esp with the rushed vlads). Although if the enemy has disable then I get BKB quick.