Trolling for the 6.6x era



Facts:

Affiliation: Sentinel
Attack Animation: 0.3 / 0.3
Damage: 38 - 56 (53 - 71 melee)
Casting Animation: 0.51 / 0.3
Armor: 2 (5 melee)
Base Attack Time: 1.7 (1.55 melee)
Movespeed: 300 (320 - 330 melee)
Missile Speed: 1200
Attack Range: 500
Sight Range: 1800 / 800
Strength: 17 +2.2
Agility: 21 +2.75
Intelligence: 13 +1

Contents

To quickly jump to a section, use CTRL-F (Or Apple-F for Mac) and search for the <WORD> next to the section (With the <>).
1. Why would I play Troll? <WHY>
2. Abilities <ABIL>
3. Skill Build and Justification <SKILL>
4. Item Build and Justification <ITEM>
5. Gameplay <GAME>
6. Replays <LOOK>
7. Closing <CLOSE>

Why would I play Troll? <WHY>

Troll Warlord has become a more midgame-capable carry, now with the ability to fend for himself earlygame thanks to receiving Rexxar's old skill, which he can make much better use of.

Due to this skill, Troll now has amazing jungling potential that almost puts him on par with other long-time junglers and can farm up his core in 20 minutes or less depending on harassment intensity and skill level.

Unfortunately, as with any pure carry, a greater burden is placed on the rest of the team to fill the void during the periods of weakness. He also needs a lot of farm to become good lategame. That said, he has decent stats around the board excepting INT, which is good because he doesn't need it anyway.
So, to sum up what I said...

Pros

• Amazing jungling
• Global team-support
• Great Bash
• Great DPS
• Lategame dominance
• Midgame usefulness
• Is a troll

Cons

• Low HP- falls to nukes
• Needs farm to be decent lategame
• Is a troll

IMPORTANT
Troll is not a laner!
Troll is not a laner!
Troll is not a laner!
Contrary to popular belief, Troll is NOT a laner! Troll is a JUNGLER and farmer and lategamer, with a little global ulti to make him less useless earlygame, but most of all a carry!

And while some carries have skills that protect themselves from damage and others make them hit harder, Troll has skills geared towards hitting faster.

Abilities <ABIL>

Skill 1: Berserker Rage

Mana Cost: none at all levels
Cooldown: 0 Seconds

"Jah'rakal goes berserk, using his throwing axes as melee weapons. He gains bonus damage, movement speed, attack speed, hit points, armor, and the Bash ability, but can only attack at melee range. "

1. Grants 5% chance to Bash for 25 bonus damage and 2s stun.
2. Grants 5% chance to Bash for 50 bonus damage and 2s stun.
3. Grants 10% chance to Bash for 25 bonus damage and 2s stun.
4. Grants 10% chance to Bash for 50 bonus damage and 2s stun. Gives +10 more MS than previous levels.

All levels of the skill grant: +20 Movement Speed (+30 at level 4 of the skill), +15 damage, reduces his base attack time to 1.55, the Bash ability, +3 armor and 100 extra HP. Bash damage is magical.

This skill is part one of why troll is an awesome jungler,he goes from having subpar base stats to some of the best out there.
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Skill 2: Blind

Mana Cost : 20 mana
Cooldown : 6 seconds
Casting Range : 700
Duration : 15 seconds

"A searing light blinds the vision of a target enemy unit, making it miss on some attacks."

1. 20% chance to miss.
2. 28% chance to miss.
3. 36% chance to miss.
4. 44% chance to miss..

A great laning skill that is skipped till later for the purposes of this jungling guide. Sure the miss chance could help with jungling, but any jungling build that focuses on defense more than offense fails. You have to get farmed fast, even if that means a rougher earlygame. That and most neutral camps have more damage sources than you can afford to spam Blind at.
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Skill 3: Fervor

"When Jah'rakal engages an opponent, his animalistic nature grants him even greater proficiency in single combat. With each continuous blow on the same target, Jah'rakal gains understanding of the prey's defenses, and guides each strike with greater ease than the last."

1. 5% increased attackspeed per attack.
2. 10% increased attackspeed per attack.
3. 15% increased attackspeed per attack.
4. 20% increased attackspeed per attack.

Max of 100% bonus at all levels.
Counter drops to half when changing targets.

BM and Troll swapped passives for great justice! One important thing to note about this skill is that it caps at 100% no matter what. Against heroes, you want the full bonus as quickly as possible, but in the jungle, as long as you buff up your defense well early, you can take your time building it up, so there's no real hurry to max it.
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Ultimate: Battle Trance

Mana Cost: 75 Mana
Cooldown: 20 Seconds
Duration: 5 Seconds, 8 for Troll.

"Jah'rakal unconsciously uses dormant magic to awaken the savagery of every warrior on the battlefield. Greatly increases attack speed for a short duration, and lasts an additional 3 seconds on Jah'rakal."

1. 60% increased attackspeed per attack.
2. 80% increased attackspeed per attack.
3. 100% increased attackspeed per attack.

This affects all friendly heroes on the map for 5 seconds.

The changed ultimate is both good and bad. Infact, Troll would be a stronger carry if he still had his old ultimate, but if you could get your team to work with you when you turn this baby on, the results could easily be better than just you alone having tons of attack speed.

Because of the very low cost and spammability of this skill, it is very useful in the jungle and out of it, just make sure not to use it -too- much if you suspect you may be in a fight soon.

Skill Build and Justification <SKILL>

Skills

Pictures




Writing

1. Berserker Rage
2. Fervor
3. Fervor
4. Berserker Rage
5. Berserker Rage
6. Battle Trance
7. Berserker Rage/Fervor
8. Fervor/Blind
9. Berserker Rage/Blind
10. Stats/Blind
11. Battle Trance
12. Stats/Blind
13. Stats/Blind
14. Stats/Blind
15. Stats/Blind
16. Battle Trance
17. Stats
18. Stats
19. Stats
20. Stats
21. Stats
22. Stats
23. Stats
24. Stats
25. Stats

Justification

Remember, this guide preaches jungling as a way of troll, and for that purpose, Berserker Rage at level 1 will let you conveniently pick up a melee stout and QB right off the bat without having to drop and pickup later on, and even if you decide to stay ranged, because you picked them up in melee form you get the melee QB/stout benefits. It also gives you more damage to last hit the creeps you have to pull.

Fervor is taken at 2 and 3 because the difference between Berserker Rage 1 and 2 is 25 * .05 more magical damage on attack, 1.25 effective damage bonus. There is no sane reason to get rage to 2 first. Now going back to the fact that Fervor will always cap at 100% regardless of what level it is, you have more reason to level up Berserker Rage for the extra Bash and MS bonus.

Blind can be and should be taken early instead of the last level of Fervor and/or Berserker Rage if the enemy is particularly dependent on physical attack, and it looks as if you'll have a chance at some action very soon.

Battle Trance isn't as powerful as Rampage, but it's certainly a lot more spammable now, and gives you the ability to support globally while farming. Simply have your team tell you to save it for a bit then tell you when it is needed, possibly making you focus on where the teamfight is expected to happen while autoattacking neutrals.

The biggest thing about stats on troll is the bonus HP, even in melee mode he's somewhat overcome by magical damage, so we get this when or before leaving the jungle and going out into the harsh world.

Additional Notes on Blind-Fervor-Rage
The last level of Fervor is weaksauce, and so is Berserker Rage.
Allow me to elaborate. Berserker Rage takes these many attacks to max out at the following levels :

1. 20
2. 10
3. 6.7
4. 5

Add that to the fact that the next target you attack, you start at half of what you had before, this means you could start at 50% bonus with lv2 fervor, which is plenty good enough to overwhelm anyone physically, and there are many punching bags in the jungle to serve the purpose of building that gauge up.

If you judge it a good idea, you could very well opt to leave them at 3 and get Blind early. This makes you stronger against physical threats earlier and lets you kill roshan almost as early as ursa.

Item Build and Justification <ITEM>

Items

Starting Items


If there is a Courier available (on the team)

as many as needed, although we try to keep this number down.

General Build

• 
• 
• 
• 
• = roughly the 20 minute mark
• 
• 

Optional Items
2x Slippers of Agility (Poor Man's Shield)
1x Yasha <- if superior chasing is neccesary
Power Treads <- may be necessary against strong spell/pure team
Hood of Defiance <- if backed against a wall
MKB <- in place of cry/buri for evasive heroes.

Get These All Game
TP Scrolls <- starting from the 20 minute mark, you'll need to keep a slot free.

Luxury
The Butterfly
Buriza-do-Kyanon
Linken's Sphere
Satanic
HoT

Questions to Ask
Am I being stunned and getting killed too much(in spite of BKB)? Get Linken's
Do they have evasion? Get MKB
Do die instantly to mass nuke once BKB runs out? Get defiance
Do I die without ever using BKB? Learn to play or get Linken's, but preferably learn to play first

Justification

Starting Items
QB starts off about as strong as a mithril hammer in melee mode, and grows as you do. Order now and we'll even throw in the ability to kill a tree every 20 seconds! That last bit there is very useful for jungling in general as I will demonstrate in strategy.
Stout Shield is as good as it ever was, and they even reduced the cost to sweeten the deal. You may choose to upgrade it to a PMS if you're looking at very early physical harass, or for whatever reason you are leaving the jungle to gank early (should not happen unless the lane in question has Rhasta). Otherwise, upgrading the stout shield holds few benefits for jungle troll.

We use the rest of our money on Ironwood Branches, as there's no cheaper way to get stats than them. Try to keep the Branches in your inventory as long as you can without limiting inventory space, i.e chuck them if you need space for Salves and TP Scrolls, and for your core.

We keep the HoIW in that form early because lifesteal overrides QB's effect of making you 36% more awesome in the jungle, and lifesteal isn't worth it quite just yet. HotD is finished when you're finally ready to leave the jungle, bashing stuff to pieces.

Alternatively:

You can just delay it till an alpha wolf spawns. Alpha Wolf has a 30% command aura which more or less replaces QB's damage bonus. Keep in mind the wolf is slow and fragile, so you will need to do a bit of micro.

If there's already a chicken, make use of it to get tangoes to recover from those pesky heroes that come for you.

Get These All Game
Always carry a TP scroll around after BKB. It saves bases. And stops you dying when you see 5 heroes coming from all directions.

Optional Items
In the case that they decide to mass Ghost Pipe or something to keep you from killing shit, drastic measures must be taken to keep you in the game. Break that HotD if you already have it, possibly upgrade them into Vlad's and armlet, and buy back your QB. BKB + Trance + QB levels bases in record time, and they can't do a thing while ethereal.

Alternatively, go lothars and hope to bash before they pipe.

General Build
Let me begin by saying that there are three categories of DPS items, IAS items, Damage items, and Stat items(yes I am aware that these categories overlap sometimes). As troll neither has damage auras or images, stat items become ineffective for their cost. Troll benefits the most from damage items because he already has massive IAS in his skills, but he also benefits more from balanced DPS items like Bfly later in the game. For this reason, the best way to build troll is to avoid stats (except for beefing up - BKB), prioritize damage(phase,HotD,Cryst,BKB), and getting a balanced item later (Bfly)

Phase Boots give amazing burst MS for getting your ass out of a gank, great armor, and decent damage for even more imba lasthitting and DPS on heroes.

Say no to vanguard, say yes to BKB.

Others
Wraith Bands/Bracers: The real reason people get these is because it's a little of everything. While jungling, what you really want is pure damage and damage reduction. The INT bit is completely wasted as well. You should never ever be pressed hard enough to get these. Simply be paranoid and stick to the camps they can't and won't get to and/or start jungling ancients early.

Power Treads give you IAS and Stats. Remember what I told you about stats? Good.
Every hero could use a Heart in super uber lategame. Even the lifestealers.

Gameplay <GAME>

Early Game
What you wanna do straight off the bat is eat away trees that get in the way of your pulling. On the sentinel side, those are the line of trees blocking vision of the bottom camp. This makes it less likely for your creeps to lose sight and give up. You can also eat a path into the back of that same camp so you can reach the other camps faster.

Pull the second wave and take care or this camp as quickly as you can without losing the last hit, your pulling weakens the lane and alerts them to your presence, you want to be done and gone ASAP. (if satyr camp, use ranged form to pull to avoid purge)

Run along to the weak camp, taking a quick look at all the other camps along the way, identify camps that are easy to handle(4 satyrs, ogres), and the ones you won't touch till at least level 5(furbolgs). If you find yourself with spare time between camps, stack the furbolgs because you're not touching them anyway, may as well fatten them up for later.

With any luck, you'll run into a lot of satyrs (ironically the sort of camps summoner-junglers hate the most). And you'll find that troll is actually quite beefy and can handle many camps without regen. If you aren't lucky and find yourself on low hp too soon(from mass centaurs/furbolgs), use all your money to buy your core +1-2 tangoes and kill yourself on neutrals. (do not do this at lv5+)

Repeated trials put me at 20 minutes average for Phase Boots, QB, PMS, BKB and HoIW, better than you will ever do with laning troll in a scenario that isn't freefarm or equivalent feeder lane. Once you pass that 20 minute mark, farming only becomes faster and faster. As a matter of fact, you can take roshan on at level 11.

Middle Game
Your role at this part of the game is still to farm. You gank if there is an easy kill out there, with no possibility of dangerous outside interference, or if your team is putting together an assassination plot involving a ton of disables, or to defend a lane.

Pay greater attention to what is happening around you, because neutralling no longer requires conscious effort, and noticing big red dots that appear on the map for a split second and protecting your life is far more important than 5 seconds of lost farming efficiency.

If you venture out to the lanes to farm at any point in time, only do it on your side of the river and do not enter the adjacent jungle afterwards, go shopping or go into the opposing jungle.

If you DO have to join a fight soon, try to find a nice beefy monster and raise your Fervor gauge with it. Remember that Fervor will start at half of what you have built-up on the next thing you attack, so it is to your advantage to start at 50% IAS on the first hero you beat up.

Who to Troll?
1. Biggest threat/MKB holder
2. Hero on lowest HP
3. DA forumers

Late Game
After the core, unless you're being outsmarted and ganked to shit, luxury items roll in with wicked speed. You may opt to stick an Aegis into one of your slots to protect yourself.

Do not forget to always make use of Blind (except on MKB holders) and swap to ranged as necessary.

Replays <LOOK>

<none yet>

Closing <CLOSE>

As you can see, inspite of some semi-nerfs, troll is still a bitch to play against when farmed, and farming has become easier for him as well, so I reckon he will be used more and stuff.

Thanks to Dust for making an awesome Viper guide for me to use as a template. I apologize for not actually reading it.

I realise that the 20-minute estimate may be overly optimistic in some bad cases, I will work towards getting myself into those situations and see what countermeasures can be taken.

Please give me feedback of any sort regarding this guide. If you can provide replays, I'd be deeply grateful.