Strife Guide for New Players

[Treehead]

STRIFE GUIDE FOR NEW PLAYERS:

This guide assumes you have played through the in-game tutorial and learned about the very basic mechanics of the game and camera controls or that you have played a MOBA before. Instead this guide will focus on in-game goals, what skills you should level up, the item system, general builds and pet guide.

GOALS:
What is the goal of the game? To destroy towers and eventually the enemy crux right? Wrong! While that may technically be the route to victory your biggest concern
for the majority of the game will be making money. Having more money than your opponents is how you are able to destory their towers and crux without them stopping you.
Stronger and more items will allow your team to control the game however you like. Towers are worth a bit of cash to everyone on the enemy team and help control your area
so they are still worth defending, but not at the price of losing farm or gold. Too many times I see one 40% hp hero trying to defend a tier 1 tower against 3 enemy heroes. That tower
is dead and you will probably die along with it if you stick around. Remember the goal is to make money for yourself, and to do that you have to efficient on the map. Let us talk
about several ways for you to make money.

The laning phase, also known as the first 5-8 minutes of the game are extremely important. This is the part of the game where people are more tied to their lanes as they are
trying to get enough experience and gold to get their core items. After this time, people will group up more and try to kill your hero more actively so it becomes harder to make
money safely on your own. To make money either you or your ally must get a kill on a creep. In strife the most common strategy is to hit the creeps as hard as you can to push
your creeps into their tower where it will be harder for them to get the kills on the creep. Another strategy is to focus on the enemy heroes and zone them out of the area
so that you can farm safely. However if you find that you are failing to zone them or kill them, you need to abandon that strategy and just focus on getting as much farm from
the creeps that you can. Here are a few tips for you to help suceed:
1. Both players don't have to be last hitting. One player getting it gives gold to both players. Feel free to benefit from out of combat regeneration when you need to.
2. Out of combat regeneration is greatly boosted when in range of a friendly tower.
3. Some early hp or mana regen items can be a strong choice in the early lane to keep you in the fight.
4. Throwing axe is a very powerful item that can assist with getting the last hits on creeps.
5. When going for a kill or hurassing enemy heroes, try to focus on one hero if you can. Gaining up on one hero is better than splitting damage
6. The bottom lane is considered to be the solo lane. Don't try this lane in the beginning until you are confident in your skills. The bottom lane is common for pros to go to boost their xp as a solo laner.

Mid-game is more complex and harder to cover. This is the stage of the game where it really opens up and hero kills become a lot more frequent. Here are two tips to help you out for this stage of the game.
1. When killing enemy heroes, DON'T show yourself! Try to come from behind or from bushes other wise the enemy heroes will simply escape.
2. Don't ignore big farm waves. Sometimes when hero fighting goes on for awhile huge creep waves will stack up in a lane. Farm them for tons of gold and xp.

How to finish a game?
Remember how the goal is to make money? Well the tier 3 towers also known as generators give a ton of money when killed. Unlike the other towers the generators are worth dying to defend or kill. Losing a generator is almost always the same thing as losing the game. Sometimes if you are winning a game the enemy team will "turtle" meaning they stop coming out of their base and just defend towers. This can make it hard to finish the game. If this happens be PATIENT. Remember that if they are turtling they are not making
as much money as your team. If they are turtled, it is also a great time to take the objectives Baldir and Cindara. Remember Baldir and Cindara can be killed at almost any point in the game.
Baldir takes about 2-3 players to kill and Cindara requires 4-5. Attack damage carries, especially with lifesteal can do better than that against them and can even solo Cindara with enough money.
Taking these objectives at any time are often better than killing towers. You can always kill the towers later, and Baldir and Cindara give money to your whole team and help you push down those towers too!


Skills:
What skills should you level first? Well some skills are more powerful in the early game than the late game. Let us take a look at Moxie for example. Either ball lightning
or z zap are good starting skills as they do direct spell damage. Astral winds is not a strong early game skill as it simply buffs your other spells. But if those spells are still low level
you would simply be buffing bad skills. In general, if you have a damaging slow or stun spell you should max that first and then grab your passives later.

Items:
Items and good builds are complex enough that they would require their own guide. However we will cover some basics. Items can be built with attack speed, power, health and mana, and health and mana regen.
They also can give resistance, mitigation and attack damage.

Power: Power makes the world go around in strife. It increases your spell damage and attack damage. Everyone needs power, and lots of it. The formula for power is pretty simple.
Every point of Power over 100 gives you 1% more spell damage and .5 more attack damage. For example let us say your spell does 180 damage and you have 150 power. You have 50 power over 100 so you have a 50% damage boost. Your 180 damage +90 = 270 total damage. The 50 power would also give you +25 attack damage. Power also effects attack gain from items like demon fang.
Demon fang gives 18 bonus attack damage. So if you had 150 power it would add 9 damage to demon fang ON TOP of the normal attack damage buff simply from power.

Resistance: Your basic tanking stat. It lowers the damage you take from all sources by a percentage. It also has diminishing returns. Going from 10 res to 50 res is a bigger buff
than going from 50 res to 90 res. If you stay at 10 res and get no health items over the course of the game you will be VERY squishy. Getting killed by just one spell is not impossible.

Mitigation: Mitigation lowers damage by a set amount from all sources. If you have 30 mitigation and you take 100 damage you instead take 70 damage. Mitigation is good against fast attack speed heroes with low attack damage. It also works well with people who have good resistance as resistance lowers their damage first before mitigation making mitigation more effective. Golden adaptor is a strong early game tank item, but may not be the right choice for tanks againt an enemy team that is primarily magic damage.

Lets look at fairly good item builds for three different roles in the game. One of the best things about strife is that any hero can have radically different builds depending
on item choice and pet choice. Hybrid builds are my bread and butter as a pro player. Before you learn how to hybrid and adapt that you must learn the basics of how to play the core roles. Those roles are casters, attack damage carries, and tanks.

Casters: Casters use spell damage to deal all their damage. They are the most focused on maxing out their power and bursting enemy targets.
Common item sets: Power boots or Rune boots, Crystalline Shiv, Arcane Emblem, Wizards Hourglass, Grimoire, Power Conduit, Eye of Tempra
Hero examples of casters: Moxie, Ray

Attack Damage Carries: Uses a mixture of power and attack speed. Primarily uses basic attacks for damage.
Common item sets: Fervour boots or warp boots, Demon Fang, Zealots blade, Vampiric Dagger, Woundsplitter, Dark bargain, Frost prism
Hero examples: Flak, Vermillion

Tanks: Tanks are based around soaking damage. Heroes that best fit this role are those who have good initiate abilities. Having at least one tank on a team to start a teamfight is essential.
Common item sets: Inertia boots or Power boots, Dampening Cloak, Golden Protector, Giant's Visage, Guardian Helm, Inferno Brand, Iceforged Plate
Hero examples: Bastion, Claudessa

Of all these items dampening cloak is one of my favorites. Getting some resistance is important. I crafted it to be built with power, and I buy that item on every single role I play
tank, caster, and carry.


Pets:
If you are a pure caster you can't go wrong with Mystik. Buffs damage and free mana recovery. Just remember to use its mana recovery spell whenever its off cooldown!
Pincer is a strong tank pet and also a strong pet in general. It passively grants resistance which is a very powerful passive.
Tortus is a pet that is weak early but strong later on dedicated tanks. In the late game he can give a ton of bonus hp. In the early game use its active to surprise your opponenet
that you actually have more health than they thought you did!
Luster is a greed pet that is good for farming. Not much more to say other than to pressure enemy heroes that you see with the luster pet.
Fitz is a pet that can win you the game if you get enough hero kills. It gives tons of money. It is best on casters or aggressive tanks.
Razer is good for attack damage carries. Remember to take advantage of its lifesteal by hitting a hero every once in awhile.
Topps is a good item for agressive melee tanks. Its active slow is very strong and can get you a lot of kills.
Bounder is good for agile ranged heroes that like to run around. A harder pet to master, but a strong one.
Fiki is a pet mostly used for the middle lane. You can use its active to farm the Big Yellow jungle zone early in the game for some extra cash.
Plunderer is similar to Pincer but is a bit more focused on cash gain and tower pushing. Its good on ranged heroes. Its one of my favorite pets.
Tinker and Zen, outside of some very niche situations, are bad pets. Don't use them.


Last but not least Strife is a small community. That means that a lot of the players who are left are skilled players. This can be intimidating, but there are players that will
help you to learn this amazingly fun game. Just keep playing even after a loss and you'll begin to pick up the skills. It is important to play out even losing games to the end
instead of quitting out (You also need to do this to get resources to craft strong items). If a player is being toxic with you simply mute them using /mute and move on with the game. We all get baited sometimes, but your time is best spent
playing the game and not arguing. Even as a top player in strife I still get people calling my actions noob and wanting to fight simply because they themselves made a mistake.
Just focusing on the game and not engaging can help your winrate more than you would think.

[Hale]

that's a great guide *_*

[Bezi]

Cery good guide for noobies! It gonna help them alot to understand the basics.