How does Tusk work?

[Tomoko]

I've played a few games of tusk, tried him, watched other play him, and played against him.. And I just don't get him.

Whenever I play against him, he's clearly blatantly overpowered, crits and stuns on every single hit with his walrus kick or punch, but whenever I play him he seems woefully underpowered and unable to do anything with a somewhat janky kit that doesn't quite mesh with itself very well.

What am I missing? What's the secret to Tusk? I need to understand this to be able to play against him competently, because every single game against him is an auto-loss at this point and I just don't know why. He's just an enigma, just black magic auto-win and I have no idea how his kit works or where he gets his damage, mobility, mana sustain, etc from.

[Tomoko]

Originally posted by ʍolɟ ǝɥʇ ǝsɹǝʌǝɹ:

He's a ganker. He's only op with a lead like many heros. But also completely useless from behind like many heros. Unless hes ganking heros with tranquils

This answers nothing about my above question.

[Gwenolric]

Tusk is a snowball hero (yeah, I get that pun). Meaning if you are already losing against him, you will loose even harder because he can get enough tanking items to just survive and come back again with his full kit.
With the new Falcon Blade, he also have the perfect item for him. Mana regen, damage and health. Good ... when ahead. Like, just play until you crush a game and see how worthless tusk can become.
If he is their initiator, you can bait snowball into a bad placement. Yes, you don't see who he is targeting, but depending on who he was facing before the snowball you can get an idea. Also spread, you don't need to get 5 man snowball, normally it should just be one stun.
His entire purpose it to get to a target -> Stun + Tag Team it -> Kill it. Ghost spectre prevent physical damage, force staff push the target away and tusk deeper, eul prevent the initial stun, Lotus Orb destroy the initiation and can even save tf.
I don't know your bracket, but it's possible in Legend or lower to just have a core tusk that can just OS all supports. But really kill him a few times, get more items and he can't do a lot of things. Like in Turbo, min 0 to 20 tusk is scary. Afterwards when he can't One Punch he is far less threatening.

[Tomoko]

Originally posted by Gwenolric:

Tusk is a snowball hero (yeah, I get that pun). Meaning if you are already losing against him, you will loose even harder because he can get enough tanking items to just survive and come back again with his full kit.
With the new Falcon Blade, he also have the perfect item for him. Mana regen, damage and health. Good ... when ahead. Like, just play until you crush a game and see how worthless tusk can become.
If he is their initiator, you can bait snowball into a bad placement. Yes, you don't see who he is targeting, but depending on who he was facing before the snowball you can get an idea. Also spread, you don't need to get 5 man snowball, normally it should just be one stun.
His entire purpose it to get to a target -> Stun + Tag Team it -> Kill it. Ghost spectre prevent physical damage, force staff push the target away and tusk deeper, eul prevent the initial stun, Lotus Orb destroy the initiation and can even save tf.
I don't know your bracket, but it's possible in Legend or lower to just have a core tusk that can just OS all supports. But really kill him a few times, get more items and he can't do a lot of things. Like in Turbo, min 0 to 20 tusk is scary. Afterwards when he can't One Punch he is far less threatening.

This answers my questions, makes more sense. Thanks for the tips to play against him.

[:)]

He's an extreme one-trick pony. Basically he tries to build pure damage, and tries to ult for an instagib. That's literally all he can do and his builds revolve around that. So the whole trick is 'land an ult,' and and beating him is just, 'don't get ulted.'

Things like Force, Euls, and GS aren't a great idea because his ult wind-up ain't exactly slow, plus he's often coming from stealth. You may not even pull them off before he lands a hit. If he gets close, even once, he wins, even if he dies. Those won't stop an engage, just create delays or make him change targets. Unless your team actually has decent coordination (they won't) to chain CC / burst him accordingly, delaying isn't enough. Someone's gonna get hit.

Shadow Blade / Silver Edge are largely what allow him to engage. Don't let him engage at all.
Treat him like Riki after he gets SB. Sentries, dust, sheep stick, CC, etc. Not ♥♥♥♥ like Euls and Force, at least if it isn't already a core for you.

[Zhenya]

я дотер

[St3gm4]

okay pro tip for a tusk player.. always use third skill along side of your ss.. make sure to tick 3rd skill first before you fill your ultimate.. that's it.

[Gwenolric]

Originally posted by .:

Don't let him engage at all.
Treat him like Riki after he gets SB. Sentries, dust, sheep stick, CC, etc. Not ♥♥♥♥ like Euls and Force, at least if it isn't already a core for you.

Then you are a moron. You do realize Tusk has a Snowball that makes him invulnerable? Also Hex? Yeah, good luck getting that before min 30 when the game is over. Also saying if he hit you it's over. Yeah, like Tusk can OS everyone just by being near. I would like to see him trying to hit a TB.

If Tusk is stupid enough to get SB and not get blink dagger, that means he has 1 engage tool, Snowball. Which means denying him the auto-attack right after the Snowball is the way to counter his entire kit. Even if he has BKB, if you Ghost Scepter/Eul/Lotus even Glimmer if he has no dust, you gain between 2.5 and 4sec of Tusk being close to a target and not capable of doing anything to it. And if it is against a roaming Tusk core, that means your team can TP and kill him.

If Tusk has Blink, now it became less effective because he can switch target. Mind you, Tusk player will almost always focus supports since he can 1v1 even when play pos4. With Blink, he jump 1 hero, try to ult and if that fails, can always snowball afterwards getting all the attention on him while his team engage.
A soft counter to Tusk would also be Medaillon or Solar's Crest. Giving 7/10 armor reduces largely the damage of Tusk and his allies since both his ult and Tag Team is physical. As for halberd, it is not worth getting this item just for a Tusk. It's a sound good doesn't work since you are facing Tusk + 4 Heroes.

[Kuronuts]

The answer depends entirely on what position Tusk is playing.

If he's 4, his main damage comes from Tag team with his ally hitting you. It's quite a lot of damage over time and his kit is very strong on punishing people with no escape in the early levels, like the enemy support or a carry without movement. His base stats are also good so he gets mileage without much item commitment. His goal is to win the lane or at least zone the enemy support so his core can win the lave 1v1. Mid game he's just going to be a powerful roamer with a gap closing stun and point and click damage and cc and late game hell be tank enough to initiate with a decent lead.

If he's mid, his goal is to just get a big level advantage and gank relentlessly. -armor items and move speed are very cheap right now and with early level advantage tusk doesn't really need farm, he can just walk up and three shot a support. Due to his low cds, he can quite often just chain gank repeatedly. He does fall off, but if he can get a big enough lead it can give his team massive space to farm and control the map.

[Will Bang]

It's entirely possible that every game you've had to face an enemy Tusk, you've had surprisingly bad team mates or he's had very competent ones.

Items to counter Tusk:
Ghost Scepter — Walrus Punch is physical, and he relies a lot on opening up his ganks with this. Besides that, Tag-Team relies on physical attacks, meaning all his team can do is throw disables if he snowballs into you with them. As a Tusk main, I absolutely despise Pugna and Necrophos due to their ethereal forms messing up my combos.

Glimmer Cape — Effective but same issue as Spirit Breaker; he counters by bringing Dust.

Force Staff — Snowball doesn't have the benefit of going invisible (afaik), so it's generally easy to see coming and Tusk gets completely screwed over if his snowballs tracks a hero right into the middle of their group/under a tower.
More importantly, Force Staff allows you to bypass Tusk's Ice Shards.

Boots of Travel — This is a little more meta than the others, but the sort of Tusks you describe are very hungry for ganks and typically involve their team mates. Ratting with Boots of Travel pisses Tusk off because it scrambles his team, and if he tries to chase you down (vision permitted, seeing him) your increased speed can sometimes be ample enough to outrun his snowball.

Tusk really, really hates nukers who stand back from their team and specifically wait for Tusk to come in and nobody else. He most often relies on enemy supports having their abilities on cool down before wrecking them. If you pick Skywrath Mage and hide, and Tusk still isn't appearing, then you're doing the right thing because he knows you can shut him down.

[Tomoko]

These two most recent answers perfectly allowed me to understand what I'm doing wrong.

Firstly, I rarely play ranked. I have about 20 or so games and I'm 2K mmr, I don't really care about ranked much and I fear if I take the game too seriously, I'll end up hating it like league. I play Turbo almost 100% of the time, it's much quicker and allows me to just afk my brain and play for fun.

I come from League, and mained Tryndamere. He's a split-pusher, and I was in the sidelanes 24/7, shoving towers and frustrating the enemy with incredible movement and damage. This playstyle has carried over to Dota to some extent, and I often play characters like Brood for the tower pushing, and Arc for the sidelane-pushing potential. I've also been picking up Nature's Prophet, and my most recent game of him was the spark of this question.

I'm always in the side lane, SOLO. In these games, with poor team coordination (Turbo, not people "being bad"), low vision (Supports never want to play support, I can understand) and my lack of concentration on the map, I'm constantly over-extended and Tusk can simply shadow blade, walk up and one-shot me with an instant-stun heavy-damage into another one-shot with pure damage items.

My playstyle of relying on escapes with Tryndamere doesn't carry over, because there is no character exactly like Trynd in Dota, with the perfect blend of damage, survivability and mobility.

Understanding that Tusk snowballs off early leads, and that I very rarely lane against him, I can see that ganking him myself in these Turbo games would probably help. Shutting him down early and getting a lead myself would probably help a lot in these situations.

I don't often have trouble against him in the mid game as a carry, mostly due to Abyssal blade's instant stun that I can use on him to help my team chain cc into him.