The Definitive Sand King Guide

This guide covers absolutely everything there is to master about Sand King, from laning to blinkicenters and everything in between. Created by a coder of Sand King in the original DotA modification for Warcraft III.

Introduction

(For the in-game guide version, go here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1287♥♥♥♥2)

Introduction

Sand King has been my favorite / best hero since the day he was released. I had the priviledge of being on a team that helped create Sand King in the original DotA, and I was one of the first to make a guide involving Blink Dagger on the hero.

Role in Dota 2

Sand King is a Support / Ganker / Initiator hero. You should never really aspire to play anything other than one of those three roles in order to be relatively successful. His first ability, Burrowstrike, is a fantastic initiator as it has absolutely no cast time (your hero doesn't need to do any animation before actually casting the spell, making it instant). Epicenter completely changes the tide of any teamfight if used even remotely corectly. Arcane boots are fairly common, and Sand Kings are known to help out with warding / courier if neccessary, making him fall into a Support role as well.

Abilities

Burrowstrike

Burrowstrike teleports Sand King to the targetted location, stunning all units he passes through while doing decent damage to them as well. Burrowstrike is one of the most versatile abilities in Dota 2. Not only is it nearly undodgable if used correctly due to its instant cast, it allows Sand King to escape many dire situations or enter the fray as he pleases.


Sand Storm

Sand Storm makes Sand King invisible, while doing area of effect damage to all nearby enemies. Sand Storm is an excellent escape and decent farming ability that gains most of its usefulness by its instant-cast. Because Sand King instantly goes invisible, he can dodge most projectiles simply by pressing "W" while the projectile is in mid-flight. Some people use Sand Storm to farm a lane, but I find it is too slow paced and allows enemy Heroes to simply deny creeps once they get low. Sand Storm is also great at delaying a fight until backup arrives. However, it is a channeling ability, so any area of effect stuns will stop it.


Caustic Finale

Caustic Finale passively poisons all enemy units Sand King attacks. If a poisoned unit dies within 8 seconds, it explodes, doing damage to all nearby units in a fairly large radius, Caustic Finale is currently one of the most underrated abilities in Dota 2. The amount of damage a fully injected creep wave exploding does is enough to kill most heroes in one shot. I will cover more about stacking Caustic Finale later in this guide. Aside from the insane damage potential, Caustic Finale is a much more useful farming tool than Sand Storm.


Epicenter

One of the best teamfight abilities in Dota's history, Epicenter is a massive aoe slow and damaging nuke that takes place over a short time around Sand King. This ability requires a 2 second channeling time, which means Sand King must be completely immobile for 2 seconds after casting the ability before its effects actually occur. Because of this, Blink Dagger becomes the most useful item on Sand King he can possibly purchase. I will cover this further shortly.

Items

Items

As mainly a support hero, Sand King does not need much to be effective. Starting items usually include a set of three tangoes, a clarity, a flask, a Courier, and a Circlet or a few branches. Aside from Boots, (Arcane or otherwise), the first and most important item you need with Sand King is a Blink Dagger.


My standard starting items.

Post-Blink Dagger

After Blink Dagger is obtained with either Arcane or Phase boots, I go straight for Aghanims Scepter for the extreme cooldown reduction on Epicenter, as well as the extra damage, radius, and extra mana for Sand King himself. After Scepter, assuming the game is not over, Veil of Discord nicely compliments Sand Kings abilities and also his teammates as well. After that, well, you should not be taking this much farm from carries anyway, so hopefully the game is over by this point. Anything in surplus would include a Shiva's Guard for additional Epicenter synergy, and a Heart.

Strategies

Laning

Most of the time, you will have to go in the "Long lane", or the top lane for Radiant / bottom lane for Dire. Occasionally, you will have a ranged carry that you can support on the easy lane, but most of the time an intelligence-based caster supports those heroes. Alternatively, you can solo middle if against a melee middle hero. I personally love doing this to counter Tiny, Bloodseeker, NA, even Templar Assassin if done correctly. I will cover soloing middle at the end of this tutorial.

Depending on your lane, you will either level up Burrowstrike and Sand Storm, or Burrowstrike and Caustic Finale. If you have any opposing enemy melee heroes in your lane, it is worth it to get Caustic Finale over Sandstorm 9 times out of 10. Simply attack creeps that are close to dying, and you will indirectly heavily harass your melee opposition in the lane.

For the first few minutes, harass and coordinate with your lane partner for perhaps an early kill. The game will be fairly uneventful for the first 7-10 minutes depending on lane setups on the opposing team. Try to avoid damage and save for your Blink Dagger as quickly as possible.

10-20 minutes

Should be spent roaming and ganking or continuing to get Blink Dagger. Coordinate ganks with allies. While getting Blink is important, being a useful ganker is more important. Always have a Teleport Scroll in your inventory at all times. Not only is this just good practice, but Sand King is excellent at stopping "Tower Dives," which is when the opposing team goes past one of your towers to kill an ally. When you see this happening, I'm sure your ally will ping the minimap excessively, so always be ready to teleport and Burrowstrike to stop the dive.

During ganks, you should be the one initiating. By that, I mean it should be you coming out of a dark corner Burrowstriking an enemy to set it up for your allies, not the other way around. Projectile stuns like Storm Bolt have a brief window where enemies can flee the area, but Burrowstrike is absolutely instant, meaning as long as you come from an area in the fog of war, enemies have absolutely no time to react. The situation always changes from game to game however, so don't take this as a black and white rule.

25+

Start sticking with your team at all times. Learn to anticipate when there will be a large group of enemies heroes (defending a tower, assaulting, pushing, ganking) and be there before they arrive. Your role as Sand King becomes increasingly important until about 50 minutes when Epicenter starts losing its effectiveness.

Burrowstriking Effectively

The green circle depicts the maximum cast range of Burrowstrike

Burrowstrike is a very versatile ability if used correctly. While stunning enemies with the ability is fairly straightforward, it is difficult to master final positioning. You don't want to ever directly click an enemy hero; you want to click behind them to compensate for their speed and direction in fleeing. This allows you to get an extra attack or two after your Burrowstrike.

Burrowstriking up and down cliffs is one of the easiest ways to escape danger immediately. Notice in the picture I drew a green arrow and a red arrow with "X"s under each. If you, in Sand Kings current position, were to use Burrowstrike on the X under the Green dot, you would perfectly Burrowstrike down the hill with no issue. If you click outside of the spells green radius, pathing will make Sand King walk along the red arrow, wasting a lot of time. Mastering the maximum radius of Burrowstrike is one of the cornerstones to being a good Sand King player.

Burrowstrike / Epicenter

While you can simply run up to some heroes and Burrowstrike them followed by an Epicenter, most heroes in Dota have some type of quick disable or escape mechanism nowadays, so this strategy only works in certain situations or with heroes without reliable disables. When I say reliable disables, I mean disables that can be activated in the extremely small window victims of Burrowstrike are unstunned to cancel Epicenter. Puck is a perfect example of a hero with an instant silence that will render a Burrowstrike to Epicenter combo completely useless. Other heroes with silence, however, such as Bloodseeker, have too long of a cast time in their silences, and Epicenter will finish completing its cast time before the spell is actually put on you. You have to learn the ins an outs of each hero to effectively know if you can Burrowstrike and Epicenter a hero.

Blinkicenter

A decent depiction of where to blink and where to stun for Epicenter

Blinkicenter is an amalgation of Blink and Epicenter. It is widely considered Sand King's most infamous strategy. The idea is, you see a team fight or a cluster of enemy heroes nearby. Then, you hide in a place that is close enough to blink but far enough where you will not be seen. You channel Epicenter, and once the spell begins, blink onto unsuspecting heroes and Burrowstrike them, causing them to be stunned, slowed, and take massive damage. It is extremely hard to counter this, as a good Sand King will not be visible in a team fight until Epicenter is already active.

In the above image, I hilighted where, in this scenario, you would channel Epicenter, where you would Blink to, and where you would Burrowstrike to after your blink. There are three parts to this combo: Channel, Blink, and Burrowstrike. A lot of players use Shift to queue their Blink after Epicenter in order to not waste any pulses of the spell outside the team fight. To shift-queue, simple channel Epicenter with R, hold shift, and click your Blink to any location. The instant Epicenter is finished channeling, you will blink to the designated location.

Notes on teamfights

Be ballsy! Sand King is usually an initiator in all team fights as the chaos of Epicenter temporarily confused and scatters enemies, allowing your team to move in for the kill. Obviously, if you have another initiator on your team such as Enigma, follow up on his Black Hole, but the general state of mind you should have is "I control when this team fight starts." It is a little daunting, but after a few multikills, you will gain the confidence required.

Other unique strategies / video

Blink Burrowstrike

A quick way to approach any fleeing enemy is to blink towards their hero and immediately Burrowstrike towards them. You can literally teleport across the entire screen with this combo. It is fast and unpredictable to most players.

Solo Middle Sand King

I'm particularly fond of this strategy, so I made a YouTube video detailing it further.
(external link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6BywUWwzNk&l)

Other notes

The last time I wrote a guide was in 2006, so I am a bit rusty on the instructing aspect. Feel free to let me know if you feel I missed any key features of Sand King. I will be periodically updating this guide as time progresses.

[Come On Cocoon We Are Doomed]

Thanks for the guide. However, could you give me some more detail in the item building? I like the fact that you went into detail about the abilities, but I really could use some more help in terms of exact building, and how to build the stats on sand king.

Thanks very much.

[Cyrax]

cool guide, but its so damn hard to stay alive with this hero in the early game.

[CrazyMax]

Nice guide, especially strategy part (Burrowstriking/Epicenter/Blinkicenter).
But you can make it better through adding alt-tab (shift-tab xD) short version and adding image of core item-build. People likes images! Images improves understanding of the information that you try to introduce.
P.S. GJ

[FinZonE !]

good !

[Chancy]

nice guide :P

[yy▲u]

epi shift blink! good job! :)

[I LOVE THE GHOUL <33333]

@Noya It's really a Scepter or Veil first thing. They're both awesome, but if your team is heavy caster then Veil first, otherwise the reduced cooldown does a bit more in being useful for the team.

[Noya]

Nice guide, I would argue that Veil is normally a better pickup than Aghs in most cases, as if you use it correctly you will add way more dmg to your ultimate [do the math if you want], (without taking into account teammates extra dmg later), and it's even cheaper and easier to buildup.

[Dudemage_Filthy CASUL]

good job!

[Nezuukkooooo]

just the regular sand king guide, definately helps those who are new, no doubt. great work.