Windrunner guide (6.81b+)

Tired of having 40% winrate on such a strong hero? Found out what is the best way to play her in the current meta and why she is so strong!

Which role is the most appealing role for a hero like Windrunner in the current meta?

From my own experience I can tell you that Support (Role 4) is currently the best way to play windrunner.
The idea is to skill shackle shot at level and that you are the initiator. If you are not good with hitting shackles I advise you try some in either bot matches or local lobbies.
Once you find out how to propperly throw a shackle the real fun can start.

Item build, what to get and how to be the most efficient.

One thing that has catched my eye is that Windrunner rarly needs any items to deal lots of damage.
The idea at start is that you get obs. ward, 2 clarities 1 tango a healing salve and the recepie for Soul Ring.

Why soul ring?
The moment you have Soul Ring at around 6/7 minutes your skill are most likely 2-2-1 or 3-1-1 or even 3-2-1.
This means that you can Power Shot AND Shackle for only 50 mana. That means 2.75 sec stun and 270(ish) damage for only 50 mana.

What about boots?
A lot of people build phase boots and this is somewhat odd in my opinion.
Why would you need the phase boots if you have windrun for the speed and if you go threads (int) you have 80~ damage with .87 attack per second. Where with Phase you have 110 damage with 1.26 attack per seconds.

So what else?
The idea is to get Force Staff right after threads. If you do this you'll see that you have 7.4 health regen and 4 mana regen. This way you can stay active during fight and even allows you to spam Power Shot during laning phase.

If there are no mek builders on your team you can build mekanism after force. After that and maby even some wards inbetween you can build what you feel like.
Like Monkey King Bar or even Desolator. I like to build hex just so you can help more in team fights.

Skill build, because who needs ulti anyway?

Skill build for support Windrunner
Like I have stated before you are going to be the innitiator. Why?
It is so that after all of the stuns you can stun again. Shackle once maxed out is a 3.75 seconds disable with a 12 seconds cooldown.
This means that if you have a venge and someone else with a stun on your team you have about 2 seconds of no stun right back into Shackle.

So at level 1 you will be skilling Shackleshot.
This is a skill you want to level up as soon as possible because for every level you get .75 seconds of extra stun and that could win you a fight or even a pickoff.

Also if a teamfight breaks out and you manage to shackle 2 of their heros it means they HAVE to fight 3 vs 5 and thus giving you a bigger chance to win.

After hitting a shackle shot you will try to hit someone with Powershot. This is your nuke damage.
Don't be afraid to take a kill if it is the only way to secure it.

It's also pretty common to skip out on the ultimate as it reduces your damage with 50/40/30%
These points you can use to upgrade Shackle shot earlier and having that few seconds might save the day.

[Sheep Sheepington]

People get phase boots on Windranger because of her low running speed (285 i think), and that windrun has a 18 second long CD for a somewhat high amount of mana.