The definitive storm guide.

Hello. My name is Ali. I have released multiple storm guides over the past year or so ever since I felt I had become an accomplished storm spirit player. I have played him both competitively and in pubs for a long time, and I have always wanted to make a real in-depth guide on this hero and his mechanics. I hope this guide will help/enlighten you on storm tips/tricks you might not know and expand your knowledge on the hero, I will try and keep this updated, I hope you enjoy!

-Ali :)

His skills.

Static Remnant.

This skill is storm spirits primary farming tool for pretty much the whole game. When activated, it places an electrical replica of storm spirit that explodes when an enemy unit walks into it's AoE. It gives flying vision when placed so later on in the game or even when trying to chase people in fog, throw one of these down. They are really cheap! They deal 140 damage in an AoE around them level 1, which increases to 280 at level 4. The explosion AoE damage is LARGER than the radius of activation. This shouldn't mean too much, but you can use it while farming creeps and it sometimes clips creeps a bit further away from the activation AoE if it explodes.

Electric Vortex.

This is storm spirit's second skill. It is a disable that scales fairly well, from 1 second to 2.5 seconds. Bear in mind that when this spell hits level 3, storm can cast this from maximum range and the target will ALWAYS hit the remnant explosion AoE if you place one down on top of you. This is useful as sometimes pre level-3 vortex you will need to run closer to your enemies than usual to hit a successful remnant. Just remember to use this skill wisely in fights as the cooldown is very long for a disable.

Overload.

This spell can be seen as a "spell amplifier" for storm's other spells. Whenever he cast's a spell (remnant, vortex, ball lightning) his hand will light up. His next autoattack will then deal extra magic damage on top of the normal damage, with a very temporary 80% m/s and a/s slow. This is very useful for chases and pairing up with his other skills for devastating combos. For instance, if you use electric vortex on an enemy, you gain an overload charge, so right click them during the vortex before placing your remnant down. The remnant will give you another overload charge which you can use right away! Using overload right clicks in-between your spells ensures maximum damage output throughtout the game. (NOTE: double damage runes and UAM's, like critical strike, do not include the extra overload damage).

Ball Lightning.

This is storm spirit's signiature skill. It has no cooldown, however it is very taxing on your mana. When used on an area, storm spirit turns into a ball of energy and zips towards the location you clicked, damaging units he flies past based on the distance he has travelled. The exact numbers are irrelivant at this point since you deal most of the damage when you arrive and combo, however it is worth noting. The mana cost to activate this spell is based on a percentage of his maximum mana pool, so you want a balance beteween a mana pool not too large, and enough mana to ball in/out for successful kills, for this reason, arcane boots should be avoided. You can use this skill for ganks but don't waste it. Only use it if and when absolutely necessary. Mistakes that many storm players do is to use ball lightning when not needed, they run out of mana quickly and lack it when they really need it. I.e. escapes. Treat your mana pool like a cup of water when you are in a desert. Use it wisely with ball lightning, and dont use it all at once.

Item builds.

Iron branch or Null talisman?

Iron branch
Pros: offers +1 all attributes for 50 gold. Good value for money. For 150 gold you can get +3 all stats, which is incerdibly efficient

Cons: clutters up your inventory and will have to be sold fairly early on.

Null talisman:
Pros: Offers good all-round stats and only uses one inventory slot. This allows for long-term shared tangos or other items of need

Cons: Less efficient for the money than three iron branches. For 470 gold, (320 gold more), you are paying for 3 intelligence and 3 damage, which can be seen as less cost effective, and can delay your bottle.

Conclusion. Buy either, however, i'd reccomend three iron branches if you are buying your own tangos and if you are going null, buy it if you think you will have less damage than the enemy (check hero damages online). Always make sure you get pulled at least 1-2 tangoes when getting a null talisman!
______________________________________________________________________________
SIDE NOTE: (buy bottle between 1-2 minutes in).
______________________________________________________________________________

Treads or arcane boots?
The usual answer for storm spirit is treads. You will then ask, "why not arcane boots"? surely storm spirit needs mana for his ultimate and his constant Q spam early game so why treads > arcanes? I am here to tell you why.

1) Ball lightning cost. This is very important with storm spirit in the early game since if used wrong, makes the hero fairly useless. Arcane boots increase your mana pool by 250. You might think that this is good but don't forget, ball lightnings mana cost is based from your mana pool. So effectively, you are making ball lightnig cost more to cast, which is less efficient than having a smaller mana pool and having a substantially smaller activation cost with treads.

2) Tread switching. This is a great thing to do on a hero like storm, but not a neccesity. By switching your treads to agility, your mana pool and health will decrease, and the bottle will fill it up by a larger percentage, then when you turn the treads back to intelligence/str, your mana/hp gained will increase overall. It also saves having to drop the arcane boots to gain this benefit. It also provides a nice attack speed bonus which is never a bad thing.

______________________________________________________________________________

Orchid or bloodstone?


Usually storm spirit players would go bloodstone first, straight after their arcane boots (because one of the components of arcanes is to build your bloodstone), however, as I discussed earlier, you will want to be building treads, and even if you were building arcanes, bloodstone should most of the time not be the way forward. I am going to explain why.

Bloodstone
Pros.

Gives you an immense ammount of mana. Which is great for storm to zip in and out of fights with ease. It also allows you to use remnant almost every time its off cooldown and not lose mana.

It also fits with the functionallity of storm. A snowball item for a snowball hero, why wouldn't you want to get this item first if you're ahead?

Cons.

Offers virtually no way to output damage other than from your right clicks and remnant (your early game right clicks will suck), unlike orchid, which offers both a silence and a damage amplification, so going bloodstone vastly reduces your kill potential.

Can seriously backfire if you die even once or twice early game with it, so makes you have to play fairly safe, and will all of that mana, unless you are fighting 5v5, is just pointless.

Conclusion

Bloodstone is a good item on storm without a doubt, however rushing it is silly as it adds unneccesary risk to your gameplay and reduces your kill potential, which is the whole point of storm when he gets his first item early game.
______________________________________________________________________________

Orchid
Pros.

Give you (as discussed earlier) amazing kill potential, especially on supports like shadow shaman and lion that can disable you after vortex has ended or heros with escape like queen of pain and puck.

Gives you damage amplification which pairs nicely with your constant overloaded right clicks and remnants, on top of your initial ball lightning damage and offers stats perfect for the hero (i.e. attack speed and mana regen).

Cons.

There aren't many direct cons to this item on storm, however if you are truly snowballing hard and your team have enough disables or another orchid builder, bloodstone might be the way to go, however these scenerios are very rare

Conclusion

Therefore, after comparing both items, one can say that bloodstone is inferior to orchid as orchid just provides both kill potential and hgiher damage output on top of mana regen, while bloodstone only provides mana regen and a slight chance to snowball, in return for having to play safely, which isn't what you want to do as storm.

______________________________________________________________________________

So what items next?

The items above are usually what you want to get for storm. After your early bottle->treads->orchid, you will probably need a black king bar. This is to allow you to play aggresively into the enemy disables with no harm, and being able to jump into a carry without the interference of the enemy supports. Bkb is a must on storm in almost all cases.
After you have finished your black king bar, the rest is usually luxury. Here are some item choices anda breif summary of each one:

Linken's Sphere:
This item is great for storm spirit as it acts defensively with the spellblock but also offensively with the immense stats it gives. It also allows you to block stuns that go through bkb (i.e. primal roar)

Scythe of Vyse (Hex/Sheepstick):
This is a great item in addition to storm spirit's orchid as if you build it, you will have three disables altogether (including electric vortex), which makes you a formiddable for for supports and carries alike. Provides the second highest mana regen in the game only behind bloodstone and provides again, great stats.

Shiva's Guard:
This item is a great addition to storm spirit's arsenal. It is great when you jump in as you can use it during ball lightning. it's a heavy AoE magical damage nuke, while also providing some nice armour and intelligence. Get this item against a right click intensive lineup or a lineup with a lot of units so they can be cleared out easily.

Bloodstone:
Although it's mostly not smart to build this item first, it is still an undoubtedly great item in the later portions of the game to supply storm spirits constantly demanding mana pool. Also as I said earlier, a snowball item for a snowball hero.

^All of these items are great in their own right, try building all of them after your orchid to see what one works best in each scenario.

Skill builds.

With storm spirit's skills, you can go either one of two routes. One route is the 1-1-4-1 build, maxing overload, for great lane prescence and aggresion, use this to zone your enemies out and ensure maximum early game dps. Route 1

The second route is the 1-3-2-1 build, where you get three early levels into vortex, and then begin maxing overload. Why the three early levels in vortex? Because a level 3 vortex can drag your enemies intop remnant range from its maximum range, which is very useful. I usually use this route if I have supports that can gank early so I can set up for spells such as fissure and arrow (vortex drags them over a bad fissure!) Route 2

When you're not going safelane? This is rare in pubs and usually happens in 5 stacks when your team puts a carry such as morphling, phantom assasin or naga mid and need a space creator that only requires one or two items to snowball. In this scenario, you will need to build a soul ring instead of a bottle, as discussed earlier, and build the rest of the items as normal. Skillwise? Follow route 1, since you won't be using your disable as much and a high level in overload makes it easy to farm your lane and move into the jungle when the tower is down. However, in certain 1v1 matchups, route 2 is better, for instance, against dark seer or puck, where they rely on movement speed/long ranged escapes, a long duration tether is better than a slow. Safelane

^Tne three links demonstrate the two scenarios mid and the scenario for the safelane when playing storm spirit (skill build wise), the skills are all explained in the links, just below the items.

I will try and keep these links updated as often as possible! Some of them are fairly old so might need looking over but are most likely accurate to each patch.

Overload mechanics

Overload. This passive is what allows storm spirit to become a true magic nuker in the mid stages of the game and lets him really annoy right clicking carries later on with his constant 80% attack speed slows. In this small section I will demonstrate a fun and easy way to use overload to maximise your dps.

Overload-walking. This is what I like to call it. It's when you throw your animation out as a normal right click, and then ''overload'' your animation while it's flying towards the enemy with the use of remnant (sometimes ball lightning).

Here is an example of me "overload-walking".
The left circle shows me casting static remnant as the animation is flying toward sven. The second circle (smaller circle) shows the airbourne animation. This saves you having to cast remnant while standing still, then throwing the overloaded animation out while chasing an enemy because that breif second you are standing still could cause you to miss out on that essential right click if you are low on mana.

Here is another example of using overload-walking, but also using overload conventionally together while chasing without the need of ball lightning.

The circle shows my animation, I am far away from sven but overloading my right clicks in mid air while running. You can't see it clearly here but the light you see is me casting remnant before my animation hits sven, this slows him down enough for me to catch up to him.


Now I have caught up to the sven but he is running into fog,
therefore I can't see him to right click.





I don't need ball lightning for this. I can simply cast a remnant beneath me to give flying vision, as demonstrated here. This also gives me an overload, so I throw it, but it doesn't kill sven.










Now time to finish the job with overload walking, as shown earlier. The two circles represent both my remnant and my animation that is being overloaded. This slow should by me enough time to finish sven off with mininal mana usage.











Using overload walking in conjunction with remnant flying vision (1800), you can chase down enemies without heavily relying on ball-lightning. This is good as it leaves you enough mana to either escape or chase for another kill. This overload mechanic also works with ball lightning while the animation is in mid air but you should just stick to conventional overload right-clicking in that scenario as you can catch up to the enemy and close the gap anyway.

Ball lightning mechanics

Ball lightning mechanics are very important with storm spirit as your mana pool being even the slighest bit lower can be the difference between you getting a kill and you not getting a kill, especially in the early game. So here I am going to explain a few little things you can do while using ball lightning to save as much mana as possible and still be effective with it.

The first thing I am going to talk about is mana usage. When you ball lightning you should always ball lightning next to them, NOT on top of them. The ball lightning pass damage will still affect them as long as they are in the standard remnant range. This saves mana for the cost of no downside. Here are two examples of the methods and the amount of mana saved/damage dealt etc.

Instance 1. Jumping on top of the enemy, like what most people do: I will be a fixed distance from sven and ball on top of him:
(I have used the average level and mana pool for 10-20 minutes into the game with the items you should have by 20 minutes to demonstrate a scenario where your mana pool is mediocore for a level 2 ball lightning), as you can see, my mana pool goes from 1092 to 809.


Instance 2. Jumping next to the enemy,( same damage output, but more mana efficient and slightly safer since you avoid over extension). I am the same distance from sven but use less mana:
I have gone from 1092 mana to 848, while dealing the same damage and being able to throw a right click to close the distance to the enemy and arrive in the same place as I would if I had balled on top of them, and with 8.4 mana regen, I will have enough mana for a remnant in 3 seconds after the ball has ended, (48 + (8.4*3) ) = 73.2. (Level 1 remnant), and end up with the same mana as I would have balling on top of them.
______________________________________________________________________________

Using items in ball lightning effectively.

Not many people do this often, but you can cast spells and items during ball lightning (while you are invulnerable). This allows you to:

1) Use the items as quickly as possible to allow you to cast the most spells during the silence/disable

2) Always get the item/spell off without the worry of getting "counter disabled".

Instance 1

Using orchid. You can use this item while balling next to them to not only silence them instantly, but to allow soul burn to include your ball lightning aoe travel damage on the target:
(the cirlce indicates the ball lightning travel damage, it can vary based on distance, but remember to ALWAYS ball next to them while using items for efficiency).


Instance 2

Using his disable. Electric vortex. You can do the same with his spells, including remnant, but vortex is more technical. You don't ball on top of them, however you can either ball next to them like usual or ball past them while casting vortex to pull them into bad positions (i.e. your team). Mana efficiency is wasted when balling past them however if your team are there to back you up a kill is always worth it.
The arrow indicates the direction in which he is being pulled. It always pulls them to storms location when ball lightning ends, not where he cast it during ball lightning. (Important note).

(SIDE NOTES) You can; in rare situations, use your vortex to pull enemies into cliffs. (E.g)

Conclusion.

After reading through all of this, if you are not asleep, I congratulate you! You have made it!

I hope you benefit from these tips/tricks/builds and use them in your pubs. If not, please leave a comment down below and I will try and improve my further guides for next time! Thank you!

Here are some links to really good storm player guides/videos that may help you if this guide doesn't

BlitzDota. Coaching pyrion flax.

Arteezy. Storm spirit gameplay highlights.

And again, thanks for reading my guide, give it a rating if you feel it deserves it :)

[Paul]

best SS guide out there, thanks alot!

[76561198171108339]

nice

[嗒嘀嗒嘀嗒]

nice

[Ita_Gin]

Nice

[Sr. T]

nice

[Rain Melancholy]

п

[Floyd]

as

[Маркуша]

nice с:

[丶坠星若蕾]

nice~~~~~~

[DMBoys.Cloud]

So so but i prefer DragonFist stile, thanks any way.