Queen of Thorns

Hello, welcome to my small guide to the QoT. I'm making this guide purely to show you how i THINK the Queen of Thorns should be played. I'm not saying my way is the best way, (although it probably is) i'm just saying i think it's the best way.

I'm going to skip all the basic stats etc, if you want to see them i'm refering you to the other QoT guide. You can find it in the list of guides.

First of the skill build, this build is focussed on maximizing your few usefull skills as soon as possible, while leaving out any usefull skills:

1. Bramble Shield
2. Ground Spikes
3. Save
4. Bramble Shield + Ground Spikes
5. Spike Wave
6. Save
7. Bramble Shield + Ground Spikes
8. Save
9. Save
10. Bramble Shield + Ground Spikes + Spike Wave
11. Uproot
12. Uproot
13. Uproot
14. Save
15. Godess if Thorns + Spike Wave (note: You should have won by now.)
    
16. Uproot
17. Uproot
18. Compost
19. Compost
20. Compost

The reason is simple, your best skills are Bramble Shield and Ground Spikes. With Bramble Shield you will be nearly unkillable, unless you try stupid 2v1 or 3v1 battles. Your teammates will also love you for this skill, it will save their lives, or allow them to chase that extra bit into the tower to score a kill.

Ground Spikes is your main offensive skill, you can use it to clear creepwaves and farm at incredible speeds, especially when priests and catas roam the map. This will also allow you to aid your team in battles, by lowering your enemys armor. The armor reduction also works against towers. For example, with Ground Spikes level 4, QoT level 10, no damage items what so ever, your normal attack will hit around 550 on a tower. This makes you an extremely strong Siege weapon. Together with an ally you can get a tower down in a pinch.

Spike Wave is used to slow the enemy when he trys to run, or just for some nice damage. You should really use this before you have sufficient mana though.

Uproot is quite useless, but compared to the other skills the QoT has, it's prolly the best. If the enemys are giving you a hard time pushing, this skill can be of great use to get towers down anyways. Especially with Compost the damage will get really high. (more then 3000).

Other people suggest using Shamblers, and Mulch Shambler. In my experience this is rather useless. I usually get a HoL for mana purposes anyways, that should also cover your health problems. In big teamfights you should always be in the back with a shield on, not taking damage.

In the case of QoT i think the skill order should be followed no matter what, there are no reasons to make exceptions and take other skills over these, as your other skills suck. You aren't going to adapt to anything. You are going to force your enemies to adapt to you.

Now for the items:

If favor is allowed i suggest either something like a swift anklet, or my personal favorit, the Cloak of Night. At a cost of 2000 favor, this gives you the same mana a Scaled Helmet gives you, and it gives you the ability to Warp. Which is great for lots of things, chasing, escaping, getting to an ally to cast bramble shield when he working himself into some kind of trouble etc.

Starting items:

Scaled helmet + Teleport scroll(s),you should ALWAYS carry at least one teleport scroll. It saves your ass.

Basicly, all you need as a QoT is mana, your first trip to the shop should be when you have around 2750 gold, allowing you to buy a Vlemish Faceguard, and some nice Boots of Speed (always nice) On your next trip you will be getting a Plenor Battlecrown and most likely some citadel upgrades. The ones you should consider are the first tower upgrades and the first gold one. other will come later. Your last item will be a Heart of Life.

Consumables: ALWAYS CARRY A TP SCROLL! ALWAYS!, it's also nice to have a flaglock or 2 just in case.

Citadel upgrades: the first tower ones are a must have. when you are playing 3 v 3 or more, gold is also nice. If you are doing really well you can get priests before warscore 10, but generaly it's best to wait for WS 10, and then go all the way to giants. It's not uncommon for me to buy all the creeps myself, especially not if they have upgraded priests already. Ground Spikes allows for great farming. You should touch the XP or DP ones, and the creep upgrades are best saved untill you have giants.

If the games is lasting very long, the citadel is fully upgrade, you have all your items, and you also happen to have 20k, the best thing to do would be to buy an ashkandor, drop it, and let your buddy Regulus pick it up. You don't really benefit from anything but mana items. Your bramble shield will take the damage for you, and groundspikes will do you damage for you.

General Walkthrough:

At the start of the game you should get your items and head to your first flag, on the way to the flag you can pick your favor item and take Bramble Shield as your first skill. I prefer to solo for the first minutes, just so i can quickly get to level 4, from level 4 on you should be putting presure on your enemies. You can basicly instagib their creeps. On a map like Cataract a good way to do this is to lure their both creepwaves at the middle of the map, and simply destroy them with Ground Spikes, this will allow your creeps to push towards their tower, and will give you some nice XP and gold. You should also aid your allies whenever you can. Bramble Shield gives you a huge advantage in fights, and together with an ally you can get some early towers by Groundspiking them. Your plan doesn't really change as you level. You will be able to push towers on your own with ease from level 7, it will be even easyer when you get your HoL.

On Forms: you should be in closed form, unless your want to use Ground Spikes or Spike Wave.

I think that was pretty much it. Feel free to point out grammar mistakes, i'm not English, so i'm not pretending my English is perfect. Comments are welcome, but if you are going to flame the build, please use arguments. (note: your build sucks is not an argument)

See you in game,

Tarias