Pure Aggro Rook’s Build
I. Intro
Most of the time, The Rook is played with his tower farm build. And when he’s outside of his farm, he seems to become a weak, slow prey. I’m sure the vast majority of players seeing a Rook alone, with no tower around him, just want to engage a fight with him. And they’re pretty sure they can make him run or, thanks to his slowness, get a kill. I want to create fear amongst my opponents with Rook.
II. Abilities
Level 1 Hammer Slam I
Level 2 Archer Tower
Level 3 /
Level 4 Hammer Slam II
Level 5 Boulder Roll I + Tower of Light
Level 6 God Strength I
Level 7 Hammer Slam III
Level 8 Trebuchet
Level 9 /
Level 10 Hammer Slam IV + Boulder Roll II
Level 11 God Strength II
Level 12 Power of the Tower I
Level 13 /
Level 14 /
Level 15 Dizzying Force + Poisoned Arrows + Boulder Roll III
Level 16 God Strength III
Level 17 to 20 are up to you. I personally take Enhanced Attributes I to IV.
Don’t forget a single level of God Strength will allow you to kill an entiere wave of small creep units in one hit. Anyway, Tower of Light should be taken first, as it increases Archer Tower's damages considerably.
One level of Power of the Tower seems efficient, to give your allies the opportunity to TP near you, when towers and flags are uncertain around.
III. Items
a ) Favor item:
Blood of the Fallen. No hesitation. It gives you such a huge health boost for early game that it is necessary. Thanks to it, you’re going to stay longer on your lane, which means more XP and more gold.
b ) Items:
At the beginning, buy Scalemail & Banded Armor. Same logic than BotF, it allows you to stay longer on battlefield. Sell Scalemail or Banded Armor if you don’t have room anymore.
What items do you really need when you can afford them?
Unbreakable Boots, one of the best item for its price.
Vlemish Faceguard, you need one mana item to perform Boulder/Slam combo several times. Try to have it by level 5 or 6.
Nimoth Chest Armor, very good armor and health.
What items should you buy if you’re rich (or if you have troubles in 1v1)?
Narmoth’s Ring, the life steal from the huge damages you’re doing may be very useful. The 20 HPS and getting life from your shoulder weapons is great also.
Groffling Warplate & Mage Slayer are very strong artifacts but cost a lot of money. You should buy them only if you really can't 1v1 opponents. Otherwise, it would be better to buy citadel upgrades.
c ) Consumables Items
Early game, try to have a Small Health Potion and a Scroll of Teleporting at all time, to escape dangerous situation. Having one Totem of Revelation early game could be useful for the passive bonus of +5 vision radius. Drop it as soon as you have no room anymore.
For mid game and late game, you must have several Capture Lock, Scroll of Teleporting & one Sigil of Vitality at all time. The sigil is an extremely good consumable for duel and fleeing. Master it and your games won't be the same.
Two good items you can choose are Wand of Speed & Orb of Defiance. The first one will help you to run after or run away from another DG. The second one will give you invincibility to buy you time, to end Boulder / Slam cooldown or to give an ally the time to come and help you. Remember it will close one of your slot and you won’t be able to carry the three essentials consumables items (Sigil of Vitality / Scroll of teleporting / Capture lock). Choose what you prefer.
When having those items, keep your money for citadel upgrades.
IV. Tricks & Tips
90% of the time, this build won’t change. But a good player must adapt his build to different situations.
One very important thing, this build WON’T work if you don’t master the Boulder Roll + Hammer Slam combo. Boulder Roll III makes the combo easier than the two first levels of course, as it stuns longer. The more levels you got, the more powerful & easy to perform the combo is.
Without Boulder Roll, Hammer Slam is really easy to interrupt. Know when to use it before level 5. Wait that Oak cast Penitence to reduce your armor and go for Slam right after.
Fighting two enemy demigods with a friendly demigod is nice, you can try to Boulder/Slam them at the same time, doubling the effect for the same price.
When a demigod is purchasing you into your towers, even if you’re going to die, it may be sometimes efficient to suddenly turn over and Boulder/Slam him. If he’s not too high in life, that could kill him, and sometimes save you.
You can pretend Hammer Slamming to make opponents run away, then quickly click somewhere else to cancel it.
If there’s no enemy demigod nearby, and you feel confident, hit 2 or 3 times the enemy tower when your waves of creep are dying under its attacks. You can do that even with first wave.
Don’t forget, you’re very slow. It’s difficult to escape a dangerous situation. You really need to anticipate. Engaging two enemy demigods is something you should never do, except if you feel that you can take them both down alone.
You can fake teleporting, then quickly click somewhere else to make ennemies DG use their stuns.
Most of the time, remember you’re a lane keeper, not a flag catcher. I usually go for Health Flag if there’s one.
Ninja teleporting on a flag an enemy demigod is capturing then directly Boulder / Slam him is very effective, this should get you kills.
I use this build most of the time, but I've found that taking tower of light I at the beginning of the game gives you more survivability, as hammer slam is just pointless without boulder roll against any decent player. Late game this build is much stronger than pure tower rook because most people will not even approach your towers. Most people don't remember that regulus' mines and the torch bearer's rain of ice will cut through a tower farm like butter. Also, a great weakness of the tower build is that at tower IV you can hardly maintain all eight towers, not for lack of mana, but because one falls almost as soon as you get the eighth up and running. In large games hammer slam / boulder roll rook can teleport in and pick up three kills in 4 seconds. One of rook's hidden abilities is line of sight disruption. If an enemy player is chasing your ally, and they don't have their camera position correctly, the rook can just get in the way and confuse them.
Wow a rook that doesn't spam towers!
Splitshadow, late game any good tower rook will have maxed out hammer slam too.
It depends. I've found its very effective to skip Hammer Slam completely and purchase Stats instead. The increase to attack speed in particular is very significant on The Rook.
I like playing a moving Hammer Slam Rook without towers but you just end up a less effective teammate overall. You do get more kills but you're such an easy target that it's usually not worth it. If there's a decent Oak on the other team you're definitely taking a big risk. Penitance is ridiculously effective against a Hammer Slam Rook.
Just throw a boulder out and you've got all day to slam people in the face. Wait until you can melee them or slightly before and it's almost guaranteed they're gonna get owned once you get level 2 boulder.
Yep, pretty much THE way to play rook and the one I dread facing. Though I wonder sometimes if you shouldn't inject God Strength I into the build once the enemy buys priests, so you can do some quick creep cleaning if your enemy gets a double wave built up.
Of course, a good build anyone can do... using it effectively is something else entirely. You should make a "Complete guide to good Rook" and use some video from your recorded games. Think of it as your gift to the community.... but please be caustic in your explanations, those are the most entertainig guides.
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