I have seen ST used effectively on a few occasions.  No more than 1 lvl of it.. but it can be helpful.  For example.. a bots rook in a 2v2 w/out a general.  Helped to get health and mana back as nobody was really pushing him hard due to tower farm.  It enabled him to stay out longer than usual.

Anyway.. I think higher lvl's of slam are more useful.  If nobody is ever getting into range for your slam, then sure.. ST can be helpful.  But to just get it for taking down towers... you can do that just fine by dropping a tower on the other side, backing up, then going in and taking no tower damage anyway.

Don’t get me wrong. I never found much room for ST in my rook play before and ST 2 sounds even more ridiculous but I think I tried it because I have been stuck in nothing but assassin games for the past week and 2v2’s at that so it’s really helped with survivability. And I usually play vial rook so it was like a mini vial. It may change once I play a 3v3 with some monks hanging out. What’s it take like one monk heal to fill up that 1900? Heh jk. The extra slot for an hp item does seem to be pretty cool without the mana usage of a slam. Even with the lower level slam right after 10 I was still able to use all 4 of my abilities with only 1 helm. Of course not spamming the boulder and slam but whenever they were necessary I had the mana.

Yea I was just trying to think of something to do with that time. I have a problem even waiting around for scaled/banded money to kick in so that 20 seconds just seems painful. heh

Heck ya. Ub and Ere scare me.  

I get what you are saying. You can use the slam in battle as opposed to just on tower. I think it was more about weighing a 500 slam vs an extra 400 tower damage and the mana cost thrown in there too. I think the mana cost and that extra slot is the main factor for me. I know I don't have to use the slam but probably would because its cool and scares people.  Still just messing around with it.  

The damage the tower was doing to me wasn't a factor. I actually wanted it to be focused on me and leave my towers alone. I really liked the place tower, ST to stop it from firing, place 2nd tower and walking away, if threatened, with both towers at full health. Only takes 10 seconds and it will take that tower a while to kill both of your towers. So maybe like an extra 1k+ of damage if you have to leave and if not threatened just finish the thing off.

With the way you are playing, you'd be 5-10x better off with a staff of renewal rather than magical coin pouch. 

So I’m still messing around with the build. I can actually say that I had some success last night in pretty fairly matched teams. I got to play against a vial rook finally. The match was Vial rook, MCP QoT, Blood Oak vs MCP Rook, blood TB, Blood DA. I thought it would be a blood bath because we had no general. TB was awesome and dominated in the mana lane and me and DA struggled in the HP lane early game. I tried some dumb stuff real early game that kinda put me behind. It wasn’t until I shopped a few times (probably level 6 or 7) that I caught up to the enemy rook and mid game there was no stopping us. I had full 5 item kit(vlem, nimoth, hauberk, banded, unbreak) when the vial rook only had 3 items(2 of which were helms I think.) That’s when we kinda ran into trouble because I started messing around. After I sold my banded for narmoth I actually started saving for bulwark when I should have just bought giants and ended it. They were way behind on money so they couldn’t really have countered the giants. Then I saved for girdle of giants just to see what I could afford. I was pushing 10k hp at the end game at level 18. Queen and Oak actually killed me once late game because I thought I was invincible. Haha. I don’t know if they were stupid or maybe I was stupid to think I would scare them but the 10k hp didn’t faze them at all. They were still gunning for me like I was at 1900. We almost ended up losing because I was too interested in spending my money but overall I think it was a decent win against a vial rook that seemed pretty good.  

The vial rook did some things that I want to try out early game with mana pots and no boulder till later. He was at the 1900 start and went scaled helm, small mana pot, tp and was able to hold for a bit. So I might try that out.  Even though treb is so awesome at 8 I want to try no shoulders early(maybe just arrows) to make up for my early ST. So I can replace the shoulders with slam. I still like the ST. The vial rook seemed to be doing pretty good with slam even without the roll.

I have yet to try this so maybe:

1- tower I

2- arrows/ST

3-arrows/ST

4- tower II

5- slam I

6-slam II

7- tower III

8- boulder

9- slam III

10- Idk yet…I don’t really like towers at this point because I can never get the full 8 out anyways until later. I think 6 is plenty the 200 mana is cool tho. I’m thinking about getting my light shoulder here or slam IV.

11-treb/ or light if didn’t get at 10

12- tower IV/ or treb if didn’t get at 11

13- tower IV/ or slam IV if didn’t get at 10

14 - boulder II

15 - Dizzy

16 whatever--- stats/god strength

I still played with only 1 helm whole game and the large mana pots and had no mana issues at all. I didn’t even use that many large pots just carried them for safety net. I might even replace it with the purple.  Still having fun.

Indeed. I run into the same problem buying cit upgrades. I feel the need to buy even cur 1 as soon as it comes up if no one has gotten it yet and then still proceeding to buy cur 2. This was the first game that I actually got to play somewhat how I wanted without having to argue who gets cur and fs. It still amazes me the higher level players that won't slpit monks or buy any cit upgrades. I was pretty satisfied with the wins last night. Can't wait to play more rooks. I'm finding that I am a little weak at start but by about level 6 on up I get way overpowered against another rook. I think they are able to catch up a bit when the temptation to buy kicks in. Its hard to pass up some of that stuff. 15% discount doesnt seem like alot but its adds up in the end.