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Heroes of Newerth Flint Beastwood Guide

By syllable - 9th March 2011 - 20:36 PM

This guide will aim to teach you about Flint Beastwood, a hero with a play style that attracts many players of various skill levels, requiring a certain finesse which, if executed successfully, can swing the odds of victory in your favour. This is, however, a fine line: poorly played, Flint's poor base damage and lack of true scaling make him a weak carry.

IPB Image
Flint Beastwood

Writers Foreword


This guide will be both detailed and focused. Its content exists for a reason, and if you disagree with certain things, feel free to reply, but please do so in a constructive manner. There's a bunch of notes also attached to some topics, with some extra info on "how to use this" instructions, which we ask that you read. Thanks in advance.

When to (Not) Pick This Hero


This is a very important caveat emptor, and one oft overlooked. Flint is a hero easily ganked, and using him in the wrong situations is asking for a beating. Specifically, the following situations are bad news:
  • The enemy team has a lot of heroes with gap-closing abilities
    Examples are Pharaoh, Devourer, Predator, heroes with Portal Key as core item like Pebbles, Moraxus, ...
  • The enemy team is an obviously gank-oriented heavy mid-game team
  • When your team already has enough (usually two) carry heroes *duh, but people seem to forget this*
Conversely, some lineups favour Flint. These generally include teams with the following characteristics:
  • The enemy team has three or more melee heroes
  • The enemy team has a lot of channeling abilities
  • The enemy team does not have ranged carry heroes that can beat you in a 1 on 1 right click fight
    Using Flare, Money Shot and active items of course, but late game your main DPS is your auto-attack, we'll talk more about this later
And Flint is not a good pick when:
  • The enemy team has a lot of heroes with gap closers
    Examples are Pharaoh, Devourer, Predator, heroes with Portal Key as core item like Pebbles, Moraxus, ...
  • The enemy team is an obvious gank-oriented heavy mid game team
  • When your team already has enough (usually two) carry heroes *duh, but people seem to forget this*
Now that we've evaded the thorny issue of losing the game at the picking screen, we can move on to the next part of this guide.

Stats and Abilities


Damage: 36 - 42
Attack Range: 570
Attack Speed: 0.71

IPB Image Armor: 2 IPB Image Move Speed: 290

IPB Image 16 (+1.7) IPB Image 21 (+2.9) IPB Image 15 (+2.9)

As you can see, Flint is a slow, squishy hero that has low base damage. He doesn't have Soulstealer's ability to blow up whole creep waves, Forsaken Archer's ability to control enemy heroes, or Scout's ability to walk the road of vengeance.

On the plus side, Flint has a decent agility and intelligence gain. This is pretty important because you'll be hurting for mana most of the time. Another selling point is his frankly ridiculous attack animation and projectile speed, which is ahead of the competition by a country mile.

Skillset


Explosive Flare
Fires a flare at the target location. Deals 75 / 150 / 225 / 300 Magic damage over 2 seconds to units and 25 / 50 / 75 / 100 Magic damage instantly to buildings on impact, leaving a burning flare for 4 seconds.

The burning Flare gives vision and applies Flared to all enemies in the radius.
Flared effects: slows movement speed by 14 / 20 / 26 / 32%
  • Target: non magic-immune enemy units
  • Type: AoE
  • Range: 800
  • Radius: 300
  • Mana cost: 120
  • Cooldown: 14 seconds
Note: Has a casting time of 0.8 seconds.
This ability is your main damage skill throughout the early-mid game. It's got everything Flint needs (besides that escape mechanism he lacks): you can use it to farm, slow opponents for chasing, last-hit towers, deal damage, and all of this in a (large) AOE. How do you use this ability then? When using it on a hero you want to use it followed up by some auto-attack harass, because they have to move out of it or they'll take too much damage. You can also throw it in a choke point to slow down enemies chasing an ally, or you can use it for vision up cliffs, in trees or around juke points.

This ability scales into late game in a certain way, in that you can start ignoring the high mana cost once you get some items, and the slow / vision it provides never loses its power. It's a really cheap ability for what it does late game.

Hollowpoint Shells
25 / 30 / 35 / 40% chance that a bullet will explode, dealing 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 bonus Physical damage and stunning for .05 / .1 / .2 / .2 seconds.
  • Passive ability
  • Type: physical
Note: Though this bonus damage is physical, the mini-stun is magical, so you can't interrupt an enemy channeling something while he's magic immune. This is a very useful ability though, it allows you to chase without having any type of slow if you're lucky enough (supposing your Flare is on cooldown). Illusions do not benefit from this ability.

Dead eye
Increases attack range by 60 / 120 / 180 / 240. Levels 3 and 4 allow Flint to out range towers.
  • Passive ability
  • Type: self buff
Note: This is what makes you awesome in late game, it allows you to position yourself, being the glass cannon you are, in a place where you can dish out huge amounts of damage without being in harm's way yourself.

The fact that you have more range than a tower on levels 3 and 4 of this ability is awesome, this means that during daytime when you're farming near an enemy tower, instead of doing nothing or denying creeps while you wait for last hits, you can just auto-attack the enemy tower. That said, you need to be sure you're not going to be ganked if you want to do this alone. Why during daytime? Simply. During night, your attack range exceeds your vision, meaning you have to walk into the tower's range to see it. This can, however, be overcome through the use of Flare or simply by waiting for your creeps to get in sight range of the tower.

Moneyshot
After a 1.7s cast time, fires a shot at the target. Deals 355 / 505 / 655 Magic damage and stuns for .2 seconds. If the target moves more than 1800 / 2300 / 2800 units away during the channel time, the spell is cancelled. Grants 1800 day vision and 800 night vision around the target while active. Also reveals the target while active.
  • Target: enemy units
  • Type: superior magic
  • Range: 1500 / 2000 / 2500
  • Mana cost: 175 / 275 / 375
  • Cooldown: 20 / 15 / 10 seconds
Note: This ability is awesome. However, before you have your fun, there are some points worth mentioning: while the description will tell you it's superior magic, only the mini-stun it applies is, the damage dealt is just regular magic. So while it's good for an interrupt (it's fine for stopping a teleport or a tempest ultimate), it won't deal damage to magic immune heroes.

How do you use this ability then? Well, certainly not only to finish off a running hero. In lane when you hit level 6, the first thing I do is starting to spam my enemy with Money Shots. At least once. Why? This will make them less likely to jump you, and if they do, you could probably kill them before they kill you. It also makes your laning enemy an easy target for ganks, or when you have your next Flare / Money Shot combo ready (the mana is an issue here), you can kill your target, provided you keep him low enough with some auto-attack harass.

However, mana management is important here. Using this ability twice along with just one Flare and you're out of mana. A serious problem because trust me, all that keeps you alive in clutch situations is your Flare. You want to make sure you always have mana left for a Money Shot. Harassing the enemy until you are out of mana is never good, because when he comes in, you've got nothing besides bad language to throw back. If a Forsaken Archer comes in to kill you, and you did harass him, and you still have mana, just calm down, press R on him, and finish it off. There's no way he can kill you before you kill him.

This is also an awesome spell to cast when the enemy is pushing your base, but isn't quite ready to initiate yet. Use this extra time you get to your full advantage, and spam your Money Shot on the heroes without a Shamans Headdress, that don't have too much HP (for example a Swiftblade is usually a good target, to either make him waste his spin, or damage him up, these guys usually have pretty low HP compared to the average melee carry hero, and 2 or 3 money shots will bring him down enough for the enemy team to back off, because if they'd go, their Swiftblade will die instantly and they'll be without a carry).

When someone ganks your lane, or when you gank somewhere, this is one of the best openers. You're just waiting in the fog of war, in the woods for a good moment, when that moment comes, you Money Shot them, follow it up with Flare, meanwhile your allies are using their abilities, it's a guaranteed kill. If you use this ability to finish enemies off, it won't be as easy, because you want to use all the time you can get to auto-attack enemies, you don't want to just stand there looking like a fool waving those guns while you could be putting bullets in people. Take into consideration that the enemy has 260 hp or so more than they would have if you use it to finish them rather than to initiate, and they'll be less likely to be scared, but actually turn and fight you, you could even die because of this.

This is a very, VERY important ability and nobody reading this guide is allowed to use it wrong!

Skill Builds


So now we know what our skillset is for and how it works, we want to know what order to get our shinies in. You know us, we're here to help.

First off, there is something you don't do with certain heroes. Specifically, you don't skill something as soon as you spawn. Valkyrie is a prime example here: "shit I just missed a Bloodlust opportunity because I skilled Leap over Javelin" and "dammit I got Bloodlusted, I'm going to skill up Leap next game instead of Javelin" are both terrible situations to be in: don't put yourself through it.

What this means is you don't pick an ability until you know what you're going to need. With Valkyrie I just don't level up anything until I need something, or until I hit level 2. With Flint, you level up either your RNG ability, being Hollowpoint Shells, or your level 1 Bloodlust ability, being Flare. If you're going to the power up with 3 allies to gank someone, you still don't level up anything. When you see someone you can make a good initiation on, THEN you skill up your Flare, and get the Bloodlust kill. If this doesn't happen, no biggy, just get your Hollowpoints and head to lane. Why Hollowpoints? The built in RNG helps on two things: harassing and creep killing (you shouldn't rely on luck here, but you might get some pre-last hits by accident that turn out to be a Hollowpoint). When harassing, the Hollowpoint procs usually give you enough time to get in an extra hit, adding an extra 70 damage's worth of harassment every time it comes up. That's a lot, especially against fragile heroes early game.

In public games you can usually skill up Hollowpoints at the fountain though, chances are pretty low that you'll actually catch an enemy, and if you do, your allies will usually chain all their stuns on top of each other allowing the guy to get away.

The Nuker

  1. Hollowpoint Shells/Explosive Flare (as explained above)
  2. Flare
  3. Flare
  4. Dead Eye
  5. Flare
  6. Money Shot
  7. Flare
  8. Dead Eye
  9. Dead Eye
  10. Dead Eye
  11. Money Shot

    Let's cut in the middle here. Now, depending on your needs, you have two choices. Get stats and die a little less fast, or get more Hollowpoint Shells, giving you more headshots for more damage. This is a personal choice, and depends on the situation you're in, but I always, always get Hollowpoints. Even if you are in a situation where you die too fast to get off enough auto-attacks to benefit from this ability, you should get it, because your problem most likely isn't survivability, but positioning.
  12. Hollowpoint Shells / Stats
  13. Hollowpoint Shells / Stats
  14. Hollowpoint Shells / Stats
  15. Stats
  16. Money Shot
And after this, you level up either stats, finishing hollow points whenever you like, or get hollow points, and finish with stats. Again, we advise getting Hollowpoints earlier, your mini-stuns really come into play at these levels when your attack speed starts picking up.

It's a skill build made to be aggressive, this Flare ability is meant to kill enemy heroes and towers, not random creeps. The ability is so good, gives you vision, slows enemies in i's AoE, damages. The slow isn't only to kill enemies, it's also to save you, by slowing and damaging enemies.

The "I'm in a Hard Lane" Build

  1. Dead Eye
  2. Dead Eye
  3. Flare
  4. Dead Eye
  5. Money Shot
  6. Dead Eye / Flare
  7. Flare
  8. Flare
  9. Flare
  10. Money Shot
  11. Hollowpoint Shells
  12. Hollowpoint Shells
  13. Hollowpoint Shells
  14. Stats
  15. Money Shot
  16. Stats.....
This build is based upon the assumption that you're solo in a side lane, and you need that extra range to dominate this lane (or just not lose it).

It's not a skill build I favour, simply because of how good Flare is early game.

Anyways, spamming Flare never is an option to win a lane, and harassing isn't as easy in a side-lane as it is in the mid lane (mid lane is shorter so you'll always be closer to your enemy, and if done right you'll have an uphill advantage). You still want to get Flare for when you go in to make that serious harass (as in getting someone down to half life or less in one go), and for the awesome slow that can turn an enemy who was coming to harass you around, Flare is just that good.

The extra range gives you an edge against heroes like Bubbles, Wretched Hag, ..., you can even edge out a Hellbringer (Bloodboil spam or no), just by staying out of range, lasthitting, and playing passively. If you know you can actually win a fight if you go into right click mode (using abilities of course) feel free to play as aggressively as you like.

The "Other" Build


This is your third option, and it sucks. Your Flare loses potential by the time you skill it, and you're defenceless early game, besides the long range you get.

It's a combination of Hollowpoint Shells and Dead Eye, whatever you like more can be your first ability to max, but I'd advise to get range over RNG, just because it's so good to have extra that long range.

A lengthy explanation is largely superfluous here, it should be quite obvious why leveling Flare over these passives is better, and if it's not obvious, it's because dealing alot of damage and slowing enemies is better than hoping to get lucky with Hollowpoint Shells and facing stupid enemies. Seriously though, not to look down on anyone but this build will have you get ripped apart all the time and you can't do anything about it, you won't get tower kills with your low base damage unless your team lets you and the enemy team isn't around, nor will you have much of a chance of actually killing heroes.

With the skill builds out of the way, we can move on to items.

Item Builds


Like his skill builds, Flint's item builds are situational, depending on the team setups and how the opposing team is playing. Thus, several options are provided according to the situations that may arise in gameplay.

First things first, there are differences between how to build items on carry heroes or semi support / semi carry / slow and steady farmer heroes. First off, if you're playing a carry and you are doing well, never EVER build a small item like a Soulscream Ring. Straight up Firebrand is the way you want to go if you need agility. The only items you can (and should) generally pick up almost every single game, are a Power Supply, and Mystic Vestments.

Whenever I play a farming hero (and I always do), I like to save up a lot of gold and then buy my item in one go, this has a few reasons. First of all, it doesn't require you to mess with your inventory space, because remember we are limited to six slots, and if you're trying to make a Firebrand for example, you need two small items and one recipe for this. Fleetfeet are too useless to carry around with you all the time, I'd even take a Minor Totem over these. Another reason is early game buybacks, they CAN be useful, but only seldom.

So this means, when you are getting ganked all the time, and your farm is bad (below 250 GPM when you reach the 10 minute mark), it's sometimes not bad to make smaller items to progress at least a little bit, because the enemy team won't allow you to build up the expensive things. Minor stat gains to boost your survivability even in the slightest can make the difference when there's something silly like a Parasite + Witch Slayer ganking you all the time.

The standard starting items with Flint are usually:
x2 Duck Boots
x2 Minor Totem
x1 Runes of the Blight
x1 Health Potion

An alternative to this is to build a Ring of the Teacher in lane, leaving your starting items as follows:
x1 Duck Boots
x1 Minor Totem
x1 Runes of the Blight
x1 Health Potion
x1 Guardian Ring

This is another sidelane build I also find viable on long ranged agility carry heroes:
x1 Duck Boots
x3 Minor Totem
x1 Runes of the Blight
x1 Guardian Ring
This way you have less regen, but more overall stats. I personally don't have a problem with staying in lane long enough unless if the enemy lane is a very agressive one, but you can always tell by their line-up, and even if you got the lanes wrong, you can bring yourself some regen with the courier. Don't do this too much though, you don't want to spend 400 gold on Health Potions, and you also don't want to be using the courier all the time so your team can't.

First off, if you run solo mid, you should never go with the second option, as you have terrible base damage as it is, and you'll need everything you can get to last hit or harass someone. Going for a Ring Of The Teacher is a good idea at any point in the game, the bonus armour is great for when you find yourself in a sticky situation, but it's 500 gold you could've spent on another item. If you get it make sure nobody else on your team has it, and make sure you get your money's worth in terms of mana regen (meaning spam your abilities as soon as you got mana for a second one).

Anyways later you can transition into this if you're not doing too well:
x2 Soulscream Rings
or also the sidelane option like we discussed:
Ring of the Teacher
Important to note here is that you don't have to finish the Soulscream Rings. It's perfectly permissible to make one or even none to save money, and selling your Duckboots to pick up a TP is no huge problem either.

Once this is sorted, you need boots. Both Steamboots and Ghost Marchers are viable on Flint, and the choice you make will determine how you play for the rest of the game.

The clear and obvious choice for survivability and damage output (later in the game) is Steamboots. The other choice is mobility, Ghost Marchers. When do you get which? It boils down to personal preference, as both offer you unique capacities that the other lacks.

You have to keep in mind, both boots are actually a door to a different playstyle. Where Steamboots if more farm / lategame oriented, with also it's own utility built in (stats swapping), Ghost Marchers are more ganking, early / midgame oriented.

If you're farming really well early on, one option is to get an Alchemist's Bones early on (7-9 minutes in), then rush for Ghost Marchers, followed by an Icebrand, to provide you with needed mobility, attack speed, damage, and survivability. It's not always going to be that simple to just farm those items, but if you manage to get the Alchemist Bones early enough and your farm doesn't drop, you should be able to finish this around the 15 minute mark, at which point you should go help out your team.

Assuming you are playing a higher level game, with good team play, where your team moves around for you, rather than you for them, Steamboots are the standout choice. If you play in a game where you're not so tight, but you do a lot of running anyways to catch and run away from enemies because you have to solo everything, Ghost Marchers. Ghost Marchers are _awesome_. The move speed is good, the damage is great early game, the unitwalking is godly. You'll be squishy though.

This is where you are left to choose between survivability and damage.

Straight up damage would be something like a glass cannon shieldbreaker build, I don't recommend it. If you want to rush something that's straight up aiming on survivability, and rather a long than short game, I recommend rushing a
Nullstone

This item isn't amazing, but you never have to go to the fountain anymore with the regen it provides (as long as you don't meet any enemy heroes at least). It provides well rounded stats, regen, a little bit of damage,and ofcourse, the passive ability block.

I myself rarely make this item. My usual build is for midgame survivability and then damage, damage, and more damage. Flint's HP is positioning, you should never have to really tank up on items, because you should never be in the middle of a fight taking damage. If you are, then you have been outpicked, or your team just isn't doing anything, or you're not adapt enough yet at positioning yourself properly.

So if you did not make a Nullstone, I recommend making a

Firebrand
into
Geometers Bane + Shieldbreaker 3.
This is the most common build. A Geometers is core on Flint. It gives you extra survivability, the activateable illusions, damage, attackspeed, movespeed, everything you really need. The Shieldbreaker is just amazingly good damage against any type of hero. It greatly reduces the effectiveness of tank heroes on the enemy team, and tears trough their support heroes. It's not always the best item to get though.

Should you choose not to make a Shieldbreaker, I highly recommend making a
Nullfire Blade.
One of the best agility DPS items in the game. Especially with the upgrade. It gives you an insane damage boost, combined with the manaburn which is VERY effective on a hero such as Flint, this is actually one of my preferred items. Even if just for the active ability. Remember, the purge effect can remove almost anything. Keeper's ultimate can be purged off, certain DoT abilities can be purged, Pestilence ultimate, all of Dark Lady's self buffs (this item is a hard counter to Dark Lady), Jeraziah (need I say more?), not to mention something like Haste or Double damage can also be purged off. This item, when used correctly, is just plain awesome. In terms of auto-attacking, it's the most effective against heroes that need their mana to stay in a fight, for example a Torturer or Soul Reaper.

Next up is an attack modifier, if you feel you can handle a second. While Shieldbreaker is an attack modifier, you can toggle through orb effects if you're up for some intensive micro. These are your options:

Whispering Helm
This is a very useful item when you often go toe to toe with other carry heroes. Take for our example Sand Wraith. You cannot beat a SW without lifesteal or a team backing you up under normal circumstances, because while damaging SW, you'll be taking 16% of that damage yourself, which skews the fight horribly against you with lifesteal to balance the scales. But let's assume your team isn't going to be dead all the time. Lifesteal is also a good pushing item. Suppose you win a teamfight and come out on top, you kill 4 of them and you have 2 allies left, but you're low on HP. In any other situation you'd have to heal to avoid an opportunistic gank, but now you can lifesteal off the creeps while pushing to the barracks. The amount you take depends on your damage really, but it should be quite a lot. One very important thing here if you're going the lifesteal route, seriously, for god's sake, do NOT make Elder Parasite on Flint. Taking 20% extra damage will turn you from a glass cannon into a paper cannon. You'll die too fast, it's as simple as that. Specially because you won't have a Frostwolf Skull, and even if you have one, you'll still die too fast. This (whispering helm) is a very rare item pick for Flint, it just doesn't compare to a Frostwolf. Why all the positive press? Simple. If you can micro the creeps from it well and have the presence of mind to hit the attack modifier toggle button (. by default) in the middle of a fight the entire time, it's +20 damage, gives you extra armor, and gives you lifesteal. If this fits the situation, it's nothing to sneeze at.

Frostwolf Skull
Aahh, one of my older favourites. Grants a ton of HP and other stats, and on top of it all, the godlike slow which still is one of the best counters to melee heroes with a Shrunken Head or built-in magic immunity (like Predator). Currently I think it takes too long to build and allowing you to be effective at the same time. This is the second most expensive item in the game, it will take you a while to build, and it adds little to no damage really. Only do if you are farming insane amounts of gold, and you have a level advantage, and if you think that you really need it lategame to counter something specific on the enemy team or to survive burst that you cannot possible dodge (a Pollywog priest and Pyromancer that both jump on you with Portal Key's for example)

After one of these, if you choose to pick one up, there's some more item slots begging to be filled. Happy to oblige as we are, we choose one of these to complement our current setup:

Wingbow
Riftshards
Savage Mace

Wingbow is always a very good choice, but when you choose this item you have to make sure you're not wasting the dodge on it. Does the enemy have a lot of (or just one very strong) right clickers that have a nasty habit of going for you? Do they leave you to do whatever you want? Either way a solid item, but sometimes other choices are more beneficial overall. For example a combination of Riftshards and a Savage Mace. This will have you crit for well over 800 (Riftshards 4), add in the Savage Mace mini-stun and +100 damage and it becomes insane. Not to mention the extra damage these items give, you'll be ripping through pretty much everything if you manage to farm items like these.

On Savage Mace I have to comment that the proc does not propagate to illusions, but, it does go through magic immunity (the mini-stun), and, it applies the extra damage (also through magic immunity). Another thing to note is that it works completely independent of Hollowpoint Shells, so both can proc at the same time.

Another item, which is an option, though I'm not the biggest fan of it for Flint:
Genjuro
It's really good when breaking the stealth to slow people, not to mention the bonus damage, don't get me wrong, the item is amazing. What concerns me is how you will survive during the time that you're building it. This is currently the most expensive item in the game. Neither a Shroud nor a Genjuro provide anything but raw damage for agility heroes. If you think you can pull this off (translation: if you think the enemy team won't buy dust or another form of revelation), go for it, it's definitely a somewhat more challenging item compared to the standard rightclicking.

A somewhat special item:
Shrunken Head
You usually don't need this item as Flint. Most of the time you'll have another carry hero on the team, and you can get away with shooting people without taking too much focus fire. Once you become the biggest problem for the enemy team though, it's usually too late anyways for the enemy, but they'll try to one shot you in the early stages of a teamfight. A Shrunken Head could save you in these situations. If you're your team's only hard carry, you should expect to need this item.

It will depend on how well you're playing as a team, as well on the enemy's coordination. But when they have a Magmus who makes it his personal mission to combo you every fight, you'll need this item for sure, because when he ults / Portal Keys in, without Shrunken Head there's not much you can do about it, you'll drop to at least half life and probably less just from this.
When to Activate Shrunken Head
You activate it when your team initiates, or immediately when the enemy team initiates (usually this is already too late). Do not walk into fights thinking "I'll just activate this when they're going to nuke me, you know what I'm sayi---" *Miniaturized by Witch Slayer* -- dead.

WRONG

You activate this before getting in range of their abilities, 5+ seconds of magic immunity is more than enough to tip the balance in a fight. This is so basic I can't stress it enough. Activate it BEFORE you go in, not AS you go in, because that's usually too late.


Another item you might want, depending on your farm, and whether you're mid or not:
Bottle
I like to save one Bottle Charge as long as possible, you never know when you need that little extra HP to survive a gank or any type of situation you can think of where one Bottle Charge can save you. You aren't likely to really need it in a sideline, and if you do, try to Courier ferry it back and forth (do this for mid as well). If you get this item you should be going for the powerups, and try to set up ganks or at least be very aggressive in your own lane. Using it as a farming tool only is a waste of 600 gold.

Charged Hammer
A bit of a special item in my eyes. In most cases I consider this to be a waste of space. It can, however, prove to be useful if you have a team full of AoE disables but not the damage to support it. For example, take a Keeper Of The Forest. When he pops his ultimate, you need to end the fight before the enemy comes out, and you need to be the one dealing the damage, because Keeper's ultimate itself doesn't do that much. The retarded attack speed and occasional lightning RNG is a good here. I'd still prefer to go other item combinations over this one, but that's my personal subjective choice. It's an item with a lot of attack speed, damage, and a somewhat useful lightning proc on it. It's actually quite good, but like always, you should consider why you'd get this item instead of another one.

I tested this item the other day after seeing it used in a replay, and it's very effective in certain situations, it's one of the most effective items to bring down fat carry heroes with a lot of HP and armor, but no magic resistance / immunity. Think of heroes like Kraken, Keeper Of The Forest, ... The chain lightning procs a lot and deals some real damage to these guys, specially when someone in their team builds a Daemonic and they have around 30 physical armor.

"Fun" Builds That Almost Never Work


There's some items that wouldn't really work in a regular game, but are funny as hell if you manage to pull them off.

+ + +

I heard this combo is pretty good at oneshotting people. I tried Spellshards Flint the day the item came out, and it turned out to be better than expected. You'll be around 1000 HP at the 30 minute mark, but hey, you got Spellshards. Hell you can go any item you want, it'll be good on Flint if you can play the hero, your team is good, and the enemy team isn't too good. I'm not going to write more about this, you'll have to try it out yourself sometime, but when you do don't forget Harkons.

Gameplay


First of all a small side note here. Flint is a squishy hero and he doesn't have an escape mechanism. This is a reality you have to face when playing this hero, throughout almost the entire game (if not the entire game), you'll be focused or people will try to focus you. And for the better part of this game, you'll be too squishy to survive if you don't position yourself well. You're not a Kraken or a Devourer, you have very little HP, not the best move speed, and you can't escape once you're in trouble. So again, if you want to play this hero, you have to be able to position yourself as good as possible, making sure you can maximize your damage output, and minimizing the risks you're taking.

Early Game: The Laning Phase


So now we have our starting items bought, let's deal with what we do with them.

Laning solo in mid


This is my favorite choice, you don't have the pressure of "having" to get every last hit that you do in a trilane (I always feel like I fail my supports whenever I miss a last hit in a trilane). That isn't to say you should let yourself miss them, but at least you'll feel under a little less pressure.

Laning mid can be a serious pain against some heroes, you should check out what the enemy is going to send against you and play accordingly. Thunderbringer, for example, will make your life a misery. What you want to do is use your auto-attack range to its full extent, exchange hits for lightnings, but make sure you don't get into auto-attack fights with this guy, because with all the nukes he has you won't win it. A Power Supply can be useful against heroes like Thunderbringer, Chipper, or Bombardier, all common mid heroes that spam a lot of abilities.

The key in laning with Flint is, not surprisingly, keeping your distance and using your retardedly high range to it's full benefit.

When facing a melee hero that can't suddenly jump or hook you (Pharaoh, Gauntlet, Devourer, ..), you want to be super aggressive. You want to take position on his side of the creeps, if he comes in to hit you, just shoot him in the face, and run back if he comes too close. The risk of being ganked is very real though. Being ganked in mid as a Flint sucks pretty hard, you don't really have any chance of survival if two stunners come at you.

This is why map awareness is HUGE, not just when you play as Flint, but when you play any mid hero. You need allies that call miss or Wards, and preferably both. But the one thing you need to do most when you feel a gank incoming, is go back. You get this feeling sometimes (or should) when you're too far out by yourself, and suddenly realize "hey there's nobody out there on the minimap.... what's this creepy feeling?". When you get this feeling, instantly back. If you get this feeling when the the laning phase is over already instantly homecoming stone to a safe location, in the laning phase just running back should do it if you're in time. This means hug the secondary tower for a full minute if you have to, you can stack some jungle creeps if you're confident they're not waiting there for you, but whatever you do, do NOT run into certain death. It may sound crazy that I'm telling you to hug towers for a minute if you have to, because that's 60 seconds you're not going to get any experience, money, possible kills, nothing, but I guarantee you, if you go out when there's obvious impending doom (and trust me, if even only one person from a side lane went missing with high enough HP to gank, he's ganking mid, if he was low HP and doesn't return to his lane within about 40 seconds, mid or another lane is being ganked), you will die. I can't stress this enough, alot of people build their laning on "I'm sure that guy isn't here, anywhere but here", and then suddenly they get jumped and die. I'm telling you, if someone is missing, they most definitely are there, waiting for the right moment to stun you. You should always assume that if they're missing, they're going to be ganking you. Where else would they be? In a usual game your allies will call this on time, and if you ask for it you can even set up a counter-gank before their gank initiates, that would be an ideal situation though, and reality is sometimes far from it.

Mid Game: Ganking / Farming Phase


This is the part where lanes fall apart and everyone roams the map to do his or her job. You make or break the game here. Gankers will be ganking all the time, supports will be warding for their team and assisting in kills, carry heroes will be trying to farm as much as they can and trying to mop up the pieces from major fights to get kills.

In some games you will have an easy job transitioning, in others, this phase will hit you before you're ready, and things won't go as smoothly as you hoped. These games are mostly pubs. In organised games usually the teams are transitioning at the same pace, each playing out the strategy they set out when they picked their heroes.

Anyways let's discuss it one thing at a time. Unorganized pubs. These go both ways. Either you and your team have superior mobility, map control, and you use it to its full potential, or the other team is in a dominant position. I'm sure you know the feeling where you're constrained to the secondary towers and the neutral creep camps closest to your base. The game is not going where you want it to, but no fear, you can overcome this problem as long as your team doesn't throw the game. The important thing to do when, compared to the other team yours is underlevelled, underfarmed, and generally outplayed during the game (or else you wouldn't be in this position), is to not engage the enemy team without a crystal clear advantage that will win you the fight guaranteed. Unless you find yourself in such a situation, it's a bad choice to fight, because you're not going to win it unless if the enemy makes a huge mistake, something you should never count on. What you can do, however, is take every bit of farm you can get, maximize all small things to attain the biggest advantage you can wring from them (you should realize in this situation, your supports need 100 seconds to get enough gold to buy a ward, every creep kill you miss is huge, always remember that you are denying your team every creep kill you take), and only enter a fight when you will either win it or can't abstain from it (i.e. they're pushing your Barracks down)). Don't even bother with tier two towers if they're pushing that as a team of 5 with all cooldowns ready. Use your base advantage here to the maximum potential. This is where your Money Shot becomes very, very useful. When you're being pushed, start spamming this every cooldown you get. Spam the same person every time, and prefer squishy targets. Money Shot is magic damage, so make sure you target someone without magic resistance items. If all goes well, you'll practically be fighting a 4v5. If they back off because you weakened one of them enough (for example carry heroes like Soulstealer, the Dark Lady, Forsaken Archer who aren't too big on HP and never have any magic resistance besides a Shrunken Head). How these clashes end is up to your team, but you have to do everything you can to get an extra edge for the fight.

There's also the eventuality where you are in control. Your mid laning was successful, you have your (upgraded) Boots, your Bottle, maybe an extra item like a Power Supply or Soulscream Ring. Starting at level 7, 6, or even 5 maybe you can gank. There's a few things to it though. Make sure that your team in the lane you're ganking is close to their tower, so you have alot of chasing space, you don't want to tower dive if you don't have to. Make sure they have enough HP and mana to actually go in when you initiate. Make sure that you don't get spotted by a ward of sight when going there. After 6 minutes and 15 seconds wards usually run out and many players, especially in lower brackets, will leave them unrefreshed. This is your moment to move. When ganking, getting last hits on heroes is good, but you shouldn't make it a priority. A kill is a kill, and assist gold is retardedly high anyways. After you're done ganking, someone from the lane where you just killed can come with you to gank mid and stop your adversary getting ahead. It'll be needed. This person can then go roaming to the other side lane, or choose to return to his lane, the thing is, if you're moving around the map, you have to keep being mobile and doing so, don't give the other team breathing space, and don't give them a chance to recover. However, always consider the late game. If you're your team's only carry, consider prioritising farming over ganking

Backpushing a Lane
You can skip this if you know what it is and how to do it.

Have you ever seen a person farm on the exact same spot for over 4 minutes? Usually this is right in front of the secondary tower in the easy lane of your faction. It can be in front of the primary towers, but usually isn't, because ganking would be too easy if a person would be there for that long.

How do people do this then,you wonder. Well it's actually one of the easiest things there is. All you need is the ability to last hit without any enemy or ally hero around. Sounds easy. What you do is this: start denying your creeps right when they hit 50% HP and auto-attack them down. It doesn't matter if you get the last hit on these or not, the plan is to make them die faster than the enemy creeps, so you basically get pushed. The second thing you do is only last hit enemy creeps when you can kill them with one hit. This can vary. If you're for example a Predator with a Loggers Hatchet, you might want to wait until the enemy creeps are at about 40 HP to last hit them, still safe and 100% certain that you get them, but not as soon as you could. whatever you do do not let the enemy wave reach the tower, and do not let the enemy siege engine die. Tank the wave yourself, kill everything except the siege engine, and tank that outside tower range until the waves arrive again.

Congratulations, you have learned how to farm a ton of gold in no time without pushing dangerously close to the enemy base! Until your allied Chipper comes along and ultimates that wave. Try to explain to him what you were doing in a reasonable way, and maybe he won't do it again.


Organised 5v5 Games


So you try to backpush lanes as much as possible, if it's not possible, resort to a combination of killing big creep waves near the tower, pushing it out, and jungling a bit. If someone else is doing the jungle just do the ancients, takes a bit longer and it's quite hard with Flint actually, but you can do it.

It's important to be around for big fights though, even if you are free farming a lane and it'll be pushed if you leave. Just let it get pushed, and help out your team. Having some team morale is important, teleporting around and just being there for your team (not only for the money shot that finishes the already dead hero) is important. If you see an ally you might save with your Flare, don't hesitate, instantly teleport, Flare enemies to slow them down, pressure them away, maybe even kill one.

In this phase of the game you should always carry a Homecoming stone no matter what hero you're playing.

Late Game: The "You Cannot Afford a Single Mistake" Phase


Like it says in the title, you cannot afford a single mistake here. If you die alone because you were too far out, you'll lose the game. If you die because you didn't notice 5 enemy heroes all go missing towards you, you'll lose the game (seriously if someone is going to get 5-man ganked it's you or another carry hero in your team, so don't act surprised that they're choosing you). If you didn't farm well in mid game, and aren't picking up your farm in late, you'll lose the game.

In fact, you'll have to work very hard to not lose the game. This is the part where I explain what downtime is. Essentially, you want to be doing something all the time when you're playing any hero. When you play Flint you're doing these things (not in any particular order):
  • Farming
  • Being on your way to farm some more
  • Killing enemy heroes
  • Being on your way to kill enemy heroes
If you're not doing any of the above, you're doing it wrong. You want to be moving all the time, every second of the game when you're not dead, you have to be farming creeps, killing heroes, or moving somewhere with these purposes in mind. Stacking ancients on your way to farm bottom lane isn't a waste of time, it's efficient. If you're turtling and waiting for the enemy to push, that Money Shot spam we talked about earlier fills your time. Defending another base side while your team waits as 4 in the lane that's actually being pushed fills your time. You seriously, should not, ever, have downtime. You'll have it sometimes, but make sure it's absolutely needed. Like early game we talked about when you're being ganked, you'll have downtime, but this is only to ensure that you won't die, look at this as denying the enemy experience and gold, and you can even think of the gold that you don't lose by getting killed as gold well earned. A part of not having downtime is utilizing your team's Courier to it's full potential. Not running back to heal, but staying in your lane and getting regen items delivered is the way to go.

In this part of the game, while you're doing the things above, you still want to always carry a homecoming stone. Being there for your team is now more important than ever. If you need 100 more gold to finish your Wingbow, tell this to your team. They'll either understand that a few more seconds can be game changing, or they'll be retarded and lose the game "derrrr I went in but nobody followed me, and it's not my fault that I didn't look on the minimap and realized nobody was there to follow, it's your fault because you weren't with me!". I'm sure you heard something like this before. Just don't mind them, and play your game.

What to Do in a Team Fight


It pains me to see sometimes how my carry hero chases a useless person too far while his or her team gets slaughtered. I'll try to help you here to not be that person!

There's certain heroes with a kill priority, and usually this priority drops below zero after they do some particular ability or action.

Most important targets in a team fight are:
The uncontested number 1 enemy in any team fight you will ever fight is: whoever is hitting you at the moment. This shouldn't be the case though, with good positioning, and your super long range, you can and should be quite far away from the actual battle. But yes, the Predator or Madman trying to kill you is your priority.

Your second target always is: supports with unused abilities that can change the course of a fight. An example: Tempest, the balloon. This guy is only good for his ultimate late game, yeah sure he has an annoying stun, but it's single target and in late game team fights it's certainly not going to change the course of the fight. His ultimate will though. So it's your top priority to pop this balloon before he uses his ultimate. BUT, be very aware of it that a Tempest who already used his ultimate is close to useless. His team knows this, he knows it, the only people who might not know it and still want to focus "an easy kill" is your team and you. Sure he'll die in a matter of seconds. Doesn't matter. He's useless. A Tempest can die after he used his ultimate and he won't care if he used it well (not much anyway). His team won't care about that death either if he used his ultimate. Hell, I never care about any of my teammates deaths (I do care to some extent of course), if they got to shine to their full potential in that fight. For carry heroes this usually means auto-attacking, hence they have to stay alive as long as possible. But for many others this just means "use my active abilities, try to look scary, body block, and hope I'm still alive when my Q-skill is off cooldown". So you kill those heroes before they can use their active abilities, and when they already used them and are just looking scary, or very juicy kills, ignore them and move to your next target.

Your last target is, if you don't have any of the above (which will be the case most of the time actually) the enemy carry hero. He'll be trying to pick off your Behemoth before the poor guy can use his ultimate. You have some choices here though. You can either kill whatever followup that person has incoming (this is actually target number #2 remember), or you can try to kill him as fast as possible.

If you can't get anything of the above, attack whatever target presents itself, this works out better than you can imagine. Run to fight, press A + click ground, win. Though what I wrote above is generally a better way to handle things.

When applying all these things, you have to think about something though, which is "can I kill this guy fast enough?" because heroes like Hag or Valkyrie tend to survive the early burst sometimes, and just Leap or Flash away.

Another important thing is to use active items, a lot of people find themselves coming out of a fight when they actually had a lot more to bring to the table in that fight, possibly turning it or ending it fast enough to save a teammate.

I hope this helped, it's a very subjective part of the game, but I think this is a pretty good way to handle team fights when playing Flint.

Good Allies and Worst Enemies


There's a few heroes in this game you want to avoid at all costs, and some that pair up extremely well with Flint.

Generally, you want to have a well-balanced team with people who can initiate for you, and support you in a fight if needed. These heroes usually work good in any team, but there's one special combo I like to get when possible.

Some of the heroes that go well with everything, and are definitely a good pick to go with Flint:
Behemoth
Works really good in a trilane with you if you have another ranged support. Not so awesome to lane with since he's not that great of a sitting partner, more of a setting up partner.
Plague Rider
An underestimated hero, deals a lot of damage, gives a lot of lane control, and gives you armor on top of all this. Shouldn't be too hard to land kills if you lane with this guy.
Voodoo Jester
We love Voodoo Jester, stun and heals for a trilane, in a regular lane if you're not solo, he can go for Cursed Ground, if you Money Shot on top of that, or even on level three if you just Flare and attack, people should die.
Pharaoh
Not the best choice to lane with, but later on in the game his initiation and mummy walls make sure you never have to be in the middle of the fight, if he places them well.
Andromeda
For the trilane or later game stages, the stun and armor reduction works well for you since your damage isn't that high compared to some other carry heroes. The "get out of jail free card" she offers is also very handy.
Glacius
Good for his aura and slows, overall one of the best supports in the game.
Nymphora
Really, really nice to lane with. Your Flare makes sure her stun can always hit the target, and you can spam endlessly because of the mana she can keep giving you. A personal favorite of mine if you're not going to solo or trilane.
Witch Slayer
Useful in the way that he's always useful. Very solid hero that always brings good things to the table.
Chipper
Focus Buffer and Rockets. Two awesome abilities that can help you later in the game. Money Shot to give vision to chipper, pewpewpew Rockets, that's good for 1000 damage if everything hits. Or Chipper Rockets to give vision for a Money Shot works too.
Empath
Imbalanced hero for now, just have her sit in you during fights, put the Lifedrain on, place some Walls, and you can start bringing out the hurt on the other team. The attackspeed you get from it is godlike, combined with your high range and the move speed she can grant you, it's one of the best heroes to have in your team when going into the late game.

Ok those were some of the heroes that work really well with you, now here's some you should try to avoid.

Basically, you should avoid everything with an easy gap closer that can kill you if they come close. That's half the hero pool, but here's some that are really annoying.
Arachna
She simply has higher damage than you, and once she hits level 6 you're dead unless if you have a Homecoming Stone on you.
Madman
The Stalk / Barrel Roll combo will drop you very fast. In late game this guy will be having around 2 attacks / second, and he'll be critting for 500, so you want to stay out of his range.
Fayde
The HoN version of the Nerubian Assassin (DotA hero). Can combo you on level 6 and won't stop doing so until 20-30 minutes later into the game.
Succubus
Smitten is so balanced that you actually have negative damage if you don't have enough pure +damage items like Riftshards. Her ultimate goes trough magic immunity (the disable, not the damage), giving her team plenty of time to drop you even if you have a Shrunken Head activated.
Wretched Hag
Good Hag players will combo you on level 6 or 7. Hitting them with Money Shot is also pretty hard, catching these guys is one of the most annoying things to do. You'll need some very good team coordination for it.
Chipper
Will be killing you trough early-lategame with his Rockets and ultimate. Focus Buffer also pretty much negates your ultimate.
Rampage
People tend to underestimate Rampage, but I can tell you he hurts A LOT, and he just got some more love in the recent patch to look more like his DotA counterpart. Anyways when this guy hits you with his charge you're done for.
Deadwood
One-shot wonder. Throw branch, Grasp, Willowmaker in the face.
The "pull them fukers in" bundle and some others are all your personal enemies:
Devourer
Pharaoh
Gauntlet
Electrician
Once one of these guys get a hold of you, you're not going anywhere, and it's not easy avoiding them. For devourer I can tell you to keep your distance, many of them look like they're positioning themselves to hook you, but they'll just corner you into decay range, go om nom nom on your face and then finish with the hook.

The other ones just combo you, there's not much you can do against a Gauntlet, Pharaoh or Electrician if those decide that they want you