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Heroes of Newerth Pebbles Guide

By LukDeRiff - 15th February 2011 - 18:02 PM

Pebbles is the most powerful one man ganking machine that has ever wandered on Newerth. His burst potential is unrivalled and in the right hands he can almost single handedly win games by causing absolute mayhem within the enemy lines.
Sounds like fun? Trust us, fun doesn't even come close.

Pebbles


1. Status Overview


Damage: 61 - 67
Attack Range: 128
Attack Speed: 0.59

IPB Image Armor: 0.26 IPB Image Move Speed: 285

IPB Image 24 (+3.0) IPB Image 9 (+0.9) IPB Image 14 (+1.6)

Analysis: Is it really that bad? Yes, unfortunately it is Pebbles has one of the most terrible Status compositions in the entire game. He has the lowest base armour paired with lowest starting agility and the worst agility gain. As a consequence Pebbles is very vulnerable to any kind of physical damage. His starting Intelligence is also far below average which, combined with his minor Intelligence gain, results in constant Mana problems. To round the package of terrible stats he has the worst Movement Speeds of all Heroes. Luckily your strength saves the day, 24 to start off with is very decent and 3.0 Strength per level is amongst the best. Due to those factors Pebbles has a large, natural hp pool. He also has the highest base in the game which makes your laning phase significantly easier.

2. Skills Descriptions


Stalagmites

IPB Image

"And Wikipedia says you can only find Stalagmites in underground caverns, pfhhhhhh...."


Activation

* Target position - Enemy Units and Trees
* Type: Magic
* Range: 600
* Radius: 200
* Mana cost: 120
* Cooldown: 20

Deals 100/180/260/300 Magic damage and stuns each target in radius for 2 seconds.

Units affected by Chuck take double the damage.

Usage:This is basic stun with a fairly large AoE and strong damage output. So far so good but note that Stalagmites have a long cooldown and thus are not spamable. Only use this skill when you intend to go in. Also note that the stun is not instant, it has a travel time and delay which makes for a 0.7 second time window in between cast and impact at maximum range. That might not sound like much but you should definitely take into consideration as you will miss a lot of stuns if you don't (missing stuns = not good).
More precise information on the exact travel time of Stalagmites:
Spoiler: Code Proof and travel time calculation
The Stalagmites have a projectile speed of 1200 (if you are new you can easily get confused by the code so if you think it will confuse just move on).

Code Proof from stalagmites projectile.entity:

name="Projectile_Rocky_Ability1"

speed="1200"
gravity="0"

modelscale="1"
model="/shared/models/invis.mdf"

traileffect="effects/trail.effect"
effectscale=""
impacteffect=""
>


To determine the exact travel time you have to use the following formula:

cast range/projectile speed

As a consequence the maximum travel time is 0.5 seconds (600/1200 = 0.5) and the minimum is 0.05 (this is due to the fact that HoN runs on 20 Frames per Second, in other words 0.05 second time intervals so the shortest possible action has to be at least 0.05 seconds long).

While the travel time is important it actually is not the exact time in between cast and impact. The reason for this is that stalagmites has a delay before it impacts after it reaches its destination. This delay is always 0.2 seconds.

Code proof from stalagmites affector.entity:

name="Affector_Rocky_Ability1"

radius="200"
lifetime="1000"
impactdelay="200"
impactinterval="250"
maxintervals="4"
targetselection="all"
targetscheme="enemy_units"
effecttype="Magic"
destroytrees="true"
>











So the minimum amount of time in between cast and impact is 0.25 (0.05+0.2) whereas the maximum is a pretty long 0.7 seconds (0.5+0.2).


This spell moves from the solid category to the "omfg awesome" category because it deals double damage to chucked units. If you don't know already why this is so good then read on and you will. Promise.

More in depth information
Stalagmites is a skill with many tricks to it. The last one is that the damage is not inflicted instantly but is delivered in 0.25 intervals (4 in total) after the impact. This means that enemies that walk into the area of the stun while the stun is active will get stunned and damaged for the remaining intervals.


Chuck


IPB Image

"Bullying the weak sure is fun."

Activation

* Target Unit - All Units
* Type: Magic
* Range: 500/700/900/1100
* Radius: 300
* Mana cost: 120
* Cooldown: 10

Deals 75/150/225/300 Magic damage to enemy units in radius. Buildings receive 33% damage. Deals 15/30/45/60 Magic damage to thrown unit.

Usage:This is Pebbles second key skill. Again there is an aspect that is not stated in tooltip and that is absolutely vital to Pebbles. You can chuck units onto themselves/yourself which has the result that they take the full damage (damage to radius + damage to thrown units). Again the true power of this aspect will be explained further into the guide. Other than that this skill has another handful of other uses. It can be used as a positioning tool for chasing and initiating ganks or teamfights. Throwing strong Initiators onto the enemy can be very effective especially early on when portal keys are rare (the long range of Chuck supports this as well). Due to the relative low Mana cost and the short cooldown you it can be used for farming later in the game.

Dealing with Nullstones
Even though this skill is single targeted you can still use it on Nullstone carriers because it only is cancels if you throw someone onto a Nullstone carrier but not if you throw a Nullstone carrier. So you can often easily avoid problems with Nullstones by chucking units onto yourself.


Slabskin

Passive Bonuses
+2/4/6/8 Armor
-10/-20/-30/-40% Debuff durations

Usage:Very basically this makes up for your tremendously low Armour. It will help you survive as the game progresses. The debuff duration reduction is very nice and will also help you out survive later on. A needed skill, nothing amazing but not bad either and a lot more valuable than stats.


Enlarge


IPB Image
"Geodude, Graveler, Golem and, wait, who is the fourth dude ?"



Stalagmites

Increases cast range by 50/100/150.

Chuck

Increases bonus damage dealt to chucked unit from 20% to 35/50/65% of the AoE damage.

Passive Bonuses

+40 / 80 / 120 Base Damage
+5/10/15 Movement Speed
-20/-35/-50 Attack Speed

Usage: Another passive but this one is much better (it is your ultimate after all). Not only do you get bigger with point in this skill but also does it boost the cast range of Stalagmites by a fair amount (also increases the maximum time in between cast and impact 0.785) and increases the damage dealt to chucked Units (+45 Magic Damage per level in Enlarge). The minor boost to your Movement speed is nothing to complain about and with the extra damage you hit like a truck. Which leads us to the negative aspect of this skill: The Attack speed decrease. It looks huge and might scare newer player but let me assure you that this negative effect is not going to affect you too much since you won't be relying on auto attacks to deal damage anyway (at least early/mid game) and the added damage from Enlarge makes up for most of this loss.

3. Hero Strengths


Now that we took a close look at Pebbles stats and skillset, we can conclude what his true strengths. The first and most important strength pebbles offers is his insane burst potential.
A large part of that burst potential is of course the burst damage. So I am going to show you how much damage you can really achieve if you use your skills right.
The key to "burst" out tons of damage is the infamous "one-two" combo. This describes stunning a target with Stalagmites and immediately chucking that target onto itself. As a result that target will take absurd amounts of damage.

Damage of the Combo
Assuming that Stalagmites and Chuck are both at level 4 you deal 960 Magic Damage. The Damage
Formula:

Stalagmite Damage*2 + Chuck Target Damage + Chuck Area Damage

300*2 + 60 + 300 = 960

Taking the natural 25% reduction for Magic Damage into consideration you will be dealing 720 (960*0.75) "real" damage with this combo.
With levels in Enlarge you will get more damage till you reach a maximum of 1095 Magic Damage and 821.25 "real" damage at level 16.
Of course you will be able to get some auto-attacks in which increases you damage even further but this factor depends on the actual situation and thus should not be taking into consideration.

So we see that Pebbles has a lot of burst damage but there are other Heroes that can and will eventually have more burst damage than Pebbles (eg. Pyromancer). Pebbles still has the best burst potential of all Heroes for several reasons.

1. He can get most of his damage early into the game being able to break the thousands at level 9.
2. He can use his combo frequently because the longest cooldown you need to be aware of is 20 seconds long and the fact that the "one-two" combo only costs 240 Mana.

This truly differs Pebbles from other Heroes and makes his burst potential unique and superior to any other Hero in Heroes of Newerth.
Other than that Pebbles is a decent initiator. He falls off compared to most common Initiators (Magmus, Behemoth, Tempest, Pharaoh, Moraxus, etc) but with his AoE stun he can work as an initiator especially if you make good use of your chuck.
Be creative with and adapt to the situation, it is a major displacement skill and you can screw a lot of Heroes that heavily rely on positioning (most commonly ranged carries or nukers that like to deal damage from a safe distance). Of course you can also combo down a squishy Hero before the fight even starts which can, depending on your target, give your team a huge advantage.

Noteworthy is that he will hit very hard due to enlarge and if given some attack speed he can deal quite significant amounts of physical damage.

4. Hero Weaknesses


Pebbles can dominate and rule early to midgame so much that he of course has to have some drawbacks. A lot of them have their routes in his stats. Having the lowest base Armor in the game makes him very vulnerable to auto attack harass early on which combined with his very low movement speed and his extremely small Mana pool limits his lane presence by quite a bit.
Also, like any other burst ganker, he loses viability as the game progresses, Hero levels rise and his ability to instantly kill people fades. Yes, Pebbles can be very viable late game but he really needs a good early to midgame in order to do so.
Those two weaknesses lead to the ultimate weakness that Pebbles has:
You are not very good early into the game and you are not good in a long game. In between however you are amazing.
If you are prepared item and level wise. You need to hit level 9 and get your core items up as quickly as you possibly can (of course). A Pebbles that suffers early game will lose viability faster than almost any other Hero. Especially since he has to get into melee range in order to pull of his infamous one-two combo. You are a slow pile of rock early on and thus need items to aid you with your positioning.

5. Skill Build and Usage


IPB Image
"Worry none we shall tell you soon enough."
  1. Stalagmites
  2. Chuck
  3. Stalagmites
  4. Chuck
  5. Stalagmites
  6. Chuck
  7. Stalagmites
  8. Chuck
  9. Enlarge
  10. Slabskin
  11. Enlarge
  12. Slabskin
  13. Slabskin
  14. Slabskin
  15. Stats
  16. Enlarge
This is the one and only Skill Build we will ever need to use for Pebbles. You level Stalagmites and Chuck because you must get you burst damage up as soon as possible. Sure one early level in Slabskin would be nice to handle harass easier but trading this very precious skill point for less burst damage is just not worth it. Also you could get Enlarge earlier but again you need to max out you key skills which has priority above everything else. From there on it is all very obvious. Slabskin is better than stats and Enlarge is taken at level 9 and whenever possible after that.

That being said it actually doesn't really matter in which order you skill at the beginning as long you reach the following skill build at level 9: four points in Stalagmites, four points in Chuck, one level in Enlarge. The skill build displayed above and allows you to effectively gank from level 5 onwards and provides the most utility.

6. Item build


So we have analysed Pebbles strengths and weaknesses and thus we will adjust our item build to support our strengths as much as possible as well as reduce our weaknesses to a bearable minimum.

6.1 Starting Items:


You will need to live through the harass that will most likely come from any ranged hero. Other than that you should focus on being able to stay in lane and get your farm up, preparing to wreck havoc later on.

Iron Buckler
You have the lowest base armor in the game so an Iron Buckler is essential in order to deal with any kind of harass through regular auto attack harass, if you are up against weak harassers or melee Heroes this not advisable.

Mana Battery
Is very useful against Heroes that spam their spells in order to harass or get creep kills, like for instance Thunderbringer.

2x Minor Totems
Minor Totems are the most cost effective items in the game and basically belong into every starting set up. You can either turn them into a Power Supply (ideally) or sell them later on (it is only 53 Gold).


Fill the rest of you inventory with Health consumables to you liking.

Mana Potion
You typically won't need very much Mana early on so avoid Mana Potions for the most part. They can be an option if you are going into a tri lane that will fight the enemies tri. The additional Mana can prove useful in early tri lane clashes.


6.2 Core Items


Our core items will be chosen so they allow us to gank, gank and gank some more. In order to be able to do so we need to cover several aspects:

1. Mana - Your combo is on a short 20 second cooldown and you want to use it as often as possible. Unfortunately you mana is very limited so we will need to do something about it.
2. Mobility - The ability to move around the map quickly and transition from target to target is key so at least some mobility will be needed
3. Positioning - Your combo requires you to be in melee range so Positioning is key to optimize your ganking potential.

Striders or Steamboots
Which pair of boots you grab depends two factors: your farm and how aggressive you want to play.
If you are having an extremely easy time farming you are better off rushing for you Portal Key and then finishing Steamboots later on. Steamboots are also good if you plan on putting out some hurt with Auto-attacks or you feel that you will have trouble staying alive.
Striders however support very aggressive play and if you plan on ganking a lot from level 5 on, then they are your boots of choice.

Blood Chalice
As stated above you will encounter Mana problems if you don't get items to assist you. Blood Chalice is the best item to deal with this (at least for the most part part) because it gives you something you desperately need (Mana) while taking away something you have plenty of (Health). And remember: stats are never bad.

Bottle or Ring of the Teacher
As good as Blood Chalice is, it will not give you the freedom to use your combo every time it comes of cooldown. So another item will have to added be added. A Bottle is a no-brainer if you are going mid but is very useful in any case. You will be moving around the map a lot and as a result you will be able to grab runes from time to time and Pebbles is one of the Heroes that excels at using runes.
Another option is the ring of the teacher which is especially useful in tri lanes. However it is awesome anyway since it gives a nice Mana regeneration aura and some much needed armor. You can work without either item but having one of them makes your life a lot easier.

Portal Key
Positioning is key for Pebbles since you have to go into melee range to pull you combo off. Simply put:Portal Key is the best positioning tool money can buy and is core in any case. It will allow you to initiate team-fights as well.

Homecoming Stone
A good ganker has to be in the right place at the right time. Homecoming Stones are one of the most cost effective tools to achieve this goal and you should always carry one of them.

6.3 Luxury Items


Once you have finished your core you have everything you need to gank 24/7. Pebbles Luxury Items are totally dependant on the particular game which is fantastic. All of these items can be very useful in certain situations and absolutely useless in others. As a consequence you should always closely examine the situation and put some thinking into your item choice.

Kuldras Sheepstick

Kuldras Sheepstick is a solid item which can help you in many situations. It is outstanding if you are going up against a team that resolves mostly around one Hero in the late game (e.g. The Dark Lady, Madman, Swiftblade or Sand Wraith). Being able to take that Hero out of the fight for several seconds is very effective and thus Kuldras Sheepstick should be your first choice in those cases.
The stats are nice and the Mana + Mana regeneration will allow you to spam skills in order to farm up even more once you reach the later stages of the game.

Daemonic Breastplate

Daemonic Breastplate offers attack-speed and armor, two things you can definitely put good use to.
Your auto-attack Dps will be quite significant and the Aura can be very useful if you have a carry that relies on auto attacks. However if you have no other Hero that greatly profits from reduced Armor then another Item might be more suitable.
It also helps if your team needs you to deal some physical damage.

Frostfield Plate

A ton of Armor and a ton of Mana plus a very nice AoE Slow. If your team is either: very focused around teamfights or really lacks AoE Slows/Stuns you are going to be best of spending you money here. It will also provide you with infinite Mana which, again, allows you to spam your skills in order to farm later on.

Stormspirit

A rather cheap item which provides you with a lot of Mana, very nice Movement Speed, a bit damage and, most important, an awesome active ability. You can use it for several purposes, the most obvious being to stormspirit a ganking target after you used your combo. Other situations where it is very valuable are for instance to use it on yourself after you initiated to avoid getting killed immediately or to temporary remove a key hero of the enemy team during a team fight.
To be honest the uses of this item are nearly endless and to utilize it to its full effect you will have to experiment for a long time. In the right hands however it can be an extremely viable pick up.

Barbed Armor

Another Cheap item with nice stats. You can use the Mana and the Armor for obvious reasons and, again, the active is very good and very helpful. This item excels the most if team-fights start early and you need the survivability to successfully initiate. If you however manage to gank the enemy very effectively and they don't group up then you want to purchase something else.

Hellflower

Mana, Mana regeneration, Damage, Attack Speed and another nice active ability. Hellflower is extremely powerful if you can extend the ganking phase (= stop early team fights from happening) and there are Heroes in them game that heavily rely on the usage of key items and spells (namely nukers and disablers or Shrunken Head users). It also will allow you to deal significant amounts of physical Damage so it is good if your team need you as another source of physical damage.
Note that is basically offers no survivability and thus should only be gotten if you dominate already.

Codex lvl1
Very, very situational and by no means a standard choice. However it can be absolutely devastating when you are steam rolling your opponents. It will increase your burst damage by a very large amount but it, just like Pebbles, gets progressively worse the longer the game goes. And never upgrade it, it really is not worth it!

Why not Spellshards ?
Spellshards excel on Heroes that have a lot of AoE but not on single target nukers. Pebbles is a single target nuker despite having AoE spells. The AoE of your skills is so small that in ganks you will only hit one person most of the time in team fights you will still only hit a maximum of 3 Heroes so you can't really put the reduction to very much use. Apart from that Spellshards are extremely costly and you must upgrade them to level 3 in order to make them effective.

Spoiler: Detailed comparison with other items

The argument that most people bring when it comes to Spellshards is:

"It increases your combo damage which is very beneficial for you, this why you should get them."

Fair enough Pebbles relies on his combo so that sounds good but is the damage difference actually big enough to justify the very large price tag ?

In order to find out we will have to know how big the damage difference is. For this we will assume the Pebbles is level 16 because that normally around the time when you are able to finish you Spellshards level 3. So the combo will deal 1095 magic damage at this point.
With Spellshards level 3 you will reduce the enemies magic resistance from 24.8% to 0% increasing your damage effectively by 24.8%.

Single target extra damage: 1095*0.248=271

So you will inflict as much damage as 1367 magic damage to the chucked unit. Every additional target only receives damage from the Chuck AoE and from Stalagmites.

Additional target extra damage: 600*0.248=148

The choice of other options depends on which aspect you want to focus on: Single targets for ganks or AoE for team fights.

If you want damage for ganks then the most potent option is a codex level 1. Codex gives you a 400 damage nuke resulting in you dealing 1495 damage with your combo+codex which is significantly more. On top of that it only costs 3000 gold so you can get it when you actually need it: early on.

For team fights the most obvious choice is Frostfield Plate. It offers a 200 damage nuke in a 620 (!) unit radius which also slows for 40%.
For single targets it is not as good as but that is not what you get if for anyways. Important is the AoE damage. Lets calculate this for 2,3 and 4 Heroes which are caught in the AoE.

2 Heroes with Spellshards: 1367+748=2115
2 Heroes with Frostfield: 1295+800=2095

Spellshards offers more damage but that extra damage is really minor.

3 Heroes with Spellshards: 1367+(2*748)=2863
3 Heroes with Frostfield: 1295+(2*800)=2895

4 Heroes with Spellshards: 1367+(3*748)=3611
4 Heroes with Frostfield: 1295+(3*800)=3695

As you can see Frostfield deals more damage to three or more targets. That is not taking into account the cheaper price, 15 armor, 30 intelligence, the aura and the much larger AoE of Frostfield.
The only that really speaks for Spellshards is the cooldown reduction which at least in our opinion is not worth the price. Spellshards is not a bad item but it is surpassed by others.



7. Hero Specific Strategies and Techniques



7.1 When to pick Pebbles


Pebbles is not a Hero that you can fit into any line up and if you pick him you need to ensure that he suites your strategy. Pebbles relies on his ability to burst down his enemies as often and as much as possible. If now the enemy has several Heroes that can withstand this burst of initial damage Pebbles becomes less useful. For instance if the opposing team has several Heroes that are naturally quite beefy or will opt to gain survivability fast you are better of picking someone else.
For this reason you never pick him early but rather 4th or 5th to ensure that there are enough viable targets available.

Now how can we utilize Pebbles ? One of his roles within a line up is a "Bridge Hero". This term describes a Hero that is able to dominate a game so much by ganking or pushing that his carry can safely farm up and take over when the game comes to later stages. Pebbles is perfectly suitable for this role and should be given a solo lane to maximize his dominance potential if you want him to take to be the bridge for your carry.
Bridge Heroes also work for push strategies as they can weaken the enemies defense by constantly picking of people before your team is about to push and thus making pushing a lot easier.

You can also pick pebbles if you are going for a gank orientated team (picking gankers when you focus on ganking is clever, heh ?). However whenever you do this bare in mind that ganking alone never wins you a game so you should have at least one powerful pusher or carry in your team in order to be able to win the game. In this particular scenario Pebbles is only a piece in a ganking machine and thus doesn't necessarily need a solo lane.


7.2 Lane Choices and Partners


IPB Image
"The road to success is always under construction"


Even though Pebbles is certainly not one of the most versatile Heroes he has a surprisingly large amount of choices in as he is viable in a solo, can go with one partner or even work in trilane.

7.2.1 Solo Lane
Giving Pebbles solo experience and farm is hugely beneficial since it allows him to start ganking very early and the farm sets him up for an early portal key. In general the midlane has more potential since Pebbles can really help your team with some rune control and luck but a solo sidelane is also doable (of course only if you are facing a single opponent).

7.2.2 Dual Lanes
In dual lanes Pebbles is quite useful because of his AoE stun so you can quite easily build a strong dual stun lane with him. However his laning partner has to fulfil an number of requirements:

- He needs to be ranged as dual melee lanes are generally very weak. Preferable is 500+ Range since the ranged Hero has to do a lot of harassment in order to keep Pebbles safe.

- He needs to be item independent because Pebbles requires strong early farm to be effective and thus can not share the farm in a lane.

- He should have a targeted stun or at least a stun that is relatively easy to hit so Pebbles can walk into range for his combo.

While these requirements sound simple there are actually not that many Heroes that fulfil them but there are a couple of Heroes that come to mind (Note these are not all possible partners but much rather some examples). Also note that a Pebbles dual lane is excellent if you plan on dual laning mid since you can really make good use of the runes.

Witch Slayer

600 Range, a strong AoE stun and one of the least item dependent Heroes in the pool. He is called the Jack of all Trades for a reason and makes a formidable laning Partner for Pebbles. Also note that portal keys on Pebbles and Witch Slayer will offer your team strong initiation.

Voodoo Jester

600 range, a targeted stun and no item dependency at all. It is obvious that Voodoo Jester is a strong partner for pretty much everything. Also note that he offers a lot of versatility during the laning phase as he can play very aggressive with cursed ground or rather defensive with Mojo.

Nymphora

You can argue that the stun is relatively hard to hit but Nymphora has so much to offer in combination with Pebbles that this drawback does not essentially weaken the lane combination. There are several reasons for this. First is that the stun projectile might move relatively slow but the stun still covers a very large area and is quite cheap so a failed attempt doesn't hurt too much.
She also offers a lot of versatility as she can play defensive with her heal or offensive with endless Mana supply through Grace of the Nymph. But the real benefit from having a Nymphora on your team as Pebbles is the absurd amount of mobility her ultimate offers. Every 60 Seconds Pebbles can be anywhere on the map and he is guaranteed to have full Mana because of Nymphora. This way you put ridiculous amounts of pressure onto the opposing team.

Glacius

Has an immobilize with fairly short range but an insanely long ranged slow, also has 600 Range and does not need any farm. On top of that Glacius has his Aura which in conjunction with a chalice solves all of your Mana problems.

7.2.3 Tri Lanes
Tri laning Pebbles can secure an extremely early Portal Key which as a result can give your team a tremendous advantage. However you need to pay attention because Pebbles needs levels as well as farm. Keeping this in mind, it is often advisable to move the supports out of experience range whenever possible to give Pebbles as much experience as possible. On the other hand you can also put him into an aggressive tri lane because he can be a very valuable addition with his stun.
Again there are some Heroes that come to mind that complement Pebbles in a tri lane. Again there are some requirements that need to be met.

- Range. Both supports should be ranged and one should have at least 550+ Range. This is due to the fact that tri lanes with more than one melee are very vulnerable and two supports with short range are ineffective when it comes to harassment.

- Item independence. One of the supports should be completely item independent (primary support or "ward bitch") whereas the other one can require one key item which he/she can pick up later on in the game (seconday support).

- Stuns. Two stuns in one lane are scary but three can cause nightmares which is exactly what you want. Every Hero in a Pebbles tri lane should have a stun to maximize you killing potential.

So some Heroes that are strong primary supports (of course not all but some good examples)



And some examples for possible secondary supports:



7.3 Laning


Again there are different approaches to the laning phase depending on your lane. So we will have to differ in between solo, dual and tri lanes again. However keep in mind that at level 5 you combo already delivers a good amount of damage and you can counter tp if any other lane gets ganked in order to grab yourself an easy kill. Also note that there is a crucial moment after which you have to leave the lane and start looking for opportunities to gank. This crucial moment is marked by the purchase of your Portal Key.

7.3.1 Solo Midlane
Midlane offers many opportunities and gives Pebbles the desired experience and farm. You can sit in lane till you are level 5-6, try to secure runes but if you don't it is not too bad at this point (it still is bad and can cause a lot of problems, never forget that). After level 5 however rune control is essential in order to develop your full potential. Make sure you get runes and if your opponent is challenging you a lot don't be afraid to guess for runes and camp them to give yourself a 50% chance to secure the rune. Also use some of your precious Mana to push the creep wave onto his hill so he has to defend and you can capture the rune. When it comes to runes there are two that are extremely beneficial: Haste and Invisibility. Both allow you to easily access one of the sidelanes or even midlane if their mid is squishy (eg Soulstealer). Haste is without any doubt the best as you can basically force kills very fast while invisibility is not bad good teams will easily see it coming and prepare for your gank attempt.

7.3.2 Solo Sidelane
In the sidelane you are much more isolated and your early ganking potential is limited so you should focus on two things: levels and farm. Farm you Portal Key and then start ganking and open up the lane for your team.
However as stated above your combo offers significant damage at level 5 so if you are soloing the short lane (legion top/hellbourne bottom) you can camp the rune at the respective spawn and help killing mid with a haste or an invisibility rune. This can help your mid tremendously but requires some communication.

7.3.3 Dual Lane
Again try to get as much farm as possible. Due to the fact that Pebbles and his preferred laning partners have stuns you can often easily get some early kills. Let your laning partner initiate and follow up if you see an opportunity to do so. Again if you are in the short lane you can often help out by camping the respective rune spawn while your mid goes for the other one. This way you can get a kill on mid or in the case of a dual lane even on your own lane.

7.3.4 Tri Lane
Building a tri lane around Pebbles serves one purpose and one purpose only and that is securing an early Portal Key. And you better be getting one! So focus on farm. Don't move too far from the creeps unless a tri lane clash is happening/just about to happen or you suffer under heavy harass. If your tri lane is not under pressure the supports should try to move out of experience range so Pebbles can get more of the much needed levels. If you are in the short lane and your tri lane again is relatively safe send a support to camp the rune in order to help your mid, unless mid has unhindered rune control.

7.4 Choosing your Target



IPB Image
"Kittens know who to shoot at. Do you?"

Choosing the correct targets in team fights is essential to succeed with Pebbles. In ganks and especially in team fights you will often have the choice in between multiple targets and choosing the best one will make your life a lot easier. In order to choose correctly in between different targets you need to compare their priority. The higher the priority of a target the more favourable it is. Priority is determined by two major factors: Survivability (health, escape mechanisms and defensively usable disables) and Danger Factor (possible damage, disables or heals). With that in mind we can divide all Heroes in four categories:

1. High Survivability and High Danger Factor
2. Low Survivability and High Danger Factor
3. High Survivability and Low Danger Factor
4. Low Survivability and Low Danger Factor

Looking at those now we can clearly see that the Heroes of category 2 are the best targets and thus have the highest priorities. Heroes in category 3 are very non-threatening and on top of that very hard to kill which gives them a low priority.
Category 1 and 4 contain mediocre targets since both have drawbacks. Category 4 gives you an easy kill but the question arises if you actually gained very much from that early kill.
Category 1 targets are quite nice since taking them out will give your team a severe advantage but you can often not guarantee the kill.

As a result we can conclude:

High Priority:
Heroes that have low hp pools but can still be a serious threat to your team. Prime Examples are nukers like Bombardier or Thunderbringer, other Heroes of this category are supports with very strong ultimates (eg Hellbringer) or Heroes with spammable AoE disables (eg Mymidon)

Mediocre Priority: Heroes that are very dangerous but hard to kill (eg Armadon, Kraken or Balphagore) and Heroes that are easy to kill but have very little impact on actual clashes (prime example being Glacius). In between those two it is advisable to go for the certain kill as it gives you a guaranteed advantage. Another important factor is how fast your team can follow up. With several portal keys you can often ensure the kill on a category 1 target. In the end it comes down to experience and with time you will have a much easier time knowing which Heroes you can instantly kill.

Low Priority: Heroes that are hard to kill but cause no real threat to your team (sadly Legionnaire comes to mind)

7.6 12 or 21 ?


The one question that players have asked and argued about ever since the beginning of time is:

"Which is better Stalagmites into Chuck or Chuck into Stalagmites ?" or in simple words
"12 or 21 ?"

IPB Image
"The only real question is: Who is the one trolling ?"


Contrary to common belief you can get, at least in theory, the full damage both ways. However Stalagmites allows you to have 0.25 seconds in between activating both skills while Chuck into Stalagmites only gives you, inhumanly short, 0.05 seconds. If you believe us and don't like maths then you can move on and use 12 but if you want proof then here you go:

The damage from Stalagmites is not delivered in one impact but in four 0.25 second intervals meaning that the damage duration for Stalagmites is exactly one second. Also the damage is not delivered instantly but with a 0.2 second delay after the sun reached its destination.
Spoiler: Code proof from stalagmites affector.entity
name="Affector_Rocky_Ability1"

radius="200"
lifetime="1000"
impactdelay="200"
impactinterval="250"
maxintervals="4"
targetselection="all"
targetscheme="enemy_units"
effecttype="Magic"
destroytrees="true"
>











So the stun has to travel to its destination after that there is a 0.2 second delay and then there is an impact every 0.25 seconds which delivers damage (impacts four times).

Now onto Chuck. When a unit gets chucked it becomes the chuck projectile for exactly one second and only takes double damage during this period of time.
Spoiler: Code Proof from chuck projectile.entity

name="Projectile_Rocky_Ability2"

gravity="4500"
lifetime="1000"
useexactlifetime="true"

>













So now you will surely ask yourself how it can be possible to include all four damage impacts from Stalagmites if you use Chuck before Stalagmites ?

Well the reasoning, again, lies within the Hon engine which runs at 20 Frames per second (0.05 second intervals). As a result the engine will "think" that both spells have been activated simultaneously if you activate them both in in less than 0.05 seconds. This way you can include all four damage impacts of Stalagmites.
If this confuses you then we will try make this more understandable by showing an example.

Note that the travel time for Stalagmites has to be the minimum of 0.05 seconds (maximum cast range for minimum travel time: 1200*0.05=60) or it is completely impossible.

Lets asssume the following:

Chuck is casted at: 0
Stalagmites is casted in less than 0.05 -> Hon Engine "thinks" Stalagmites is casted at:0

Stalagmites impacts at: 0.20 (due to the delay)
1st Damage Impact at: 0.20
2nd Damage Impact at: 0.45
3rd Damage Impact at: 0.70
4th Damage Impact at: 0.95

As a result you have 0.05 seconds after Chuck to cast Stalagmites.

If you do it the other way around you have a whole 0.25 seconds in between both skills which makes it much easier to actually execute. Actually it is nearly impossible to execute a perfect combination with using chuck first due to biological reasons and if you don't believe that test your reaction time to get an impression of how short even 0.25 seconds is.

If you are curious how fast the GR crew is here are some examples (on average):

LukDeRiff: 0.21 seconds
Kustodian: 0.19 seconds
Oreb: 0.20 seconds
XFlame: 0.24 seconds
Snooopy: 0.21 seconds
TheCapitalist: 0.20 seconds
Tedde: 0.19 seconds

Alltime GR crew record: 0.00 seconds from Tedde

Of course this does not represent your ability to cast two spells after each other as fast as possible but it gives you a good idea of how extremely short 0.05 seconds is. Don't hesitate to post your own results and show us if you can beat our record (Screenshot or it didn't happen).

8. Replays and Videos




The almighty chu shows how devastating a solo mid pebbles can be.


xFin executing a Pebbles tri lane extremely well.

9. Thanks to


- S2ElementUser for his insight into game mechanics which have helped to solve several mysteries surrounding Pebbles
- Simba, Freshpro and Revyyy for their precious feedback
- CENTAUER for the sexy Thumbnail and Portal Image

10. Changelog


February 15, 2011 First release