Strategy
Gameplay
| Playstyle | |
|---|---|
| Windranger is a very flexible hero who can be played in any lane, and who can perform many roles from support-disabler to DPS carry. | |
| Pros | Cons |
|
|
Carry
Windranger can be a very aggressive carry. As carry, she needs aggressive supports like Crystal Maiden, Oracle, Winter Wywern, Mirana or another support with stun.
Support
Windranger is good support, when she can use Shackleshot everywhere. As support, she is still low but can do some damage to enemies.
Ability Builds
| Generic Windranger | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 20 | 25 | |||||
 |  |  | | |  | | | |  | | | | | | |  | | | | |||||
Talents
| Hero Talents | ||
|---|---|---|
| Focus Fire Kills Advance Cooldown by 18s. | 25 | Windrun Cannot Be Dispelled |
| -12% Focus Fire Damage Reduction | 20 | +0.75s Shackleshot Duration |
| -15% Powershot Damage Reduction | 15 | -2.5s Windrun Cooldown |
| -2s Shackleshot Cooldown | 10 | +20% Powershot Slow |
Tips & Tactics
General
- In general, Windranger should focus on either maximizing her potential in disabling enemies, or increasing her raw damage and upgrading her ultimate for physical DPS; it is not feasible to aim for both. The former may be done as a support or core, however the latter is only feasible if Windranger is given farm priority.
- Played as an offlaner, it is recommended to get Windrun first in order to give yourself survivability against the enemy's supports. You have decent last-hitting capability due to being a ranged hero with a low base attack time, and your escape ability can save you from ganks if used properly. Once you have enough levels, you can use Powershot to get last-hits from a safe range and to harass down the enemy heroes enough to give yourself a chance at a kill.
- As a mid, Windranger should purchase an early Null Talisman for more last-hitting power, and save up for a Bottle to give her mana for her spells. Survivability is less of an issue as the enemy's supports will have to rotate in order to gank you, so priority should be given to beating the enemy's mid and leveling up your nukes and disables so that you have a chance to get a kill.
- As a safelane support, Windranger can focus on harassing down the enemy's offlaner using her ranged attacks, and landing full-duration Shackleshots during ganks. Priority here is given to protecting the safe-lane carry and shutting down the enemy offlaner, so nukes and disables take priority.
Abilities
Shackleshot
- Aimed properly, Shackleshot can stun two enemy heroes for almost four seconds, giving your team a major opportunity to capitalize on.
- Positioning is very important when casting Shackleshot, both on yourself and the enemy. Even if shackling two enemy heroes together is not possible in a fight, tying one enemy hero to a tree or nearby creep still gives you a very long-duration disable. Always keep an eye out for possible latch targets, as Windranger has entire treelines to use when fights occur in either jungle.
- Shackleshot is very powerful when used in conjunction with any other leading disable. As smart enemies will deliberately attempt to avoid lining themselves up with creeps or trees to allow themselves to be shackled for the full duration, stopping them in their tracks first will give you much more time to re-position yourself around them and cast Shackleshot from an angle of your choosing.
- One important facet to keep in mind about Shackleshot is that you do not have to directly cast it on your target in order to disable them. If there are nearby enemy creeps, you can line up Shackleshot on them, and attempt to latch the enemy player as the spell's secondary target. This can be a very useful tactic if the enemy is deliberately attempting to avoid putting themselves between yourself and the treeline or nearby creeps.
- In concert to the above, Shackleshot is capable of latching enemies through Linken's Sphere in this way. By targeting the enemy player as the secondary target of Shackleshot, it is possible to stun them for the full duration regardless of their Linken's Sphere. You can then break the Linken's at your leisure during the stun duration using an expendable targeted ability such as Force Staff.
- While Shackleshot's mini-stun is very weak, don't forget that it is a mini-stun regardless. This makes it useful if you need a fast interrupting disable against enemies with powerful channeling spells such as Dismember, Death Ward, and so on.
- If there is no tree, secondary Hero or creeps near a Shackleshot target, you can still stun them long enough by using Shackleshot, then quickly use Blink Dagger and place Ironwood Branch behind them.
Powershot
- Powershot is a potent damage nuke with an extremely long range. It is generally recommended to max it out first, as its long reach allows you to harass, last-hit, scout and kill from surprising ranges.
- Powershot's long range and nuking power makes it ideal for sniping fleeing enemy heroes, as well as hitting invisible enemies that you know the approximate location of. As well, keep in mind that you can hit multiple enemies with it at once, so it pays to line up your shots.
- Remember that Powershot grants vision over the arrow's travel path. Use this to your advantage to scout out areas ahead of moving in, such as checking if enemies are waiting behind a certain treeline to gank or if the enemy team is killing Roshan.
- Powershot's long range allows Windranger to hit multiple jungle camps with a single cast if she lines it up properly. This allows her to farm quickly in the jungle, or even use Powershot to draw aggro and stack more than one neutral camp at once. You can also farm some of the opponent's camps from your side of the river.
Windrun
- Windrun is a very flexible spell as it provides Windranger with both movement speed and evasion, allowing it to be used both defensively and offensively. If you expect to encounter ganks from the enemy team, one early level is usually wise.
- While the primary use for Windrun is as an escape spell against enemy ganks, it also has uses as an offensive spell. Used aggressively, Windrun allows you to chase down enemies and slow and body-block them for teammates to catch up, and ignore their physical attacks if they try to trade attacks with you. The bonus movement speed also allows easier positioning for Shackleshot and Powershot, but mind the mana cost and cooldowns so that you don't get caught short.
- If you are getting ganked and cannot outrun the enemy with Windrun, consider activating it once the enemy's disables have been used and then channeling a Town Portal Scroll for escape. The enemy will be unable to hit you with physical attacks, preventing them from killing you as you teleport.
- In a similar vein, Windrun combined with Healing Salve will prevent attacks from cancelling the salve for its duration, potentially allowing you to survive a tough situation early in lane.
- Depending on how much of a threat you are posing to the enemy team, they may buy a Monkey King Bar to counter Windrun's evasion, so be aware of that possibility if you are relying on Windrun to evade enemy attacks in teamfights.
- Use Windrun to tank towers and Roshan for your team.
Focus Fire
- Focus Fire is a very potent spell that allows Windranger's physical damage to scale. It is useful to get at least one early level no matter what role she is played in.
- An early level of Focus Fire allows Windranger to deal tremendous damage to towers if left alone. If possible, try to bait out the enemy's Glyph of Fortification prior to casting Focus Fire on their tower, so that they cannot reduce the amount of damage your ultimate does to it.
- Unless you are building a DPS-focused Windranger, it is not recommended to target the enemy's main carry with Focus Fire at the start of a teamfight, as it is not guaranteed that you will be able to do so for the full duration of the spell. While you can use the spell to whittle down lone targets during ganks, it is most profitably used against enemy towers if you cannot guarantee that it will do enough damage to the enemy's carry in teamfights.
- Due to the amount of raw attack speed that Windranger gets from her ultimate, it may be wise to build attack modifiers with stable proc chances, so that you can proc them multiple times over the course of the ultimate. For instance, a Maelstrom has a 25% chance to proc on each attack and thus can deal a significant amount of magical damage in a short period of time, however a Skull Basher will go into cooldown for two seconds once it procs, preventing you from stun-locking a foe.
- Combining Focus Fire with Windrun allows Windranger to keep her target slow and showered with arrows.
Items
Starting items:
- Tango regenerates health for Windranger to stay in lane.
- Healing Salve also restores health.
- Clarity supplies mana for Windranger to use Powershot for last hits.
- Iron Branch gives cheap attribute bonuses to increase damage, mana, and health.
Early game:
- Phase Boots provide movement and attack damage, so Windranger can run down enemies with Focus Fire.
- Magic Wand gives burst healing and mana regen in the middle of fights.
- Null Talisman gives cheap attributes and spell damage, making Windranger stronger in lane.
- Infused Raindrops shrugs off magical burst damage, which Windrun does not block, giving Windranger an easier time versus nukers.
- Bottle helps Windranger manage runes, as well as restoring her health and mana.
- Javelin greatly increase damage output of Focus Fire in early game.
Mid game:
- Blink Dagger allows Windranger to instantly reposition for her abilities, especially Shackleshot, or escape incoming enemies when combined with Windrun.
- Maelstrom greatly increases Windranger's flash-farming speed, and Focus Fire will proc Chain Lightning repeatedly for area damage in teamfights. Upgrading to Mjollnir improves Chain Lightning and makes Windranger less reliant on her ultimate for damage.
Late game:
- Monkey King Bar greatly increases Windranger's damage output. Pierce can proc multiple times during the course of her ultimate, bypassing evasion and dealing bonus magical damage.
Situational items:
- Scythe of Vyse grants extra intelligence to increase her base damage and more mana regeneration to cast spells. The hex can serve as a potent complement to Shackleshot or used to instantly hard-disable priority targets.
- Daedalus grants a huge damage boost with Critical Strike, allowing Focus Fire to shred most enemies very quickly.
- Linken's Sphere gives Windranger stats across the board and powerful mana regen. Its spellblock helps to make Windranger much more slippery when evading enemy ganks, or gives her a larger window of opportunity to cast her disables in a teamfight without being disabled herself.
- Eul's Scepter of Divinity is a good cheap utility item for support Windranger. The increased base movement speed greatly augments Windranger's mobility in combination with Phase Boots and Windrun, and the extra intelligence and mana regen give her much more utility with her spells. The active can be used to disable an enemy and position yourself for landing a full-duration Shackleshot, or for generally disabling enemies or giving yourself temporary invulnerability (while removing debuffs from yourself) during fights.
- Black King Bar protects Windranger against magical damage and disables, making it an important carry item; combining Avatar with Windrun will make her nearly untouchable.
- Nullifier gives bonus damage, prevents enemies from using defensive items like Ghost Scepter, Shadow Blade or Eul's Scepter of Divinity, and locks enemies down during Focus Fire.
- Orchid Malevolence shuts down ability-dependent enemies and gives bonus damage with Soul Burn. It can be upgraded to Bloodthorn for a large DPS increase and True Strike to counter evasive foes.
- Force Staff is very effective and versatile for positioning a Shackleshot, allowing you to force a unit in front of a tree, force a creep/unit in front of another unit, or force yourself into position. The additional intelligence gives her more mana and base damage as well, and in emergencies it can be used to displace yourself during escapes.
- Desolator gives Windranger additional damage output, as well as an armor reduction debuff that can be applied to buildings as well as heroes.
- Rod of Atos can hold a target down so that Shackleshot may be cast from an angle of Windranger's choosing.
- Aghanim's Scepter improves Windrun's speed boost and gives it 2 charges, making Windranger very mobile and evasive, though the attributes are unimpressive for a carry.
