City of Tempest: Horus

How do you play Horus?

A very nice tactic :
3 mana build and buy attack speed first..i'm really no pro but it works pretty well

Im more like 3 mana, atk card

4 mana, get silence upgrade at level 4. Buy 1 or 2 mana regen then get speed asap followed by atk spd. If you want, you can buy mana pack to get early ult, otherwise wait till level 8 and just get atk dmg instead. No bs build yo, I used it in the euro tourney almost every game! I believe I maxed speed very early too.

The rationale behind this build is pretty simple. Crow smoke is a dodgeable auto attack, therefore if you attack at max range and he moves away, you will miss. This is why slow and speed are especially important before you get your ult. Also, your ult is the only thing that's you're gonna use to hit the turrets, so have fun casting it alot and watch it slowly massage the turrets to death.

You wanna just abuse silence to waste mana pots and get easy kills. Your priority should be 1) harass/kill the hero in your lane 2) constantly push your creep into his tower. The most dangerous part of the game for Horus is level 1 to 3 before you have silence. If you get past this stage at an equal level with the enemy hero, you are already ahead since you're going to be able to get a ton of easy kills after that.

basically what sareve said tho 2/3 mana is also viable

also avoid laning against melee unless ur some1 with AngeL's skill cos that early potkill-> constant sniping is a bitch for horus to deal with and a lot of ppl can mindgame that silence to do little to nothing early before u hav ulti/speed

also avoid trappers for obvious reasons

early ulti builds are somewhat impossible to pull off unless they try to engage u first with a pot cos ur damage speed just isnt high enough for them to die before all the slows wear off

I've played Horus inhouse consistently for probably the last 2 months and I'd wager myself being the best at him right now around here. Playing Horus will largely depend on who you are matched up with. Generally there are only 2 mana or 4 mana builds with Horus. I would not bother with any other number.

Versus Casters:

2 mana build. Avoid harassment as much as possible so that you can farm the first 2 waves of small marines and ghosts. This gives you 420 gas and then go hit 2 boxes for the rest you need for attack speed. Keep pumping attack and farm like hell. If you push sufficiently, you can get the tanks before 5:51 on your side and perhaps one of theirs (or two if they are really careless but this hardly happens inhouse). When you get speed is a matter of again who you are facing.

I generally upgrade silence whenever I want to start pot-killing, so you have to gauge that in your matchup. For this 2 mana build you can also buy mana pack and mana pot right after attack speed (850 gas) and upgrade your ulti early. Around level 5-6 you can kill with pot and ulti using this, however again not always the case depending on who you are matched up with. With enough points in attack and an upgraded silence, your feedback (v) will usually kill them early if they have no shields. Which, unless you are SungJ and start with 1000 shields, you will be fine.

My purchase order also varies depending who I am against. Speed booster early is important, and so is one mana regen and health regen because of harassment. After those three I would suggest shields and pots. Late game I have all regens, all mana packs and just kill without a pot.

Versus Melee

Versing melee can be a challenge. So, here are some thoughts:

vs. Blade Hunter - 4 mana, early ulti and pot kill. Against all melee try to catch them when they pot with silence by baiting and playing mindgames.

vs. Zeros - Zeros you can get away with 2 mana and damage because his pot kill is much less dangerous than the other melees early. Get armor early with Zeros and he shouldn't be a problem. Horus vs Zeros is a pretty hard counter for Zeros in many ways.

vs. Lur Cellant - This can go either way depending on what kind of build they are doing. If they're going for a farming build (2 or 1 mana) with Lur, you will have to match that and do your 2 mana build. If he goes 2 mana build and mana pack/mana pot first, you will have to match as well. If he's going for 4/5 mana early hook then you'll have to work in some mana into your build to pot kill. Although Lur suffers a huge handicap with hook because of the same reason when versing Duran with upswing - the time it takes to bring people in gives you a chance to silence and own his ass, so even with 2 mana build you should be able to do it vs any Lur.

vs. Genesic - I don't see Genesic being used inhouse that much, but my approach would be to outfarm him and watch what kind of build he's doing (i.e. if he's going for early crusher). Kind of similar to Zeros, although Genesic is a bit of a problem with Golems.

vs. Duran - This is the worst possible matchup as upswing is basically silence. Silence has a longer range than upswing, so this matchup will be about who silences who first which can be very frustrating.

vs. Quakers - Quakers can be a bad news bear for Horus because of his pushing power, so you need to do a 2 mana build to outfarm him. Quakers can kill very early, so you need to keep range from him and when you have 250 mana for feedback try to kill him first. Get armor early as well for this one.

All in all I have been playing the 2 mana build consistently and I have found it to be more useful overall than the 4. Getting attack speed first allows Horus to farm extremely well and you can usually get more tanks than your opponent. By the time you have 250 mana, your feedback will do a lot of damage and that is all you need at that point to kill if your silence is upgraded. I used to do 4 mana and early ulti but it simply doesn't do enough damage and his farming ability is compromised.

I don't know how horus builds vary nowadays, but sareve's stat used to be the standard one for horus.

Though Alex is right that horus needs atk speed as soon as possible rather than mana regeneration,

since horus is one of the few characters that rely on amplified normal attack for collecting creep.

So overall I would recommend sareve's stat with alex's shop orders for Horus

I used to do 4 mana build and get mana pack + mana pot first as the fastest way possible to kill with Horus. It just doesn't really work as well as 2.

I've done 2 mana build vs many different heroes inhouse and as long as they weren't a hard counter (like Chimera) then having 2 mana allows you to farm MUCH faster. I only recommend Sareve's build versus melee, but even then to be honest I would still prefer the damage for pushing, farming, etc. When you have 250 mana, with the 2 mana build your feedback does a lot of damage and you only need that + a few auto attacks and you can kill easily. It also sets you up to pot-kill when you get your ulti around level 8 or 9 or so much easier and you are still able to farm.

I don't focus on early killing with Horus anymore because Horus is designed to grow in power as the game progresses, so my emphasis is farming.

I get your point Alex. I guess this is also related to Lur's stat as well

but one of the reasons to go 4mana is to constantly use the amplify attacks.

4mana allows you to use the 125 mana amplified normal attacks (in case of lur 75+50 berserker) on and on,

so with 4mana you actually don't need any mana regen for farming creeps.

I do know you never like the idea of no mana regen, but 4mana horus/lur can live on without it for a long time.

The thing is, this is different than most skills. Let's take Zeros for example from the other thread and then I will review Horus' early game from level 1 - 3 as why this is important.

The argument is that a low mana build (as with most heroes) is not worth the damage you get compared to 3 or 4 mana that allows you to cast more spells at lower damage early on. Zero's Z skill does 225 at 2 mana and 200 at 3 mana, but with 3 mana you can cast it more frequently and therefore it's worth it to go to 3. Zero's Z skill is the same cost as Horus and I believe they have the same magic points so their regen is the same.

Now let's look at Horus' unique skill and why it is worth it to go 2 mana.

Level 1 - 2

Unlike a static skill that does burst damage, Horus' skill is damage over time. Horus gets +14 attack with every point, so after the first marines if you go 2 mana your damage is 40 with crow smoke (26+14) as opposed to regular 26 without it. Therefore, this is how many hits it will take with crow smoke to take out the next set of marines and ghost wave to get to level 2:

Marines @ 40 = 8 hits
Marines @ 26 = 12 hits
Ghosts @ 40 = 18 hits
Ghosts @ 26 = 27 hits

You can assume that if someone is harassing you heavily, the longer you are there the bigger the problem. I am pretty certain that with the 4 mana build, you are going to have to heal before level 2 if they harass you sufficiently because a) you cannot kill this wave fast enough and b) the Large Marines will come out before you kill them and increase the amount of damage you take from creep aggro + harass.

To give you an idea, and you should know from being one of the best harassers I play against - even with 2 mana build, I sometimes die before/right when I kill the final ghosts and get level 2 if they are harassing me a lot. And with 2 mana build you can kill the ghosts and marines before the Big Marines come out granted your opponent hasn't split the hell out of them.

Level 2 - 3

If you are doing 4 mana build, then your damage at level 2 is 40. If you are doing 2 mana build, your damage is 68. Let's take a look again at why this is important at this point:

Big Marines @ 68 = 19 hits
Big Marines @ 40 = 32 hits
Ghosts @ 68 = 11 hits
Ghosts @ 40 = 18 hits
Marines @ 68 = 5 hits
Marines @ 40 = 8 hits

And most importantly:

Gas tank @ 68 = 30 hits
Gas tank @ 40 = 50 hits
Gas tank @ 79 = 26 hits
Gas tank @ 49 = 41 hits

The last two figures are what the regular attack damage is plus stim at 2 mana and 4 mana respectively. What this means is that it takes you almost double the time to farm the tanks before 5:51 if you go 4 mana, giving your opponent time to check you out and steal them.

TLDR:

1.) Crow smoke is not an ability that is more useful if you can cast it more, but rather if it does more damage.
2.) With a 14 damage bonus and with about 15 attacks per crow smoke, the damage differences are significant.
3.) Horus will get harassed during level 1-2 and he must farm as quickly as possible.
4.) Horus must push the lane so that he can farm tanks in the correct spawning times.
5.) Horus will never die.