Hon:Zephir

HON: Zephyr

This guide will cover how to build Zephyr into a carry/semi-carry tank hero. It focuses primarily upon his incredible jungle capability once he hits level 5-7, his high strength gain, and Wind Shield. I've played him about 8-10 times now, as well as experimenting with him in jungle in 1 player mode. I am open to additional suggestions and improvements. However I only want comments regarding a jungling Zephyr, building him as a tank, and whether or not this is a viable build. I do NOT want to hear comments about how he should be an early pusher, a support, or that Guide X says to build him this way. That is for another thread.

Stat Gain
Str 17 (+2.5)
Agi 18 (+1.Cool
Int 19 (+3.0)

High strength gain makes him a reasonable tank. High int provides more than enough mana for you.
Continue Reading...

Abilities
Leap
Description: Zephyr Leaps toward targets. Dealing damage in a line and pushes away effected targets
Damage type: Magic
Range: 550/700/850/1000
Mana cost: 100/120/140/160
Cooldown: 20/19/18/17 seconds
Deals 75/125/175/250 Magic Damage and pushes targets back

A blink with damage. Works as an excellent escape mechanism when getting ganked in the woods and also as a good initiator mid-late game.

Cyclones
Description: Zephyr spawns a small cyclone for every kill/deny he makes. Spawned cyclones patrol and damage in the area around him. activating the ability calls the tornadoes back for a health and mana.
Damage type: Magic
Range: 700/900/1100/1300
Mana cost: 75
Cooldown: 25/22.5/20/17.5 seconds
spawns cyclone which lasts 20/30/40/50
maximum # 5/6/7/8
deals magic damage for 15/20/25/30
heals 50health (need to check on mana returned)

The base skill that allows you to jungle efficiently once you hit level 5 to 7. Cyclones spin around you randomly, and do not go with you when you leap or teleport. They will instead path as normal units and eventually catch up to you.

Wind Shield
Description: Zephyr creates a shield which improves evasion and has a chance to return projectiles
Mana cost: 120/110/100/90
Cooldown: 45/40/35/30 secs
Applies for 10/15/20/25 secs
15/20/25/30% Melee evasion
15/20/25/30% chance to return projectile based attacks

The reason why you can tank as an intelligence hero. Also helps you jungle.

Wind Control
Description: Zephyr creates an area oh high winds increasing movement and attack speed for Allies and decreasing for enemies
Range: 600/800/1000
Radius: 550
Mana cost: 150/200/250
Cooldown: 120 seconds
Allies:
+30/40/50% movement speed
+20/30/50 attack speed
Enemies:
20/30/40% reduced movement speed
-20/-30/-40 attack speed

Useful in team fights and synergizes incredibly well with aoe disables such as Tempest, Tree, Lego. The ult seems bugged to me, as I don't really notice enemies with reduces movement speed. I haven't thoroughly tested it, but it doesn't seem like units are getting full -40%ms.

Skill Builds
1: Leap/Tornado
2: Tornado/Leap
3: Tornado
4: Leap
5: Tornado
6: Leap
7: Tornado
8: Leap
9: Wind Control
10: Wind Shield
11: Wind Control
12: Wind Shield
13: Wind Shield
14: Wind Shield
15: Stats
16: Wind Control

Explanation of Skill build – Tornado is maxed asap to improve jungle. Leap is taken at level 1 to avoid potential first blood situations and perhaps aid in your own first blood. It is not a big difference. Leap is leveled to provide additional aoe damage in jungling.
You won't be leaving the jungle till 20-25 minutes in, meaning you will likely be level 14 or higher. It doesn't really matter whether you get Wind shield or Control, as you shouldn't have the mana to use either one until you leave the jungle.

Item Build
Initial: 2x Runes of blight and Iron Buckler
Explanation: Runes for health regen and iron buckler en route to Helm of Black Legion

Lifetube + Beast Heart => Helm of the Black Legion
All the tanking items necessary to farm infinitely in the jungle. Anything less is insufficient, anything more is unnecessary.

Sword of the High + Mock of Brilliance Recipe => Mock of Brilliance
Turns you into a farming machine and provides a useful aura during team fights.

Marchers
Movespeed is good.

Core build finished.

From here on, you can take out an entire jungle in probably 30 seconds. Not to mention you will most likely last hit entire creep waves without trying, with radiance aura and tornadoes. You should be able to easily farm any item within a short period of time.

Two avenues are now open to you. You can either go more control/disable and get Totem of Kuldra (sheepstick) or Hellflower (silence stick) or tank up more and get Frostfield plate while providing another nice aura. Frostfield plate seems to fit your rule slightly better though. In addition, you can choose to upgrade to phase boots as well.

Level Breakdown
Levels 1-7
Take bottom lane as Legion, top lane as hellbourne. Normal laning. Last hit, deny, and avoid harass. Pull neutrals to your creeps. By level 7, you should have farmed your lifetube and hopefully almost a Beast Heart.

Level 7-14
Jungle and gank your lane if the opportunity arises. Make sure you always keep mana for Leap to avoid getting ganked in the woods. Also keep an eye out on the rune if nobody else on your team is bottling it. You should be able to buy your Beast Heart by 7.

Level 14+
Exit jungle and push. You should be 2 levels higher than most solos, unless someone has been fed. You also should have radiance by this point. Game time wise, it should be around 22-25 minutes, depending on creep luck and how well you did levels 1-5.

Jungle Guide
You will begin jungling at level 7. Jungling at 5 is possible with a Helm, but is much harder as your tornadoes do not last as long. You often cannot kill creeps fast enough, and thus will be taking much more damage and may need to go to the fountain to heal. Thus, you may still level faster by staying in lane, although if you are having trouble last hitting in lane, it may be more beneficial.

Different creeps are better and worse for you. You ideally want many, low hp neutrals, as they will generate more tornadoes. Here is a ranking, where 1 is the best. I don't remember the names, so I use descriptions.
1) Low level camp - The group of 5-6 goos
2) Low level camp - Group of 3 poison spitters or group of 3 quillboar things
3) Three Ogres or Three wolves
4) 3 Birds or 3 Skeletons
5) Two Bat worgen type things
6) 2 Minotaurs
7) 2 Catmen

There is some luck involved here. If you get all catmen or minotaurs, you will have a harder time tanking damage. These camps have only 2 creeps, high HP, and do much more damage. Try not to engage these camps until you have a full set of tornadoes, and even then, if there is an alternative, I would recommend going there until you are higher leveled.

Start by leaping into the low level camp to build your tornadoes. Then move to a rank 3 or 4 camp ideally. Once you have full tornadoes, you should be able to take down any camp within 10-15 seconds. Always use leap on harder to kill camps to minimize damage you take, but always save enough mana to escape incase of ganks.

Additional Tips:
Creeps spawn initially at 0:30 and then on the minute, every minute. If there is any unit inside the camp, when the minute strikes, they will not respawn. However, if you attack the camp and walk away, they will follow you. If they leave the camp and the minute strikes, a new set of creeps will spawn, meaning you now have a double stack. Doing this is extremely important, as it greatly improves your farming rate. If you approach a camp at around the 45sec mark, wait till around 50-52, attack them once, and then run as far as possible. This should stack the camp and then you can kill them all at once with leap and tornado AOE.

If it is around 40sec, too early to creep pull, try to walk slightly away from the creep camp. Then kill the creeps there. The corpse takes some time to decay (not sure on exact timing here but would guess ~7sec) and if the corpse is in the camp, the next creep camp will not spawn on the minute. Therefore, killing them slightly outside their camp will make the new camp spawn.

When attacking, try to stand between creeps. Your tornadoes spin around you randomly, so having creeps on all sides maximizes their effect. Also, when leaping, leap in between and slightly past the creep camp. This will cause the tornadoes to have to move through the creeps when they try to catch up with you. This also triggers the Catman and Minotaur to stomp, but if you leap past them, they will be pushed away and stomp nothing. This saves you either the extra damage from Catman stomp or the 2sec stun from the Minotaur stomp.

If you know your tornadoes are going to vanish soon, eat them to regain hp and mana. Typically, you can do this right before killing a low level creep camp, as your tornadoes are about to be replenished. This is especially useful when you encounter the 5-6 goos.

If you look at your lane and see that nobody is there, go out and try to clear out the whole wave with your tornadoes+leap. It can give you a nice extra boost while waiting for good creep respawn.

Once you hit the jungle, you will level faster than a solo hero in lane. You should never have to go back to the fountain to heal if you jungle correctly.

After the Jungle
After you have farmed your Mock Brilliance, you should exit the jungle to help your team. Unfortunately, this build requires that your team play 4v5 for the first 25 minutes or so, which is not unmanagable but can be difficult with certain hero lineups. However, you should be higher leveled and well farmed, so you can normally swing the balance.

Hero kills are simple and involve blinking past the direction the enemy will flee. This ensures if they are running, they will have to walk around you. In addition, you can drop your ult, but try to position it so that the edge is where the enemy is and he will have to walk across the entire diameter to escape. This will give you the longest period possible to attack. Once he escapes the ultimate, you can run along side them, letting tornadoes and MB damage, until Leap coolsdown and you can finish them. If at any point he turns and attacks you, activate wind shield and fight. You will most likely win any 1on1 as soon as you leave the jungle, unless it is against a fed hero. Tornadoes and MB will eat people alive.

Team fights are basically you leaping in and dropping your ult. If there is a better initiater, let them drop their stun/disable first, then leap in

Tornado Tips
Remember that you can always eat your tornadoes and heal.

Try to maintain 8 at all times. With MB and current tornadoes, you should be able to nab almost every last hit on a wave by just standing there, so it should constantly be refreshed.

If you are fighting a melee at low health, you can attempt to kite them. When you run, the tornadoes tend to trail behind you, meaning that if an enemy is chasing you, they will continuously be taking damage from the tornadoes. When he beings to get low hp, he will turn around and give up the chase. At this exact moment, leap back past him and attack.

Final Comments
From my personal play, my best times to getting MB has been 21 minutes (got one kill), my worst was around 28 minutes (bad creeps, needed to return to fountain, and died once), and on average I get around 24 minutes. If the rest of your team is unable to survive the early game without you, then this strategy is not viable. You will lose map control and the enemy may often gank woods, disrupting your farm. However, if your team can survive, and even be slightly negative, you will emerge from the jungle and rape.

Wind shield can be unbelievable sometimes. Even at low hp, you can often kite or attack enemies, while MB and tornadoes burn them down. Meanwhile, you will evade multiple hits in a row. Then you can leap back and kill them. This works unbelievably well in pubs where many players are unfamiliar with this hero. If you are facing unescapable situtations, just fight and often you will get lucky and nab a hero kill. Agressive play is the optimal way to play this hero in my opinion.

Follow along side enemies instead of attacking. As I said before, tornadoes trail behind you, so if you are chasing after a hero, you do not get the full effect. It is better to stop attacking 1 hit early and make sure you are either beside or in front of the enemy hero as he is fleeing. Follow along until leap is ready, and then go in for the kill.

Once again, I believe that Wind Control is not doing as the tooltip reads at the moment. I do not notice enemies with reduced movespeed when under Wind Control. If I am mistaken, please let me know. However, if I am right and it eventually gets fixed, it will just make ganking that much easier, as you now have a reasonable slow.