Bounty Hunter, Right Clicker or Support?

Hello, I am here again to bring up this topic.

Bounty Hunter is classically known as a 1 shot hero, his crit and invis allowing for a quick burst damage gank on an unsuspecting enemy. However, his carry potential isn't very high mainly because being outcarried and his ****py teamfight presence (But well tbf 20% bonus MS to the whole team is pretty good). And he is sometimes played as a support too, the Jinada slow proves effective at ganks.

Even if he plays roaming he will still get a ****load of gold from Track. I got a tip before that says picking BH to disrupt the enemy jungle (The Enigma ended up with 261 GPM. lol.) and even though I dont have good early farm I ended up with what, 400 or more GPM I think.

As I was saying, since he has poor teamfight presence and carry potential, is support/roaming Bounty Hunter more viable? Heck, I'd even go as far as dagon.

BH is a utility hero for me. I mean, it's fun to get Desolator and MKB and try to 1-3 shot people, but in many games, you're gonna be participating in team fights and that's rarely useful.

The hero is not a carry, time he spends farming is time he doesn't spend ganking, and since he gets like ~50-150% more gold from his ganks it doesn't make much sense to do else unless your health and mana are not suited for it.

So, when I play him, items I pick up commonly include Orchid, Solar Crest, Halberd, Vlads, Lotus Orb, even a Pipe at one point. Scythe if I'm snowballing really hard.

And my situation is much the same as yours. I pick BH to disrupt jungle heroes. If I do it right, I can soak some XP, and once i get to 6, I keep looking for ganks, and if all goes well, I have the gpm of a core despite getting the last hits of a support.

If you play him at higher ranked games he automatically becomes a support/utility hero, just because you wont get enough gold to ever get enough rightclick items.
The most important phase for the hero is the extreme earlygame, 0-10 minutes.
During this phase you should put as much pressure and try to set up as much kills as you can. Play a way of economy, if they have a jungler them **** him up.
For this reason i also prefer him as a full on roaming support, since you arent bound to a lane, and if you go ganking anyway a lot of XP gets wasted.

This ^

Dagon is fine if you're getting constantly Fed, can be a major asset in Teamfights by Killing a Support / Squishy Core even faster and are going to end the game in the next 10 minutes. It's a niche Luxury on Bounty at best.

---

Hopefully, your other Support will have bought Animal Courier + Observer Wards. If not, you'll need to buy these...never pick Roaming Bounty in low skill pubs... -_-






Mango










The main decision you have to make with starting items is how passive / aggressive you should be:-

• You can be greedy enough to buy Boots of Speed and focus on using Shadow Walk to steal Last Hits before running away as getting Kills will be difficult (i.e. vs. Chen or Enigma)
• You can be more Aggressive with a Stout Shield using Double Shadow Walk (explained further down) to manfight Supports / afk Junglers
• You need to focus on Dewarding the Jungle so you can Roam around freely, Sentry Wards are indispensable for this
  
  If you other Support bought Observer Wards, try to get them to Pool you a Ward so you can get Vision in the Jungle fast enough that you can "contest" the 1st Bounty Rune afterwards. You'll probably need to Skill Shadow Walk early on, but as always, don't skill an Active until you use it.
  
  As for contesting 1st Rune, try to get Vision of Supports from a safe spot in their Jungle. If they have Sentry Wards or Dust of Appearance, snagging the Rune is going to be suicide. If there's no detection and no Zeus, just sit on top of the Rune Spawn and take it as soon as it appears, THEN RUN. It's best to use Shadow Walk 10 seconds before the Rune Spawns, so you have time to get into position and another 10 seconds to get clear.
  
  Make sure to check their Mid player's Items, if they secured a Bounty Rune and started with only Pooled Tangoes and Iron Branches, odds are, they'll want their Bottle giving you a chance to snipe it. If they spend more Gold at the start and don't get a Bounty Rune, then head into the Jungle.
  
  During the "Laning" Phase, use Shadow Walk to steal Last Hits. If you see an opportunity, you can go for a Kill. The main reason why Bounty Hunter is such a strong Counter Jungler is due to the Bonus Damage from Shadow Walk. 30 Damage at lvl1 means that you will be able to get Last Hits against anything other than maybe Treant Protector. Also remember that the Bonus Damage Buff is applied as soon as you activate Shadow Walk.
  
  If you watch a Pro game, you'll notice that when they go for a Manfight with a Jungler, they'll use an Auto-Attack with the bonus 30/60 Damage, then during the animation for the 2nd Auto-Attak, they'll use Shadow Walk again, instantly applying another 30/60 Bonus Damage. With 60 Bonus Damage at lvl1, you'll be surprised at how effectively you can manfight Heroes and come out on top. Manfighting is worth it if you can either force the Jungler to leave and head back to the Fountain, or at least buy more regen, or if you can get a Kill.
  
  A you level up, take a point in Shadow Walk, Jinada and Shuriken Toss. At level 4, you can either get a 2nd point in Shadow Walk or Shuriken Toss. The 2nd level of Jinada does barely anything as at this point, you only be getting 15 Damage and a 9 second Cooldown means that your target will either be dead or safely away from you by the time you can use it again. Shuriken Toss deals more Damage than even 2 procs of Shadow Walk, but this is Magical Damage and it comes at the expense of a higher Mana Cost. Shadow Walk stays at 50 Mana at all levels, but the Physical Damage and Duration go up, while the Fade Time decreases making it a solid choice, especially when considering that Physical Damage is more effective against most Heroes at lvl4. Be sure to Max Shuriken Toss by lvl8 though.
  
  Bounty Hunter isn't much of an Asset in Teamfights as he takes a while to chip away at Heroes before he can Kill them. Your main use is BEFORE the Teamfight, scouting with Track and providing vision. Just make sure to move around and not get caught out.
  
  As for Items you need some form of HP and Mana Regen early on. Tranquil Boots + Soul Ring will solve both these problems by far, but sometimes Urn of Shadows + Arcane Boots works better. If you're feeling aggressive and want to snag Runes, a Bottle can also work, but this may deprive your Mid Laner so think carefully before buying one.
  
  As for extensions, Solar Crest is good for obvious reasons. You can also try Eul's Scepter of Divinity to prevent targets from escaping and to allow yourself to get repositioned after the 1st Jinada Slow wears off and offers a way to Purge Dust of Appearance. Black King Bar, Diffusal Blade, Rod of Atos, Heaven's Halberd, Vladmir's Offering, Orchid Malevolence are all solid choices in some situations too.

I'd Echo the sentiments about him being a utility hero. Like, he's a hero who plays around building an economic advantage. Because in the early game, he's all about disrupting the enemy, sniping last hits and couriers, setting up kills, forcing sentries to be bought, ect ect. It's all about being around the map, making life hard. And then after the laning stage, he's about making kills worth more, and turning drawn team-fights into wins, and won team-fights into massacres

I actually really like casual Dagon 1 as a pick-up on BH. It gives you a lot of burst to throw into a team-fight (Like, you can get a 400 damage dagon nuke, your physical nuke combo, and then multiple shruiken bounces), and it means you can still be of us in team-fights; 400 damage means you can kill someone much more quickly, which means you turn a 5v5 into a 5v4 just that little bit quicker, which increases the odds of you winning the fight from there.

Otherwise yeah, just build utility items, because you get a silly amount of gold from team-fights, and the utility items let you be more relevent in team-fights as you put track up on multiple people.

Eh... I'm a bit iffy on Xyrus' starting items.

1 x Tango (125)
1 x Orb of Venom (225)
1 x Sentry Ward (200)
2 x Clarity

is usually what I go for.