Tips for Tidehunter

Well i was surfing around the guides and i just realized there are few guides for tidehunder that worth reading (no offence to the writers but go in depth and learn coding) one of the those rare cases is Peppo_oPaccios guide wich is pretty good but a little old.
So i want my second guide be for the Tidehunter and i need tips cause i haven't played with him for i don't know 6 or seven years cause he wasn't my type of hero but after patch 7.xx i got interested in him. so i've been playing with hiw again for a weak or so but i need those pro tips to maximize my game play and of course the upcoming guide.
so tell me everything.

I don't play the hero nor know much about it so I can't really help with tips, but I can direct you to where you can easily check out what pros (and less pros since open qualifiers) are doing with him at this moment:

https://www.dotabuff.com/esports/leagues/5316/matches?hero=tidehunter

Good luck with your new guide!

I would say it's worth being as familiar as possible with the hero before writing a guide, so try to spend some serious time with him.

On specific tide stuff I would say:

- Tide is a hero who is very strong when in front, but so-so when behind. It's really important to get the right lane matchup for him. He can dominate 1v1 versus most melee heroes, but put a zoning support like Venomancer against him and he's living on scraps.

- Tide is built for team fights and 5 manning. You need to fit him into the right drafts for that to work. Ideally with other team fight heroes, and cores who can output good damage against stunned targets.

- Tide's a very good farmer thanks to Anchor Smash, but he needs levels to be able to jungle/ancient effectively.

- Many people don't seem to appreciate how strong the self-purge on Kraken Shell is - it's almost a definite Ravage enabler, but you sometimes see people missing their opportunity by not paying attention to having control of their hero back! One of Tide's strengths is that it's just so hard to stop him from getting Ravage off.

- Despite not being especially damaging, Tide is a core hero (albeit a utility one) who needs farm and levels to be effective. While the Blink/Guardian Greaves route is generally his best one, there's no reason he can't pickup items like Pipe of Insight when needed.

- Never waste Ravage. This doesn't mean hold it back if it'll mean a definite kill on the enemy #1 alone, but never throw it just to get yourself out of a scrape. The cooldown and lost impact is too high.

Tide is not a hard hero to play. Just blink in and press R when enemy BKB's are down.

The best advice I can give :

- Skill build in lane : go full 0/4/4. Yep, don't skill Gush, and you can even skip Ravage until you're 7 or 8. The point is to have max level Kraken Shell and dominate your lane. 48 damage block in the early game is a complete gamebreaker, you take literally no damage.

- Start with lots of regen. Tide is an amazing laner thanks to his W and E, but he has no sustain. Get at least a tango and a salve. Tide can solo against pretty much any melee carry + support dual lane, and can even solo against trilanes if he gets a few levels.

- Stacking ancients and clearing them with a 0/3/3 build is a great fallback plan. But dominating your lane is better.
(did I say that you should max W and E and ignore your other skills? This bears repeating.)

- Anchor Smash reduces a carry's attack damage by 60% for 6 seconds, and it goes through BKB. Don't underestimate the anti-carry potential of that skill, it scales extremely well into late game.

- Item build is essentially always the same. Arcane Boots -> Blink Dagger -> a mana item -> Refresher Orb.

mana item can be Force Staff, Blade Mail or Point Booster. All 3 are good. Personal preference is blademail, since it allows him to sit as a frontline anti-carry in fights, making him useful even when his ult is down. PB goes into either aghs or octarine later.

- That, or arcanes + Mekansm into blink.

- Take the cooldown reduction talent at level 25. It stacks perfectly with octarine for a 90 second cooldown ravage. And it reduces the cooldown of Refresher Orb as well. OSfrog.

What happened to Shiva's on Tide?

When do you buy it? After blink? You're just delaying your refresher by 5K gold for no reason. After refresher? Tide can't rush refresher after blink because he doesn't have enough mana. In the late game? Sheepstick or octarine is better at that point.

Also, just compare shivas with Blade Mail.

Seriously shivas needs a buff. It used to have the niche of being the only big utility item with sheep. Now that there's a billion utility items, shivas is just not that great.

I play 2-3 games a day with him until i master him (it will take 1-2 months)(yeah i'm that serious about my guides)
shiva is not that good and octarine is much better cause it allows you to spam Anchor Smash and make the life of the enemy hard carries like hell (a big mention to PA).

You could potentially still buy Shiva's, it's certaintly not a bad item on him. I'd put it as 'situational' - against teams with a lot of right click, especially strength heroes who's DPS would be more effected by the reduced attack speed.

As Hamster said, there may be other items you'd prefer at this point ( Blade Mail is great bang for the buck, Scythe of Vyse is so rarely a bad choice).

Well... I may not be able to come here for a few months, not gonna go through details but let's just say, **** happened. the guide is going to be delayed for some months.
The UnTold fans don't need to worry cause most of my work is on the paper and not gone to ****. any way the guide needs to wait for some month, so does dota 2. *sigh*
See you all later.

OK I tried sth different today.
Our #4 built mek and i was doing well so i decided to delay refresher for approximate 7 mins and built solar crest with the gold that almost always went for mek. It was really good and gave me an insane physical damage immunity combined with krakens shell (I know it weakens KSs purge but there was not many heroes with such awful spell in enemy team). Shine combined with gush melted enemies down and let our right click heroes destroy them in a blink.
So i wanted to ask you is this item viable enough for tidehunter?