Let's Get 12-Slotted: Pano's Guide To Jungle Lone Druid

I completely agree that you need to fill the 3 empty item slots on Lone Druid, and that they are essentially wasted right now.
I simply don't think that you should fill them with wraith bands. They don't really make you tankier, they only give DPS to Lone Druid but he really doesn't need DPS because we're building the bear as a carry not LD.
The things I like to build on LD to fill these slots :
- A casual Cloak : extremely cheap and helps tank up a lot
- a Medallion of Courage. Medallion is considered core on lycanthrope, I have no idea why it's not considered core on LD just as well, even more so because you have all the slots you need for it.
Medallion gives you armor. It allows you to solo Roshan early just like Lycan does. It stacks PERFECTLY with the armor reduction from Assault Cuirass for a total of -11 armor. I even get Desolator on the bear for -18 (!!) armor reduction in total, which reduces the armor of anyone to below zero. IMO armor reduction is almost as effective as Radiance for farming faster, with the medallion you just melt those tanky big creeps and ancients.
- a casual Talisman of Evasion. 25% evasion helps tank up a lot. Make into Butterfly if you're really fed.
- a Ghost Scepter. Situational, but very useful against right-clickers.
- a Blade Mail. Seeing how LD gets focused, it's an awesome pickup :)
- a casual Morbid Mask so Lone Druid can farm jungle on his own without the bear (if you have Radiance), to be built into a Vlads later
- it's likely you'll need Black King Bar at some point, so a casual Ogre Club could work
- a casual Chainmail to be built into AC later
etc...

I think your approach is interesting because even in pro matches you would see the lone druid end with only tranquils and gem for example, having only radi and some other items only on the bear.

Have you thought about other effective items? Like getting armlet for the druid himself, or getting bracers instead of wraith bands? Have you tested whether the bear can use a bkb or other activated items beside phase boots? What would be the ULTIMATE items for truly 12 slotted Lone druid, that is, in MOST situations?

Nice guide.

If what you want are survivability, why no go for Bracer instead of Wraith Band?

Also, why do you get Orb of Venom before Phase Boots on the bear? I can't see why you want the orb if you're jungling...

I did not. I suggested Blades of Attack over Wraith Bands, which is equally effective in the jungle as a Wraith Band, annd doesn't hinder your farm rate




That totally doesn't contradict itself...



You can still keep farming regardless, you can just last hit better and you will still be more-or-less useless in fights. You can't go into the jungle with a bearless Lone Druid, wraithbands or no wrathbands. So, lane farm which isn't accelerated by Wraith Bands unless you have trouble last hitting, is what you are going to be using.

Unless you have some way to farm elsewhere in which getting the stats of Wraith will actually help you farm, of course. I can't think of a place, personally.

The "what ifs". I don't see how stacking wraith bands deals with those any better. Maybe it is slightly less scary to be in lane, but honestly, for that purpose, I would get Bracers, or better, Drumbs of Endurance, which will give you a lasting effect.

Stats are ONLY good in the earlier stages of the game, or if you are behind and need to emulate levels.

I didn't say it was as good as the Armlet exploit was. If that exploit were still available I'd probably recommend still going for that. The point I WAS trying to make is that Armlet proved early game stats do significantly affect how potent Lone Druid feels. The Armlet exploit would clearly be the winner of the two since the bear has Demolish, Entangling Roots, can run faster than the Druid AND has more HP early game. But the Wraith Bands have benefits of their own: First of all they are MORE cost-efficient than an activated Armlet (i.e. you gain more damage, attack speed, health and other stats for less money). They have a super fast and totally negligible buildup (485 gold? pshhhh). You can tailor each game how many you buy to the rate at which you feel it's time to start moving towards bigger items (rather than having to complete the entire 2600 gold investment every game to get the cost-efficiency you want; because Armlet didn't become cost efficient until you gained the active toggle). They actually give the druid MORE HP (whereas the Armlet didn't because it was on the Spirit Bear) and believe me a druid with 200 around extra health on TOP of the 250hp gained from True Form makes a big difference 7-8 minutes into the game. And lastly, if your Spirit Bear DOES happen to get killed on cooldown you can still keep farming quite well. It's a small investment that deals with alot of "what ifs" that the other current popular builds can't seem to deal with.

Final comment I think you forgot I'm talking about a Jungle Build here. This build is designed for druid to farm fast, gank, defend pushes, survive jungle ganks, be able to farm ancients earlier, push towers early on and just generally to be able to actually DO STUFF if your team is doing bad, but it's not really meant for laning. In a laning situation sure you want to whittle the Spirit Bear down and then nuke it, but in early clashes (of the type this build is designed for) you will not be focusing the Spirit Bear. 2700hp is too much HP to burst through 5-12 minutes into the game and will likely get your team killed if you put that much resources into taking down the Spirit Bear rather than the Druid or his teammates. Most "bursting" of the Spirit Bear happens later in the game, when he starts rapidly accumulating more big items, the Druid becomes more and more irrelevant and your spells are at or approaching max level.

The armlet went on the bear. The Wraith Bands would have to go onto the hero himself in order to receive these benefits.

This means, compared to armlet, it is strictly worse. The damage and attack speed is now on the hero and not on the bear. The bear who had the passive ability Demolish which increased this baser damage. The armor is not a valid argument, because armor scales with HP, so armor on the bear is multiplicatively more valuable than armor on the hero.

Yea, you will get the stats on the druid and if that is your goal then that is fine, but Lone Druid's biggest boon is being able to take towers early.

However! I don't think you are wrong for bulking up the druid, it just is... odd, since as my friend puts it, "everyone knows the Bear is the hero".



Maybe. At my level of play we focus the bear down as much as possible (in lane) because it has a hard time getting any form of regeneration. Forcing an early resummon is always a good thing, and 300 gold to the killer is early boots.

Taking down the bear is no different than tanking down axe. Just right click it a lot and chain stun it when it is low and you got yourself a resummon or 300 gold.

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AUI_2000, the guy who invented armlet bear, said that the reasoning behind why armlet was so good was because it was cheap and let you take take towers early to cascade into getting your core items early and put constant pressure on the enemy at the same time. The reason that Lone Druid was such a great threat then, but not an every game hero now. Stacking Wraith Bands I don't think to be a "bad" idea, but it isn't Armlet.

Looks like someone can't read. I'm not surprised my post confused you, because you misunderstood every single thing I said.

When I said stats on Armlet I WAS referring to the +40 damage, +25 Attack Speed and 5 armor when activated.... This cost 2600gold and was awesome. Why? Cause it was cost-efficient and had no drawbacks (prenerf). What does 2600 gold in Wraith Bands get you (on Druid)? 45 damage, 30 attack speed, 4 Armor, 285 health and other stats that are not as important....That's even more than an activated Armlet! So my point is Wraith Bands are even more cost efficient than an activated Armlet. My second point is the only drawback that it COULD have is negated by the fact that Lone Druid has plenty of item slots to spare and will not be needing to sell them back at any point in the game.

It IS a bummer that you can't use the Wraith Bands on the Bear but the truth is it doesn't make much difference because early game (when you'll be buying these things) the enemy won't be bothering to take out your bear in fights, it simply has too much HP early game to be bothered with focusing on it. Investing a little bit of gold into the Druid at the start can take you a long way. Every bit of it can be useful in some way:

-Hanging out in the backlines and sending your bear in? Like i said especially early on they'll be looking for ways to get to you, 2700 HP on the bear is just too much early game, so the tankier you are, the longer your bear can keep chasing and getting the root procs.

-You chasing someone? Sure all that damage you got is better on the bear than you, but when that entangling roots proc goes off it's both of you beating down on the enemy, and the more damage between the two of you that you have early on, the less enemies will get away.

-Worried about getting ganked in jungle? They're not looking for your bear early on to shut you down (though they will be looking for it mid/lategame), they want you, and the tankier you are the less succesful those ganks are likely to be.

-It's past 20 minutes and the enemies are starting to focus your Radiance wielding Spirit Bear? Alot of teams at this point hunt the bear to exploit the long cooldown and the fact that many Lone Druids go barebone to stack the bear. If they get your bear, you can't farm, you can't tank, you can't even even do moderate dps. You're just a creep. But with these cost-efficient stats you will actually be able to to alot more without your bear for a very small early fee.

These stats early game make Lone Druid come into his own very quickly. And he can get away with doing it because he doesn't have to worry about item slots.

Armlet of Morgan never gave spirit bear stats. It gave 31 damage, 8HP regen per second, 15 attack speed, and 5 armor for 2600 gold. Since the bear wasn't a hero, he didn't have the drawback of the HP reduction, but also didn't get the extra HP from the strength bonus because the bear doesn't get stats.

It was a really good item on him because it gave Lone Druid the most bang for it's buck of any item you could get of equivalent cost without any drawbacks

From your last post, it sounds like you want to put the Wraith Bands on the bear. You do understand that the bear doesn't get anything from stats: No damage from AGI, nor attack speed or armor, no health from Strength, and no mana from INT. The bear can only get + armor, attack speed, and damage. In reality, Blades of Attack on the bear is +9 damage as opposed to a Wraith Band's +6 for a greater cost.

OHHHHHHH! You thought that Lone Druid put armlet on himself, maybe?

I am not sure how you think armlet worked on Lone Druid before 6.78, or if you understand that armlet isn't an item you get anymore on him... but your last post completely confuses me, I am sorry to say.

As a general rule, the only thing you put on LD, the hero himself, are Tranquil Boots (generally, if you don't like em don't put em on) and Hand of Midas (so you get the bonus experience. Most every other item in the game thinks of Spirit Bear as the hero on Lone Druid

The very definition of cost efficient implies that for the money it costs it gives you more stats/damage etc. than another item for the same money spent. 1500 gold towards 3 Wraith Bands gives you more stats (and at least similar raw damage) than 1500 gold towards a Radiance does (even assuming that you could buy the 17 damage + 14 AOE DPS that the 1500 gold could get you). The only point in time at which Radiance provides more power per each gold spent is when you have the completed item, because it also gives you AoE (which you lack) and allows you to split push safely; these are the only reasons it is built in the first place and is also why rushing it straightaway is a perfectly viable strategy (though it leaves you lacking in other departments for quite awhile). However, that 1500 gold spent towards 3 Wraith Bands sure gives you ALOT of stats/damage for the money spent compared to other items you could be building towards. There's only two reasons you don't stack such items on other heroes:

1) The stats/damage it gives contributes little to enhancing the strengths of the hero and covering its weaknesses (i.e. the stats don't benefit the hero playstyle).

2) The stats may be great for the hero early on but the item becomes inefficient when the hero is forced to sell it back because it doesn't build into anything he wants and he has run out of item slots.

The only reasonable argument against stacking Wraith Bands is that the damage/stats they provide do not aid the hero much in his playstyle (don't cover his weaknesses and enhance his strengths). Because we know for a fact that lack of item slots is not a problem for Lone Druid. My premise is that these early stats do help the Lone Druid alot. It's undeniable that Radiance does alot to enhance the Lone Druid's playstyle, this is why it can be built first. But building Radiance first is contingent on alot of things going right in the game: You have to not die to ganks much (which can be hard because without stats even your bear form can be relatively squishy early on), your team needs to be able to hold pushes without you for 15+ minutes, you can't/shouldn't go ganking because even if the enemy makes a mistake and a good opportunity arises you will probably not be able to run them down or if you can you probably won't do enough DPS to kill them, you can't put alot of tower pushing pressure because if a teamfight erupts you'll probably die and if a lone defender comes to repel you you won't have the strength to 1v1 them yet etc etc.

These are the reasons we choose to build items other than Radiance straight from the get-go. Why do players build Hand of Midas and then Radiance? Because they discovered when building Hand of Midas first that they can still build Radiance in a time period close to what it took them to build it if and they still get some attack speed and faster farming of subsequent items (which they will still need to cover Lone Druid's other deficiencies before the hero is effective). This strategy works too, in fact it's better than straight up rushing Radiance because it helps the Druid hit similar Radiance timings while also speeding up subsequent items. But this strategy is also contingent on pretty much the same things that the straight-up Radiance build depended on as well.

Now here's the kicker: why was Armlet of Mordiggian so effective on Lone Druid before the nerf? Because on the Spirit Bear it could be turned on indefinitely and when turned on it provided a high amount of cost efficient stats....that's all it gave...stats! So why was it so good? Cause stats make Lone Druid effective and Armlet of Mordiggian cost very little for the stats it provided! Guess what though...2600 gold worth of Wraith Bands gives MORE stats than even an activated Armlet of Mordiggian does (and without the health drain, so on a cost efficiency basis Wraith Bands even beat Armlet! There's two reasons though why our mind doesn't go straight to stacking Wraith Bands instead of Armlet of Mordiggian; first, the Wraith Bands go on the Druid, not the Bear (I believe this is the major reason) and second, we can't stack 2600 gold worth of Wraith Bands due to item slot constraints (even double the slots of every other hero has its constraints...). But are Wraith Bands more cost efficient than Armlet? Absolutely. And do more stats make the Lone Druid more effective at any stage of the game? Absolutely as well. Furthermore, through extensive testing I have found my 2-4 Wraith Bands build to hit similar Radiance timings to Hand of Midas into Radiance (within 2 minutes on average) without any of the drawbacks of that build.

That's why I wrote this guide; it WORKS and it does so with alot less risk involved. More importantly, it does so by taking advantage of a very often neglected advantage that Lone Druid has: 12 item slots. It allows you to be much harder to kill, farm fast (and even farm 2 SEPARATE locations fast when Radiance is complete), it allows you to gank early and effectively, it allows you to 1v1 and sometimes even 1v2 early on, it allows you to punish your opponents' mistakes while making it harder for them to punish yours, it allows you to farm ancients earlier and it doesn't even make you weaker in the later portion of the game because you never have to sell these cost-efficient items you bought. If someone could think of an even better way to make use of these extra slots both early and lategame then this guide will have done its job; getting people to think about how to use those slots to make Lone Druid even more successful as a hero.

This discussion however has gotten ME thinking about the lack of inherent regen early on with this build. In my games I just buy consumables as needed (because I don't like the risk of Tranquil Boots breaking during ganks or early teamfights) and I find that I really don't usually need so much regen early on that I need to dedicate an item slot to it. But the lack of inherent regen DOES present some quite large problems when facing a very aggressive gank-heavy lineup early on (since having to buy regen all the time or returning to base or waiting for it to get to you) can severely dampen your farming speed....I need to do some testing on a build order that could help alleviate the problems that that scenario presents. But either way the Wraith Band stacking would still be a great way to go because as the Armlet of Mordiggian exploit proved, early stats DO matter.

About the starting items, I kinda forgot we were talking about jungle and so I agree with yours if you plan on making Wraith Bands (even though you might still need a Tango to make shortcuts between camps and regen after you gank - I know a jungling LD shouldn't gank, but it could happen - or get ganked); but talking about my early-game item set versus yours I think you forgot about the Power Treads: with Tranquils, Wand and Cloak you spend 821 gold less as you already have Tranquil Boots; most of the time I play the whole match with them, too.

Still talking about the Wraith Bands, as Wisdomseyes1 said they're just good in the early game and I'd rather save all that gold for getting a quicker item on the bear, since you want to begin to push as soon as possible. The extra stats on the Druid are awesome and all, but as he's naturally tanky and most of the time the one that deals damage is the Bear (for example when you're pushing tier 3 towers or when you're chasing) I think one of them is enough. People usually buy single Wraith Bands or Null Talismans to improve their last-hitting in the early game; any big damage item is generally better than stacking cheap stuff unless you're losing or supporting.

I also didn't read about the Maelstrom because you only talked about the Mjollnir (which is a bad item in my opinion too, since getting a full AC is better than upgrading a Maelstrom) but, about the passive that interfers with Entangling Roots, it doesn't seem a big deal to me because it also increases your attack speed (which becomes huge if paired with an AC, as said before). Still, Radiance, if gotten in a reasonable time, is always better as you said and there are other alternatives to the Maelstrom if you feel the Chain Lightning is a nuisance, so I don't have anything else to say about it.

jeez. a jungle druid that recommends starting stats and 3 wraiths

First: I agree with you

Second: The issue with stacking Wraith Bands isn't that Wraith Band isn't a cost effective damage item for the early game and it isn't because you have to sell it... it is because you spend 1,500 gold for something that is ONLY good in the early game, which you could have spent 1,000 gold on to get your Radiance faster, or preferably the full 1,500 (it is a little less but only by about 45 gold). For your purposes of getting "early stats that help you jungle" you could just rush Phase Boots. Blades of Attack give you the same damage, the attack speed is negligible in the beginning of the game, the HP is only relevant in very early stages of the game when you don't have levels to support your HP pool, and the mana is more-or-less waisted. Phase Boots is the boots off choice for the bear anyway, and is much more cost effective than just buying a bunch of Wraith Bands.

You cannot say "I don't need regen because I won't be taking damage" and say "I need strength for the bonus HP in the early game" without contradicting yourself greatly.

To me that seem like a better use of your money, which does not impede farming times at all, mind you. Do you disagree?

Third: Considering the chances of both of them happening at the same time, after applying that they are both Pseudo-Random distribution and Entangling Claws has a cooldown, the chances of them actually procing at the same time are pretty small, so while it does impede your chances, it doesn't impede it buy enough to say "this is a terrible item"

Maelstrom is 2,700 gold. Radiance is significantly more expensive, and is harder to get if you aren't left alone. There are reasons to get it, it isn't horrible. Especially if you need the AOE pretty quickly or you have other core items you have to get without spending all your money on getting Area of Effect.

Forth: See Second. Getting early damage vs getting early stats, where the early damage builds on itself and the early stats do not, I guess it is a matter of preference. While inventory space isn't an issue on Lone Druid, money still is like it is on every hero. Spending unneeded gold is something I tend to avoid.