Sven, the Roaming Knight

Sick multi account bumping your own thread.

Personally, I go for the carry/semi-carry build and it works wonderfully. I start out by rushing Mask of Madness so I can then jungle. Build treads and use it on str when jungling, int when ganking. After that, I go for heart for the survivability, easy jungling, and extra str for the ult. Then comes the Armlet for extra damage and str (heart counters the hp drain). That brings you to around 150+400 damage when ult is activated. Finish off with critical.


Tl;dr: MoM -> Treads (str/int) -> HoT -> Armlet -> Buriza (deadulus or something like that, forgot the dota 2 name)

I followed that and late game I was simply unstoppable. I RARELY go -k/d with Sven. Usually it's 2+ kills per death.

I tested the Armlet-MoM comparison, and I found out I like MoM better because of the CRUCIAL lifesteal, and the greater DPS. Sven should be built to be pretty tanky, and even with the less EHP he's still fine.

I generaly prefer Armlet of Mordiggian. Mask of Madness sure gives some nice movement speed and attack speed, but as is mentioned it makes Sven a glass cannon. Armlet is exact opposite, it does not give some fancy lifesteal or movement speed but it gives extra 25 strengh that god's strengh can work with it also gives you some flat attack speed and flat damage. So it basicly makes Sven a steel cannon, with god's strengh Armlet of Mordiggian and Black King Bar, Sven can wipe whole enemy team. as long as your team helps enemy should not be able to flee and those that escape, let them go, they can't do anything alone without their friends.

Secondly about tanks, I definitely think there is a tank class in dota. Tank is someone with good strengh gain or abilities that give him extra health. If they get a lot of damage, strengh and with it health they become tanks. The mechanics of a tank is to be hard to kill, weaker heroes are going to have hard time killing them. As was said tank needs something to make the others focus them and that is the damage. So basicly if you not attack them, they will do a lot of damage and if you focus them, you're gonna have hard time killing them while the others will be killing you. Sven is definitely a tank, god's strengh is a serious thread that makes people focus him cause if they don't they will surely die and if they do... Sven has a lot of health and killing him is even more fun when he has Black King Bar. Just because your Sven is easily killed does not make all Svens not tanks, the reason is the Mask of Madness, as dying 30% faster is what tank should not.

I have a question, lets say you guys have someone on your team like Skeleton K. and his lifesteal, or someone with an obvious pickup (Lycan, Ursa, etc.) would an Armlet be a viable choice?
I mean it gives nice stats and not to mention the 475 lifesaver boost to your health, and maybe even if no one on your team has lifesteal, can you have Vlads with Armlet?
I'm Fairly new to this game, with about 250 games played total so I would like some tips :D

Stack ancients all game
Ult, MoM, and kill them all

Good guide. I wrote a bunch of stuff but my Internet Explorer ****ped on me. I'll retype it when I get home.

Btw, Check out my Zeus Guide, tell me what you think.

Spacebear,

I like your guide, but I do have some caveats about the early ganking potential of Sven. He really can only gank in conjunction with a hero that has alot of stuns/slows. I think this guide is perfectly fine when you're laning with someone like Crystal Maiden, Bane, etc. Roaming is a good option if you can coordinate well with your teammates and make sure they use their stuns first, then you follow up with the 300 damage AoE stun/100% damage boost (@lvl 7).

Some things about the other commentors here: I agree with some of what you are saying, in that Sven isn't as good as Lion or Tinker is at ganking, but this is partly where Sven comes into his own. Last night, I played a game where our Lone Druid got terrible early farm, and I (playing Sven) managed to get amazing kills in the early teamfights. I ended up carrying the team, with a BKB, Power Treads (replaced by Boots of Travel), and an Assault Cuirass. I think this shows how, in a pinch, Sven can fit the roles of either a carry OR a ganker.

On Items: Dunno how I feel about the MoM, its damage bonus is very nice, but the extra damage taken can be deadly if the gank goes bad, and you have to tower dive to get the kill, leaving you vulnerable. I have had games where MoM does wonders for me and games where it kills me multiple times. Kinda split over this one. Not sure about the whole Heaven's Halberd thing...never gotten that item on Sven.

Overall, solid guide. Check out my Zeus guide by the way, tell me what you think!
+1

If you had actually paid any attention to what I typed you'd see that the build where I said to grab MoM IS the one where you're trying to build him as a carry, and that it's also something I don't recommend doing regardless of if you're playing a pub or not. It's a build you can do if you have no other carries on your team and need to be the carry, and if you intend to carry as Sven you need to get buff fast before the hard carry on the enemy team has time to catch up. MoM is the ultimate risk-reward get-buff-fast item.

On the point of mana in regards to the roaming build, with Treads on INT, an Urn, and a Bracer into Drums you'll have plenty enough mana to get the job done if you play smart, and since you're roaming you'll probably have rune control, meaning free regeneration and haste if you're lucky. You'll notice I added bottle to the situational items, which I thought wasn't necessary to mention. It sets you back 600 gold on the rest of your build, but if you're roaming and you have good rune control it will completely solve your mana issues entirely. In regards to the carry build, I forgot to include Soul Ring as an item to grab after MoM, so that's there now.

At level 7, Sven with no items and three points in stats, two in Storm Hammer, one in Warcry, and one in God's Strength still only has enough mana for one cast of Storm Hammer and one cast of Warcry. Switch out that point in Storm Hammer for a point in stats and you'll just BARELY have enough mana to cast Storm Hammer twice and still be able to cast God's Strength, but now instead of dealing 325 damage instantly, you're now dealing two instances of 100 damage with a 15 second delay between them. You may as well be hitting them with a flyswatter for all the good it'll do.

@Spacebear : I didn't notice it was only scaling about STR damage. Battlefury was not meant to farm, but rather to quickly kill a team. However with the flat dmg thingy it does change everything... Need to test that ^^'

And thank you/my bad for the purge. I did not notice it either. Good to know x)

About ganking though I still disagree with you. You cannot compare the ganking potential of Pudge, Lion, Earthshaker, Lina or Tinker (the list is too long, i'm lazy to write them all) with the ganking potential of poor little Sven. You do have a nice stun but... what else? 12%MS is not that big, you STR is not that high, and you have no burst following up. The heroes up there have at least 2 Burst spells/AoE (Well except for Pudge but hook/rot is so good...). Sven is just as decent a roamer as any other hero, he is not really a good roamer. He does not really deserve the title imho. Roaming is about early game, and early Sven only has his hammer which is not enough imho again.

@Salawayun : If you have enough mana to cast 2 Storm Hammer it's all you need, 30s of fight is good enough for roaming/ganking. You don't use the spell to farm. You use it to kill. And you don't kill every 20s. Urn, or/and clarities are enough. He did not say mana regen is not good, he said there are other items better. Then I do agree with you that somewhere there should be some little more manaregen as I am not sure the 50% given by Urn is enough later on (After the 15min mark for instance).

Grabbing MoM-BKB already has a hint that you're gonna building Sven into a Pseudo-Carry with a "threatening" DPS output, the worst thing is, with you're EHP lowered, your low ranged AoE stun, and the fact that you're gonna be mostly at the frontlines as you're more probably gonna be an Initiate, your opponent would more likely to survive and happily make you eat AoE especially at earlier levels where you try to go in MoM activated, unless this one's mainly geared for Pub.

Also, regarding prioritizing Stats, you said it so yourself


So why greatly opt for a build that would deplete all your mana and making you only useful for the first few seconds of the teamfight? People are gonna be relying more on that Disable rather than that damage output.