Help with my Troll guide!

So, I'm creating a guide for Troll Warlord
Currently, I have ironed out the 3 builds that I plan to set for him, and have got an idea for what needs to be in the guide. I would like to gather some third-party tips and tricks for troll, and also any strange items that you find work on him for some testing while writing the guide.
Thanks in advance!

Aww.
And i thought you were making a 'troll guide'

Desolator and vladimir's offering

I like playing support Troll Warlord. His ulti buffs everyone. His slow and miss benefits everyone. For a Thankless hero he is kinda selfless
Vlads and arcane boots.

Hey, it's good that you're writing a guide on Troll Warlord, indeed this hero hardly gets any love on Dotafire and really deserves some new guides.

I actually thought about writing a Troll guide (Kappa) at some point, but I think I'm not going to do it so here's some personal advice :

His strengths :
- Counters lineups with lots of right-click heroes, especially melee right-clickers (WK, Lonedruid, Bloodseeker, Sven, etc)
- Great pushing power in combination with other heroes (Tiny typically, but lots of other examples). Use Battle Trance from the other end of the map and let them melt towers
- Great single target burst damage, ideal for ganking and focusing down key heroes in teamfights

His weaknesses :
- EXTREMELY easily kited. He's pretty much Ursa, anything with a slow, stuns, force staff, ghost scepter etc make him unplayable because he can't get in range to right-click
- No specific teamfight ability as a carry. His attack is purely single target and the only thing he really brings to teamfights is the utility of his spells
- Very weak to magic burst damage


He's generally best played as a #2 : he's best as secondary carry, not as a main carry. Reason is that it's best to pick a main carry with good teamfight presence (e.g Medusa) and buff him with Battle Trance instead of having to rely on dodging teamfights and split pushing with Troll as only carry.

So he's best as a solo mid, of course safe lane carry works but Battle Trance is only really effective if there are other right-clickers in your team. He's one of the best heroes for 5-carry teams (^^)

Items

I'm generally not that convinced by the item builds I see on him so here are a few thoughts. Main idea is that yes, he's really good late game (not a "hard" carry but really close), but it's not the best to play him with only the late game in mind. His main strengths are his pushing ability, the utility from his skills, and his single target burst - he actually comes online very fast with level 11 and one or two midgame items. Best to get a few mid-game items, do early Roshan, and gank/push some towers.

Here are the items I like :

- Drum of Endurance. I'm really not a drum fan so trust me when I say that Troll is one of the best heroes for this item. There is absolutely no need to go full Sange and Yasha on Troll, drum is more than enough if you want more speed. Good HP and fixes your pathetic mana pool.

- Helm of the Dominator/ Vladmir's Offering : main use is to do early Roshan. Either you solo Rosh (easy with one more damage item) or do Rosh with your team, but you can get Rosh at ~15 minutes so do it. Vlads if going for a utility build if your team needs it, helm if going for a hard carry build to get Satanic later.

- Blink Dagger. I know it might sound a bit weird, but if you ask me, it's a core item. For the same reason it's a core item on Ursa. Troll absolutely needs to get in melee range of enemies otherwise berserker rage is useless : Troll needs to attack with his melee attack as much as he can. Additional speed like Sange and Yasha just doesn't cut it because he can't initiate by just walking in.
His combo is blink in, Whirling Axes (Ranged) to slow, Whirling Axes (Melee) to disarm, Battle Trance and right-click in melee form.

Shadow Blade allows him to initiate like blink, but SB doesn't solve kiting issues. With a blink you can essentially get in people's faces to use your melee attack on a 12-second cooldown, while with a shadowblade you can do this only once and get kited like hell once you do. Same thing as Ursa really, shadowblade Ursa is really meh.

- Diffusal Blade and Eye of Skadi : essentially better items than Sange and Yasha on AGI heroes, the slow is far better. But if you go blink you don't even need any of these.

Besides this, good old Black King Bar, any damage item like deso, MKB, crit (just don't build attack speed on Troll it's completely unnecessary), and Satanic/Skadi for survivability.

Beware Butterfly, it's kind of like butterfly Phantom Assassin or Riki, it just relies on your opponents being bad. Troll is the kind of hero you already buy MKB against so don't push your luck.

Also, maybe you saw FATA get Mekansm on Troll but with the new 225 mana cost and Troll's 250 maximum mana forget it :)

His best skill build is generally 4/4/1 not 1/4/4. Max berserker rage second and only one value point in Fervor since the fervor change.

Sorry but this is not the guide section

Ka ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ ppa

U didnt include deso in ur build hamstertamer

Raport Unscathed for not reading. Troll feeder ^^

EDIT : formatting is only something to help people who are too lazy to read. You don't see people complaining to the editor of Lord of the Rings or something that their books lacks formatting. Stop being lazy eye candy addicts kids, you'll get diabetes :P

Reported for not using formattings on one part because you are lazy! 8{D