Ancient stacking with non cleave aoe heroes like Luna, Gyro, Medusa,...

A few days ago I played Luna again and like the good Luna player I'm, I stacked ancients. Normally, before the ancientnerfs, you could easily farm your stacks after completing the Yasha. But with every patch were the ancients got nerfed it became harder and harder. Now I'm actually not sure if farming ancient stacks is actually a viable thing for heroes like Luna, Gyrocopter and others. It took me way to long to complete a quadrupple stack of ancients, and I left with just 100 hp. I was on dire and I was even standing on the stairs to reduce the damage taken!

So I was wondering what the general opinion is about farming ancient stacks on for instance Luna.

I think that ancients stacks are really good on heroes like Sven and Phantom Assassin, especially with the Phantom Strike piercing spell immunity, because they have cleaves.
But on Luna, it took really long, which is a risk, you are left with barely hp and I actually think that jungling with a dominated alpha wolve is faster than using a ranged creep for farming ancients.

I think it is worth it as long as you don't get ganked just after finishing the stack...

I did some math and tests (different hero) cuz I was wondering about same topic and killing quad stack of ancients with Drow (without aghs, only treads, aquila, lance) is still more effective than farming jungle with alpha wolf

It's still completely worth it on Luna, Helm of the Dominator ancient stacking is still the standard build. Gyrocopter ancient stacking is weaker and nerfing Gyro is one of the main reasons why the ancients got buffed. Medusa Helm of the Dominator has never been a thing, but if your team stacks your ancients you can clear them fairly easily with Dusa if you build her to do that.

Gyrocopter is limited by the 6 hits of Flak Cannon. That's the big difference with the two others. Gyro will leave the ancients at ~200 HP and that's really Icefrog's way of saying "screw you Gyro pickers". He's the only hero on which there was a major change.

Luna, honestly I just think you don't have the best build. Replace the Yasha by a Moon Shard honestly. It's far more value damage output. Of course you won't clear 4-stacks with helm yasha. Helm- Hyperstone is already better, and helm-shard just tears through 4-stacks.

Medusa should go Mask of Madness if her team plans to stack ancients for her and with it she has all the damage she needs.

IMO the ancient changes were really just a Gyro nerf (and a Chen/Naix buff of course). The impact on the other guys is really minor.

So the build: Power Treads, Ring of Aquila, Helm of the Dominator, Yasha is outdated? I used to get the Yasha to upgrade it into a Manta Style later. And before the little stack nerfs a Yasha was more than enough to clear ancients.

And if you get a moonshard do you still buy manta or just bkb into damage like Butterfly?

Well now that Moon Shard exists, Yasha is far from being the most cost-effective early damage item on AGI heroes. Especially on a hero like Luna who has high base damage and a damage steroid, so scaling well with attack speed. Luna is all about flashfarming in the early/mid game, so building all the DPS you can. So yeah, IMO the helm/yasha build is a bit suboptimal right now. It's not bad, it's just not the best.

Luna doesn't need Manta Style the way Anti-Mage does. Unlike AM, she doesn't care about purging silence. She can still buy manta, just much later. She's still a great manta carrier since with manta and travels she comes close to max movement speed, and with her insane AGI gain manta is still the best damage amplification she can get. She just gains nothing from going manta first item.

Personally I'd go Power Treads -> Helm of the Dominator -> Moon Shard -> Black King Bar -> Manta Style or Butterfly (I'd always buy both, and order is situational).

No Eye of Skadi though? It's really good, means you can actually chase people down without spending 80% of the time moving. And, it rounds out whatever health issues you're having so you don't get rekt.



No she doesn't, not until high levels when your AGI gain kicks in.



Of a measly 38, that you max last.

Hmm, yes a moonshard is way more dps but Yasha is more dps than the single Hyperstone. Getting moonshard is probably the most viable build at the moment. I noticed that the extra ms from a Yasha doesn't help with chasing either so just getting more attackspeed for the short moment you can attack someone is probably better.

Well the fact that you natively build Helm of the Dominator means that you're more encouraged to go Satanic as your survivability item over skadi. And a Luna with manta + BoTs can already chase super wellwith her 480-something MS.



It's not. Plug this into an online calculator for Luna if you don't believe me.

Yasha : 16 damage and 31 attack speed
Hyperstone : 55 attack speed

I know that adding damage and attack speed is not 100% rigorous but it's a good rule of thumb. Yasha gives you 16+31 = 47 and hyperstone gives you 55.

Go both. BoTs, Manta, Skadi, Satanic, Butterfly, BKB. Sit on 3.5k hp, hit for just under 300, have glaives, illusions and max movespeed. Ez. Swap out BKB for MKB once it's down to 5 seconds if you're against evasion.

The Moon Glaives are her damage steroid, the bounces give you the posibillity to do a lot of damage on people. You can easily melt down 2 tanky heroes as luna since they will get hit several time.


The eye of skadi seems good but if I have a Satanic I don't want to get more hp, just more damage. I think stacking Butterfly on the hero is really strong now too, just as on Terrorblade.