Viability of a CarryShaker

I CALL VIABLE. =D

situational is the ***** answer for people who dont want to say its **** but dont actually know when it is viable, like when people put Bloodstone in their guide as a situational luxury item but cant name 1 reason on when its good. (cause the answer is never....)


ok, first things first. Earthshaker with items is insanely strong. its not just about his damage output or how he scales.
no he isnt a 1 position carry, unless you want to put the carry mid, for example PA+wisp and use the ES like your would a safelane centaur, but he has a lot of potential as a core hero.

he has a ****ton of control, a lot of damage, but it is burst. and can become pretty tanky as a core.

having farm isnt just about having another item, its also about allowing you to stay in the fight, where he can keep disrupting the fight and smacking people with his totem.
he scales better into lategame then a centaur for example, yes he is not such a tanky beast but he has a lot more influence and is actually a legit Refresher Orb hero.
he is less standard but think about it, centaur is also very underwhelming if he doesnt have much heroes to combo with.

granted, midshaker is not as safe as a puck, but he is definately strong. just make sure he fits, so not too much tanky heroes on their team, and not a team that can kill you from a distance, since ES is really good against teams that need to go deep.

It's viable, but he shines elsewhere.

Critshaker sometimes works. Basically you buy str items like Armlet and Heart, then you buy critstick and you hope for a crit when you smack somebody with that totem. You also become tanky as a side effect of that build, which is nice because you are melee with the need to get in people's faces to initiate. Overall good against lowish level players because they target you immediatley after you initiate, allowing your carries to do whatever they want.
Note: Never, EVER skip Blink Dagger. EVER.

Okay so... what if u were to build Earthshaker like a 6.82 Kunkka. Basically two Daedalus with and optional BF core. Discuss.

Don't really think BF is a core. Daedalus is. CritShaker with boots Blink Dagger and 2 Daedalus is already devastating enough. Hell, 1 is enough

What people generally don't get about critshaker is that thanks to pseudo-random distribution, their chance to crit isn't 25%, but actually 8%.

8% chance to crit on the first hit isn't good enough. That's why people go arcanes blink and play him as a support. The hero is item independent.

What I really don't get is that the VERY REASON why Earthshaker is so OP is that *as a support* he can solo kill people with a ~1500 burst damage combo while chainstunning them for 5 seconds. If you play him as a core buying items he doesn't really scale well with, you're essentially wasting what makes the hero so good in the first place.

Just look at BigDaddy ES. He always goes 25-5 or something every game. This guy is a support player. So stop hogging mid as ES plz and let real mid heroes go mid. Playing support isn't about being an useless ward *****, it's about not hogging a farming position from your team when you're playing a farm-independent hero.

It's tons of fun, don't take me wrong. But don't start thinking it's good, because it isn't.

What people generally don't get is that PRD is actually your friend when you play crit-dependant heroes ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

If you played Kunkka you might have felt that: you kill creeps, until SUDDENLY you don't crit for 4 times straight. With shaking(no pun intended) hands you land one more blow and it doesn't crit either... and that's when you realise it's TIME TO FIGHT PING PING PING AT THEIR BASE *********A I HEFF A CRIT IMBUED SWORD WE CAN'T LOSE GO REK THEM. With critshaker it works the same - hit creeps, find a target, get close, BAM, wait 5 seconds, blink in, land a crit, kill all survivors with a second totem/fissure, go siege their hg.

Carry Shaker sounds like a kinda awful idea.

Core Shaker on the other hand can be terrifying. A fast Blink Dagger on Earthshaker is terrifying, because it gives the hero so much game impact. You can quite happily blink on Heroes, and burst them down with your combo. And having the Blink Dagger early means you are making the opponents lives miserable from then on out.

His scaling comes then from like having utility items like a Sheep Stick and Force Staff, again increase his game impact. Earthshaker is one of the best Hex carriers imo, given it lets him take a hero out of the fight for about 8 seconds. On top of dealing a massive amount of burst, and having another instant disable to go with the hex.

So to me, the point of giving him Farm priority is because with said farm he can create massive amounts of pressure on the enemy, and give your other cores space from a very early point in the game, which never really drops off, (Well he loses solo-pick off potential). (He doesn't care for BKB's in pick-offs because he has an instant disable, and even with BKB's he's obviously distruptive with Fissure blocks.)

The only issue I have with him as a core, is that he is situational. He's a kinda bad laner, which makes mid problematic, and safe lane Shaker is... interesting? I can see it working like safe lane Centaur Warrunner . So, whilst I think the idea of ES with farm priority is very strong, the execution is so so heavily dependent on the enemy line-up. Whereas support ES is much more flexible in when it can be picked.