Ezalor - Battery Build (6.81 updated)

Introduction

Keeper of the Light is a utility hard support hero, capable of providing tremendous help to team mates, but lacking in direct effectiveness. While I've included the other main builds, I'll be focusing on my preferred "battery" build and the situations where it's effective.

As always, you need to pick, skill and equip heroes depending on the situation, not just mindlessly follow the cookie-cutter builds.

Your style of play with him has to be very much about working closely with your team mates - you can do very little on your own, but can add incredible synergy to their abilities. This is a theme that runs through your skills, playstyle and items. Your job is to get the best out of your team through intelligent support play.

Pros and Cons

+ Almost unlimited mana sustain
+ Strong pushing and anti-push power
+ Good base movement speed
+ Item independent
+ Good farmer
+ Great utility spells

- Very poor attack damage
- Almost no damage scaling past early-midgame
- Stun is very unreliable
- Pretty squishy and position dependent
- Relies on close co-operation with allies

Illuminate

This is your main source of damage, a channelled spell with a huge AOE and considerable pushing power. The biggest issue with it is that channelling time - every second you wait adds another 100 damage to the wave, up to the maximum for it's current level. However, this means that you're standing completely still, pointing your staff in the direction you're going to fire. It makes it very easy to either dodge it or launch a counter-attack.

This means you want to find spots out of sight of the opposition to channel it - from higher elavations, behind trees etc. It has a very long range, so you can also just stand well back from them.

While you have Spirit Form active, you don't need to manually channel the spell anymore - a spirit version of you will do it instead, allowing you to both cast it from safety, and be doing something else at the same time.

In terms of usage, it's most useful for pushing lanes and farming - with a few levels you can blast down waves of creeps (including siege creeps) easily, either to defend your towers or pressure the opposition's. You can also stack and farm most jungle creeps pretty efficiently. You also try to land a good one during team fights, although this will usually be one channelled by Spirit Form.

Obviously you need to bear in mind that you are a support hero, you need minimal equipment and don't scale effectively - so don't use it to take farm from other heroes. You can cancel it early to reduce the damage it does - allowing you to push lanes but still let others last hit. The cancel can also be pretty useful for nuking down a fleeing hero before they can dodge or get out of range.

I tend to max this second as it's expensive without an appropriate level of Chakra Magic to back it up.

Mana Leak

This is an extremely under-rated little spell, which can be extremely irritating for many opponents to deal with. It also packs a good stun time if they run out of mana completely, but this is obviously pretty unreliable.

It works very well against heroes who are reliant on high movement speed to chase/escape such as Dark Seer, Timbersaw, Razor etc as they will quickly burn through their mana and leave themselves stunned...or have to stand still and fight. It's pretty ineffective against heroes who use Blink or spells like Illusory Orb to get around - these movements do not leak mana.

There are two main uses for Mana Leak - harassment and helping to secure kills. Securing kills is fairly straight forward - throw it on an enemy hero who is trying to retreat, they'll soon be unable to use their abilities, and will either have to stop moving or risk a long stun time.

For harassment you can Mana Leak enemy heroes as they try to move around - especially from aggressive pressure - potentially getting a stun, but either way you can cost them a considerable amount of mana.

Most offlaners are very dependent on their mana to successfully escape and farm, so this can be pretty debilitating for them. Do this twice and you might well get the stun too. Early on your opponent won't have had the chance to get Arcane Boots yet, so will have no quick way of refilling their mana without going back to the fountain or getting lucky with a regeneration rune.

Once you have 2 levels in Chakra Magic don't be afraid to throw this on the enemy hero from time to time. The skill is very cheap to cast at level 1 and although the increased loss rate and stun time are nice, there's no particular rush to max it, with your other skills usually proving more important.

Chakra Magic

In many ways this is your strongest skill, and can be considered pretty overpowered when combined with the right allies in the early game. For a small cost, you can instantly restore mana to yourself or team mates, this scales so that the net gain is 50/105/160/215.

Basically this is completely free mana, no need to buy any regen equipment, and with a little management and a pair of Tranquil Boots you'll almost never need to visit the fountain.

Once you have some levels in this, you can feed your own abilities to make sure you almost always have enough mana to cast your spells - you're basically useless without them so this is important.

Almost more importantly, you can give this free mana to nearby team mates, and for many this is incredibly powerful. It's very important when you pick KOTL that you have an appropriate laning partner(s) who can make good use of this and allow you to win the lane decisively.

They NEED a nuke - you can constantly feed them mana to power it, and they dump it on their opponent every chance they get. Mana goes in, damage comes out. There are no heroes who can deal with this level of harassment and come out on top - their only chance is to kill you.

Spirit Form

Spirit Form isn't really an ability in itself, it's more of a gateway to your extra skills. However, we'll still talk about it a little. First of all, it gives a spirit channeller for Illuminate, making it safer to use in dangerous situations.

It has a small mana cost of 100 to activate, so just be mindful of this in tight situations. It has a duration of 40 seconds at all levels, while maxing it reduces the cooldown time and increases the potency of the extra spells. The cooldown decrease is very important, reducing the times when it's unavailable.

There are many times you may need to use Spirit Form, but the most important is during team fights - you're very ineffective without it, so always try to ensure it's available for these situations. Don't be afraid to use it for other situations too though - your extra spells and abilities are can be very useful for helping with ganks, escapes, defending towers, etc.

Blinding Light

Only available during Spirit Form, Blinding Light is your most potent team fight spell, even compared to the damage potential of Illuminate. It scales fantastically into the late game, or at least until you get mass Black King Bars and Monkey King Bars turning up.

The most important impact of this spell however is that it causes an 80% miss chance for auto-attacks for up to 5 seconds to any enemy heroes hit - this is huge, especially later on when direct attacks are the most important source of damage.

It has a huge AOE and causes a knockback effect to all enemy heroes hit - be very careful not to help the opposition by spreading them out against allied AOE damage/disable. This knockback can also be useful for ganks - cast Blinding Light on the far side of a fleeing enemy, and you can move them back towards you.

My advice on using this spell is to wait until both sides are engaged in the fight before using it, and even then to wait until any friendly AOE attacks have completed - you really don't want to knock enemies out of a Black Hole or the radius of a Reverse Polarity. Once you're sure of all this, or the enemy has got a better initiation on your team - throw it out to minimise their damage output. Hit as many heroes as possible, but especially their carries.

Recall

This is an underused spell, especially in pub games, but can be extremely handy. Basically it allows you to teleport a friendly hero to your position, after a delay of 3-5 seconds. During this time, your ally must not take any enemy hero damage or the spell will be cancelled.

This has a variety of uses - for example you can bring in an ally for a team fight when they don't have a Town Portal Scroll or you are nowhere near a tower. Potentially you can rescue an ally from a gank if they can succesfully juke for a few seconds, although this can be difficult as many players don't know about the "no damage" requirement. If you have good vision of an area, you may be able to pull an ally to safety before the enemies arrive, or give them a rapid exit after taking a risky tower.

Probably the most common use is to fetch a hero who's just respawned to a fight near the enemy base - this can make a vital difference to whether you take rax or not.

Just be careful not to Recall allies against their will - technically you can pull off some great moves with this spell, but be mindful that maybe your AFK farming hard carry is in no shape to be fighting right now.

Build Discussion

The first skill build at the top is the one I use most commonly - BUT it does assume that you're in the safe lane, with a 2v1 against an enemy offlaner, and that your carry has a nuke.

It can also work in a 2v2 offlane, again provided you have the right partner, but really you should have some more stats items and not buy the courier in this situation.

With this setup, it's usually very easy to win your lane - tell your carry to spam their nuke, and give them mana back with Chakra Magic as often as possible. Why not use Illuminate instead? Well, it's somewhat inaccurate, can push the lane, and is expensive. It's far more efficient to give the mana to your carry and concentrate on maxing Chakra Magic than to try to level Illuminate as well.

That early level in Mana Leak allows you to not only wear down your opponent's health, but their mana too. If you and your carry go on them (even with little expectation of actually killing them) you can force them to retreat under it's effects. The combination will soon force them to be extremely passive, or give you an easy opportunity to grab an assist.

The level in Illuminate at 4 gives you the option to start using it, either for extra harassment (a few levels in Chakra Magic should soon be enough to power both of you pretty well), to semi-jungle, or to head to another lane to defend/push. Even at level 1 it's pretty powerful.

Some people don't, but I generally like to get Spirit Form at level 6 - it opens up your options and gives you access to your extra spells. Be aware that all of your skills are blocked by magic immunity!

In a push heavy game, or against an enemy "blinker" like Puck or Queen of Pain, I'd probably swap out that early level of Mana Leak for an extra one of Illuminate. As always, use your brain and be flexible!

Picking KOTL

+ Your team needs a hard support
+ At least one of your lane partners has a spammable nuke
+ The enemy team may try to push early (e.g. Leshrac, Enchantress, Chen, Enigma)

- You'll be up against a lane with strong early killing power (you rely on attrition/lane control to protect your carry, as you have no conventional stun or slow).
- Your prospective lane partners lack nukes or obvious uses for free mana.
- Your team lacks damage and/or stuns

Items

Equipment is not a massive part of KOTL's game, but there are still some interesting choices that can change your contribution in various ways.

Starting:



A pretty standard selection for a hard support - the nice thing is you don't have to spend any cash at all on Clarity potions. We take plenty of health regeneration to tide us over until our Tranquil Boots are ready, and also means we can help out our carry if necessary.

If another player buys one of the utility items, I'd usually pick up a Ring of Protection.

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Core:



With most heroes there's usually various opinions on the best kind of boots - it's pretty easy with KOTL - get Tranquil Boots 99.99% of the time. They boost your already excellent movement speed, give you armour and health sustain. Chakra Magic makes Arcane Boots irrelevent, even for helping others in the team.

You also need something to bulk you out, and my usual choice is an Urn of Shadows provided there isn't another one on the team. It helps boost your HP and also gives you a cheap and easy method of healing your team - being able to quickly dish out 400hp and 300mana is extremely helpful.

If there is another Urn of Shadows on the team, I'd probably pick up a Bracer instead. You might also consider a Magic Wand in some games, but you might start struggling for inventory space.

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Extension:



These are the most common items you would consider getting after your core. The most obvious is a Mekansm for that increased team heal, and the extra survivability it offers you.

However, the others all deserve consideration. The Force Staff can help you and your team escape, initiate or allow you to enforce movement on Mana Leak. It's pretty handy, but I'd usually make sure of the Mekansm first.

Eul's Scepter of Divinity gives you a "disable", and that can be very useful against teams with channelling spells or for kiting melee heroes. Drum of Endurance is another nice utility item, but only pick one up if nobody else has.

Necronomicon is most commonly picked up if you need invisibility detection. The extra strength is also nice for keeping you alive, and the minions very useful for pushing. Ghost Scepter can be very useful if you're up against lots of physical damage, either late game, or against heroes like Clinkz and Juggernaut.

Finally, Rod of Atos - somewhat expensive and a bit greedy for a support, but it gives you considerably more durability and intelligence, plus the active is extremely helpful for both ganking and escaping. For only 850 more gold than a Force Staff it deserves consideration, especially against heavy burst damage.

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Luxury:



You don't tend to have tons of money left over when playing KOTL, and in many games the last item I pick up will be a Ghost Scepter, usually after a Mekansm and a Force Staff. However, it's sometimes worth looking at options if things go even later...

Scythe of Vyse is pretty awesome on any hero, but especially intelligence ones. Hex and a bunch of a nice stats, great for both you and your team.

Boots of Travel are another great option - even more movement speed and the ability to get around the map quickly (and potentially bring an ally with you using Recall). Also saves an inventory slot.

Aghanim's Scepter is a new option for KOTL as of update 6.81. It now gives you three bonuses:

1) Illuminate nows heals any team mates his for half it's total damage. E.g. a fully channelled 5 second blast would heal them for 250 HP.

2) You get permanent Spirit Form, so you will always have access to your extra spells.

3) Gives unobstructed vision around you during daytime only (the opposite of Night Stalker's AS upgrade).

Overall this is a useful set of bonuses, but more setup for utility than pure effect. It's a luxury upgrade and you shouldn't rush it before utility items. Ultimately the decision is whether the Hex of a sheepstick is worth more than these bonuses.

Role

Easy one - you're a hard support or #5. Your job is to ward, buy utility items and provide anything else your team needs. Your own needs are extremely small - you have near infinite sustain for less than 1000 gold, and you don't need any mobility aids or specialist equipment to use your abilities effectively.

Run the lane for your carry - deny, stack, pull and feed them mana. Semi-jungle if the enemy offlaner backs off to the tower, come back to feed your carry mana, and hit the offlaner with surprise Illuminates or Mana Leaks if they come back to compete. Don't go trading hits much with your opponents, let your carries' nuke do the work.

Try to make enemies retreat in combination with your carry, and time Mana Leak for just before they use their escape capabilities - it's damned funny watching Timbersaw realise that last Timber Chain cost over 200 mana, or Dark Seer to reach his tower and realise he won't be able to afford another Ion Shell for quite a while.

Generally you want to be nearby to the action centres, especially tower defences. Illuminate is a great way of defending, completely wiping out waves (including catapults) after a few levels. Enemy teams almost have to take you out first before they can take a tower successfully.

Your survivability is based on good positioning and your high movement speed, you never need to be close to the enemy to be effective, and you're at your best working from the sidelines to ensure your team is stacked with mana, and the enemy whacked with Illuminate and drained from Mana Leak. Your auto-attack is very weak, but can still be useful for that little bit of extra damage, denying and attacking towers.

Be considerate with the rest of your team - you may well be getting harassed to dish out mana, try to give it to the hero with the lowest pool, or the one most in need (e.g. an initiator without enough for his ultimate) as there is a fair cooldown. Remember you can ALT click on Chakra Magic to let people know it's on cooldown, and how long for.

Also be considerate to not take farm off other heroes where possible. Between some lane control and the occasional Illuminate while moving through the jungle you should easily be able to afford the essentials and a bit of extra equipment for yourself.

Good Allies

There almost no heroes who don't like a nice bit of free mana, but we'll be focusing mostly on laning partners and those who provide a particular synergy. Generally for the safe lane we want somebody with a cheap, reliable, single target nuke.



These are probably the best two partners as their nukes are cheap and reliable, allowing you to rapidly establish lane control.



A good select of partners with stun/nukes, they're pretty dangerous and you can allow them to make more use of them than normal. However their high mana costs and your lack of a follow stun means it will take more levels before you're realistically going to get kills.



A selection of some of the offlaners you work well with - again we want partners who can establish lane control with a spammable nuke of some kind - ideally something cheap so you can use it from the start. Also helps if your lane partner is fairly beefy so they can afford to be near the creep line while you hang back.

Bad Enemies

You're pretty squishy and very reliant on your movement speed and positioning to keep you alive. Here are some of the heroes who can make life pretty unpleasant for you:



Uck, horrible invisibility heroes. You can give them a bad time in lane if you get some Sentry Ward, but you have to be careful all game not to give them easy kills. Against everyone but Nyx, a Ghost Scepter can be very handy, you just want HP when up against him. Also be aware he can reflect Illuminate on to you very easily with Spiked Carapace, but not Mana Leak as it doesn't actually inflict any damage.



Ow, ow, ow. These guys can take you to pieces in no time if they catch you. Treat with care, ensure your wards are up and your map awareness on.



These guys can all dodge or minimise the effects of your main spells very easily through their transport abilities. Feed your allies and let them deal with them.