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Animal Courier
Observer Ward
Stout Shield
Tango
Ring of Regen
Soul Ring
Boots of Speed
Arcane Boots
Mekansm
Guardian Greaves
Pipe of Insight
Crimson Guard
Aghanim's Scepter
Assault Cuirass
Lotus Orb
Scythe of Vyse
Shiva's Guard
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2 | 3 | 7 | 8 |  |
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1 | 5 | 9 | 10 |  |
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4 | 12 | 13 | 14 |  |
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6 | 11 | 16 |  |
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15 | 17 | 18 |
"Is that a new hero?"
=http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/2523897138, Bloodseeker 2016
Elder Titan
MTG: Gruul (red/green)
Likes: Tsunderes, big band swing, 
Venomancer , moshing, 
Sven , psychoactive drugs, bedtime, Law & Order, armor, Evanescence
Dislikes: Yanderes, unnatural order, 
Silencer , Steeler's Wheel, 
Nyx Assassin , "Little Steps" , additives
ET is probably the best hero on the 6.88 patch, and hopefully will remain strong. PPD is famous across the pro scene for playing him, but apparently everyone forgets who he is. Kind of like when people go up against an all magic lineup and six hours after they lost, they remember 
Huskar exists. Or 
Kunkka as a hero in general. He has a very strong early game, especially when paired with a hero like 
Vengeful Spirit or heroes with slows. He also has massive late game potential against heroes who naturally don't build extraneous armor or spell resistance as well as being able to split an enemy's health bar cleanly in half. He also has a stun potential from the longest range than any other hero in the game. And he even has the potential, depending on the opponents and necessity, to become a core hero, similar to a carry, but let us not speak of this here, out in the open.
Some really good points that come across is that his ultimate Earth Splitter , pierces through BKB and immunities and, if the late game allows for that, also disarms the opponent, even though if one becomes spell immune afterward can remove the debuff, but once the BKB is popped, it won't do them any good. Another thing is that he makes good in the safelane and the offlane, even though my guide primarily targets the offlane as the highest potential to get things done, due to his stun's large range and the ability to scout with his Astral Spirit , which can also more than double his damage output when used correctly. He's also quite sturdy, especially with the Stout Shield being a starting item and will usually be able to tank a few tower hits in order to secure the kill.
Some bad points about him is that for a strength hero, he has relatively low HP in the beginning, making him an easy target for nukes. Against a 
Zeus for instance, the back line is the safest place to be unless ET gets the jump on him first. He also builds no items in order to deal with silences until Guardian Greaves , which removes all manner of debuffs from someone. Also, for being a STR hero, he does not make a good frontliner, even though his Astral Spirit, which can only be touched by the machinal machinations of 
Tinker and his MK II Boots (unless they changed that two patches ago), makes a great frontliner. He prefers to set things up with his Q, let his ult rip, then run around, causing sudden naps and the destruction of armor and spell resistance. What a great guy.
So without any more intros, let's move on to the over view of the good, the avoidable, and the unavoidable.
Elder Titan as a hero has several good and bad points about him, but in this chapter we're going to cover some basic strategies in learning to play him. First off, you already had a pretty good instinct in just picking ET as a hero and increasing your pool of heroes but, let's go over some more major points of his capabilities.
Good Instinct
1. Strong early game roaming.
It does not take a lot of mana to perform an Astral Spirit stomp combo on somebody between levels 1-5, and this is due to the low cost of his spirit in general. ET's mana pool is large enough in the beginning to supplement quite a few stomps and spirits, especially if you are able to acquire an early Soul Ring , but what makes it so great is the duration of the sleep time, which is 3 seconds at level 2, making it one of the most effective stun at lvl 3. This gives your mid plenty of time to set himself up when you're coming down from the offlane.
2. High harass potential
Astral Spirit gives a lot of damage at level 1 and 2, especially if there's a trilane you're fighting against, and the damage output is normally going to be double of whatever your base damage is. This gives you a double damage rune on a 16 second cooldown, closer to 7 seconds considering how long the duration of his spirit goes. This can lay some serious smackdown on squishier carries you're laning against, my personal favorite to beat the **** out of with this guy is 
Anti-Mage , because of his low base armor and cocky attitude, where four hits and he's dead. This is a great way to get carries out of lanes, and while it may put you in some danger, especially if the carry is protected by a 
Lich or a 
Lion, it will normally pay off way more than sitting and being a little *****.
3. Solid setup and teamfight
Passives win games sometimes in ways where some people don't even realize it. Out of the 150+ items in dota, there's only 4 that give spell resistance: the 
Cloak , 
Hood of Defiance , Pipe of Insight , and 
Glimmer Cape , and these are core on only 3 heroes, which are 
Axe , 
Centaur Warrunner , and Elder Titan himself. Any support could technically build it up, but it's just not something that's in their high-impact items. Even 
Timbersaw and 
Bristleback could build it, but that would set them back on their Shiva's Guard . The whole point of this is, for those who don't know (like that Bloodseeker in my game, bless his blissfully ignorant soul), ET's passive is Natural Order , which removes all base armor and all base spell resistance, setting it all to 0. What a hero: You push no buttons and have a higher impact with a passive than some heroes do with actives.
Actives also win games, but usually win more games than passives. A fully upgraded Echo Stomp will freeze enemies for 5 seconds of not moving. Great for disengages, initiations, and overall just damage. It is also the last spell that deals composite damage. HOWEVER. Remember that your physical body deals physical damage, and the astral body deals magical. From what I've seen, getting hit by both deals more damage than getting hit from one, but of course, I may be wrong. This does mean also that if the enemy has more armor in the late game, you can deal more damage relatively through your spirit.
Avoidable Mistakes:
1. Passive early gaming
The last Elder Titan match I lost was due to solo laning against a 
Slark and not ganking mid, as I did in my other games, or any other lane for that matter. I was concentrating on becoming a core in order to secure the late game, but that was greedy and ended in the downfall of that game. That and my team was pretty garbage as well. ET has so much kill potential on practically any lane that it should be abused as much as possible, especially with the Soul Ring available. Guarantees a stomp every time. Not to mention his base movespeed isn't too shabby either. If you're passive in the early game, it will allow your enemies to get ahead.
2. Too much confidence
This goes for all heroes, not just our dear friend the Tit. Generally speaking, he still has very little armor and is not suited to keep chasing under tower, even though he shouldn't be chased that far either. If an enemy is already halfway to their tier 2, you lost the fight and you should probably leave, unless you really want to feed. Even though ET can do well with minimal items, the Arcane Boots and Mekansm should not be delayed for longer than necessary. When you're approaching your LV 11 you should have both of these items done for the amount of game impact you should have had.
3. Greed
Everyone has it. Everyone. Even your grandma who makes you cupcakes and gives you money every time you go over. Deny yourself. If wards are off cooldown, buy them. If there's enough money for sentries and the enemy has two invis heroes or a 
Shadow Blade wielder, buy them. There's only one valid reason not to buy sentries or observers when they come up, and that's if you're 200 gold away from your major item and you are on your side of the map with an unused jungle. If you're shoving a lane with peeps, you need to make sure you don't get jumped on. Though ET is a monster with his core items all up in play, it doesn't mean he's going to suffer that much more if you don't have that 
Ring of Health in your inventory right away. Push the tower, win a teamfight, die for your carry's Triple Kill, and then use the assist and tower money to buy it in base.
Unavoidable Issues:
1. Money
Please reference Pink Floyd when you read the title.
As a support, expect your item timings to be 2 minutes behind what you were hoping for, or possibly more. You can't read the enemy team's mind and movements, no matter how much ward vision you have up unless you're a 
Treant Protector (another hero that doesn't exist. That guide will be fun). So sometimes your mid is ganked or your offlane and you need to TP and take the death so they may live. Doing so kind of makes you like Jesus, dying for their sins. And in dying and waiting to respawn, again much like Jesus, you will lose gold, setting items back. Not to mention with the amount of detection you'll need to buy you can never get a decent timing unless the enemy is just really bad at the game. Sometimes it will happen, though. Nobody expects an Elder Titan.
2. Hero knowledge
As we saw in the very first sentence of this guide, I'm 3k (not boasting, since it's not much to boast about) and people are in my skill bracket who STILL haven't seen this hero. Kind of a downer actually. You have to assume people don't know that you can wake up a sleeping enemy by punching them. Or even burning them with their 
Radiance . Others may also not know that Earth Splitter draws people towards the center of itself. This could be a good or a bad thing for you, depending on who doesn't know and who does. Either way, it's always good to make sure you communicate with your team. Mics are preferred since you can't type "please refrain from hitting the enemy with your skills and weapons while we disengage, or you will wake them and perish" in the space of 5 seconds. However, your chat wheel should have the option for "Get Back!" on it.
3. Turtling and cooldowns.
Elder Titan is not the best turtle hero in the world. Ult has a respectably long cooldown at 100 seconds, or 1:40 for scrubs who know nothing of time. Only die backs are longer than this cooldown. A good stomp results in the death of many creeps before a tower, but ultimately won't kill them. Not to mention he's just not equipped for continuously pushing out lanes. Even Echo Stomp at level 4 is an 11 second cooldown. Heroes like 
Lina that have quick, spammable abilities are much more suited for this kind of defense. If you're already forced into your base and you don't have a carry like 
Medusa , 
Sniper , or a Sven that has quick wave clear without putting themselves out there for too long, it's going to be very critical how you use your stomp.
You can usually pick Elder Titan in any lineup currently, as he is a viable Mekansm carrier which he can later turn into those delicious Guardian Greaves , the best boots in the game. This makes pushing much easier along with many other things, such as armor, regen, and health. Also since he is an Aura hero, you'll notice all the items on his list as core items are meant to build everyone stronger, better, harder, tougher. Let's first focus on how to get there though.
Buy your starting items recommended by this viable 6.2k mmr twitch chat guide and head to the rune. You can either go with everyone else or opt to try and solo a rune. Either way, normal rune contesting should be a 4-1 split, with the 4 going to whichever the closest safelane is. This allows for much cleaner contesting. If you think you'll be able to get a kill, level Echo Stomp first as it's a great setup tool.
Now get your *** back to the offlane and try to block as many creeps as possible. Assuming you have Astral Spirit level 1, here's some clever tricks for you. You can walk your spirit around using Tab. Summon it on the large camp and walk it over to the small pull camp before letting it run back to you. Smart players will be able to get the lane creeps and possibly some heroes by walking behind the creep wave and catching them on return. That is some serious damage. Whoever is the closest to you, like Anti-Mage or 
Terrorblade or their support, just punch them in the face and watch as their health bar disappears. It's practically magic, but in reality it's physical damage.
Rune contesting is a big thing for ET, especially since he can put his astral spirit high ground and curbstomp the absolute **** out of them and steal their rune. Also with a good regen, haste, arcane, or DD, he can go mid and do something with it. Speaking of which.
Mid is always gankable, especially with the amount of setup ET provides. At level 3, you should be able to get 3 seconds worth of standing around for the enemy. What's really cool about the sleep is that damage from creeps and towers don't wake them up. If you have another roaming support or offlane, like a 
Rubick or 
Ogre Magi , the kill potential in any lane is ridiculously high.
The highest impact you'll have is at level 5, where your sleep will be 4 seconds long and there's a little bit of Natural Order in your life as well as the enemies. You also should have had just enough farm in the offlane if you weren't completely harassed out of it for Soul Ring . Your base movement speed is decent enough to where it doesn't matter if you have Boots yet, but it definitely helps early on. At this stage, you can leave the offlane, regardless of who is farming it. Being stagnant as an offensive hero is a waste of potential and will cause more harm than good. An enemy team will suffer if they have no farm and a lot of deaths on 4 heroes and only 1 with farm, but will even out if they've all had decent lanes and no disruption. There are not a lot of carries right now that auto-build into extremely tanky items. Even 
Lifestealer has kind of fallen out of favor. This means that even after laning phase is over they'll still be farming it as best as they can, leaving them open for ganks. Make sure you got dust for Slark as a general rule, even if you don't see the 
Shadow Amulet yet. It won't go through his ult, but it's definitely nice to have for when he has his invisibility.
Once you get that Earth Splitter , don't be afraid to use it early to set up kills, especially if you're roaming. It's a lot of damage and it also slows an enemy hero. Plus if you throw it on their direct escape route, it could guide them into your ganking buddies. As an example, you could throw the ult off to the right, forcing your enemy to go left, where your mid 
Death Prophet is waiting to slow them regardless with her 
Spirit Siphon , or steered into a 
Sacred Arrow or an angry Sven . If you stomp someone with level 3 Echo, you can lay an ult down immediately and guarantee the damage and slow as long as nobody wakes them up.
My headache is getting pretty bad right now. I should have taken today off.
Towers are not ET's favorite thing to push, mostly because he can't. There's always the option to go for the 
Drum of Endurance , which boosts a lot of stats and gives the ability to push a lot easier, but this guide is much more focused on making sure that your team survives and can turn engagements. I would rather focus on getting Arcane Boots , which are cheaper. However it is a good item for most cases, so if you have a lot of early game push naturally, like having a 
Juggernaut and a 
Beastmaster , try not to skip it. Going to the original point, though, having three people in one lane is grounds to push and usually knock down a tower, especially if you're able to get a kill or two out of it. Forcing TP's and towers are the best thing you can do, not to mention that at lvl 7 you have the potential to put the enemy to sleep for 5 whole seconds in a large radius.
(WAKE ME UP WAKE ME UP INSIDE I CAN'T WAKE UP)
The overall point is that this is when you start building towards that Mekansm in order to continue to support your teams in the fight and make pushes go on for a lot longer and stronger. It also is just a good item overall, even for the high mana cost, but when you're building into Guardian Greaves it really doesn't matter that much in the long run. After your Mek is done, you should constantly strive to push tier 2 towers until all the objectives lie dead at your feet. As you close in towards that LV 11 don't forget that knowledge is now available to buy for yourself in the shop for the cheap price of 150 gold. I would only buy this if you're the lowest level on your team and you've already bought out of wards. If you happen to have a second support that's running 5 or 6, let them have it. You might even buy it for them if you're extra nice.
Depending on how well the midgame goes for you and how much momentum your team has, you may be able to secure yourself a 
Vanguard and frontline a little harder for your team instead of going straight into the GG boots or the Hood of Defiance . Which one you secure for yourself first is completely up to the team composition on the other side. Heroes like 
Phantom Assassin and Vengeful Spirit will beg for the big V, while heroes like Zeus and Venomancer will ask for that big D. All sexual references to virtual characters aside, though, these are items that are very easy and necessary to complete for ET. With all Tier 2 towers down, the gold should come pretty naturally. If your teamfights haven't been going that well due to lack of followup or just bad positioning, it's time to reevaluate the strategy for the late game. Key points would include creating enough space by invading the enemy jungle so that your main carry is left alone to farm up items, grouping up to push while the enemy is economically weaker, or securing Rosh in order to make space across the map and collectively farm.
On a very important note, Natural Order does not work on Rosh.
Roshan is a key element in pushing high ground for many, many reasons. Teams with bad high ground offense will usually find themselves continuously pushed back after one or two deaths of teammates and suddenly the scores have been evened and lead lost. Also there is 1,000 gold to be gained for that beast to be slain and cool prizes. Another big thing for this guide in particular is that Elder Titan favors the Rosh pit fights.
ET can sit outside the rosh pit from far distances, walk his spirit in, then put whoever is in there straight to sleep, which also sets up the Earth Splitter , This also gives a ton of vision, allowing you to make the call whether to go inside or keep searching around for a bit and pick off anybody hanging around. Two most common fights you'll see is on Dire high ground outside the pit and the pit itself, and both are favorable to our ET. The first is favorable because there's two major routes and one bottleneck leading back into the Dire lanes. If anyone chooses the bottle neck, guaranteed they're getting slammed by that split. The means there's really only two choices, the best one being going up the stairs towards the secret shop and hoping to get out of vision long enough to leave. The pit itself, though, is always 100% Fissure material due to the gravitational pull of that fissure and the area of the pit. Plus it's a straight 50% magical damage without resistance because of your Natural Order , and even with a Mekansm on the other team, the damage has already been done and won't be reversed. Not to mention you still have your own.
Towards the 35 minute mark, you should be finishing up all the pieces to everything else, including your Crimson Guard and Pipe of Insight , giving you three extra slots you can fill. Most of the time you'll find yourself obsessed with wards and 
Town Portal Scroll refills as a support.
In case of your high ground defense, your best bet is to walk your Astral Spirit out as far as it can go down the lane they're pushing and put their creeps to sleep. in order to gain maximum time to prepare your defenses. Also if you've lost a tower, always put an observer and a sentry down, regardless of invis heroes or not. What you want to make sure to do is keep ward vision off of your high ground so you may be able to catch them unawares with your position. Of course you never know when a 
Pudge will get a lucky hook and **** everything up. If your team can cooperate with you, on the other hand, you may be able to turn a push into a push of your own,, depending on how prepared your team is along with its composition. a lot of big teamfight spells can land a full wipe and carry you to victory.
In your seige of the enemy high ground, just scout out the best you can with spirit. If you can acatch a decent group with the split, go for it. Not to mention you there's a lot to protect you against the elements of evil. You may even want to go high ground yourself to force people to start wasting spells on you in order to give everyone else better advantages. But if you die, as the natural carrier of every Aura in the game, you may as well keep yourself from dying. Let's look at some of the luxury items:
Elder Titan is not meant to go and right click everyone to death, because that's what his team is meant to do for him. Even items like AC aren't actual damage boosters, they just change damage relatively to how it interacts with enemy armor. As long as you offer control, the enemy will fall before thy mighty Stapler Gun.
Shiva's Guard is first on the list for offering a high amount of armor and stability for ET. It also offers vision and slows and damage with it's active, and acts as a great initiation. This also slows the enemy attack speed when they're attacking you by a respectable amount, giving you more auto-attacks than them. The vision is the most important part, as it will allow target spells to pierce the fog of war.
Aghanim's Scepter is usually a good pickup, even before the Shiva's because the build up is much easier and also costs less. I usually pick this up when the enemy has a lot of right click heavy users, such as Sven and Phantom Assassin , who usually have to pop their 
Black King Bar before a fight starts. It's especially good against the Sven and also strength carries like Lifestealer and 
Chaos Knight due to the fact that normally they won't be building 
Manta Style which will also remove the disarm that the Scepter offers. The upgrade also gives a larger slow and duration on that slow and disarm and some pretty sweet stats.
Assault Cuirass can usually be built by one other teammate on your team, but isn't always frowned upon for an ET to pick up. It increases pushing power and armor for everyone and decreases enemy armor. This also gives our lord Tit more punching power as well, relatively speaking. It's a great item, but if you already have a carry that may build it for themselves, like a 
Queen of Pain or a Sven , another alternative to armor, especially earlier, is Vladamir's Offering .
Aura's aside, a good comeback/final blow mechanic is the 
Refresher Orb . Each ult still does 50% of a heroe's max health, which means if they have no magic resistance, or your teammates have a 
Veil of Discord (another decent mid game pickup on Tit), there's a high chance of wiping the team. You'll have more than enough mana to get it off, and the sleep duration also is long enough for you to lay both down and do the biz.
Lotus Orb removes debuffs and reflects spells: Handy in case you've already been silenced after popping your Guardian Greaves and good for removing silences on your friends as well. It offer good armor and regen as well. With this in accordance to your other items built, you basically have a poor man's 
Heart of Tarrasque which can't be turned off.
Scythe of Vyse offers good stats and mana boosting as well as more control for your friends to quickly nuke someone down. It's better than an Orchid and a Eul's based on the fact that it will prevent the enemy from using their items and normally can chain together a long amount of stuns to kill said hero. Just with ET alone that's over 8 seconds of stun.
In conclusion, this hero is extremely strong and diverse, with many openings to dominate in several areas of the game when played correctly and always has the opportunity as a support to become a force to be reckoned with. Have fun, and remember that CTRL + movement will be your best friend when you use your Astral Spirit to scout.
Cheers,
UnrulySupportGuy
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