Sando's Guide to Gyrocopter

Introduction

Strengths and Weaknesses

+ Great early burst damage
+ Strong, multi-target attacks
+ Good agility gain
+ Powerful teamfighter
+ Fast farming ability
+ Great DPS output

- Somewhat item dependent
- Burst and stun are unreliable
- Short range without Flak Cannon
- Poor base damage
- Quite squishy
- No escape

Rocket Barrage

Rocket Barrage is a powerful, short range nuke that inflicts tremendous amounts of damage to isolated enemy units. It's one of the most powerful level 1 nukes, and has a very short cooldown that allows it to be used multiple times in a single engagement. It can easily get you first blood with a little setup, and can also turn around situations where you might be in trouble.

Unfortunately it has a very short range, requiring you to chase, isolate or lure opponents into trouble. It will attack every enemy within range equally, meaning that the damage is rapidly dispersed if you can't get them on their own.

This makes timing and usage an important skill - and also means that a good pair of early boots are a big help for you. Try to open up on enemies as they retreat away from their creeps, or if they try to chase you and get isolated.

It's cheap enough that you can use it to boost your farming speed against non-magic immune jungle creeps once you have a little equipment. It can also be pretty deadly when combined with invisibility.

Homing Missile

Homing Missile is your stun, and also packs a reasonably hefty nuke depending on how far it has travelled to hit an enemy. It has a long cast range, but is slow to begin moving, and can be killed by attacks from enemies - making it unreliable.

The secret to a good Homing Missile is to try to cast it from outside the vision of enemies, giving them less time to react and retreat away from it. It benefits greatly from any other stuns or slows that your team can supply, giving it a better chance of successfully reaching its target intact.

It can be quite difficult to land a missile successfully against good players, and a number of heroes can dodge it fairly easily using their abilities. However, it does have a good stun duration, even at low levels, and can sometimes get you out of trouble - for example if Pudge is about to Meat Hook you, drop a missile and it should arrive in time to break his channelling and give you the chance to get away.

If at all possible, combine it with Rocket Barrage to inflict considerable damage.

Flak Cannon

I'd say overall Flak Cannon is Gyro's best power. While it relies on your right click damage for its scaling, it's useful all game for harassment, pushing, and team fights.

Once activated, your next 3/4/5/6 attacks will hit every enemy unit within 1000 range except your primary target (which will be attacked as normal). This makes it very potent for teamfights, and is especially useful against illusion heroes and large groups of minions. It's also pretty useful for pushing and farming.

For example, when farming the jungle, you can wipe out entire stacks (even ancients) very quickly - even farming multiple camps at the same time by drawing them out in turn. A good support or dominated unit stacking ancients for you will massively increase your GPM once you can take them.

In lane, you can use it to harass enemy heroes, pop Clarity potions and generally irritate them for a fairly small mana cost. However, be aware that you can push the lane out while doing so.

In teamfights, make sure you activate it at the optimum moment to get as many attacks as possible against as many enemy heroes as you can - you have to wait 30 seconds to use it again, so don't just use it to push the creep wave forward before a siege for example.

Be aware that the extra shots DO NOT carry bonuses such as Critical Strike or UAMS, so we mainly want to focus on stacking straight damage on Gyro to maximise it's effectiveness.

Call Down

Call Down is your ultimate, launching two large rockets that explode a few seconds apart in a reasonably large radius. The first missile does more damage and slow, but the slow effect of the second missile lasts longer.

This ability has a pretty short cooldown and low mana cost, so don't be afraid to use it for both ganks and teamfights. Frankly it's a bit lacklustre after the early-midgame, as the scaling is pretty poor, but every little helps, and it does do a good job of keeping enemies in range of Flak Cannon while you tear them up with that.

Call Down has an Aghanim's Scepter upgrade that gives it a global range and a little more damage, but frankly it's not that useful in 99% of builds and you should generally concentrate on stacking up physical damage for use with Flak Cannon instead.

Skill Builds

Generally you'll want to max Rocket Barrage immediately and first - it's a very good nuke and can easily bag you kills that will boost your farm and experience considerably.

Homing Missile I'd always want a point in early on, but after that it's very situational whether you put more into it any time soon or not. The main attraction is a 2.2 second stun rather than the damage, but it's kind of unreliable.

Flak Cannon can be skilled more heavily early on for lane domination, push/anti-push or if you expect early large scale clashes. It's a very irritating skill to lane against and only becomes more useful as the game progresses.

I'd generally get Call Down at 6 as frankly it becomes less and less potent from this point onwards. You may even decide not to skill it any further as the damage increase and cooldown reduction is pretty lacklustre.

Role

Gyrocopter is generally played as a #1 carry in the safelane, given farming priority by his team and expected to provide the bulk of their damage later on. He's also pretty good in trilane vs trilane battles, so could end up offlane with 2 supports. Alternatively he can safe lane solo pretty well against most heroes.

He can also be played situationally as a mid, using his abilities to dominate that lane and/or gank the sidelanes. He doesn't generally get a lot of play in pro-games in this role, but it can work for him as he snowballs nicely.

Finally, you can even play him as #4 semi-support, although this is pretty unusual, and he'll usually be roaming or in a kill lane here.

One of the things I like about Gyrocopter is that his skillset allows him quite a lot of flexibility in his approach. You can play him as a snowballing or teamfighting carry due to his midgame power, or he can AFK farm effectively and carry the game for his team later on - you generally make your choice here post-core:

Black King Bar can let you team fight.

Shadow Blade can let you gank/snowball.

Helm of the Dominator can let you stack ancients and get health regen from farming.

Playstyle

Gyrocopter is a fun hero to play, packing damage in almost every situation and with short cooldowns that let you employ his abilities frequently. However, he's much better at dishing out damage than taking it - so you have to find a good balance between being within his short attack range, and dodging/kiting out to stay alive.

He's very well rounded for an agility hero and does everything pretty well - farming, pushing, ganking and teamfighting. This makes him an excellent pickup in most games - he's very flexible and you can respond effectively to the situation in hand - simply adjust your item choices and playstyle accordingly.

His other great benefit is that his Flak Cannon damage hits an unlimited number of targets in the given area - meaning he can attack the whole enemy team at once, and also deals effectively with illusions without getting bogged down by them. His DPS output is extremely consistent - generally you'll be stacking raw damage on him and then applying it consistently across a number of targets.

His survivability is very much based on this damage output - lifesteal is crucial, as is the ability to continue attacking so he can keep healing himself up.

Items

Starting:



This would be my standard starting equipment for relatively easy lanes where you're expecting to fight 3v1. You have some basic health regen for when you need it, and the Wraith Band should make it easy to last hit while also boosting your mana and health pools a bit.

You may need to fly out more consumables as you go, but this should guarantee you're last hitting well even if against a reasonable opponent. For tri vs tri lanes you may need to grab more starting consumables. You could even consider starting with a Ring of Basilius instead if you think the lane will be almost uncontested but this is a little more risky.

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Core:



This is my standard core - a lot of cheap stats from the Ring of Aquila and Drum of Endurance should sort out your early issues with health/mana, while also providing some mana regen for your allies and the option to push when you want to.

Gyrocopter needs some additional stats early on to round him out, and I'd say these items are all a sound investment for the midgame. They're relatively cheap and give good bonuses. If you're absolutely determined to play an AFK farming style, you may even skip one of them and go for an earlier Helm of the Dominator, but this may limit your ability to get involved.

If you're in a particularly tricky trilane or solo against a spell spammer, a Magic Wand can be a good investment too.

For boots, we almost always want Phase Boots as they stack damage most effectively (our agility gain is good enough that attack speed isn't much of an issue later on), and it also gives you an effective way of staying in range for Rocket Barrage and possibly escaping.

Don't be afraid to mix up the order you get these items in - you may want Boots of Speed or even Phase Boots first if you think it will get you kills. Pick up an early Bracer if you need HP, or the Ring of Basilius if you need mana regen.

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Extensions:



Generally I'd say you want to pickup a Black King Bar almost every game with him, and usually the Helm of the Dominator too. As a carry who needs to be near the frontline of almost every fight, it's vitally important that you keep attacking to both inflict DPS and lifesteal to keep you alive.

Helm of the Dominator gives you armour and lifesteal, which are both extremely useful, but almost as important is the farming boost it gives you by allowing you to stack ancients. You can farm them extremely quickly and the number present is not a problem for you - the more the better.

Gyrocopter isn't a hero who really needs any help from farming equipment (due to Flak Cannon), but the HoTD offers a very genuine boost.

You might also want to pick up a Yasha here.

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Luxury:



This may seem like quite a short list - what about Orb Effects, crits, etc? Don't get me wrong, these items aren't terrible on him, but I'd consider these items to usually be the best choices.

As Flak Cannon attacks a large number of enemies based purely on your raw damage (orbs, crits etc aren't applied to secondary targets), you want to pick the most efficient items possible to achieve this.

Monkey King Bar would usually be my first choice here - it provides a lot of whammy for the cost, and hits all secondary targets just as hard as the primary. Obviously it's also good against heroes with evasion.

Butterfly is another good upgrade, but it somewhat more situational as it's evasion effect can be countered by enemies. Still provides a good boost to your armour, attack speed and damage though.

Manta Style is a natural upgrade if you've already bought a Yasha or Shadow Blade - allowing you dodge certain incoming spells and debuff some effects. It provides some good additional damage even if your illusions aren't that brilliant. Generally I'd consider this after most of these other items unless I was on a more ganking/snowball build.

Satanic mmmm nice. Once you have sufficient damage (say after MKB) the lifesteal and active from this are extremely potent and can keep you alive right at the heart of the battle unless you get disabled. Builds from HoTD and I highly recommend it.

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Situational:



Two situational items I want to talk about briefly. The PMS is not an ideal option, as a ranged hero it only offers half the damage block, and I don't think it's generally as useful as a Ring of Aquila. However, if you're in a lane where you're being heavily harassed and struggling to farm, it can be a stop-gap option.

Divine Rapiers are kind of a pet hate of mine - there's been too many games where somebody tries to troll when winning and loses the damned thing for a nice 12k gold turnaround. Rapiers should be a last gasp gamble that you either need for a base race or because you're losing anyway.

However, they are extremely good on Gyrocopter due to Flak Cannon and can potentially turn a game for you. Consider one strongly if you're up against it, and try to grab an aegis from Roshan too if possible.

Shadow Blade I was almost reluctant to mention as it's pretty situational - basically you want it for ganking - go invisible, find an isolated hero and burst him down before he can respond.

Sample Builds

Standard Carry:

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6-slotted Carry:

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Ganker/Snowball:

Good Allies

Armour Reducers:



Gyro's high physical damage output he benefits a lot from allies who can reduce enemy armour, making him hit even harder.

Stunners:



Heroes who can lock down targets for him are extremely useful, especially early game when Rocket Barrage and Homing Missile can be so effective.

Damage Amplifiers:



Being able to amplify damage of all kinds helps Gyro tremdously, both early and late game.



A nice chunky support for you, with a combined stun/slow/nuke that does well with Rocket Barrage. Later on, his ability to tank up and his Vampiric Aura work well for you.

Bad Enemies

Burst Damage:



You're somewhat squishy until you get some items together, and even then are much better at dishing out damage than receiving it.

Other Heroes:



These heroes are all capable of causing various problems for you throughout the game - hitting hard, locking you down, harassing you or proving too mobile to kill.

Summary

Gyrocopter is an excellent all rounder, with several viable builds and playstyles that you can switch between during the game.

He has excellent early game burst damage and is capable of snowballing hard given the right situation and backup. His farming speed and DPS output late game are also suitably impressive if you play him correctly. He has good teamfight presence.

His physical damage is consistent and multi-target, albeit in bursts. Building raw damage is your primary goal, as Flak Cannon doesn't carry orb effects or critical strikes. He's squishy and short ranged, so it's important to build magic immunity and lifesteal to improve your survivability.