Semi-Carry Earthshaker

You guys are right, Crit is great on semi-carry earthshaker. I tested around a bit with Daedalus and Armlet, I could get hits around 2k-3k with Enchant Totem.

Also I noted that 2 Daedalus' does lesser damage than Armlet of Mordiggian + Daedalus but it would trigger more and lesser survivability.

Assault Cuirass seems to be situational pick to me, If no one in your team is making it and you need survivability; you could go for it.

Thinking you can get either Octarine Core or Silver Edge but not both depending on the situation. Octarine definitely better than Bloodstone and solves mana issues fairly.

So, As of now, for 6 slots late game I'm thinking,

Cost: 22920 gold

Daedalus, Armlet, Octarine, Assault Cuirass; All good suggestions, I'll experiment more on these and update the guide soon.



Sange and Yasha is not supposed to be an initiation item here either but rather give overall boosts in almost all departments where ES falls short, it gives him movement speed, damage, attack speed, hp and an additional slow apart from all the stuns. I get it early on because unless your team is supporting you, it is very hard to get gold initially for an Earthshaker. But after reading all the suggestions, I'm beginning to feel that it is a situational pick as well when you have lots of faster heroes on the enemy team.

Similar to my build, but i would prefer Blink Dagger because it is harder to counter, and I put AC/Heart/bkb as a replacement for shivas. My reasoning is AC not only increases your armor, but it also decreases armor in an AOE. Heart is for when you just need survivability in general, not armor or magic resist but just raw hp. bkb is when you get chainstunned. I can understand Shiva's, so maybe i would add that to the situational along with the 3 items i listed

I think you've missed the importance of critical hits in semi carry es.

The ideal semi es item build is something like treads>SB>daedalus>heart/shivas>daedalus>daedalus

Yes, triple daedalus. You pick Shivas to deal with physical damage. Heart to deal with magic damage. You could go AC instead, which is super situational.

But yeah, hardcore crits for days.

Armlet of Mordiggian into Shadow Blade into Heart of Tarrasque will give you pretty much the highest on-hit damage in the whole game without rapira.

armlet is pretty much core on carry es because it gives strength, and str gives you base damage which is amped in Enchant Totem.

It's generally a pretty bad idea to not rush Blink Dagger on dagger heroes. I mean, not only is blink the best item in the game and is more cost-efficient that any other item in dota...but Earthshaker's huge weakness is his ability to close gaps with enemies. Essentially if you don't go blink nobody is going to be bad enough to stand next to you ; so at the end of the day you can't use your skills in any way. Enchant Totem, Aftershock, Echo Slam...all those skills rely on you being next to enemies and they know it.

Sange and Yasha is not an initiation item. People are still going to kite you. SnY first shaker is like SnY first Ursa...nobody is going to be bad enough to be next to you so you can't kill anybody.

Is Octarine not worth it?
Lifesteal off fissure aftershock and ulti, which makes for a great lifesaving mechanism.
Also since a lot of your damage comes from enchant, it probably is worth it to shave 1.25 seconds off of the cooldown.
I think Octarine could trump Bloodstone in most situations with this build.

Great guide though I'm gonna try this next chance I get.

any sort of carry Earthshaker relies on the Totem for damage, and there is no other item in the game that fits better than daedalus to boost that up. My ideal build for Semi-carry Earthshaker would be,

Threads -> Blink/SB -> Crit -> Crit -> Heart/Shiva/bkb -> Crit.

What about Shadowblade Daedalus

Thank you for your comments.

1. Why lots of attack speed?
2. Why not stack a lot of strength?

• As I mentioned earlier, this build isn't just about trying to maximize that burst damage from Enchant Totem, but use it as a nuke along with decent sustained damage (~250) and stuns. ES has all the damage he needs to kill a hero, the problem is dishing it out fast enough. Attack speed also helps him in a solo duel.
  
  
• You have all the damage you need, just need to catch up to running heroes to stun and dish out damage fast enough. Sange and Yasha gives greater maim and Silver Edge gives lesser maim, these slows should help a lot.
  
  
• You could stack two Heart of Tarrasque if you can find the gold for them. Also, people underestimate Soul Ring's early to midgame utility; It is very useful for keeping that low mana pool up on this hero; it is almost like free Enchanted Mangoes.
  
  
• Blink Dagger is very useful on this hero, it would be better than Silver Edge because it is faster (instant actually) initiation. You can get both of them if you want, it depends on the situation.

3. Why Sange & Yasha and Vlads?

• Sange and Yasha gives two important thing to this move-attack-slow hero to catch up with heroes apart from blink dagger, 16% move speed and Greater maim slow. He has decent sustained damage with this build AND good burst damage. Also, please note that he's not a pure carry but a semi-carry which helps out the main carry.
  
  
• Vladmir's Offering is also same thing, It is good for early game and allows you to farm neutral creeps easily early on. It gives everything overall, 15% damage, lifesteal and mostly that extra bit of mana regen. I suppose you could put Satanic instead of Vladmir's Offering (which I mainly avoided because of very high cost: 6.1k compared to 2.3k).

I've tried to keep the build not be very costly since it is not always possible that you get a good start. With this build, you can still catch up even if you fail your laning phase.

Why build SnY and Vlads on a hero who can blow up people with just Sb and small crit if you're building him as a carry anyway? Carry ES has **** sustained damage and is purely burst-oriented.

Hell yeah!
Dota is supposed to be fun. So why not just enjoy it with a funny build from time to time?
Just some points

1. Why are you building so much attack speed on him? Wouldn't raw damage be better?
2. Enchant Totem increases damage based on your primary attribute. Did you ever try to stack a lot of strenght? Satanic instead of Vladimir's Offering, Silver Edge instead of Blink Dagger or just a lot of Heart of Tarrasque's spring to mind.