Spirit Breaker: "Rampage!" (Updated 13/05/2015)

Introduction

To first understand the hero, you of course need to understand what role he plays.
Spirit Breaker is mainly a ganker, but can also carry somewhat. I like to compare his carrying ability to a Queen of Pain, but his ganking prowess is more akin to Nyx Assassin. He is durable in all sense of the word, starting with 5 armor, a ridiculous amount for a hero who starts with 701 hp without any items (which is incidentally the highest in the game).
To top things off, he starts with a ridiculous 65 average damage, what is much higher than most heroes and makes last hitting incredibly easy, especially since he even hits harder on creeps than heroes with Quelling Blades.

Pros VERY hard to kill. Amazing ganking potential. Very high base damage. Very high early game health and armor. Scales decently with items. Great initiation. An escape mech, although not so reliable.

Cons Not the best teamfighter ever, especially if you mess up the charge. Charge can be hard to use correctly. Ult can sometimes be a double-edged sword. Requires good farm to be useful, but other heroes are more useful with the farm.

Skills

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Type: Targets:

Active Enemy Units

Spirit Breaker fixes his sight on an enemy unit and starts charging through all objects. All enemy units passed through will be hit by a Greater Bash, and the targeted unit is stunned upon impact. If the targeted unit dies, Spirit Breaker will change his target to the nearest enemy unit to that location.

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Notes:

• Spirit Breaker will run through units, trees, structures and terrain.
• Allies of Spirit Breaker (and he himself) will see an animation over the head of the target.
• Any unit you pass through (300 radius) will proc a Greater Bash of Spirit Breaker's current level, if Greater Bash has been learned.
• The charge stops if you click anywhere, or if you are disabled.
• Spirit Breaker gains shared vision of the target for the duration.
• If the target dies, the charge is transferred to the nearest valid target.
• Some items are usable during the charge without interrupting it. Using Black King Bar right before you strike will ensure your charge doesn't get countered.
• Does NOT provide True Sight on enemy unit, however the animation over the head of the target will still be there.

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I thought to look at this skill first not because it's the first one of his skills, but it's the most important to look at. You might think:"Why the hell would I not max charge first? It makes me run faster, makes the stun longer, etc."
To understand why, you have to look at the tooltip:

So, to do the most damage you need to max your Greater Bash. If you do not max your Greater Bash, you are practically useless.

THE COW HAS BEEN BUFFED! it now has a beautiful 12 second cooldown, which really helps your uptime.

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Empowering Haste

Type: Affects:

Aura/Active Allied Units

The Spirit Breaker's presence increases the movement speed of nearby allied units. On use, gives an extra boost of speed for 6 seconds.

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Notes:

• This is an aura, and will give the buff to Allied units.
• 900 Radius is a very large area, and you can use this to save people in danger by following them at a distance to give them the movement speed bonus.

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There is not much to comment about this ability, other than the fact it gives your whole team the movement speed bonus. this is INCREDIBLY good and makes it very hard for even heroes with blinks to escape you, raising most heroes movement speed to above 450. As this also increases your movement speed, it also increases your bash damage, and therefore all of your skill damage.

This now has an active, giving you an extra burst of speed for 6 seconds. For 14 seconds after that, however, you'll only have half of the original speed. It doesn't matter too much, and using the active to get a bit of extra damage is generally okay.

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Type: Targets:

Passive Enemy Units

Gives a chance to stun and knockback an enemy unit on an attack, as well as gaining bonus movement speed after a bash occurs. Deals damage based on movement speed.

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Notes:

• Increases Spirit Breaker's movement speed by 15% for 3 seconds at all levels.
• Has a 100 range knockback on proc.
• The bonus damage is added to spirit breaker's attack damage. This is special becuase it is possible to get extra damage crits if you bash and crit at the same time, but the 25%*17% is a very low chance.
• Does not stack with Skull Basher or Abyssal Blade

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This is what creates all of Spirit Breaker's damage. Without this skill, his ult will be no better than Riki's blink strike and Charge Of Darkness will be almost useless.
Both Spirit Breaker's ultimate and his Charge have damage based on this skill. Charge Of Darkness hits all enemies passed through by Spirit Breaker with a greater bash, which at level 7 with max bash is around 150 physical damage, and a 1.6 second stun. A well placed charge can easily stun every enemy hero, damage for 150 and also don't forget the stun on the main target.

It was buffed recently, which isn't the largest buff. It gives you a bit extra damage in the first couple of levels, what's nice, but not incredible.

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Type: Targets:

Active Enemy Units

Spirit Breaker slips into the nether realm, reappearing next to his hapless victim. Upon reappearing, a Greater Bash of the current level occurs and deals bonus damage. With Aghanim's Scepter, the Greater Bash hits in a 250 radius IN FRONT OF the target.

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Notes:

• Spirit Breaker will move to the other side of the target seen from the point he cast it.
• Skill has a 1.2 second cast time - you can be interrupted during this! It is also cancelled via line of sight - this can be very irritating during the night!
• The stun goes through Black King Bar, but not the damage.

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This skill hits for a ridiculous amount at level 7, being 150 magic damage + around 120-150 physical, on top of a blink strike, and the stun. The added physical damage hits hard on very many heroes early game, since many of them won't have much armor.
This skill is what makes Spirit Breaker an amazing ganker, with a semi low cooldown and large damage. On top of his already high base damage, with a couple of items he can easily solo a player with charge + ult and a lucky bash or two. However, at the point of the game that you'll be ganking there will likely be a teammate on the lane you are ganking, which makes kills incredibly easy. I have bolded the final point on this, as it is incredibly good against heroes such as enigma (as long as you don't get caught in the black hole yourself!

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Items

Power Treads
Boots are always a choice of preference, and I prefer treads. The health is great, and the attack speed also gets you more bashes, of course. Phase boots are decent, they do give you more damage on your bash when you phase but the extra health and attack speed is great.

Drum of Endurance
With the new changes, you can now combine this with Empowering Haste's active for a ridiculous 37% bonus movement speed for your whole team., on top of giving you everything you need, mana, damage, health, attack speed.. it has it all.

Shadow Blade
With the release of Silver Edge, this item only got better. You can activate this while charging and you won't even break invis when you finish your charge, allowing you to get the bonus damage. It also gives you attack speed what gives you more bashes. The invisibility allows you to charge past wards, removing one of the biggest problem for spirit breaker when ganking. You don't have to worry about invis reveal other than a gem, since they aren't going to randomly use dust and they aren't very likely to randomly place sentries. This makes Shadow Blade an incredibly good item for Spirit Breaker & makes his ganks all the more deadly.
I almost always pick up this item after Shadow Blade - it gives you everything you want - stats, attack speed, health and an awesome boost in movement speed, making you incredibly fast.

Assault Cuirass
I almost always go into this after the Sange and Yasha as it's very unlikely you'll need any more pure health and the Hyperstone alone increases your damage potential by a lot, and the armor reduction also makes your ult that slightly bit more deadly.

Silver Edge
You'll eventually always upgrade the Shadow Blade, but it's best to leave it until at least after the Cuirass. However, against some heroes such as Phantom Assassin or Spectre, always buy it as soon as possible - removing the passives of these heroes is the difference between a kill and death.

Aghanim's Scepter
Still a great item if you can get it really fast. The lower cooldown and AOE bash is really great during a teamfight, but currently I find it's much more useful to get the Shadow Blade.

Urn of Shadows
I like this item a lot, but I find that going for a fast drums is better, and considering I will get the Aghanim's after the drums, there's no need for the mana regen. It's still a good item however, and the extra damage can bring you a kill.

Black King Bar
I thought about having this in Spirit Breaker's core, but then though that i shouldn't. Why? He has so much ******** health that he is REALLY hard to kill with treads, drums and urn. Sometimes it can be good to take a Magic Missile for the team. Since you probably still won't die, it can be better than a support taking it instead. don't forget you also run at a ridiculous speed, and even stuns won't stop you from getting back to them. However, when against teams where AOE teamfight damage is all they've got (think: Dark Seer, Sand King, Enigma etc) you will want to pick it up. it's only single target stuns you can shrug off.

Armlet of Mordiggian
This makes Spirit Breaker hit like a complete truck if you can get it early. It also tanks him up even further. but, once again, i don't have this as core. Just like Aghanim's, it's usefulness drops as the game proceeds, and it's something you'd eventually sell. Since i find that Urn and Shadow Blade are too helpful to remove from the core, by the time you have those three items you won't be wanting armlet, but it can be a pretty good pick up if you get a Shadow Blade very fast, although so can Aghanim's.


Monkey King Bar
I put this one first because it'll be needed against heroes who pick up Butterfly, have skills that give evasion (like Windrunner) or seldom Heaven's Halberd. It also gives you an extra mini bash, on top of lots of damage, and a bit of attack speed.

Heaven's Halberd
This item is excellent on Spirit Breaker, mainly when against lots of physical attackers and also to mess other carry heroes up with the active. Don't forget it also gives you a chance to slow, 25 damage and a massive 20 strength.

Satanic
Makes you even harder to kill, partly because of the +25 strength, and partly because of the 25% lifesteal and active. This is great if you need to carry a bit more, making it much easier to survive teamfights later into the game.

Daedalus
Bread and Butter damage item of choice, for obvious reasons. A little note that if you bash and crit at the same time, rather, for example, critting on 250 damage, 250+bash damage will be critted instead. This can cause some massive crits, hitting similar damage to if you critted on the first attack when using shadow blade. However, the chance for this is incredibly low, so don't bet on it!

Boots of Travel Are a decent item late game but it's a decent item late game for anyone. It's good to eventually buy this, and the extra item slot instead of having a TP scroll is of course, very useful.

Mjollnir is still kind of a good item. Kind of. The active is really good for you, and so is the attack speed. However, I simply can't recommend the hammer for the hero with the lowest BAT in the game, and a hero that isn't amazingly good at being able to stay on top of someone for long enough that the lightning is super useful. The active IS very good, but way better if one of your team uses it on you!

General play as Spirit Breaker

I'm going to put these as a few tips:

• When charging, try to make a path where you will not pass common ward placements. The best way to do this is just to simply go between the tier 1 & tier 2 towers of either top lane or bottom lane if charging mid, or between tier 1 and base towers of any lane if charging to side lanes. Charging from base generally dodges most wards.
• In teamfights, charge the enemy who is the furthest back from you. For example:
  (key= *: Spirit Breaker X: Enemy Heroes O: Enemy you should charge)
  * X X X X O
  This will, of course, hopefully hit all enemy heroes between you and the target with a greater bash. if you want to be a little risky, you could even charge a creep in a lane to try to hit all the heroes with a greater bash, or if nobody is in a good position for you to hit any targets with the greater bash, although I probably wouldn't recommend trying unless you're very close to the real target (Shadow Blade helps too!).
• After Nether Striking, try charge any unit in front of your target immediately afterwards, to add some quick damage and increase the stun length, if you haven't used it already.
• Don't be scared, if you charge in first and your team are slightly behind you probably won't be under even half health by the time your team get there in the mid game.
• Enemies will find it very hard to run away from you, so if you see an enemy around 800 range away from you, you'll quite easily catch up to them.
• REMEMBER YOU CAN CANCEL YOUR CHARGE OR NETHER STRIKE BY USING THE STOP COMMAND OR HOLD POSITION COMMAND.

Laning with Spirit Breaker

When playing Spirit Breaker, you can practically take any lane, including mid. His most optimal lane currently is the Off-Lane, but it is still quite hard for him. You should be okay if you stay at the edge of exp range and get the pull warded, however. He can be used as a safe-lane carry as long as your team has something that will carry late game in the Jungle or Middle, for example Morphling (mid) or Lifestealer (jungle). If you're safe lane carry without a hero that's going to replace you as carry for the late-game you probably should be off-lane. Middle is good when against suspect heroes, such as Bloodseeker or Pudge, which you can easily beat to last hits and have practically no chance of dying to them without their supports helping them.

Off-lane Spirit Breaker is his best option and the lane you will be playing most of the time during games. If you are playing him off-lane I would suggest picking up the first point in Empowering Haste at Level 2, as the extra move speed may help you survive, and the bash won't really do anything for you. As a last resort, you can use the charge to attempt to survive. if you have a jungler, it's best to target one of the creeps he is farming (and you should probably tell him to stop killing it too), second to a support pulling. If you know that neither of those options are available, you can charge to middle or your safe-lane, it doesn't really make much difference. On the off-lane i'd suggest that you get two sets of Tango, one Healing Salve, two Iron Branch and one Gauntlet of Strength. You could get a buckler, but i prefer the tangos and stats over it, as you have 25% physical resistance at level 1. Once you hit level 6, or earlier, go gank something. Hopefully you'll get a kill, and go from there.

If you go safe-lane, you are one of the best heroes to kill creeps on tower since your base damage is so high, so make sure your support keeps pulling. Your supports will have to give you as much experience as possible, so if they're hanging around a bit too much don't be scared to tell them off. If you are safe-lane, I would suggest you go Hand of Midas. It sounds a bit counter-intuitive with such a gank-heavy hero, but a quick level 11 can destroy people. There aren't many things that can survive through all the attacks on top of a 400 damage physical nuke. On top of this, the attack speed is still very useful. Get a quick Aghanim's Scepter if teamfighting or Shadow Blade if you're snowballing hard.

As i said before, i don't like to go mid with Spirit Breaker much as you can make it much easier for your mid by side-laning or off-laning then ganking later. If you do go mid, always pick up a Stout Shield, three Iron Branch, Tango and a Healing Salve, unless you think your opponent is melee, where you should probably pick up a Quelling Blade.
HOWEVER. There is one hero you should always play mid against, and this hero is Pudge, the king of all Pubstompers. Why should you play Spirit Breaker mid against Pudge? Because spirit breaker outclasses him in every way. Spirit Breaker has more health than pudge, more armor than pudge, more damage than pudge. The best thing about this is that the Pudge will laugh when he sees spirit breaker in his lane and think it's going to be easy. It's not. 8 times out of 10 they'll start rotting on you and attacking you. Then you attack back. And he'll be losing so much health. And you'll be fine and then he will realise the error of his evil, pudge picking ways, and be much more passive. If you get a lucky bash, you will do lots of damage since he has 0 armor at level 1. He will be scared of the Spirit Breaker, and he damn well should be. If you get hooked and eaten at level 6, as long as you're at full health you can easily survive the whole combo, then either charge away, ult him and run away, or maybe even kill him if he's already quite low.
He is very good against any melee hero mid, and is fine against many of the ranged mid heroes, although not as good as he is against Melee ones.

Mid Game with Spirit Breaker

The TL;DR version is to simply:

In the Mid Game, you'd have hopefully gotten atleast your treads, your drums and your Urn, and be building towards your Shadow Blade to finish it in the mid-game. Just farm (although do give your farm to any harder carry than you, such as Faceless Void, Phantom Assassin, etc.) and gank if it's safe to when nether strike is up. As long as you keep charge up, you can stay and farm while your team pushes and as long as they are not too far away.You should be initiating all the fights, especially with your Shadow Blade. Very simply, Charge the enemy hero furthest back so you get greater bashes on everybody you can, and then quickly ult the hero you need to the most (like a carry), or if you can think you can take out a support hero without the opposing team even being able to react, do that instead. Your team can follow in afterwards to the chaos you've created, giving your team an opening where you'll be focused rather than the your own team who will be incoming (hopefully!)

This is also where Black King Bar is very useful in that you will be an unstoppable force when you use it.

Mid game is Spirit Breaker's dominating points, and you can easily take back losing games with a Shadow Blade and good ganks. (My replay is a very good example of this!)

Late Game with Spirit Breaker

By Late Game, you're not going to outcarry any Phantom Assassins, Faceless voids, or any of those big carries. However, you're still going to destroy any support hero, and you still carry pretty well. It's nice to have a harder carry with Spirit Breaker, as alone he is not enough, but he is a great addition to a team with one. Mid game is where Spirit Breaker shines, and he is king until late. A lot of your playstyle does not change from Mid Game, but by Late you're usually pushing/anti pushing lots more.

Notable Friends/Enemies

Invoker
This can be good as long as he's got some good skill with Sunstrike. A bad bash could mess it up, however. It's hard to pull off, but if it hits you can kill almost anything early game.

Ancient Apparition
Similar to invoker, a pre-emptive Ice Blast can be the difference between a kill and not. Other than that, speeding up kills is good so you can get out faster and avoid any help from the opposing team.

Nature's Prophet, Zeus..
Global abilities are very good with spirit breaker. Notably, a kill given to a Zeus is better than one given to you.

Omniknight
Special mention for this guy, as a Repel just before you reach the enemies with your charge can make you almost impossible to kill in the early game. approx 8-10 armor, over 1k health and magic immunity? No chance!

Windranger
If you don't kill her with your combo, she'll just use wind-run and be gone. The shackle can be really quite annoying too.

Centaur Warrunner , any other seriously tanky hero
Practically invincible against you early game. Try to avoid ganking unless you have lots of support.

Nyx Assassin
No point of charging this guy until you've got Shadow Blade, or he's simply going to use Spiked Carapace.

Mirana
Easily killed after Shadow Blade, simply leaps onto tower before that. Similar problem to Windranger in that if you don't kill her in the combo she doesn't die. (on that note, anything with good escape really isn't too good for you.)

Clockwerk
Cogs. Just no. If he sees you coming he can simply put them up ruining your gank. Can also ruin charges mid team-fight, too.

Abaddon
Basically impossible to gank after level 6 after his ult will simply pop and he'll run away. Should be alright if you're ahead and you know he's too far out.

Nature's Prophet, Tinker, Broodmother (things that splitpush hard)
Shadow Blade is easy kills for any of these people. Even without it, they will have serious trouble trying to push with you ready to charge them if they take a step out of line.

Anti-Mage
Early physical damage is really painful for him, although later on in the game he'll have lots of armor that will not make you so potent as he gets items.

Enigma
On top of him being a fairly easy kill for you early game, you should almost always build Aghanim's Scepter against him and stop his ult, and of course, it goes through Black King Bar. He can be a problem though if you charge through his hole (which hopefully you'll cancel before you reach it.)

Bounty Hunter, Riki...
Anything that relies on invisibility hates the breaker. Simply carrying a Dust of Appearence can be really problematic for them. Clinkz has no chance in the early game.

And finally, anything squishy. Watch your ***, Crystal Maiden, the cow is coming for you! (but please don't Frostbite me!)

Final Words

ID:858477990 (Off-lane) Very happy with this game. A bit of an easy off-lane, but the ganks brought my team to late-game.

Side note:

Thanks and good day!