The Old Man. The Best Man (Update 4)

@Divine Wrath
Valid points made. Bloodstone is a great item on Zeus, considering how much he spams his abilities.

Firstly thinking you can get the bounty rune at the 00 00 is flawed thinking. The moment Zeus is out of position he gets destroyed easily especially at lv 1. He has no escape abilities, below average movespeed and is squishy.
Secondly, I am going to have defend my stand when it comes to Veil. You worded it strangely: you make it seem like I'm the only core hero on my team, as if there are no initiators in my team and I'm the sole person to cast veil and start a fight. It really depends on the lineup, many other heroes benefit from the Veil and it is much cheaper in comparison to an Aghs.
And never, EVER in my life heard of a Zeus who purchases a Skadi, not amongst my friends, not amongst professional streamers and not amongst other guides published have I heard of a Skadis on a Zeus.
Sure Zeus stat gain is complete utter **** but this is easily remedied with an Aghs. Your completely wasting the attack modifier from Skadi. Your base attack time is **** beyond belief and if you are going to say "So that I can slow fleeing enemies", you said it yourself that Zeus needs to stay afar when you were arguing about the Veil of discord.
Your argument is that by building Zeus as a semi tank you are gaining "smart damage"?! While that is certainly true for Bloodstone, Zeus isnt like a Viper and Razor who build items like Heart of terrasque for tankiness.

Let me explain- heroes like Razor and Necrophos build tankyness is because they have PASSIVES that synergise with them taking damage like Razors Unstable current and Vipers passive. Not only that but Razor ultimate last a long duration, the longer the ultimate last the more impact is has. Not only that, Razor and Viper are Agility heroes, heroes with high armour to sustain themselves.
How about necrophos? Isnt he an itelligence hero too? Necrophos has a percentile damage passive, the longer you stay in a fight, you health keeps draining. Not only that, while necrophos lacks in armour he compasates with a stupidly spammable heal. How about Zeus passive? Remember, Zeus does 11% damage of your CURRENT HEALTH. So while it does strong damage at the start of the fight it weakens as the fight goes on.
If you really stick to your entire team of tanking it up a Shivas Guard is SOOO MUCH BETTER. It has an absurdly long range active- that synergises with Zeus long cast range and it gives Zeus massive spike of armour and stats.

I'm sorry if I sound rude but a Skadis to me is so strange. A shivas is a much better option.

@Divine Wrath
Valid points made. Bloodstone is a great item on Zeus, considering how much he spams his abilities.

Firstly thinking you can get the bounty rune at the 00 00 is flawed thinking. The moment Zeus is out of position he gets destroyed easily especially at lv 1. He has no escape abilities, below average movespeed and is squishy.
Secondly, I am going to have defend my stand when it comes to Veil. You worded it strangely: you make it seem like I'm the only core hero on my team, as if there are no initiators in my team and I'm the sole person to cast veil and start a fight. It really depends on the lineup, many other heroes benefit from the Veil and it is much cheaper in comparison to an Aghs.
And never, EVER in my life heard of a Zeus who purchases a Skadi, not amongst my friends, not amongst professional streamers and not amongst other guides published have I heard of a Skadis on a Zeus.
Sure Zeus stat gain is complete utter **** but this is easily remedied with an Aghs. Your completely wasting the attack modifier from Skadi. Your base attack time is **** beyond belief and if you are going to say "So that I can slow fleeing enemies", you said it yourself that Zeus needs to stay afar when you were arguing about the Veil of discord.
Your argument is that by building Zeus as a semi tank you are gaining "smart damage"?! While that is certainly true for Bloodstone, Zeus isnt like a Viper and Razor who build items like Heart of terrasque for tankiness.

Let me explain- heroes like Razor and Necrophos build tankyness is because they have PASSIVES that synergise with them taking damage like Razors Unstable current and Vipers passive. Not only that but Razor ultimate last a long duration, the longer the ultimate last the more impact is has. Not only that, Razor and Viper are Agility heroes, heroes with high armour to sustain themselves.
How about necrophos? Isnt he an itelligence hero too? Necrophos has a percentile damage passive, the longer you stay in a fight, you health keeps draining. Not only that, while necrophos lacks in armour he compasates with a stupidly spammable heal. How about Zeus passive? Remember, Zeus does 11% damage of your CURRENT HEALTH. So while it does strong damage at the start of the fight it weakens as the fight goes on.
If you really stick to your entire team of tanking it up a Shivas Guard is SOOO MUCH BETTER. It has an absurdly long range active- that synergises with Zeus long cast range and it gives Zeus massive spike of armour and stats.

I'm sorry if I sound rude but a Skadis to me is so strange. A shivas is a much better option.

LANING AGAINST THEM section, Storm Spirit. You said "meat" instead of "meet"

Is that skill description and guide copied? Btw u should read this @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Not sure how much you played Zeus and if this applies for 5v5 teams or Pubs, but there are many wrong things.

1. Best start when u go for bottle is actually buy nothing. If you get from start bounty rune until first row of creeps actually reach river you can already buy bottle, if not use your Q to get 3-4 last hits and u got bottle. In any case around 01:20 minutes into the game you have bottle on you and ready to pick up runes on 2 min mark. This allows you to go fast for boots increasing moving speed and having better chances to get runes as you move faster.

2. Veil of Discord is a great item in balanced fights or when you win and almost all times when you play in a 5 man team. Not in pubs. At least not as you do your math. Your perfect math where you apply debuff on all 5 enemies never applies to Void getting his ulti on all enemies, why would that happen to a range hero that needs to get close to apply Veil ? A good centered Veil will always get you much closer than Q range(since with Q you can target actually anything since it jumps). If you want math, assuming enemies are not packed one on another, 875 cast range till mid of a spell with 600 range translates into 475-1175 distance from enemie heroes, so closest will be at 475y. So you either cast safer and not got all 5 in, either you risk a suicide action since most probably you'll be the main target, beeing lowest HP hero and biggest threat as burst dmg. Not to mention Veil is offering little extra survival.
I would buy Veil ONLY if my team has at least 3 casters or 2 nuking casters (like Zeus + Lina). In the case there are 3 casters however is best to ask your support/disabler take it since he will have much more control on its cast.

3. Eul and/or Force Staff will give you only early escapes. In late game you even have both (and maybe Drums also), or none. Mainly cause if you are last hero as positioning vs enemies and you need to run that means your team is dead and most probably you are not in a 1v1 situation. So Eul disable will delay one hero. Even in pubs I see an extremely high number of players using blink dagger, it is very hard to assume that you have speed bonuses and opponents don't. Just do not build your escape on one item.

4. As for Aghanim and Refresher tendancy on pubs. I find this actually perfectly useless.
Why I say so ?
Well, let's see. Both items together costs 9425 gold. If you go make those exactly after boots and bottle that means you are going to have either a hard mid game for yourself since you have no filler mid cost items, either your team is already winning and your later game contribution will not make big difference if that's the case. If you team is not the one winning the early game then again, since Zeus is not by far the best last hit hero and when leaving lanes he shouldn't either bother steal the LH from carries, imagine how much gold can an emeny hero with decent (not optimal) jungle possibilities. Worst even, if they decide to buy BKB and/or have invisible heroes they will make your 2 items useless (entirely or 50%).

My personal buy order in Pubs and almost in all situations are :
Bottle - Arcane Boots - Bloodstone, rest is situational, but many times I go for Skadi and Blademail.
The moment you got Bloodstone you have good mana, good HP, very good regeneration, much more freedom(no more running for runes all time), even more freedom(no more running to base to refill, since bottle compared with an empty 1000+ mana pool is a joke), not to mention if you are not suicide type and get its charges down in 5 minutes you'll have lower ress time so more time to stay in fights and get XP and gold. Early Aghanim gives you MP and HP but no regen, so you will cast and run back, Refresher will give you no survivability and again, you will run back.
Skadi will give you again very much HP and MP and can ruin melle carries in teamfights since they will have lower AR and will not be able to follow their targets.

Bloodstone + Skadi + lvl 20 makes you close to 3k HP Zeus. Take Blademail to give even more survival and math changes completely. You will survive much more in fights, so you will spam Q a lot more. A lot more Qs translates in a lot more dmg from passive. In certain cases a number of heroes will certainly suicide on you, best candidates beeing sniper and Lina. Sniper is so easy to counter since autoattacks are obvious and his ulti gives you a big time to react.

More than Agh/Refresher, Bloodstone/Skadi alwasy does much more smart dmg. Every time you are not fighting 5v5, using ulti and refresher means you will nuke 1-2 targets and maybe kill those 1-2 but the rest will get allerted and flee. They will certainly get full HP sooner than 90 seconds(your ulti CD) and can't be bothered compare it with refresher timer. Bloodstone/Skadi will make more local damage since you have a lot more mana and regen, and you also prevent heroes from fleeing with slows (requires autoattack).

5. Enemies
- Rubick. Rubick sucks, the only problem while playing against him is not letting him steal your ultimate. In rest he is fragile and will die quite fast in battles.
- Pudge. Get Eul and force staff to completly forget about him, or pay attention. If he gets farmed by your other teammates however it will make no difference. You can Eul him on sight, Eul to interupt ulti to help team, or if you get hooked, spam Eul on yourself to get cycloned near him, then spam forcestaff and you are out (till he can hook again).
-Void. Get Bloodstone, Skadi, Blademail. Anything else with extra armor (go for Shiva's Guard !) will make him think again if he picks you first when he catches you in Chrono. Or learn to stay behind and not let yourself caught in it. Outside his ulti he will be around 1.7k HP and you only need activate blademail between his stuns (doubt he will not take stuns) and you 3k HP, blademail, and you own nuking capabilities will make his question if he can go out of the fight alive.
- Silencer. You are very wrong on Silencer's Q. Your own Q is always much stronger. He casts Q, you cast Q back. You will almost always consume less mana since Zeus will never upgrade Q fast(passive is always better upgrade), you will do full Q dmg + passive dmg, he will do 1-2 ticks dmg. So no, Silencer vs Zeus who haves bottle is no win, ever. Even if he silences, go away and use bottle.
-Queen of Pain. You will only counter her with HP build again, since she will always be the one initiating so in 1v1 you are the one who needs to survive, not her. If you survive first 3-4 seconds and not trying to run then she will be the one trying blink away.
-Drow. Bloodstone, Skadi, Blademail. She can't do much at that point unless she will consider kite you, in which case you should consider getting an escape/follow item.
-Bloodseeker. Bloodstone, Skadi, Blademail. His ulti will do nothing to you if your Bloodstone has 8+ charges early on, some more later on.
-Doom. Bloodstone, Eul, Drums, anything that gives you speed as passive. His ultimate will be again denied by Bloodstone regeneration but you will be silenced completely( no spells, no items) so you need to get away till it goes off. Skadi can help only in 1v1 situations to slow him and avoid melle, but low range attacks from Zeus will almost all time ensure he hits you at least once.
-Storm Spirit. You need HP to survive his disable. So again Bloodstone, Skadi.
-Lion. Bloodstone, Skadi, Blademail. If you survive his disables (when he can't make more than 1.5k dmg at his best) he is dead.

What you really can't handle are heroes with illusions like Phantom Lancer, Chaos Knight, Naga Siren, and the worst one ever for you Anti Mage.
You have a few options here.
a) Go for Aghanim and Refresher, use both and hope you even get illusions down or low HP so your team can see easy the original. Can only be used in teamfights, not for escape, since if you are alone any of them will follow and kill you, not to mention that using both ultis out of teamfight even succesfully is a complete waste.
b) Shadowblade out if you are not stuned. So you need Shadowblade.
c) Simply die if you get stuned :)
d) Build up very high armor, including Shiva's Guard to get a chance slow down all and get out.



Basically when playing any hero you must understand a few things.


First if your hero has a chance to dictate the flow of the game. Like Void. Everyone expects Void to farm and come in each time his ulti is available. He is a hero that greatly dictates the tempo of the game. Zeus is not. Not even farmed. Heroes that dictated tempo are either carries once geared or disablers early on. Gankers can fragmentate tempo, but only as long the other allow it, till they decide that they must stay all 5 together.


Second you need to decide what heroes from enemies are a threat to you and how can you prevent becoming a free farm for those.


Third, if you play Zeus as glass canon you need to understand that you must not die. You must avoid that over everything. As Zeus is maybe more important than any hero since you have bad mobility, sometimes you get kills across the map with no xp gains, so you need to stay in game as much as possible and take any safe chance to make use of your Q + passive dmg.

Your burst gold gains are in the start game while on lane. In mid game Zeus will have a gold starvation if you die since if you are allowing it you will be focused first almost always. Your mid game gold almost exclusively comes from teamfights if you stay alive to do so. If you got bloodstone however jungle is a valid way to get extra gold between teamfights since you have the mana regen to cover the Q spam.


Sorry for exagerating and answering to your guide with a guide :)

Great guide!
I always rush the scepter
I will try the veil next time

Having stasis field will still push the lane by a bit, it was like having Ring of Basilius aura affecting all allied units. Just pull neutral camp too to maintain lane equilibrium. You can also start to deny when the allied creep has below 50% hp. Since you are harassing and zoning out enemy heroes, they will have trouble last hitting.

I just gave an explanation in the Sidelane section I added :) But getting Static Field is still great anyways :D

I don't think it pushes the lane very far. Creeps have 200-300 HP early-game, so it's very little damage; but it also does free damage to your laning opponent. To each their own, I suppose :)

Great guide and nice explanation on item section. I usually go for Soul Ring + Tranquil Boots, only bottle when mid. Soul Ring is a nice choice for early game so you can keep on spam your skills to last hit or harass, and it builds into Bloodstone too!

Great guide! Taught me a lot :D

I never thought of using veil first as i almost never buy it and when i do i forget to use it :(

But i think the skill build has a problem? There are 5 lvls of arc lightning.

And i can sympathise with the thundergod's wrath ;)