The Unconventional But Effective KOTL Build

Introduction

Welcome to my humble guide to Keeper of the Light. Keeper is one of my personal favorites when it comes to the game Dota 2, as he is a hard support, relying on very little items while having the potential to buy many luxury items. He is an extremely good pusher, doing ridiculous burst damage early and mid game in a huge AOE, while providing allies with massive amounts of Mana and Health at all points of the game.

While many would definitely call this build "stupid", "unconventional" and "worthless", please read this with an open mind, as I have found it to be extremely effective; My current record with KOTL, as one of my highest played heroes, consists of a 95% win rate with a 5.5 KDA in a combination of team and pub games.

So, without further ado, let's get started.

Pros / Cons

Pros

• Is a Powerful Support That Does Not Require Many Items
• Extremely Good Harassment
• Powerful at Just About Any Stage In The Game
• Free Teleport
• Effective at Draining Health and Magic From Enemies, as Well As Giving It To Teammates

Cons

• Extremely Squishy
• Has to Remain Stationary for Long Periods at a Time (Prime Target for Pudge, Mirana, Clockwork, Etc.)
• Has the Potential to Steal Farm from Carries with Illuminate
• Right Click Damage is Almost Non-Existent

Items

I prefer to build my Keeper as an extremely useful support, harasser and pusher.

Since you are a hard support, you of course want to buy both the Animal Courier and Observer Wards. From there, buy some Tangos and an Iron Branch. If for whatever reason you have any bonus gold left, either finish it off with a Healing Salve (Preferred) or more Iron Branches.

As soon as you possibly can, upgrade the Courier into a Flying Courier, and next buy Boots of Speed. A Magic Wand is also recommended as soon as possible during the Laning Phase as it will give you a chance to save yourself if you are low health, or use an ability to get a kill if you are just a tiny bit lower than you need to be.

Your Core items are where the real heavy support nature of Keeper and this guide start to take effect. While most would disagree with this, as Chakra can provide for most of your needs, I say screw that: get Arcane Boots so that you are an infinite fountain of Mana for everyone: Keep yourself as well as your team supplied during team fights without having to wait for the pesky cooldown of Chakra or having to pick favorites to just one team mate or yourself. I personally believe that the mana cost, single target effect and cooldown for Chakra alone makes this more than valid for early and mid game. On top of this, you'll want to get a Mekansm for the same purpose as Arcane boots, but this time for both Health and Armor, on top of its pushing power.

Luxury Items are where Keeper really starts to get interesting: I recommend the first item you swap out is your Arcane Boots for Boots of Travel: the movement speed is really good for escaping from bad situations, while the infinite teleport to any friendly unit helps cut down on the cost of TP Scrolls and works in great unity with your Recall. Next, you should build a Necronomicon for the pushing power, the bonus strength since you are very squishy, and the extra intelligence, among the other bonuses it brings forward. Euls Scepter of Divinity provides more movement speed, and works incredibly with your Ultimate and Illuminate: charge it up while Spirit form is activated, put someone in a Cyclone soon after, and launch the Illuminate at them as soon as the Cyclone finishes. Rod of Atos works similarly with it's slow, though isn't as effective since it's not a full disable, and instead of movement speed, gives bonus health. Both items cost very similarly low prices. Force Staff is a great support, chasing and escape item, and is one of the lowest costing items in the Luxury department. Both Orchid Malevolence and Scythe of Vyse are applicable, but not recommended due to their high mana costs and more suitable alternatives. A Drum of Endurance, Ring of Aquila and Urn of Shadows are also potentially applicable as support items, but again, aren't recommended over items.

Skills

Illuminate is a very good first pick as it allows a potential first blood, and if not, can force your enemies to back off to heal. Try not to use it too much unless you are tri-laning, as it can push the lane far too much. If you are trying to harass out of lane or push the creeps, I recommend using it in lane. If you are trying to do massive damage and get a potential kill, I recommend doing it behind the cover of trees. Since it takes a while to charge up, try to approximate where the creeps will be based on the position of your own creeps, or try to aim just behind the enemy creeps to hit Heroes. During Teamfights, always charge it up a fair distance away from the fight directly into the middle. It is important to know that a fully charged Illuminate can very kill and entire creepwave, so unless the carry is out of lane, try not to use it to steal farm.

Next, you want to get two levels in Chakra Magic for it to be properly effective. I personally prefer to use it on myself early game so I can spam-harass with Illuminate, but if you have a Hero in lane with you who's mana pool is low but their ability mana cost is high, such as Pudge or Sven, you'll mostly want to use it on them whenever they require it.

From there on, go back and fourth with these two abilities till they are fully maxed out, ignoring your ultimate for now as these skills, in my opinion, are more important to max out. They should be maxed out by level 8, at which point you should get Mana Leak at level 9. Use it on the squishiest target with a low mana pool or someone who has used a lot of mana costly abilities recently, as it forces them to either stand still or lose all their mana when they run and eventually get stunned. You can use this in conjuration with your Illuminate to force them to choose between losing mana or losing health.

Finally, at levels 10 and 11, get your ultimate, Spirit Form. This ability allows you to move around while charging your Illuminate, and grants you two other abilities: Blinding Light and Recall. Use Illuminate during Teamfights when everyone is bunched together for maximum effect, or, use it on a fed, right click carry to blind him before the Spirit Form wears off. Use Recall as a free TP out of base into the action, or as a save for a friendly unit fleeing from battle. Get your attributes as normal, and level up the abilities as you can from here, maxing Mana Leak and Spirit Form as soon as you can.

Counters

Good Teammates

•

Enigma: Midnight Pulse, Black Hole and Illuminate all timed just right is absolutely devastating.
• Faceless Void: Chronosphere-Illuminate generally works out nice.
• Mirana: Mana Leak can make her arrows easier to hit, and once the arrow hits, Illuminate follow up should be easy.
• Clockwerk: You will get him a easy Hookshot with Mana Leak, and an easy Cog-Battery kill with Illuminate.
• Magnus: Reverse Polarity-Illuminate combo.
• Sand King: Burrow Strike, Epicenter and Illuminate combo.
• Ancient Apparition: These two work together beautifully and if combo'd, can kill off a whole team easily.
• Elder Titan: Echo Stomp, Earth Splitter and Illuminate is generally a pretty easy and painful combo to pull off.
• Almost anyone can work favorably with KOTL.



Scary Counters

•

Pudge: Standing Still for up to 5 seconds and Squishy? Easy kill.
• Mirana: Standing Still for up to 5 seconds and Squishy? Seeing a pattern here?
• Naga Siren: You're pretty much effectively useless and dead constantly.
• Faceless Void: If you get Chrono'd, you are dead.
• Clockwerk: Same reason as Pudge and Mirana.
• Anyone with a stun or effective Point Target ability is good against you.

Summary

So long as you remain an effective support, following typical support roles such as pulling, stacking, supplying, warding and harassing, and you follow this easy guide, you will do well as Keeper of the Light.

While he certainly isn't the hardest Hero to learn, he isn't the easiest either. But one thing is certain, he is very effective at what he does. If you play him right, you too could have a near perfect win rate with him.

Thank you for reading, I hope that this unusual guide could be both insightful and entertaining, and I hope too that you will do well with the Legendary Keeper of the Light.