[Daily Hero tl;dr #30] Kunkka

Oh this hero. I've been kind of dreading this write up, I'm not very good with Kunkka .. he's probably my worst hero. But I'll do my best to describe his playstyle.

TL;DR

• Skills (ganking/dual/trilane) - Torrent (1,3,5,7) Tidebringer (2,9,10,12) X (4,8,13,14) Ship (6,11,16)
• Skills (solo) - Torrent (2,9,10,12) Tidebringer (1,3,5,7) X (4,8,13,14) Ship (6,11,16)
• Items (lane) - stout, branches, regen, gauntlets
• Items (early) - Phase, urn, Lothar's
• Items (later) - BKB, Daedalus, BFury, HotD
• Tips - abuse X Marks the Spot, Tidebringer to harass and hit distant units, Tidebringer stays on you for denies
• Counters - disables, shut down early

Kunkka is a nice strength half-ranged semicarry. Half-ranged because even though he is technically melee, all of his skills have nice range, including his autoattack. For this reason, he's a very powerful solo laner because he can last hit and harass at the same time (with bonus damage).

Early in the game you are a very strong ganker and you rely heavily on landing good Torrents. It does great damage, disables, and slows in an AoE .. so hit them. You are very reliant on your X -> Torrent combo. Level 2 X gives enough time to X someone, Torrent that spot immediately, and they will get hit when they return. At higher levels, you can use the "return" sub-ability to do the same thing. It's a pretty simple combo and with some experience you should be able to hit Torrents every time.

Later in the game you are a great teamfighter due to your boat. It does damage, stuns, gives you bonus MS, and gives your team a nice damage reducing effect for a few seconds. It's great for initiating. I'm not a pro at the boat, but in my experience it goes farther than you want it to go. It travels quick but takes a few seconds to reach its point, so it's very useful to try to catch fleeing heroes. I trust someone in the comments has some nice tips.

Kunkka has a very obvious cast animation, so you can animation cancel quite easily to try to confuse your opponents. You can "fake" Torrents to see if they are trying to dodge. If you do it right, they will not know when you place your Torrent so you can try to catch them off guard or doing something else silly.

// No write up tomorrow due to blackout. Sorry.

/// I am compiling a list of my threads (until something better comes up) on my profile at GG.net