New Starter with Rook, Looking for tips

By TheTrav on August 11, 2009 8:47:42 PM from

I played DG a fair while after release, mostly as Erebus. I still find the vamp a lot of fun, but wanted to mix it up a bit with someone completely different and figured I couldn't get much different than the walking fortress.

So far I haven't ventured into any online games, only playing against hard ai, yeah I know, piss weak but I want to learn the absolute basics of his abilities before getting slaughtered in custom games.

From my extremely brief play testing, I found that starting off on cataract with hammer slam took about 3 creep waves before I leveled up. I read someone say a single slam was a level which you can get tower from, but that was not my experience, I slammed the entire wave in a single shot three times, so I don't think I was doing it wrong... The AI got the flag capped before me, but I took it back before the second creep wave had arrived.

Second play I went with tower for the first skill and found it a lot easier to stay near the fight, however I had a lot of trouble with damage output, and keeping my health & mana up. I found that I'd frequently push the other DG back, but have about half to 3/4 my health gone, and it wouldn't be fully recharged by the time they got back, so numerous battles I was forced to flee and am convinced that a human player would have killed me each of those times.

So with the low regen I found myself running back to the health crystal a lot, and most of those runs I made without enough cash to buy decent gear. I used teleportation scrolls a little, however I found they weren't saving me a whole heap of time on cataract unless we held the flag that I wanted to get back to (my towers almost never stayed up after I left).

My build was basically whatever came available to me with the following priorities:

Shoulder mounted weaponry
Power Towers up to lvl 2
boulder roll
hammer slam
the one that gets extra auto attack damage
stats

I'm not sure if the auto attack damage was really worth it, as I didn't do a whole lot of auto attacking until I was pushing towers (it was quite effective on them)

I was also setting up my towers as close together as I could and trying to keep them pretty much on top of the flag, so we held it down longer.

So far, my biggest target by far is to increase Rook's HP regen rate, as that is what I think was forcing me back away from the money earning creep lane.

Anyone got any tips / suggestions / critiques?

+3 Karma | 15 Replies

What favor item were you using? and if you want some good builds there are a few of em under the strategy sction of the forums, find one you like and practice with it.

Ahh yes, I forgot to mention that, I have no favour items as of yet. It appears all the favour I earnt from early games has been wiped, and I am slowly re-accumulating it.

Rook is the hardest demigod to play correctly.

You seem to have the proper skills selected, not taking towers above level 2 is extremely important to know. I would suggest taking blood of the fallen, scalemail, and banded armor as starting items.

For towers, you don't want them directly on top of the flag, try placing them more towards the enemy and make them run through them as long as possible before they get to you. Also using the archer upgrades you can kite the enemy while still doing damage to them.

Final tips: Buy priests, Towers are disposable, Try to lead the enemy with your hammer slam.

When fighting enemies they will see you as slow and vulnerable. Make them run through your towers trying to kill you, boulder roll + slam, and you will quickly find yourself chasing them down and killing them. Sometimes low health can be a good asset as well.

When you speak about the enemy, I assume you mean enemy demigods, as opposed to enemy creeps, which will aggro the towers and ignore me yeah?

When you say buy priests, you mean at the citadel upgrade? I tend to avoid doing that because I read ages ago that they're mostly just an XP boost to the other team... At what point do you recommend buying them? ASAP, Or after a few levels, or midgame?

Honestly towers are good for everything, they don't die too easily and are cheap to replace. I often put them up to defend myself against demigods, but blasting away creeps is never a bad thing.

I will even use them as tanks to soak up damage from enemy towers so I can autoattack them, but that is usually a more risky move.

As for priests, they have recently decreased the xp and gold per kill. I find them to be an extremely good asset allowing me to hold flags easier, save allies, and regen in battle. The enemy simply can't take advantage of the little extra xp because you can push them around the map.

I usually buy them soon after they are available, more depending on how much gold I have after vlemish faceguard than the enemy.

One of rooks big keys is the rings that have lifetaps on them.. one is available at 1750 gold and one at 4000... both yield impressive results for increasing his ability to stay in lane..

Building on what Lugh is saying, health-drain cannot be less than 1. So, even though you're doing 4% lifedrain (with the cheaper ring) and that's on 12 damage (an arrow) you actually gain 1 hp from each arrow. That comes out to something like 30 hps passively, just walking around. Not a 'ton', not gamechanging, but it'll keep you out that much longer which WILL be game changing.

Orb of Defiance is also key, esp if you have a healthy tower farm up. 5 seconds where you get to heal a little and your enemies wander around trying to figure out what to do while they get pounded on by towers... it's good.

Also, learn how to fake-slam. Very key. I played a master at it today. Although I did get a few key interrupts on Rook, there were a few times he would life his hammer, I would pounce.. and he canceled. Then slammed me. Very nice.

abuggeredhedie has said most of the key comments. The two lifesteal rings are great alongside your passive attack skills, and definately keep you in the fight for longer. Try to pre-empt enemies coming so you can lay down towers - and always run if there's two in the vacinity - the thing with Rook is to know when to run (start running a lot earlier than with any other DG).

Try and team up with someone - it infuriates people when they're getting chased by your team-mate, and from out of nowhere they get boulder-rolled Use the boulder-roll to try and get assists, and use your towers to keep flags

Not only do fake slams prevent you from being interrupted, they'll scare enemies off. If you're getting low on health, fake slam - the enemy will run out of reach, giving you an extra foot or two to run/lay a tower.

Buy and use more teleport scrolls

And don't forget you can stick most of the other demigods in your pants for the old Demigod in the pants trick...

Where the other side goes, OH LOOK ROOK EASY EXP!! And the torchbearer in your pants sets them on fire while you smash them and they end up going DAMN it was the old God in the Pants trick!

Quoting Miyamiya,

reply 3

Take Amulett of Äeleportation

New Starter with Rook, Looking for tips

every game i play with rook no matter what build, i get hammerslam and boulder roll.

dont try to run away. your too slow.

always have a teleport handy. i always carry around 2.

always carry 1 robust health potion. it can turn the tide of the fight very quickly.

I usually go:

1. Tower I
2. Archers
3. Skip
4. Tower II
5. Boulder+Shoulder tower
6. Slam I
7. Slam II
8. Slam III
9. Trebuchet
10. Roll II
11. Slam IV
12. GS I
13. GS II
14. Skip
15. Dizzying Force + Poison Arrows
16. Roll III
17. GS III
18 - 20. Stats

I put my towers just a bit behind the flag and try to stack them on top of each other. An enemy often won't be able to tell the difference between one tower and four when stacked. The reason to put it behind the flag is so that you can retreat back to the your map tower and anyone that pursues will be hit by both the map tower and your own towers. If you put your towers too far forward an enemy can pursue you to your map tower and not take extra damage from your placed towers.

The teleport favor item is good if you plan to use it as part of your strategy. You should use it to ambush flag cappers and quickly reinforce your teammates. Teleport -> roll -> slam is a great tactic for rook. If you're not going to be a teleporter, then BotF is the way to go. You'll also have an extra trinket slot free because you don't have to take tele scrolls.

I think speed rook (stacking anklet, wand and both boots) is a waste of time although you can surprise a few people. As pointed out in other threads, you'll still never be as fast as the speedy DGs like UB and Sed.

Rook has 2 sides, the ninja boulder slammer and the tower farmer.

I personally combine both. Depending on the dg makeup on the other team i go heavier on towers with melee demis like an UB (ohhoho those guys craaaaawl back when they meet me). Towers are excellent for dealing with a Sedna or QoT because the steady dps output together with a slam is, again for me, an effective way to gradually lower their hps in between heals and shields. Minion builds however are a problem since you cant aim your towers (which i think they should!)
A better level hammer slam is nice when there are squichies in play like a not-so-hpstacked TB or a regulus. Its priceless to boulder slam them.

Keep in mind this build is an insane mana sink so i mostly go for BotS these days for mana refilling especially when i dont got my plenor/vlemish combo.

And just another tip for fighting in a lane with your towers as someone said, stay and fight. Youll really be surprised when you go BEYOND tower 2 and get 6, even 8 towers up. Serious facemelting imminent. Your slow, your useless when running. Stand by your towers, boulderslam, do whatever you can. It is better then running and dieing a noobish death while you might die whil fighting but taking the other out in th progress or let a teammate finish it.

tl;dr Rook melts faces.

yeah, blade of the serpent is how i play my rook these days. you can stay in a lane for as long as you want with BoTS & towers, and it will take 2 enemy DGs to push you out.

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New Starter with Rook, Looking for tips