Kunkka

Kunkka the Admiral is a versatile melee Strength hero built with an arsenal of powerful area-of-effect spells. Two of his active spells are nukes that have long reaction time, but can disable and disrupt the enemies' position. He is mostly played as a carry or an initiator or even a spell nuker. He is known for his Tidebringer sword, which magically gives him the ability to cleave a large area around him on his attack with heavy potential damage on his next attack, which refreshes at a given period of time. Torrent calls upon the element of water to rise and burst out, dealing damage, disabling them up high, and slowing them on impact. There's a delay on this skill before it activates, so Kunkka must be wise in using this ability. X Marks the Spot targets any hero or Admiral himself to be marked on their current position, and after a few seconds delay, instantly returns to the marked spot. Useful in setting up tricky spells, escape prevention, or even saving allies, X Marks the Spot makes the Admiral a great battle strategist. His ultimate lets him summon a Ghost Ship, which travels on ground, until it crashes a set distance away, stunning and damaging enemy armies on that location. The Ghost Ship also bolsters allies with Kunkka's Rum, granting them bonus movement speed and numbness to damage. Ghost Ship is difficult to land, due to the fixed distance of its cast point and the crash site of the ship. However, a good Ghost Ship absolutely cripples an enemy team. Capable of inflicting high burst damage with his spells, controlling their position while able to survive the mayhem when his spells are used properly, Kunkka is a mighty offensive team fighter, built with strong physical and magical damage output, who can indeed turn the tide of a battle.

Tips

 * Tidebringer is your signature ability, and should usually be trained early and maxed out first. Notable exceptions would be when having a stun to chain would be advantageous for early kills or you need a mechanism to prevent escape heroes from running away.
 * Use Torrent to initiate battles and disable opponents.
 * Try to get raw damage to maximize your Tidebringer damage.
 * X Marks the Spot works well with Torrent to ensure you a hit. Leaving X at level 2 allows you to immediately cast Torrent after X because both skills have a delay of 2 seconds. Consider if the extra range on higher X levels is needed.
 * Ghost Ship delays half of the damage dealt to allies, making it great for short team battles.
 * Train Torrent first if you're going for First Blood, otherwise, train Tidebringer.
 * Try dual laning with heroes such as Crystal Maiden, Shadow Shaman, Shadow Demon, Bane, or Vengeful Spirit. Their disables will help you land your Torrents.
 * Use a high leveled X Marks the Spot on enemies who are trying to flee using a Town Portal Scroll and they will be brought back to the X no matter how far they've gone!
 * The classical combo should be: Torrent and then Ghost Ship, but you can add X Marks the Spot before them if you are targeting a single unit.
 * During team fights, either initiate with your combo when the enemies get clumped together, or wait until the battle starts and use it when they get clumped.
 * You can use X Marks the Spot and a scroll of teleportation to go back to your base, refill your bottle, and go back to your previous location.
 * Ghost Ship will always appear a specific distance behind Kunkka and end a specific distance from Kunkka. The distance at which the boat appears and hits can be seen by mousing over the ability and noting the radius circle behind and infront of Kunkka. Practising memorising the distance the ship travels in a practise game with cheats and wtf mode on can go a long way to pulling this wonderful ultimate off successfully.
 * Another method to pulling off successful ultimates is to always set the target point for Ghost Ship to anywhere out of Kunkka's range. That way the end point and radius circle will always be placed where you clicked the target.

Trivia

 * Kunkka's official alternate/fun names were "Daelin Proudmoore", "CoCo", and "Captain Obvious". Daelin Proudmoore was a campaign boss in Warcraft III: Frozen Throne; his hero model is borrowed by Kunkka in DotA.
 * Kunkka is also the name (or online handle) of the artist who made numerous pieces of loading screen art for DotA. The Admiral hero was given his name as a tribute to his work.
 * In his DotA biography, it is stated that some people called him "Jack Sparrow," but it was never seen as his name in-game. Jack Sparrow is the name of the main character in the Pirates of the Carribean movie franchise.
 * The line "Sweetly sweetly blew the breeze - on me alone it blew." and Kunkka's response to killing Slardar "And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I." come from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".