Earth Spirit

Kaolin the Earth Spirit is a highly adaptable strength hero with great utility, able to effectively fill the role of a support, ganker, or offlaner, while still having a large game presence due to his strong initiation. Unlike most heroes, his abilities revolve around an innate ability, Stone Remnant. Because of Stone Remnant's synergy with his other abilities, Earth Spirit has an incredibly high skill ceiling, and can be challenging to master. He can be surprisingly mobile, owing to his Rolling Boulder, and can use this in combination with his other abilities to position himself to disable multiple enemies, save allies from certain death and generally become a commanding presence in a teamfight, even without a great deal of farm. With good timing he can initiate fights from a distance, and given the right circumstances can deal a surprising amount of damage to both single and multiple targets, all the while disrupting enemy positioning allowing for easy kills. A useful ally and a dangerous enemy, the Earth Spirit's versatility and flexibility make him an ideal hero in almost any lineup or lane.

Recommended items

 * Aghanim's Scepter Aghanim's Scepter gives Earth Spirit a lot of possibilities along with some extra nuke damage, Agh's is a great item for experienced players.

Tips

 * Mastering Geomagnetic Grip and Rolling Boulder is easier and more beneficial than Boulder Smash (if you are just starting to use Earth Spirit). Using a Stone Remnant together with Geomagnetic Grip inflicts the highest damage among your normal skills and silences all enemy heroes caught in the path of the stone. Rolling Boulder is also a very effective escape tool when used together with a Stone Remnant.
 * Positioning is key with Earth Spirit; this hero is adept at breaking chases and running down fleeing foes. As a support player you may want to have yourself positioned behind your core heroes so you can pull them to safety in case they get initiated on. You can Boulder Smash away an enemy hero chasing you or your ally, or if you're too far use a Stone Remnant to stun them from a massive 2000 distance.
 * Enchant Remnant from Aghanim's upgrade is perhaps one of the best ways to easily remove an enemy hero from a team fight by enchanting them and then using Boulder Smash to send them away from the fight, perhaps into impassible terrain or over into the jungle to force them to take a long way back into the fight. This can prove especially useful against heroes that need to be close by to properly utilize their skills (examples include Razor's Static Link, melee right click heroes and the like). Alternatively you can sneak up to an enemy hero, enchant them and then use Boulder Smash to send them into your allies. Remember that an Enchanted unit is invulnerable under all circumstances, this can be used effectively with your allies as well to save a dying ally by sending them away from the fight or by sending the team initiator into the enemy team to stun them first before the actual initiation (in this case you will need to very carefully coordinate with your team before using them as Enchant Remnants).
 * Remember that you can refresh the duration of Magnetize by placing Stone Remnants beside the affected targets. Try to time your stone placements to maximize the damage of your ultimate skill, however also remember that your skills lose the majority of their effectiveness without stones so be sure to always have some in reserve.
 * A successfully targeted Boulder Smash with a Stone Remnant is one of the longest range and fastest moving stuns in the game. You can use it for a variety of effects despite its mediocre damage, such as canceling an enemy's teleport from a safe distance (e.g. a Naga Siren who has put your allies to sleep is trying to run away, a Tinker with Boots of Travel or a Nature's Prophet hidden inside Sprout) or enemy channeling spells without endangering yourself (e.g. Witch Doctor's Death Ward).
 * Boulder Smash is perhaps the hardest skill to master in Earth Spirit's arsenal due to the fact that even a small movement can horribly offset your projectile from its intended path. Remember that you need to be standing right beside the remnant in order for your hero to interact with it thus increasing the emphasis on positioning even further.
 * A basic combo you can master as Earth Spirit is placing a Stone Remnant behind your enemies, pulling the stone in for silence, then smashing it away to stun them before using Rolling Boulder to slow them for your allies and then adding Magnetize if necessary.

Trivia

 * Earth Spirit, like, and , was a Pandaren in DotA. However, he was re-skinned to avoid copyright issues with Blizzard, since Pandaren are a race of creatures in the Warcraft Universe.
 * His innate ability, Stone Remnant, is called Stone Caller in DotA, and it summons an actual Rock rather than a Remnant. Its function and mechanics are just the same. It's still named Stone Caller in the npc files.
 * Earth Spirit's name, Kaolin, is a reference to a type of fine white clay of the same name.
 * Earth Spirit's lore draws inspiration from the Terracotta Army, a collection of statues depicting Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang Di's armies.
 * In the npc files, Enchant Remnant is named "Petrify", probably the beta name of the spell which got changed to the current name for unknown reason.