Batrider/Guide

Generic Batrider
Batrider is traditionally played as an initiator, dragging enemies back to his team with. Hell, Lasso was and remains the number one reason he is played competitively. However, considering how strong Lasso is in the right hands, it often gets nerfed a little, and Icefrog compensates by giving Batrider more magic damage, or a bit of stats.

You will usually want to head to the offlane. If you're not facing a mean-looking trilane, you can probably start with a point in, that will help you secure last hits, harass the enemy carry and trade hits with his support. Not only does it increase your right-click damage and applies a small slow, it mostly drastically reduces their turn-rate. Once the support is done harassing you (perhaps a new creep wave is coming along?), you can assuredly land two or three extra auto-attacks while he ever-so-slowly turns around. Of course, you should cross that if he can purge off your sticky napalm (, ...). If it's impossible to get near enough anything to attack it, you could be better off with a starting point in as the unobstructed movement can help you run away to safety, or perhaps to hide in the trees to leech experience without getting noticed.

In your average game, the offlane should become unsafe soon enough and you'll want to head to the jungle to catch-up on gold and experience. Batrider is a terrible jungler at level 1, he can barely manage at level 2, and he's just fine at level 3 with two points in Napalm and one in Firefly. Stack the neutrals, stack your Napalm, and farm up your core, then gank somebody with a.

As for items, you'll usually start off with a that will upgrade into. Get some es, perhaps an or two that you can either plant for extra regen from your tangoes, or turn into a  if you're facing plenty of spammers. Once you've farmed a, your next core item is.

From there, every other item is luxury. Maybe you want to guarantee your initiation so a can be necessary. But maybe the enemies' spells go through magic immunity so a is a better choice. is nice to have for the extra movement speed to drag your enemies further, as is. Thanks to the flying vision you get from Firefly, you're also a great carrier. If you're getting starved for item slots, consider upgrading your Force Staff into a, the extra stats and the cool down reduction is always nice...

Damage-oriented Batrider
Oh boy this is a tough one. Now that Flaming Lasso has such a bad cast range, and that Flamebreak deals so much damage combined with Napalm, we've seen pro-players skip entirely the Lasso in the early game. It's a good choice to make if you can bully the enemies with Napalm (no mobility or purge on their side), and instead go for extra points in Flamebreak and wait until you've farmed a to take some points in Lasso.

The build order we give is only an example. If you've already read the tips we give on Napalm, you may think it's best to max it out first since it's eventually the skill that will dish out the most damage. However, in practice, it's sometimes difficult to get enough stacks of napalm to justify leveling it over your other skills, mainly Firefly which is much more reliable and has a much larger AOE once you've circled around for a couple of seconds.

In an actual team fight, you'll have to consider all the enemies instead of a single one, and you certainly won't be able to stack Napalm on all of them. These enemies will disrupt you as you're chasing a target covered in Napalm, and that enemy will try his hardest to stay away from your Firefly. That's where comes in. If you can't keep up with your target, Flamebreak can either bring him back in your Firefly, or the DoT can be enough to finish him off, especially if he's covered in Napalm. If you only took a value point in Firefly since the damage scales poorly, any target that hasn't got a stack of Napalm on him can ignore it entirely, whereas it's at least a little significant with more points in Firefly and no stack of Napalm. Overall, you'll have to adapt your build every game and see what's working best for you.

For items, should still be your boots of choice, although  can be a good alternative. The it comes with can be recycled later for an  or a. You can take an or two to further boost up your regen and cast an extra Flamebreak when low on mana, and get an early  as well, to increase your chasing power. This Wind Lace can be upgraded into, a great cost-effective item that suits Batrider quite nicely. If things are going very nicely on your lane and you don't see the need for Lasso/Blink Dagger yet, you can get even more cheap stats: two s will upgrade later into a that will do wonders for your damage output.

The game should eventually settle down and you should return to your tradtional initiating role and go back to your standard and.

General

 * Batrider can effectively jungle early with a few points put into and . Make sure to stack the camps to maximize income!
 * Make sure you have a and a  when you gank with . Most enemies will not know what hit them.
 * Remember that Batrider has only 1200 day vision while most other heroes have 1800, keep this in mind when ganking.
 * During the mid-game, remember to go for ganks with smoke, often times only one other hero is needed to secure kills.


 * Batrider can dominate the middle lane thanks to Sticky Napalm, and even be able to go for kills with and a few stacks of napalm on the enemy midlaner.
 * Always keep in mind that Sticky Napalm provides vision for 2 seconds on its location. Combined with the free-pathing from Firefly, it should be impossible to juke you.
 * Firefly's damage is dealt twice per second, so the bonus damage from sticky napalm will also be counted twice. Therefore, one single stack of napalm will increase Firefly's DPS on heroes by 20/30/40/50.
 * Against heroes, an extra point in Napalm will be as valuable as an extra point in Firefly once you've reached two stacks of Napalm on that hero. If you're having troubles getting more than one or two on an opponent, you're better off with extra points in Firefly since it will also increase the damage of everything that's not covered in Napalm. However, if you can isolate a target, the DPS increase from Napalm will be better than the on from Firefly once you reach three stacks.


 * It has an insane 1500 cast range. If you've managed to get away from a team fight with a sliver of HP, you can still probably turn around and throw your molotov from a safe distance before going back to your fountain.
 * Be wary however that the knock-back from Flamebreak can push an opponent at a safe distance from your ally.... Just as easily as it can shove him back into your ally's grip...
 * Flamebreak does not cancel any channeled abilities, so the previous point becomes especially important when someone is trying to cancel a for example.
 * Does 4/5/6/7 instances of damage. As a purely hypothetical scenario, with 10 stacks of level 4 Napalm, it could deal up to 4/5/6/7*(25/30/35/40 + 10*25) = 1,100/1,400/1,710/2,030 magic damage before any reduction or amplification.


 * Use to approach enemies from angles they would not expect you, or to hide in the trees and wait for an opportunity to arise.
 * Batrider can also be a viable solo offlaner thanks to flying movement gives, allowing for a somewhat reliable escape from bad situations.
 * Does a total of 37 ticks of damage. As a purely hypothetical scenario, with 10 stacks of level 4 Napalm, it could deal up to 37*(35 + 10*25) = 10,545 magic damage before any reduction or amplification.
 * When you're jungling, extra points in Sticky Napalm are more valuable than extra points in Firefly. Even with its damage reduced against creeps, Napalm scales better once you've reached 4-5 stacks.
 * As an example, let's assume you are level 3. You can either have 2 points in Firefly in which case you can deal 37*(15 + 10*2.5) = 1480 damage; or two points in Napalm in which case you can deal 37*(5 + 10*5) = 2035 damage. Overall, that extra point in Napalm is as valuable as the extra point in Firefly once you've reached 4 stacks (since 4*2.5 = 10 which equals to Firelfy's DPS increase), and it becomes more valuable once you have 5 stacks. This is true at all levels of Firefly and Napalm since they both scale linearly.


 * Batrider should center around movement speed and positioning items to get the most out of his ultimate.
 * can be bought as a way of initiating on 2 clumped up targets, this can be devastating late game as it means batrider can effectively pull two targets out of position.

Items
Starting items:
 * es gives needed health regeneration during the laning phase.
 * gives cheap health, mana, and damage and can later be built into a Magic Wand.

Early-game items:
 * gives more killing power and sustainability.

Core items:
 * is mandatory for an offlane batrider, providing a source of HP regen to allow him to remain on lane.
 * is essential for Batrider as both and  require deliberate positioning to be effective.

Situational items:
 * can be a good pickup for Batrider because he is mana dependent early game.
 * can be used while lassoing a target, allowing you to drag them even further.
 * is a great pickup for Batrider. It gives you movement speed to improve Lasso effect, mana regen to help spam your abilities and also another disable to help in teamfights or to disjoint projectiles.
 * gives unmatched global presence and the extra movement speed allows Batrider to drag enemies farther during his ultimate.
 * prevents Batrider from being stopped by most stuns meaning he can drag the target further out of position without dying as quickly himself.
 * seems pretty expensive on Batrider, but it can prove itself seriously efficiency. Because, it allows him to catch two heroes instead of one, and if it haves Refresher Orb, it can catch two more, which means he can become a real threat to grouped heroes on low HP.
 * can be bought in late game as a luxury item, which will give you a much higher health and mana pool supplying health and mana regen, magic lifesteal which will fit with and  and also will reduce your cooldowns allowing for an even better spam of all skills.
 * has an interesting active that fits nicely in your initiator role. The slow it does can prevent your enemies from reacting on your initiation, the damage it deals can put their s on cool down. The +15 armor and +30 intelligence is always nice to have...