Earthshaker

Raigor Stonehoof the Earthshaker is a melee Strength Hero with several area of effect disables, commonly played as a ganker or initiator. Unlike most Strength heroes, he is played more like an Intelligence caster hero and is almost entirely reliant on his spells to inflict heavy damage. His Fissure is a versatile spell that affects enemies in a line, used to stun, inflict decent damage, and create an impassable wall of earth for a significant duration. Good usage of this can cut off chokepoints, leaving enemies with no escape routes or preventing them from chasing after endangered allies. Enchant Totem massively boosts his attack damage for one attack, and has a very short cooldown. Aftershock lets the Earthshaker deal additional damage and stun in a small area around him everytime he uses one of his spells, and combos particularly well with Enchant Totem. Earthshaker's heavy AoE-centric kit is most powerful when his enemies are in large numbers and in close proximity. With his Echo Slam, he can deal heavy damage to clusters of enemies. All of Earthshaker's spells (with the exception of his ultimate) have a long casting animation, but with proper positioning, an adept Earthshaker can wreak havoc with his area-of-effect spells. Blink Dagger is an essential item for Earthshaker to be able to properly land Echo Slam within a cluster of enemies. At the same time, because of the high mana costs of his spells, he needs some form of mana sustenance. With his tremendous seismic power, the Earthshaker is never one that should be taken lightly even when he is heavily outnumbered.

Tips

 * Fissure icon.png Fissure creates an impassable barrier, which can be effective for stopping enemies from escaping.
 * It is important to keep in mind, however, that this barrier is also impassable to yourself and allies. Be careful of how you position yourself and the Fissure wall.
 * Use Enchant Totem icon.png Enchant Totem in conjunction with Aftershock icon.png Aftershock to stop escaping enemies, even when Fissure is unavailable.
 * Upon initiating, Aftershock icon.png Aftershock allows for your Enchant Totem and Echo slam to disable the enemy team for longer periods of time.
 * Because of the echo damage,Echo Slam icon.png Echo Slam is best used in the middle of the enemy team, especially when they have a large amount of units near them.
 * A Blink Dagger icon.png Blink Dagger or Force Staff icon.png Force Staff will help you get into position to use Echo Slam icon.png Echo Slam. Note that it might not always be best to initiate and it can sometimes be best to wait for the enemy team to start the fight and group up.
 * Try to find a balance between building items that help you be the team's initiator and those which increase your mana, Icon_Int.png Intelligence and or Icon_Str.png Strength so that you can remain effective throughout the game.
 * Soul Ring icon.png Soul Ring is often a particularly effective item on Earthshaker, as it provides both health and mana regeneration while giving you the option for mana whenever needed.
 * Arcane Boots icon.png Arcane Boots give Earthshaker more team utility through active mana regeneration, increased movement speed, and an increased mana pool to allow you to cast more spells.
 * Because of Echo Slam icon.png Echo Slam, it is a fatal mistake to push against an Earthshaker without taking precautions to not get caught while grouped up. Echo Slam's damage has no upper limit and so Earthshaker has the potential to wipe out an entire team of heroes instantly if there are enough bodies present.
 * Because of Echo Slam icon.png Echo Slam, Earthshaker is particularly effective against heroes that can create illusions or clones, such as Chaos Knight, Naga Siren, Phantom Lancer and Meepo, as well as heroes that can summon or control units such as Broodmother, Nature's Prophet, Enchantress and Chen.
 * While he is primarily and fundamentally a support because of his potentially game-breaking spells, it is possible to play Earthshaker as a physical damage dealer due to the very large amount of damage from Enchant Totem icon.png Enchant Totem. There are a lot of builds for this, but they usually revolve around cost-efficient strength items like Drum of Endurance and Armlet of Mordiggian, and then Daedalus. With these items an Earthshaker can potentially instantly kill an enemy carry (though there is some risk involved). If you wish to attempt this type of build, make sure you have the consent of your teammates first, most will assume you plan on supporting.

Trivia

 * Earthshaker's response " erth_ability_echo_03.mp3 Chaos Dunk!" is a reference to the freeware RPG game Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden