Storm Spirit

Raijin Thunderkeg, the Storm Spirit, is a ranged Intelligence hero who wields the elemental power of lightning. He has high mobility, strong ganking and carrying potential, and very good synergy between his hero abilities.

Static Remnant creates an immobile clone of himself that, upon contact with an enemy, shocks all enemies in a small area for damage. It has a very low cooldown, making it a good farming skill. Electric Vortex binds an enemy to himself, drawing it in slowly; at higher levels of the skill, it will always be able to pull the target into a Static Remnant. Overload further supplements this combo by harnessing the excess charge whenever Raijin casts a spell, adding it in the form of magical damage to his next attack and zapping enemies in a radius around the target. Finally, Storm Spirit's ultimate and signature skill is Ball Lightning, in which he transforms into pure energy, sacrificing his own mana to dash quickly around the map in an invulnerable state, inflicting minor damage to foes he impacts as well as giving him an Overload charge. It can be used to initiate and escape long distances with ease.

Because his ultimate disjoints enemy projectiles and has no cooldown, he can prove to be one of the most slippery foes in the game, provided that he has enough mana regeneration to sustain it and/or the enemy team does not have strong disables such as stuns and silences. However, without proper mana management, he will run out of juice very quickly and be a sitting duck. While extremely vulnerable early game before he acquires his ultimate, once he does so, if he gets a few quick kills and some mana-sustaining items, he will become an unstoppable force of nature.

Tips

 * Static Remnant is an effective nuke useful for pushing and triggering Overload attacks, the overloaded attacks are useful for assaulting and heavily slowing enemies (even for just a brief amount of time).
 * Electric Vortex allows Raijin to pull his target close enough to his Static Remnant, triggering its damage.
 * A common tactic most people use is to cast his ultimate, Ball Lightning, at minuscule ranges to trigger his Overload passive after which he attacks his target then repeating the steps again, potentially giving Storm Spirit's slow a higher duration.
 * Though essentially it is not orb-walking, it does have a similar process.
 * Use Ball Lightning to go through the enemy and end up behind them, since they have to turn around to attack you. Each hero has a turn animation time, which (although is usually a mere fraction of a second) can be crucial to your advantage. Repeatedly using Ball Lightning in quick succession within small range confuses the enemy even more.
 * A very common combo Storm Spirit uses to nuke down lone heroes is to ambush them with: Ball Lightning > Attack > Vortex > Attack > Remnant > Attack > Ball Lightning through them to dodge their retaliation > Attack > Escape if enemy has not died. This will greatly injure most heroes, and kill those foolish enough to be walking around alone with weakened HP.
 * Another alternative would be to use ball lightning > overload > vortex > remnant > overload > then just normal attack and use ball lightning to chase enemies when out of range. When engaging heroes like Earthshaker/ Vengeful Spirit, a wise move would be to use ball lightning after vortex is over since the enemy would most likely cast a stun first which storm would be able to dodge.
 * When engaging a group of heroes, Storm Spirit can actually, although at a risk, be the first one to engage them, followed by several allies already behind him to back him up. This strategy can make enemy heroes blow most cooldowns on Storm Spirit while he can simple run away with Ball Lightning, disable a hero with Electric Vortex, leave a Static Remnant behind and pave the way for allied heroes and their counter initiation.
 * Note: Storm's Ball Lightning deals a reasonable amount of damage when it is maxed out, so using Ball Lightning from a far distance will deal huge damage to the enemy.
 * While in Ball Lightning, you can use items like Shiva's Guard to bring a dazzling yet deadly cold storm which follows around while rolling on. Great for initiating and crippling enemies, along with Overload, escaping away is most unlikely. You can also cast Static Remnant for farming or pushing, or just show some amazing power.

Trivia

 * Storm Spirit's hat was added to Team Fortress 2 on the 18th August 2011 as Storm Spirit's Jolly Hat.
 * Much like Brewmaster in DotA, Storm Spirit's hero model was a pandaren; it had to be changed as he transitioned to Dota 2, in order to avoid copyright issues with Blizzard.
 * Raijin is the name of the god of thunder and lightning in both Shintoism and Japanese mythology.