Troll Warlord/Guide

Carry
Troll Warlord should always be played as a carry. A good Troll player is constantly farming, pushing, or taking objectives. One of the first important items on Troll Warlord is, which should be upgraded to a  as soon as possible. With this item, one can farm the jungle without losing much health. Combined with and  (or ), you should be able to fight in early team fights. You should find a good balance between farming and pushing (Dependent on your team's situation). A good use of the hero's ultimate is to assist his team with pushing or fighting without him to get bonus gold through assists or towers.

Ability Builds
At the start of the match you always invest a point in to be able to get easy lasthits in the laning phase.

Then, depending on the game situation, you max out (for a more objective-centric playstyle) or  (for a more kill-centric playstyle). Maxing both skills in tandem can be effective as well, as long as one optimizes farming and fighting appropiately.

You always pick up your when you are able to do so, at levels 6, 11 and 16.

Maxing gives negligible benefits without the much-needed levels to provide more attack speed, and thus, more bashes. Therefore, it should be maxed last.

-You should always be in melee form while moving, fighting and farming to gain bonus movement speed and the chance to bash, as well as a lower BAT.

-Try to finish off running heroes, zone enemy melee heroes or lasthitting creeps by changing to ranged form.

-When toggled on, exchanges with.

-The Bash chance is a measly 10% while in melee form. However, a bonus  20/30/40/50 Damage is done per bash, in addition to a 0.8/1.2/1.6/2 second stun.

-Only real purpose of this spell is to slow the opponent.

-You should go in melee form after casting this spell to gain bonus movement speed, making chasing more efficient.

-Slows 30% across all levels, but the duration of the slow goes up to 3/3.75/4.5/5.25 seconds. This is a deceptively powerful slow as the cooldown of the ability is 10 seconds at level 4, providing a 52.5% uptime on said slow. For comparison, Eye of Skadi provides a comparable slow, at 35%.

-This spell only deals 75 damage across all levels.

.
-This spell is your main damaging nuke, as the damage scales with level (75/125/175/225) unlike the ranged version.

-Axes whirl in a circle around your hero, extending to a radius of 350 units before coming back, each axe having a radius of 100 units.

-Inflicts a blind effect on enemy heroes and creeps, lasting 4/5/6/7 seconds and debuffing the afflicted with 60% miss chance.

-You should use this spell for farming, pushing, teamfights freely. However, it does NOT affect Roshan.

-This ability provides most of your DPS potential.

-Try not to constantly switch targets to prevent your Fervor stacks from reseting.

-Most effective for 1v1s, destroying buildings and Roshan.

-Synergizes with Berserker's Rage to facilitate bashing consecutively.

-As mentioned, try to ult whenever you or your team are doing objectives. (Pushes, Roshan, etc.)

-You get assists if an enemy hero is killed by one of your teammates while under the effect of this spell.

-The enemy team can't hear your "cry" when casting this spell, if they don't have vision of you.

Items
Starting items: Early-game items: Core items: Situational items:
 * and give you basic health regeneration to stay in lane longer.
 * provides a minor armor bonus, it also builds into a.
 * helps against enemies that can spam spells, it later builds into.
 * doubles your mana regen during the early game.
 * help you escape bad situations as well as closing the distance to enemies to take advantage of your more powerful melee form.
 * is core on troll because only lasts 5 seconds. Every second matters, and stuns and disables potentially make you unable to do anything for several seconds, wasting the spell's full potential.
 * provides lifesteal which works well with your high attack speed. You can dominate a neutral creep with it to make soloing Roshan easier.
 * because his base movement speed is high, this item is a good choice as it adds agility and even more movement speed. Upgrade it into either a for some durability and slow, or  for the illusions and dispel. Not only can Troll create illusions from Manta, but it can also dispel some debuffs using it's active.
 * offers cost effective attack speed and damage increases, strong initiation and mobility, and a mediocre escape.
 * can be upgraded into a which, coupled with Troll Warlord's passive attack speed buffs, can allow him to go from little to full health in only a few seconds, as well as providing survivability through the item's strength bonus.
 * gives your attacks a great deal of damage. Because maximum attack speed is easily achieveable with his ultimate and passive, Troll Warlord can focus on damage and get multiple Daedalus to crit more often and lifesteal even more.
 * can also be picked up to counter the evasion of heroes such as, and give a big boost to your damage output. The mini bash can also help cancel spells/items that require channeling such as.
 * provides a massive agility and attack speed bonus as well as evasion. The attack speed part of the item makes perma bashing more likely when your ultimate is over. In addition, the evasion, combined with the blind provided by Whirling Axes provides a great deal of survivability. FInally, the Flutter ability allows you to chase or escape with ease.