Wraith King

Ostarion the Wraith King is a melee strength hero, a carry and tank capable of both dealing and taking plenty of damage. His infamous Reincarnation allows the Wraith King to rise again after death, acting like an Aegis of the Immortal, making him especially difficult to kill. But if left alive, the Wraith King can wreak havoc upon his enemies; his Wraithfire Blast provides reliable damage and a stun on a short cooldown, Vampiric Aura grants his team sizeable lifesteal, and Mortal Strike helps make short work of foes.

Gameplay
Wraith King is a durable core with a reliable stun. As his ultimate, Reincarnation, effectively doubles his health in a teamfight, he is commonly built as a tank carry. He is traditionally popular among new players for his survivability and potentially simple playstyle. However, Wraith King can also be played at a high level of skill, particularly by using active items. For example, well-timed Tread switching can make his expensive stun much cheaper in the early game.

Recommended items
Starting items:
 * Buying a or a  provides Ostarion with a decent amount of regeneration in the laning phase.
 * Buying a gives Ostarion more opportunities to set up kills early on with.
 * Starting with two es give Wraith King enough mana pool to cast two times at level 1.
 * A is an excellent starting item for Ostarion as it allows him to get last hits easier. It also makes Mortal Strike hit harder against creeps and increases the effectiveness of Vampiric Aura when attacking creeps.

Early-game items:
 * A can sometimes be the difference between a death and a kill. Its active usually grants enough mana to sustain.
 * provide an excellent boost of speed for any hero.
 * A can be built into an  later on and gives extra survivability in the form of armor and health regeneration.

Core items:
 * provides the same kind of benefit as the Magic Stick does, but it also provides a small amount of attributes. It makes great use of the earlier bought branches, making room for new items.
 * increases Ostarion's damage per second; attribute switching can also make his limited mana pool go much further if the treads are switched to intelligence.
 * is Ostarion's main DPS item. It is also easy to negate the health drain with the help of.
 * negates countering Ostarion through kiting, as well as helping him with positioning.

Situational:
 * causes Ostarion's physical attacks to hit harder, especially against targets with already low armor. Vampiric Aura also benefits greatly from it, as it heals based on dealt damage after armor reduction.
 * negates Ostarion's main weakness: being chain-stunned and then burst down after . Furthermore, as long as he isn't disabled, he can keep hitting enemies, healing himself up with his aura.
 * increases Ostarion's damage output by increasing his attack speed and further reducing enemy armor. The aura from this item also increases his team's armor and attack speed. Since Wraith King usually survives longer, the item's aura provides more impact.
 * provides Ostarion a decent HP and damage bonus, blocks 40 damage from incoming attacks and it also gives his attacks a chance to bash and, on top of, another active stun which also pierces spell immunity, which is very handy as he is easy to run away from if his own stun is on cooldown.
 * gives Ostarion a great health, health regeneration and attack damage boost, making him even harder to kill and harder to ignore.
 * gives Ostarion some evasion against enemies which rely on their physical attacks, and lets him cut off an enemy carry from their primary source of damage for a while.
 * increases Ostarion's attack damage, counters enemies with evasion abilities or items such as or, and provides him with a high chance to interrupt channeling spells when Wraithfire Blast is not an option.
 * is an excellent item for Ostarion to get due to it not dropping if activates upon death, thus making it less likely for him to lose it. When carrying the Aegis of the Immortal, Ostarion has to die 3 times to lose the Rapier. The great damage boost also increases his endurance by improving his lifesteal aura's returns.
 * is a useful item for Ostarion if he is playing a support character, as it makes him able to elongate his teammate's lives, potentially getting more kills or other objectives. It also provides overall decent stats.
 * is able to be consumed by Ostarion, granting him more attack speed and allowing him an effectively higher chance to proc Mortal Strike.

Tips

 * If wraith king get his ultimate while in wraith form he will resurrect meaning that you can use your ultimate with 7 seconds of cooldown remaining. With an octarine core you can use your ultimate every 45 seconds - 7 from ghost = 38 seconds.
 * is a decent nuke early on, which also allows Ostarion to disable and slow at the same time. A perfect tool for ganks and team fights, it has a relatively low cooldown, but its relatively high mana cost does not allow it to be used frequently. It should be saved for when it is really needed.
 * It is generally best to have maxed first as both of Ostarion's passives are not very effective in the laning stage, since both are based on attack damage.


 * has quite a high mana cost for a Wraith King's rather low mana pool and regeneration. It is best to always keep his mana pool high enough for Reincarnation to trigger, or to make sure that enough charges of his Magic Stick are present in case of an emergency.
 * Another possible solution to this problem is to have a, since it grants enough mana to sustain Reincarnation's mana cost when already having at least some left-over mana, unless the enemies have mana burning capabilities. The health loss from Soul Ring's active ability is usually not a problem thanks to.
 * Due to Wraith King's sustainability, he usually should initiate fights and tank up some damage first. Sometimes, it is great to even die first, triggering which heavily slows every nearby enemy. At this point, the enemies usually either prepare to take him down again, or try to escape when they can't take him down a second time. This is the perfect opportunity for Wraith King's team to follow up and catch the enemies off-guard.
 * Besides these, dying as last as Wraith King basically just wastes his Reincarnation, since he cannot do much on his own after respawning besides dying a second time right away.
 * is highly situational, as it allows Ostarion to potentially use twice in a fight allowing him to deal damage for a longer period of time.
 * Picking up the after killing Roshan is an excellent idea. It essentially gives Wraith King a 3rd life, though  activates first as long as he has sufficient mana. If his mana is too low for Reincarnation, Aegis activates first instead.
 * should be considered if Wraith King is counter picked by illusions and mana burn, as the Chain Lightning and Static Shield is effective against them, as well as giving some protection and retaliation when he initiates. However, if illusions are the only problem, a  is a better choice as it gives health and mana regeneration as well as extra creep damage for.
 * When going for a, it should usually be used after having used Reincarnation, since enemies can surround him and prepare during the reincarnation delay and disable him before he can even do anything.
 * is a great pickup on since he doesn't have any teleportation or movespeed skills to close the gap on enemies, and  allows you to blink into the fights and stun the most fragile enemy with, or to escape in tricky situations.

Trivia

 * Prior to December 13th of 2013, Wraith King icon.png Ostarion, the Wraith King was known as Skeleton King icon.png Ostarion, the Skeleton King.
 * On December 10th of 2013, Skeleton King was removed from the game for "pressing ceremonial reasons". After the Wraith Night event, he returned as the Wraith King.
 * His model was completely reworked from the previous skeleton model to the current model. His color theme was changed from red to green and all his icons were changed accordingly.
 * He also got a new voice set, by the same voice actor who also voiced Skeleton King previously. Skeleton King's responses can be found here.
 * In DotA1, Wraith King's (who is still known as the Skeleton King in DotA1) name is Leoric. This is a reference to the Skeleton King of Diablo who is also named Leoric. In transition to Dota2, his name was changed to Ostarion to avoid copyright issues.
 * Copyright issues may also be a reason to why Skeleton King was remodeled and re-titled into Wraith King. Another likely factor for the remodeling was to solve many cosmetic item conflicts with the low-violence model which was made for the Perfect World client. A low-violence model was required for Skeleton King due to strict policies in China against the usage of skeletons in video games.
 * Wraith King's responses for buying Wraith items 02.mp3 "I NOW HAVE ALL THE SEXY", buying a  Wraith items 18.mp3 "Oh, Rapier. NOW YOUR KING IS BALLING OUT OF CONTROL!" and his battle begin line Wraith ally 01.mp3 "I'LL HELP MY WEAK AND PUNY ALLIES WHERE I CAN." are a reference to a popular DotA hero guide called "CAPS LOCK LEORIC".
 * In several responses, he refers to himself as the "Once and Future King", which is also a title for the legendary King Arthur.
 * One of Wraith King's lines is "We'll lead as three kings" when he activates an illusion rune. This line has close reference to the song "City Hall" by Tenacious D with the line "We'll lead as two kings".