Troll Warlord/Guide

Gameplay
Small text === 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.

Tips & Tactics

 * At level 25 without items and with 7 stacks of fervor and his ultimate Troll Warlord reaches 597/600 attack speed.
 * Troll Warlord is faster in melee mode, making it easier to chase or escape from enemies. It also increases your armor, so switching to melee form whenever damage is received reduces the overall damage you take.
 * You can opt for the strategy to kill Roshan early. Troll Warlord with HotD and Phase boots can easily kill Roshan thanks to his bash and high attack speed against single targets. In addition the use of a smoke may allow a sneaky Rosh.
 * When your target enemy is starting to become harder to chase in melee form, keep in mind that you still have a Ranged form. Ranged Whirling Axes can aid in crippling them, so that you can revert back to melee form to finish them off.
 * Augment Troll Warlord's power with damage-boosting items, since his power lies in his excellent attack speed.
 * Ally buffs such as 's Empower can also be a good source of boosting damage.
 * Because of its scaling boost to attack speed Fervor is usually leveled up last with 1 point at level 4 for tower pushing/Roshan/beating on a single hero. Having your move speed and bash duration higher will greatly benefit your survivability and chase, since Fervor is extremely good with even only 1 skill point. But keep in mind that since a recent update the first stack is always active.
 * It's better to focus on one target rather than switching from one to another, since Fervor makes him more dangerous the more he attacks the same target with each blow.
 * Attack speed items such as Gloves of Haste and Hyperstone allow you to build up Fervor more quickly, but do not scale well if you opt to max it early on.
 * If you're 6-slotted, sell any attack speed items for higher damage items. With all skills levelled, Troll Warlord easily achieves his maximum attack speed, so items like Mjollnir are much less useful.
 * Drum of Endurance and Sange and Yasha are strong items coupled with the bonuses from Berserker's Rage, giving you even greater mobility to prevent kiting.
 * Maelstrom, Mjollnir, Orb of Venom and Eye of Skadi are the only few Unique Attack Modifiers that stack with the commonly opted HotD.
 * Maelstrom is an excellent source of early-game and mid-game damage, but upgrading to a Mjollnir is discouraged as Troll Warlord hardly benefits from the 80 attack speed it provides. Instead of upgrading your Maelstrom, sell it for higher damage items such as Daedalus, Butterfly or Monkey King Bar, or utility items such as Eye of Skadi, Black King Bar or Heaven's Halberd.
 * Heroes who mainly auto-attack benefit greatly from Battle Trance. Try to draft at least one more hard hitting carry for your team to get the most out of it. If your team insists on picking four carries, Battle Trance can often be the saving grace for a horribly gold starved team as it equates to more than a free five second Hyperstone for everyone at its first level. Contently look at the map and use Battle Trance at any engagement of allies to give them an advantage. Check at the map at use your ultimate every time someone is fighting or pushing. Communicate with your team to know when exactly you need to activate your ultimate. Be sure to always have enough mana, buy a Ring of Basilius to get more mana regen.
 * Battle Trance can be used to help allies in many ways even if you are not there, as the effects are global, that is why Troll is often played mid to reach level 6 quickly (and do a fast Roshan at the same time). Whether you have someone pushing a tower such as or, if  has used ,  her  or if  is Roshing, heroes with high base damage but low attack speed like , be sure to help your friends by using your Ultimate!
 * Battle Trance does not buff Illusions, but it does work on and his clones allowing to reach the highest DPS of the game. Because Meepo is excellent at pouncing on enemies, he can generally obliterate anyone instantly once he blink/poofs in under the effects of Battle Trance. He can use Troll's ultimate to destroy buildings in backdoor.
 * With the bonus attack speed when Troll Warlord is picked, some heroes can focuses on damages Daedalus or Monkey King Bar instead of attack speed.


 * 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.
 * The melee and ranged versions of Whirling Axes have separate cooldowns. Keep this in mind when in battle, so that you can output more damage with them.
 * 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.