Sand King

Crixalis the Sand King is a melee strength hero whose abilities can cripple multiple enemy heroes in one devastating combo, where each of his abilities deals area damage. He is one of the most versatile Heroes in the game as he can push, initiate, support, roam, gank, and even semi-carry if he can pull it off. Sand King's versatility is expanded by how he deals with lanes as well. He can be comfortable at any lane; suicide lane for support, middle lane for ganking, and short lane for pulling and jungling. He can combo great with trilane, dual lane, solo lane, or even no lane especially since he is item independent and can focus on full ganking or roaming. Though his roles are very expanded, his main job is to initiate. His entrance is usually his most powerful element, best executed when most of the enemy team are crumpled up together, trying his best to deal as much damage as possible while inflicting slow or stun status effects upon them. Though Sand King is a weak tank early game due to his low initial attributes, he depends on his Sand Storm to dodge single target abilities and to juke, while he depends on his Burrowstrike to dodge anything else.

Tips

 * Use Blink Dagger to extend stun range by blinking in front of a hero and stun as many heroes as possible.
 * Blink Dagger is a commonly built item for Sand King, used to initiate after channeling your Ultimate.
 * The combo of Ulti+shift click blink is a formidable and a very strong way to enter team fights with the element of surprise and deal a ton of area of effect damage. Basically turning the tides of battle in your favour.
 * A full blast of Epicenter at level 3 will deal 1100 damage, easily crippling the opposing team
 * After initiating Sand Storm will protect you from auto attacks as well as deal damage to any enemy who stays in the area.
 * In early game, hitting each creep once with Caustic Finale, followed by Burrowstrike will deal insane damage in that area and likely instagib any enemy hero who happens to be there.
 * An effective early game combo involves using Burrowstrike on an enemy so they end up facing away from you and then immediately casting Epicenter. If done correctly, the enemy will be unable to stun you out of the channel phase and it will almost guarantee a kill.  You should discontinue this around mid game, as you will need to save your ultimate for teamfight situations.
 * The philosophy behind Sand Storm is that the enemy will grow bored of waiting for you to end its channeling, or will be too busy with the rest of your team to care about you. Note that while you cannot be hurt by autoattacks during it's channeling, area of effect spells affect you fully. In the cases where the enemy has an AOE stun such as Lina's Light Strike Array or Invoker's Deafening Blast, it might be better to use Burrowstrike as an escape tool.

Trivia

 * In a very old version of DotA, there was a bug where the final pulse of Crixalis's Epicenter would cause 10,000 points of damage. The only unit that was able to survive this was a super beefed up Pudge that was used to measure the amount of damage dealt by the ability.
 * Sand King's line, "Like sands in the hourglass, these are the days of defeat" is an allusion to the soap opera Days of our Lives's introduction line, "Like sands in the hourglass, these are the days of our lives."