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 become 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

 * Storm Spirit is a very mobile ganker who thrives on an aggressive play style. While he is very mana-hungry and difficult to master, he more than makes up for this by rewarding players with aggressive mindsets and good dexterity, who can use his abilities to jump on foes from extremely long distances, pummel them down with tremendous amounts of magical damage, and escape before their allies can turn on him.
 * In order to make the most of his mobility, Storm Spirit's first priority should be to build items that give him both mana and mana regen. Ball Lightning allows him to initiate and escape at will, making him very hard to catch in the hands of a skilled player, however it consumes large amounts of his mana pool, meaning that life or death literally rests on how much mana Storm Spirit can muster up when needed.
 * Storm Spirit is most generally played in the mid lane, as his abilities make him an extremely powerful hero to have early levels and gold on. While he is quite weak and vulnerable before he hits level 6, he becomes a force to be reckoned with once he obtains access to his ultimate.
 * drops a remnant on Storm Spirit's position upon cast, detonating when an enemy walks into its trigger radius or when it expires.
 * In the laning stage, Static Remnant can be used to apply nuke damage to a creep wave, useful for getting multiple last-hits at once or pushing the lane in order to buy yourself space to check the runes. However, it is also dangerous since the spell's small radius means that Storm Spirit, a ranged hero with low HP and armor, must walk into melee range of the creep wave in order to make the most of it. Make sure that the enemy cannot easily capitalize on this disadvantageous positioning before doing this.
 * Due to its area-of-effect nature and low mana cost and cooldown, Static Remnant can be a useful spell for farming neutral camps, especially if they have been stacked. Each remnant can deal its damage to the entire camp if placed close enough, reducing the amount of time required to farm them.
 * Mind the delay between placing a Static Remnant, and it materializing. Smart enemies can run outside of its radius in the second after placing the remnant, so try to make sure that the enemy is otherwise disabled in order to land the explosion on them.
 * Static Remnant has an instant cast time, allowing Storm Spirit to place them without breaking stride. When running from enemies, leaving a Static Remnant in your wake can discourage enemies from pursuing in the early game if they cannot afford to take the damage.
 * Keep in mind, a Static Remnant will still explode if an invisible enemy enters its radius. If a Static Remnant explodes without a visible enemy entering its radius, but before its expiration time, it means that an invisible enemy is approaching.
 * Static Remnant gives flying vision for its duration, which allows it to be used to gain vision through the fog of war. This can be used to check inside Roshan's pit, or to see over trees and high ground. It can be particularly useful when placed behind a tree, as enemies will be unable to see the remnant but it will still provide vision of them until it explodes.
 * is a short disable that stuns its target as it is pulled in.
 * As a general rule of thumb, Electric Vortex has no value at level 1, and is only useful for catching enemies at level 3 or higher, so it should either have multiple early skill points put into it in order to increase Storm Spirit's disable potential, or altogether ignored in the early game for more damage output through his other spells. A value point is not enough to disable enemies long enough to put a meaningful amount of damage on them, short of interrupting Town Portal Scrolls.
 * At any level, Electric Vortex can pull an enemy into the explosion radius of Static Remnant, provided that it was already placed at the same location that Storm Spirit casts Electric Vortex from. However, keep in mind that Static Remnant takes time to materialize, and at level 1 Electric Vortex only pulls for just barely the theoretical amount of time and distance needed for this; in practical terms, a fleeing enemy and the delay between commands means that they will likely run outside of the remnant before it materializes unless Electric Vortex is cast on a target inside of its maximum range. Regardless, it is wise to put at least two levels into Electric Vortex in order to ensure that enemies will be caught by a Static Remnant.
 * Beware that Electric Vortex will also halve Storm Spirit's movement speed upon casting, meaning that he is unable to easily move himself to a more advantageous position to attack or cast his other spells. As such, the only ways to reliably re-position are either to have activated a Haste rune or to cast Ball Lightning.
 * is the linchpin that links together all of Storm Spirit's abilities and augments the amount of damage that his physical attacks deal.
 * Overload procs every time Storm Spirit casts any of his spells. As such, mastery of Storm Spirit requires that players learn to attack targets between every spell in order to maximize the amount of damage dealt.
 * The area-of-effect nature of Overload allows for it to be used as a farming spell. Throwing an Overload charge at the center of a group of creeps will apply the damage and slow to all of them, which allows Storm Spirit to deal aftershock damage to groups of creeps after using a spell.
 * The splash damage from Overload also allows it to be used as a harassing spell in the laning stage. If the enemy is standing close to a creep (such as the ranged creep), attacking that creep with the Overload charge can deal splash damage to the enemy player without drawing aggro.
 * Keep in mind, attacks will check for Overload procs when they successfully connect. As such, it is possible to throw an attack, and then cast a spell while the projectile is mid-air, and the projectile will still proc Overload on its target. This can be used to get kills on low-health enemies who are fleeing, but who will escape before a spell comes off cooldown for proccing Overload prior to attacking; attacking and then casting a spell to proc Overload will cause the subsequent attack to deal its damage and slow.
 * Beware that attacking spell immune units, particularly ancients, siege creeps and wards, will still proc Overload even if it will not deal the damage or slow on that unit. In the early game when Storm Spirit's mana is still finite, this can result in a wasted Overload proc, so be careful about which targets to attack in order to maximize the usage of Storm Spirit's mana.


 * can be cast at minuscule ranges to trigger.
 * Using, can travel behind enemies, forcing them to turn around to attack him. Dance around an enemy with  to confuse them even more.
 * While in, you can use items like to bring a dazzling yet deadly cold storm which follows around while rolling on. Great for initiating and crippling enemies, along with , escaping away is most unlikely. You can also cast  for farming or pushing, or just show some amazing power.


 * A very common combo uses to nuke down lone heroes is to ambush them with:  > Attack >  > Attack > > Attack >  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 > Attack >  > > Attack > then just normal attack and use  to chase enemies when out of range. When engaging heroes like /, a wise move would be to use  after  is over since the enemy would most likely cast a stun first which  would be able to dodge.
 * When engaging a group of heroes, 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  while he can simple run away with, disable a hero with , leave a  behind and pave the way for allied heroes and their counter initiation.


 * gives intelligence, loads of mana regeneration, a flat movement increase of 40, and its cyclone can be used on one self to dispel all silences in the game with the exception of 's (However, if the player finds himself stuck in the spell, the simple solution is to use the cyclone on Riki himself than Storm, walk out of the smoke screen, and continue normally).

Trivia

 * , like, and , was a Pandaren in DotA. However, he was re-skinned to avoid copyright issues with Blizzard Entertainment, since Pandaren are a race of creatures in the Warcraft Universe.
 * Raijin is the name of the god of thunder and lightning in the Japanese Shinto religion.
 * The line ss attack 10.mp3 I'll spirit you away!, as well as him muttering Spirit... Away... when he dies may be a reference to the film Spirited Away.
 * Storm Spirit's speech is very similar to Ninjor, a character from the Power Rangers franchise, who's voice acting is largely based on the character Dudley Do-Right, from the Dudley Do-Right Show.
 * Euls Sceptre of divinity's similar item was called Stormspirit in Heros of Newerth.