Sand King


 * Difficulty: Medium/High
 * Skill Curve: Low

Sand King is a heavy gank/initiation melee caster hero that is somewhat similar to Earthshaker in playstyle and utility. He can contribute to the team easily but if you master his skills he brings a lot more to the table, due to the utility-orientation of his skills. His first skill is burrowstrike, which is a decent range stun that, when cast, will bring him to the target point instantly as well as stunning anyone inbetween him and the point. It is similar to a blink but most often used as a nuke rather than an escape, and arguably one of the better skills in the game. His second ability is sandstorm, which simply turns him invisible and deals damage in a large AOE around him for a very long time. This skill is very useful for stalling when you get ganked (activate sandstorm and wait for allies to come) or simply farming/dps in a team battle. The instant invisibility is an interesting aspect - in the hands of a good player, what you can do is activate it when you are about to get stunned and most abilities will use the mana and go onto cooldown, but you will not be affected. It takes a lot of timing and skill though. His Ultimate channels for 2 seconds and then begins dealing damage in a small AOE around him, which gradually expands. The damage output from this ability is very high, but if he is stunned during the channel time it is 100% wasted, which is why people often purchase Blink Dagger on him (cast ultimate, wait for channel to finish, blink in). He is easily harassed early game but can also be very agressive in lane due to his Burrowstrike.

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Basic Strategy

 * 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 AEO damage. Basically turning the tides of battle in your favour.

Trivia

 * In a very old version of Dota All Stars, there used to be a bug with Crixalis's Epicenter where at the last pulse it used to deal an ungodly blow of over 10,000 points of damage killing anyone in its reach, except the super beefed up Pudge that was used to measure the amount of damage dealt by the skill
 * Crixalis is voiced by Dennis Bateman, who voiced Spy class in Team Fortress 2.