Guide to Barathrum, the Spirit Breaker

How to own&kill in pubs

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Changelog
2009/12/31 Added changelog section; Added Urn of Shadows/Blademail; Added Late game performance section
2010/5/10 Started to upgrade this guide to 6.67C

Hero Introduction

Barathrum is a speed based assassin with moderate global supporting abilities. He has 2 active abilities and 2 passive ones, perfectly supplementing each other. His first active skill is a charge from anywhere on the map which stuns on the first hit. His second active skill is a fade-blink attack that knocks enemies backward. His first passive skill is an aura that both increases his movespeed and increases his attack by movespeed. His second passive is a bash that procs 17% of the time
His position in the team is a point disabler+burst dpser+ganker. He is NOT the farming carry. Pick him if you wanna charge and kill lv 6+ and still retain enough late game power as secondary dpser.


Stats Analysis
Click for detailed stats

• Average overall stats growth: no shortage is your biggest advantage
• Comfortable base attack and attack animation: During ganking, animation canceling helps early game
• Lower than average base movespeed to balance his skills
• Very high armor!

Some Useless Tips for beginners

• Your early game depends more on your laning skills, the lack of disable is made up with rather high damage and tough stats. You also gradually gain faster movespeed.
• Being a strength based ganker means you can improve survivability+damage all in a Bracer, which is exactly what you need early to mid game. In my opinion, any ganker who doesn't have a strength growth of 5 needs these, and who has a strength gain of 5? NOBODY

Skills

• You can use this skill from anywhere on any enemy or neutral creep in your sight. During the brief cast animation you might lose sight. It takes 4 seconds on the same spot for to charge up before actually moving, issuing another command will break the spell. I don't think you can shorten this period.
• When Barathrum charges within 2500 distance of the target, a buff is visible in HIS status bar. An experienced player always checks his status bar and will always know when you charge him! An animation is played above the head of your target for all your allies to see upon charge.
• Gives vision on target upon cast, if the target goes into invisibility you gain sight of the target. That is, you see a patch of highlighted area with no target.
• You will always stun&hit the target unless it's Puck who phase shifts, or you're stunned first which breaks the spell. Pugna's Decrepify, Ghost Scepter's ability and the typhoon staff seems to make the initial stun useless(citation needed). You will hit&stun invisible targets!
• If the target you charged splits into Manta Style based illusions, you still charge the real one(thanks to doovad)
• Movement speed is increased every 4 seconds, a naked Barathrum will achieve max movespeed(522) after 12 seconds and become magic immune for the rest of the charge. The movespeed buff lasts 2 seconds after whatever way the spell ends.
• Upon charge Barathrum has 0 collision size, he passes through units and trees. But his route is uncontrollable, generally it's a straight line from you to your target, but you will make the necessary turns to walk up&down hills.
• Using any items, levelings a skill or doing any action at all will break charge.(Thanks to SNOW37)

2.

• Increases base+boots movespeed by 10% and deals 16% additional damage based on his CURRENT movespeed, the effects show on your attack bar.
• At Lv7, this skill alone increases your attack by 47.2 and movespeed to 324, throw in a pair of Boots and you have 380 movespeed and +60 attack. Do NOT underestimate this skill!
• The damage increase is based on your CURRENT movespeed, charging, the speed rune and Dark Sear’s run fat boy run all increases your damage in turn.
• The additional damage used to take place right before you attack, meaning Barathrum attacks twice in 1 move. Particularly useful in last hitting lol. But I haven’t noticed it in recent versions and saw nothing on the changelog.

3.

• This skill always procs 17% of the time, leveling it up doesn’t increase the chance!
• Although the damage is magical, the disable works on magic immune units meaning you can break a BKB tp or BKB channeling ultimate
• It also triggers right before you attack, many times during last hitting I find it annoying
• Bashing a target will cause allied agro on it to drop, if you auto attacked and bashed, your hero will turn to another unit. Farmers watch out! But if you click attacked your target, such things won’t happen

4.

• Your ultimate. Upon cast, you step backwards, fade and blink to your targets other side(seen from the point he cast it) and bash him
• The bash effect is a lv4 Greater Bash, you don’t have to learn it to take effect, it's just there
• Once the casting animation is done, you will always bash your target. During the 1 sec delay you can be disabled or killed. Even so, your disabled form will still bash your target.

  For example, SNK stuns you during the fade time but you still blink-bash him in the stun.

  If your target blinked/jumped/tped/whatever and moved a LONG distance, you will still appear right next to him and stun. I once ultimated a tping Omniknight and ended up near his fountain.
  If you died during fade, your carcass will bash your target. I remember a few occasions. But my hero died right when he was about to blink, so it might depend on when he dies
  See what I mean by YOU ALWAYS BASH YOUR TARGET?
• A long cooldown of 75 sec, Aghanim’s Scepter will shorten the cooldown to 20 sec

Skill Build




Empowering haste is maxed first. This is Barathrum's soul. Greater Bash is taken only 1 level as it doesn't proc more often and the stun effect&damage increase is pathetic. Charge of Darkness is maxed 2nd and not 1st because the stun increase can't help you deal more damage than leveling up Empowering haste, but it helps a lot so I level it up 2nd.
After lv11, you can choose between stats and Greater Bash. Personally I like stats better, higher levels of Greater Bash is useless, but hey no hero's perfect right? Level up your ultimate at lv 16 duh


Item Build

Starters


You need to concentrate on early game farming to jump start ganking Lv7, and QB helps a lot. Barathrum's actual damage is quite high with Empowering haste, QB just makes it more imba for last hitting. 3 Branches are used for a special purpose mentioned below.

Basic Items


Needless to say, boots are your first priority. As you are an early game melee ganker, items that directly increase hp is vital. Urn of Shadows is now among the basic items.

Why Urn of Shadows

--It offers a cheap and effective stats and mana regen package
--The points IMMENSELY increase ganking effectiveness. You can heal effectively(hp+mp) after a successful gank and finish any escaping enemies.
--Can a bracer finish off any escaping enemies? Can it heal you for 400 over 8 sec? NO. Do you have 20 item slots? NO. So get only 1 bracer.

Core items


That's it. All the items you need to own the game. With these items you have ridiculous burst damage during the charge+Netherstrike combo early to mid game, few heroes can stand it, and if you can't win a solo(any solo) it means your ememy is fat with the bounty from your newbie teammates

Situational Items


This is also a VERY suitable early game survival item. because you're ganking all the time in a high-risk-high-pay style. You can squeeze it in after Boots, since urn of shadows requires you to go back to the fountain, while this is totally available on the lane. After the 30th minute mark, you can sell this for better items.


Barathrum can also become a semi-tank. If your side doesn't lack dps but need someone to charge in, break enemy formation and taunt everyone then this is perfect.


A perfect dps booster for Barathrum. Synergizes with his playstyle. All passive bonuses are useful. When skill is activated, adds(totally) 65 damage, 25 attack speed and 475 hp which drains away after 13 sec. Deactivating it when you have less than 475 hp and activating it immediately gives you an instant hp boost. Very useful to escape or land a desperate kill. If you want further dps after MoM, this is perfect. Cheap, burst damage, survivability.


Good survivability booster, increases disabling ability and a minor increase in dps. With this, your ultimate cools down every 20 sec, making it a powerful disabling blink that deals damage. Get this if your side's dps is enough and survivability tops dps for you.


Good item if you get nuked and disabled a lot. Since this build centers around MoM which makes you receive more damage, BKB is a nice choice when you can't live long enough to deal damage.


What's better than a walking bomb? Get this to further increase your team fight importance. Charge an enemy core disabler/dps, turn this on after a successful stun and do your routine. They wll be forced to focus fire you which hurt themselves or fall back which leaves your target behind. Proper team fight sense is needed here. Blademail is not newbie-friendly! Get this if you are the tank or getting focus fired a lot. However, this does not increase survivability, so make sure you can stand a lot of damage in the first place.

Luxury Items

I play Barathrum as an early-mid game ganker with little need for items. That's why my core item build for him is cheap and few to (1) start ganking asap and (2) maxed item effect/gold returns. Of course there are other better items but they don't fit his pace.

For example, getting BoT instead of Treads+2 Bracers+Magic Wand greatly increases your farming time and lowers the success of ganks.

To me, Treads+2 Bracers+MoM+Armlet/Scepter/another item is A LOT of money for a ganker. So I choose to leave this area blank of items because HE SHOULD HAVE NONE. After the item build mentioned above, it's as if discussing what luxury items CM or VS should have. The situational items are already expensive enough.

Rejected items
I've added this section recently due to requests.


Walkthrough

Early game
you should focus on last hitting&denying. Before you have Charge of Darkness killing is kinduva small probability event due to your side's lack of disable. If you have super strong lanemates, consider leveling up Charge at lv2 and Bash at lv4.
From lv4 and more possibly lv5, you can land a kill on careless lane enemies. Barathrum is generally an underestimated hero, you can make folks pay heavily for their ignorance. Just don't push anything, wait for an opportunity. Remember you have only a charge that stuns for 1.5 sec and cools down after 40 sec.

Lv 6-11
Ganking time, farm only when your skills are in cooldown, global awareness is vital for you to net kills, save your teammates' asses and have Dota cry your name. Gank till you have a Mask of Death and some 500, then farm for your MoM and start a new round of ganking.

Lv 11+
If your side hasn't gotten the upper hand already, you need to play carefully since you're the 2nd dpser and an important force to guide game pace. Get Armlet or Aghanim's Scepter or BKB, support, support, support.


Gameplay

In this part, I will be discussing Barathrum's potential and weaknesses as ganker, assassin and burst dpser. It includes suggestions on playstyle and gives further justification to item builds.

How to kill with Barathrum:
At lv7, pick a target and charge. Upon hit, you will stun. When it's over, he will normally have less than 50% hp and start to run. Since you will have higher movespeed(in most cases), you can:

• chase&attack before finishing with a Netherstrike
• Netherstrike right after the stun and combo kill

Most players won't just stand there, they have skills and as a melee hero you will get nuked. So either target a fragile hero with less than 75%hp and combo him to death(yeah, it's entirely possible), or call for help!
Keep Dust of Appearance with you against invisibility heroes. Since you always stun an invisibility hero and you have his sight, you'll know when to activate it.

BOOST YOUR SURVIVABILITY EARLY ON
Exchanging lives is generally a bad idea

Not only do you have to initiate a gank, you need to make it long enough to deal damage and hopefully leave in 1 piece. Furthermore, you’re a secondary dpser, unlike VS, your life matters a lot
That's why you should consider cheap effective items like bracers, Urn of Shadows, Poor Man's Shield/Vanguard.

GANK EARLY AND OFTEN
There’s enough time to farm later

At lv7 you are in your peak condition which lasts all through lv 11. As enemies level up, pack up on hp/armor/items, you start to lose edge. Here's when proper items kick in and help you teach them who runs the field. And what better way to earn the gold than off your enemies' bounty while you can?

Use Charge of Darkness wisely

• Experienced enemies always notice you’re charging them except in confusion(team fights, chasing etc) so charge when near if possible
• Charge newbies from afar when your target’s lane is on your side(closer to your tower, your creeps are more etc) and there are teammates
• Charge a fleeing enemy(even if he's all the way on the other side of the map) ducking through shadows and your teammates need help with vision, you don’t actually run there, you're just the spy cam
• It’s generally a bad idea to charge Puck, but most Pucks are newbies anyway so whatever

Mana&Cooldown 101

• At lv7 a naked Barathrum has 312 mana, a full combo requires 320 mana which is why you need 3 branches or a circlet, A magic wand or a bracer will solve the problem, though I get both
• Your active skills cools down in 40/70 sec, you have no use for mana in between and yet you won’t regenerate enough early game. So a good way is to gank, farm a bit, go home and buy your bracers, magic wand and charge from there
• Always calculate your mana, especially after your MoM

On soloing and teamplay
Experienced gankers&team players can ignore this part completely

• Barathrum is essentially an assassin, his team role is weaker than TH or Visage. However dota is truly a teamplay game, even assassins need enough support so don’t single out yourself and the other 4 dudes, you’re a team, act like one!
• Initiate a gank with the help of others, set the pace and get your side moving
• As the game moves on, killing depends more and more on team support and cooperation
• You are an awesome dpser early game even without your skills, so if your side has ganking heroes with ample disable(Lion, Viper, VS, ES, TH), following them to a gank gives you great edge
• Barathrum should start ganking lv6+ and if he has any gold at all, it should mostly come from netting kills. Once everyone's over lv11, he starts to lose edge. Time to farm a bit and get some items, then it's teamplay time again.

How to pick your targets

• Early game it's essential to kill and get gold, so pick on easy targets, the easier the better
• Mid game, a properly equipped Barathrum is great against farming heroes without disables or escape mechanisms like:
  
• Once you have some items, start having ideas on enemy carries, call your teammates and pay them occasional visits
• There are always heroes hanging around with 50% alone or with a teammate, easy prey

Correct Item Usage
When you are Charging an enemy, using Mask of Madness and Armlet will cancel the stun. So you either activate them right after the first stun or, if you're close enough, activate them first before charging.
After lv 10 enemies begin to pack on hp/armor/healing items, making it harder for you to kill in a combo. Correct and timely usage of MoM and Armlet is essential to maintain mid game ownage.

Late Game Performance
Ok I'm saying this from pub game experience, correct me if I'm wrong.
His dps comes second, since his skills only amplify movespeed and the highest you can get is 522(by the way getting BoT and Yasha is highly impractical), which defines him as an early-mid game dps.
Barathrum's greatest late game skill, imo, is Greater Bash. Coupled with enough attack speed, he's an awesome single-hero disabler. "Did I just Bash him all the way from 75% hp to 30%?" It took me a couple of matches to believe myself. During team fights if you manage to bash enemy dpsers half the time, you lower their dps greatly. However you cannot deal as great damage anymore, coupling him with a ranged dps solves the problem.