Son Cosas que Pasan

Magmus is a powerful and often misused hero. He's part of a select group of heroes with powerful AoE ultimates with long cooldowns, most of whom have Portal Key in their core. He also has a slightly above average str gain and two skills to use as an escape mechanism, making him harder to kill than most heroes.

He hovers somewhere between supporter and ganker, with a powerful AoE ultimate for team fights. He isn't the traditional hard carry who spends 40 minutes in the woods. But between incredible pushing power combined with good escape mechanisms, and an ult that wins team fights, a good Magmus can decide the game for his team.

He's a direct port of Sand King from DotA. And while his story always made me think he should have been named Lavos, his lava effects do look pretty sweet.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Great team oriented hero.
• Epic power ulti with a versatile skillset.
• Powerful roamer, laner, and ganker.
• Quick farmer and fast pusher.

Cons

• Skillset places him in the middle of fights.
• Choked for mana early.
• Loses power in the late game.
• Ultimate easily countered by stuns.

Lava Surge
Riding on lava, Magmus surges toward a target location, damaging and stunning enemy units in his path.

Target ground
Magic damage
Range: 400/500/600/700
Mana cost: 140
Cooldown: 11 seconds

Transports self to target location, dealing 100/160/220/280 Magic damage to targets who pass within radius of self and stunning them for 2.17 seconds. During the first 0.52 seconds of the stun, affected targets cannot be attacked. Range 400/500/600/700.

A good all around ability, it serves both offensive and defensive purposes. It works as a powerful AoE stun, a tool for getting up or down ledges that enemies may not be able to chase past, and a decent setup for our ult.

Steam Bath
Magmus releases extreme heat, toasting the area around him. The resulting steam damages nearby enemy units over time and cloaks Magmus from enemy eyes.

Self
Magic damage
Range: 300/350/400/450
Mana Cost: 60/50/40/30
Cooldown: 40/30/20/10

Applies stealth to self for 20/40/60/80 seconds or until spell is cancelled and deals 20/40/60/80 Magic damage per second to enemies in radius around self. Upon breaking channel, there is a 0.6/0.9/1.2/1.5 second delay before Magmus is revealed.


Magmus's most underused and underestimated ability, this skill has many uses. Without levels, it leaves you immobile and invis, a sitting duck. However, with levels it becomes an excellent tool both offensively and defensively, as many of your enemies will ignore the damage.

Don't knock it 'till you try it.

Volcanic Touch
Upon attacking enemy units, Magmus' flaming mace instills an intense heat in them. If they die while under the effects of this intense heat, they explode, damaging the nearby enemies of Magmus.

Passive, applied on target
Attack modifier

Applies Volcanic Touch to target for 0.25 seconds. When the unit inflicted by Volcanic Touch is killed, enemies of the inflictor within a 400 radius are damaged for 90/130/170/220 Magic damage.

A passive ability that makes enemies we last hit explode, dealing damage in an aoe. It's uses include easy destruction of a creep wave and a good follow-up to our stun.

Eruption
Magmus channels the power of the lava, releasing it after a short delay. The resulting lava grows over time, damaging nearby enemies over several seconds.

Mana cost: 175/250/325
Cooldown: 140/120/100 (130/100/80) seconds

At the end of 2 seconds channel time, deals 110 Magic damage to targets in radius every 0.35 seconds for 1.8/2.5/3.2 (2.1/2.8/3.5) seconds. Radius grows from 300 to 550/675/750 (600/700/800), Slows movement speed of enemies within radius by 30%. Stats upgraded with Staff of the Master in blue.

An epically powerful ultimate, able to destroy entire teams. This is generally the reason your four teammates begged you to pick Magmus before the enemy does, if you've ever played RD. The difference between a good magmus and a poor one is generally how effective their use of Eruption is. It will be explained in length in the strategy section below.











Initial Items

x6 x2

2x Minor Totem - 106
6x Runes of the Blight - 180
2x Mana Potion - 100
Total -386.

This leaves you with just over 200 gold left, assuming you didn't random. You can use this on either:

Mana Battery - 210
Which you will want, but can purchase at the outpost next to your lane.

Courier - 200
You'll want an animal courier to bring your bottle to you. You should grab one if no one else did.


Pretender's Crown - 185
Starting stats, and part of our Fortified Bracelet.


Wards of Sight - 200
Once you get bottle you'll be ganking and rune whoring, grab some wards to make this an easier task, or to spot ganks.


You should first pick up Mana Battery at the outpost if you haven't already. Then, you should purchase a bottle, followed by Marchers. Upgrade to a Power Supply and Fortified Bracelet next. Your items should look something like this.




You then farm a Portal key to complete your:

Core




Mana Battery - 544
Bottle - 600
Fortified Bracelet - 510
Marchers - 500
Various consumables - wards (200) Courier (200) Runes (180) mana pots (100) between 0 and 680.
Portal Key - 2150
Total - 4304 to 4984


Explanation

Magmus needs +stats and a bottle for ganking. Marchers is obvious. Portal key maximizes Eruption's potential. Magmus needs no more items to do his job, so feel free to buy tp stones and wards.

However, if you do your job right you'll still be making money. Eruption gets hat tricks and Magmus farms very quickly. So here are some of Magmus's luxuries.

Luxuries

At this point, Magmus has enough hp, regen, mana, and mobility to do his job. But there several areas he is still weak in. He has not upgraded his boots, and both his health and mana pool is still pretty low.

In order of how much I'd recommend it....


Post Haste - 2700 - The best choice of boots for Magmus. Use Volcanic Touch to push a lane, and join your teammates in another. Best movespeed boost as well, and making money shouldn't be much of a problem.

Staff of the Master - 4400 - It gives a nice bonus to multiple aspects of Magmus's ultimate, while giving decent bonuses to our health and mana pools. Also, pretty soon it might give a cool-looking visual effect.

Behemoth's Heart - 5500 - A good item on any hero, especially a squishy str like Magmus.

Barrier Idol - 3653 - A powerful defensive item for you and your teammates. Due to Magmus's ease of farm it's quite easy for him to get the cash for this item, and his relative squishyness+needing to be in the middle of fights makes him a good candidate for holding this item, as he could make use of the magic defense.

Frostfield Plate - 4700 - More AoE and slow, synergizes nicely with Eruption. If you've already purchased hp, such as with Behemoth's Heart, you will be quite hard to kill with the armor. Also gives a hefty boost to your mana pool, a prerequisite for the next item.

Restoration Stone - 5300 - I'll list a couple significant problems with this item, first. It gives no bonuses to our health/mana pools, only to damage and regen. Our ulti cooldown is 100 seconds without SotM, and 80 with it. That's pretty short. With Magmus's innate int gain, we won't have the mana to ult+restoration stone+ult without going to fountain. It's very expensive. However, if you can get over these problems, such as by already having fixed the mana issues, having 2 eruption's available is very, very, powerful.

Shrunken Head - 3900 - Gives a short duration of Magic Immunity, good alternative to Portal Key for channeling Eruption. It's +str and damage are useful as well.

Helm of the Black Legion- 2225 - A nifty defensive item. In most cases, however, you will not want to buy this. It's most useful ability on Magmus is the +300 hp, so you can normally just buy the Glowstone or Beastheart for SotM or Behemoth's Heart. Regen is covered in the build already, so unless the enemy team has 3-4 heroes with a reliance on auto attack, you're better off passing up on this recipe.

Magmus does quite well in a lane, for a melee hero. It is preferable that he be laned with a ranged, preferably with a stun. Pyromancer is the perfect candidate to lane with Magmus.

Lava Surge is your nuke, your disable, and your blink. Never underestimate it's power or it's utility. It allows for two auto attacks after the nuke from the stun, since it places you right next to the enemy.

If you picked up Volcanic Touch, you can last hit enemies and any enemy heroes nearby will take the damage. This works best against melee heroes trying to last hit as well.

Your abilities will push a lane whether you try to or not. Take advantage of this by using the extra fog in your lane to gank a different lane. Enemies will be worried about out last-hitting the tower, and might just think you're staying back and waiting for the next creep wave in the fog, when really you just bottled a haste rune and are about to gank mid.


Notes:

• Don't babysit a weak hero if you can help it. You need to get Portal Key in a hurry, so you'll be competing with a carry for last hits.
• You need a strong lane to gank effectively. Magmus does best with a fellow stunner/disabler, preferably AoE.
• Steam Bath can be used to farm a lane. However, it will push your lane, enemies can deny creeps with ease, and AoE abilities will counter this strategy. It is suggested you not do this.
• With Volcanic Touch and Lava Surge, you will push the lane eventually. This gives you a great opportunity to grab runes and gank other lanes. The constant supply of health and mana you get from bottle this way is essential for your lane domination.
• Volcanic Touch is a tradeoff of pushing your lane versus exploding creep damage on heroes. It is usually more effective to take against melee heroes.

Lava Surge

Lava Surge hits an AoE in a line, from wherever you are to the ground you clicked on. It's range and damage goes up as you level it. This ability works as a nuke, a stun, and a blink. The fact that it can place you within melee range of a stunned and nuked enemy makes this an especially powerful skill, especially early game.

This ability can hit as many enemies as are between you and the ground you targeted. If two heroes are within range of each other so that you can stun them both, then do so.

Lava Surge synergizes well with all three of Magmus's other abilities. He can use surge to bring a ranged creep within one hit from death, whereupon Volcanic Touch will effect any enemies within range if you hit that creep. You can use Steam Bath for bonus damage (80/sec at level 4) while the enemy is stunned. If the enemy doesn't have any form of disable, you can use the stun to channel most of your ultimate. They won't be able to run out of range with the extra .3 seconds they have.

Notes:

• The width of the line effected is about 200, so you have a small window of error upon moving targets.
• Can be used to traverse impassable terrain, such as hills or trees.
• While enemies can't be attacked for the first .5 seconds after being hit, you can still act and they can still be hit by spells.
• The stun does not give you enough time to channel your ult, so if your enemy has a stun of some sort you will not be able to Lava Surge+Eruption.

This picture shows an Arachna farming bot lane. She is at about 60% life and right next to a creep.


See what happens below, after I Lava Surge. Arachna has lost a good chunk of her health, and the ranged creep is now within one hit from death. The reason I surged so far was so that I could hit the ranged creep as well, since I put two levels into Volcanic Touch. I can now hit the ranged creep, and deal 130 magic damage to arachna. And if that doesn't kill her, she has to run past me to get to her tower.



In this shot, a low hp Arachna can be seen running to the right to get down the ramp. Since Lava Surge is not a target able ability, you need to stun where your enemies will be, not where they are. You should Lava Surge along the blue arrow rather than the green one if you want to hit Arachna.



Steam Bath

Steam Bath has several uses, both defensive and offensive. Once cast, Magmus is invisible so long as he doesn't move or act. Assuming you put 4 levels in it, he also deals 80/sec in an aoe of 450. For some reference, that's more than the range of Succubus's auto attack.

Swiftblade's spin does 140 magic damage a second. Steam Bath does 80 magic damage a second in a much larger radius. Lava Surge stuns for just over 2 seconds, so if you combo this right after using Lava Surge you can deal an extra 160 magic damage before they even get to move. If they don't have a way to attack or stun you while you're invisible, you can deal another 160 while they run out of range.

The easiest way (apart from True Sight) to counter Steam Bath is with an AoE attack, such as Pebble's stalagmites. If you see an enemy with an aoe attack you should not rely on Steam Bath to keep you alive. Instead, there are some other tricks you can do with Steam Bath.

For example, with four levels in Steam Bath it keeps you invis for 1.5 seconds after you start moving again. Most people's first instinct on seeing the steam from the ability is to drop AoE's on the spot, thinking you won't move. If you've used that time to run towards or away from them, you've made them waste time and mana.

You can use Steam Bath for evading a projectile, as well. Hit it while Hammerstorm's stun projectile is in the air and it will miss if you move again. You can also use it to dodge auto attacks, such as that last ranged attack your enemy sent towards you to finish you when you had 10 hp left. Just make sure you cancel Steam Bath and keep running, afterward.

Notes:

• Extremely ineffective without putting additional points into it.
• Deals decent damage in a small AoE, many players unaware of how painful it can be.
• Can be used in various mind games. Excellent escape mechanism, because even if enemies have an AoE stun, or something similar, you can use the 1.5 seconds of invis to juke.
• Gains a low cooldown of 10 seconds once fully leveled.

Volcanic Touch

Volcanic Touch deals magic damage in an AoE if you last hit a target. The two most obvious uses are to last hit a creep, dealing magic damage either to creeps to farm and push, or to heroes for extra damage.

Apart from it's obvious farming uses, Volcanic Touch can be used as a nuke. At level 4 it deals 230, a not insignificant amount. Killing a creep with an 80 damage swing can deal 230 to every creep around it, possibly causing other nearby creeps to fall below 80. Two last hits like this can hit an enemy hero for 460 magic, instead of the 160 physical 2 swings would have hit them for.


Notes:

• Pushes a lane, which is usually a negative early game unless you're going to use the push your lane so you can gank a different lane.
• Excellent farming and pushing tool.
• Never underestimate it's effect on nearby heroes, it hits almost as hard as most nukes.

Eruption

Eruption is one of the most powerful abilities in the game. When used correctly it can bring entire teams from full to dead. Usually, however, it will kill one or two heroes, leaving the rest injured enough for your team to pick off. It requires two seconds of channeling before it activates, during which your hero swing his hammer very noticeably and can be stunned. At which point your ult does not go off and you have to wait on it's fairly long cooldown. After the channeling period ends, several waves dealing 110 damage each spread out from Magmus in a ring around him. Each wave travels further and further away, starting at 300 and ending at 800, when fully upgraded and carrying Staff of the Master. At level 6 it deals 660 magic damage, and fully upgraded it deals 1100 to everyone in it's AoE. It deals this damage over 1.8-3.5 seconds and slows everyone it hits by 30% for 3 seconds. It's a very powerful ultimate.

The problem, then, is getting it channeled while being close enough to enemies for it to deal full damage to them. The rest of this section will be devoted to various ways to do that.

Option 1: Stun+Ult
This is the simplest and most easily counterable version. You simply need to stun an enemy without the ability to inturrupt you, and start channeling your ult.

In this shot you can see Arachna and Armadon near Sentinal's first top tower. I'm about to stun+ult both of them.



As you can see if you look below, I used the line of Lava Surge to hit both heroes, killing Armadon and stunning Arachna. Arachna has no means of cancelling my channeled ultimate, so her two choices are to either run through my ult, or through the legion tower. Since she's a level 1 in practice mode she dies like a punk.



Option 2: Fog of War+Ult

A really nifty trick that will give your allies a chuckle, this involves using trees and hills to hide your hero while you channel your ulti. Probably most commonly used while being chased.

You can see the bright hammer, and I can see the bright hammer. But since Magmus is on a hill, Arachna just sees fog.



Option 3: Fog of War+Ult+Stun

The key in this situation is to find a spot hidden from your enemy within 700 range.

Ignoring the dead arachna in the upper right corner for a moment, you can see that Magmus is within 700 range of Arachna, and fully concealed in the fog of war. For this combo to work perfectly, I need to use the shift key to queue ult+stun. While holding shift down, hit r to begin channeling your ult. You then have two seconds to, while still holding down shift, activate your stun on the ground below the enemy hero. What this does is queue's the stun, making it so the instant he finishes channeling his ult he will immediately Lava Surge towards Arachna.



As you can see, my ult channeled in the fog, where no enemy could have stunned me, and I combo'd it with Lava Surge to hit Arachna with both spells.



Option 4: Fog of War+ult+Portal Key+stun

The most common way Magmus will ult a team, it's also the most effective. Simply channel your ult in the fog of war. Then, while holding shift, blink into the middle of the enemy team. It's easier to do if you've bound one of your item slots, the one holding Portal Key, to a button like 1 or F. After you blink in, Lava Surge in such a way as to stun as many enemies as possible.

The enemy team is pushing mid with three heroes, and I'm sitting on the ledge with my blink dagger.



After channeling my ultimate I blinked in and stunned all three, resulting in a hat trick.



Option 4: Shrunken Head

While Portal Key is superior in giving Magmus's ult maximum effectiveness, you can also use Shrunken head to keep yourself from getting stunned.
In this scenario, either Plague Rider or Nymphora could normally stun me to stop me from channeling my ult. But since I have Shrunken Head activated, they can't. After it finishes channeling, I'll simply Lava Surge into the largest group of enemies.


Synergies

+ A fairly simple combo. Lava Surge is a heavy nuke which also stuns. 280 is enough to bring a ranged creep one hit from death. Volcanic Touch can then explode that unit, dealing extra damage in an aoe already hit by Lava Surge.

+ While you can't hit anyone in the air from Lava Surge, you can start dealing damage to them from Steam Bath right away. And if you leveled it early, you would be dealing 80/second, far more damage than you can do with auto attack.

+ Stunning an enemy will give them very little time to react to your suddenly glowing hammer. Far more useful against foes without an inturrupt/stun.

+ Channeling Eruption while in fog of war, and then blinking in, is the greatest combo Magmus can get.

+ + + + In this hypothetical situation, Magmus channels his ultimate in the fog. He then queue's blink using shift, blinking into the middle of a group of heroes with his ulti on. He Lava Surges into the largest group of enemies. After his ultimate ends, he can Volcanic Touch any low hp creeps for extra AoE damage, or use Steam Bath to hide/run/damage.


Magmus does his best work ganking and counterpushing. Anyone with significant ganking power will be buddies with Magmus from level 9 to endgame.

This one's pretty obvious. If Tempest and Magmus have coordination, these two ulti's can wreck a team. Magmus's skills can clear entire creep waves, giving Moon Queen or Swiftblade an excellent ult opportunity.

Magmus is a relatively squishy hero, he has low str gain and a core without much hp in it. A hero like Accursed or Jereziah can greatly extend his life with their support spells.

These are our least favorite heroes, because unless you take precautions they can stop the channeling of your ult.

Our power ulti can be avoided by blink, if they aren't Lava Surged immediately after your ult goes off.

Our ult does pretty swell damage, but a tank like Legionnaire will simply take it and keep hitting you.

Heroes who generally have a low health pool easily fall to Magmus's ultimate. These squishy-supporter/nuker types are generally the one's Magmus wants to blink on top of and include in his initial Lava Surge.

We like these enemies because they can't do anything against our stun+ulti combo but run away.


Magmus is not a jungle hero. Steam bath doesn't even hit neutrals. However, just as his skills are good for pushing a lane, they can easily destroy creep camps as well for some extra cash. Lava Surge if you need to, and start auto attacking the weakest enemy. Volcanic Touch will explode on the entire creep camp every time a creep dies, making the next Volcanic Touch even easier.


Early game

Grab your starting items and head to your lane. About 75% of the heroes in HoN are a better solo choice than Magmus. So go bot/top with a friend, hopefully a hero like Pyromancer or Pebbles, who can stun an AoE. Last hit creeps to get gold and to hit your enemies with Volcanic Touch and look for opportunities to Lava Surge. Good times to use your stun are:

• Your enemy is fighting or running from creeps without any enemy creeps nearby. The extra 2 seconds of creep auto attack makes a difference early.
• If your teammate also has his nuke/stun/whatever ready. Stun, and auto attack the weaker enemy while your gank partner unloads.
• If the enemies are ganking you or your teammate, Lava Surge can either stun the enemies or use it as a 700 range blink, sometimes over trees and cliffs.
• You have extra mana to spare.

As soon as you have money for bottle, pick it up. This greatly strengthens Magmus's game, since he's a powerful ganker who pushes a lane. Use your skillset to push the creeps to the enemy tower, and while he's busy last hitting and you're in the fog, go gank mid lane. Grab the rune on the way, tell your mid solo you're going to gank, and Lava Surge the hero.

Magmus has a powerful early game skillset and good survivability. By the time you reach level 6 and have your ult, you can easily be 1-0-2. The key is to keep up pressure on multiple lanes with bottle and your skills. Roam between lanes, grab runes every 2 minutes, and keep a teleport consumable handy. If any enemies pushed a lane past river, that's your chance. Call a gank on him to your teammates and head into the woods behind him. If you have a useful rune, such as haste or double damage, take it and fill up your mana reserves. Lava Surge as many heroes as you can find and begin auto-attacking the weakest one.

As far as items go, you should grab Marchers and create a power supply+Fortified Bracelet after you've finished bottle. Your inventory should look like this.


You have been using wards on rune spots, and been carrying a tp stone, right?

Your goal is to farm this item by the 20 minute mark:


If you can get Portal Key by 20 minutes, congratulations. You're all set for the:


First off, if you don't have blink dagger yet you need to go farm it. It's essential to doing well. Don't neglect team fights and ganks that aren't too far out of your way, but focus on farming.

Once you have blink dagger, your farming is done. Gold is a luxury, your focus should be on keeping your enemies weak. You belong in team fights and ganks, and should only be killing creeps to push a lane to maneuver your enemies. In fact, the only item I can recommend you work toward mid game is:


The reason for this purchase is Magmus's stellar pushing ability with Lava Surge and Volcanic Touch. After pushing a lane like bot, you can teleport mid with your teammates. This might turn the fight mid tower to a 4v5 if one of them goes to defend bot tower, or if they all defend mid bot tower may get destroyed regardless of how mid turned out.

Otherwise, your role is still the same mid as it was early, only now you have blink+ulti in your arsenal. Most ganks will still revolve around intelligent use of Lava Surge and Steam Bath, but for fights involving 2 or more enemies, consider using your ultimate if it's off cooldown. It's cooldown is only about two minutes, so be use it often.

Team fights are where Magmus shines, as all four of his skills are AoE. The key will always be proper execution of Eruption, but Lava Surge, Steam Bath, and even Volcanic Touch have their uses in team fights due to high magic damage dealt in an AoE.

Late Game

This is where eruption's power begins to taper off. Enemies will have upwards of 2k hp, making Eruption still powerful, but not enough to destroy an entire team. Push lanes, Eruption enemy teams, etc. By now you should know the drill.

The key at this point in the game is not to let yourself get picked off. If you die, you can't use Eruption on the entire team. You have several survival tools, but even so you should be careful to never die without first having ulted the enemy team.

Advanced Strategies

Magmus has a powerful ultimate that can end a push. This allows your team to do a strategy called turtling. The idea of turtling in general is to keep the game going on for a long time with a solid defense, until you have enough troops/a REALLY farmed Sand Wraith to win for you. Hard carries like Sand Wraith don't do much until approximately 40 minutes in, depending on how well they farmed. If you blink+ult+stun the enemy team every time they try to push as a team, you can make all their pushes fail, allowing your carry hero/heroes the time they need to win the game for you.

Push lanes to maneuver your enemies where you want them. Magmus can clear a creep wave in 3 seconds by level 8, so 15 seconds of push for you can bring the enemy creeps up to an enemy tower, where a hero will have to defend.

A nifty way to get Eruption off is to gank with a fellow stunner. The key is to open with Lava Surge and begin channeling your ultimate. Before your stun wears off, your ally will then stun the enemy hero/heroes, leaving them helpless before Eruption.

Steam Bath is useful for mind games. Never sit in Steam Bath if the enemies can hit you or have true sight, simply hit the ability and start moving. This gives you a short duration of invis, and enemies might waste AoE's on the spot you just Steam Bathed.

Lava Surge+Cliff's.
As you can see here, I am running from an enemy Arachna.




I used Lava Surge to travel over impassable terrain up a cliff. She can't see me, nor chase me unless she has blink. I am then free to teleport home.



That's all I have for Magmus. I'll keep this updated and such