Thursday, April 12, 2012

Unlocking the Potential in Ring of Basilius

Ring of Basilius is a great item to have in the laning stages and its benefits extend into the midgame as well. It has a great buildup since you can start with a Ring of Protection and purchase the Sobi from the side shop. You get an aura that gives nice mana regen to you and nearby teammates as well as an armor aura too. The item is very cheap and helps tremendously in pushing.
I specifically want to discuss the ability to toggle the aura on and off and how to properly abuse this. A lot of times I see players make this item early in the game and turn off the aura only to completely forget that they have it and leave it off the whole game.

Holding this item gives your hero huge influence and should never be neglected. The ability to control creep equilibrium is extremely strong. A lot of the following ideas seem like common sense but many players aren’t conscious about these intricacies.

Soloing against 2-3 opponents:
You generally want to turn the aura off so the creepwave will reach your tower and you can cs more safely.

If they decide to deny creeps really hard so the lane doesn’t move, you can turn the aura on and stay in a safe position near your creeps. This causes the wave to push into their tower which kills your creeps quickly. This brings back the equilibrium closer to your side.

If their heroes are more pushing oriented, you have to gauge their pushing abilities. Sometimes you can get away with leaving aura off until they reach the tower and then turn it on and use your aoe spells to help clear the creeps. If it’s some early aggressive mass summon push you probably want to leave your aura on at all times.

Often, you will encounter the enemy pulling creeps. I usually turn on the aura at this point and try to chip away at the tower as much as I can. If you want to put in the effort, you can toggle Bas on and off randomly. This makes it extremely difficult for the enemy hero to last hit under the tower.
NOTE: These things may not be possible if you’re up against a trilane.

Assuming the pull camp wasn’t stacked, the creeps will likely double up and start heading to your tower. I typically have my aura on to try and make the wave smaller before it arrives. This gives the enemy less creeps to tank the tower which means two good things: They have less time to attack the tower, and if they decide to dive you, they might not have enough creep support to take the tower hits.

Solo vs Solo:
You generally want to turn the aura off so the creepwave will reach your tower and you can cs more safely.

Again, if they are outlaning you and controlling the creeps with mass denies, you can turn on aura so the wave runs into their tower and bounces back.
If you think you can get a kill by diving their tower, be sure to turn your armor aura on so creeps can tank tower.

Although Bas isn’t too common for solo mids, you can turn it on a bit before rune spawns so the wave pushes and you can go grab it.

Dual or Trilaning vs Solo:
Pretty simple guidelines. If you aren’t planning on a fast push, keep aura off so you can cs and threaten kills. Aura on if you are pushing or decide to dive them at their tower.

Dual/Trilane vs Dual/Trilane:
See: “Soloing against 2-3 opponents” and “Dual or Trilaning vs Solo”.
The same rules will apply.

This pretty much covers all laning scenarios. Bas use in the mid and lategame stages is fairly straightforward.

-Turn it on if your team is pushing.

-If there’s not much going on, keep the aura off so creeps stay near you.

-If you’re farming and the enemy team gathers for a push, assess whether you need to tp immediately to defend or not. If your team can handle it without you, turn on the aura and push hard. It puts pressure on the opposing team and forces them to make a decision. They can either continue their push, in which case you can take their tower. Or they can defend and you can run away when 5 heroes suddenly go missing from lane.
If they send one hero to deal with you, that’s okay too since your team can probably fight 4v4 and you can tp in to help also.

Proper Basilius usage can grant you a huge advantage and a lot of players have it idly sitting in their inventory. Of course, these things apply to Ring of Aquila as well. It may take a bit of effort and thinking at first to abuse the aura but after a while it becomes automatic and is a great asset to your gameplay.

2 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for this! I've been very confused about how to use the active effects but now it seems quite clear. Will definitely try this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well i simply do this when i want to gank an opponent. Because if i turn it off, my opponent couldn't see the aura effect on my creeps (especally when he/she is lane-farming) and he/she will have no idea that death is coming. I also do the same with radiance

    ReplyDelete