Raijin Thunderkeg, the Storm Spirit Guide 

Static Remnant
Raijin creates a remnant of himself containing his essence. The Static Remnant will release its stored energy whenever an enemy unit comes near it. Lasts up to 12 seconds.

Level 1 – 140 Damage.
Level 2 – 180 Damage.
Level 3 – 220 Damage.
Level 4 – 260 Damage.

(Your Pushing, Anti Pushing, Harassing skill, great against multiple creeps)
(For more info refer to the facts section of the guide)

Cooldown: 4
Manacost: 70/80/90/100
Level 1: 70 mana, 4 sec cooldown.
Level 2: 80 mana, 4 sec cooldown.
Level 3: 90 mana, 4 sec cooldown.
Level 4: 100 mana, 4 sec cooldown.

Electric Vortex
Storm focuses his energy to rip open vortex drawing an enemy to it. This process slows the Storm Spirit down for a brief period.

Level 1 – Pulls 100 units over 1 second.
Level 2 – Pulls 150 units over 1.5 seconds.
Level 3 – Pulls 200 units over 2 seconds.
Level 4 – Pulls 250 units over 2.5 seconds.

Cooldown: 20
Manacost: 100
Level 1: 100 mana, 20 sec cooldown.
Level 2: 100 mana, 20 sec cooldown.
Level 3: 100 mana, 20 sec cooldown.
Level 4: 100 mana, 20 sec cooldown.

Note: Vortex is not a channeling spell.

(Your Disable. For more facts about vortex go to the facts section of the guide.)

Overload
Storm Spirit becomes overloaded with electrical energy whenever he casts a spell. The charge is released on his next attack as an electrical burst, dealing damage and slowing nearby units.

Level 1 – 30 Damage.
Level 2 – 45 Damage.
Level 3 – 60 Damage.
Level 4 – 75 Damage.
Passive

Note: This skill only activates when you use your own skills, item skills don’t activate Overload.

Ball Lightning
(interesting fact: another term for ball lightning is “ROFL” rolling on the floor lightning and this term seems
to be used a lot lately as the term to use when describing storm’s ultimate. Ex. “Ball Lightning yourself outta there!” doesn’t sound as good as “ROFL yourself outta there!”)

Storm Spirit becomes enveloped with energy, losing his physical form, and travels until he depletes his mana or reaches his target. While in this form, he deals damage to nearby units based on how far his electrical form has traversed. Damage, speed and area of effect improves per level.
Passive

(Your escape/ ganking/ aoe nuke skill, for more info refer to the Facts section below)

Justification

Static Remant is maxed early on for pushing/ killing/ defense purposes. Its a no brainer. 1 level of overload is fine early on since maxing it only results in an added 45 aoe damage.
Max Remnant and electric vortex early for the early 2.5 sec disable and add 1 level of Ball lightning at lvl 6 for escaping, ganking, spell evasion purposes.

After Maxing out Remnant and electric vortex, finish leveling remnant in order to effectivly clear creep camps and waves.

1. Even if you leveled ball lightning only once your ability to escape does not diminish. You can keep it the same all the way to lvl 23 if you choose to.
2. The more levels on ball lightning the higher the speed and damage but the mana is burned faster as a consequence.

Decent Hp and mana regen which storm needs and it comes in cheap parts.

I advocate:  or early on.

Why you may ask? Bloodstone has a great hp, mana, mana regen ratio to the gold spent, linkens has a build up which boosts stats, gives mana and hp regen and has spell block.
Both items provide storm with what he needs namely oodles of mana and mana regen while boosting hp yet being relatively inexpensive.

Both items are to be considered part of his core build.

Choosing linkens or bloodstone depends on who you’re up against.

When there are relatively few disablers and gankers go for bloodstone. When there are a large numbers of gankers (mirana, pudge, lion—you know the rest) get linkens. All you need to survive is to avoid the initial disable after that you can ROFL yourself outta there.

 or  (int)
Why phase boots? Sure they’re a novelty however storm is no longer the dps hero he used to be. He doesn’t need the extra attack speed from treads (while the stats may be nice). Boots of Travel provides great ms but with his ultimate he can out chase any hero even with boots of speed alone and with linkens or bloodstone.

Why treads? The added stats + the movement speed is great. While storm is no longer the dps hero he was treads provide stats + movement + extra attack speed for a low price.

I can’t seem to decide myself. Just pick one for personal preference. Don’t get travel though, you don’t need the extra movement speed since your ultimate is more than enough.

Int + armor as well as a great aoe slowing and damaging skill. With his current farming skill you should be able to have this at around the 40 minute mark.

For me thats his core. Relatively inexpensive overall compared to other core builds yet very effective. This core build usually provides enough mana for chasing, disabling + remnant and chasing again. The replay I posted at the bottom shows how with these items alone you can own a full hp nevermore by yourself.

Just Pick One. If you can get more than one even better.

Mana regen, int boost, stat boost and another disable.
Whats not to love! Getting this early on though is a bad idea since its build up is expensive as hell.

Stat boost + nice slow = great on storm. You should be able to get this at the 55 minute mark. (Do I even need to explain why you shouldn’t try to get this early on…)

 Great build up, extra damage and mana regen as well as int. Good later on terrible for early game since storm needs items which boost stats and gives decent health and mana

Fail Items
(They may seem good on Storm but they are just a waste of money)

 
Gives you hp regen and hp = good
Aids your survivability when you’re ganked = good
Delays your mana and mana regen boosting items = bad
Does not help you spam your skills = bad
Storm needs mana to be able to imba farm this does not provide that = badWith enough mana and mana regen items you won’t need to worry about being ganked = vanguard fail
You’re not meant to tank damage = double fail
You do not tower dive early on = triple fail

Your ultimate makes you faster than any hero in the game.
You cannot be outrun, nor can any hero catch up to you with a good ROFL. You literally pay 2700 gold for something you already have in excess.

 etc.
He’s no longer a dps hero, dps items would be a big waste of money and would delay your core items.

 

Don’t be an idiot.

ABILITIES WHICH COUNTER STORMS

ULTIMATE:

Nether Strike – will still hit you even if you ultimate out of there. Invulnerable to damage. Yes. Invulnerable to bash = no.

Counter – when in ball lightning mode you are essentially invulnerable to physical damage. So providing that you have enough health leftover you can just use your ultimate again to escape. Nether Strike is not so much a threat but it can get you out of your ultimate, but escaping is easy as well.

Silence: Countered by linkens. If in a gank in order to get rid of the spell block of linkens silencer might try casting curse of the silent first then global silence. A way around this is of course the fact that the range of curse of the silent isn’t that great. As soon as you see a red dot just ball lightning yourself out of there.

Doom – a good doom bringer will of course cast lvl? death before casting doom to get rid of the spell block of linkens.

Rhasta’s Net: Rhasta’s net is the one disable that you cannot use your ultimate to get out of. The best counter to this is being map aware, avoiding rhasta when possible, use wards or get a bkb.

Vodoo: you won’t be able to cast anything if you’re a critter. A good counter to this is linkens or wards.

Blackhole doesn’t allow you to cast a spell, a counter to this is to use either euls, guinsoo, orchid or bkb. I would suggest euls, guinsoo or orchid since they synergize better with storm.

Mana Leak : While mana leak won’t kill you it will ensure that you won’t be able to escape effectively.
The mana drain from your ultimate combined with mana leak will cripple you before you even get to the half way point of where you want to go.

Chronosphere: Storm cannot use his ultimate within Chronosphere….enough said.

 
The main point is as long as you can see them coming no matter how many stunners or disablers the opposing team has you can still get away. Provided you have good map awareness and people actually say when a hero is missing.

     
ensnare power cog Overgrowth Sprout Upheveal Rupture
    
earthbind Open WOunds Psionic Traps Spirit Lance Viper Strike/ Shadow Strike
     
pit of malice Purge Poison Touch Dream Coil Void Frostbite
    
GraveChill Enchant Stifling Dagger Viscous Nasal Goo Spectral Dagger

As you can see Storm can escape from the vast majority of disables in the game using his ultimate.
It doesn’t matter how much he’s slowed by via a disable, using his ultimate he can escape easily.
Some of the disables listed here can’t even be escaped from using blink yet storm by the virtue of his ultimate can escape them. This makes him able to farm better, push with confidence and be less of a target in the eyes of a lot of heroes since they know it would be hard to disable and gank him.

Alright this part of the guide is for the information addicts out there who want to know more about Storm’s ultimate. This part of the guide is not for those who dislike reading large amounts of data accumulated by players.

Alright I’ll go into detail about how to use this skill properly. Believe or not storm has now become one of the best farmers in the game. With proper use of static remnant you can take out an entire creep wave and storm will get all the gold all the while ensuring that few of your own creeps take damage.
The combo is:  +  +  + 

Here’s how its done. First and foremost you do not place static remnant before the creeps arrive.
That will only result in only 1 creep getting hit.

Laning:
When laning against an opponent you do not surge ahead and place remnant before the creeps arrive, that will only ensure that your opponent will be able get off a few shots at you while you do that.
Do this, wait for the enemy creeps to arrive, wait for them to engage your creeps, stand directly behind your melee creeps (close enough to see the pores at the back of their heads, namely very very close) place static remnant it will go off immediately afterward. Attack with overload, then use static remnant again, then overload. You will be able to get a few creeps and if your up against a melee opponent will ensure that he will be driven back.
(Pics to come…..)

Note* This will not affect the range creep.

Pushing
- Get ahead of your creeps, and I mean ahead. Wait for the enemy creeps to cluster near you then use the remnant + overload combo twice. You will be able to take out the entire creep wave in a few seconds and ensure that none of your creeps take damage while you take all the gold. The key to this is to ensure that the enemy creeps cluster in order for remnant to take its full effect. This technique has helped me farm items faster than most heroes. Be map aware with this method, don’t just surge ahead without looking at your minimap.

Example of creep clustering. This what you should do.

What you should never do. Don’t place static remnant until creeps cluster.
Only one creep will affected and thats just a waste of mana.

Note* This will not affect the range creep most of the time. The range creep by virtue of its range
does not cluster like the others.

Farming Neutrals – same method of remnant + overload combo works great on the groups of Satyrs.

Storm by virtue of static remnant also happens to be one of the best anti pushers in the game.

Skills such as:

Spiderites, Wolves, Revnants and zombies while normally incredibly well at pushing down towers are owned by Static Remnant. Spiderites especially with their low health. Laning against a brood mother who
tries to push a lane with spiderites early on results in storm gaining gold at an exponential rate all the while leaving the tower with a good chunk of health. The zombies of undying fare no better since with their equally low health the more zombies that pop out the more gold storm gets. (Check my replay when I laned against an undying, he tried to push fast early on and used tombstone for pushing and defence. All he did was give me more gold in the process.)

Use on Invisible Heroes

Static Remnant works on invisible units. As soon as an invisible unit gets near the remnant it automatically explodes damaging the invisible hero. This works wonders in a lane vs. Brood, all you have to do is place a remnant on the web and watch it explode as brood gets near. Maxing remnant early on and placing it where you expect brood to be will ensure that brood will stay far away from you or else suffer the damage with her low hp. Its great for countering lanaya without a gem. If she attempts to escape a gank using invisibility all you have to do is continuously place remnant on the spot she turned invisible and wait for her to die. An enemy unit doesn’t have to move in order for remnant to activate all they have to do is be in close proximity.

1. This is a great disabling skill against fleeing heroes. This spell will also affect channeling spells so you can use it to stop the ultimates of: Voljin, Nevermore, SandKing, Pugna, Enigma etc. This spell also affects normal channeling spells such as rhasta’s net.

2. This spell will also interrupt TP.

3. Vortex also acts as a silencing spell. Which is invaluable, a 2.5 second silence and disable is nothing to ignore. Thus you don’t have to worry about a hero stunning while using vortex.

4. A quirk of vortex is that you can vortex a hero and tp at the same time, provided that you vortex them and immediately use tp you can get away however there is a 1 second period wherein you’re still there and vortex has ended, provided that the person controlling the opposing hero doesn’t have incredible reflexes you can get away safely even with the 1 sec difference.
(Don’t forget that the enemy still has to select the spell and aim it, usually this takes more than 1 sec)

5. Finally the best quirk of vortex is that you can vortex a hero without actually being there! You can use it to save an ally that is trapped by a channeling spell without endangering yourself.

Here’s how to do it, use your ultimate to get near the enemy hero use vortex on him then immdiately use your ultimate to get out of there. The enemy hero will still be drawn to the spot where you were before without you even being there!

I have to test whether or not vortex can draw enemy heroes out of chrono sphere, if it did that would be hilarious.

Interesting Facts for Discussion Regarding Storms Ultimate

“the ulti can definitely do significant damage. When this skill gets REALLY good is if you’re going to hit multiple members of the opposite team. It’s a good initiating move, combined with his other skills that can take the opposing team to 1/2 health in just a little more time than it takes to blink.”
(quote courtesy of Deanis, dota-allstars)

“Leveling this skill does NOT increase/decrease the manacost in any way. It increases the damage, speed, and AoE of the damage. However, by increasing the speed, it increases the mana used per second, but not the total mana you’d use in a ball lightning over a constant distance.”
(quote courtesy of “Thermald, dota-allstars”)

In ball lightning you can in very short bursts negate any spell coming your way(timing is everything). When I say short bursts I mean in bursts of around 600 aoe around storm( to avoid spells such as storm bolt, magic missile etc(think of how magina does it) , take into account the cast delay in a spell , it will of course take timing. Away around the mana cost is to do it in short bursts, think of it as a hyper version of blink with no cooldown.

Do not, I repeat do not use it for jumps which are too long. If you can escape an enemy merely by ball lightning from the cliff to the river then do so, not all the way back to your base. For all its possible uses the mana cost is justified on storm spirits ultimate.

“Slower speed means you get longer invulnerable, it saved me several times from WD’s curse + dagon combo (just count the seconds and ROFL when the damage calculation is poping out, and you wont receive damage).”
(quote from Just@noob, dota-allstars)

So as it turns out Storm while in his ultimate is invulnerable to the effects of maledict. The longer you travel the less likely you’ll receive the full brunt of maledicts effects. Since the speed increases per level theoretically the lower the level the slower the speed but the longer you stay invulnerable. So a strategy to counter maledict is to keep his ultimate at level 1 till later levels and just pick farther points in the map. You’ll travel slower but as you retain invulnerability for longer periods of time you could avoid some of the damage from maledict.

I have yet to test out if this is applicable to the damage from Viper Strike and other damage over time spells like venomancers ultimate and warlocks heal/ damage spell however if it is keeping his ultimate at lower levels and picking farther distances would enable you to negate a lot of the damage from the spell.

Finally his ultimate can reach inaccessible places in the map, with luck you can reach them and tp to safety when you’re ruptured. – Further justifies the mana cost

Calculating the Mana Cost:

“(15 + 7% max mana) + (10 + 1% max mana) * (units traveled / 100)

In other words, to go 1200 units (Blink Dagger’s max range) if you have 1000 mana pool max it would cost:

(15 + .07 * 1000) + (10 + .01 * 1000) * (1200 / 100) = 85 + 20 * 12 = 325 mana (or 33% of your manapool).

If you only have 500 mana it would only cost you 230 mana (or 46% of your manapool).

If you have 2500 mana it would cost you 610 mana (or 24% of your manapool).

In other words, having a larger mana pool is still better. Large pool and large regeneration is probably best, however. That implies you want your mana to come from +int items, which give both +manapool and +manaregeneration.

Of course, a smaller pool is easier to fill… but regeneration (except in the form of Bloodstone) is based on your int score, so improving your regeneration pretty much also means enlarging your manapool (and thus increasing the cost on your ROFL).”

“Note that one consequence of the 15 + 7% up-front cost is that it’s going to be substantially cheaper (about 500-600 “units” cheaper depending on your max mana) to do one long ROFL (Rolling on the floor lightning, another name for Ball Lightning) than it is to do two ROFLs of the same (total) length. In other words, don’t hedge your bets and end up being forced to make a second attempt! Go all the way the first time.”

(Quotes courtesy of, WinterAyars, dota-allstars)