Troll Cannibal

[Mort]

dmortb.net/MTG/Troll Cannibal/1.jpg

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Khel-zak the Troll Cannibal
Troll Cannibal is one of the hardest combat heroes to play early game, but he is extremely good at late game.
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Armor Type:

Medium

Damage Reduction:
Chaos 100%
Hero 100%
Magic 75%
Normal 125%
Pierce 75%
Siege 50%
Spells 100%

Skills:

Innate: Soul Drain
Allows the Troll Cannibal to regenerate 8% of his hitpoints every second by consuming the corpse of an fallen enemy.
A great way to recover your health if there isn't many enemies around.


Level 1: Behead (Passive)
A passive ability that adds a chance to perform a critical strike that deals 5x normal damage, which is always useful.
Allows the Troll to do much more damage, however for this ability to be useful he needs a good attack speed and damage.


Level 1: Scalping Cry
A useful ability that lowers the damage inflicted by enemy creeps for 15s when activated.
This skill is perfect to use when there are a lot of creeps hitting you, or any of your teammates, especially useful when the heroes are having problems handling the current wave.


Level 6: Bloodboil
Anti-magic potion and purification can remove the effect of this skill
This skill increases the Trolls damage but drains his life at the same time.
Be careful when using this skill as it can kill your hero if you don't have a way to regain health (Your Innate, Empath or just ordinary potions)



Level 10: Soul Steal
This ability is quite unique, when a hero dies, the troll gets their strongest skill, which he can use once. The skill gained is at the same level as Soul steal; eg. if an Evoker dies with level 2 ball lightning dies, and the troll has level 3 soul steal, then he will get ball lightning level 3.

Status Gain per Level
Str+1.7
Agi+2.5
Int+1

Suggested Playstyle:
Troll is the hardest Tank to play early on, but his skills will only get better the more levels he gets in them, and the more damage the creeps inflicts.
There is probably several way to play him, but I'm going to give 2 examples:

Defensive:
At start only pick stats and Scalping Cry as much as you can, as stats will increase your damage/hp/mana and scalping cry will help you survive the creeps longer. Once you've maxed Scalping Cry, start going for Behead and once you've maxed Behead you should start picking as much of Bloodboil as you feel he can manage, just remember that a Vampiric potion is the best way to recover hp quickly while using Bloodboil, as you might need to save Health potions for when you lose the effects of Bloodboil.
Pick his ultimate when you can, as it more or less gives you the next dead heroes best skill, and that can prove quite useful.

Suggested Items:

• Winged Leather Boots
  
• Elven Plate Mai
  
• Ruby-insect Ring
  
• Arbelog Paw Boots
  
• Elven Stalking Boots
  
• Combo Boots to Elite Elven Boots
  
• BloodStone-insect Ring
  
• Nimsha
  
• Ring of Vicotory
  
• Ironbarks
  

Offensive:
At start only pick stats and Behead up to level 5, level Bloodboil up as much as you feel the Troll can manage, keep levelling up the Behead until it's maxed, and pick your ultimate as much as you can.
Once behead is maxed get some point in to Scalping Cry, as it will help your teams heroes survive.

Suggested Items:

• Gleaming Longsword
  
• Winged Leather Boots
  
• Elven Plate Mail
  
• Telo
  
• Arbelog Paw Boots
  
• Elven Stalking Boots
  
• Combo Boots to Elite Elven Boots
  
• Nimsha
  
• T'kashi Mirror Blade
  
• IronBark armor
  

I have to inform you that I have not yet reached late game with a Troll Cannibal, so I can't get you any better item builds at the moment.

Tips:

• Use Scalping Cry on all levels that are especially hard like ranged and other waves that deals lot's of damage.
  
  
• Troll Cannibal can kill faster if the creeps armour is lowered, so if someone in your team has an ability to lower armour (eg Battle Chanter's Failure of the Forge and others), stay close to them.
  
  
• Get Nimsha as soon as possible! He will be an insane killer once he gets his hands on a Nimsha.
  
  
• Use Anti-Magic Potion or Purification to remove Bloodboil if your health is dropping too rapidly.
  
  
• Troll's range was increased from 400 to 650. Stay a little bit further away from the front lines. Attacking from the cliffs is a safe strategy and allows you constantly use Bloodboil relatively safely.
  
  
• Besides his physical killing power, you should also consider what order to kill the enemies team in. Stealing another hero's level 10 is an insane skill. Once you receive another hero's skill, use it wisely.
  

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Advanced Ability Info:


Innate: Soul Drain
Hotkey: D
40mp.
Consumes nearby corpse to heal 8%hp/s, lasts 7 seconds.


Level 1: Behead (Passive)
Level 1: 4% chance of 5x critical hit
Level 2: 8% chance of 5x critical hit
Level 3: 12% chance of 5x critical hit
Level 4: 16% chance of 5x critical hit
Level 5: 20% chance of 5x critical hit
Level 6: 24% chance of 5x critical hit
Level 7: 28% chance of 5x critical hit
Level 8: 32% chance of 5x critical hit
Level 9: 36% chance of 5x critical hit
Level 10: 40% chance of 5x critical hit
% Chance has been increased in 1.87


Level 1: Scalping Cry
Hotkey: S
Level 1: Reduces nearby enemy creep damage by 7%, costs 20mp.
Level 2: Reduces nearby enemy creep damage by 14%, costs 30mp.
Level 3: Reduces nearby enemy creep damage by 21%, costs 40mp.
Level 4: Reduces nearby enemy creep damage by 28%, costs 50mp.
Level 5: Reduces nearby enemy creep damage by 35%, costs 60mp.
Level 6: Reduces nearby enemy creep damage by 42%, costs 70mp.
Level 7: Reduces nearby enemy creep damage by 48%, costs 80mp.
Level 8: Reduces nearby enemy creep damage by 56%, costs 90mp.
Level 9: Reduces nearby enemy creep damage by 63%, costs 100mp.
Level 10: Reduces nearby enemy creep damage by 70%, costs 110mp.
Notes: Lasts 15 seconds.


Level 6: Blood Boil
Hotkey: B
Level 1: +40dmg, -10hp/s, 40mp
Level 2: +60dmg, -20hp/s, 50mp
Level 3: +90dmg, -30hp/s, 60mp
Level 4: +135dmg, -40hp/s, 70mp
Level 5: +205dmg, -50hp/s, 80mp
Level 6: +305dmg, -60hp/s, 90mp
Level 7: +455dmg, -70hp/s, 100mp
Level 8: +680dmg, -80hp/s, 110mp
Level 9: +1025dmg, -90hp/s, 120mp
Level 10: +1535dmg, -100hp/s, 130mp


Level 10: Soul Feast (Passive -> Active)
Level 1: Stolen skill is level 1.
Level 2: Stolen skill is level 2.
Level 3: Stolen skill is level 3.
Level 4: Stolen skill is level 4.
Level 5: Stolen skill is level 5.
Level 6: Stolen skill is level 6.
Level 7: Stolen skill is level 7.
Level 8: Stolen skill is level 8.
Level 9: Stolen skill is level 9.
Level 10: Stolen skill is level 10.
Notes: Is replaced by a skill of any hero that dies, stolen skill can be used once, then the skill reverts to Soul Feast.

[zigzag]

Troll is a great killer, and with the right build, a great team killer.

Avoid getting swords on him, because good offense could manage to kill your entire team with an effigy of a troll with swords. Instead, buy a bloodstone ring, and level up your lv6. This way, bloodboil can be maxed with less danger then before. It allows for plenty of killing before the nishma. Always keep vamp pots, healing pots, and anti-magic pots on your hero though, for emergencies.

[ingenting]

Jan 14, 2009 23:10:10 GMT -5 zigzag said:

Troll is a great killer, and with the right build, a great team killer.

Avoid getting swords on him, because good offense could manage to kill your entire team with an effigy of a troll with swords. Instead, buy a bloodstone ring, and level up your lv6. This way, bloodboil can be maxed with less danger then before. It allows for plenty of killing before the nishma. Always keep vamp pots, healing pots, and anti-magic pots on your hero though, for emergencies.

his high critical makes him a good successor of ranger for image with/out swords anyway
if image kills troll, its ok
but kill the entire them is kind of ........... u need to purify it faster or just run

[sivly]

Can a defensive Troll be an effective tank ? With his low HP, he seems quite vulnerable to offensives, imo . Can any correct me, if I'm wrong ?

[ingenting]

Apr 12, 2009 14:09:09 GMT -5 sivly said:

Can a defensive Troll be an effective tank ? With his low HP, he seems quite vulnerable to offensives, imo . Can any correct me, if I'm wrong ?

I wouldnt recommend to make a troll as your main tank, but the defensive build is an idea for people who like to play it differently.

In public games, there are some situations that your troll is the only tank in your team. That is why we put defensive build and hope it's useful to players.

Maybe you can try it out and share your custom troll build /acquaintance with us.

[worldtop]

besides his physical killing power, you should also think which enemy hero to kill in order to snatch his skills to aid your team.
especially when your team lacks AOE. Once you grant the skill from dead hero, use it wisely.

[zigzag]

Hybrid Build for the troll cannibal -
Focus on Behead, Bloodboil and Soul Steal. Level Scalping whenever you can throw extra points into it. The idea behind this build is to use on Bloodboil and late-game items for damage. The troll needs a little more gold than in the other builds. Requires a decent tank that doesnt' require much money and an AoE hero.

Speed Boots
Cheap Armor
Ruby-Inset Ring
Work on gathering Combo Boots
Elven Platemail
Bloodstone Ring
Nishma
Ironbarks
Skullcleaver
Tkashi

What do you think?

Edit: Does that look better Sack?

[sackpuncher]

Sounds like an EB build unless you have a tank who can hold his lane and his aggro with minimal cash (which shouldn't be that hard to get). If the level priority is Behead and Scalping then I'd probably pick up the ruby ring before combo boots since you won't be putting anything into stats. Other than that I like it.

SIDENOTE: You and your damned speed boots, can't say they're not fun though.

[Fadel]

Well I love playing troll, but I do things a little differently and they seem to work out for me, just wanna know what your oppinions on it are. Yet I don't mind a bit of constructive criticism.

I usually alternate between behead and stats for the first 10 levels, as Scalping cry ineffective due to the fact that troll just kills too fast! Most creeps don't even make it to, and that's taking a side alone. And I don't really like bloodboil, but I take a few levels in it for those hard situations. The ulti is just pure awesome, I don't get why ppl skip it, it's pretty useful if you can get a few kills on the other side, or if a teammate dies, you get to hold your own till he revives.

As for the item build, I get him telo boots, armor, str ring, nimsha. Pots ofcourse and vampiric potions as needed.

[BlackMagister]

Wow someone wants advice. I read what's going on the MT forum but really nobody actually asks for advice because everyone thinks they already know everything or at least don't ask on forum, at least this one. Anyways...

For skill builds I usually go for some stats until I have +5-11 in stat bonus for some health (I can't remember what I do exactly at the moment), blood boil and behead, prioritizing the stats until needed, than blood boil than behead.. Blood Boil is more effective than Behead when it gives you a large attack bonus vs Behead which gives you a small chance to critical hit for 5x off Troll's low base damage. Even with some stats you will still be incredibly fragile and in danger of dying even when no creeps are attacking you if you're not careful. Which makes it extremely important for you to attack from high ground and carry health potions. Early on a lot of the small ones with possibly a big one as backup then later on just one or two proportionate health potions, possibly leave some on the ground, either you place them or your runner.

Scalping cry is indeed useless in most of the time because he is simply used as a killing hero. In order for scalping cry to be useful you need to be near the action which is not a good spot for the Troll Cannibal to be. You are correct to think it is ineffective, there only a few situations where it is useful such as when Troll is the best tank option or very late game when even large increase in stats really doesn't help kill creeps due to high hp so scalping to help the tank live would be helpful.

Soul Feast in order to be used effectively you need to understand what abilities you get from dying heroes. You get another hero's ultimate and if it's an active ability you keep it until you use it, if it's a passive it's timed. It will usually be the ultimate ability with some expectations, taken from compendium:

There are some exceptions, though:
- The passive Ultimates, Thief's Venom and Sniper's Rapid Reload, the Troll Cannibal will get for 20 Seconds.
- When a Faenrae Champion, Barbarian or Blood dancer die, he will learn their Lv6 skills instead of the Lv10 (Word of Chaos, Berserk and Earth-Shaking Strike, respectively)
- When a Mentalist dies, the Troll will learn it's Lv1 Dazzle. For it to work, he also gets Focus Moonbeam (which will temporarily replace Soul Drain). He also learns Focus Moonbeam when a Moon Mage dies (as it also requires the innate).

There is a lot of advice that can be given for soul feast.

Some of these abilities are not as useful on the Troll, for example Dazzle from the Mentalist is a useful ability on the Mentalist, but not on the Troll because it needs to be set up, meaning the Troll needs to get close and gets better by reduced cooldown which is useless for the Troll. If there are a lot of heroes with not very useful abilities I will usually go for stats instead of soul feast because it's not worth it over stats when I normally get abilities that simply distract the Troll from his job with no benefit.

Another tip is some abilities like Dragon Dance, Time Stop and Summon Dark Rift are just as useful at level 1 as level 10, the only difference is the mana cost and cooldown. Cooldown of course doesn't make a difference to the Troll so you can keep Soul Feast at level 1 if these are the only abilities you want. If you get an ability you don't want just quickly use it, when you get the ability you do want save it as the three listed are very useful in a pinch.

Your items are ok, sometimes a gleam is needed on him depending on the team setup or difficulty. Though like the flak you received on the mt forum it's generally looked down upon if you get a lot of gleams. The reason is it's better to get other items eventually and stacking gleams only has a small window of usefulness so it's better to simply plan ahead. Of course if your team is losing and the best option is something that goes against the norm than do it. Sometimes people will save money for something but lose before they can get it, in which case they should have just spend money for items now instead of losing.