Kraken Guide

Skillset

This is Kraken’s strongest skill. It is a physical cleave that deals 60/100/140/180 bonus damage in a 200 radius and 30/50/70/90 bonus damage in a 325 radius. I would like to emphasize the word bonus. It does not replace your regular attack (which deals 47-53 damage at level 1). It is in addition to your regular melee damage, which means you do 107-113 damage at level 1. It is an active ability, making it stronger than passives such as Jereziah’s and Puppet Master’s. Rather than being forced to choose between using your cleave to last hit a creep or to harass a hero, Kraken can last hit the creep with his base melee damage and then cleave the hero.

To reinforce how powerful this ability is, I will do a brief comparison to other bonus damage abilities. Soulstealer’s bonus damage does not reach +60 until level 7 at best (typically 8 또는 9 if he is skilling up demon hand instead), which you are doing at level 1. Jereziah’s cleave at level 7 is only 50 bonus damage, with a 5 second cooldown, compared to your 180 damage on a 3 second cooldown. Puppet Master does comparable splash damage at level 7, but Kraken will do higher damage against the primary target with a shorter cooldown. This is THE steroid skill of early game laning.

This is the other skill you will be putting points into early game. The damage portion of this skill is irrelevant. The important thing is that this skill operates as a pseudo-blink (it is not instantaneous) allowing you to chase for kills with Splash, or escape from ganks. At higher levels, it also allows for initiation with Whirlpool. Two things I want you to pay attention to – the mana cost and the range. As you’ll notice in the screenshot at the top of this guide, Kraken’s mana pool at level 1 is severely limited, and his intelligence gain per level is rather low. Tsunami Charge is not for creeping, it is not for harassing, it is a positioning tool to be used only for a kill or an escape. The range at maximum level is 1300, which is 100 units longer than blink dagger, and unlike blink dagger it can be used immediately after taking damage. It also has a cooldown of 11 초, shorter than blink dagger’s 18.

This skill is stronger than stats. It is weaker than Kraken’s remaining skillset. It synergizes very well with his other abilities, along with his base 310 move speed. Between a 1300 range blink, 310 move speed, and a 28% slow, it is unlikely that any enemy who does not have invisibility or blink will be capable of escaping you unless they are already near their base.

This is what Kraken is most known for. Whirlpool does respectable AoE damage in a team fight, but that is not the most powerful aspect of this ultimate. The true potential in this ability is it allows your team to initiate in a place of your choosing, and the team that initiates the battle is usually the team that wins the battle. Combined with Kraken’s 28% passive slow, at level 16 enemies are slowed by over 50% in a small AoE killzone with -6 armor, allowing fast kills of dangerous enemies.

전략

Now that we are familiar with Kraken’s attributes and skillset, we need to devise a strategy to use with him.

1. Kraken’s base health and health gain per level are high, allowing Kraken to absorb a significant number of nukes. This means we are unlikely to be bursted down by anything short of dual spell spammer lanes (Torturer + Pyromancer, or similar heroes with multiple nukes). As such, passive health regeneration is very powerful, as it enables us to never have to leave the lane.
2. Kraken’s mana pool is very low, which does not allow us many opportunities to use our blink. However, our blink is on a moderately long cooldown, as is our ultimate, and our farming skill has a relatively low mana cost. Therefore, items which grant higher maximum mana are not a necessity, and we can make items which grant us passive mana regeneration.
3. Kraken’s base damage is already high because of his strength gain, and we have an early game steroid skill to give us even more last hitting potential. A quelling blade will make it impossible to deny against us.
4. Kraken is an initiator in team fights, which means we are going to be focused first. We do not want a shrunken head, as it is our job to absorb enemy nukes from our teammates with our high health pool. However, it is important that we survive the battle, as we have incredible chasing ability with our passive slow and active blink, as well as very high damage without any items due to splash. We will want a shaman’s headdress, a behemoth’s heart, and against teams with physical damage we have to be especially concerned with our low armor.
5. Kraken’s charge is very good, but it is not an instantaneous blink, and we can be stunned out of it. We have already determined that we do not want a shrunken head, as we are likely the tank for our team. Therefore, against teams with many stunners, we will need a portal key in order to land our ultimate without being stunned.
6. We have a cleave, and a need for mana regeneration. We already know that heroes who have built-in cleave do incredibly well with a runed axe (Jereziah, Kunkka in DotA, Magnataur in DotA) and heroes with low mana pools who need to use their spells consistently do well with a runed axe (Madman). Therefore, our primary DPS item, once we can tank sufficiently well, will be a runed axe.
7. Our base damage is high, but our attack speed is low. We need to increase our attack speed, especially with a runed axe. Therefore, we will usually make enhanced marchers. However, our survivability is more important than our damage, and our armor as mentioned before is low. Against melee heavy teams we will make steamboots instead for the extra health and armor and utilize tsunami charge to phase through creeps.
8. Our ultimate lowers armor, and slows enemies in a small AoE for us to cleave. Our luxury item will be a shieldbreaker to maximize burst damage during the 4 second kill window.

Nymphora in this example is squishy and died from the charge + whirlpool + cleave. The other heroes are alive but damaged, slowed, with lowered armor in a small formation for your team to AoE and clean up.

Note that it is not always beneficial to hit every enemy hero with Whirlpool. Sometimes you will only want to hit one hero (ex: a fed Predator) so that your team can kill him 5v1. Othertimes you will want 2 또는 3 영웅 (대소동 + Magmus + Puppet Master or other squishy heroes) so that you can kill them away from their team and avoid their deadly ultimates. There may also be heroes you want to avoid hitting with Whirlpool, as bringing them into the middle of your team is potentially deadly (Jereziah, Legionnaire, 대기 업인).

You should be the one initiating fights and tanking damage for your team in the mid game. The team that initiates is the team that wins, 8 times out of 10. If their team pushes a tower, pull them behind the tower into your allies. If your team pushes a tower, pull them away from it and into your allies. If a gank happens in the forest, use Whirlpool to let your allies escape, or pull half their team out of position to where you can kill them. Switch from focusing on regeneration items to focusing on tanking or DPS items, or a Portal Key.

If your team has a Tempest or Magmus or another strong AoE hero, make sure they are there and ready before you use Whirlpool.

Late Game/Push Phase

By this point you should have a heart, enhanced marchers, part of a runed axe and possibly a portal key. The focus here is to use your Whirlpool to kill their most dangerous heroes (either a high DPS carry, or their tank/initiator) and then push the tower. You should be the one tanking tower damage, and after your Whirlpool is on cooldown you can still initiate with Tsunami Charge and soak up the hits. If you’ve turned your Shaman’s Headdress into a Barrier Idol, you should be using that to nullify their team’s AoE damage when you anticipate burst damage (Plague Rider ultimate, Tempest ultimate, and so forth).

Don’t get caught with your pants down. Don’t be by yourself during this phase, ever. The first team to get genocided will lose their barracks and likely the game as well. Whirlpool causes genocides, and the enemy team knows this. You are going to be #1 priority on their gank list. If you are able to kill their team without using Whirlpool, do so and push. They will revive around the time you are pushing their base tower/barracks, at which point if they attempt to defend you can Whirlpool and kill them again. This will win the game. If their team is stronger than yours, you have two options. Turtle until they push, then pull their team deep into your base (fountain with portal key, the two towers closest to throne if you don’t have a portal key) and kill them, then counterpush. Option 2 is to kill 2-3 heroes that you see in a lane with your ultimate (the other heroes are probably in another lane or farming neutral creeps) and then push 5v2 or 5v3 with your allies (who hopefully have their ultimates ready).

Additional Notes

Now that Kraken’s Splash is physical damage, it has additional functionality that wasn’t previously available.

1. It goes through magic immunity (Swiftblade’s spin, Jereziah’s magic immunity, ancients, shrunken head, so forth)
2. It works on gadgets (Slither’s wards, Pollywog’s ultimate, Scout’s ward, Voodoo Jester’s ultimate, etc)
3. It synergizes with your ultimate and other -armor effects (Soulstealer aura, Shieldbreaker, similar abilities)

Tsunami Charge also has some quirks that differ from blink and portal key.

1. It will not escape Puppet Master’s strings anymore.
2. If a targeted stun is cast on Kraken during a charge, or if Kraken begins the charge while a projectile is airborne, he will complete the charge. The projectile will still hit, charge does not evade the projectile like blink does. However, if Kraken is in midcharge and is hit by a stun that lasts for 2 초, and arrives at his charge destination 1.5 seconds later, he will only be stunned for the remaining 0.5 seconds upon charge ending. (As mentioned earlier, Succubus’s sleep breaks this general rule). This means that stuns will not necessarily prevent Kraken’s Whirlpool->;Charge combo, as he may recover from the stun quickly enough to chase and hit you with Whirlpool. They will stop him from manually completing Whirlpool, but if cast in advance there is little you can do to prevent it as it autocompletes.
3. Charge cannot go through trees/cliffs/etc. It will go through units and heroes but will path around terrain.
4. Charge cannot be used to cancel Swiftblade’s ultimate. The slashes will follow, unlike with blink effects.

Tidal Pull also goes through magic immunity. You may not be able to damage a Jereziah with charge once he goes magic immune, but you can certainly chase him down by charging into melee, slowing him with Tidal Pull, and casting Splash until he dies.

Have fun and enjoy Kraken!