D1RE's guide to the support TaurenTable of content- I. Foreword- II. Early game- III. The first minion- IV. Defending the base- V. Numbers and stuff- VI. Allies and worst enemies- VII. Most important skills and items- CreditsI. ForewordMy goal through this (extremely wordy) guide is to help people to play the Tauren to what I think is his full potential. When I say his full potential I mean that I think he is far more valuable as a supporter than he can ever be as a baser (assuming you have other basers that is), I will give you a little look at him and justify why now.
Baser vs. supporter:Pros for the baser:- He got his own base so he doesn't rely on other people
- He can save the day when everyone else is dead
Pros for the supporter:- He doesn't need much lumber so he can focus on getting more gold
- Tauren bases are shitty compared to most other races pimped with the same amount of gold
- Tauren is one of the best supporters in the game vs. a good titan
- He can level up while he golds so he needs that head start before the first minion (which would be delayed by an early lumber base)
Buildings-
Shelter –
10-
Fruit Tree -
20-
Beastiary –
150 (Require Shelter)
- Totem
Wall –
50 (Require Shelter)
-
Totem Tower –
150 /
4 (Require Shelter and Stone Totem)
- Ston
e Totem –
20 /
2000 (Require Beastiary)
- Demolisher T
otem –
90 /
2500 /
1 (Require Shelter and Merchant)
- Merc
hant –
45 /
150 Base stats:- HP – 300
- Mana – 225
- Armor – 4
- Strength – 10 (increases by 5 each level)
- Agility – 10 (increases by 1 each level)
- Intelligence – 15 (increases by 1 each level)
- Movespeed – 340 (374 with War Drums) (Titan is 400, minion 390)
- Damage – 125 (Increases by 5 each level)
- Attack range 128 (178 with Tauren Master) (Titan/minion range is melee which is between 100 and 125 I believe)
What does the stats give you?- Strength – +25 hp / increased hp regeneration / 1 damage
- Agility – Every 3rd point give +1 armor / increased AS
- Intelligence - +15 mana / increased mana regeneration
II. Early gameOk, this guide basically revolves around golding so you get stronger, so you can gold more, so you can get stronger. Simple eh? Well, doing it can be harder. You will start off by going straight to the right in that little spot between the trees where you can 1 shelter. Build your shelter, summon a kodo to lumber in there and start lumbering yourself. When you got 200+ lumber you go down to the south-east entrance to the gold mine and wall off the entrance.
Now you should be ready to start golding. The second the titan appear somewhere on the map you run down to the gold mine. Try to be the first to enter and last to leave.
The first 6 gold you use on a TP staff, always carry at least one of those, they save lives, the rest you spend on tomes. Now, for most races it is a bad cycle to buy tomes, so you can gold more, so you can buy more tomes. But not for the Tauren. Every time you get one gold you get two experience. For the first level you need 200 exp, that's 100 gold. Nifty that you get 3 tomes and 2 TP staffs for 102 gold, eh? This cycle you will keep up until someone gets killed OR the titan decides to camp the middle. You should then go and build a Beastiary somewhere (and of course set up a lumber camp while you’re at it) to do your first two researches: Caster Training and Battle Training. Do not bother taking the second caster training upgrade, it's shitty if you compare price to effect. Especially for a supporter.
III. The first minionSo the titan got his first minion. Well, it was bound to happen sometime. Now one of the two following things will happen:
- The minion runs around killing stuff and taking the titans exp
- The minion camps the middle
If nr. 1 happens you can skip right down to section IV. However, if nr. 2 happens (and it usually does) we get the chance to gain some extra gold and exp. Now you got a problem, you can't get any more gold since that annoying little bastard is right there in the middle. So this is what you do: First of all you get yourself those two researches I mentioned earlier (if you don't have enough gold you'll have to ask someone to pull the minion long enough for you to get those researches, demonologists are good at that). After you get those upgrades you'll have to gather everyone to kill the minion. Everyone:
- Satyr (if he somehow wasn’t the first minion)
- Magnataurs
- Demonologists
- Other Taurens
- Morphlings (warrior/beast form of course)
- Makruras (gotta love the aura)
- Titan hunters (rarely needs more than one, if you need any at all)
Now you all simply rush the minion and kill it. It's not hard, he'll go down fast.
However, if you can’t organize a rush, you’ll have to be a little creative. If you can manage to pull the minion to the lumber base right below the middle (or any other easily walled off place) you can trap him there by setting up a fake lumber camp. Then you spam fruit trees after walling him and keep yourself out of his range while attacking him. Try to always build with small paths in between so you can keep yourself out of his reach. This is one of the places where your extra range shines. Remember, if the titan comes you should get out and make the fruit trees deny themselves. If you have the help from a Nature/Makrura hunter things all of sudden became much easier. Simple wall the middle as you normal would, but with a double layer of upgraded walls. However, you leave one spot open for the minion to enter (make it look like an accident during building) and build a fruit tree inside. Now you pull the minion in, he will go for the tree while you run around and wall him in. After that you simple blink the hunter in, upgrade the new walls and start whacking on the minion. The worst case scenario here is usually the titan TP’ing his minion out, meaning he just wasted his 3 minute cooldown TP.
IV. Defending the baseYou finally decided to move into a base. Hopefully it’s close to the penalty so you can get the rest of your researches. Defending a base is he final stage of the game for a Tauren. You’ll be sitting between the walls delivering some mean extra damage and support with your various spells. If it looks like the titan is going to break the base I’s time to pull out your (not so) secret weapon: The Ancestral Rage. This will give you the opportunity to summon the Tauren Guard, your own personal lifeguard. It will also give you Warstomp. A nice trick to use vs. titans that love to punish is to use Enfeeble on them first, and then stun them when they punish off Enfeeble. Apart from that you just poke the titan in hope of a bash or two. Remember to be aware of nukes if you weren’t able to tome up early and remember that a lot of titans/minions have bouncing nukes. Delivering a nuke to your baser isn’t very nice (and very bad if it kills him). Also, if you’re in a Nature/Goblin/Radioactive base there will be lots of room available for your harvesters so you can get some lumber, if not you should build a lumber base outside so you can get 7-8k lumber, you’ll need that for researches.
Final note: When you see this stage approaching you should do your best to get 45 gold before you move into a base. That will give you enough for the Tauren Master Training along with the other upgrades when penalty comes.
V. Numbers and stuffResearches:- Caster Training – Learn Enfeeble -
5 /
700- Battle Training – Learns Pulverize -
10 /
250- Survival skills – Learns Healing Ward and War Drums –
5 /
1000- Basic Earth Mastery – Learns Aftershock –
15 /
500- Advanced Earth Mastery – Learns Earthquake –
10 /
500- Tauren Master Training – Gives various
passive buffs –
15 /
500 (Require Merchant)
- Ancestral Rage – Learns Ancestral Rage (Avatar) –
25 /
2500- Total prize –
145 /
8250 (Merchant, Beastiary and Stone Totem included)
Skills:- Char
ge – Gives 100% MS and 50% AS boost for 10 sec, 90 sec cooldown
- Healing
Ward – Heals all units owned by the Tauren for 2% of their total hp in 15 sec
- En
feeble – Slows enemy units AS and MS by 30% for 5 sec, 80 sec cooldown
- War Drums – Increases MS by 10% and AS by 15% (
passive)
- Maul – 15% chance to stun for 1 sec and deal 100 damage (
passive)
- Pulverize – 25% chance to deal 200 AOE damage (
passive)
- Aftershock – Deals 300 damage to all enemy units in 900 range when he attacks (
passive)
- Tauren Master – Gives 100+ hp, 50+ mana, 50+ range and 50% increased hp regeneration (all
passive)
- Ancestral Rage [
X] – Gives you +1000 hp, Warstomp and chaos damage. Also allows you to summon the Tauren Guard. Lasts for 2.5 minutes with a 6 minute cooldown.
Note: Does not make you magic immune.
- Tauren Guar
d – Summons 3 Taurens with 950 hp and 60 damage. Last for 1 minute with a 3 minute cooldown.
Note: Your own personal merchant summons. Can only be used in Ancestral form though.
A final note:Killing or being close to a minion getting killed will give you a good chunk of exp. Using a TP staff to get close to a minion kill is not a waste.
VI. Allies and worst enemiesAllies:- Magnataur – Slow poison will provide the one thing you really need, a reliable way to keep the titan/minion in range.
- Satyr – He will provide you with all the damage reducing you to a tank. However, there are very fed minions that can escape this duo if the satyr got some of his damage upgrades done.
- Nature – Can make you an aura tree which boosts your attack and movement speed (correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it stacks with War Drums) and he’s generally ownage for hunting minions with his army. He also tend to have room for harvesters in his base.
- Demonologist – Summons are lovely for pulling minions into traps, or generally just owning a minion/titan if he got some strong summons.
- Other Taurens – Twice the damage, twice the stuns, twice everything really. Nice, but nothing special.
- Radio/Goblin – Got some extra room in their bases. They both have hunters that are nice to annoy /pull minions with. You won’t have to kill wards while in their bases either. Radio bases can usually make up for your lack of a slow.
- Ogre – Stay away from them. Just stay away.
- Other builders – You need a place to live, right?
Worst titans:- Ice titan – He’s the worst and there’s several reasons for it. His nuke deals normal damage for a nuke, but it also slows you. Since it’s aoe damage you can’t have a worker running by your side to counter it either. His poison can actually kill you, unlike on other titans/minions.
- Wind titan – His nuke will disable you so he can catch up and it will kill your workers in the same way as ice titans. He doesn’t have a slow poison, but he has a slowing skill that also slows attack speed and boosts his ms and IAS.
- Electric titan - Evasion is annoying. Really annoying as it lowers your damage output and can that can sometimes be fatal.
- Hydra, naga, fire titan – For you, nothing special. Hydra’s nuke is a bit weaker, but eye can be annoying if nothing else. Remember that fire and naga titans have bouncing nukes.
- Fat stinking titan – The disease aura is annoying, but nothing else. His nuke is shit since he can only use it to finish you off and it’s nearly impossible to hit with. He does however have a 75 bonus damage when he attacks from windwalk, meaning you shouldn’t be taking chances with that until you have two tomes.
- Stone titan – His nuke deals only 100 damage at max level so he rely on his physical damage. Your fortified armor makes you strong against physical damage. The stun on his nuke can be removed with a detonation so it isn’t really much of a threat. He will also be under leveled versus decent players ‘cause of no way to kill harvesters.
- Darkness titan – He’s the least threatening of all the titans for you. His nuke deals below average damage without any disable. He got no windwalk, and should he get a wind catcher he’s about as dangerous as number 4 on the list. His nuke will however make sure he's a high level, meaning that although he's basically weaker he could become a potent threat to you faster than most other titans.
Worst minions:- Ice minions - Same is titan, read above.
- Hydra, naga, fire, zombie minions - Bouncing nukes, need I say more?
- Electric minions - The nuke doesn't bounce so they're a bit less dangerous. They still have full damage and easy to use nukes though.
- Stone minions - Nuke is harder to aim since it's manual (not hard, but harder) and will usually be used on harvesters rather than you. It doesn't bounce either.
- Wind minions - Low range nukes with below average damage, doesn't bounce either. These guys aren't very threatening compared to most of the other minions.
Most important skills and itemsItems:- Soul Wand – Can be bought for
500 from the pool that demonologists can build and will steal some mana from the titan and give it to you. Will help your mana problems greatly.
- Enchanted stone – Demonologists make these. Heals you for 125 hp.
- TP staffs – Can be bought for
6 at the shop near the middle. Nice for tight situations. Sells for
900.
- Eye of the Ocean – Can be bought for
5 at the shop near middle. Will give you vision of the target that is eyed. A nice way to use this is not to instantly waste it on the titan so he can remove it with punish. Rather than doing that you will save it for when you defend a base. Right before the titans goes invisible with windwalk you use this on him. Doesn’t always net you a kill, but I’ve gotten a few this way. Sells for
750.
- Replenishment Potion – Can be bought for
4 at shop near middle. Heals 2000 hp and 1000 mana over 30 seconds. Dispelled if you take damage. Nice to have if you’re harassed a lot and have a lot of hp while defending a base. Sells for
300.
Skills:- Charge – The 100% ms bonus and 50% IAS bonus is nice. It’s your only reliable escape mechanism and you should therefore not instantly activate it in combat in case you’ll have to run. That being said, use it if you know you won’t need it again soon or you have ancestral form ready. Lasts for 10 sec with a 90 sec cooldown.
- Enfeeble – Slows ms and IAS of the target by 30%. Last for 5 sec with a 80 sec cooldown. Will be punished away.
- Maul – 15% chance to stun the target for 1 sec and deal 100 bonus damage. Works well in synergy with your Charge.
Passive.
- Ancestral Rage – This is your avatar. You get Warstomp, chaos damage, you can summon the Tauren Guard and as a little extra you get +1000 hp. This is great for defending bases, killing minions/weak titans or just to escape if you get in trouble. Remember that spells still work on you.
A note on the gold towers:I won’t list them all here, but what you lack is armor and a reliable slow. That means you want the towers that give armor (cannon tower and crown of thieves comes to mind) or a slow (frost launcher and sludge launcher are those I can remember). You can’t build any of these yourself, but if someone is willing to trade for the one you can build you should go for it. Otherwise I suggest you stack tomes.
Replays#1: I added a replay so you can see. I do two good minion kills early and I play fairly well throughout the game. In the end we feed titan / he let us gold to make it more interesting, still no match though.
#2: A relatively bad pub game. Titan get a very early minion and I sit passively not doing much the first hlaf of the game. All that's worht seing really is the minion kill I do with the mgna, apart from that it's a cookie cutter bad pub. I win in the end though.
Credits- AoW_Hun7312 for tips on edits
