Rancor 4 newbie

[Hunter]

Hi All,

 

Lately, I am playing Rancor. Being a noob (~50 games or so) I am clearly not very good player, so I am openning this topic to share my item and tactic impression so far, in order to hear feedback and general ideas you might have.

 

In the beginning I started with pure INT Rancor, the trouble with it was that I couldn't do any damage or be useful in any way right until lvl 12 or so, becasue only then I woul have enough items to boost the nuke damage to anything larger than negligeable. So instead, what I do now is boost weapon damage to make the most of the snipe (it scales with weapon damage) until lvl 8 or so, and only then I start to invest in INT items.

 

Since I tend to stay out of the battle as much as I can, and keep cloaked o the best of my ability, from lvl 10 on I mostly invest in pure or mostly INT items (e.g. edge) , so I have sort of a glass cannon which I mostly use to rain nukes on enemy team in every skirmish my team has. The only thing I miss is the ability to quickly go in for a finish snipe (the way Nova does) - Rancor seems to me too slow.

 

BTW, I tried going Nova-like Rancor, but for some reason even though he has similar starting stats, this failed miserably - no idea why :(

 

PLease let me know what you think.

[SourDiesel]

I'll post what I do and you can take that, FWIW.

 

Talents: 0-2-4 Health, Armor, CD, Swiftness, Wealth, Transport

 

Items: Flare Gun, Ihan, Gravity, Sunflare, Nitro, Yamato

 

With you 850 starting minerals get the two components for flare gun along with an agility potion. Rancor gets half off consumables so the agility potion is great value. The agility potion will get your damage high enough to effectively last hit units without substantially slowing down your flare gun by wasting cash on an agility item that becomes useless 15 minutes into the game. You can go either bottom or top; don't play middle, if you end up across from a good middle your tower will get pushed down and you'll get almost no creep kills. Start the game by focusing on last hitting units. With the agility potion it should be pretty easy to last hit unless you're paired with a pushing hero that's stealing all the unit kills. If an opportunity presents itself, go for a hero kill but don't focus too much on getting kills at the expense of your creep count early on. You want the cash for flare gun and the +29 intel component of Ihan before you hit level 7.

 

Once you're 6 you can begin to wander the map and rack up a hero kill count. Your combo is R-Q-R-Flare gun. That should deal about 1200 damage at level 7, which is enough to kill any squishy hero (if you're playing pub there is almost always a nova/shadow/ling/etc. that you can one shot with this combo). You can also finish heroes hanging around with less than a full bar of health. Rancor is relatively simple to play. You will basically spend the whole game repeating that same combo over and over again. Early on, before they have vision, you want to be flanking a lot so you can get in range for snipe (drop your R-Q-R-Flare combo and retreat). The skill for Rancor comes from understanding how to position yourself and anticipating what your enemies and your allies will be doing next. Your success will depend largely on your ability to identify the right targets and get kills.

 

EDIT: Forgot, you also get half price off wards and they will help you to gank and protect your team. Make sure you get them whenever you got change to spare throughout the game.

[NoWaterJustIce]

make sure you are already cloaked when you snipe people so you get the 130%Int Bonus or your snipe will be rather lackluster.

[Skydie]

I'll post what I do and you can take that, FWIW.

 

Talents: 0-2-4 Health, Armor, CD, Swiftness, Wealth, Transport

 

Items: Flare Gun, Ihan, Gravity, Sunflare, Nitro, Yamato

 

With you 850 starting minerals get the two components for flare gun along with an agility potion. Rancor gets half off consumables so the agility potion is great value. The agility potion will get your damage high enough to effectively last hit units without substantially slowing down your flare gun by wasting cash on an agility item that becomes useless 15 minutes into the game. You can go either bottom or top; don't play middle, if you end up across from a good middle your tower will get pushed down and you'll get almost no creep kills. Start the game by focusing on last hitting units. With the agility potion it should be pretty easy to last hit unless you're paired with a pushing hero that's stealing all the unit kills. If an opportunity presents itself, go for a hero kill but don't focus too much on getting kills at the expense of your creep count early on. You want the cash for flare gun and the +29 intel component of Ihan before you hit level 7.

 

Once you're 6 you can begin to wander the map and rack up a hero kill count. Your combo is R-Q-R-Flare gun. That should deal about 1200 damage at level 7, which is enough to kill any squishy hero (if you're playing pub there is almost always a nova/shadow/ling/etc. that you can one shot with this combo). You can also finish heroes hanging around with less than a full bar of health. Rancor is relatively simple to play. You will basically spend the whole game repeating that same combo over and over again. Early on, before they have vision, you want to be flanking a lot so you can get in range for snipe (drop your R-Q-R-Flare combo and retreat). The skill for Rancor comes from understanding how to position yourself and anticipating what your enemies and your allies will be doing next. Your success will depend largely on your ability to identify the right targets and get kills.

 

EDIT: Forgot, you also get half price off wards and they will help you to gank and protect your team. Make sure you get them whenever you got change to spare throughout the game.

 

Didn't really read this post but seems to be giving the right messages. Just instead of R-Q-R flare gun, I highly recommend E-R-Q-R flare gun, due to increased snipe damage while cloaked. I also would advise setting up item hotkeys. Here is a small guide someone else made: http://www.aeonofsto...t-item-hotkeys/

 

Setting up hotkeys will allow you to use flare gun faster, and pull of that winning combo without fumbling around clicking items. Just beware you will need to set items up in an appropriate order. As rancor for example my '1st' item slot would be the flare gun, which would be hotkeyed to my keyboard key "2". 1 is my hero select key.

[ginosaji]

To be honest I prefer an AA style start with Rancor. He didn't have his base damage nerfed like almost every other AA, he has an almost instant animation (making him good at last hitting), and he has a range of 7 (allows for great harrass in lane). I haven't settled on the best way to start since the item changes, but here are a few options I've toyed with.

 

3-1-2 Might, Fury, Demigod, Health, Swiftness, Energy.

 

I've toyed with getting Machete first, or getting both the STR and AGI potions for better lane phase. I've also toyed with 3-0-3 taking wealth for the machete and two energy pots. It's greedy, so it doesn't work so well IH, but decent in pubs if you can stay alive.

 

Anyway, I've found that I usually come out of laning phase with 30-40 more creep kills than with a pure INT start, which is about 550-700 extra minerals. Machete also prvides good sustain with the leech (especially since you can just auto attack siege creeps now), some extra health, and decent weapon damage that helps on your snipe as well.

[residente]

and he has a range of 7

 

Unless Red/Ekco changed it in the lastest patches, Rancor has 6.5 weapon range.

[ginosaji]

Unless Red/Ekco changed it in the lastest patches, Rancor has 6.5 weapon range.

 

No you're right. been awhile since the last time I looked it up.

[Indo]

talents: weapondmg, spelldmg , hp , armor, cooldown, movespeed

 

Items: power stone, rod, ihan, miner googles, symponic seeds, gravity edge, fury

[ginosaji]

Power stone?

[SayMyName]

Unless Red/Ekco changed it in the lastest patches, Rancor has 6.5 weapon range.

 

Residente is correct. It was always 6,5 :) Hero with 7 range, was and is Raynor :P

 

 

 

Rancor is one of best, if not the best heroes getting map control (which is huge part of gaining game control) its his style and his highest strenght- this goes through his ganking/warding potential. Rancor is also one of most safe picks. Due to his versality and usefulness. U can play rancor as a pure support (buying full wards at start/some regen) and ganking/gaining map/preventing enemy heroes- even from start with proper talents. Rancor is great, very strong ganker. He have possibilities of iniatiting or supporting succesful gank. Team with rancor have easier higher map advantage due to his ganking, and invisibilty (forces constant wards/chronos) and his easier and chepaer warding/counter warding (fast movespeed- mobility with invis, cheaper consumes that allowes map control) Thats what most of his skillset scales with. He also scales with aoe dmg and teamfight capabilities, scales with burst dmg - thats why there is so popular int rancor - that is support with really good scalling. Still he can scale and be played as standard dps agi carry, if u want, or more properly- if ur team needs it, its better (like much spellres/tankiness from enemies, u dont have any other proper dps carry). Thats his versality.

 

Rancor is very greatly concepted hero, that extracts from moba concept and bring much to the table of strategy.

 

 

 

If u wanna compare rancor to nova, nova is carry. Rancor can also be a carry as mentioned above (what is best depends ofc on situation). Still nova is stronger carry, scales way harder with farm. Nova is hard carry and with farm she will provide with proper build way more dps than u (rancor :) ) On other hand rancor will be more useful from early game, will almost always be useful through the game (cause gaining map control) even with small amount of farm, he will be useful with his constant disable potential, with debuffs- slows (with nukes, nitrogen) - and with farm - with his aoe dmg. As u can see rancor can fit super good into support role.

 

P.S. Hint - if its not gank, single pickoff, but its a teamfight-> u should always position urself behind, with most of the time being squishy rancor in some degree (that fits most of the time to most supports), behind ur team protecting u, when u dishout and bring to the table ur disables/dmg with ur range.

[NoWaterJustIce]

Pure int rancor is the best way to go and only newbs buy sunflare gun. The real pros rush 6 gravity edge's

-Invisible Mobile Sentry Ward

[Yaldi]

Pure int rancor is the best way to go and only newbs buy sunflare gun. The real pros rush 6 gravity edge's

-Invisible Mobile Sentry Ward

 

real pros go blue gene first;)

[Moo]

Blue gene is OP, really needs to be nerfed for the love of god, every flobing character gets it because of how OP it is.

[Hunter]

During a couple of last games I've noticed that my Rancor gets pretty useless late game. After 40 minues pr so every non-glass cannon hero seems to have some nice HP and the cloack gets uselsess b-cause everyone has truesight. So I dish out remote nukes, but they don't seem to be doing enough dps to make much difference (I had like 2 gravity + other INT stuff).

 

Do you think I should be switching to agi-critical dps mode toward the endgame?

 

Another thing, I'm struggling against a lategame overfed gankers e.g. AlfaZergling, cloak doesn't help and I can't outrun him, so he just kills me in 3-4 hits. Any ideas?

[ginosaji]

During a couple of last games I've noticed that my Rancor gets pretty useless late game. After 40 minues pr so every non-glass cannon hero seems to have some nice HP and the cloack gets uselsess b-cause everyone has truesight. So I dish out remote nukes, but they don't seem to be doing enough dps to make much difference (I had like 2 gravity + other INT stuff).

 

Do you think I should be switching to agi-critical dps mode toward the endgame?

 

Another thing, I'm struggling against a lategame overfed gankers e.g. AlfaZergling, cloak doesn't help and I can't outrun him, so he just kills me in 3-4 hits. Any ideas?

 

INT Rancor only really gets going mid to late game. His early game is what is weak, as he has a hard time farming, does little damage, and is squishy. Cloak is still important late game, as it gives you the bonus damage and movespeed on your snipe. AA (AGI-Critical) Rancor gets worse towrd late game, while it's relative strength is mid game. There are very few heroes other than pure tanks that can survive against an even farm/feed Ling in the late game if he is built correctly. Rancor is actually a one of the best counters in the game against gankes like Zera, Ling, etc. as his Nuke-Snipe-Nuke combo will do insane damage by late game. Since you are going mostly INT, Sunflare is a good choice on Rancor, as it will do around 1000 damage by late game. Some people say flare doesn't go with his play style, I disagree. You will never be tanky enough to go head to head with a ling/zera/shadow. Your main defensse is the threat that if you have two nukes, a snipe, and sunflare, they will almost certainly die before they can engage you.

 

Gravity Edge, Ihan, Nitro, Sunflare, Star's Fury, Symphonic Seed. You should have nearly 500 INT, your combo with a Star's proc will be devastating to a non-tank. What you need to worry about is making sure you hit the combo right, which takes good reactions and some practice. Stay by your team, if you get jumped unaware, you will almost certainly die. Wait for their AA/carry (Darpa, Grunty, Ling, Leo, Nova, Zera, Shadow, etc) to engage and hit them with your combo.

 

I've tried INT/AA hybrid on Ranc and it can be effective in pubs, haven't tried it IH yet. Machete>Ihan (survivability)>Cerebro>Nitro>Star's Fury or Atom Smasher (Usually atom smasher)>Gravity Edge>Survivabilty item like Darsteel or organic. Pure physical damage Rancor (AGI or Crit) really doesn't always work in pubs unless you get very fed early.

[Hunter]

I have a really stupid question. If you build heavy INT Rancor, why would you go for anything expect as much gravity edges as you can get? I mean,it seems you can the most INT from these, no? (BTW I don't do that, I mix, but in general - why not 6XGravity?)

[SourDiesel]

During a couple of last games I've noticed that my Rancor gets pretty useless late game. After 40 minues pr so every non-glass cannon hero seems to have some nice HP and the cloack gets uselsess b-cause everyone has truesight. So I dish out remote nukes, but they don't seem to be doing enough dps to make much difference (I had like 2 gravity + other INT stuff).

 

Do you think I should be switching to agi-critical dps mode toward the endgame?

 

Another thing, I'm struggling against a lategame overfed gankers e.g. AlfaZergling, cloak doesn't help and I can't outrun him, so he just kills me in 3-4 hits. Any ideas?

 

Couple points,

 

1. If you got 2 Gravity's you're probably building wrong. Gravity's biggest bonus comes from the +20% true damage. Unique attributes do not stack so, for the second one, you're basically spending 4.1K on 100 intel and 5% movement speed which is not good value. (Compare that to Ihan where you get 80 intel, 600 health, and an active regen for 70% of the price - the 20 intel you lose translates to only ~80 damage across an R-Q-R combo). If it's damage you're looking for, you should go for Yamato instead of a second gravity it has a +25% spell damage active.

 

2. If you're having a problem with survivability, Ihan and Nitro together will give you an extra 1K health along with a slowing effect on your nukes and an active that heals you in a pinch. This won't save you if you're targeted by an agil hero or nuking combo but it will keep you alive if you get hit with AoE or take a couple of shots while you're repositioning.

 

3. If you get targeted by an agil carry in the late game as Rancor, you really shouldn't survive regardless of what items you have. Instead, you should be the one initiating against the AA carry and he should be dead before he has time to react to you. This is done by being cloaked at all times and sitting on high ground or well behind your allies going into any engagement. Stay out of combat and do not drop below 2 nukes available until the AA carry reveals himself. Use your allies as bait for heroes like ling, zera, nova, etc. It doesn't matter if they have true sight. They will be preoccupied with another hero and your combination of range and surprise will be enough for you to get your R-Q-R-Sunflare combo off. In the late game, if you have a decent team and die after taking out the strongest agil hero on the other team, you've probably made a good trade that will allow your team to win the engagement.

[SourDiesel]

I have a really stupid question. If you build heavy INT Rancor, why would you go for anything expect as much gravity edges as you can get? I mean,it seems you can the most INT from these, no? (BTW I don't do that, I mix, but in general - why not 6XGravity?)

 

Unique attributes don't stack so after the first one all you're getting is 100 intel. So here's some math:

 

Suppose you have one gravity already along with 100 base intel. If you get a second gravity you get 100 intel for a total of 300. That means your snipe will do (210 + 390) * 1.2 or 720 damage. Your Nuke will deal (280 + 225) *1.2 or 606 damage. One Nuke-Snipe-Nuke combo will deal 606+720+606 or 1,932 damage.

 

Or, you could get one gravity and one sunflare gun. Your total intel is now 265. Your snipe will do (210 + 344.5) * 1.2 or 665 damage. Your Nuke will do (280 + 199) *1.2 or 574. Your Nuke-Snipe-Nuke combo will do 1813 damage. But you'll also have a sunflare gun which should do about 700 damage with those items. So your Nuke-Snipe-Nuke-Sunflare combo will do 2,513 damage. Furthermore, gravity's damage will remain flat because it's just adding intel. Sunflare scales with 20% of your energy so the more intel items you get, the more damage sunflare gun will do.

 

Or, you could get one gravity and one yamato. Your total intel now will be 251 but you get a +25% spell damage active. Your snipe will do (210 + 326) *1.45 or 777 damage. Your Nuke will deal (280 + 188) *1.45 or 679 damage. One Nuke-Snipe-Nuke combo will deal 2,135 damage. And this is a low estimate of the damage differential because it assumed just a single intel item as you add intel items, the benefit from the second gravity will remain flat but the extra 25% damage will continue to grow as the base damage of the spells grow.

 

 

Beyond that you have to consider the cost of items.

 

Gravity costs 4.1K minerals. For that price you could get an Ihan and a Storm Pauldrons and still have cash to spare - that's 109 intel total along with 600 health and an active restore. Plus, the pauldrons will build into almost any other intel item. If inventory slots are an issue (and they only would be late game) you can get an Ihan and 8 blinkmoth serums for less than a Gravity. That's 98 intel for 80 minute plus 10% cool down reduction, 600 health, and an active restore.

 

Finally, you have other considerations besides just damage. Nitro, for example, turns your Nuke into a 20% AoE slow; it costs you 30 intel vis-a-vis Gravity which is only 47 damage on your snipe and 27 damage on your nuke or 101 damage on your nuke-snipe-nuke combo. Rarely will that 101 damage be the difference on a kill, but the 20% slow on your second nuke might be the difference in landing your 3rd Nuke or could slow a running enemy just enough for an ally to catch up and finish him. Health is also a consideration. Obviously if you're Rancor you'll be staying out of combat and if you get tracked down you're dying no matter what. But, you will be subject to AoE from time to time as well as long range spells. You don't want to be able to get one shotted by just a toilet or a Raynor kill shot. Cooldown is valuable too, especially as your damage grows. Cooldown means you can Nuke and Snipe more often which, therotetically means you can do more damage (obviously it doesn't translate perfectly, but if a fight goes for a certain amount of time CDR could mean one extra nuke and one extra snipe).

[NoWaterJustIce]

i think if you want max dmg and money isnt an issue you want to grab sunflare, reactor, and 4 gravity edges.

[ginosaji]

i think if you want max dmg and money isnt an issue you want to grab sunflare, reactor, and 4 gravity edges.

 

No...

 

If you do the math Atom Smasher, Star's fury, and Cerebro will all give you more damage than a flat 100INT would, on top of all the other stats you get from said items. The only way stacking Gravity Edge would be better than these items would be if you are just sitting in the back nuking and not engaging at all, as you obviously need to AA to be able to proc said items.

 

So, Max damage output build would be Gravity, Sunflare, Yamato Reactor, Cerebro, Star's Fury, Nitro. You absolutely need Nitro to survive. On top of that the AOE slow is incredibly usefull.

[Indo]

ok is the dmg output better if you have +600int +20%truedmg or maybe 400-500 and cdr, a yamato, fury, flare gun etc, while also having more other stats with different items

[NoWaterJustIce]

in an ih game the number of times that you are close enough to aa someone as rancor and you are not about to die is very low... so why get all these items if you wont be using there passives... i suppose its just a different play style

[Indo]

its just a diffenrent kind of skill i suppose :p there is something called map awareness

[AlphaQ]

2/1/3

wep speed

wep damage

180 hp

cooldown reduc

swiftness

wealth

 

 

grab a durans machete and 3-4 energy potions for lane sustain

get lightning rod

if you are fed, go straight for stars fury, if not get ihan

now grav edge

stars fury or ihan, whichever you dont have

sunflare gun

yamato reactor

sell ihan, then get support: taser/sword breaker/ phantoms menace

change lightninng rod to cerebro

too lazy to find out when, but somewhere in there sell your durans machete

[Hunter]

Hi All,

 

Thank's for all the input, really!

I did not think about the unique at all :(

 

Just for you, to laugh at noob, yesterday I discovered the item hotkeys. Immagine that, until now I was clicking the items :)

Anyhow, I played with the flare gun - nice damage late game, even though the range is pretty short, so the only way I could use it was when I was cloacked and they did not have detection.

 

Will try some of your ideas tonight, thanks.