kaelthas has a reputation of only being useful against idiot enemies who do your job for you, and I’m here to tell you that if that’s the case it’s your fault for the talents you’re taking.
A lot of kt’s talents are what I like to call, best case scenario talents. These are talents predicated on hitting multiple enemies with your ability, or your enemy standing still for you. If you have a gazlowe on your team & are willing to only be useful every time his combo that will kill the entire enemy without you anyway is off cooldown, then that’s fine, but otherwise if you’re planning on playing against enemies who are trying to win, you should build kaelthas for the worst case scenario, also known as the “I’m going to carry my team instead of hoping my team carries me” build.
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First of all, take Convection every time. Now that 99% of people have stopped reading to make angry replies, I’d like to invite you to go to kt’s page on heroes profile, scroll down to the builds & take note of what the first talent on the highest winrate build is (I’d just post a screenshot but can’t post URL’s). That’s right, convection. The reason mana addict isn’t the highest winrate build is because that’s the talent people who don’t play kaelthas correctly take. * So I will be in the replies calling anyone who stopped reading already noobs. ANYWAY, you should be striving to not die, and this talent will force you to learn to play kaelthas better. No matter how effective the shield is, it will never compare to just playing in a way that results in 0 deaths. And more importantly, this talent synergizes with your later talents extremely well – even if you don’t get any value out of it for your first 16 levels, that’s fine bc you’ll get value out of at 16 – and after your 16 you won’t be getting value out of the shield anyway. Think of it like Nazeebo’s 20 quest, but you take it at level 1. Or think of it as the Burned Flesh talent but it works even if you only hit 1 enemy. Remember; if you get to the end of the match with 0 deaths you are going to get MVP no matter what, and only convection makes you play the way a MVP kaelthas plays. Believe in yourself & dare to perform.
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Mana Tap. Yes, I know the other talents make your stun much better, but, none of the E talents increases how much mana you get, and, more importantly, they encourage you to use your E offensively when you should be holding it for defending yourself most of the time – on account of the convection. A big part of the reason people think convection is a bad talent is bc their level 3 pick is encouraging them to use their E off cooldown – stop doing that. Take the trait talent and, unless you’re putting trait on your flamestrike to hit grouped enemies or running from an enemy gank, use traited living bomb on the nearest enemy off CD for constantly mana regen.
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Sunfire Enchantment. The Q & W talents are “best case scenario” talents that provide nothing for you if an enemy assassin dives on you whereas the trait talent makes you much better at 1v1’ing enemy assassins – the kind who will be trying to kill you even when they shouldn’t because you have convection. You are effectively passively taunting enemy dive heroes and you’re gonna need to be the best duelist possible. The bonus AA damage to a single target is equal to the bonus you get from a completed convection quest fireblast – and if you aren’t going up against a single enemy, the bonus to spellpower will make up for not taking the other talents.
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Pyroblast. Do I even need to explain why? You click the bad man and he goes away. If you don’t take this ult every time then I just fundamentally don’t understand what it’s like to be you.
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Pyromaniac. This is the first half of the convection combo I was talking about. Neither of the other two talents will be as useful as giving you as many convection Flamestrikes as possible. You should still be trait-bombing off CD whenever you can for mana so this requires no change of playstyle, it just increases your damage output.
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Ignite. This is the second half of the convection combo. Fury of the Sunwell is a trap talent – any enemy who can get hit with the second strike is dead anyway. If all of your flamestrikes apply living bomb, and each living bomb reduces the cooldown of your flamestrike by 1.5 seconds, then if you can hit 1 enemy with a flamestrike & trait double-bomb two others you get a 50% reduction in your flamestrike cooldown that you get to aim, so it can hit enemies who aren’t afk. Also, because you no longer need to get close to the enemy team to chunk one of them you’re safer, allowing you to not use your living bomb & stun unless someone is trying to pick you which saves more mana for your flamestrikes. At this point you should switch from trait-bombing off cooldown to almost exclusively traiting your Q during teamfights – it doesn’t matter if you can hit multiple enemies with it, it just guarentees that at least 1 enemy can’t escape it no matter what. Also, it turns Li Ming’s beam ult into a suicide buttom if your ult is off cooldown.
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FLAMETHROWER. You are now a machinegun Azmodan. If you hit 2 enemies with your flamestrike & trait double-bomb two enemies it just flatly refunds the CD of your Q, or if the enemy just passes it to two enemies. You can do sounding flamestrikes by casting it outside of your sightrange where enemies might be and just press R on whoever got the bomb to basically guarenteed kill at least 1 enemy hero without even needing to be in the same zipcode. The complete lack of warning also causes them to accidentally spread the bomb much more – if no enemy is on screen their focus will probably not be in the middle of their screen which means a sounding Q is far more likely to make them spread the bomb than you hitting the W button on an enemy – especially if they know which direction you’re in and are all trying to chase you. No kaelthas in sight = no need to spread out. Also, you might not notice this before level 20 but the enemy can break the pyroblast channel by getting out of its cast range before it’s done casting. This is a good thing. It forces an enemy to run away screaming out of the fight, who will probably not even notice that the pyroblast cancelled, and only puts the spell on a 10 second cooldown. With this talent combo you can effectively use your Pyroblast as an unofficial Horrify, on top of your level 1 acting as a passive taunt. It might seem unfair to your team that you can basically entirely remove your body from the fight, but remember; you are now a defensive god. If your team loses the fight you can hold the enemy off of your base until they respawn, short of the enemy having a divecomp. Just keep walking away & flamestriking.
An extra note: in case you don’t know kt can clear most of a wave in under 2 seconds. Walk up to the wave, trait-bomb the last melee minion & mage, start walking away to keep them in a line and drop your flamestrike under the last melee minion – the flamestrike should just barely hit all the ranged minions and will kill the mage which will make him explode which will kill the ranged minions & make the melee minion’s bomb fatal and leave you with two melee minions that you can AA to death really fast – especially after level 7
- A quick note on how to read statistics: The reason the tier-specific ratings says mana addict is better but the holistic builds ratings says convection is better is bc the former is the rating for games that end before level 4, whereas the builds is for games that last until 20 (it can’t know what the level 20 talent of a build is if the game ends before then). So neither data set gives a full picture – you can only get a clear picture by playing the build & seeing what it does to your winrate. My kt winrate is 60%, a solid 12 points higher than the highest winrate mana addict build.