Strategies

Laning

Burrowstriking Effectively

Burrowstrike / Epicenter

Blinkicenter

Notes on teamfights

Most of the time, you will have to go in the "Long lane", or the top lane for Radiant / bottom lane for Dire. Occasionally, you will have a ranged carry that you can support on the easy lane, but most of the time an intelligence-based caster supports those heroes. Alternatively, you can solo middle if against a melee middle hero. I personally love doing this to counter Tiny, Bloodseeker, NA, even Templar Assassin if done correctly. I will cover soloing middle at the end of this tutorial.Depending on your lane, you will either level up Burrowstrike and Sand Storm, or Burrowstrike and Caustic Finale. If you haveopposing enemy melee heroes in your lane, it is worth it to get Caustic Finale over Sandstorm 9 times out of 10. Simply attack creeps that are close to dying, and you will indirectly heavily harass your melee opposition in the lane.For the first few minutes, harass and coordinate with your lane partner for perhaps an early kill. The game will be fairly uneventful for the first 7-10 minutes depending on lane setups on the opposing team. Try to avoid damage and save for your Blink Dagger as quickly as possible.Should be spent roaming and ganking or continuing to get Blink Dagger. Coordinate ganks with allies. While getting Blink is important, being a useful ganker is more important. Always have a Teleport Scroll in your inventory at all times. Not only is this just good practice, but Sand King is excellent at stopping "Tower Dives," which is when the opposing team goes past one of your towers to kill an ally. When you see this happening, I'm sure your ally will ping the minimap excessively, so always be ready to teleport and Burrowstrike to stop the dive.During ganks, you should be the one initiating. By that, I mean it should be you coming out of a dark corner Burrowstriking an enemy to set it up for your allies, not the other way around. Projectile stuns like Storm Bolt have a brief window where enemies can flee the area, but Burrowstrike is absolutely instant, meaning as long as you come from an area in the fog of war, enemies have absolutely no time to react. The situation always changes from game to game however, so don't take this as a black and white rule.Start sticking with your team at all times. Learn to anticipate when there will be a large group of enemies heroes (defending a tower, assaulting, pushing, ganking) and be there before they arrive. Your role as Sand King becomes increasingly important until about 50 minutes when Epicenter starts losing its effectiveness.Burrowstrike is a very versatile ability if used correctly. While stunning enemies with the ability is fairly straightforward, it is difficult to master final positioning. You don't want to ever directly click an enemy hero; you want to click behind them to compensate for their speed and direction in fleeing. This allows you to get an extra attack or two after your Burrowstrike.Burrowstriking up and down cliffs is one of the easiest ways to escape danger immediately. Notice in the picture I drew a green arrow and a red arrow with "X"s under each. If you, in Sand Kings current position, were to use Burrowstrike on the X under the Green dot, you would perfectly Burrowstrike down the hill with no issue. If you click outside of the spells green radius, pathing will make Sand King walk along the red arrow, wasting aof time. Mastering the maximum radius of Burrowstrike is one of the cornerstones to being a good Sand King player.While you can simply run up to some heroes and Burrowstrike them followed by an Epicenter, most heroes in Dota have some type of quick disable or escape mechanism nowadays, so this strategy only works in certain situations or with heroes without reliable disables. When I say reliable disables, I mean disables that can be activated in the extremely small window victims of Burrowstrike are unstunned to cancel Epicenter. Puck is a perfect example of a hero with an instant silence that will render a Burrowstrike to Epicenter combo completely useless. Other heroes with silence, however, such as Bloodseeker, have too long of a cast time in their silences, and Epicenter will finish completing its cast time before the spell is actually put on you. You have to learn the ins an outs of each hero to effectively know if you can Burrowstrike and Epicenter a hero.Blinkicenter is an amalgation of Blink and Epicenter. It is widely considered Sand King's most infamous strategy. The idea is, you see a team fight or a cluster of enemy heroes nearby. Then, you hide in a place that is close enough to blink but far enough where you will not be seen. You channel Epicenter, and once the spell begins, blink onto unsuspecting heroes and Burrowstrike them, causing them to be stunned, slowed, and take massive damage. It is extremely hard to counter this, as a good Sand King will not be visible in a team fight until Epicenter is already active.In the above image, I hilighted where, in this scenario, you would channel Epicenter, where you would Blink to, and where you would Burrowstrike to after your blink. There are three parts to this combo: Channel, Blink, and Burrowstrike. A lot of players useto queue their Blink after Epicenter in order to not waste any pulses of the spell outside the team fight. To shift-queue, simple channel Epicenter with R, hold shift, and click your Blink to any location. The instant Epicenter is finished channeling, you will blink to the designated location.Be ballsy! Sand King is usually an initiator in all team fights as the chaos of Epicenter temporarily confused and scatters enemies, allowing your team to move in for the kill. Obviously, if you have another initiator on your team such as Enigma, follow up on his Black Hole, but the general state of mind you should have is "I control when this team fight starts." It is a little daunting, but after a few multikills, you will gain the confidence required.