Flame Tail/Guide

## Introduction

Flame Tail is one of the best AOE carries that excels in almost all lanes and match ups, that along with her great ability to roam and snowball the other lanes makes for great versatility in both plays style and build. Today we'll be looking at the build that I have tested and that is int + health, however I will go over each stat for her real quick.

* **Health** - Extremely good in the fact that not only does it allow us to survive in battle better since we'll be in the center of of chaos, it also synergizes extremely well with out passive.
* **Intellect** - This is the stat that most of our buildings are going to scale and where most of our late game damage will be coming from. <--- You want a lot of this
* **Energy/Energy Regen** - For the most part useless don't invest anything into this, though an early regen talent may help you early game if your struggling to keep up your energy pool.
* **Strength** - Their are builds for fox that revolve around this however we wont be touching them in this guide, a lot of your early game damage is gonna come from these an early str talent will be great for your early lane damage.
* **Stamina/Will** - Basically your physical and magic resist, their are a few talents that will incorporate these stats but for the most part we will be ignoring them.
* **Agility** - you don't need any for this build, stay away from it.
* **Cunning** - You're going to need some of this late game as it effects penetration which we'll be talking about later.

## Advantages and Disadvantages

**Advantages:**

* Good AOE Damage.
* High survability.
* Good Roamer.

**Disadvantages:**

* Bad single target damage.
* Needs to farm to be effective.
* Reliant on a good team.

## Skills

 **Wind and Sparks**
Deals magic damage based on int, talent upgrades deceptive wind and swift wind decrease enemy speed by 30% for 3 seconds and for each enemy hit CD reduced by 1.5 seconds respectively.

This is going to be your main skill for both harassing the enemy and clearing creep waves. Early game this will mostly be used to either harass the enemy liner using the slow to land extra auto attacks or to push your wave out so you can roam. Late game you'll be using this to one shot creeps late game for wave pushing, when in teamfights try to his as many enemies as possible for the CD reduction as it'll increase your AOE damage by leaps and bounds.

 **Cunning Fox**
Create an allusion of yourself for 4 seconds and become invisible for 6, you also get a 30% speed increase if activated on native land. After you get cackling flame the illusion after up for 2 seconds will stun all surrounding enemies for 1.4 seconds.

This is one of the best talents for ganking and escaping ganks, when going in for ganks for both top and bot hit this right around 3/4's of the way up too surprise whoever your ganking leading with the slow from wind and sparks. This is also useful for escaping ganks and getting into or out of the center of the team during fights, however watch out for eyes and wards as they will inhibit your stealth and get you killed if you don't play it right. Remember even if they have vision you can still use this ability for the stun.

 **Flame Tailed**
For 7 seconds the hero releases 5 fireballs hitting up to 5 enemies in the AOE radius dealing damage based on int. The flame shield upgrade is as follows, During use of this talent damage you take is reduced by 35% and increased by 12% if on native land.

This is the skill that truly shows the effectiveness of the fox, during teamfights you're going to pop this in the middle of the doing massive AOE damage and reducing the damage you take. This is also where having a good team really comes into play as your tank/DD's need to follow you up properly, as an example a good combo would be the quarrier leash into your ult as they are stunned and susceptible to your AOE. If you can pop your illusion in the middle of the team after the ult nears it's end you'll be able to stun most allowing your team to clean up what's left.

## Recommended Talents

This will be updated with pretty picture soon but for now we'll just hop right into it with some text. This is my build as of currently In the future I'll try to post a better build when I have more talents available to me.

* Tier 1 Talents - Recovery/Advantage/Natural Mind
* Tier 2 Talents - Living armor/Genius/Desperate intellect
* Tier 3 Talents - Focus/Internal Reserves/Rare Mind/Warrior's way
* Tier 4 Talents - Aspiring thought/Sagacity/Secret Strength/Tainted Blood/Secret Intellect
* Tier 5 Talents - Braveheart/Balanced development/Purposeful/Cruelty/Backbone/Heroic Fortitude
* Tier 6 Talents - Survival Instincts/Unlimited Potential/Greatness of Mind/Toughness.Cobra's treachery

In explanation of talents I've chosen it's mostly concentrating on building health + int. There's a few very important talents in here as well such as internal reserve which provides health when use talents this synergizes very well with your passive and increases your sustain. Survival insticts which is a quest reward is also a wonderful talent that gives you health when you drop below a certain amount, you can use it in order to bait an engagement you can win hower be careful in checking to see if he has it as well.

## Lane Match-Ups

 **Blizzard**
one of the hared lanes you'll, in the beginning you'll have to counter push the wave with your fire cone and focus on last hitting. AA her in the beginning of the game is going to return damage to you with her shield so it's not worth it to harass this point, she also is really good at stopping you from roaming. You're most like gonna need a gank to win this lane or it'll be fairly passive. Also it's hit and miss but can you juke her ult with your illusion if you time it right might be a bug though further testing needed on that. Once you hit mad game focus on skirmishing away from her have your jungler cover gank a lane and try to get ahead. Her utility is just as good as yours if not better so in the end it comes down to a skill match up.

 **Storm Thrower**
A fairly easy lane, you have a lot of mechanics to mitigate his damage, first off his lightning ball will switch targets to your illusion if you pop it in mid flight which makes it really easy to avoid and then all in him now that he lost a chunk of his damage. The main thing you're going to take advantage of in this lane is the fact you can out push pretty easily in order to roam which will allow you to spiral ahead of him if done properly. Other Thant hat it's a standard match up focus on harassing him with auto attacks. Important to note if he goes in on you don't run away or else he'll easily push you out of lane you can mitigate half his burst so go ahead and punish him if he goes in on you.

 **Sorcerer**
I have yet to see on outside of outpost but I'll make a few passing remarks about the theory of this lane. Avoid his stun circle if you cant at least pop illusion to avoid getting polymorphed as a follow up. Other than that he's really squishy and you should be easily able to sneak a few kills on him.

 **Dragonfly**
This guys gonna hurt a lot and you're probably gonna have a tough time if he is familiar with him. First off you can't avoid his ult with allusion so keep that in mind. As far as laning goes he's going to give you a rough time post lvl 5, his ethereal form is going to reduce a lot of your damage and he has high innate sustain like you. It's imperative in this fight that you don't let him have native ground as his skills have high benefits. The one thing you have on him in lane is you can push harder so abuse this fact and try to roam otherwise you'll be stuck in a farm fest stalemate. Late game he can burst down a single person so try to keep him away from your squishy chars.

 **Black Panther**
I've seen her solo mid once or twice and it's a really easy lane, just focus down her pet then kill her one combo is enough to burst her down. Not much else to say about this lane it's an easy win.

## Tips and Tricks

So in this section I'll share a few fun little things you can do as the Flame Tail:

* One of the most fun things to is a really play that's really only effective once but can usually score you first blood. So what you're gonna do is trade with your opponent till he's fairly low. At this point head back to your tower and teleport (just in case he sees you though I doubt he will) cancel it and the illusion as soon as your creeps hit the tower, doing this on native land by your tower will give you the move speed buff now sneak towards the wave get behind him and burst him down with everything you have. This should guarantee the kill.
* The next tip as that when you illusion make sure to run the opposite direction if it's a viable option simply for the fact is that most people will continue running in the same direction. You can also just stand completely still if you're say underneath your tower in order to confuse them.
* Your ult is a great way to reduce damage, in fact if you keep a red pot and a healing scroll in your inventory until a late teamfight you'll be almost unkillable during the process use their advantage and try to gather focus so your other carries can win the game.

## Conclusion

There's still quite a bit more I plan to add to this guide as I explore more content in this game. Feel free to disagree with things I've posted as well as suggest things to add to the guide.

**Guide created by:** Raviren.