7.02 Tidehunter Support

Good ol’ battle pass inspired me to rock the support Tide this match. Some quick thoughts.

• Super important to hold on to the skill point at level 1. I skilled Gush, which ended up working out for first blood on Techies, but what if I didn’t catch out the Techies? Anchor Smash is way more mana efficient for trading. Should have saved the point until I knew we could try for the Techies kill. Gush with man advantage, Anchor Smash for trading.
  • Gush: 110 damage for 120 mana, 40% slow for 4 seconds, -3 armor
  • Anchor Smash: 75 damage for 30 mana, -45% damage for 6 seconds
• For starting items, I wish I had snagged a wind lace to help land Anchor Smash on people. Maybe two clarities too, Levi runs dry quick.
• Felt very effective in the early game, I suspect the hero is cruelly underplayed as a support. Gush and Anchor Smash are really strong skills, he just needs to mana up frequently.
• When the lanes were pushed out with no good opportunities to hurt someone, I went full on Stackhunter. Felt like I had a lot of options for how to play, I could easily bully people off their bounty runes, could skirmish in lane, or gank, or jungle.

Good enough to draft? I think YES. He would work great tanking ganks against a pick-off team that utilizes heroes like Slardar, Spacecow, Ember etc. Gives your own team tower diving ability too and tons of team fight just like standard offlane Tide. But it’s not commonly played so the player needs to be aware that he is squishier than usual, and that he’s going to run out of mana a lot.