#I can used as a meat shield or as a method to gain mana

[i-am-a-fan]

TIP: You can summon me during an attack by using the “@“ Button!

ᴸᵒᵃᵈᶦⁿᵍ ᵗᶦᵐᵉ ᵐᵃʸ ᵛᵃʳʸ ᵇᵉᵗʷᵉᵉⁿ ᵖˡᵃʸᵉʳˢ

[lets-try-dota]

Centaur Warrunner

I was intrigued by Centaur, because I’m sort of drawn to the characters with the largest health pools. While he’s not exactly my type of hero, he’s definitely got utility.

Imposing.

Difficulty: ◆◆◇◇◇ - Relaxed

The Centaur has some pretty simple spells with pretty clear intent. His long cast animations can throw a player for a loop, especially with such close-range skills that are easy to run from or stun him out of. His trickiest ability is his risky W (Double Edge), which deals heavy damage to both an enemy and Centaur himself. There are some pretty interesting economics behind that spell, but it’s really the scariest thing he’s got in his arsenal for the player.

Durability: ◆◆◆◆◇ - Sturdy

Centaur has the largest base health pool in the game by a margin of 300 at level 25. Since his moveset encourages him to build Strength both for increased durability and for higher damage out of his Strength-based E (Return) and R (Stampede), that health pool is likely to soar into the 4000s range by the end of the game. Combined with the fact that his E punishes enemies for attacking him, he can basically effectively place himself in the center of battle. However, his lack of an escape mechanism (thanks to the fact that his escape ability is likely your method of getting into a teamfight) leads to some very compromising situations, and a sloppy Centaur (e.g. me) will die early and often.

Damage Output: ◆◆◆◇◇ - Tough

It doesn’t seem like it, but Centaur is pretty reliant on his spells to deal out damage. They do scale well with Strength gain, but they don’t quite reach full potential thanks to their serial nature. Toward the late game, he can switch over to mainly physical damage, but then his issue becomes attack speed; his is pretty slow, which bars him from becoming a true carry. Honestly, thinking about it now, he may do well with Sange and Yasha; I didn’t even think to get it on him, since it’s such a niche item usually. Move speed, attack speed, and bonus strength/damage are all things he can do well with.

Support Viability: ◆◆◆◇◇ - Semi-Carry

Centaur is kind of hard to scale into the late game, but it can definitely be done. He scales absurdly with Strength boosts; if only there were an item he could get that would give, say, something insane like +40 strength, and also make him regenerate 7% of his health each second! Surely, if such an item existed, VALVe would put it in their default guide, at least as a situational item...

However, a dependency on spells and the ability to initiate teamfights also makes Centaur a good support, stunning and softening up the enemies so his team can come in and finish the job. Unfortunately, bot matches make effective initiating difficult, because bots will just do whatever they want and come into a teamfight one-by-one, letting themselves get shredded.

Sustainability: ◆◆◇◇◇ - Burst

His abilities have fairly short cooldowns, but Centaur’s biggest issue is mana. His mana issues are huge, and they are constant, to the point that I sold the guide’s suggested Tranquil Boots to buy Arcane Boots at the 30 minute mark. Yes, I was still having mana trouble toward the latter half of the game. It’s really a big issue with him; his only saving grace is that he can cast his W as much as he wants, since its damage can’t kill him. However, that can be an issue if he uses too much of his own health; no matter how bottomless his health pool seems, he’s still not invincible.

Enjoyability: ◆◆◇◇◇ - Dull

His abilities move pretty slowly and they don’t seem to have a huge impact. However, I have reason to blame some of my issues enjoying him with VALVe’s terrible item guide for him. Pipe of Insight over Heart of Tarrasque? No situational Satanic? Tranquil Boots on a hero who needs everything except durability? What is up with this guide? Who made it? Luckily, I was keen enough to pick up a Heart for myself, and the difference it made was really spectacular. Creeps basically die in a radius around him, thanks to his E, and the Heart’s health regen lets him retain full health for the entirety of a counterpush, even if he doesn’t attack at all.

How the Match Went: ◆◆◆◇◇ - Close

It’s tough being a tank/initiator when your team is seemingly indifferent to the fight going on. Razor spent the whole game farming and only came out to push at about 50 minutes, which is when he finally became secure in his power, I guess. In the meantime, as you can tell, I was being a complete nitwit, basically meat-shielding my allies and dying in their stead while they failed to take down the Chaos Knight - Shadow Fiend dream team.

It is really tough to overstate how massively a Heart of Tarrasque and Blademail helped Centaur out. Why VALVe didn’t include the former in the guide is completely baffling. 1300 bonus health, 300 bonus HP Regen, 30 bonus E damage and 120 bonus R damage is the kind of buff you’d ask to see removed from the game due to its sheer power; I’d go so far to say that Centaur synergizes with Heart of Tarrasque better than pretty much any other hero. The only one to come close is Pudge.

However, I can understand focusing on Centaur’s many weaknesses. I feel like Arcane Boots and Yasha would pretty much solve them, though. It makes me want to make my own item guide for him.