OVERVIEW Top
SAW is awesome. He has so much potential to kill things everywhere, but how do you unlock that potential?. Weapon SAW scares everyone once he gets spun up, but he takes an eternity to do that (either naturally or with
Suppressing Fire) and does puny damage until he does. Worse, the enemy can just stun him or run away to put thing back at square one. Crystal SAW has the opposite problem - when he's using his abilities, especially
Suppressing Fire, he's the norse god of crystal damage. Once his abilities are spent, however, he's barely a warm body, and the five seconds to get the next round of abilities are a chance for the enemy to wipe the floor with your team. He also has trouble holding the lane and getting last hits in the midgame, which leads to a farm disadvantage you might not be able to overcome.
However, there is a middle ground! You can have your cake and eat it too if you build both! The crystal lets you start engagements with a huge burst of damage, and the weapon lets you polish off anyone foolish enough to stick around.
STARTING LOADOUT Top
Start with a
Book of Eulogies and two
Halcyon Potions - you'll do ever so slightly less damage than a SAW with a
Weapon Blade, but the health you get back will make up for that by an order of magnitude. Wait to pick your first ability until after the first exchange - if the enemy retreats get
Suppressing Fire to keep control of the lane, and if you retreat get
Roadie Run to stay alive. Harass the enemy with
Suppressing Fire and use minions and
Halcyon Potions to heal and outlast your enemy. Even if you lose the first engagement your healing and eventually the long range of
Suppressing Fire will let you regain space. The overall idea is to push the minions into their turret and make last hitting that much harder for them. In this stage making the opposing laner return to base to heal is almost as good as a kill, so don't overextend to secure kills.
EARLY GAME Top
Once you earn 1200-1500 gold, return to base and buy these items. When you come back use the ridiculous crystal ratio on
Suppressing Fire to keep the enemy at arm's length and the weapon power to secure last hits. If anyone gets close show them your amazing weapon DPS, and don't forget to secure the kill with
Roadie Run.
An alternate build here is to get a second
Crystal Bit instead of the
Energy Battery - you'll do more damage with your abilities, but you'll have to keep a close watch on your energy level. If you do this build the
Energy Battery instead after you get
Sorrowblade.
MIDGAME Top
Build evenly across your items to stretch your gold, with weapon items coming first (last hits are more important than kills). Place scout traps in all three bushes around the center of the lane and NEVER EVER move forward of a bush that doesn't have a scout trap in it.
Book of Eulogies is only useful if you're sticking in the lane and getting lots of last hits, so if you find yourself dying quickly after you spawn buy armor or shield to counter whoever is killing you.
LATEGAME Top
Once your team starts grouping buy boots so you can keep up with your junglers. If you haven't done so already, buy armor or shield to counter whoever scares you the most. Once you buy
Sorrowblade, use the newly opened slot to build towards
Shatterglass. Once you've bought that, use the open slot again to build a
Chronograph and work towards
Clockwork.
One of the best things about SAW is his ult (
Mad Cannon) - it slices through enemy heroes with both a weapon and crystal ratio and never misses. In fact, you can load your gun with exploding shells when no enemy is in sight, then watch
Mad Cannon recharge while you haven't even used it yet! Often I'll get two ults per engagement by having one already loaded in the gun and another waiting to be loaded when I expend the first one.
FINAL BUILD Top
Finish off armor, shield, boots, and a final damage item as needed. The final damage item will typically be a
Serpent Mask, but consider
Bonesaw,
Broken Myth, or
Crucible as needed.
Keep in mind that SAW is one of the best heroes in the game at stealing the Kraken.
Suppressing Fire does continuous, heavy damage over 2.5 seconds (otherwise known as an eternity when the Kraken is about to be unleashed). If the Kraken dies while you're hitting him you have great odds of getting the last hit. The icing on top of the cake is that you can hit him from far away and then immediately run away with
Roadie Run. I even think he beats Joule at this, since SAW gets
Suppressing Fire every 10-15 seconds and therefore doesn't need to save up an ult for the task.
Quick Comment () View Comments
You need to log in before commenting.