Plan of Attack Top
Fortress is one of the most effective invaders in the game right now! He is technically classified as a "
protector," and even more accurately, he is an "
initiator."
I think of it as an analogy from other RPGs; where you have characters with spells and abilities that augment the damage output of other characters on the battlefield, even if they themselves aren't directly doing the damage --specifically by reducing enemy defenses and increasing the powers of your companions.
That is
Fortress' greatest power above all else. He is an
augmenter and
synergist.
If for example you have a
Fortress/
Taka combo and the enemy has a Not-Fortress/
Taka combo, the combo with
Fortress will win a 2v2 fight almost every time. In this scenario, the goal of both teams will be to kill the opposing
Taka first, ASAP, but the
Taka with
Fortress on their team will be able to kill the enemy
Taka faster because of the bleed brothers synergy, and then the other enemy hero will probably be dead soon too, once it becomes 2v1.
This is not just because of DPS amplification from
Law of the Claw, but because of the dual gap-closing dynamic from
Truth of the Tooth which lets you and your carry companion focus down and kill their carry faster than the enemy can focus down and kill your own carry companion.
Furthermore, your enemies can hardly ever escape fights anymore. With
Fortress and
Truth of the Tooth, there are no survivors. So even if they hit the
Sprint Boots, it won't be long until you (and usually your whole team) catch them and kill them before they can flee to safety.
This chase-dynamic changes the game theory in a few key ways and should be utilized accordingly in the battle plan; to extract maximum efficiency from
Fortress and his advantages in this new and evolving "mobility-meta."
This means you want to aggro really hard during early and mid game, and by extension the rest of the game --getting into fights you know you can win quickly, and knowing they can't retreat to safety as easily as before. They can't even hide anywhere after level six which is when you get
Attack of the Pack so they can't avoid the snowball by playing conservative.
The best thing about this aggressive approach is that as
Fortress, you don't need many special offensive items to do it effectively, just some
Sprint Boots and
Hourglass, and you can be a deadly offensive force like this, (as attack amplifier in tandem with your team) all the way up to level 12, for hardly any gold cost! If you pull it off, there won't even
be a late game for the opposing team.
In regards to other items I notice people tend to buy for
Fortress:
Why should we spend gold to buy a Warhorn, when
Fortress has a built-in Warhorn in his A-ability,
Truth of the Tooth?
Why should we spend gold to buy
Scout Trap(s),
Flare Gun(s), or
Contraption, if
Fortress has a built in homing device and renewable global flare in his ultimate
Attack of the Pack?
On
Fortress, those items are quite redundant and cost gold that you could be using to rush
Fountain of Renewal which is a much more significant team-fight winning item, especially when purchased as early as possible.
The default kit is so effective by itself that it lets us focus our item purchases on assets that put the rest of our team in a much better position to realistically dominate team fights. This means that our primary assets are: team-survivability from
Fountain of Renewal, and
Crucible, bleed effect from
Law of the Claw, chase via
Truth of the Tooth, and initiation from
Attack of the Pack.
Now we are starting to illustrate why we should use
Fortress differently than a traditional support hero. He has no need to "waste" time with traditional support duties such as placing
Scout Trap(s) all over the map, because his unique abilities overlap with those duties in a very powerful way. We should still use
Scout Trap(s) to create kill opportunities in the shop-bush area, on
Gold Mine/Kraken, and other little things here and there, but
Scout Trap(s) for traditional vision are a bit less neccesary when playing this type of aggressive game.
When we are constantly engaging in and winning team-fights, we control the map so much that old-school
Scout Trap placement theory is a bit redundant because you always know where they are, when they are spawning, and you are constantly feeling them out. This is completely different than when we play with non-invade heroes and we are cycling our own farm over and over safely on our side of the map. We have little-to-no interaction with the enemy and have no idea where they are or what they are doing. So with that type of traditional gameplay the
Scout Trap is of course, essential.
With traditional support roles, what is usually implied is that the support hero is the least "busy" hero. But with
Fortress, its the opposite, he is the
most "busy" hero; constantly and frantically hunting, initiating, and pretty much fighting more than anyone else. He has no time or empty slots open to serve the team via traditional support duties, he is busy constantly trying to create game-winning kill opportunities for the team along with
Taka.
Ardan,
Adagio, or
Catherine on the other hand have time and slot space during "down time" since their abilities don't reveal the enemy location; so they should provide a sense of vision for the team manually. So with
Fortress, it should be our companion placing a
Scout Trap on the
Gold Mine/Kraken while we are smelling out the tri-bushes for enemies to munch on.
As
Fortress, we have all that stuff in our basic kit, and all we need is some
cool-down items to make it effective enough for constant use.
Early Invasion Top
Start to invade!
Don't be afraid to risk it. Since
Fortress doesnt rely too much on purchased items, its OK to trade deaths with the enemy carry sometimes. You don't really have any penalty for personally being behind the curve once you get your
Fountain of Renewal. You want to keep the pressure on and even if you accidentally die, its not that big of a deal as long as your team gets a kill out of the death too.
Start with
Ironguard Contract and ping your teammates to come to the enemy jungle and invade every time you start a new game.
This is pretty much the same thing we used to do with
Koshka when she was OP:
Begin the match by rushing to the middle area. By the time you arrive to the middle area, hopefully you see their laner show up in the lane. Perfect. Keep pushing and don't even attack any enemies you see at first, just run
PAST them straight through the middle tri-bush and straight towards their enemy minion-mine area. That way they can't retreat away from you to turret safety when they see your whole team is there trying to invade them. It will already be too late because you will get to a position behind them that guarantees they can't escape. Your other two teammates are advancing hard and fast from the bottom shop-area already giving chase, and you have passed them up enough to surround them 3v2, all the whilst all five of you are running AWAY from the enemy laner who will get there way too late (if at all). If you kill one or two enemies, thats perfect. If not, let them go and quickly go up and leash their top healer minion and bring it back down south to kill him and the double minion camp. If you all stay south, they won't risk coming to fight you, it will be too far away from their turrets. Just don't go north and theres nothing they can do about it in time.
As soon as the enemy jungle is farmed and you (hopefully) got a couple of kills, head back and let the laner go to lane.
You and your companion start farming your own jungle after shopping for
Sprint Boots.
Based on how hard you hit them earlier, you should go for another early 2v2 or even 3v2 invade after you cycle your jungle.
Always go attempt to farm their middle area minions every farming cycle. Poke their shop-bush and tri-bush to look for opportunities. The more advantage you have, the more you should push it as a rule --or otherwise risk losing the advantage in some Even-Stevens team fight later on down the road.
An advantage is only as good as your ability to snowball it. That means that mathematically, you didnt make much profit by killing a couple of extra camps and enemies (not enough to make a huge difference and guarantee you a win) and maybe you even wasted time yourself. But what you know for sure is; right now, this minute, they are still weaker than you. Thats really your only advantage; this window of opportunity. In the long term it will even out. They might not be weaker than you five minutes from now, so don't let them farm comfortably after a successful invade. Try to snowball it from there otherwise it wont be an advantage for long.
Don't be complacent by only farming your own side due to wanting to be safe. They are just as afraid of getting invaded as you are of invading them. If the enemy laner is visible and busy, don't hesitate to engage over and over again! Its not just about you gaining farm, its about them
not gaining it. Thats the only way to create a true and significant gold advantage that will win you the game. This is especially true when both teams are efficient farmers, or if they have a better potential late game comp.
Losing a few hundred gold towards your build early on means nothing when winning end-game team fights net you profits of thousands of gold. It will all even out. Its like peeing in the ocean, that 200 hundred gold worth of lost wave clear doesn't really matter if it means you get a snowball advantage that the enemy can never recover from.
First Few Items Top
When its time to buy your first few items, they are all conveniently on the same panel located under the
utility tab. Just buy all four tier-1 items on the left, they are all in the same place:
Ironguard Contract,
Sprint Boots,
Hourglass, and
Oakheart. Then its heavy defense from there:
Fountain of Renewal and
Crucible.
So when you visit the shop for the first time in the field, buy
Sprint Boots and have about three or four
Halcyon Potion(s) on you.
Halcyon Potion(s) are sold back at full price for 25 Gold so its always better to have too many of them as opposed to not enough of them because you can sell them back anytime at 100% value in a pinch if you need to buy something else instead, they are like a currency. You always want to be swimming in potions because you want to stay full on health and mana at all times (
Halcyon Potion(s) also restore mana) to take advantage of any and all opportunities to pounce on people. That enemy shop-bush for example is like candy --you never know what you will find down there! And again, they can never escape you and your companion like they would escape from other heroes so take advantage of that whenever you catch a glimpse of someone.
Oftentimes, if I know they haven't shopped in a while, I will place two mines in their shop bush on their side and we will wait there patiently for up to a minute for them to come use the shop and wait till they are touching us to attack. The mines we are sitting on will help kill them easily for an easy single or double kill. And you know they will come shop, they have to.
The next purchase on the next cycle is to buy
Hourglass so that way you can always pounce when you need to and your companion gets the speed boost so you can keep farming as fast and efficiently as humanly possible. Make sure to leash farm minions at all times towards your next farm minion to keep it fluid.
After that, get
Oakheart and proceed to rush your first
Fountain of Renewal while frantically cycling between farming, invading, and ganking in the lane.
Mid Game Top
Fortress peaks really hard around levels 5-7, especially if you have been getting some early kills. Don't be afraid to pop a
Weapon Infusion once or twice at any point where you feel there will be a team fight that helps you push the lead or get
goldmine.
Feel free to pop a Weapon
Winfusion anytime, either after you finish
Fountain of Renewal, or if you are doing really well and don't need the advantage, you can wait until after
Crucible to pop one. You are useful simply with your default kit and your companions, so there is no rush to reach some end-game build before you can be effective in fights. Take the time to invest in a
Weapon Infusion, they are always worth.
And because the default kit is so good, upgrade the
Hourglass up to
Chronograph after you get
Crucible.
If you are winning, keep pressure on the lane-bush area near the first enemy turret, south of it, all the way to their back camps, and back around towards the middle. That whole loop is yours starting in the alley-way just under the enemy turret area and back around. This way you control their back camps by keeping pressure there and going back and forth whenever farms re-spawn. Just make sure not to be a victim of their turret when all three enemies are there. Fight them near their back camps but not so much near their turret and especially not in their turret lane-bush where they can pick you off from the safety of their turret.
Anytime you need to find them for a full-pressure hunt when you are with your whole team, just release the hounds.
End Game Top
So by the time you have
Fountain of Renewal,
Crucible, and
Chronograph, get another
Weapon Infusion and you guys should be able to win team fights heavily to push turrets.
In team fights, your goal is to attack first, and pounce on the weakest, deadliest heroes such as
Ringo,
Taka,
Celeste,
Vox and
Koshka but sometimes you just kill whoever is about to die or who is closest.
You can mark one person and then pounce on another. But you want to use your B-ability
Law of the Claw on the person you need dead the most.
Always use your allies as a speed boost from the
Packmates perk by touching them to aid your escape whenever you're in danger.
Essentially a fight usually goes like this:
- Use ultimate
Attack of the Pack
- Mark a weak target
Truth of the Tooth
- Pounce
Truth of the Tooth
- Mini-warhorn chase ensues
- Make them bleed
Law of the Claw
- Enemies hopefully target you
- When you are low on health touch your ally and get the
Packmates speed boost to escape
Koshka-style
Then when you are out of immediate danger, hopefully your
Chronograph got your
Truth of the Tooth reactivated to pounce once again to finish off any survivors. Ace!
Use
Crucible and
Fountain of Renewal accordingly, and always have your ultimate
Attack of the Pack on during major fights. It makes your attack speed go up significantly and lets you survive better while creating chaos, slowdown, and mass bleed-effect which gives your team momentum and a significant edge. We took overdrive on the ultimate for the lower
cool-down so we always have it as often as possible, before and during any and all crucial team fights.
Don't be afraid to turret dive quite deep. Especially if you are with a
Taka, manage turret-aggro smartly and keep it on you and away from
Taka who is in there killing, even if it means you die so
Taka can live to feed another day. Remember turret-aggro can be quite manageable and its good to mess around with and memorize the dead zones up north in between turrets in training mode. If two of you are in turret range, the turret can only attack one of you at a time and offers no protection for the fleeing enemy if turret aggro is on you and not the person chasing. You can stay just within range to keep aggro on you and then get out of range before you die and hopefully by then
Taka has gotten the kill and escaped as well.
You can dive very deep!
Conclusion Top
Thanks for reading the guide! I know its a bit long, but I tried to include many details to illustrate what it feels like playing
Fortress so that newer players can get a good idea of what the mindset is like beyond just listing the builds.
Its very rewarding to play this
Fortress build with an excellent
Taka player and it is one of the most OP tandems in the game right now as of 1.6 in my opinion.
Thank you, and have a tremendous day!
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