General DiscussionBLEEP BLOOP - A wisp guide by general_tao

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Introduction
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Hi, my name is general_tao and here is a guide to one of my favorite heroes: IO the wisp. Since wisp is a hero that is and should be played in combos, this guide will be formatted in describing different aspects of some of the best wisp combos. Since I am describing combos, I will not only develop on what wisp should do and get, but also the other hero.

The combos I will be expanding on are ursa, tiny, riki and ck. In the last section of the guide I will include a brief description of some other of my favorite combos.

I hope you will enjoy my guide. Have a nice read.

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Wisp in general
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Wisp is a great support hero. He makes your carry a beast but is very fragile and requires good communication with the carry to play. When you practice the hero, I strongly recommend doing it with the same partner all the time so you can improve your coordination.

Wisp is a good 4, but not a very good 5 (hard support). The proper way to play against him is to focus him all the time, meaning you will be focused a lot and need defensive items and some level of farm. This doesn’t mean you should not buy wards or buy/upgrade the courier.

Wisp is a very weak laner and should never be used in an aggressive trilane. It is better in a defensive trilane or a 2-1-2 setup. Having 0 starting armor, low hp and shitty damage, you cannot afford to trade hits with your opponents.

You can also dual mid it, having the wisp rune controlling with the bottle but this has been nerfed a lot in the recent patches.

Wisp is a very coordination and communication dependent hero. You MUST have a way to talk to your carry, be it ingame voice chat or a third party program.

In the mid-late game, it is very important to keep good map control and aggressive wards so you can really be a global threat. Wards in the enemy jungle will allow you to kill farming carries, and wards on runes or other common spots will allow you to kill warding/dewarding supports.

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Pros and Cons of each combo: [/size]
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[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Pros: [/size][/color]

Attack speed and tankiness provided by overcharge make ursa even scarier than he naturally is. The bonus movespeed provided by tether also means it is very hard to escape the ursa. Note that you can lvl 1 rosh if wisp has 3 salves, and after wisp got his medallion it increases the speed at which you can kill rosh during the game.

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Cons: [/size][/color]

This combo is not very effective against carries that have good escape mechanisms until ursa gets abyssal blade or sheepstick.

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[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Pros: [/size][/color]

The best pushing combo in the game. Once tiny has his aghs, manta, ac and deso, he can outregen the backdoor protection of towers and raxes, meaning that every minute you can kill one of those buildings and are a constant threat to your enemies. Tiny also has huge burst damage that can kill most supports in 1 hit in the early game. Craggy exterior also makes tiny excellent against melee carries with high attackspeed. Overgrowth with overcharge obviously synergises pretty well too.

When chasing. if avalanche is on cooldown, tiny can toss the tethered wisp to slow the opponent. Don't forget tether has a 900 break range and toss has 1300 range, so you have to be closer than 900 units of your opponent for this to work. As wisp, you have to bring your balls closer to you so they explode on impact for a 800 magic damage burst (toss and spirits lvl 4)

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Cons: [/size][/color]

Unless tiny gets a big farm, he can easily get outcarried by a hard carry. This combo is also somewhat ineffective against high mobility carries.

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[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]pros: [/size][/color]

This combo is specifically made to kill blinking and hard to kill heroes (am, morph, weaver, etc). With blinkstrike into cloud and tether slow, most heroes will die before being able to escape the cloud to blink. If it is mid-late game, you will at least force a bkb charge, which by itself is a win.

Ganks without relocate are very easy with this combo. Just place the invis riki behind the target, and as soon as wisp uses tether, riki used cloud.

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Cons: [/size][/color]

As with tiny, riki can get outcarried if he doesn’t get enough kills and farm. You need to get an early advantage and snowball from there on to use this combo at max effectiveness. Furthermore, tiny has some backup plan in being a pushing beast in the lategame, but riki doesn’t.

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[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Pros: [/size][/color]

This combo received a heavy nerf with patch 6.79, since it could stun for over 6 sec. It is still viable and works well against high mobility heroes because of reality rift.

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Cons: [/size][/color]

6.79 reduced greatly the stunlock potential of this combo. Also the enemy will know which is the real ck because of the tether.

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Abilities [/color][/size]: A description of the abilities wisp has and description of some of their uses.

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Tether (Q):[/size][/color]Tether is wisp’s signature skill. It is extremely versatile and has many uses:

Slowing: I cried a little when tether lost its stun, but the slow is still quite usefull to kill heroes without blink or a good escape mechanism.

Escaping: Tether has a huge range (1600) and can be used to tether an allied unit to escape a gank and avoid getting killed. Note that you have to be at at least 600 range for the tether to move you.

Cutting trees: If your carry doesn’t have a quelling blade, you should go destroy the trees next to the pulling camp to facilitate double pulls in the early game. You can also destroy the trees up the cliff to the right of roshan to prevent aegis steals by pesky heroes like batrider, storm or any blinking hero.

Healing: the tether unit receives 1.5x you health and mana regen. This is one of the main uses of tether in every phase of the game. Mek gives the tethered unit 625 hp when used with tether on. Soul ring gives 225 mana.
Notes: to heal a unit with tether, you must have lost the hp you will be healing before healing yourself. This is easily achieved using overcharge or soul ring. You do not need to lose some mana before using soul ring since it will increase your manapool if you are full.

Tether has a 900 break range, so you need to have a good positioning and coordination not to break the tether, particularly if you are with a blinking or blinkstriking hero. In that case, tether should be used right before the blink from at least 600 range so you will follow your carry when he blinks.

You cannot aim tether on a magic immune unit, so tether your ally before he uses his BKB

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Spirits (W):[/size][/color]Your balls are your only nuke, and should always be maxed first to increase your burst damage. Their use needs practice to aim them, but they are a very powerful nuke. Besides, putting your balls in someone’s face is always a pleasing experience.

You should always shift cast your balls when using a tp from fountain, since it will cost you 0 mana.

Try to aim for heroes that are close to each other since it will double your damage output.

You should always cast your balls before relocating to give them time to form. If you used them at least 5 sec before relocating, you can also use them twice during the relocate time.

You can farm multiple camps in the jungle by standing in between them and having the balls pass over. You can also stack multiple camps this way.

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Overcharge (E):[/size][/color]This is what makes your carry a beast. Huge attackspeed bonus and 20% more tankiness.

Use this skill if you need to lose some hp before healing someone. You can also toggle it quickly in between tower hits or strong nukes.

When you are healing with someone in the fountain, use overcharge to speed up his healing

Try to have good positioning in fights to avoid getting hit. This allows you to use urn, salves, bottle, heart while overcharging to give huge regen to your carry as well as making him tankier.

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Relocate (R):[/size][/color] global threat to any hero alone, this often forces your enemies to 5 man early to avoid getting picked off all over the map.

If you are facing a high mobility hero, it is often good to relocate directly on him since he won’t be able to see the animation. To notice it he needs to look at the map during that 2 sec.

You can save anyone from impending death relocating them to the base. More often than not, this will mean you are dead if no one is around you to tether when you relocate back.

If your carry gets disabled during a fight, a short relocate backwards will save him, and at the same time you will not get him out of the fight so he can continue dealing damage.

Your tether has the same cooldown and duration as the relocate duration, but will never break during a relocate. If you do break the tether during relocate, you will always be able to tether again, but only once. Use this to slow twice in a fight with tether or to bring back an injured hero at the end of the relocate instead of your carry.

During a relocate, you should always prepare yourself to answer this question: Should I leave my carry here to continue fighting/farm or should I bring him back? If you don’t prepare the answer to this in advance, you might have one second only to think about it and make a mistake.

Try to be hidden when using relocate so your enemies don’t know where you will be going back and wait for you there to kill you.

In the mid to late game, Your team should always be split into you and your carry farming, and the other 3 together doing something useful. If a fight breaks out you will always be able to join them, and if you get ganked, you can relocate your carry out.

The cast time of relocate is not a channeling but if you get stunned during it, you will not relocate. Be wary of this when using it defensively.

Try avoiding to use relocate to heal in fountain. You have items to heal anyways and its a waste of a great skill with decent cooldown at early levels.

Never relocate on an enemy hero if you don’t see his allies on the map. It might be a trap.

I often tell my carry so stop moving right before relocating, so we don’t break the tether by accident. You can also achieve this by rightclicking your carry before looking for a relocate spot.

If you see you might fall into a trap, just leave your carry and pray.

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Item choices : [/size]
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[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Starting items: [/size][/color]

The starting items are a combination of those items. Items on the left have higher priority. ''/'' means or and '','' means and.

/ / , , , , , ,

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Laning phase : [/size][/color]

I get most of the time (if not all) an early . It gives you damage, and very needed armor. Then I disassemble my basi to make items that depend on the combo I’m doing.

[size=16][Color=#aa3cff]Ursa/riki:[/size][/color] basi is disassembled into and + . Considering both of those heroes will get a basi ring or Aquila, mana is not an issue.

[size=16][Color=#aa3cff]Tiny/ck:[/size][/color] basi is disassembled into + . The soul ring is more than enough to cover your carry’s mana problems and if it isn’t, put in a magic wand for good measure. Be sure that your carry is tread switching properly to get the full benefits of the soul ring.(str when soul ring is used, then int when casting)

Note: my boots of choice are almost always tranquil. The regen is good for you and your carry and 4 armor is great on a 0 base armor hero. Do not get mana boots unless your whole team really needs it and no one else can make them. If you have a mana dependent carry, soul ring is more than enough. The only time you should get manaboots is when facing a wex invoker.

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Mid–late game: [/size][/color] Here you have many options depending on your opponents and how the game is going.

[size=16][Color=#aa3cff]Your partner’s items should look like this:[/size][/color]

[color=#f5ff55]Ursa[/color]: phase/BoT, vlads, bkb, dagger/shadow blade, sheepstick/abyssal blade, butterfly, aegis/heart

Note: when ursa is about to get 6 slotted, he must tell the wisp, so wisp can start building vlads to free Ursa’s inventory space.

[color=#f5ff55]Tiny[/color]: treads/BoT, drums, aghanims,assault cuirass, manta style, desolator/daedalus

Notes: he gets deso if you are pushing and backdooring towers, else daedalus. If the wisp is filthy rich he can get the deso instead of tiny.

[color=#f5ff55]Riki[/color]: treads/BoT, diffusal blade, manta style, butterfly, abyssal blade,MKB/daedalus.

[color=#f5ff55]Ck[/color]: treads/BoT, drums, armlet, manta style, satanic, mkb.

[size=16][Color=#aa3cff]IO’s items: [/size][/color]

: cheap source of health and mana. Make sure you tell your carry to put his treads on agility before using.

: A must. Sometimes someone else will make it but it should be on you most of the time to get the armor and to be able to heal your carry while relocating.

: good to survive during relocate, force your stunned carry to a safe place, and generally a great item. If you want to force your ally and follow him, you can be away from him (at least 600 range), tether and immediately force him. As soon as you will be in range to force, it will work and you will follow your ally to his destination.

: gives extra movespeed, you can eul an enemy to position yourself to slow when he lands and eul’s makes you invulnerable for 1/6th of the relocate time to help you survive.

: Get this ASAP. You become a walking fountain.

: Get these boots when you can afford them, if possible right after heart. When relocate ganking, you can leave your carry there and join him back after with the BoTs. The very high movespeed combined with tether also helps kiting enemies while your carry deals damage.

: get it only if you didn’t get the mek. Do not get both.

: help your carry even more. If you are comboing with ursa, the ursa must tell you when he is about to get 6 slotted to give you time to farm this. He can then sell his own for a more agressive item and you provide the aura.

: are you getting raped by physical dps ?

: are you balling out of control ? (pubs only not for serious games)

: provides good tankiness, a slow (unreliable), disarm and evasion.

: I almost never get it, but no doubt it can be very good. I simply prefer to start my heart at that point. Particularly good against a disruptor to prevent getting glimpsed back.

: self explanatory, situational item. Use your judgement. It can be used on your carry to prevent some single target disables.

: Probably the best item in the game, but by that point you should already have won. I think I only could afford it once.

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Skillbuild[/size]
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q = tether
w = spirits
e = overcharge
r = relocate
s = stats

IO’s skillbuild is most of the time q-w-w-e-w-r-w-e-e-e-r-q-q-q-s-r. Since the nerf to tether, the increased slow time is not worth upgrading the skill anymore. The bonus IAS and tankiness from overcharge is better in almost any case. Maxing the nuke first is a no-brainer since it’s a VERY powerful nuke (500 aoe damage, 14 sec cooldown on lvl 4)

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[size=18]Laning, Mid and Late game play styles : [/size]
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[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Laning:[/size][/color]
As previously mentioned, wisp is a very bad laner. Do not expect your enemies to cower with their tails between their legs when you harass them, expect them to laugh at you and return the favor. You should mostly stack and pull from the jungle to get lvl 6 as soon as possible. Remember, the game really starts for you at lvl 6.

Once your basi is up you can trade a little bit of hits, but not too much. For harassing, just use the balls. They are very intimidating and you can zone people out to let your carry safely farm.

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Midgame:[/size][/color]
The midgame starts for you when you hit lvl 6. From that point on, you need to have eyes everywhere. Be aware of every enemy towers health. Tier 1 towers don’t have backdoor protection and can easily be backdoored for a little income boost.

Most of the time, you will follow your carry everywhere and secure his farm. If he is farming a lane close to a jungle, you can go in the jungle to farm multiple camps with your spirits. Do not wander too far from your carry as he might need your help or you might need to relocate somewhere to gank or countergank.

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Lategame:[/size][/color]
The lategame part of the game is pretty similar to the midgame. Stay with your carry at all times and have your other 3 heroes together doing something useful like pushing, farming or ganking. If a fight breaks out, join it with relocate or escape ganks with it. Alwais make sure your allies know when your relocate is on/off cooldown. It is critical information.

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Friends and foes : [/size]
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[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Friends: [/size][/color]Here are some heroes that will not be your tether partner but that can be very useful to have in your team:

: he can hunt down enemies for you and give you track gold on ganks.

: he can join fights with you anywhere on the map.

: he can give empower to your carry. This is particularly strong with tiny, giving him 100% cleave and melting anyone getting caught in reverse polarity.
You can also try to do the fountain skewer combo, but it requires some practice and can backfire miserably, so I would only recommend attempting it when you are almost certain of losing and the gamble might get you back in a leading position. This video demonstrates the skewer relocate combo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJrTAg6Uhrk

: he can sunstrike anywhere to help you in your ganks.

: gives vision on any low hp hero so you can gank them.

: when you tether your carry, the aura gives him 6.25 mana regen at lvl 4

: he can go inside your carry to gank with you.

: at lvl 3, his ultimate will heal the carry for 1000 hp. He also allows some defensive relocate shenanigans like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEj91pE6KEc&list=UUfsOfLvadg89Bx8Sv_6WERg&feature=c4-overview

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Foes:[/size][/color]

: glimpse is a pain in the ass for wisp. He can glimpse you to kill your carry, or glimpse him to kill you. If he know where you are landing he can ult trap you there for 2 kills as well.

/ : You are very squishy and susceptible to burst nukes. If those heroes are on the field get a casual cloak.

: Very hard to gank and he runs around you laughing while killing you.

Agressive trilanes: If you think you might face one, you better have a strong laner like visage as your second support.

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Heroes Wisp excels against[/color][/size]

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]General categories:[/size][/color]

Ranged carries: Usually squishier than melee carries, they will melt to a wisp combo. The only exception is weaver, because he is extremely mobile and hard to kill.

Squishy supports: They can never be alone in the map or they are dead. Period. It is important that you keep good map control to catch them off guard when they ward/deward.

[size=16][Color=#00a5ab]Special mentions:[/size][/color]

: relocate breaks flaming lasso so your carry is alwais safe from a pickoff. If wisp gets lassoed, just tether back to your team after lasso is done.

: splitpushing is very dangerous against a wisp. It is easier to counter him comboing with a blinking hero. When furion gets his shadowblade, the carry has to blink toward his escape path and dust (if you have no gem)

: same as with furion. Having global presence is very risky against a wisp.

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Other combos : [/size]
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here are other combos that work pretty well with wisp:

: start the stun right before relocare for maximum effectiveness. Alch has the lowest BAT (base attack time) in the game while using the ulti, so he is the hero that benefits the most from IAS. Alch needs a dagger.

, : blink sets up the tether slow and they both benefit from IAS. AM has a low BAT as well.

: Eblade and double dagon (pub only)

: He deserves a special mention. Relocate sets up omnislash very well and the healing the ward provides while tethered is absurd. In the laning phase jugg benefits a lot from the extra movement speed with bladefury as well. You need a soul ring for this combo

, , , : carries who benefit from the attack speed, movespeed, tankiness and have some way to close the distance between them and the target. With sven get soulring, with the others urn+medallion.

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Suggested material : [/size]
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I have an ingame guide I made that has any items I might want to buy as suggested items. It is quite useful so I don’t gave to browse the shop to buy my items. You can use it if you want, its name is: Tao’s complete item list.

You can watch any of my replays where I was playing with dp.Amok (he sometimes calls himself 2 russians1vodka). He's my usual combo partner. If it was between 2 and 5 AM EST, I was probably drunk so don't judge too harshly :P.

English is not my first language so if you see any mistakes, let me know in the comments.

Thank you for reading. May you destroy your foes on the field of battle and cover yourself with glory with the amazing hero that is Wisp.

Best regards.

general_tao.