Arachna HoN Guide
Heroes of Newerth Character Guide for the Arachna Hero. Click here to check out a basic guide for Arachna written by Shadowcamsy. That guide talks about Arachna’s basic skills and some good tips on what you should do in the game. But I want to talk about more serious detailed strategies and tactics for Arachna. First up, let’s talk about what to do in the beginning of the match. When you start out by your pool, let’s say you are playing a 5v5 match for the most popular map. You will have about 600 bucks or so to start with, so if nobody is buying a courier then you should buy a courier for yourself. If you have to buy one yourself buy the courier monkey, a pretender’s crown and 1x runes of blight. If you don’t have to buy a courier then buy a pretender’s crown 2 pairs of those +3 to agility slippers and then some runes of blight (the things that let you eat trees to regen health). The reason why I go for the agility slippers instead of the strength gloves is because I want to make a Soulscream Ring instead of a strength bracer. This is because this guide is going to show you how to use Arachna as an offensive character that doesn’t want to get hit much. I used to get the Soulscream Ring in when I first started playing Arachna, then I switched to the Strength Bracer because I thought I wanted more health but then I switched back to the agility slippers for the Soulscream Ring. The reason why I like the Soulscream Ring is because the recipe is cheaper and the extra damage helps you last hit and deny creeps. If you don’t know what last hitting is, it’s when you attack a friendly or enemy creep when it is 1 hit away from being dead by pressing “A” on the keyboard to get the target reticule, then you “Left Click” on the target creep and you kill it. If the creep is an enemy you will see a gold number show up. That number is how much gold you acquired for killing the creep. If you last hit an friendly creep, you get a message that says, “Denied.” That message means that enemy heroes in the area will receive less Experience Points (EXP) for the death of that creep. This is important especially if you are playing against a ranged hero because generally ranged heroes receive even less EXP due to creep denies than melee heroes. This is key because as Arachna, you will probably be taking the middle or “mid” path in the map by yourself (solo) and will have to face another ranged hero. This is because ranged heroes usually are picked to go solo mid.
Now that you got your starting items you are ready to hot-key your hero by holding “Ctrl” and then pressing “1” on the keyboard. Then hotkey your courier with the number “3” on the keyboard. Now if you press 1 twice the screen will center to your hero, and if you press 3 twice the screen will center to your monkey courier. There is a reason why you didn’t set the courier to “2” and we’ll get into that later. Start walking to your lane and put 1 skill point into “Webbed Shot.” This is one of the best skills in the game. It lets you slow the attack speed and movement speed of an enemy and attack with your physical base damage at the same time. It’s kind of like an attack modifier, but better…especially if you get it to level 3 or 4. When you get the the first tower wait for the horn to blow and then try and block the creeps from walking too fast by zig zagging a bit. Then when you encounter the enemy hero and creeps try and back off and move around to avoid getting shot by nukes, like Pyromancer’s nuke, or Defiler’s nuke and keep moving until an enemy creep is almost dead or if an allied creep is almost dead. Then last hit either the almost dead creep or allied creep by how I mentioned above, by pressing “a” then left clicking on the almost dead creep. If no creeps are close to dead and you find that the enemy hero is just standing there or you think he/she is close enough, go ahead and click on your Webbed Shot skill and hit the enemy with a blast of silk! This is a good way to harass your enemy and to punish them for getting too close. If you do this and don’t just stand there and auto creeps you will not push the lane or path that you are in and the creeps will gradually fight closer and closer to your tower. Or if the other hero is playing the same way then the creeps will generally fight in the same place. If you fight with the creeps close to your tower it is safer than if you fight close to the enemy tower. The reason for this is because you always want to be close enough to the deaths of the enemy creeps that you get EXP and if the fighting keeps taking place near the enemy tower you will have to back off in order to stay out of range of the tower. This might be too far to get EXP for the creep deaths. Also if you fight near your own tower you will have elevation and line of sight on your side, this is especially true if you are fighting mid. After a few waves you will have leveled up. You want to put your next point into “Harden Carapace.” This skill is very underrated because it lets you take away debuffs like the dangerous Vindicator Sage’s Lore attack. If you click Hidden Carapace on you will take away this debuff among others. The next skill you should get after that is Webbed Shot (Skill LEVEL 2) and then after that when you hit level 4 put a point into stats. Then at level 5 put another point into Webbed Shot (Skill LEVEL 3). Now during this time you may have ran out of trees to eat from being damaged, or you may have collected enough money to buy marchers (boots). Go ahead and press “3” on your keyboard twice and cue up your courier and tell him to bring you whatever you need and can afford. Remember that your courier brings you all the items at once, so if you have a full inventory but your courier brings you recipes and other items at the same time when you click the “Give items to hero” button, then the recipes will engage and the other non-recipe item will be placed in the new empty spots in your inventory.
Now let’s say you haven’t been in a solo lane this whole time and you have actually been playing with someone who has good communication. You could have been using your webbed shot to harass an enemy hero and bring down its Hit Points (HP) low enough that your ally hero could use a stun or some other kind of nuke or special attack that would weaken the enemy and then you RIGHT CLICK on your webbed shot ability and keep slowing down the enemy hero until either you or your ally can kill it. This is teamwork that Arachna is built for.
Once you hit level 6, put a point into your ultimate skill, “Spider Sting”. This skill is awesome, when you use it you shoot out a baby spider that chases your enemies and detects stealthed units like Scout or Nighthound. It also slows enemies and hurts them a bit. When you hit level 6 and if your opponent is at half health or lower, and if you have been doing a good job of denying enemies and keeping the lane back toward your tower…you can right click and activate your webbed shot and then cast your Spider Sting ultimate on your enemy. If you are lucky your enemy will try running away and that when you can pelt him full of attacks and webbed shots.
If you hit level 6 and you are laning with an ally, try and coordinate your ultimate with a friends attack. AN UBER combo with Arachna’s ultimate is with Sand Wrath. You tell sand wraith over team chat, (press and hold “T” on your keyboard and talk into your microphone. If you don’t have a microphone set up yet, you should really consider getting one because a mic makes the game a lot more fun) But if you can’t get a microphone set up just use the keyboard chat interface by pressing “enter” on your keyboard and start typing to your ally and say something like, “I got my spider, you ready to PWN this guy?” And what you can do is if you have your ultimate and sand wraith has his ultimate you can slow an enemy with spider sting, and then have Sand Wraith teleport from across the map with his “Mirage” ability and you two can double team the enemy hero.
As you gain in levels you should build your Steamboots. That is better than enhanced marchers because Arachna uses the increased attack speed and I like to be able to switch from Agility to Intelligence by “left clicking on the steamboots in your inventory” The switch from agility to intel is good for getting some last minute mana for casting your Spider Sting.
The next item you should buy is the Assassin’s Shroud. This item allows you to vanish for about 10 seconds or so. This is great for escaping because you can’t take too much damage. And also it’s good because you can sneak up on people, hit them with an extra damage webbed shot, then spider sting them and then kill them.
Next you should buy the Whispering Helm. It costs under 2000 gold and it give good damage bonus and a little defensive bonus as well as 15% life leech. If you left click on the Whispering Helm in your inventory you will see a reticule instead of your mouse cursor and you can left click on a targeted creep and take command of them. I suggest you take control of a minotaur. The reason why is because minotaurs give an attack speed bonus aura. If you don’t see any minotaurs then go ahead and control another neutral creep boss like a wolf boss or skeleton boss…catman bosses are good because they hit hard. So then Hot-Key the minotaur to keyboard button “2.” Now Arachna should be “1” your minotaur or pet should be “2” and your courier should be “3.”
Now that you have your Whispering Helm you should be able to destroy neutral creeps pretty easily without needing to web them and you will leech your health back. The next item you should get depends on your money flow. If you have a lot of extra money and you should pick up a Warpcleft from the secret shop. This item makes you attack super fast. And it is part of the charged hammer recipe. If you just have mediocre money you should buy Shieldbreaker. If you have a walrus load of money you should get the Savage mace. That item increases your attack speed a bit. Increases your damage by a ton, and gives you mini-stun which stops people from channeling and doing anything really. The other item you can buy is Wingbow but the parts for this item are expensive and they aren’t that great by themselves. Especially the Dancing Blade which is 3300. The cool thing about Wingbow is that it gives you evasion and it increases your attack speed and damage. Personally I think the Savage Mace is better because as Arachna you shouldn’t be getting hit but you want your attacks to be fast and do as much damage as possible.
For late game you should destroy towers by letting your allied melee creeps initiate damage against the tower and you stand at max range and attack the tower. When your allied creeps are dying and the last creep is almost dead, simply run back out of tower range and then repeat the process. When you get into group fights it is important for you to not clump up with your group and fight at max range. This way you won’t get sucked into big sloppy group fights and Area of Effect (AOE) spells, like Tempest’s ultimate. If you decided to get the warp cleft you will find that last hitting enemies will be really easy due to your fast attack speed.
The last thing I’ll talk about is rune control. Since you will probably be solo middle, you will need to check on the rune. That means every Even numbered minute such as 2 mintues, 4 minutes, 6 minutes etc..(you can check the game clock my looking at the top of the screen by where it shows the current hero kills and the time of day) you need to check the river halfway between middle and top… or halfway between middle and bottom. There, in one of those 2 spots, you will find a rune. It is important that you control that rune by telling your teammates that you are taking the rune, or that you found no rune (let’s say) bottom and so that everyone know that there is a rune top. Rune control is an important part of the game and I can tell you from experience I’ve gotten schooled more than once by someone getting a Double Damage Rune or a Illusion Rune and bringing the pain to me. If you have a bottle and you drank from it 3 times already and now it’s empty you can left click on your empty bottle and then left click on the rune and then you will “bottle” the rune so you can keep it later for a limited time.
To end the game in victory now that you have bought good items and you are relatively high level, you must fight in team battles wisely. You will be targetted first so consider entering battle stealthed. Or else make sure that you disable the right enemy that your team calls as the ‘squishy’ target. Make sure that you spider sting the stealther or use it as crowd control because people panic when they get a spider on their tail. If you stay out of harm’s way and engage the enemy wisely your webbed shots and high damage will carry your team to victory. If not, then you need to reevaluate your strategy.
I hope you enjoyed this Arachna Guide! Don’t forget to check out my guide for Blood Hunter.
-Tyler