Skill Order
1. Firestorm
2. Pit of Malice
3. Firestorm
4. Pit of Malice
5. Firestorm
6. Pit of Malice OR Dark Rift
7. Firestorm
8. Pit of Malice
9. Dark Rift OR Pit of Malice
10. Stats
11. Dark Rift
12-15. Stats
16. Dark Rift
17-20. Expulsion
21-25. Stats
Skill Order Explanation
Firestorm is maxed first since it is your main farming tool. Pit of Malice is also quickly maxed, to protect you from ganks and to assist your lane partner in scoring some early-game kills. If you're solo or jungling, take Dark Rift at level 6 instead of Pit of Malice, since you're alone and much more vulnerable to ganks. Otherwise, Dark Rift can wait until level 9.
After Firestorm and Pit are maxed, 5 levels of stats are taken. These help you tank, and give you enough mana to spam away comfortably with Firestorm. Expulsion is held off until late game because it's basically only good for adding damage during large team confrontations.
Items
Item Order
Animal Courier
Magical Bottle
Flying Courier
Radiance
Boots of Speed
Void Stone
Boots of Travel (always carry a Scroll of TP until you get this)
Heart of Tarrasque
Shiva's Guard (sell Void Stone when you almost have enough gold for Mystic Staff)
Hyperstone
Assault Cuirass
This is the item build which I've refined over numerous games through experience. It should work for you regardless of your lane choice.
Animal Courier -> Flying Courier
Like wards and Scrolls of TP, Animal Courier is one of the little things that separates the noobs from the decent players. Early game, couriers can help you stay in your lane by bringing you healing and mana regen items. They're also very useful late game, since they let you buy items the second you have the necessary gold, instead of having to wait until you physically return to the shop (which risks dying and losing your money). In games with trusted allies, share control so that your whole team can have these benefits.
You'll need to upgrade your courier into a Flying Courier in order to get the most value out of the Bottle. Regular couriers are not just slower, but also lack the survivability and flexibility of flying couriers.
I recommend buying a second Flying Courier recipe (to give your Flying Courier the mana pool necessary to lay wards) by mid game. A mana-enhanced Flying Courier can lay Observer Wards around the map far more quickly than you can yourself.
Magical Bottle
Magical Bottle is the best healing and regen item for Pit Lord, period. Your Flying Courier can continually refill it for you at the Fountain, giving you an unlimited stream of hit points and mana. Bottle is the only early regen option fully capable of supporting all-out Firestorm spamming on every creep wave.
Before the nerf in version 6.50, it was so overpowered that every hero HAD to get one. Bottle's regen capability still remains the best even after the nerfs in 6.50 and 6.51. The nerfs did succeed in making this item no better than (or possibly worse than) other regen options, for heroes who will have trouble farming it up or who must gank instead of waiting around for a refill. However, because Pit Lord shouldn't leave his lane during early game, he can still wield the rebalanced Bottle + Flying Courier combo just as well if not better than before.
Getting a Flying Courier and a Bottle is a big investment early game. But trust me, it's MORE than worth it. The benefits you gain from Bottle will improve your farming and will actually shave a few minutes off the time it would otherwise take you to farm up the rest of your items.
RadianceMake no mistake about it: this is the most important item for the Pit Lord.
Radiance is considered one of the best items in the game, and many good teams have one (and only one, since the immolation doesn't stack) player with this item. Besides being generally awesome, it addresses a couple of the Pit Lord's problems: damage and hero killing. Radiance gives you an excellent +60 attack damage, while dealing 35 (26.25 to heroes) immolation damage per second to everything within a radius of 550 range units. If you don't think the immolation sounds like much, just do the math: If you burn 5 opponents, you will deal an additional 788 damage over the next 6 seconds from immolation damage alone.
The immolation lets you continue damaging an opponent just by following close behind them, so that you can kill someone even if you can't land a physical hit on them. Chasing someone down and finishing them off can be a major problem for the Pit Lord otherwise, since he lacks direct, high-damage nukes, and his disable doesn't do any damage. The AOE damage from Radiance will make you a bigger threat on the battlefield, so hopefully the enemy will respect that and target you, thus fulfilling your tanking role. Rush this as soon as possible, preferably in 20-25 minutes.
Void Stone
The mana regeneration from this item makes your spell spamming and farming far easier.
Scrolls of TP and Boots of Travel
The cooldown on Dark Rift is too long for you to sieze all of your pushing opportunities, so you'll need to get BoT. This item can help you tear down your enemies' towers far more efficiently, and save your own towers as well. Until you get BoT, keep a Scroll of TP on you at all times.
Heart of Tarrasque
This is another top tier item, which gives you far more hit points. Heart is an essential item for fufilling your tanking role.
Shiva's Guard + Hyperstone OR Assault Cuirass
After getting Heart, you can more easily boost your effective hit points by going for armor. Either Shiva's Guard or Assault Cuirass will do the job here. I've spent quite some time trying to crunch the numbers, and it's tough to decide which item is better. On one hand Shiva is better for personal tanking, because it gives the same amount of armor to you as Cuirass, while also decreasing all nearby enemies' attack speed by 25%. On the other hand, the +5 armor aura from Cuirass can provide more durability to your allies than Shiva's cold aura, should your enemies choose to ignore you and go for your frailer teammates. The increased attack speed and negative armor auras from Cuirass can also give your team far more damage than the 200 (150 after hero reduction) damage Arctic Blast from Shiva. Then again, Arctic Blast provides intangible benefits from the extra hits and AOE damage you may be able to land on slowed enemies.
However, one big advantage Shiva has over Cuirass is cost. Shiva costs just 4,700 gold, compared to 6,120 gold for Cuirass. While Pit Lord can farm up anything he wants, even he may not be able to get Cuirass at a reasonable time after all the other huge items in this build. You can also sell your Void Stone if you're going for Shiva, because it gives you +30 Intelligence (which more than covers for 3 consecutive Firestorms). That effectively reduces the cost of Shiva by 450 gold, shifting the balance even more into Shiva's favor. With all these cost savings, you can get a Hyperstone along with Shiva for just a little bit more than Cuirass itself, giving you some of Cuirass's benefits along with the ton of benefits from Shiva. If the game drags on, you can upgrade the Hyperstone into a full Cuirass.
Like Radiance, Shiva and Cuirass are one-per-team items because their auras don't stack if your allies also have the items. Because of this, I won't rule out Cuirass even though Shiva + Hyperstone is now the recommended build. Get Cuirass if your team has slowing and disabling more than covered, and especially if one of your allies already has Shiva.
Observer Wards, Sentry Wards, and Gem of True Sight
You're most likely going to be the richest player on your team, so don't be cheap. Be a team player and share the wealth by taking care of your team's ward and detection needs. Again, Flying Courier will be extremely useful because of its ability to quickly deploy wards around the map. You should be durable enough to be the team's Gem holder once you've acquired Heart.
Rejected Items
You may notice a similarity between some of the items in this list: They're big mana regeneration items. For some stupid reason, many Pit Lord players are under the mistaken impression that Pit Lord absolutely needs all this mana regeneration. He DOESN'T. He's not an intelligence hero, or a strength-caster that needs spells to contribute in a fight, but is somewhat lacking in natural mana (such as Earthshaker or Tiny). Pit Lord's natural intelligence growth is quite high (2.6 per level), and his spells all have low casting costs. In a big team fight, he just needs a reserve of 350 mana (not a lot by that point in the game) to cast his 3 AOE spells. Even then, those AOE spells aren't absolutely vital for dealing damage in a team fight, and a full team confrontation may not even occur if the enemy heroes engage and die against your team separately. Your main contributions will be tanking while dealing Radiance damage, and pushing creeps across the map at an extremely fast pace. I've found that the Void Stone and extra stat levels in my build are quite sufficient for supporting Firestorm spamming.
Gold in and of itself is useless. The Pit Lord's farming abilities should be channeled into obtaining items that give him an actual edge in battle (such as Radiance, Cuirass, and Heart), rather than being used to support further farming.
Battlefury
Yes, it gives you more mana regeneration, and even boosts your attack damage. However, it's far from a dominating item, and is pricey enough to delay your Radiance and Cuirass/Heart despite your awesome farming. This seems to be a common suggestion from a lot of people, but I think it's unnecessarily boosting one of your strong points while doing little to address your weaknesses. You don't need THAT much mana regeneration to effectively use your spells, and the Cleaving Attack is pointless, since you'll be killing every creep you see anyway. In team fights, Cleave doesn't match up to Radiance, since the AOE isn't as large and you won't be cleaving anything if you're disabled.
Guinsoo's Scythe of Vyse
This is another "solution" to the Pit Lord's supposed mana problems. Guinsoo is one of the best items in the game when it comes to mana regeneration and intelligence boosting, and it's a must-have for almost every intelligence hero. However, as a strength hero you will not be able to get the most use out of it (the intelligence won't boost your physical attack damage). Guinsoo is excellent for frail heroes who need an escape mechanism to survive, or high damage dealers who just need a few more seconds to finish off their prey. As a beefy tank and supporting hero who already has his own natural disable, these things just aren't necessary. Guinsoo may give you a ton of mana, but it doesn't give you the two things you need the most: hero killing power, and enough hit points to keep on tanking throughout the game.
Arcane Ring
Another favorite among the people who think that Pit Lord "needs" the mana regeneration. It's less wasteful than spending a ton of gold on a Battlefury or Guinsoo JUST for the mana, but it's still unnecessary.
Satanic
I've seen some people suggesting this. It's not an absolutely terrible choice on Pit Lord, but it's just not as good as the other Reaver upgrade, Heart. As a tank with slow attack speed (who will probably end up being disabled during team fights if things go to plan), Pit Lord doesn't utilize the life steal very well. Heart will provide him with far more tanking ability.
Black King Bar
BKB is a survivability item, but it's NOT a tanking item. The tank's job on the team is to soak up all of the enemy's attacks, nukes, and disables, so that his frailer teammates won't have to. By giving you magic immunity, BKB removes the possibility of the enemy directing their spells towards you instead of your allies.
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16 years ago
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