How to build out for an ADC (Attack Damage Carry) hunter in Duo (long) lane.

This guide is meant to be an all around guide for advanced or novice hunters. I’ll discuss the builds the pro’s are currently using and then move on to builds that have some more defense for those that might be starting out and need a little more time to react.

So where do we start, well, let’s start with your first 1500 gold. Pick up Death's Toll and either 1st tier Devourer’s Gauntlet or 1st tier Heartseeker. That last 50 gold can be used for a green pot (common), a blue pot (common on Ullr) or a ward (if you see that your support hasn't picked any up). “Choices so soon?” you say, “Just tell me what to build!” you say. If you are new, just go Devo Gloves 1 and a green pot. Devo gloves will give you better sustain due to the lifesteal and it won’t put a target on your back. Heartseeker will give you 8% extra movement speed when it is finished but stacks will reset on death, so it tends to put a target on your back, and you will get to know your enemy jungler pretty well.

So a beginner build with no defensive items looks like:

• Death's Toll, Devo Gloves, Boots (Pen or cdr, depending on which hunter) Executioner, Rage, Deathbringer (DB before Rage on Artemis), Titan’s Bane (replacing Death's Toll)

A more veteran build will look like:

• Death's Toll, Devo Gloves, Boots (Penetration) Heartseeker, Rage, Deathbringer, Titan’s Bane (again replacing Death's Toll)

A living on the edge build will be along the lines of:

• Death's Toll, Heartseeker, Boots (Pen or cdr, depending on which hunter) Executioner, Rage, Deathbringer, Titan’s Bane (again replacing Death's Toll) If you make is this far and end up with enough gold or simply end up losing most of your stacks you can swap in Bloodforge for Heartseeker.

So those are the primary builds you will see most of the pros playing, the first is pretty universal, the 2nd is popular in EU and the last one is an NA build that used to be popular until the cost of Devo Gloves was reduced a few patches ago. I want to point out that just because these are the builds that the pros build does not mean that they are the best for you if you are just playing casual or beginning league. Sometimes just having a little more time to react can greatly improve your chances when you are still new to the game or new to the god you are playing. When you are playing for practice and experience, more survivablity can be a god’s send. Along that vein lets look at some viable defensive items.

There are a couple items that you can replace your third item with if you find yourself dying often (feeding! omg noob! quit smite! blah blah blah...) Those items are Shifter’s Shield (common), Magi’s Blessing (against high CC teams), Spirit Robe (against moderate CC with at least 3 magical gods), Hide of the Urchin (less common), Hide of the Nemean Lion (against teams with high autoattack damage ie hunters, assassins, chronos) Midgardian Mail (against a double assassin team or assassin/bruiser team.)

The important thing to remember when you pick up a defensive item is that you will still need some amount of penetration once the enemy gets to level 20. Whether that is executioner or Titan’s Bane is up to you. Even Brawler’s Beat Stick is good, if you are facing a Hel, Aphro, or Chang’e . So the question is, if you opt for a defensive item, which item should it replace? In build 1 and 3 above get your defensive item instead of executioner. You will be weak offensively in the mid-game, but if the alternative is feeding…. In build 2, you’ll want to get your def item instead of heartseeker. If you’ve already gotten either executioner or heartseeker and then find you want defense just go back and replace them when you’ve run out of slots. You never want to replace either crit items, boots or devo gloves.

So, let’s talk about consumables. Health pots are a waste of slot and gold once you reach about level 7. Your health scales up with level but the health pots regen the same amount of health. Blue pots are good up until about level 18 because sometime you just need enough mana for one more ability to get the kill. Wards are good. Many of the pros will just run around with a single ward as a “just in case I need vision” ward, but i find grabbing two wards on every back and placing them in good locations will win games, and is the enemy jungle’s worst nightmare. Enemy rotations are completely useless if you see them coming. All that being said about wards, if others are faithfully warding, its not hurting you having wards in your inventory.

Actives! The trick with actives is to wait as long as you can to get them, so you can pump out the most damage possible with items. At 900 gold for a tier 3 active you are delaying an item by 2-3 minutes. That being said Boots 3 and Aegis/Beads are pretty standard. You do Aegis 3 when the other team has some major burst potential (never moving Aegis) and beads if they have a lot of CC. Boots 3 is too versatile to not get. Boots will get you out of a jam if you overextend or allow you to take the other adc in a “boxing” match.

So that’s the current “meta” builds. Beyond that, juke often and don’t feed. May the gods be with you!