Geo Daggerless Build
Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 8:15 am
Here's how to pubstomp using geo, without the dagger early build. I'll learn this sometime, but for now this current build suits me fine.
First, a big misconception:
Geomancer is not a "lategamer" or "hard carry". If you are Geo and a true lategamer gets 6-slotted, you are probably finished. Geo can never stand up to hardcarries like Stealth Assassin, Phantom Assassin, Rogue Knight, etc.
Geo is a midgame hero. The true strength of the Geomancer is to outfarm and outlevel your opponents. Not even Alchemist can keep up with a Geomancer's farm in the midgame. This allows you to hit incredibly hard in the 20-30 minute mark, so hard that the enemies will not be able to recover from it before the game is over.
Geomancer is not a weak laner. You can first blood an unexpecting enemy as early as level 3.
So. How-to:
Laning phase
Take solo mid. If your allies don't give you solo mid, call them noobs and leave the game.
Learn poof. Geomancer's base attack power is pathetic and he's susceptible to harass, so use poof to CS when possible. The purpose of the laning phase is to farm your boots of travel. If your allies didn't place wards, call them noobs and place your own. You need wards as geo, it is absolutely not optional. If you don't know how to ward or don't want to, don't pick geo.
Get as much CS as you can while not dying. Get 1 poof, 1 earthbind, then ulti. Using this, you can FB an arrogant enemy. If they are under your tower, throw bind on them twice and they are now dead. Same thing if you get your allies to gank. I usually use only one meepo to CS, which is the one that the enemy harasses; then I move it back to base and heal, and start CSing with the other meepo. You can also send this meepo to collect runes or stack creeps if you feel like it.
When you hit level 7, max your poof. Now you can one shot waves of creeps. This is incredibly useful. When the enemy mid leaves to go gank, run past the tower and poof away creep waves. You will easily tower mid. Optionally, go gank vulnerable enemy heroes using poof.
Hopefully you farm boots of travel within 10 minutes, preferably in 5.
Farming Phase
Laning phase is behind you, you have BoT. At this point in the game, there will usually be a lane that is empty. Take the opportunity to poof away 1-2 creep waves, then teleport away. Make sure it's safe; you'll know it's safe if your wards do not detect any enemies. If the enemies are on all the lanes, go jungle.
Each additional level of ulti gives another boots of travel and increases the amount you can farm. The next item you want is Aghanims. This grants another meepo, but more importantly 100% stat sharing so your clones don't melt. At this point, you should help allies who are in danger, but not run into certain death for them.
Make Skaddi ASAP after Aghs.
Meepo battle tactics
By the time you're fighting, you should have max poof, a couple points in both earthbind/geostrike, and 2-3 meepos. Chain earthbinds on the enemies, bait the stuns or let your allies take them, run in and poof. 4 poofs is enough to melt any non tank.
If the enemies are focusing down a single meepo, then you need to micro a little. First, order all meepos to attack the people chasing you. Then, retreat with the lowest meepo. Geostrike slows them down to nothing, and if you get lucky they'll keep trying to run through it and die. Try to escape huge AOEs if possible, but if you do end up eating them, try to lower/take down a few enemies with poof.
When meepo dies, buy back immediately. Meepo does not have gold buyback restriction. You are always worth more alive than waiting out the death timer.
Midgame
By now you should have BoT/Aghs/Skaddi and 5 meepos. Hardly anything can stand up to you now, so it's time to take a rax. Gather your team as best you can. Take rosh first; use smoke of deceit if you are worried about enemy wards. Get enough gold for buyback. Now you have 3 lives. Lead your team into battle. First, take any non-base towers that still remain (there shouldn't be many). Gank if possible, and push to rax. Do not be afraid of tanking and dying. Use your aegis, then die normally, then buy back and return. If you do it right, your team should be able to take at least a tower if not a rax.
Continue farming and move on to the situational items. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Do the enemies have a Sven, Xin, Magnus, Enigma, or Leshrac?
Make Hex. Hex them before they get their skill off.
Am I dying too fast to non-geo-counters to contribute?
Make more Skaddis. They add like 2k life.
Am I not dealing enough damage to cut through big tanks?
Make an eblade. It gives some nice agility.
Can I not even reach the enemies before they kill me?
Make a dagger. It's not hard to use when you already have your skaddi.
Now, continue pushing. Constantly be pushing and killing when possible. You are the strongest presence on the field, you need to act like it. Don't be scared of going in 1v2, or even 1v3. Encourage your team to push with you, since you *can't* do everything alone.
Keep in mind - poof never becomes bad. That's over 1000 big area damage. That's more than most heroes' 100sec CD ultis will do, and its with a 6 second CD and irrelevant manacost. This can shred armor-stackers.
Hopefully with enough pushes you finish all the rax. If you don't, you'll go into late game and at that point, you're very reliant on your team's hardcarries. You're still a good battle presence, but no more 1v3s for you.
Rejected garbage items
Mekanism - I see newbie geos go this all the time. I don't know who they're learning this build from. Geo is a killer, not a healer.
Vlads - Another item I see all the time. You really think lifesteal is worth delaying your core by another 5 minutes? You aren't a carry. IF AT ALL, this should be a 7th item put on your courier but if it's that lategame you're in trouble anyways.
Boots that Aren't Travels - Throw those power treads away. Mobility is the entire point of geomacer, don't waste it.
Any item that only benefits main - BKB, Buriza, MKB, Battlefury... These are all great carry items, just not geo items.
Maybe items
I don't get these but they wouldn't be total garbage: AC, Pipe, Shivas
Special hero mentions
Huskar: this is your worst nightmare as a mid geomancer. So bad you may even want to swap lanes. Geo has no real response to this hero. Can't kill it, can't run. Not such an issue lategame.
Necrolyte: if any of your geos get below half, you're good as dead and you can't buy back.
Magnus: luckily everyone sucks with this hero but a good one can easily kill you.
Sven: hex is required. hope he doesn't bkb.
Enigma: hex is required.
Xin: hex+dagger is required. Fist can literally one shot you.
Lich: people think this counters geo, so they pick it instead of real geo counters. Earlygame, split geos. Later, tank it, you have 5000 HP.
Earthshaker: much more of a counter because of the stunning potential. It is possible to tank him.
Riki: your worst mid-lategame nightmare. You have no response to the cloud since you can't MKB. He easily shreds a geo who he targets.
Mortred: much the same, miss 50% of attacks.
Slark: you counter this little frog hard. Surround him so he can't leap, geostrike him, and poof. Shadowdance won't protect him.
Conclusion
Meepo is, in my opinion, the absolute best hero in the game. His ability to snowball out of control and do a one-man-team build makes him potent at carrying dead weight players, and so is my #1 pick for anti-stacking.
I have personally achieved about 95% winrate with this strategy, without teamswapping or dodging games. Those losses, I fully admit, were times I got outplayed hard, especially when the enemies pick 5 Geo counters. Even then, you can do a lot better than me with this hero; my skill with it isn't even close to memaru's.
The power and skill ceiling here makes it a very nice hero to main.
First, a big misconception:
Geomancer is not a "lategamer" or "hard carry". If you are Geo and a true lategamer gets 6-slotted, you are probably finished. Geo can never stand up to hardcarries like Stealth Assassin, Phantom Assassin, Rogue Knight, etc.
Geo is a midgame hero. The true strength of the Geomancer is to outfarm and outlevel your opponents. Not even Alchemist can keep up with a Geomancer's farm in the midgame. This allows you to hit incredibly hard in the 20-30 minute mark, so hard that the enemies will not be able to recover from it before the game is over.
Geomancer is not a weak laner. You can first blood an unexpecting enemy as early as level 3.
So. How-to:
Laning phase
Take solo mid. If your allies don't give you solo mid, call them noobs and leave the game.
Learn poof. Geomancer's base attack power is pathetic and he's susceptible to harass, so use poof to CS when possible. The purpose of the laning phase is to farm your boots of travel. If your allies didn't place wards, call them noobs and place your own. You need wards as geo, it is absolutely not optional. If you don't know how to ward or don't want to, don't pick geo.
Get as much CS as you can while not dying. Get 1 poof, 1 earthbind, then ulti. Using this, you can FB an arrogant enemy. If they are under your tower, throw bind on them twice and they are now dead. Same thing if you get your allies to gank. I usually use only one meepo to CS, which is the one that the enemy harasses; then I move it back to base and heal, and start CSing with the other meepo. You can also send this meepo to collect runes or stack creeps if you feel like it.
When you hit level 7, max your poof. Now you can one shot waves of creeps. This is incredibly useful. When the enemy mid leaves to go gank, run past the tower and poof away creep waves. You will easily tower mid. Optionally, go gank vulnerable enemy heroes using poof.
Hopefully you farm boots of travel within 10 minutes, preferably in 5.
Farming Phase
Laning phase is behind you, you have BoT. At this point in the game, there will usually be a lane that is empty. Take the opportunity to poof away 1-2 creep waves, then teleport away. Make sure it's safe; you'll know it's safe if your wards do not detect any enemies. If the enemies are on all the lanes, go jungle.
Each additional level of ulti gives another boots of travel and increases the amount you can farm. The next item you want is Aghanims. This grants another meepo, but more importantly 100% stat sharing so your clones don't melt. At this point, you should help allies who are in danger, but not run into certain death for them.
Make Skaddi ASAP after Aghs.
Meepo battle tactics
By the time you're fighting, you should have max poof, a couple points in both earthbind/geostrike, and 2-3 meepos. Chain earthbinds on the enemies, bait the stuns or let your allies take them, run in and poof. 4 poofs is enough to melt any non tank.
If the enemies are focusing down a single meepo, then you need to micro a little. First, order all meepos to attack the people chasing you. Then, retreat with the lowest meepo. Geostrike slows them down to nothing, and if you get lucky they'll keep trying to run through it and die. Try to escape huge AOEs if possible, but if you do end up eating them, try to lower/take down a few enemies with poof.
When meepo dies, buy back immediately. Meepo does not have gold buyback restriction. You are always worth more alive than waiting out the death timer.
Midgame
By now you should have BoT/Aghs/Skaddi and 5 meepos. Hardly anything can stand up to you now, so it's time to take a rax. Gather your team as best you can. Take rosh first; use smoke of deceit if you are worried about enemy wards. Get enough gold for buyback. Now you have 3 lives. Lead your team into battle. First, take any non-base towers that still remain (there shouldn't be many). Gank if possible, and push to rax. Do not be afraid of tanking and dying. Use your aegis, then die normally, then buy back and return. If you do it right, your team should be able to take at least a tower if not a rax.
Continue farming and move on to the situational items. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Do the enemies have a Sven, Xin, Magnus, Enigma, or Leshrac?
Make Hex. Hex them before they get their skill off.
Am I dying too fast to non-geo-counters to contribute?
Make more Skaddis. They add like 2k life.
Am I not dealing enough damage to cut through big tanks?
Make an eblade. It gives some nice agility.
Can I not even reach the enemies before they kill me?
Make a dagger. It's not hard to use when you already have your skaddi.
Now, continue pushing. Constantly be pushing and killing when possible. You are the strongest presence on the field, you need to act like it. Don't be scared of going in 1v2, or even 1v3. Encourage your team to push with you, since you *can't* do everything alone.
Keep in mind - poof never becomes bad. That's over 1000 big area damage. That's more than most heroes' 100sec CD ultis will do, and its with a 6 second CD and irrelevant manacost. This can shred armor-stackers.
Hopefully with enough pushes you finish all the rax. If you don't, you'll go into late game and at that point, you're very reliant on your team's hardcarries. You're still a good battle presence, but no more 1v3s for you.
Rejected garbage items
Mekanism - I see newbie geos go this all the time. I don't know who they're learning this build from. Geo is a killer, not a healer.
Vlads - Another item I see all the time. You really think lifesteal is worth delaying your core by another 5 minutes? You aren't a carry. IF AT ALL, this should be a 7th item put on your courier but if it's that lategame you're in trouble anyways.
Boots that Aren't Travels - Throw those power treads away. Mobility is the entire point of geomacer, don't waste it.
Any item that only benefits main - BKB, Buriza, MKB, Battlefury... These are all great carry items, just not geo items.
Maybe items
I don't get these but they wouldn't be total garbage: AC, Pipe, Shivas
Special hero mentions
Huskar: this is your worst nightmare as a mid geomancer. So bad you may even want to swap lanes. Geo has no real response to this hero. Can't kill it, can't run. Not such an issue lategame.
Necrolyte: if any of your geos get below half, you're good as dead and you can't buy back.
Magnus: luckily everyone sucks with this hero but a good one can easily kill you.
Sven: hex is required. hope he doesn't bkb.
Enigma: hex is required.
Xin: hex+dagger is required. Fist can literally one shot you.
Lich: people think this counters geo, so they pick it instead of real geo counters. Earlygame, split geos. Later, tank it, you have 5000 HP.
Earthshaker: much more of a counter because of the stunning potential. It is possible to tank him.
Riki: your worst mid-lategame nightmare. You have no response to the cloud since you can't MKB. He easily shreds a geo who he targets.
Mortred: much the same, miss 50% of attacks.
Slark: you counter this little frog hard. Surround him so he can't leap, geostrike him, and poof. Shadowdance won't protect him.
Conclusion
Meepo is, in my opinion, the absolute best hero in the game. His ability to snowball out of control and do a one-man-team build makes him potent at carrying dead weight players, and so is my #1 pick for anti-stacking.
I have personally achieved about 95% winrate with this strategy, without teamswapping or dodging games. Those losses, I fully admit, were times I got outplayed hard, especially when the enemies pick 5 Geo counters. Even then, you can do a lot better than me with this hero; my skill with it isn't even close to memaru's.
The power and skill ceiling here makes it a very nice hero to main.
. Even after dying after buyback at lvl25, you're down for at most 60 seconds where other heroes would be down 100+.
FailFish