Astrid: No Kingdom For Jungle Monster

Build and Guide Astrid: No Kingdom For Jungle Monster

Cheat Sheet
Skill Build

Pick up Spin Slash and alternate between it and Fearless Charge until level 7 – Dire Blow isn’t needed in the Jungle. Grab it at level 7 and start to prioritize Fearless Charge as you begin to gank.

Items

Leviathan, War Boots, Spear of Longinus, Slikk’s Sting, Blitz Blade, Fenrir’s Tooth / The Beast

Arcana

Agility/Strength, Life/Leech, and Stab/Guard is a solid Tier-1 arcana spread. In later tiers, prioritize Attack Damage, Armor Pierce and Life Steal above all else. Dabble in Critical Damage if you have anything strong on hand.

Talents

Punish

Introduction
On the surface, Astrid can slot into the Jungle role without changing much from her everyday build – simply taking up Punish and throwing away the Jungle-dedicated item later on is fine. Her natural shields fend off most of what the Jungle can offer early on, and this doesn’t change whether you take up Punish or not – you’ll just be losing a lot of Gold and EXP without it and Leviathan in your backpack.

But we’re going to do something more with Astrid with this build. Rather than have her farm essentials in the Jungle and do her usual routine of pseudo tank with a surprise blade, we’re going to build upon her guaranteed critical strike and fast cooldowns to make a rapid assassin that can still take a massive swing at the team before it’s lights out. This isn’t necessarily more aggressive than Astrid’s typical playstyle; but it certainly needs nerves of steel.

Skill Build
Bladed Guardian is a passive ability that grants Astrid a small shield whenever she falls below 80% total health. Lasting for around 4 seconds (unless depleted) it even deals magic damage to those around her as it ticks over. The shield adds a decent chunk to her health early on, but patters out later in the game. Thankfully, it fires back up every 24 seconds if the HP criteria is met. But this cooldown is shortened with every strike Astrid lands; by 3 seconds on a champion hit or 1.5 seconds when striking a minion or monster. You can imagine where we’re going with this.

Spin Slash is more straight forward, but it plays perfectly with our end goal. This fast AOE swing around Astrid grants a base 20% increase to her attack speed if it comes into contact with an enemy hero, with another 3% added on for every additional hero hit for 4 seconds. Given it has flat 5 second cooldown, a single item and some wise arcana choices will quickly turn this into an always-on buff in fights. At skill level 6, this becomes a minimum 40% attack speed increase. That’s a lot.

Fearless Charge is a strange one as its official skill description doesn’t accurately describe what it does. Upon use, Astrid charges a short distance forward, dealing damage, slowing, and decreasing the armor any enemy heroes in her way by 30%. Her next auto-attack will then be a guaranteed critical hit and even shaves 1 second off the 10-second recast time of the ability itself. What it doesn’t mention is that this auto-attack is a lunge, meaning Astrid can charge closer to the her enemy first and lunge at them from a distance with the follow-up strike. It’s a double movement skill and a pretty great gap-closer when you’re chasing one or two enemies down an open lane. The guaranteed critical strike is what we’ll aim to power up and basically treat like a god.

Lastly comes Dire Blow – an Ultimate ability very deserving of the name. Upon activation, Astrid becomes immune to all damage for 2 seconds as she readies a massive cleave. Striking in the last quarter of her invincibility period, the swing deals massive 500 damage that only gets stronger with every 2% of HP she’s lost at the time of activation. Those hit with the brutal attack are slowed for 1.5 seconds – or stunned if they had more HP than Astrid at the time. She can even move slightly as it casts (but can’t pivot), giving a 1.5 second grace period for her to catch the most amount of targets in her swing. This can either be used to gain some vital HP as we approach nirvana with adequant Life Steal, but the punch it packs is a worthwhile way to bow out – whether you die right after, or manage to use Fearless Charge to escape during the stun.

This is absolutely open to interpretation depending on battlefield conditions at the time; it has its ups and downs. We’ll grab Dire Hit quite a bit later than we usually would, but only because it serves very little purpose in the jungle.

Start things off with Spin Strike as it’s going to be your highest damage source for a while. Fearless Charge comes after. Alternate between these two until around Level 7 (or whenever a major fight breaks out that needs your attention). Dire Hit should be picked up whenever sticking around in the jungle isn’t a viable option, and Level 7 is typically when that becomes a decision you have to make – and fast.

From there, drop two additional points into Fearless Charge. The idea here will be to live off the sharp critical strike offered by lunging at someone with that particular move and repeating the process until they’re either dead or running in fear. Fearless Charge has its cooldown reduced with each point, and our aim straight out of the jungle is to pick up individual kills by roaming the battlefield – Spin Slash doesn’t really stand out against a single opponent, and its cooldown never gets any quicker through skill points alone.

Drop a few into Dire Blow and Spin Slash when Fearless Charge is at 5 points. Finish it off by level 13.

Talents
We usually have 2 or 3 picks down here, but there’s really only one viable choice in a guide so heavily focused on a Jungle build. Punish if your only option.

Justifying the choice is easy, too. Punish allows you to buy the Jungle-specific items in the store that quickly upgrade into powerful items that reward monster kills with more power. Not only that, but having one of these items increases the EXP gained by killing jungle monsters by 15-30% depending on the stage of the item.

Not only that, but upgrading your initial starting item (Hunter’s Crossbow) turns the Punish skill into Frostbite. While still dishing out a ton of damage to monsters, Frostbite can be cast on enemy heroes, too, slowing them down and dealing additional damage. The best part is that is has no character animation – it just happens. That means there’s no need to weave it into a rotation or time it with an auto-attack. Either use it when you need your target to slow down, or save it for a killing blow from a short distance.

Equipment
As mentioned above, your first must-have buy here is Hunter’s Crossbow. Build this into Gnoll Cleaver, and finally Leviathan. Soulreaver is the more aggressive option (and is totally viable), but Leviathan will remind Astrid of her usual frontline life. It grants a flat 800HP boost, and gives 70 more for every monster killed when it’s on hand. At its maximum number of stacks, that’s 1850HP – higher than any other item in the game! The axe itself damages enemies around Astrid every second, just like her passive shield. In an ideal fight where Life Steal is keeping you around, you’ll be burning enemies for a while just by standing there.

Our boots of choice become War Boots in this scenario, as they give strong 25% boost to our Attack Speed and give us the movement speed boost we’ll need to catch up to some quicker foes. Early on, it just helps with the jungle kills.

Spear of Longinus is our next full build, taking the place of Rankbreaker in the more typical ADC role most Astrid players go for. Adding essential Attack Damage, Cooldown Speed, and a decent helping of Armor, it’s one that should help her catch and kill ranged heroes like Valhein and Tel’Annas before taking too many to the face. Each strike (up to 5) shreds her target’s armor by 50; a great way to help rip apart tankier enemies with the Attack Speed to back it up. If they’ve been softened with Fearless Charge and your Attack Speed boosted with Spin Slash, this was make a big difference in very little time.

Then things get a little more straight-forward as we simply pile on the stats. Slikk’s Sting powers up our guarnetted Critical Strike and opens up the chance for more by exactly 20%. Blitz Blade speeds things along yet again, only adding more raw power and 10% Life Steal that, paired with high attack speed and AOE hits, is like a siphon in the heat of the moment. Attack Speed rapidly increases the cooldown of the Chain Lightning passive, so slash away!

Then it’s a choice between Fenrir’s Tooth or The Beast. The former adds massive amounts of raw attack power and is a clear choice if you’re already crushing the competition at this point. If they’ve powered on ahead, offsetting some power for additional Life Steal with The Beast is an easier pill to swallow.

Arcana
Splitting Agility and Strength arcana down the middle in Tier-1 is the sure-fire thing to do when it comes to Red picks. Similarly, Life and Leech evenly distributed in Purple slots shouldn’t cause too many arguments. If you’re privvy to picking The Beast as your final item, go full Life for maximum efficiency. Grab a few points of Armor Pierce with Stab in the Green slots, and go for Armor (Guard) in the rest.

Tier-2 Red Arcana can’t do much for our Max HP at this stage. Leviathan gives us plenty to work with, anyway. Go all-in with Batter if you’re aiming for The Beast. Otherwise, throw a few Backstab arcana in there to beef up those crits. Passion and Fury are both good picks in the Purple slots, but Passion would be the easier choice. Mix with Vamp if you’re going without The Beast. For Greens, go heavy on Assault. The name alone makes them worth it.

Bloodlust, Assassinate, and Skewer are the clear choices in a 1/1/1 spread when it comes to Tier-3 arcana. Optional extras would be tossing a few Rampage coins in with the Reds for higher critical strikes. That’s about it.

Early Game
The ‘early game’ lives and dies with your actions in the Jungle. Astrid is a little problematic during the first few minutes  as her ability to gank is dictated by a fairly long Fearless Charge cooldown. She can get herself into a fight just fine, but getting out or chasing thereafter is tricky.

Money keeps her ticking over, so the aim is to accumulate a healthy amount as fast as possible, and offset any slowdown through leveling up her abilities. Start with the Might Golem and clear out that half of the Jungle before moving onto the next. Use Punish on whichever enemy can take its full amount as it comes off cooldown to keep timings optimal. Stick around here until you’re level 6 or 7, making sure to build up Hunter’s Crossbow as the cash comes in.

If things area getting a little dicey for your team elsewhere, identify which lane has a particularly low enemy hero close who might get close to the brush. Try to stick to ganking whichever lane you’re on the side of (and the middle) as you don’t want to lose too much time away from the jungle. Use the brush to stay hidden, and pop Fearless Charge to quickly zone into a soft target. Follow through with the critical strike auto-attack and use Spin Slash to beef up your Attack Speed – save it for a double-strike if another foe is coming in to help.

Outside of that, just keep farming in the jungle. Getting a slight gold edge above the rest really stands out here. Keep the  Golem buffs going, and use your abilities to get the job done faster. You’ll need to use Restore to get your mana back every now and then, but your passive shield should stop you from taking too much damage.

Mid Game
Signified by the belated unlock of Dire Hit, your first aim here is to apply pressure to the enemy team on nearby lanes while continuing to farm the jungle to beef up Leviathan. Topping out at +1850 around 6-8 minutes into the game will make a huge difference. As ever, your passive shield kicks in at 80%, so more HP means it simply kicks in when you still have a massive chunk of it left.

Once it’s maxed out, roaming will become a regular thing. You’ll want to offload Punish/Frostbite on a Golem if it isn’t being used in many fights, just to secure even more gold and keep on top of things. Roaming means you won’t always be farming creep or getting consistent kills, so keeping on top of your income through other means is vital. Killing the Abyssal Dragon will become easier as time goes on, but organising your group to kill it too early can be detrimental.

Back to roaming; hiding in the brush is still a great way to ambush foes. If they’re still sticking to their lanes, let your ally know you’re ready to go. Let them push closer to your tower, signal the attack for your ally, and us Fearless Charge to pounce on a softer target – like a mage, support or ranged attacker. If you get stunned and have trouble chasing a ranged hero, use Fearless Charge again to team up on whoever is closer. Spin Slash should be used whenever it’s available to keep the Attack Speed buff going. The critical strike from Fearless Charge is best offloaded on a weaker target, but you won’t always get the chance to spam it until you have a few more items.

To re-cap – continue to kill jungle monsters as you roam the lanes. Prioritize surprising ranged/support heroes, use all your abilities when possible, and coordinate ganks with your allies. Save Frostbite for a mobile target. Otherwise, save it for Golem kills.

Late Game
At this point, you should be looking at fast cooldowns, crazy attack speed and a noticable amount of Life Steal. Using Frostbite on Golems won’t be necessary, but you’ll want to use it on the Abyssal Dragon to get the job done fast. Keep an eye on that spawn timer.

In combat, you don’t want to be the first to rush into battle. Wait for the your team to open fire before using Fearless Charge to latch onto high-priority targets like supports and mages with high AOE. The idea situation would be to zip into 3 or more enemies this way so that Spin Slash buffs your Attack Speed by another wide margin. Keep pressure on your target by repeating this 1-2 combo, ensuring you land at least one auto-attack with each Fearless Charge to hit for a high-damage critical strike. Save Frostbite for if they escape, or when you need to finish them off quickly.

During all this, you should always keep a close eye on the battlefield to identify your next target or to switch onto a target that may be making things more difficult than your current. Survivability in a situation without a heavy AOE mage or plenty of stuns is your forte, so don’t be afraid of sliding around the battlefield with Fearless Charge and Spin Slash to keep your Attack Speed increase up, and reducing the enemy team’s armor through a mixture of Fearless Charge and strikes from Spear of Longinus.

The faster your attacks, the quicker your shield will reapply itself. Having this on offers slight protection, but also deals additional AOE damage, so it’s actually best used surrounded by the enemy. Your abilities can hit multiple opponents, and only make your attacks faster. They play off each other’s strengths to award aggression with more protection. Save Dire Hit for when you know your health is about to drop dangerously low and either attempt to siphon that life back by striking again as they’re stunned, or use it as an opportunity to escape with Fearless Charge. With just Blitz Blade on hand, you should be able to Life Steal you way back to that 80% HP sweet spot. This is typically a good time to claim the Abyssal Dragon again.

FAQ/Tips
Fearless Charge will become your go-to damage skill. Use the lunge to inflict heavy damage, change targets, or avoid deadly AOE skills

Frostbite should be saved for large monsters early on, but can make a huge difference if you’re unsure whether an opponent will escape your grasp

Making sure to hit an enemy with every Spin Slash will ensure a massive Attack Speed increase is on you at all times

The whole idea of building Astrid this way is to abuse the cooldown of her passive shield and inflict heavy damage with fast and consistent critical strikes. Control is key

Matchups
Astrid is best paired with just about any support character in a team fight. In the early stages of a battle, anyone capable of a stun or two should orchestrate their attacks to strike between her Fearless Charge cooldown. Later on, she becomes a bit of a loose cannon, rushing into battle and typically aiming to shut down high-value targets before they cause too much trouble to those around her. A shield is all she can really ask for here.

When facing off against Astrid, it’s AOE magical attacks that will cause her the most grief. Spin Slash is typically used fast and without a true target, but Fearless Charge usually aimed rather than simply tapped. Trapping her in a persistant stun (like from Aleister or Gildur), can give your team all the time they need to burst her down. She can’t magically break crowd-control effects to use Dire Hit, so there’s rarely any hope of her putting up one last stand if the stun lasts long enough.

Similar warriors like Taara and Arduin can create a stalemate situation pretty easily. Nakroth can be another tough customer.