Soul Reaper

Introduction
Most of the guides that I've skimmed through on the forums are pretty bad, and as this was the second most popular choice in the poll
I've chosen him to be the next hero I write a guide for. He's a top level hero, nerfed subtly by the item nerfs to bloodstone and heart,
but still 100% viable especially in HoN.

AoE damage/heal skill

Deals massive aoe damage
Executes a target at ~50% health
Strong range and animation
Strong solo
Likely to be targeted due to aoe abilities
Weaker in lanes, still viable however
Low movespeed
Requires quite a bit of gear

Skills
Judgement is Soul Reaper's bread and butter, it allows him to simultaneously heal your allies while dealing damage to the enemies. It
has a very short cooldown allowing you to spam it during team fights. Allies will get a green version of a spirit that flies into them,
where as the enemy heroes who are struck receive a red scythe wielding grim reaper.

Withering Presence is your main source of aoe damage next to Judgement, allowing you to deal massive and crippling damage to
opponents if they allow you to remain living. The AoE is big enough that it should encompass all enemy heroes during team fights. This
when combined with your first ability is extremely deadly, and one of the reasons you're focused during fights. It also provides massive
damage during the early phase, merely because it's almost a permanent degen provided to opponents but also because it's so gradual
it can in fact take people off guard.
Inhuman nature would be far more useful if you didn't have basically a single ability to spam. It does have it's uses, though should
never be skilled beyond level 2, and when you do skill it to to you generally only do so in heavily aggressive or pushing strats.

Demonic Execution is what makes you so deadly to heroes during team fights. It allows you to basically assassinate someone once
they get past a certain threshold, which turns the fight into a 4v5 right off the bat. Similar to Axe's cull, this is however reduced by
magic immunity, but easily able to kill someone much sooner than Axe.

Skill Build
1. Judgement/Withering Presence
2. Withering Presence/Judgement
3. Judgement
4. Stats/Inhuman Nature
5. Judgement
6. Demonic Execution
7. Judgement
8. Stats/Inhuman Nature
9. Stats/Withering Presence
10. Stats/Withering Presence
11. Demonic Execution
12. Stats/Withering Presence
13-15. Stats/Withering Presence
16. Demonic Execution
17-21. Stats
22-25. Stats/Inhuman Nature

First of all, depending on what you take first, it's obvious you'll take the other next. The aura does best when used against dual lanes,
if you're soloing the strong lane or in a dual lane yourself, since it effectively doubles it's effectiveness. Your next decision is to choose
between stats and inhuman your next open levels(4/8), and it's all dependent on that you're running and what your opponent is
running. Stats provide that instant health/mana/damage that you may need in your lane, or even in early game skirmishes, where as
Inhuman will provide you with a steady source of mana. I only suggest inhuman if you're running a very aggressive gank and push
strat, where you may have to use a significant portion of your mana and have to continue pushing. I personally don't require the skill
during the laning process, but others may. You can opt to take more points into stats, but you'll want to have aura maxed pre 16, so
keep that in mind. Obviously the rest or all of inhuman nature is taken in the last levels.

Item Builds
Basic starting items

The starting items I suggest all link into later items, providing no waste at all. The items are based off maximizing your base damage
and mana pool, in addition to supplying a sufficient amount of regen. The healing potion is for emergencies if they chase you into fog,
or it can also be used if you take critical damage. Runes of blight are obviously meant to keep you up as high as possible, or to pre-use
just before going into an enounter. Finally, the clarity provides mana regen if you find yourself running out of mana quickly.

Early Game

This should be your goal during the early game, opting for two null talismans early if you need the base damage and health or rushing
your boots if you require the survivability it adds in addition to movespeed and pushing power. Your goal is to finish it all, as it provides
you with a significant mana pool and armor base, something this hero is lacking. The ring plugs into later items, and provides you with
the ability to massively add armor to your creeps, allowing for strong solo pushing when combined with your ability to nuke and heal
simultaneously.

Mid game

Nome's is a new item to HoN and it provides this hero just about everything he needs - mana regen, armor, additional heals. While
lacking in the health department, our next item(staff of the master), provides cheap and easy steps to increasing your hitpoints. I
would suggest getting your +10 strength item before your int item, but your best bet is easily starting with the Glowstone.

End game

A staff of the master upgrades your ult, allowing you to execute an opponent with ~half health. This is useful for obvious reasons, but
with the change to the item, it's much easier to build and every piece is beneficial to what you need. It's very easy to build in
comparison to a sheepstick, so you really shouldn't have any problems pumping this out at this stage of the game. Finally, if you find
yourself just rolling in money, I'd suggest a sheepstick because it gives you basically infinite mana in addition to a disable. It's another
one of those int items that adds both mana and hitpoints, so it increases your survivability as well as makes you multi-functional.
Beyond that, I suggest merely using your best judgement, but tanking items are generally good(frostfield plate, headdress->pipe,
heart).

Starting the game

Choosing a lane
This hero is very good at doing just about whatever it is required, but excels are soloing in two different places. He can solo mid, he
can solo the strong lane(bottom for sentinel, top for scourge), and he can also be thrown with a decent babysitter against tough
offensive lanes. Common strategies is to throw Soul Reaper and Accursed against powerhouse lanes like Magmus/Pyro,
Hammerstorm/Pyro, etc because it turns their offense into their weakness. Their burst can't take you down, and Soul Reaper is far
better at harassing than a pyro is.

Scouting for the rune

This is important, but this hero has very negligible early game damage and no disables, so he can either be used as bait or simply as
damage/heals if a skirmish should happen near the runes. If you're soloing middle, double damage or illusion runes should be taken as
they heavily increase your ability to cs. That is unless you have a very strong lane that could first blood with the rune.

Beginning of the laning phase and controlling the runes

I will never suggest a bottle for this hero, and as such, you gain far less benefit from runes. This doesn't mean you can leave the
opponent to grab them over and over, as this will make both laning harder and generate kills for the opposing team via easier ganks.
The runes are best controlled with a crow, as this completely negates their ability to grab a rune and also gives you more experience
since you don't have to leave the lane. You should basically last hit as much as possible, harassing with heal when you are in a position
to snag multiple creeps and dink opponents. If you have the lane in good equilibrium near your tower, generally where you are atop
the hill and your opponent is on the bottom of it, this should be disregarded as you're in a heavily favored position over them.
Harassing should be done against certain heroes, generally ones you don't want to farm, or want to leave in crippled hitpoint range for
ganks or solo kills. Some examples would be valkyrie(as shown in my video), or arachna. And as with this build we'll be leveling aura,
it's important that you stand in range of it to clip them, however you shouldn't compromise your positioning too much to achieve this.

Early game
Item Progression
Early game item progression depends on what you need in your lane - if you're having trouble last hitting it's best to finish those two
nulls as quick as possible, though if you're having an easy time quickly building your boots can do multiple things. It allows you to
easily push your lane when you want to scout rune or gank, and even allows you to push towers. It also allows you to tower dive, since
your creeps can tank about twice as long, and you don't actually even have to auto attack to get kills. Merely running alongside and
nuking when it comes up is sufficient, when combined with aura. Ring can be bought whenever you feel necessary, so if you're really
just demolishing middle it might be best to buy your Nome's right off the bat.
This does two things: freeing up your inventory, and leaving your items close to your tower in case you finish an item and once again
have inventory slots. It's pretty common, and if you've ever wondered why pro players leave items like branches near their tower, it's
to leave them in range to pick up should they have free item slots. Freed either by completing recipes or using consumables. While
this picture shows two branches on the ground, with the updated build you really shouldn't even have more than one and you'll only
run into this problem if you delay boots by a lot.

Ganking
Soul Reaper moves very slow, having a base movespeed of 290(10 under average), as such most of his ganks will be done via counter
ganks by utilizing the TP scrolls. Notice allies getting tower dived bottom? TP, heal, and ult something ASAP. While you can run down
there and gank, it's generally very noticeable, but if you KNOW some key area doesn't have wards don't be afraid to exploit this fact.

Maximizing regen and manabattery/powerupply

Once you finish treads, you have the unique ability to (more easily) boost your regenerative abilities. While this probably sounds
foreign and complicated, it really isn't, and I'll explain. Let's say with strength treads on you have 500/1000 health, and with agi treads
it switches to 400/800. Assuming that we have a flask which heals 400, we obviously will only get to 900/1000 with strength treads on.
As such, if we switch to agi treads and then flask we will be at 100%, allowing us to switch to strength treads with full hitpoints. This
can be done with mana as well, and more notably with your power supply. Have 10 charges? Switch to agi treads(lowers your
mana/hitpoints as low as possible) before you use it to reap as much benefit from it as you can. This can be done by dropping all of
your stat items, for example your null's on the ground or the crow and quickly using you regen, or if you happen to find yourself with
treads(which isn't a bad item).

Why does this work? Well, when you add hitpoints or mana via items or otherwise, you keep the same % hitpoints and mana, so by
lowering your total before using any items that would heal you, you effectively increase your % to a higher amount than you would of
if just normally regenerating. This can be done also by dropping your items in the ground/chicken, or any other method of lowering
your total hitpoint/mana before healing.

Powersupply and manabattery are useful, but I only tend to take it if the enemies are good for it. A good example would be dual stuns,
thunderbringer, or most of all armadon.

Team pushes
Either offensive or defensive, you should be at every team fight. You're far too useful at this stage in the game(~7-11) to not be in
team fights, as you can literally be a 2k swing in damage with a single spell. In comparison to other heroes, all depending on how well
you farmed, you should be pretty beefy at this stage in the game. With strength treads on you should be tilting around 1.1-1.2k
hitpoints, making you one of the highest health heroes(especially int heroes) in the game. This doesn't mean you can run into the
fight, balls to the wall, but you can take quite a bit of punishment. Depending on your team lineup, if you have a strong early game,
you should try to push down towers as you're able to heal all of your allies and creeps while subsequently damaging all of your
opponents in range. This gives you alone very strong pushing power, but also doubles as defending power, which is why I stress TPs as
extremely important early on. You can defend towers, or show up to pushes near your own towers, and gain a very early economy
advantage simply by knocking down their towers and keeping your own up.
Videos relating to the guide
Scrim between QuC and WNP, detailing my guide's item build and playstyle:
1
2
3
4

Recent pub game, altered skill build:

1
2
3
4
5

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