Sins of a Dark Age Ermuk Guide

Sins of a Dark Age Ermuk Guide by Fendrilon

Hello all my name is Fendrilon and I’m relatively new to the SoaDA beta. Just starting this week.
However I’ve gotten really into it and have been playing in as many community games as possible.
I’ve found Ermuk to be my absolute favorite champ and think I have found an interesting play style for him that is fun, but more importantly extremely effective.

Now i know other players who build and play Ermuk differently but i’d like to go over what I do and why i think its the best!

First of all why play Ermuk?

#1 He is ranged.
melee can be trickier to play both in laning and teamfights.

#2 He has cc.
i think Kickbox may be the best CC in the game, it has long range and a very nice stun time plus it looks awesome.. you just kicked Grugg flat on his face with your freakin feet how cool is that?

#3 Tons of move speed.
Ermuk’s move speed can be used for initiating, escaping, or team utility, for a game where everyone seems to move slow Ermuk can feel great in this regard.

#4 Decent jungle clearing.
This would be with his E, now I haven’t figured out a good way to clear minion waves with his E, but for the small gremlin and badger jungle camps it works wonders, having them all run over his vine trapwire twice clears them all.

#5 He is cute and furry
No I’m not a girl, shut up leave me alone I just like the look of the hero.

Abilities:

Here are Ermuk’s ability stats

Innate Passive: Refuge in Nature
Gains bonus ability cool down  (5/7.5/10/12.5/15%) and mana regen (1/2/3/4/5 per second) while in the grass.

Q: Kickbox
Mana Cost  90/95/100/105
Cool Down  16/15/14/13
Magic Damage   60/90/120/150 + 0.65 Special Power
Note: knocks down target.

W: Helping Hand
Mana Cost  80/100/120/140
Cool Down  13/12/11/10
Speed Boost Duration  3
Healing  70/120/170/220 + 0.7 Special Power
Speed Boost  15/18/21/24%

E: Razor Vine Trap
Mana Cost  70/75/80/85
Cool Down  24/22/20/18
Trap Lifetime  10
Magic Damage  60/110/160/210 +0.5 Special Power
Armor Reduction  5/10/15/20
Magic Resistance Reduction  5/10/15/20
Debuff Duration  5

Ultimate: Forest Guide
Mana Cost  100
Cool Down  100/90/80
Duration  8/10/12
Radius  11
Speed Boost  15/17/20

Playstyle:

Now before we go into items and ability skill order, I want to talk about my Ermuk philosophy and the different build/playstyle options he has available.

Now Ermuk came from a SP mage type background from what i understand from Thanatological’s comments to me, he had a time where he was on par with the other mages and substantially overpowered. He has been nerfed since that time, very reasonably i might add, but it makes him unviable in my opinion as a SP mage.

Consider this, Ermuk’s Q at rank 4 does 150 damage, that’s less than Atasha’s Q at rank 2(160), same as Dekain’s Q at rank 2, and only 5 damage more than Serewyn’s Q at rank 2.
For Ermuk’s E the damage is substantially better though not great, and good luck getting an enemy to run over it more than once or twice,
His ratios are good but Q’s limited base damage and the unreliability of his E means his SP damage is just lackluster compared to the game’s real mages.

However as listed above Ermuk does have some great strengths. Now my build came from the realization that after using Ermuk’s abilities in a fight, jumping in with Q and using E for a single proc, i would spend a fair amount of time just auto attacking waiting for my abilities to come back. I considered that Ermuk could be pretty effective as auto attacker being ranged and having his kit. So as I began considering building him as an Attack Power hero, when I looked again at his E, I saw that it reduces both magic damage and armor. This was when i considered building him as attack speed, magic damage on hit ranged carry.

Now Soada has 2 great items for this. They are Soul Ripper and Lycan’s Fangs, lets look at each of them.

Soul Ripper
30 SP     45% attack speed
Passive: Your basic attacks deal magic damage
Unique Passive: Your basic attacks reduce target’s magic resistance

Lycan’s Fangs
30 attack power 35% attack speed
Passive: Your basic attacks apply a stacking magic damage over time effect

There is more info relating to these items but these are the important stats and effects. The synergy between these 2 items is amazing and they are core items for me on Ermuk. You do great damage with these 2 items plus with a proc of your E, reducing the enemies magic resist, you can get up to 44 shredded magic resist more than most heroes even have (base magic resist is 30). You will be doing significant magic and physical damage, surprising most players who arent expecting it. I have caught alot of people off guard who dont expect me to have so much auto attack damage, when they turn to flee from the duel, its Kickbox time and with the extra movespeed you can get in the last few hits you need to take someone down.

So in terms of item build path,

Starting items:

2 Conscript’s Dagger
1 Health pot

Assuming you start top or bot where there is easily accessible brush, if you spend some time in it you shouldnt go out of mana, unless you are crazy spamming your spells which you shouldn’t be since with an extra +14 attack power level 1 you can harass very effectively with auto attacks.

You can outsustain pretty much anyone because your auto attacks hurt more, and you can use W to heal your self, you should be able to survive most “all in” engagements due to the high health available.
Now one could start with boots, glyphs and pots and that would be fine but the last reason I choose these starting items is… last hitting. Last hitting can be HARD in this game at least for me with the current unresponsiveness and EU ping, extra damage at start helps to make last hitting much easier.

Midgame/Core items:

the order in which you get these items is pretty much at your discretion but you will want:

Soul Ripper
Lycan’s Fangs

Commoner’s boots- Charger’s Sabatons (best boots in game)

Glyphs: Blink+random(maybe portal)
Blink is a must have, get as early as possible, but for the other im undecided, portal in general is nice. Bulwark can be good if the other team has Beroth. Not big into anguish or cripple but could be ok for kill potential. Haste seems meh on Ermuk, you got enough run speed already.

Late game/Luxury items:

Leader of the Pack
a great item that adds to your punch(attack speed), gives you lifesteal and gives a nice lifesteal aura to your team. If you hate your team and are fed yourself you could go Hungering Blade instead which works well with your attack speed.

Grove Keepers Mantle
I like getting at least 1 defensive item and this one gives a bunch of nice stats, at this point you do enough damage but need to keep yourself alive. I’m open to other options for a defensive item, depending on game specific circumstances,  Sentinel, Revenguard, Chilling Breastplate, and Second Wind i could see each of those being decent in this slot.

Hiro’s Windblade-
One last damage item. This gives nice attack speed, has a nice active, and has that extra bit of movement speed. Decent overall.

Skill Order:

Take Q level 1, but afterwards it up to how you feel about your lane.

Taking a lot of harrass? level up W.

Not taking harrass but want to be agressive and pressure the enemy hero? level up Q.

Want to push the wave then head into jungle and farm? level up E.

Obviously take Ult whenever you can.

Overall as long as you have all 3 abilities its totally situational what you max, but see that’s the beauty of Ermuk, he is so flexible, he can deal with pretty much anything in laning phase.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Lategame a real carry like Torrace, Skalla or Khagas will outdamage you because crit, but early to midgame you actually do more auto attack damage on less gold (look at what my core items cost vs normal attack power carry items) and you bring tons of team utility.

Ermuk is a ton of fun to play and  I’m still learning new things with him everyday so i’ll probably need to update my guide in the near future but for now this how i’m playing him and I’m kicking a lot of face!!!