Ratatoskr Arena Build

Hi, I'm Fuzzel and want to share with you my Ratatoskr build I put together for Arena.

Key focus lies on his Guide lies on the Dart ability, which can, if used correctly, shred enemy gods to pieces!

The mantra here is: "Being squishy only matters if they can catch you."

This is my first guide (and English isn't my native tounge), so suggestions/corrections on formatting, presentation, item information, or even items itself, are very welcome.
Currently the "In the Game" and "Tactics" Chapter is still missing and I will eventually complete it, but I wanted to share the basic build with the community as soon as possible.

I hope you found this guide useful.

Pros: + High damage potential + Slippery + Strong early on + Fun to play + Cute

Cons: - Very squishy - High vulnerability to CC - Requires quick and precise reaction do use the full potential with Dart

Passive: Acorn of Yggdrasil

Unlike other passives, instead of giving you a stat modification or a special stack, Acorn of Yggdrasil gives Ratatoskr a unique item called Magic Acorn which takes up one of his six items slots and at first only gives you +5 physical power. Upgrading this Acorn will modify your Dart, Flurry of Acorns and Acorn Blast, adding additional affects/damage, depending on the upgrade path you choose and the item tier-level.
It also gives you a snazzy upgrade look: Ratatoskr will gain coloured stripes depending on the chosen Acorn, as well as having the by the acorn modified abilities chance colour accordingly.

You can upgrade this Acorn like any other item with gold. But you can do this anywhere on the map. You don't have to be in your base in order to upgrade.
The first upgrade to Tier 2 for 850 gold gives you two options:

• The Blue Acorn
• The Yellow Acorn

Any of the two have +30 physical power and modify your Flurry of Acorns but differ in the effect:

Blue Acorn makes your 12 Acorns of Flurry Acorns apply slows.
Yellow Acorn straight up gives Flurry Acorns 20% more damage.

To Tier 3, the upgrade path branches again giving you a total of four Tier 3 Acorns to choose from.
On the Blue Acorn path, the options consists of:

• Sapphire Acorn
• Emerald Acorn

Both Acorns have +50 physical power and +15 physical penetration. The differece lies again in the ability modifying effect:

Sapphire Acorn converts your Acorn Blast basically to sticky grenades. They will to stick gods & walls they hit or just stay in the air, until they explode after 2 seconds dealing AEO damage. Enemy gods with sticky acorns on them who will run back to his teammates will even damage those gods when the acorns explode.
Emerald Acorn will make your Acorn Blast heal yourself for each hit. This can come in useful as a squishy assassin, especially as your enemies may not expect that you can heal yourself.
On the Yellow Acorn path, we'll find:

• Opal Acorn
• Topaz Acorn

Like the Tier 2 and the first Tier 3 branch, both will give you the same stat improvements, being +50 physical power and +25% cooldown reduction, and only differ in the ability modifying effect:

Opal Acorn: This is the one we want for our build; Adding lightnings to our Dart that shoot out the left and right of Ratatoskr while we dash.
Topaz Acorn on the other hand grants your Dart a stun of 1.2-2 seconds upon dashing through a god twice in 10 seconds. (Basically if will be applied then if your dashing-chain ends and Dart goes on cooldown. This plays nicely with an assassin, but we are focusing our build on speed and confusing our enemy by dashing as often as possible.

---

(1) Dart

This is your most important ability.
Dart let's you perform a dash similar to the one Nemesis has, damaging every enemy unit you pass with your dash, but unlike Swift Vengeance you are not getting a succession of 2 dashes but a very clever and exiting mechanic:

Once you dashed through a God, which you didn't dashed through already in the last 10 seconds, your Dart's cooldown is reset.
Meaning that you can dash up to six times in a very short time, until your ability goes on cooldown.

Dart has a mana cost of 35 for each individual dash, whereas Swift Vengeance's two dashes have a fixed cost of 50-90 mana. So if you dash 6 times you are looking at a cost of 150 mana.

The cooldown is fairly low, but not too low with 14 seconds. Applying the 40% cooldown reduction of our Opal Acorn and Jotunn's Wrath the cooldown comes down to 8.4 seconds, becoming blazing fast!

As already discussed above in the Passive, Opal Acorn modifies your Dart ability, adding lightnings that are applied to the left and right of your dash. More about that later in the Items Chapter and Tactics Chapter.

---

Flurry of Acorns

(2) Flurry of Acorns

You spit out 12 acorns in a circle around you with a radius of 20, who will then stay there for about a second before they will return to Ratatoskr.

Each Acorn itself does deal very low damage of 10-26 (+15% physical power) whenever it hits anything, both the way out and back. The cooldown of 12 seconds (7.2 seconds with a full build) is even shorter than the one of Dart and it has a mana cost of 70-90.

Keep in mind that if you have the Yellow Acorn the damage will be boosted by 20% making it 12-31.2 damage per acorn.

How to effectively use Flurry of Acorns together with Dart will be discussed down in the Tactics Chapter.

---

(3) Acorn Blast

As we chose the Yellow Acorn> Opal Acorn path with our build, our Acorn Blast ability will remain unmodified, leaving it in a rather unimportant position.

Acorn Blast will shoot out four individual Acorns in a narrow cone, that each deal 30-70 (+25% physical power) damage on hit.
To maximize damage on a single target get as close as possible to the god to ensure that all for Acorns hit.

With the shortest cooldown of all our abilites being 10 seconds (6 seconds with a full build) it's a constant poking ability, but keep in mind the cost of 60 mana.

---

(4) Through the Cosmos

Upon activating, Ratatoskr charges shortly up and jumps into the air onto a large tree branch of Yggdrasil, save from further attacks. He then can jump up to two times onto another branch, covering quite an amount of distance, before he then leaps down onto the ground again, doing AOE Damage of 250-570 (+100% physical power).
The mana consumption is moderate with 90-130 and the cooldown of 90 seconds can be reduced to 54 second with out build.

Through the Cosmos can be compared to Apollo's ultimate, but unlike Across The Sky your range is fixed by 2 branch-jumps and your final leap (which will cover around half the distance of the arena) while [[Apollo] can by on his cart as long as he doesn't run out of mana which gets used for every second he uses his ultimate.

Just as Across The Sky, Through the Cosmos is a very versatile ultimate, for finishing retreating enemies, combining with your team members ultimates, escaping enemies' ultimates, or even escaping back to your base (or at least to your side of the Arena by the side of your allies). More later in the Tactics Chapter.

Keep in mind that as with all similar ultimates, during the period of "charging up" before you leap into the air, you are very vulnerable as you stand still. Don't use your ultimate as a escape when you are attacked and your health bar is already in the deep red.

Warrior Tabi

Giving him +40 physical power at the beginning as opposed to the +20 by Ninja Tabi can make a huge difference. Ratatoskr is very squshy and in the beginning you want to rather poke and use your Dart than auto-attack like you would normally do with an assassin. You gain later enough attack speed with Asi. But if you rather choose Bloodforge you might consider picking up Ninja Tabi instead.

---

Opal Acorn

Ratatoskr's Acorn is a unique item only available to Ratatoskr, granted by his passive Acorn of Yggdrasil, and plays a very important part in his build, as it gives you a variety of options to choose from to enhance your abilities.
For Arena (and especially with the play style I based this build on) the Opal Acorn is the best choice.

+50 physical power and a 25% cooldown reduction are great on it's own but what really interests us is the Lightning upgrade your Dart-Dash receives:

Beside your 190 + 40% physical power damage (With the full build on Lvl 20) that results to 298 from the dash itself, the Acorn now adds up to 6 lightnings lightnings that will shoot out left and right of Ratatoskr while he dashes, dealing a whooping 110 + 70% physical power meaning: 271.
Considering that you can dash instantly again if you dash a god for the first time in the last 10 seconds, this can add up to a frightening amount of damage you can deal to a group of gods.
But wait, there is more!

Those lightnings that the Opal Acorn grands you, do apply on-hit effect, which concludes us to the third item in the build:

---

Golden Bow

Oh yes, the Golden Bow. It gives you a decent amount of physical power with +35, a slight movement speed upgrade of 5%, and +10% Critical Strike Chance. But don't let the item description fool you, this is a godlike item on Ratatoskr!

Because the real deal is the passive, which deals 50% AOE damage of your basic attack damage in a radius of 15ft. This is already a nice thing to have for an assassin as they hit hard, but as Opal Acorn's lightnings apply on-hit effect, this will apply as well.
The result is that the 50% of the dash's damage itself gets applied to everyone standing around (on top of the lightning damage) and that 50% of the lightning damage gets applied back to the god you actually dash through (if the lightnings hit anything nearby) and everything else that might not got hit by the lightning (as it prioritizes gods).
You will shred gods!

---

Jotunn's Wrath

This item gives you a bit of everything a god like Ratatoskr needs:

• Physical power of +40 and physical penetration of +11 to further boost your damage potential.
• +150 mana which you need to dash as often and as many times as possible.
• And a 25% cooldown reduction which maxes it out to 40% together with the Opal Acorn. This is key as you want your Dart to be up as quick as possible at the end of a dash chain.

---

Asi

Life steal is a great thing to have as a squishy assassin's as it allows you to hang onto enemys, sucking away their health. Asi is my choice here because it boosts your life steal from 15% to 40% for 5 seconds when you are in a tight situation and on top of that gives you +15 physical penetration and raises your attack speed by 30% to 1.7.

---

Shifter's Shield

This will round up the build, giving you straight up another 40 physical power and 15 protection both physical and magical.

According to your health being either above or below 50% it will give you +20 physical power or +20 protections (again both physical and magical), suiting you for right situation.

---

Alternatives for Asi:

Bloodforge

If you rather want 40(+15) more physical power and that extra 9% lifesteal, Bloodforge might be something for you but keep in mind that you loose the +30% attack speed of Asi so you should pick up Ninja Tabi in the beginning.

---

Alternatives for Asi/ Shifter's Shield:

Hastened Fatalis

Depending on your play style you might want to consider picking up Hastened Fatalis instead of either Asi or Shifter's Shield to latch onto your enemies through it's passive removing the attacking movement speed debuff for 1 second.

Replacing Asi you won't loose the +30% attack speed but all your life steal and 15 physical penetration Asi grants you. But you gain an extra 10% movement speed.

Replacing Shifter's Shield you will have a whooping +60% attack speed raising it up to 2.0 which will suck away the enemies health with the help of Asi. But you loose the situational extra physical power/protection (both physical and magical) from Shifter's Shield.

It is up to you, considering that your quickly "re-cooling" Dart will let you chase enemy a fair bit anyway

---

Alternatives for Shifter's Shield:

Magi's Blessing

Magi's Blessing

Now, if you want to be a bit more on the saver side, Magi's Blessing is a great item, giving you the same +15 physical and magical protection as Shifter's Shield although it will don't boost it up to +35 each whenever you health falls below 50%.
On the plus side, it puts another 350 health into your life bar and has a lifesaving beads like passive:
Absorbing one hard CC and granting you 1 second of CC immunity afterwards, every 60 seconds.
Great to have as a Ratatoskr where one right placed CC can put you to a stop, giving the enemy the chance to crush squishy you.

---

---

Actives:

Combat Blink

Like all Assassin's, going in fast, making a kill, and getting the heck outta there is a good tactic.
Combat Blink gives you that extra "surprise mobility" to either secure the kill on a retreating god or escape from a tight situation, whenever your Dart is either down, blocked or wont move you enough.

---

Greater Purification

Beside the usual " Ares! Get your beads ready!", it can be become quite handy for Ratatoskr as CC leaves him vulnerable. Remember, your speed with Dart is your greatest weapon. CC is your biggest enemy with this tactic.

---

Aegis Pendant

Just as Combat Blink, Aegis Pendant will help you to survive tight situations where Dart is not an option. Also great to counter ults, especially those who who want to finish you off when you are retreating like Nu Wa's Fire Shards, Thanatos' Hovering Death or Through the Cosmos from your alter ego.

Start

//TODO

Mid

//TODO

End

//TODO

//TODO