Guide By : Riorus

Ao Kuang, Dragon King of the Eastern Seas, is a mage and powerful pusher. He's arguably one of the best mids in the game as he is able to quickly dispatch waves of creeps and keep his opponents at bay. When playing Ao your aim is to get a lot of magical power so that all of your abilities can do maximum damage. Your main weakness will be getting caught in melee range so you have to stay focused on keeping at range. So now let's look at how you can stay at range and keep melee gods away from you.

Ao's passive is Graceful Winds. This gives you 5% of your maximum mana as magical power. This helps you scale through the game.

Ao's first ability is Squall. This is a skill shot projectile that does a moderate amount of damage and slows in an area around the target. You can use this to finish off enemies, kill creeps or to help you escape.

The second ability is Slither. This is your escape ability. it increases your speed by up to 17% + up to 7% for each nearby enemy. It's a great spell for escaping ganks but you have to use it quickly before you get slowed.

Ao's third ability, Tornadoes, is his main ability. This ability creates a large tornado that places smaller tornadoes on enemies. This small tornadoes deal 50 damage +15% magical power every half second for 3 seconds. The small tornadoes get refreshed the longer the target stays in the large tornado so the longer they're in there the more damage you do. This spell is especially useful for clearing entire waves of creeps.

Ao's ulti is Spirit's Tempest. This spell summons a large dragon head that breathes down in a line in front of Ao Kuang dealing up to 800 damage +120% of magical power. It also knocks any enemy it hits to the side. The problem with this ulti is the long cast and travel time. For it to be used effectively it should be used on people who aren't paying attention to you, so if they are running or they haven't seen you yet.

Now before we get into the item & skill builds, I'd like to to say that this guide, as well as all of the Guides we produce are meant to be viewed as a broad generalisation, and are focused on newer players looking to gain an edge when playing the character, everyone has a different play style and what works for me, may not work for you, but this guide should do quite well in most circumstances. With that said, let's go ahead and take a look at how we'll be building Ao Kuang.

Your build will rotate around Tornadoes. This is your most powerful spell and should be levelled up fairly quickly. To get you started you should pick up Tornadoes first as it allows you to deal major damage to creeps and keep your opponent away from you. Your second spell will be Squall. In the early game you can use this to pick away at your opponent or even finish them off if you got some good early tornadoes. At level three pick up another level of Tornadoes to increase your damage output. Then get Slither so that you can escape any early ganks that will come your way. At level five grab your Ultimate (Spirit's Tempest) and from there start alternating between Tornadoes and Squall while picking up Slither if you feel like you need more speed.

To start the game you should get level one of Boots of Magi and level one of Rod of Tahuti. This will give you a powerful start however you will not be able to buy mana potions and you'll have to head back to base fairly quickly. If you decide you want a more sustained start you can get two levels of Boots of Magi and pick up a few mana potions.

If you went with the first suggestion then when you have the money max out the Boots of Magi and grab some mana potions. After this you should get Meditation so that you can stay in lane for long periods of time.

Next get another level in Rod of Tahuti and start getting Polynomicon. The Polynomicon gets you magical lifesteal which is very useful for staying alive and at level 3 it gives you a passive which boosts your auto attack by 100% of you magical power after using an ability. This can boost your auto attacks to do up to 600 damage at the end of the game.

After this finish off Rod of Tahuti and start on Doom Orb and Book of Toth. These are great boosts to your magical power and mana pool. They'll make you more of a threat in the late game and Doom Orb can make you stronger the longer you stay alive.

For your final item you can get a defensive item. If you're being threatened by physical damage get Breastplate of Valour. The mana it gives you will increase your magical power as well because of Ao's passive. If you're taking a lot of magical damage get Void Stone. This gives you magical power and projects a magic defence debuff on enemies nearby. If you feel like you're under a lot of threat from both magic and physical damage then you could either skip out on either Book of Toth or Doom Orb and then get both of the above or you could get the Hide of Leviathan for a small increase to both resistances.

If you're being ganked often by enemies with slows/stuns then you should get the Purification Beads. This is an ability that removes and cc's on you such as Arachne's slow, Artemis' boar or Ymir's freeze.

For laning you will often be in mid so you don't have to worry about it too much but there will probably be a time when you've got to give it up to someone else.

When this happens you want to be with someone who can immobilize an enemy so you can get as much damage as possible out of your Tornado. A tank, such as Hades or Odin, can usually do this well but you may also want to lane with a carry as early game your Tornado will leave creeps with low enough health to get one shotted. This means that your carry can get a great boost in xp and gold from last hits. If you do decide to do this you'll want to hold back on levelling up your Tornado so that you don't steal too much farm from your carry.

I'll wrap this guide up with some tips and tricks that you should keep in mind while playing Ao.

First of all keep in mind that your Tornadoes spell has a bit of a cast time and takes a little while to place the small tornado on the target. This means that you should place the Tornado just ahead of where your target is running this means that you will definitely hit and deal maximum damage.

Hitting an enemy with Squall while they are approaching or in a Tornado will slow them and keep them in the large Tornado for longer.

When attacking creep waves you should place the Tornado ahead of the first Centurion or Cyclops are running and in a position where the archers will stand to fight. This will kill all the archers in a wave from near the start of the game, leaving the melee units to be easily picked off.

Slither is quickly negated by enemy slows so use it when you're in fear of ganks to get back to a safe place very quickly. If your teammates call miss and you've been pushing hard Slither back to your tower sooner not later.

As Ao's ulti has a wide area that it hits you can get an easy hit if enemies are running against a wall. In the time it takes for them to notice the mark on the floor and move across the danger zone they would have been hit.

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