Hi all, my guide is back in business yet again (unless SEMC makes another useless nerf against Koshka) and I'll be updating everything on it. For the meantime, I'll post a roadmap of what I plan to do to have this guide completely remade. So without further ado, here are the objectives:
- Add builds again. DONE!
- Add threats. DONE!
- Add a skill overview chapter. DONE!
- Add a skin display section. DONE!
- Add an item section.
- Add pros and cons section. DONE!
- Add a wall jumping picture.
- Add a current meta-analysis.
- Add an actually decent introduction.
- Add a tips and tricks section.
- Explain in depth how to employ Yummy Catnip Frenzy correctly.
- Explain the importance of positioning and counter-positioning for Koshka.
- understanding the importance of rushing defense in early game
- Analysis on Shatterglass vs Broken Myth
- Compare Journey Boots vs Halcyon Chargers
- Add credentials.
- Add a ToC.
- Very dank pics
- BB code upgrade
Random comments:
just realized the alliteration in my title is too subjective, accepting more ideas.
I can't believe that I forgot to update my signature in the forums to include Aesthehes artwork.
Oh boi 100 upvotes *tear rolls down*
Change-log:
- May 21, 2017 - Started remaking guide!
- May 22, 2017 - Finally got the code working on the abilities section. Added skin section too.
- May 23, 2017 - Pros and Cons section being worked on.
- May 24, 2017 - Pros and Cons finished!
- May 26, 2017 - Finished the offensive items section.
- May 28, 2017 - Started working on the defensive items section *groan*
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Bloodrush
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Koshka gains 2 move speed for 4s whenever she deals damage with her abilities.
Koshka's passive is part of what makes her one of the most mobile heroes in the game. With this skill, you can quickly reposition, chase and escape against other heroes. Additionally, it makes traveling between two points extremely quickly. Additionally, Koshka can also dodge many skill shots with ease (though some of them do require a certain degree of prediction). This is why I don't recommend buying
Sprint Boots for your first item since you can basically activate them with every skill you cast.
This also makes her extremely efficient at moving between camps, leading to a higher clearing speed and gaining an Exp/gold curve against your enemies which finally makes up for early game snowballing and aggression as part of his kit.
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Pouncy Fun
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Koshka dashes to the target enemy and deals damage.
Your main gap closer for basically everything. Pretty straightforward and can be used in conjunction with
Aftershock as a hit-and-run tactic. It should be noted that apart from your main passive, this is your only escape skill. You can jump over walls or at other minions and take advantage of a speed boost to escape. If an enemy has some skill to dash away, you may prefer initiating with
Yummy Catnip Frenzy and waiting on using this skill so that they cannot escape or vice-versa. Usually maxed last.
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Twirly Death
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Koshka twirls, damaging all enemies around her. Her next 2 basic attacks within 5 seconds deal bonus crystal damage.
Empowered attacks have lower cooldown (0.5s) than her normal basic attacks (0.8s)
This is Koshka's bread and butter skill. This is where you deal most of your damage from and that's why you should always max it first. When you overdrive it, you get an even higher amount of base damage and 1 second less of cooldown on it.
Among the things that all Koshka players should understand is how to use
Twirly Death correctly. In most cases, you should use it
before hitting anything so that by the time you actually start dealing damage, you'll be able to dish out four TD stacks instead of two. This is almost doubling your damage output and should be learned as soon as possible. This is also what you should do at the start of the game before minions spawn, to make your clear time more effective.
Few people understand that
Twirly Death can also be used as a finisher skill. Its range is slightly above Koshka's AA range, meaning you can get a speed boost or just straight up kill a low hp enemy with it. This means you can forgo waiting for your
Pouncy Fun cooldown to finish and can be a deciding factor between getting or not getting the kill.
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Yummy Catnip Frenzy
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Koshka leaps at her target then launches into a flurry of slashes, stunning the target for the entire 2.2 second duration. Koshka will cancel her ult if the stun is Reflex Blocked.
Arguably one of the hardest skills to use correctly in competitive gaming. This can be easily reflex blocked, using it incorrectly leads to being rooted in a bad position, and you do not deal much damage during the duration of it. Not surprisingly, most, if not all players don't even bother maxing this. If you can count on that the enemy carry can block it correctly, consider either having your support sacrifice a skill, buy a
Nullwave Gauntlet or use it on purpose so that they can't use it against more potentially devasting CC. Still putting a point into it at level 6 is advisable, three skills are still better than two and this opens up more possibilities.
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+ High mobility.
+ Fast clear speed.
+ Good against skill shot oriented heroes.
+ Murders squishies for breakfast.
+ Early game powerhouse.
+ Good counterjungling potential. |
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- Squishy.
- Lack of escapes.
- Potato in late game.
- Crippling CC skill.
- Weak against tanky sustain heroes.
- Can't stand much CC. |
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Koshka is a hero that can easily dominate the first four minutes of the game, setting up early snowballs which allow her carries to power farm into late game. She can easily dive in, kill or incapacitate, and escape. Given her mobility, she is able to quickly dodge skillshots, making her an effective counter to heroes like
Kestrel,
Skye,
Skaarf and
Samuel if played correctly. This also makes up for extremely quick farming (which can be done in your jungle or in the enemy's). She is also very useful against WP carries, being able to jump in and Atlas them with ease (
Pro Tip: always use
Atlas Pauldron before jumping into the enemy carry. All of this make her a useful assassin.
Still, this is without setbacks: being focused on, early shield and CC can keep her from reaching her power spikes and achieving her advantages. Taking her as the first pick in a ranked game is guaranteed to bring up defensive supports like
Lance and
Ardan, who will then turtle to late game. In fact, barriers are a living hell: a temporary source of hp that can take up a great part of your damage or even completely nullify it. To counter this, strategic positioning and counterplay are necessary.
Offensive Items
Shatterglass
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Shatterglass is one of those items whose effectiveness on
 Koshka heavily depends on how much her CP ratios have been tweaked. That aside, this provides a much more upfront type of burst damage (though
 Broken Myth will out-scale it given enough time) and can be used to burst down carries in situations where time is not a hand. Still, and I can't stress this enough, BM is an item that will scale better late game in most situations. Furthermore, your clear time with this item is beyond ridiculous, something you may want to keep in mind. |
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Aftershock
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Ah, one of the main staples in every
Koshka build, not only is it cheap, it also pairs very well with the empowered attacks from your
Twirly Death, amassing a huge amount of burst quickly. Truly an early game item. This item also makes up for useful Kraken steals given its single-target damage). Late game, any
 Aegis will keep you from chunking off your enemy's hp, so most players build a
Broken Myth to pierce through, amplify your damage (which can go as high as 400 hp so you can imagine) and adds a massive amount of power to the game. Always remember that your damage can be further increased by adding time gaps of 1.5 seconds in your skills. Very late game, consider selling for more stable items. |
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Broken Myth
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Broken Myth is the biggest late-game investment you can have because it simply increases your base damage and pierces.
Aftershock and
Shatterglass are prone to be shielded, this item only gets more effective. This item also magnifies the effect of
Aftershock nicely. Meanwhile, this item does not increase the damage from a
Shatterglass though they are still a relatively nice duo. Some players like to but this along with a
 Piercing Shard to shred through your enemy's shield with more ease, selling this item only when they can buy another T3. |
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Clockwork
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Among the three offensive items, you'll take for Koshka (usually), one of them will have to sustain your mana issues. This is not mandatory but recommendable. Clockwork gives off less energy regeneration than
 Eve of Harvest but it can increase your total CP by 25% (which works well with
Shatterglass). Still, the best thing about this items is its cooldown: allowing you to rapidly spam skills. This makes
Clockwork a bad match for
Aftershock since you usually want to time your skills for increased damage. This build is, in the late game, is even burstier than Aftershock builds. |
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Eve of Harvest
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The other variation of a mana regeneration item is this. Eve is a much more defensive choice, allowing you to chalk up damage, something very useful if you're the only frontline of the team. This item virtually guarantees that you can have unlimited mana. Usually, I take this choice when I have to fight tanky heroes for some sustained damage (which pairs up nicely with
Broken Myth).This item also provides a flat 50 more crystal power, which is why I consider it a half offense, half defense item. Also, this item pairs well with
Aftershock, since the slash damage can quickly let you ramp-up hp. I take this when dealing damage is not as important as say, keeping your carry alive with plenty of
 Breaking Point stacks, as with the case of
 Vox and
 Gwen or when I want to stay alive long enough to deal more damage. |
Defensive Items
Aegis
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Most, it not all carries are probably going to buy Aegis at some point in the game, especially against
Koshka. This item gives you a
 Reflex Block every 35 seconds (which is 10 seconds less than
 Crucible and
Reflex Block, which is pretty useful against hard CC skills like
 Hellfire Brew,
 Aces High and
 Afterburn. Moreover, this makes diving in in team fights much easier and safer. The only scenario where I wouldn't buy this is against a double WP carry team, in which I would either buy
Crucible or a
 Metal Jacket +
Atlas Pauldron. |
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Atlas Pauldron
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I tend to ignore
Metal Jacket in favor of this item for Koshka. Her kit gives her ridiculous movement speed boosts and two gap closers, so slowing the WP enemy carry for four seconds is pretty recommendable. Not only should you be gone after that time, the enemy carry will hardly deal damage in the process. It also helps your support a lot, since it can now focus on building either a
Crucible or
 War Treads, sort of like split building. Two
Atlas Pauldrons can also be pretty effective to shut down late game monsters like
Vox or
 Ringo. |
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Metal Jacket
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Pretty useful against WP heroes that can poke you from afar (which is a pretty rare thing considering you're an assassin) Reduces damage A LOT while keeping you alive. I mainly take this against
Gwen because her
 Skedaddle can cleanse her, and
Vox because of his ability to jump around and avoid your
Atlas Pauldron. When in doubt, take
Metal Jacket as a safe bet. As a side note, this can also diminish
Breaking Point stacks a lot when the enemy team is focusing against you, and a very useful, yet not exactly efficient counter against
 Tension Bow, where attack speed doesn't matter (Raw hp is more preferred). |
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FoR
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Fountain of Renewal can be bought in the same case scenario as Crucible, but it can also do so much more. If the enemy team is not dealing consistent CP damage, or if more healing is necessary to keep your team alive, this is a pretty useful item. Regardless,
Aegis is usually superior because it has a
Reflex Block. |
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Crucible
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You heard that right, Crucible can be very useful for Koshka in certain situations, like when the carry is dealing most of the damage and keeping him or her alive is essential. Also, it´s very effective against double weapon teams who still have crippling CC. |
Boots
I prefer talking about these more at depth because they provide quite the tactical difference in games.
Koshka is such a mobile hero that for most part of the early game she doesn't need them at all unless the enemy team is equally mobile. This is why starting with two
Crystal Bits is so effective on her. A good player should be able to use any damageable unit (minions, jungle mobs, kraken, the friggin' enemy turret) for a mobility advantage. This means that Koshka hardly benefits from
Journey Boots because her passive is just that good. In fact, the only reasons an enemy should be able to run away from you is either because:
This makes buying
Halcyon Chargers an optimal purchase in most situations. Let's not even forget about the CDA and energy regeneration.
BUT this doesn't make Journey Boots necessarily a worse purchase either, having a sprint available every time the enemy attempts to run is invaluable. Additionally, your assassin play style means that you will eventually have to retreat back and wait for another opportunity to strike, 12 seconds will reset quickly. Heck,
Journey Boots also mean that you can
initiate and
disengage and
reposition with the same item. One strategy I like to use is
Pouncy Fun at an enemy, Atlas them, and then disengage with these boots (dealing some damage in the process, thereby crippling the carry and allowing me to either focus on the more powerful jungler OR then letting the support initiate and apply Atlas again when the situation calls for it. As you see, you can't really use
Halcyon Chargers for this.
Most situations vary too much for me to give you a clear answer, so adapt.
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