Earthshaker is one of the best initiators in Dota – he has multiple spells giving him AoE control both from long and short range AND an instant disable. This makes him great at ganks and even better at controlling team fights. Additionally, he has the rather rare ability to create a physical barrier with his Fissure, which allows for creative usage both offensively or defensively. All things considered, ES could have game-breaking impact even without too many resources with the right usage of his skills. Nonetheless, Shaker is a hard hero to master because he is extremely timing and positioning sensitive.

Earthshaker is a utility hero – a team fight and gank initiator. Because of this, he is usually played in the support position, most commonly roaming and trying to gank the enemy solo heroes. It is also possible to put him in a solo position – this will allow him to get his mobility items faster and become an even greater threat to the enemy team.

One thing to bear in mind is how the hero works in the early game: he is a weak laner, which means that in a sense he is a relatively greedy pick. At the same time, if the enemy team is vulnerable to getting blocked by Fissure, he could have a big impact early on from successful gank rotations.

Since ES is a bad lane support (bad at zoning out and harassing), he is usually utilized as a roaming semi-support. This is the ideal position for him mainly for two reasons:

1. He is outside of vision which is perfect for surprising Fissures. It is very hard to block heroes that see your positioning, but if you stay in the fog of war you might get perfect ganking opportunities.
   
2. He could utilize the jungle and pull to get resources. This is quite important because ES is actually item dependent – he needs mobility and mana sustain ASAP.
   

Substitutes:

Putting ES in a solo lane is more unconventional but could work very well in certain situations. The access to levels and farm (a fast Dagger) could make ES an amazing ganker in the early/mid game. You have not only initiation and control, but also very good nuke damage thanks to the high levels in Enchant Totem and your ultimate, which could allow you to score solo kills easily.

Offlane: The main thing to consider in this case is the lane in which you want to put ES. Usually, you want to put him in the offlane, so that the mid and safe lane are free for more farm dependent heroes. Nonetheless, if he the enemy has a very strong offlane ES could struggle to find farm. His biggest weapon is his ability to block his lane creeps with Fissure and in this way move the creep equilibrium towards his tower.

Mid lane: The hero can spam Enchant Totem to take farm in most cases, but very strong 1v1 laners with good harassing potential (e.g. QoP) could end up zoning him out and dominating him – you need to avoid such lanes. ES is actually quite strong against melee heroes because of his Enchant Totem harass. If you, see that the enemy mid laner is a melee hero and you need a good tempo-control mid lane hero ES could be a great choice.

Good friends to have are:

Strong Against:

Weak Against:

Access to farm and items is probably the most important factor that should determine your skill build with Earth Shaker. Enchant Totem and Aftershock require you to go close to your target to use. This means they are hard to utilize without a mobility item. In that sense maxing Fissure first is the best choice if you don’t have a lot of access to farm.

If you have access to resources, however, you have the choice to prioritize your other skills. The reason is that Fissure actually scales the worst with levels – you get most of the utility of the spell even on lvl 1.

You should always take Echo Slam whenever available because the nuke damage and instant stun (combined with Aftershock) are very good even at low levels.

Your first point usually goes into Fissure – the long range stun and the possibility to block could allow you to get kills from very early on. If you would be farming in a lane, however, you could take Enchant Totem first to contest last hits more efficiently.

The focus of this build is to acquire cheap HP and mana sustain early on and to roam as much as possible without going to base.

You want to get your core Dagger ASAP to be able to initiate more efficiently. Later on you go for Eul’s to increase you’re your mobility and survivability, but other choices like Force Staff or Shadow Blade are also viable if you feel the Eul’s wouldn’t help you a lot.

If the game goes late in this example you go for Aghanim’s to increase you mobility and initiation even further. Nonetheless, this is a luxury. Sometimes you will have to buy other team utility items like Lotus or Glimmer to keep your allies alive or Shadow Blade to stay out of vision and find better initiations.

This build focuses on dominating the lane. You get a Q-Blade to make sure that you will get as many last hits as possible. You complete Power Treads to be able to use Enchant Totem more often by switching your PT to INT and to increase your stats a bit. Then you go for Soul Ring for the Mana sustain it gives (you can also get the Ring before the PTs if you have mana problems).

Afterward you complete your Blink Dagger and you are ready to join fights. The Force Staff you get after the Blink allows you to disengage after initiating to keep yourself and your allies alive. Shadow Blade is great especially for a Core ES as it makes it easier for you to find gank opportunities. Moreover, not being seen also makes it easier to jump in fights just at the right time.

In the late game, you go for Shiva’s to increase your AOE damage and more importantly – to counter the enemy right-clicking cores. The last item in the list, Octarine, is just an all-round great late game item because of the CD reduction. You can always substitute it for other choices like Hex or Refresher.

Fissure in combination with Aftershock deal a lot of AoE damage and could be used to clear a creep wave very fast. The problem is that Fissure is mana intensive and if you don’t have very good mana sustain it is smarter to use just Enchant Totem and to save the Fissure for kill attempts.

Your main tool for harassing and possibly zoning out is Enchant Totem. Even at low levels it deals significant damage and could help you get the better end of a hit exchange. When you have Aftershock it is a good idea to use Enchant Totem when an enemy hero is close to you. The stun will ensure that you land the Enchant Totem hit. For example, you can wait for a melee enemy to come close to a creep for a last hit and then you can use Enchant Totem to stun and hit.

The main problem with Enchant Totem is that it is melee range. This makes it very hard to use against ranged heroes (they can simply kite you).

Fissure is a bad harassing tool because of its mana cost and your low mana pool. Usually, you want to save the spell for kill attempts, especially in the very early laning stage.

Your main survivability tools are your stuns. If you see heroes ganking you, you should stun them with Fissure before they are in range to initiate and simply walk away. If they get close to you the stun from Aftershock could help you create some distance and survive, but the low duration on low levels makes this a relatively weak survivability tool. If you have some levels in Aftershock, you can also use your ultimate on nearby enemies in order to stun them and so disengage. The fact that the spell is instant might help you cast it before enemies can disable and kill you, although this is a costly survivability tool because of the huge CD.

Fissure is also very efficient for saving allies. With good positioning, you could block off your opponents and disallow them from chasing by placing a Fissure between them and the hero they are focusing.

Fissure

In the early game, your kill potential comes mainly from your ability to create a physical barrier. If you use Fissure correctly you will be able to block off an enemy hero, which should buy enough time for your teammates to finish the kill.

Two things are very important when trying to get a kill in the early game – timing and positioning:

With ES it pays off to be patient – wait for a favorable creep equilibrium, wait for the enemy hero to come in for a last hit (or to harass) and immediately block him in with a Fissure. Always try to abuse natural barriers. If you Fissure a hero in the open he will simply run in another direction. And if you Fissure a hero next to trees, for example, he will be blocked off from two sides, leaving very few options for retreat. Some areas on the map present very good fissure opportunities if you are standing at the right angle. For example, if your allies are chasing an enemy down the river and you manage to put a Fissure across his path the kill should be secured because the only escape route is towards your allies.

Enchant Totem

If you have high levels in Enchant Totem you could deal extremely high amounts of nuke damage. The tricky part is getting close enough to your target – most likely you will be able to use efficiently Enchant Totem if your allies have good disables to follow-up your Fissure initiation. Ideally, you will be able to pre-cast Totem and use it twice during the kill attempt.

Echo Slam

When you get lvl6 your kill potential grows further because of your ultimate. Of course, the ideal option is to use the spell right next to an enemy hero and a creep wave. Getting in such a position without a Dagger, however, is difficult. Because of this sometimes it is worth it to use the spell just for the initial damage and the stun from Aftershock. It has instant cast animation, which means you could chase after a target, disable it with Echo Slam and follow up with Enchant Totem/Fissure. If you use Enchant Totem first the target will most likely get out of the Aftershock stun radius because of the slow casting animation.

In that sense without a mobility item, your solo kill combo would be: Pre-cast Enchant Totem, wait at least 3 seconds, initiate with Fissure, while the target is stunned walk to it, use your ultimate, hit, cast Totem again and hit again to secure the kill. Since the Fissure stun has a short duration (especially if you are not maxing the spell), you would need to cast it from a short distance in order to have a chance to reach your target with Echo Slam.

With ES you could start rotating right from lvl1 – the reason is that you have your main offensive tool (Fissure) right from the start of the game. Getting a good block with Fissure could easily result in a kill provided your allies have enough damage/control.

If you are playing a farming ES, you usually want to get your Dagger first and start rotating afterward. Blink amplifies your initiation and kill potential a great deal - it is your most important timing in that sense.

It is a good idea to always carry a TP scroll in order to be able to join fights if you need to – ES is great at counter-ganking. With Fissure, you could easily allow your allies to disengage by blocking off the enemy heroes or even get counter-kills.

Having an Invisibility or Haste is also an important timing and you need to try to get a kill out of it. Those runes give you the same benefit as a Blink Dagger by letting you get in melee range easily.

ES is very rarely played as a lane support. The reason is that he doesn’t have good tools for harassing and zoning out. Even more importantly, Fissure is most powerful when the enemy hero doesn’t expect it. Because of this staying outside of vision is very important when playing a support ES – both for ganking and for saving your allies.

Neither the stun nor the damage of Fissure is impressive. The physical barrier the spell forms is what actually allows you to get kills. Because of this when ganking you need to look for an opportunity to block the enemy hero from retreating. This requires you to be patient and on occasion, you need to spend some time close to the lane waiting in the fog at a good angle for a Fissure block.

If you are not patient enough you would possibly miss a good opportunity for a kill. If you are too patient, however, you could waste too much time doing nothing. This is particularly bad for ES because you actually want to get your Dagger relatively fast to be able to unlock the full potential of the hero. This means that instead of waiting near a lane for something to happen you could have spent some time pulling and farming. 

Use your game sense to predict the outcome of your gank attempt – if a kill is not likely soon you shouldn’t wait but use your time to do something else (check rune, pull). If you think a kill is likely waiting even a bit longer isn’t too bad.

Manage your mana carefully – you are useless without Fissure and you should make sure you always have mana for the spell. Every Fissure you use must count – don’t waste your mana on impossible kill attempts or just to harass with Fissure in the early laning stage.

You need to have a very good game sense early on and make the optimal movement decisions.

Usually, you would rotate between the mid and the safe lane. In that sense your options are to pressure mid, to pressure the enemy offlaner or to pull and get farm in the jungle:

• If the safe lane creep equilibrium is closer to your tower and the enemy offlaner moves past the River (or even better, past the side shop), this is a great opportunity to try to block him in and kill him. In order to do this, you need to make sure he doesn’t have vision on you from a jungle ward.

• If the enemy mid laner is a squishy or immobile hero and your mid laner has good kill potential you could spend some time close to the mid lane waiting for a gank opportunity. The perfect time to initiate is when the creep equilibrium is closer to your high ground and the enemy hero comes in for a last hit – this way you could block him off from his ramp.

• If you are afraid that your farmers are going to get pressured – e.g. your mid lane hero is likely to get ganked or your opponents are running an aggressive offlane, it is a good idea to stay close to them in order to help them disengage unwanted fights. Remember that Fissure has a very long range. While waiting near the safe lane you could stack and pull the small camp and while waiting near the mid lane you could stack jungle camps/Ancients for your allies.

• If your allies are not getting pressured too much and you are unlikely to get easy kills on the enemy heroes (e.g. they are mobile and hard to kill, you lack the kill potential or they simply control the creep equilibrium very well) you shouldn’t waste your time but instead you should try to pull and get as much farm as possible – a fast Blink Dagger is always very valuable.

You usually want to start your roaming Shaker with boots. This game this is not the case because he has one more roaming support (Pudge) and Shaker needs to buy some of the support consumables.

Instead, Yapzor starts his Shaker with tangoes and clarity. Without boots your hero is very slow early on, so you have to find ways to be useful, mainly relying on your Fissure block.

Yapzor knows how to do this: first, he helps his offlaner (Tiny) and Fissure blocks the wave for him twice. With this, he secures some last hits close to the tower for Tiny and a good start for him.

Afterward, Yapzor rotates mid and pressures the mid laner (Ember) just with positioning, staying around the mid lane and always threatening him with a block. OD can set up for the fissure nicely with his Astral Imprisonment. Eventually, they manage to kill him with the help of Pudge.

At a point, Ember becomes too scared to stay in the lane and goes to the jungle, which allows Yapzor to leave mid and rotate to help top (with killing a Huskar together with the Pudge) and bottom by securing more kills for the team.

As a roaming support, it is his job to always be where action is happening – notice how he always carries a TP and is able to instantly respond and help save allies and secure kills with a Fissure.

You are not a lane dominator even though you could do very well against melee heroes. The main reason you are in a solo lane is to get your Blink Dagger as fast as possible and to search for kills afterward.

Use your Enchant Totem to ensure you get most last hits. The mana cost of early levels is very low. Harass with Enchant Totem whenever you have the opportunity to do so – it deals heavy physical damage and you could possibly even zone out your opponent if he doesn’t have sufficient HP regen.

After you get your mana sustain item (Soul Ring, Arcanes) you could use Enchant Totem and Fissure with Aftershock to clear the creep wave and use the free time to get runes, stack/farm the jungle or even rotate for kills.

You are unlikely to get solo kills unless your opponent underestimates the damage output of Enchant Totem and makes a mistake. With the help of allies, however, you could be a serious threat to your opponent. You could initiate with Fissure to allow your allies to get in range and follow-up with disables and damage. You need to utilize Enchant Totem to secure the kill – ideally, you would be able to pre-cast it and use it twice in the kill attempt.

It is also possible that you follow up the initiation of your allies – this way you will have more time to reposition yourself and place Fissure in a way that prevents your target from retreating.

At lvl6 your kill potential grows and if possible you should try to take advantage of this. If getting a solo kill isn’t likely then you should request a rotation from your allies.

Playing in the offlane as ES is very simple in theory (because of the Fissure block) and quite difficult in practice because if the creep equilibrium isn’t under the tower you are a weak offlaner.

Your main weapon is the block from Fissure. Abuse it as much as possible to keep the creep equilibrium at your side. This will allow you to get solo XP in addition to some last hits. If you don’t do this you will have difficulty finding levels and farm because you are not great at fighting back the enemy support(s).

If you simply cannot stay in the lane because you are getting pressure too much, you can choose to roam and attempt ganks in the other lanes.

In terms of items you have two important timings:

First, mana sustain items: Arcane Boots; Soul Ring + Tranquil Boots, etc. - they allow you to spam your spells more often, which increases your farm rate.

Second, mobility items: Blink; Force Staff – they increase your initiation potential and allow you to be more active on the map.

All other items are luxuries and simply amplify your effectiveness rather than change your play style.

Your play isn’t too dependent on the start you have in the game. Of course, a good start will let you get your Dagger faster which will open possibilities for you. If you have a bad start it might be worth it to find some space and time to try to farm up your Dagger. Either way, however, you role would be the same – you need to stay close to your allies ready to initiate/counter-initiate ganks or fights.

Without Blink:

Assuming you don’t have your Blink Dagger yet, you need to be patient in fights. You can try to favorably initiate with Fissure and allow your allies to follow-up. Alternatively, you can wait for the fight to start and use Fissure to disable enemies or separate them from their team. Nonetheless, you should still stay at distance and should not run into the fight too early to use Echo Slam. Only after the fight has started and enemies have used most of their control spells it will be easier to run into the fight and use Echo Slam efficiently. If you run in too early you could get disabled and killed before you have used your ultimate.

If an ally has an initiation spell like Ravage, you can use it to get in range and cast your ultimate.

With Blink Dagger:

Blink makes entering the fight much easier and opens up different opportunities for you. Nonetheless, you need to carefully position yourself before the fight – ideally, you want to be in the fog of war, out of harm’s way but close enough to jump in whenever you decide to.

This positioning is important not only because you want to jump in with Blink Dagger surprisingly. It allows you to use Fissure from a good angle and possibly block heroes in a favorable way. For example, if you see the enemy initiator jumping in, you could Fissure his teammates to block them from following-up. Another possible scenario is that your teammates are already winning the fight – in such a situation you could use Fissure to block enemy heroes from retreating.

With Blink, you have the freedom to choose the exact moment of jumping in. Ideally, you want to be patient because once the fight has started enemy heroes tend to clump-up. This will allow you to counter-initiate and use Echo Slam closer to its maximum efficiency.

In some situations, however, you will see good initiation opportunities before the fight has started. If an important enemy hero is staying too far away from his teammate you could jump on him to quickly pick him off with Echo and any follow-up of your team Alternatively, especially at lower skill brackets teams sometimes forget they are facing an ES and they clump up together with their creep wave when they push – this is an ideal opportunity to initiate and even secure the fight on your own and you shouldn’t be afraid to use it.

You also need to decide how to use your Fissure. If you want the maximum impact of your initiation you want to cast it after you jump in with Echo Slam. This way you will hit your targets with the Fissure and Aftershock damage at the same time, maximizing your damage output. Sometimes, however, it is better to use Fissure from a distance to ensure you get a better block. If it is not a good time to jump into the fight, you can even use your Blink to reposition yourself in a way that helps you get a better Fissure block (in practice this usually means jumping to the side of the fight and separating heroes with Fissure). Last but not least, even if you are using Fissure just for the damage and the stun you should still think about the blocking aspect. The reason is that sometimes you could unintentionally hinder your teammates. Be careful not to block off your damage dealers from their targets.

Example:

First, notice Kaka’s positioning. He is close enough to instantly follow-up Dark Willow disable, but he is far enough not to get his Dagger cancelled by Razor.

His initiation allows his team to claim two quick kills. When the Razor buys back, his team wants to disengage. He makes this much easier by blocking the Huskar.

5-man pushing

The most important aspect of 5-man pushing with ES is your positioning – stay outside of vision but in a good position to counter-initiate when the enemy team decides to defend.

If you are certain that your opponents are not in position to defend you could hit the tower with Enchant Totem to help bring it down faster.

Split-Pushing

When you get your Blink Dagger and some mana sustain items you are not a bad Split Pusher. With Enchant Totem, Aftershock and Fissure you could clear creep waves very fast. Moreover, you deal significant damage to structures thanks to Enchant Totem.

The main problem for ES split-pushing is that you typically want to stay with your team to participate in tower defenses and fights. Even if your team is not in position to take a fight, generally speaking, you are a more valuable anti-pusher than split-pusher. In addition, you can no real escape mechanism, so if you get initiated when split-pushing you will likely die.

Anti-Pushing

Fissure is a great spell for anti-pushing for two reasons. First, you can block the creep wave (and possibly the enemy team) from reaching the tower in the first place. For example, if your opponents are trying to breach high ground and you use Fissure across your ramp the enemy team would not be able to climb it for 8 seconds (valuable time if you are stalling the game). Second, it deals AoE damage, stuns and has a very long range, giving you the opportunity to clear creep waves and damage enemy heroes without getting dangerously close.

Last but not least, the threat of Echo Slam counter-initiation will make the enemy team reluctant to commit to a push.

You need to make a decision if you want to use your ultimate. Echo Slam is a long CD spell and if you think you would be team fighting soon it is smarter not to use it for a gank. In that sense the later the game goes the better it is to conserve your ultimate (unless you are ganking a very important target like the enemy hard carry).

Without a mobility item, the most important part of ganking with ES is the Fissure initiation. Be sure to use the Blocking aspect but also make sure you hit the actual stun, since it will allow your allies to follow-up your initiation.

With a Dagger, you have more options:

Without Echo Slam:

If you don’t have your ultimate available (or you don’t want to use it) it is a smart move to hit the target with Fissure from the fog before Blinking in. This will give you the second you need to hit the enemy hero and use your Enchant Totem after Blinking in. If you jump in and try to cast Totem/Fissure afterward the target will have some time to react due to the long casting animations. You might get disabled right away or the enemy hero could simply dodge your spells with some defensive mechanism. The combo is: pre-cast Enchant Totem, wait at least 4 seconds, use Fissure, Jump in, hit, use Enchant Totem, hit again. This should be enough to secure a kill on squishier targets. For tankier heroes, you would need the help of allies.

With Echo Slam:

Since Echo Slam is instant your initiation is quite straightforward – you pre-cast your Enchant Totem, wait 3-4 seconds, jump in and instantly use Echo Slam, hit, cast Enchant Totem again, hit, Fissure. When initiating with Echo Slam it is better to use Fissure when you are next to your target to take advantage of the bonus Aftershock damage.

You don’t have scouting spells that give you vision. If you are playing a support, make sure you take care of Warding. Ideally, you would have an ally that helps you with that task because this will allow you to get your Dagger faster.

Using Smoke of Deceit often is a great idea with ES because it will keep you outside of enemy vision before your initiation.

Farming is quite high on your priority list before you get your Blink Dagger and your last priority once you have it. You are an active hero and if you are in a position to do so you should try to initiate favorable fights and ganks instead of passively farming.

Even if you don’t intend to force fights it is a good idea to shadow your teammates even if it means missing on some farming opportunities. It is important that you are in position to counter-initiate whenever needed.

Mechanically, farming with ES is quite straightforward and depends mostly on your mana sustain. If you have enough of it you can spam Fissure and Enchant Totem to clear creep waves and camps. Stay close to the creep wave/jungle camp when using both spells so that creeps get hit by the Aftershock damage. Since the majority of your damage is AoE (Fissure and Aftershock) you benefit from stacking. Use Enchant Totem to finish off the big creeps.