Lone Druid Guide by Qojqva
Artist: Valve
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Author:
Qojqva & Co.
Date: 01/2019
Tags:
text
Lone Druid
Builds
Tactics
Analysis

Welcome

Welcome to Qojqva's Book of the Lone Druid, a hero guide part of the Book of Dota series!

Here you will find all the information you need to learn to play Sylla on a high level – from drafting and builds to the optimal playstyle in different lanes and situations. We hope you’ll enjoy this guide and find it useful!

Qojqva lone druid stats
TL;DR:

Draft: LD is one of the heroes that you can pick even early into the picking phase if you are confident in your ability to play him. The option to go for a ranged or bear build makes it hard for your opponents to counter you reliably with picks. Moreover, he is a strong and flexible laner.

Laning: Try to go to the easiest lane to get as much farm as possible - LD is item-dependent. Focus on last-hitting and denying and harass with the Bear when you have the opportunity.

Mid & Late: When you get your Radiance (bear build), try to pressure the enemy team and claim objectives and map control in the mid game. Try to finish the game in the mid-late stage by sieging the enemy base together with your team. If you fail to do this and the game goes late, focus on split-pushing with the Bear. 

With the ranged build, focus on more cost-efficient stat items and stick with your team. Position your hero defensively in fights and try to deal as much right-click damage as possible.

Authors

Max "qojqva" Bröcker
Endorsement & Info

Qojqva is one of the very few old-school core players who have been able to consistently stay at the top of the game and to maintain their peak mechanical skill.

He has competed on legendary teams like MYM,  mousesports, Team Liquid, Team Tinker, Escape, NiP, and Alliance.

Nikolay "CTOMAHEH1" Kalchev
Info & Editing

CTOMAHEH1 started his pro career as a support in Basically Unknown together with Mind Control. Since then he has consistently been playing on the European T2 scene, most recently on Unchained Esports. 

His highest placement on the EU ladder is top 100 - he plays all roles (mainly support), which is untypical for high-ranking players and shows his great versatility and understanding of the game.

Martin "BRING IT ON" Slavov
Writing & Info

Martin has lots of experience writing about Dota and he is no pushover in the actual game - a Divine III player, Martin plays mid and carry heroes on a very high level.

He has been playing Dota since Guinsoo's Dota Allstars (more than 12 years) and he loves thinking about new builds and strategies.

Kyril "MrNiceGuy" Kotashev
PM & Editing

Esports and gaming enthusiast since forever and founder of Dotahaven.

Has been playing Dota since 2005 (5.84). An Ancient I player in Dota 2.

I’m beginning to feel like a rat god

Lone Druid is an agility carry who is very good at pushing and split-pushing. The hero is defined mainly by his first ability Summon Spirit Bear, which summons a unique bear companion that can use items. This makes Lone the only hero in the game who has 12 item slots.

Needless to say, he is quite powerful in the late game and if you play him well enough with good enough micro control, Lone is one of the heroes that can allow you to win games on your own. 

Lone Loadout
Stats
Level 1
Level 15
Level 25
STR
18
Very Low
51
Low
75
Medium
AGI
20
High
54
High
78
High
INT
13
Very Low
32
Very Low
46
Very Low
Attack
38-42
Very Low
71-75
Very Low
95-99
Very Low
Armor
2
Low
8.72
High
13.52
High
Resistance
26
Medium
28
Medium
29
Medium
HP
524
Very Low
1128
Low
1560
Medium
MP
231
Very Low
459
Very Low
627
Very Low
MS
334
Very High
340
Very High
345
Very High
STRENGHTS

MAJOR:

A bear? A rat. Spirit Bear destroys buildings very fast from very early into the game. With an Aghanim’s Scepter, the bear can also split-push without any threat to the hero.

Strong laner: Combined with the bear, LD has high attack damage and can last hit/deny very easily. At level 5 you can also pose a serious threat to the enemy laner with the bear’s Entangling Claws.  

Strong at all stages of the game:  The hero is extremely hard to kill in his True Form, the bear is also very fat at the beginning of the game and both of them can use Savage Roar as an escape tool. The bear is also a 3000 HP Radiance carrier making it very strong in the mid game. While the Bear build falls-off in the late game, the hero build makes you into a powerful high-range carry (similar to Sniper).

MINOR:

High MS: Very high movement speed.

12 items: No other hero has a minion that can use items which makes the hero rather unique to play. It gives you some freedom to strategize with items, but more importantly, it gives you brute late game power, if you find yourself in a super long game.

WEAKNESSES

MAJOR:

Farm dependent: LD requires large amounts of farm in the early game, which makes him pretty passive early on. 

The bear doesn’t scale well: The Spirit Bear has no stats, so it has very few realistic options for increasing its durability. Luckily, with the Aghanim’s Scepter, you can still split-push with it when it becomes too weak to fight the enemy carries.

Highly dependent on the bear: If the bear dies and it’s on cooldown, the hero is pretty much useless with the more popular Bear build.

MINOR:

Requires micro: You need to control an extra minion all the time which can be hard if you’re not used to it. 

No AoE damage: Even with Radiance, the hero lacks the potential to threaten more than one hero at a time.

Replays

Alliance vs DD, Dota Summit 9

Match ID: 3988532657
Replay

Qojqva plays Lone Druid mid very successfully against Double Dimension. Alliance have picked Lone together with two other semi carry cores that can afford to play aggressively - WR and Ursa. The team is able to create a lot of free space for Qojqva and he uses it very well to free farm - he reaches 724 GPM and 771 XPM. Once he has his items he does what LD does best - he pushes. Qojqva has a bit less hero damage than his allies, but he has 10k building damage - three times more than all of his allies combined.

Team Liquid vs LGD Gaming, SL i-League Invitational Season 4

Match ID: 3710951598
Replay

Liquid’s Matumbaman play’s an almost flawless game of Lone Druid and manages to deal the incredible 16k + building damage and to reach above 700 GPM. He starts the game in the mid lane versus a Storm Spirit, which makes this a great replay to watch if you want to learn to play Lone mid.

Drafting

You can pick Lone Druid when you want to push in the mid game. The hero (or rather his bear) is a strong Radiance carrier who doesn’t scale that well into the late game so you prefer to have a lineup that can end the games quickly. You need about 15 minutes of free farm during which you can’t help your team much and your timing starts after you get Radiance, so you need strong early and mid game heroes who can buy you the needed space for the first 15 minutes and who can fight with you afterward.

If you pick Lone early in the draft enemies are likely to counter the Bear. If they do this, you can change your plan and play with the ranged form build. This is a great thing to do because most heroes that counter the Bear build don’t counter the ranged build. For example, Lifestealer (and other man-fight heroes) is very strong against your bear because he can kill it quickly and in addition, he deals higher damage to you in melee form because of your higher HP pool. In ranged form, however, you can kite him. Even if he kills your bear this will not decrease your effectiveness because your hero has the expensive items, not the bear.

Safe lane carry

The usual position of LD – you don’t need that much help, which means your teammates can focus on the other lanes and win them harder.

Mid lane carry

Pretty much the same as safe lane – you’re not that easy to kill and you can control your lane against most heroes by last-hitting and harassing with the bear.

Offlane carry

Even though Admiral Bulldog made the offlane Lone Druid the standard for a long time, this is a tricky position for the hero. You need to utilize creep pulls as best as you can in order to keep up in farm and you need a lot of space in the early-mid game to get your items, which means your other two cores need to be more active.

It is possible to play Lone in the offlane successfully, but the safe and mid lane are the much safer choices that allow you to follow your game plan more easily – to get fast Radiance, push and force fights. A very slow Radiance because of a hard laning stage in the offlane could make you irrelevant in the mid game, which means you will miss a big timing of the hero.

It's better to play him in 2v2 situatioons in the offlane.

Synergy

Good friends to have are:

Buffers: Lich, Invoker, Beastmaster, Ogre, LC, Omni

Lich
Invoker
Beastmaster
Ogre Magi Portrait
Omniknight portrait
Legion commander

Buffs that increase the survivability or DPS of the bear are most welcome as it helps with the mid game pushes a lot.

Other pushers: DK, Shadow Shaman, Jakiro, Chen

Dragon knight
Shadow Shaman
Jakiro Portrait
Chen

Drafting Lone in a 5-man mid game pushing strat is definitely a good idea. Combining him with other good pushers in the mid game could secure your team huge map control advantage, which is welcome as you need space to farm the items you to finish the game.

Semi-carry cores with strong mid game: TA, QoP, DK, OD, Brewmaster, DP

Templar Assassin
Queen of pain
Dragon knight
Outworld Devourer
Brewmaster
Death prophet

Heroes with carry potential who can group up in the mid game and have strong team-fight, so you can win fights and claim objectives. The idea is the same as with the pushing heroes, but with more emphasis on winning the team fights than pushing the towers – the Bear will provide the push you need.

Counters

Strong Against:

Lone is not particularly strong against a certain type of hero. He thrives in drafts that lack direct counters for him so that he can do his thing - either to kill buildings (bear build) or to deal damage from a safe distance (hero build).

Squishy supports: AA, Skywrath, Lina, CM, Silencer, Lion

Ancient Apparition Portrait
Skywrath Mage Portrait
Lina
Crystal Maiden
Silencer
Lion

Your early game is strong against squishy supports as they’re easy to kill with Entangling Claws. This is also  true in the mid game, especially if you go for a Radiance build.

Bear Build is Weak Against:

With the Bear build, you are most afraid of heroes who can control or kill the bear or heroes who can slow down your push too much. Bear in mind (no pun intended) that because of the lack of stats, the Bear doesn't scale as well as most carry heroes and in the late game it will have trouble in fights against most well-farmed carries. This is where split-pushing comes into play with the bear build.

Tanky man-fight carries: Ursa, Sven, Lifestealer, Phantom Assassin, Troll

Ursa Portrait
Sven
Lifestealer Portrait
Phantom Assassin
Troll Warlord

Those heroes can destroy your bear and are too tanky to easily take down in a man-fight.

Ranged Damage Dealers:

Drow Ranger
Sniper
Tinker
Enchantress
Weaver

Those heroes doesn't really man-fight the Bear, but they are almost impossible to reach and can still kill it in time. They also make it very hard for the Bear to push into the enemy base (especially Tinker with Laser).

Control for the Bear: Naga, Venomancer, Underlord, Elder Titan, Jakiro, Witch Doctor

Naga siren
Venomancer
Underlord Portrait
Elder titan
Jakiro Portrait
Witch Doctor

Heroes with spammable control spells work best. AoE control is also efficient as it can catch both the hero and Bear (especially true for Witch Doctor).

Razor

Razor can drain damage from the bear, which means he is one of the very few heroes who is a strong laner agianst LD.

Slardar Portrait

Slardar’s Corrosive Haze allows the enemy team to kill the bear very quickly – it has very low natural armor.

Ranged Build is Weak Against:

The good news is that with the Ranged build you are not afraid of the Bear build counters and vice-versa, which gives you flexibility.

Heroes with Gap-Close: PA, Weaver, DK, Puck, QoP, Lancer, Riki, Clock

Phantom Assassin
Weaver
Dragon knight
Puck Portrait
Queen of pain
Phantom Lancer
Riki
Clockwerk

With the ranged build, you're most afraid of heroes that can close the gap and get on top of your real hero. You are mobile and Savage Roar helps, so you are not as vulnerable as e.g. Sniper, but the logic is the same (you want to right-click from a safe distance). 

Skills

Lone Druid bear
Spirit Link
Lone Druid Savage roar
Lone Druid True Form
Lone Druid Battle cry
Lone Druid Entangling Claws

Summons a powerful Spirit Bear companion that can equip items. If the bear moves 1100 distance away from the Lone Druid, it cannot attack. Lone Druid suffers 10% of his max health as backlash damage if the Spirit Bear dies. As the bear increases in levels, it can learn the Defender, Return, Entangling Claws, and Demolish abilities. Spirit Bear does not benefit from attributes.

STATS

Cast Animation: 0.5+0.63

Max Health as Backlash Damage: 10%

Attack Proximity Range: 1100

Duration: Permanent

CD: 120

Mana: 75

Aghanim's Scepter

Allows Spirit Bear to attack at any range from Lone Druid, and to survive if Lone Druid dies.

Summon Spirit Bear

Mechanics:

  • The backlash damage is dealt as pure damage from the unit that killed the Spirit Bear.
  • The Spirit Bear cannot be summoned if it has taken damage from a player in the last 3 seconds. Has no minimum damage threshold.
  • The Spirit Bear can use every item, except for placing Observer Wards and Sentry Wards. It can also use runes.
  • Hand of Midas grants Lone Druid the gold and experience when the Spirit Bear uses it.
  • When the Spirit Bear is 1100 range away from Lone Druid, it gets disarmed, turns slightly grey and uses different animations.
  • The Defender ability makes your hero tankier when the Bear is around.

Uses:

The most unique ability of the hero. The bear is extremely versatile:

It can carry items: send it to base, take the items and instantly recall it to your hero with Return.

It can harass your lane opponents, which is especially potent when she gets Entangling Claws and could even lead to kills.

It can help in last-hitting: attacking with both the hero and the bear makes it almost impossible for most opponents to contest your last hits.

It’s very strong in pushing and split-pushing thanks to Demolish, Spirit Link, Savage Roar and Return.

It is strong in mid-game fights – enemies will have too little damage to challenge it and its DPS with Radiance will be hard to deal with.

The bear’s biggest disadvantage is that it has no stats. That means that strong carry items like Skadi, Butterfly, Manta are completely useless on it, which reduces its late game potential.

The bear benefits from Aghanim’s Specter, allowing it to hit targets without the hero being around. This is usually abused by sending it to split-push the enemy towers while the hero is in a much safer position. With items like AC, Desolator, MoM the towers and barracks are getting demolished very quickly, unless a hero comes to stop the bear. We’ll talk about it in more details in the mid & late game section.

Links Lone Druid and the Spirit Bear, increasing the attack speed of both and causing damage each one deals to heal the other.

STATS

Cast Animation: 0+0

Attack Speed Bonus: 20/40/60/80

Shared Lifesteal: 40%/50%/60%/70%

Duration: 10

CD: 43/36/29/22

Mana: 50

Spirit Link

Mechanics:

  • Only heals from attack damage. Spell damage does not trigger the lifesteal.

Tips:

Spirit Link has two aspects you need to think of:

The Attack Speed buff is pretty straight-forward: you can use the spell when you want to bring a target down as fast as possible.

The lifesteal effect is a bit more interesting. It's useful in man-fights to keep both units alive. If you're in trouble with the bear or hero, however, you can run with one and attack with the other to increase your survivability. This is especially useful when your hero is getting chased. The attack speed bonus will increase the chance that the bear gets an Entangle, and when it does it will give your hero a substantial heal (if the bear has items).

Lone Druid roars fiercely causing nearby enemies to flee towards their base in terror. Their movement speed is increased by 20%

STATS

Cast Animation: 0.1+0.57

Radius: 325

Enemy Move Speed Bonus: 20%

Duration: 1.2/1.6/2/2.4

CD: 38/32/26/20 

Mana: 50

Savage Roar

Mechanics:

  • Applies Fear on all hit enemies within the radius, forcing them to run towards their team's fountain, while preventing them from acting.
  • Shares cooldown with the Spirit Bear's.

Uses and Tips:

The advantage of this ability is that it can be used both by the player and by the bear. This means that if your hero gets stunned, you can simply cast it with the bear instead, making your hero pretty hard to kill.

Savage Roar synergizes very well with Entangling Claws: you can roar the enemy while he’s entangled and it serves like a stun. He will not be able to run away, as he is entangled, but in the same time he will not be able to use spells and items because of the roar.

The enemy runs towards their fountain, which means that in rare situations you could actually force them to run towards your teammates – when you are ganking someone from behind. Nonetheless, this rarely happens because with LD you almost never gank intentionally – you farm, push and split-push.

Lone Druid learns to morph himself into a raging bear, losing his ranged advantage and some base movement speed, but gaining melee power as well as the Battle Cry ability. He can morph freely between druid and bear form.

STATS

Cast Animation: 0+0

Transformation Time: 1.933

Base Attack Time: 1.5

Armor Bonus: 4/6/8

Health Bonus: 300/600/900

Move Speed Loss: 45

Attack Range Loss: 400

CD: 0

Mana: 25

True Form

Mechanics:

  • Despite the lack of cooldown, True Form does proc all on-cast effects (OD aura, Silencer curse, Magic Stick/Wand) like a regular spell.
  • During the transformation, Lone Druid cannot do anything. Cannot be interrupted.
  • Reduces Lone Druid's movement speed to 275 and attack range to 150 while giving him melee attack properties.
  • True Form persists through Lone Druid's death. If he dies during it, he respawns in True Form.

Uses and Tips:

True Form makes you invulnerable for a brief amount of time, allowing you to disjoint projectiles such as ranged attacks, stuns, etc. similar to Alchemist’s transformation. Using this requires some practice – it is difficult to hit just the right timing.

The ranged form is better for farming and moving around the map. The melee form is better for fights as it makes you tankier and unlocks Battle Cry.

Adds attack damage and armor to the Lone Druid as well as any nearby units under his control.

STATS

Cast Animation: 0.5+0.57

Radius: 1000

Attack Damage Bonus: 70/100/130

Armor Bonus: 10/15/20

Buff Duration: 5

CD: 45

Mana: 50

Battle Cry

Mechanics:

  • Affects all units owned by Lone Druid and his Spirit Bear, not just him and the bear.
  • Battle Cry's level is set equal to True Form's level.

Tips:

Unlike Spirit Link, Battle Cry is not global, it has 1000 radius, so you can’t use it for split-pushing with the bear only.

Battle Cry works on Necronomicon units.

Attacks have a chance to cause roots to burst from the ground, immobilizing the attacked enemy unit, and dealing damage per second.

STATS

Proc Chance: 20%

Damage per Second: 60

Hero Duration: 3

Creep Duration: 9

CD: 5

Entangling Claws

    Mechanics:

  • Roots the target, preventing it from moving and casting certain mobility spells.
  • Deals a total of 180 damage to heroes and 540 to creeps.
  • Entangling Claws uses pseudo-random distribution.
  • It works on BKB units too.
  • Prevents a huge number of repositioning abilities like Blink, Time Walk, Pounce, Ball Lightning, Leap, Waveform, etc.

Skill Builds

Advanced Tip: when you get to lvl7, save your skill point. When fighting someone, wait for an Entangle and use the bear's Roar. Then, immediately level up your bear - it will refresh the cooldowns of Entangle and Roar, which will allow you to use the fear a second time and if Entangle procs, this will pretty much guarantee a kill on most heroes in the game.

Standard Skill Build
Lone Druid bear
1
Spirit Link
2
Lone Druid bear
3
Lone Druid Savage roar
4
Lone Druid bear
5
Spirit Link
6
Lone Druid bear
7
Spirit Link
8
Spirit Link
9
Talent Icon
10
Lone Druid True Form
11
Lone Druid True Form
12
Lone Druid Savage roar
13
Lone Druid Savage roar
14
Talent Icon
15
Lone Druid Savage roar
16
Lone Druid True Form
18
Talent Icon
20
Talent Icon
25
Pros: the bear is as strong as possible;
Cons: lower tankiness due to delayed ult;

Max Bear requires no explanation: it increases the bear’s stats and most importantly - unlocks its abilities.

Spirit Link is the ability you want next as it helps you with farming or fighting.

Savage Roar is a good value point: it lets you escape ganks or cancel nasty abilities, but it doesn’t scale too well compared to Spirit Link, so we leave it at level 1. You can take it at hero level 2, leaving the first point in Spirit Link for level 4 – that's good if you think you’re going to be ganked e.g. if you’re playing mid. The other option is to ignore Roar until you have your other skills maxed - this is the most offensive option and is best in easier lanes.

True Form is not all that useful at lvl 6 as you don’t want to use it while you’re farming. Similar to Savage Roar, you can still skill it earlier if you think you’ll need it to survive pressure from the enemy team, but ideally you'll leave it for later on.

Battle Cry Grants Spell Immunity

25

 -0.5s Spirit Bear Attack Time

0 Entangle Cooldown

20

-25s Battle Cry Cooldown

+10 Spirit Bear Armor

15

-12s Savage Roar Cooldown

+125 Attack Range

10
+250 Health

Lvl10: Health for the Bear build, attack range for the ranged build.

Lvl15: The bear armor is really huge because the Bear has low armor without it. By taking it, you can skip a second armor item. The bear with this talent has 16 armor without any items. Armor in Dota works with diminishing returns, making it rather not cost-effective after 20-25 armor. So you can simply build one armor item, for example AC or Solar Crest, and then focus on DPS.

Always go for the armor if the bear is your main front-line pusher and the enemy team has heavy physical damage. In other cases you can consider the Savage Roar: the CD becomes low enough to cast the spell twice in a fight, which is especially useful with the Ranged Form build.

Lvl20: Battle Cry CD is the usual choice especially if you're going for the Spell Immunity lvl25 talent. The Bear Entangle is useful if you're snowballing with the Bear Build.

Lvl25:  Battle Cry is the usual choice here – it’s essentially a free 5-sec BKB for both you and the bear. The Bear BAT is powerful if you're split-pushing with it.

Item Builds

Bear Build

As we already mentioned, LD can’t have a very versatile item build as the bear is limited by the lack of stats. Your late game choices are much more open, as then you can afford some big items for both the bear and the hero.

Starting items
Stout Shield
Tangoes
Orb of Venom
Early game
Quelling Blade
Phase boots
Magic wand
Hand of Midas
Tranquil Boots
Mid Game
Radiance
Assault_Cuirass_icon
Aghanim's_Scepter_icon
Late game
Desolator Icon
Shadow_Blade_icon
Mjollnir_icon
Black King Bar
Stout Shield
Tangoes
Orb of Venom

Orb of Venom: we start with this because it’s very useful for harassing with the bear in the laning stage.

Quelling Blade
Phase boots

Phase Boots are the best choice on the bear - they allow it to chase more efficiently, which means a higher chance to get an Entangle. Moreover, it gives it armor, which makes it tankier.

Magic wand
Hand of Midas

Hand of Midas: it provides levels and gold and also boosts the bear’s attack speed, which means more entangles and better pushing. You can skip it if the game is action-packed.

Tranquil Boots

Tranquil Boots: if your hero is not going to be a damage-dealer, Tranquils provide the most utility.

Radiance

Radiance: an insane item for the bear. We’re talking about a 3000 HP Radiance carrier who moves very fast, attacks fast, chews through towers like paper and essentially has free Aegis. The bear can also clear creep waves by just burning them without the hero being there.

Assault_Cuirass_icon

Assault Cuirass: it provides a lot of armor and attack speed to the bear – pretty much all it needs. Also reduces buildings’ armor, so you can push better with it. 

Aghanim's_Scepter_icon

Aghanim's Scepter: it allows the bear to hit without the hero being there. It sounds simple, but the benefit is insane. It gives you 0 risk split-pushing capabilities, you can push waves and in the late game allows the bear to push towers and barracks extremely easily. 

Desolator Icon

Desolator: good for the late game when you want to boost your pushing power after you have Aghanim.

Shadow_Blade_icon

Shadow Blade: it allows the bear to get in position for split-pushing much easier once you have Aghanim.

Mjollnir_icon

Mjollnir: this is probably the best DPS item for a fighting bear, provides the biggest attack speed boost aside of Moon Shard. It’s not that bad for pushing either. However, if you’re going to build it, make sure you have enough armor first.

Black King Bar

Black King Bar: you might need it sometimes in order to fight or push with the bear. Of course, we have a free BKB talent, but it’s at level 25. If you feel you really need it – buy it. 

Ranged Form Build:

If you’re going for a ranged form hero build, then the logic you follow is usually that of a long-range damage dealer a bit similar to Sniper. The idea is to use the bear to prevent the enemy team to reach you, while you kill them with the powerful long ranged attacks of the hero.

Starting Items:
Stout Shield
Orb of Venom
Tangoes
Early Game
Boots of Speed
Wraith Band
Wraith Band
Power treads Strength
Mid Game
Maelstorm
Dragon lance
Mjollnir_icon
Hurricane Pike
Late Game
Black King Bar
Daedalus
Butterfly
Stout Shield
Orb of Venom
Tangoes
Boots of Speed

Brown Boots on the Bear are usually enough. If you feel the Bear gives you value in fights, you can give it Phase Boots to help it stick to its targets and to make it tankier.

Wraith Band

Wraith Band: a standard AGI carry item. Get multiple if you're fighting a lot in the early game.

Wraith Band

Wraith Band: a standard AGI carry item. Get multiple if you're fighting a lot in the early game.

Power treads Strength

Treads: the stats and damage synergyze well with the Spirit Link AS bonus.

Maelstorm

Maelstrom: thanks to your high attack speed you can proc the lightning very often. This is great for farming and for dealing damage in fights.

Dragon lance

Dragon Lance: your hero is squishy in ranged form, so bonus attack range is extremely useful for attacking from a safe distance. The stats are also welcome. Get it before Maelstrom if you need the stats to survive enemy aggression.

Mjollnir_icon

Mjollnir: the stronger version of Maelstrom. You can put the active on the Bear while it’s in the front line of the fight.

Hurricane Pike

Pike: amazing for keeping aggressive melee enemies away from your squishy hero.

Black King Bar

BKB: If you want to right click with your hero in team fights, you will need a BKB at some point – the enemy team will try to focus you in fights.

Daedalus

Daedalus: Increases your DPS even more, synergizes very well with the high AS that you have at this point of the game.

Butterfly

Butterfly: Even more AS and more importantly at this point – survivability against the hard-hitting enemy carries.

Other Items

Early & Mid Game
Hood
Mask of madness
Solar Crest Icon
Ghost Scepter
Late Game
Abyssal_Blade_icon
Nullifier
Necronomicon
Satanic
Hood

Hood early on and Pipe mid-late is the best item to increase the survivability of your hero. The AoE spell shield of Pipe means that the bear could benefit from the item as well.

Mask of madness

Mask of Madness: similar to Desolator, it provides insane amounts of damage against buildings, really good for ratting. 

Solar Crest Icon

Solar Chrest: it’s a nice survivability item for the bear while also providing an offensive use as well. It’s good when you’re planning to fight instead of just push. It’s pretty good in the early/mid game, but in the long run building AC is simply better.

Ghost Scepter

Ghost Scepter: it’s sometimes needed to keep your hero alive against physical damage. 

Abyssal_Blade_icon

Abyssal Blade: it doesn’t improve the push at all, but is one of the best late game items for fighting with the bear.

Nullifier

Nullifier: another good item for fighting. It’s really good against heroes who rely on items to stay alive like SF, Gyro, Bloodseeker, Luna, etc. 

Necronomicon

Necronomicon: highly situational, but Battle Cry affects all units under your control. So at level 25, we’re looking at Necro minions with +120 damage, +20 armor and spell immunity rushing the enemy base along with the bear. 

Satanic

Satanic: the best man-fighting item combined with BKB or the spell-immunity of your Battle Cry.

Early Game

Lone 350px

Laning with LD is similar to any other carry’s with the exception that you can constantly harass the enemy hero. The early game is very passive, you just want to get as much farm as possible. Getting a lucky kill with the Bear’s Entangle, however, is certainly possible if an enemy overextends.

Secure last hits;
Harass & kill the enemy if possible;
Push the tower on your lane if it's not too risky;
Farming:

Last hitting with Lone Druid can be a bit tricky if you haven’t had much experience with the hero. The reason is that your bear hits from a melee range while your hero has a projectile so there’s a small delay between the 2 attack during which it’s possible for the enemy to deny. To shorten this delay you can move your hero closer to the creeps and secure most last hits and denies. Of course, this leaves you open for harassment, so only do it when you’re certain you won’t be punished.

A more difficult trick is to issue the attack commands 1 by 1 (first the hero, then the bear), making it so that the two hits fall almost simultaneously. You need to be fast to make it work, though – control groups of the hero, the bear, and both together are useful for this.

Try to always last-hit and deny the ranged creeps – you have the opportunity to do so, so use it to get an advantage.

Your goal in the laning stage is to get your Hand of Midas as fast as possible so you can have that secured gold income no matter what you do.

In the late laning stage, you can farm the jungle - push out the wave and go to the closest camps. You can use the Bear to tank camps and you can even fully transition into the jungle if you want to free the lane for an ally that needs it, but generally, you would prefer to farm the lane as well as it gives more resources. The ranged form is much better for farming in the jungle, so try to use True Form only when you’re farming dangerous spots where you can get ganked.

At level 7 you can use the Demolish ability to push towers if your lane is empty, even if you don’t have True Form for Battle Cry. 

The bear can also take runes, so you can send it to take bounty runes, or the normal runes if you’re playing mid.

Harassing & Kill Potential:

LD is really good at harassing the enemy hero.

With the Orb of Venom on the bear you can always send it to hit the enemy whenever they come close to the creeps. You should, however, make sure you’re not pulling the creeps. To avoid that, send the bear forward without attacking the enemy first. When it’s outside of the creeps’ agro range you can hit the enemy. In an ideal situation you can send your hero forward as well and completely zone the enemy.

The pinnacle of your laning is at level 5 when your bear learns Entangling Claws (at this point you definitely want to have boots on the bear). It makes it almost impossible for most heroes to lane against you as you constantly send the bear towards them and if you get a root, you can easily score a kill.

You don’t usually have the damage to solo kill enemies unless they’re at low HP or really out of position, so try not to dive enemies under their tower where you can easily die if enemies teleport to help.

Kills after level 5 are pretty easy if a support joins the party to initiate with a stun or slow.

Survival:

Your only concern in that department is ganks. The hero is fairly squishy before you have True Form so you want to be extra cautious in the laning stage. If you suspect an incoming gank, let the bear last hit/deny and keep your hero on the edge of the XP range. A Quelling Blade on the bear should make it easy enough to last-hit properly.

If you see enemies running at you, you want to start running with the hero and use the bear to Savage Roar them. That should make it impossible for them to kill you.

In case they manage to catch you, try to assess the situation. If you’re stunned for a long time (for example from DK) you sometimes want to wait a bit until the disable is close to its end and then Savage Roar. The reason for that is that Roar is 1.2s at level 1, so if you use it too early the enemies might still be able to catch you after it ends.

Once you have True Form (usually you want it earlier when you’re mid and you can delay it when playing safe lane), you can start using it when you’re farming on the lane to avoid ganks. If there are missing enemies, try to still farm with the bear only.

Timings and Rotations:

Your goal in the early game is to farm Hand of Midas and Radiance as fast as possible. Before that point, you can pretty much farm all the time.

As a Lone Druid you want to stay on your own lane and farm. If there are kill opportunities on your lane, then you can fight, but you don’t want to rotate to other lanes to fight as you’re not very mobile.

Once you get Radiance, you want to group up with your team and start pushing or looking for fights.

Video Example:

In this game we can observe Team Secret’s Ace playing LD against EG on the safe lane.

You can watch how he tries to harass the enemy Clockwork from level 1. His team leaves him alone and he can’t really zone Clock outside of the experience range, so he just focuses on farming.

Check how he consistently takes both bounty runes at minutes 2, 4, 6 and 8 with the hero and the bear, denying Clockwerk the gold and experience. The Bounty rune timings have been changed since then, but you can still do this trick if the runes are uncontested.

The lane is rather passive and Ace is patiently waiting for level 5 when he can start harassing the enemy more efficiently.

At 4:15 you can see how much damage the hero can deal during an Entangle. He knows he can’t finish the kill, so he just backs off. A kill on the lane happens when Pudge finds the Clock and Ace brings him down. 

At level 7 he starts pressuring the enemy tower as he knows Clock can’t really stop his push.

This game also shows the power of Aghanim split-pushing bear, so I advise you to watch the entire game to see how the strategy works. 

Mid & Late Game

Lone Druid Bear

With the Radiance build, you want to utilize the Radiance timing to force fights and claim objectives. Around the 20th minute mark your opponents will usually have trouble dealing with the bear, which gives you a big advantage. Ideally, you want to siege the enemy base before the enemy carries become strong enough. If this fails, get Aghanim's and start split-pushing in the late game.


With the Ranged Form build, your power curve is more gradual. Farm when you have free time, but stay close to your team to deal damage in fights.

Push with your team if possible and siege the enemy base;
Keep farming;
Split-push if you have the opportunity;
Timings:

Bear Build:

Once you have Radiance, you can start pushing with your team. If you farm it fast enough (before min 20) you’re pretty strong and you should be able to win team-fights. A whole team behind the bear is very hard to stop when you’re pushing, especially if you’re leading.

If you’re leading or the game is even you can proceed with building an Assault Cuirass, it’s really good for sieging and team-fights.

If you’re losing, you probably won’t be able to fight as the enemies can kill the bear very easily. If you’re not in the driving seat you might want to build Aghanim’s Scepter after the Radiance so you can start farming with the bear and split-pushing without risking your hero. Effective split-pushing with Radiance can also buy your team a lot of time to recover (e.g. you can back-creep and force reactions).

Ranged Build:

With the ranged build, your power-curve is much more gradual, which means that you don't have to worry about timings too much. Farm when you have free time and stick to your team for fights. Try to gouge which heroes on the enemy team threaten you. You might need to get BKB or Pike before you start team-fighting.

Team fights:

As we mentioned, you want to be fighting in the mid game unless you’re at a massive disadvantage.

Fighting with Lone Druid is not very complex – the thing you need to worry the most is controlling the positioning of both your hero and the bear; usually this means keeping the hero on the back lines while fighting with the bear (or dealing damage from a safe distance with the ranged form build).

You want to wait for someone else to initiate because you don’t have any form of disable unless you land root on the first hit with the bear. Once the fight breaks out, send the bear after an enemy hero you want to bring down and stay behind with your hero.

Savage Roar can be a very flexible ability in a team-fight.

  • You can save it and use it to rescue your hero or bear – this is good if you’re at a disadvantage and the enemies are killing you or your bear easily.  
  • You can use it to force enemies to run, allowing your team to fight with a number advantage; also a good tactic when you’re playing from behind or the game is even, this could be a fight-winning move. Savage Roar forces the enemies to run for 2.4s and it gives them a 20% speed boost so if we assume that they run for 2.4s and need about 2s after that to return to the fight, that’s at least 4 seconds window where the enemy team fights without 1 or 2 teammates.
  • You can use it on an enemy after you root him so he can’t cast anything – this is mostly viable when you want to burst an important hero with your team who can otherwise use Ghost Scepter, Eul or another defensive item/ability.

Pushing:

5-man pushing:

As we already mentioned, Lone Druid is a great pusher. In a 5-man pushing, you want to stay behind your bear and let it siege the enemy tower. Your team’s job is to use their abilities to buff your bear, heal it or cover its escape with disables when it’s low.

You can also use Savage Roar on enemies who are close to the bear so you gain more time to push.

You want to save Battle Cry if your enemies haven’t used Glyph as it fully negates the effect and the cooldown is rather long.

Remember that you don’t have to suicide your bear in an all-in push. You might want to stop the push when it’s low, maybe send it to base with a TP scroll and continue when you return it with full HP.

Split-Pushing:

Once you have Aghanim’s Scepter the bear becomes a very dangerous split-pusher (probably one of the strongest in the game). Thanks to the Demolish ability it can destroy enemy towers in record time and it’s generally hard to kill because of Savage Roar, Return and its high HP.

Another extremely important point is that you can play with the bear much more risky than a normal split-pushing hero as you can resummon it if it gets killed: basically the bear’s buyback is free and only has 2 minutes cooldown.

The strategy usually is to wait until you see the enemy heroes doing something else (like fighting, pushing somewhere else or just farming) and then send the bear on another lane to push.

Try to keep the lanes pushed as much as possible. It gives you farm, makes it harder for the enemies to make moves and opens opportunities to send the bear into the enemy base.

You can build Boots of Travel and Shadow Blade, so the bear can move freely around the map without being spotted. Desolator or any attack speed item also boosts the pushing power a lot.

Matu split-pushes with the Bear while his team is fighting mid. He manages to take a tower and forces a reaction, which prevents the enemy team from taking objectives out of the fight they just won.