DotA Hero Syllabear was spared a time of great strife due to the deeds of his people. Sensing their settlement’s impending destruction they turned their child into a bear and sent him into the wild. Syllabear grew up strong and savage, like the bears that inhabited the forests of his home. Using druidic powers, he can enter a state of almost rabid frenzy, and even call powerful bear companions to aid him. Awakened into his elven heritage by Furion the Prophet, Syllabear has regained his true elven form, and brings the bestial spirit of the bear to the battlefield.
Base HP: 473
Base Mana: 169
Strength – 17 + 2.1
Agility – 24 + 2.7 (Primary)
Intelligence- 13 + 1.4
Base damage 46-50
Attack range of 550
Base Armor 2.4
Movement speed of 305
Syllabear maybe a difficult hero to master since you must control two characters. But once you get used to it, he can wreak havoc to your enemies. He is supposed to be a carry hero, witch means hopefully he will be a hero killer.
Skill Descriptions
Spirit Bear
Summons a powerful Spirit Bear companion. At level 4, it randomly Entangles enemies that it attacks, which immobilizes an enemy for 3 seconds, dealing 40 damage per second. Spirit Bear deals 28 – 38 normal damage. Spirit Bear will automatically teleport back to Syllabear if it attempts to attack a unit while he is more than 1500 range away from Syllabear
Level 1 – 1400 hit points, Syllabear will lose 100 HP if Spirit Bear dies. Spirit Bear has 320 movespeed and Base Attack Time of 1.75.
Level 2 – 1800 hit points, gains Return, which allows it to teleport to Syllabear instantly (with 5 seconds cooldown), Syllabear will lose 200 HP if Spirit Bear dies. Spirit Bear has 320 movespeed and Base Attack Time of 1.65
Level 3 – 2300 hit points, has Return, Entangle and Demolish. Demolish allows Spirit Bear to deal 1.33 times damage to buildings, Syllabear will lose 300 HP if Spirit Bear dies. Spirit Bear has 330 movespeed and Base Attack Time of 1.55.
Level 4 – 2700 hit points, Entangles 16% of the time, has Return, Demolish, 33% Spell Damage Reduction, and can carry up to 6 items, Syllabear will lose 400 HP if Spirit Bear dies. Spirit Bear has 340 movespeed and Base Attack Time of 1.45
Mana Cost: 75
Cooldown: 180
This is Syllabear’s signature skill and his best skill. The Spirit Bear is extremely powerful and can entangle heroes. The Spirit Bear is also great for tanking towers and is a good tower destroyer with Demolish. One thing which you may note is his extremely high health. When Syllabear is only level 7, Spirit Bear will have 2700 hit points. This is one of his greatest strengths. Spirit Bear is also insanely fast with a 340 base movespeed at level 4, which is boosted to 380 base movespeed by four points in Synergy.
Rabid
Syllabear can create an intense combative fury in either himself or any of his controlled unit.
Lasts 10 seconds.
Level 1 – Increases attack speed by 10% and movement speed by 5%.
Level 2 – Increases attack speed by 20% and movement speed by 10%.
Level 3 – Increases attack speed by 30% and movement speed by 15%.
Level 4 – Increases attack speed by 40% and movement speed by 20%.
Mana Cost: 50
Cooldown: 30
This is a great skill. It offers a heavy increase in chasing capabilities and damage per second. Most of the time you will be using Rabid on your Spirit Bear in the early game. In late game, it is highly advisable that you use Rabid on yourself because you will have more damage. Note that it only lasts 10 seconds. With four points in Synergy it lasts 50 seconds, that is why we don’t get this skill early game.
Synergy
Increases the Lone Druid’s synergy with his Spirit Bear with each level:
Spirit Bear – Adds 10 damage and 10 movement points.
Rabid – Increases the duration by 10 seconds.
True Form – Adds 100 HP per level
Mana Cost: N/A
Cooldown: N/A
This boosts the effectiveness of all of Syllabear’s skills greatly. It gives Spirit Bear much more damage and movespeed; it gives Rabid a huge duration boost that it desperately needs; and it gives True Form an extra four hundred health, which is always useful.
True Form
Syllabear learns to morph himself into a brown bear. He can morph freely between human and bear form.
Level 1 – 250 bonus health.
Level 2 – 400 bonus health and has Battle Cry.
Level 3 – 600 bonus health and has One.
True Form’s Mana Cost: 25
True Form’s Cooldown: N/A
Battle Cry
Give Lone Druid and his units under his control within 900 AoE 20 bonus damage and 2 bonus armor.
Duration: Lasts 10 seconds
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Mana cost: 50 mana
One
Links Syllabear and up to 2 of his controlled units by the soul. Damage that they take is distributed equally between 2 or 3 of them.
Mana Cost: 80 mana Duration: 35 seconds
Cooldown: About 12 seconds
This gives a lot of extra health to Syllabear which you really need. If you cast it on Spirit Bear, then any damage that either Syllabear or Spirit Bear takes is equally distributed between the two units. One will work on any unit that you control. I use this skill early game to escape from ganks (Note: It doesn’t increase your health by a flat bonus, the percentage of health you have relative to your maximum health will stay the same. So when using it to escape ganks, turn it on before they start attacking.) And in late game I use this skill to turn my hero into a beastly tank. One is a very useful skill that you receive by leveling this up and it makes Syllabear a monster tank.
Skill Build
1. Spirit Bear
2. Synergy
3. Spirit Bear
4. Synergy
5. Spirit Bear
6. Synergy
7. Spirit Bear
8. Synergy
9. True Form
10. Rabid
11. Rabid
12. Rabid
13. Rabid
14. Attribute Bonus
15. True Form
16. True Form
17. Attribute Bonus
18. Attribute Bonus
19. Attribute Bonus
20. Attribute Bonus
21. Attribute Bonus
22. Attribute Bonus
23. Attribute Bonus
24. Attribute Bonus
25. Attribute Bonus
Spirit Bear is your most important skill. Spirit Bear is obviously an amazing ability and it is by far Syllabear’s best one. So if you disagree with this, don’t comment, just stop playing DotA or read another guide. Spirit Bear has 2700 health with makes it a beastly tank, a really fast attack speed, a 380 movespeed which is ideal for chasing, and Entangle, which is a good disable. He’s pretty much awesome in every respect.
Synergy is really good because it gives your bear a shitload of damage which you need early game. It also gives him a lot of movespeed. Rabid looks like it might be good early game, but the duration is so short without Synergy that it isn’t worthwhile at all. The extra damage on your bear helps a ton in last hitting as well.
I don’t get Rabid early because it won’t last long enough and Synergy is just far more important because it will add about as much movement speed and it will add more damage per second. I get Rabid at levels 10-13 because the extra movespeed and attack speed that Rabid can give your Spirit Bear are far more important than +8 to stats. It gives your Spirit Bear close to 522 movespeed and a high attack speed which will allow you to chase down heroes extremely well.
True Form is the main point that I expect to take flak from. I don’t advise you to use it before level 16 because the trade-off isn’t very good until that point. The extra thousand health is well worth and the access to the One ability makes this skill well worth it, despite losing your range advantage. Range is most useful in early game lane control anyway. I don’t advise using this skill until you get to at least level 15 or so unless you’re just using it to run away. I get level one of this skill at level nine because you can use it when you anticipate being ganked.
Item Build
1. Ring of Regeneration and 2 Ironwood Branches (Sylla)
2. Boots of Speed (Bear)
3. Gloves of Haste (Bear)
4. Boots of Elvenskin (Bear)
5. Finish Power Treads (Bear)
6. Boots of Speed (Sylla)
(optional : Bracers for Sylla)
7. Sacred Relic (Bear)
8. Finish Radiance (Bear)
9. Finish Boots of Travel (Sylla)
Your core item should be like this :
Spirit Bear
Syllabear
+ (as needed)
Treads on your Spirit Bear provides a huge damage per second increase and greatly increases your chasing capabilities. With Treads, your Bear will be able to increase the amount of Entangles that it does and it will allow it to get more hits in on a running hero because of the large boost to movespeed. With level 4 Synergy, your Spirit Bear has 380 base movespeed. With Treads that becomes a whopping 445 movespeed. This should be enough to chase down most heroes.
Radiance on your Spirit Bear provide a large amount of damage. Radiance is the best damage per second item, and since your Spirit Bear will always be in the middle of battles, it almost ensures that most of the enemy team will be getting hurt by the Radiance area of effect damage. When chasing a hero, your Spirit Bear will get in many more hits than your hero will because he is much faster. Your Spirit Bear will also perform more attacks per second because you will Rabid him and put Treads on him. Radiance is put on the Spirit Bear which optimizes damage. You can harass a hero with your Spirit Bear even if your hero isn’t around by moving around with him and not attacking.
Sylla maybe need health boosting items if facing chain nuker, but don’t waste money other than 1 or 2 Bracers. The reason for not purchasing any is because you want to get that Radiance as quickly as possible so you are able to best utilize it. The earlier you get Radiance the better. True Form allows you to boost your health by 600 if you know that you are in a dangerous situation and are about to be ganked and such. Boots of Travel allow you to teleport all around. This allows you to farm in open lanes quickly and lets you get right into the thick of a team battle if one is about to occur and you are far away. This one is pretty obvious.
If the games last long, this is your luxury you should bought:
Syllabear
Spirit Bear
Hood of Defiance is to allow Syllabear to tank more, because at that point in the game you will most likely be the first hero focused. I get this item over Heart because 30% reduction from spells is really useful. A lot of the damage that you’re going to take is going to come from spells. It’s also a pretty cheap item, so it’s going to help your survivability quite a bit. When you use True Form, you already have a large amount of health anyway, so that’s why I prefer to get Hood.
Butterfly serves two purposes for Syllabear. First, it improves your damage by a lot, improving your attack speed by more than a Hyperstone and improving your damage by 60. It also improves your survivability, giving about 4 armor and a whopping 30% evasion. After the new buff to Butterfly, this item is pretty awesome. I prefer this item over other damage items because it’s important to improve your survivability as well as damage. It’s also a nice complement to Hood because Hood doesn’t help against physical attacks.
Desolator is the next best straight damage item after Radiance. After Desolator, you should get a Heart. At this point of the game, you should have a ton of damage, so it isn’t really that important to get more damage. Survivability will be more key at this point, because you’re still going to be focused, so the longer you remain on the battle field, the more damage you’re going to do.
Hyperstone and Bashers come next so your Spirit Bear can disable the enemy team more. By this time your item slots on your main hero will mostly be filled, so there isn’t much other choice. I get Hyperstone before Bashers because it increases the amount of disabling that it will do by more than getting a Basher. The increased attack speed per gold from a Hyperstone and 4 Gloves of Haste are almost exactly the same that it’s worth getting a Hyperstone to conserve your slots. If you get 4 Gloves of Haste, that only gives you room for one Basher.
Strategy
Firstly, if you want to do all of these techniques quickly and efficiently, you should definitely have three different hotkey groups. One group for the Syllabear and the Spirit Bear, one group for Syllabear only, and one group for the Spirit Bear only. Also toggle the button near your minimap that has a bunch of dots on it. You want it to look like the dots are all spread out instead of in a pyramid. That will ensure that the units in your selected group don’t all move at the speed of the slowest unit.
You should request to solo. Since Spirit Bear can’t Entangle until level 5, just do your best to farm your lane and only harass minimally. If you’re level 5 and you do get an Entangle, just attack with both your hero and your bear and hoping for a kill. Last hitting should be really easy with Syllabear because you have huge combined damage with your Spirit Bear, so try to farm a lot. Whenever your creeps push out past the river, go farm the neutral camp. I also highly recommend that you creep the neutrals if you’re having a tough time surviving in your line. Farming neutrals will still net you a decent amount of gold and experience, so even if you are forced to do this, you can still be on track for your Radiance. Remember that neutral creeps will spawn every minute, so try to take advantage of this when farming them.
Use the bear to tank a tower while tower diving a hero. Tower diving means that you are trying to kill a hero next to his tower. This can be dangerous early game because your hero will not have much health. The Spirit Bear will have a ton of health though, so this is a much safer method. Use the bear to follow a hero that is ganking as an observer ward or like Beast Master’s Hawk. Entangle will never proc unless you issue an attack command to your Spirit Bear to attack (don’t have your bear auto-attack anything.) Use the Spirit Bear as a chicken at level 7 because it can hold items for you. Whenever you send it back to heal, don’t forget that you can buy items on it to then transfer to your hero.
You can also put a Gem on your Spirit Bear if your team needs a Gem holder. This isn’t always the best idea, but if you are careful with your Spirit Bear, he will be difficult to kill because he is so fast and has Return. If you do this, you have to be really careful with your hero too, because if your hero dies, Spirit Bear will drop the Gem. When you are getting chased and your bear has treads, attack the hero that is chasing you, and there will be a good chance that your Spirit Bear will entangle him, allowing you to escape peacefully. (If you don’t have your treads on bear yet, send your hero to the fountain while microing your Bear to block the hero as you would with a creep wave.)
When you are pitted against an extremely difficult lane combination you should put your hero out of nuke range but just at the edge of the experience range. Micro the bear to get gold/denies. That allows you to farm safely. When you have just chased really far into enemy territory after a hero and are returning to your side of the map there may be some creeps following you and your Spirit Bear. Use the Spirit Bear to attack the creeps while you run away so the enemy team doesn’t know where you are. You can dodge them with this technique.
If you’re sending your Spirit Bear back to the Fountain to heal, it’s a good idea to transfer your Radiance to your hero until your Spirit Bear gets back. But make sure that you have an open item slot on your hero, or else you could drop it and an enemy might pick it up, costing you the game. If you’re really having trouble with your lane, then it’s really helpful to creep the neutral creeps near you. It’s very effective with Spirit Bear. Also, if your creeps are attacking the tower, and you don’t want to cross the river, you can just creep the neutral creep camp that has two trolls and a kobold taskmaster for some quick, safe experience. I highly recommend that you do this, because crossing the river is pretty risky, and these creeps are easy gold. If Spirit Bear Entangles a creep, focus another one because Entangle lasts a long time on creeps. Remember that neutral creep camps will respawn every minute, so try to take advantage of that and not be near the camps when creeps respawn.
You should have your Radiance by about 35 minutes in. It’s really important that you do, but if you don’t you really need to just power farm. If you are having trouble farming in your lane, farm ancients and regular neutrals. Once you have your Radiance, your Spirit Bear will be extremely strong. You should constantly have your Spirit Bear on Rabid and just try to chase down as many heroes as possible. When you have Radiance on your Spirit Bear, don’t forget that even if Sylla isn’t next to it, you can chase the enemy around with it while not attacking, and the immolation from Radiance will still damage them. You can also use this tactic to farm creeps while your hero is at the fountain. Your team might start pushing here or they might not, it depends on your strategy. If they are pushing, you should be leading your team with your Spirit Bear, and going for their weak intelligence heroes. If your team isn’t pushing, just farm up a storm. With Radiance on your Spirit Bear, you should be last hitting pretty much every creep. Neutral creeping is also much faster once you have Radiance.
When you are level 16 you might want to always stay in bear form. You might want to use it only when you are being attacked like Morphling’s morph stats, but it doesn’t work because it has a casting time so your health goes down by a good percentage when you are transforming yourself. When you are level 16 use one whenever you are in True Form. This spell is so awesome, it makes you a huge tank. But, against a team with a lot of AoE this spell is useless so you might want to put the radiance on yourself and not on the bear, cast One, then move your bear out of the fight to tank as much as you can. One only lasts 30 sec so you need to press the hotkey for your bear, return, and use One again. You should be leading your pushes because you will be your team’s tank at this point. Just go for those low health heroes. If it’s really late in the game, use One with Spirit Bear and keep it out of the beginning of the battle, then bring it in towards the end to clean up. This will make you a monster of a tank.
Base Mana: 169
Strength – 17 + 2.1
Agility – 24 + 2.7 (Primary)
Intelligence- 13 + 1.4
Base damage 46-50
Attack range of 550
Base Armor 2.4
Movement speed of 305
Syllabear maybe a difficult hero to master since you must control two characters. But once you get used to it, he can wreak havoc to your enemies. He is supposed to be a carry hero, witch means hopefully he will be a hero killer.
Skill Descriptions
Spirit Bear
Summons a powerful Spirit Bear companion. At level 4, it randomly Entangles enemies that it attacks, which immobilizes an enemy for 3 seconds, dealing 40 damage per second. Spirit Bear deals 28 – 38 normal damage. Spirit Bear will automatically teleport back to Syllabear if it attempts to attack a unit while he is more than 1500 range away from Syllabear
Level 1 – 1400 hit points, Syllabear will lose 100 HP if Spirit Bear dies. Spirit Bear has 320 movespeed and Base Attack Time of 1.75.
Level 2 – 1800 hit points, gains Return, which allows it to teleport to Syllabear instantly (with 5 seconds cooldown), Syllabear will lose 200 HP if Spirit Bear dies. Spirit Bear has 320 movespeed and Base Attack Time of 1.65
Level 3 – 2300 hit points, has Return, Entangle and Demolish. Demolish allows Spirit Bear to deal 1.33 times damage to buildings, Syllabear will lose 300 HP if Spirit Bear dies. Spirit Bear has 330 movespeed and Base Attack Time of 1.55.
Level 4 – 2700 hit points, Entangles 16% of the time, has Return, Demolish, 33% Spell Damage Reduction, and can carry up to 6 items, Syllabear will lose 400 HP if Spirit Bear dies. Spirit Bear has 340 movespeed and Base Attack Time of 1.45
Mana Cost: 75
Cooldown: 180
This is Syllabear’s signature skill and his best skill. The Spirit Bear is extremely powerful and can entangle heroes. The Spirit Bear is also great for tanking towers and is a good tower destroyer with Demolish. One thing which you may note is his extremely high health. When Syllabear is only level 7, Spirit Bear will have 2700 hit points. This is one of his greatest strengths. Spirit Bear is also insanely fast with a 340 base movespeed at level 4, which is boosted to 380 base movespeed by four points in Synergy.
Rabid
Syllabear can create an intense combative fury in either himself or any of his controlled unit.
Lasts 10 seconds.
Level 1 – Increases attack speed by 10% and movement speed by 5%.
Level 2 – Increases attack speed by 20% and movement speed by 10%.
Level 3 – Increases attack speed by 30% and movement speed by 15%.
Level 4 – Increases attack speed by 40% and movement speed by 20%.
Mana Cost: 50
Cooldown: 30
This is a great skill. It offers a heavy increase in chasing capabilities and damage per second. Most of the time you will be using Rabid on your Spirit Bear in the early game. In late game, it is highly advisable that you use Rabid on yourself because you will have more damage. Note that it only lasts 10 seconds. With four points in Synergy it lasts 50 seconds, that is why we don’t get this skill early game.
Synergy
Increases the Lone Druid’s synergy with his Spirit Bear with each level:
Spirit Bear – Adds 10 damage and 10 movement points.
Rabid – Increases the duration by 10 seconds.
True Form – Adds 100 HP per level
Mana Cost: N/A
Cooldown: N/A
This boosts the effectiveness of all of Syllabear’s skills greatly. It gives Spirit Bear much more damage and movespeed; it gives Rabid a huge duration boost that it desperately needs; and it gives True Form an extra four hundred health, which is always useful.
True Form
Syllabear learns to morph himself into a brown bear. He can morph freely between human and bear form.
Level 1 – 250 bonus health.
Level 2 – 400 bonus health and has Battle Cry.
Level 3 – 600 bonus health and has One.
True Form’s Mana Cost: 25
True Form’s Cooldown: N/A
Battle Cry
Give Lone Druid and his units under his control within 900 AoE 20 bonus damage and 2 bonus armor.
Duration: Lasts 10 seconds
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Mana cost: 50 mana
One
Links Syllabear and up to 2 of his controlled units by the soul. Damage that they take is distributed equally between 2 or 3 of them.
Mana Cost: 80 mana Duration: 35 seconds
Cooldown: About 12 seconds
This gives a lot of extra health to Syllabear which you really need. If you cast it on Spirit Bear, then any damage that either Syllabear or Spirit Bear takes is equally distributed between the two units. One will work on any unit that you control. I use this skill early game to escape from ganks (Note: It doesn’t increase your health by a flat bonus, the percentage of health you have relative to your maximum health will stay the same. So when using it to escape ganks, turn it on before they start attacking.) And in late game I use this skill to turn my hero into a beastly tank. One is a very useful skill that you receive by leveling this up and it makes Syllabear a monster tank.
Skill Build
1. Spirit Bear
2. Synergy
3. Spirit Bear
4. Synergy
5. Spirit Bear
6. Synergy
7. Spirit Bear
8. Synergy
9. True Form
10. Rabid
11. Rabid
12. Rabid
13. Rabid
14. Attribute Bonus
15. True Form
16. True Form
17. Attribute Bonus
18. Attribute Bonus
19. Attribute Bonus
20. Attribute Bonus
21. Attribute Bonus
22. Attribute Bonus
23. Attribute Bonus
24. Attribute Bonus
25. Attribute Bonus
Spirit Bear is your most important skill. Spirit Bear is obviously an amazing ability and it is by far Syllabear’s best one. So if you disagree with this, don’t comment, just stop playing DotA or read another guide. Spirit Bear has 2700 health with makes it a beastly tank, a really fast attack speed, a 380 movespeed which is ideal for chasing, and Entangle, which is a good disable. He’s pretty much awesome in every respect.
Synergy is really good because it gives your bear a shitload of damage which you need early game. It also gives him a lot of movespeed. Rabid looks like it might be good early game, but the duration is so short without Synergy that it isn’t worthwhile at all. The extra damage on your bear helps a ton in last hitting as well.
I don’t get Rabid early because it won’t last long enough and Synergy is just far more important because it will add about as much movement speed and it will add more damage per second. I get Rabid at levels 10-13 because the extra movespeed and attack speed that Rabid can give your Spirit Bear are far more important than +8 to stats. It gives your Spirit Bear close to 522 movespeed and a high attack speed which will allow you to chase down heroes extremely well.
True Form is the main point that I expect to take flak from. I don’t advise you to use it before level 16 because the trade-off isn’t very good until that point. The extra thousand health is well worth and the access to the One ability makes this skill well worth it, despite losing your range advantage. Range is most useful in early game lane control anyway. I don’t advise using this skill until you get to at least level 15 or so unless you’re just using it to run away. I get level one of this skill at level nine because you can use it when you anticipate being ganked.
Item Build
1. Ring of Regeneration and 2 Ironwood Branches (Sylla)
2. Boots of Speed (Bear)
3. Gloves of Haste (Bear)
4. Boots of Elvenskin (Bear)
5. Finish Power Treads (Bear)
6. Boots of Speed (Sylla)
(optional : Bracers for Sylla)
7. Sacred Relic (Bear)
8. Finish Radiance (Bear)
9. Finish Boots of Travel (Sylla)
Your core item should be like this :
Spirit Bear
Syllabear
+ (as needed)
Treads on your Spirit Bear provides a huge damage per second increase and greatly increases your chasing capabilities. With Treads, your Bear will be able to increase the amount of Entangles that it does and it will allow it to get more hits in on a running hero because of the large boost to movespeed. With level 4 Synergy, your Spirit Bear has 380 base movespeed. With Treads that becomes a whopping 445 movespeed. This should be enough to chase down most heroes.
Radiance on your Spirit Bear provide a large amount of damage. Radiance is the best damage per second item, and since your Spirit Bear will always be in the middle of battles, it almost ensures that most of the enemy team will be getting hurt by the Radiance area of effect damage. When chasing a hero, your Spirit Bear will get in many more hits than your hero will because he is much faster. Your Spirit Bear will also perform more attacks per second because you will Rabid him and put Treads on him. Radiance is put on the Spirit Bear which optimizes damage. You can harass a hero with your Spirit Bear even if your hero isn’t around by moving around with him and not attacking.
Sylla maybe need health boosting items if facing chain nuker, but don’t waste money other than 1 or 2 Bracers. The reason for not purchasing any is because you want to get that Radiance as quickly as possible so you are able to best utilize it. The earlier you get Radiance the better. True Form allows you to boost your health by 600 if you know that you are in a dangerous situation and are about to be ganked and such. Boots of Travel allow you to teleport all around. This allows you to farm in open lanes quickly and lets you get right into the thick of a team battle if one is about to occur and you are far away. This one is pretty obvious.
If the games last long, this is your luxury you should bought:
Syllabear
Spirit Bear
Hood of Defiance is to allow Syllabear to tank more, because at that point in the game you will most likely be the first hero focused. I get this item over Heart because 30% reduction from spells is really useful. A lot of the damage that you’re going to take is going to come from spells. It’s also a pretty cheap item, so it’s going to help your survivability quite a bit. When you use True Form, you already have a large amount of health anyway, so that’s why I prefer to get Hood.
Butterfly serves two purposes for Syllabear. First, it improves your damage by a lot, improving your attack speed by more than a Hyperstone and improving your damage by 60. It also improves your survivability, giving about 4 armor and a whopping 30% evasion. After the new buff to Butterfly, this item is pretty awesome. I prefer this item over other damage items because it’s important to improve your survivability as well as damage. It’s also a nice complement to Hood because Hood doesn’t help against physical attacks.
Desolator is the next best straight damage item after Radiance. After Desolator, you should get a Heart. At this point of the game, you should have a ton of damage, so it isn’t really that important to get more damage. Survivability will be more key at this point, because you’re still going to be focused, so the longer you remain on the battle field, the more damage you’re going to do.
Hyperstone and Bashers come next so your Spirit Bear can disable the enemy team more. By this time your item slots on your main hero will mostly be filled, so there isn’t much other choice. I get Hyperstone before Bashers because it increases the amount of disabling that it will do by more than getting a Basher. The increased attack speed per gold from a Hyperstone and 4 Gloves of Haste are almost exactly the same that it’s worth getting a Hyperstone to conserve your slots. If you get 4 Gloves of Haste, that only gives you room for one Basher.
Strategy
Firstly, if you want to do all of these techniques quickly and efficiently, you should definitely have three different hotkey groups. One group for the Syllabear and the Spirit Bear, one group for Syllabear only, and one group for the Spirit Bear only. Also toggle the button near your minimap that has a bunch of dots on it. You want it to look like the dots are all spread out instead of in a pyramid. That will ensure that the units in your selected group don’t all move at the speed of the slowest unit.
You should request to solo. Since Spirit Bear can’t Entangle until level 5, just do your best to farm your lane and only harass minimally. If you’re level 5 and you do get an Entangle, just attack with both your hero and your bear and hoping for a kill. Last hitting should be really easy with Syllabear because you have huge combined damage with your Spirit Bear, so try to farm a lot. Whenever your creeps push out past the river, go farm the neutral camp. I also highly recommend that you creep the neutrals if you’re having a tough time surviving in your line. Farming neutrals will still net you a decent amount of gold and experience, so even if you are forced to do this, you can still be on track for your Radiance. Remember that neutral creeps will spawn every minute, so try to take advantage of this when farming them.
Use the bear to tank a tower while tower diving a hero. Tower diving means that you are trying to kill a hero next to his tower. This can be dangerous early game because your hero will not have much health. The Spirit Bear will have a ton of health though, so this is a much safer method. Use the bear to follow a hero that is ganking as an observer ward or like Beast Master’s Hawk. Entangle will never proc unless you issue an attack command to your Spirit Bear to attack (don’t have your bear auto-attack anything.) Use the Spirit Bear as a chicken at level 7 because it can hold items for you. Whenever you send it back to heal, don’t forget that you can buy items on it to then transfer to your hero.
You can also put a Gem on your Spirit Bear if your team needs a Gem holder. This isn’t always the best idea, but if you are careful with your Spirit Bear, he will be difficult to kill because he is so fast and has Return. If you do this, you have to be really careful with your hero too, because if your hero dies, Spirit Bear will drop the Gem. When you are getting chased and your bear has treads, attack the hero that is chasing you, and there will be a good chance that your Spirit Bear will entangle him, allowing you to escape peacefully. (If you don’t have your treads on bear yet, send your hero to the fountain while microing your Bear to block the hero as you would with a creep wave.)
When you are pitted against an extremely difficult lane combination you should put your hero out of nuke range but just at the edge of the experience range. Micro the bear to get gold/denies. That allows you to farm safely. When you have just chased really far into enemy territory after a hero and are returning to your side of the map there may be some creeps following you and your Spirit Bear. Use the Spirit Bear to attack the creeps while you run away so the enemy team doesn’t know where you are. You can dodge them with this technique.
If you’re sending your Spirit Bear back to the Fountain to heal, it’s a good idea to transfer your Radiance to your hero until your Spirit Bear gets back. But make sure that you have an open item slot on your hero, or else you could drop it and an enemy might pick it up, costing you the game. If you’re really having trouble with your lane, then it’s really helpful to creep the neutral creeps near you. It’s very effective with Spirit Bear. Also, if your creeps are attacking the tower, and you don’t want to cross the river, you can just creep the neutral creep camp that has two trolls and a kobold taskmaster for some quick, safe experience. I highly recommend that you do this, because crossing the river is pretty risky, and these creeps are easy gold. If Spirit Bear Entangles a creep, focus another one because Entangle lasts a long time on creeps. Remember that neutral creep camps will respawn every minute, so try to take advantage of that and not be near the camps when creeps respawn.
You should have your Radiance by about 35 minutes in. It’s really important that you do, but if you don’t you really need to just power farm. If you are having trouble farming in your lane, farm ancients and regular neutrals. Once you have your Radiance, your Spirit Bear will be extremely strong. You should constantly have your Spirit Bear on Rabid and just try to chase down as many heroes as possible. When you have Radiance on your Spirit Bear, don’t forget that even if Sylla isn’t next to it, you can chase the enemy around with it while not attacking, and the immolation from Radiance will still damage them. You can also use this tactic to farm creeps while your hero is at the fountain. Your team might start pushing here or they might not, it depends on your strategy. If they are pushing, you should be leading your team with your Spirit Bear, and going for their weak intelligence heroes. If your team isn’t pushing, just farm up a storm. With Radiance on your Spirit Bear, you should be last hitting pretty much every creep. Neutral creeping is also much faster once you have Radiance.
When you are level 16 you might want to always stay in bear form. You might want to use it only when you are being attacked like Morphling’s morph stats, but it doesn’t work because it has a casting time so your health goes down by a good percentage when you are transforming yourself. When you are level 16 use one whenever you are in True Form. This spell is so awesome, it makes you a huge tank. But, against a team with a lot of AoE this spell is useless so you might want to put the radiance on yourself and not on the bear, cast One, then move your bear out of the fight to tank as much as you can. One only lasts 30 sec so you need to press the hotkey for your bear, return, and use One again. You should be leading your pushes because you will be your team’s tank at this point. Just go for those low health heroes. If it’s really late in the game, use One with Spirit Bear and keep it out of the beginning of the battle, then bring it in towards the end to clean up. This will make you a monster of a tank.