Introduction
Hello Guys, today i’m gonna make a guide about my personal lonestar build that climbed me up to L3 (and i’m a really mechanical unskilled player). I aim this guide to players that are already used to lonestar, but there’s no problem if you are going to play him for the first time. If you are brazilian or portuguese speaking, feel free to add me on steam and i can explain better to you how it works. Soo lets get started.
Why Lonestar split push?
Well, if you aim to play Lonestar as a nuker, you need to have a really good mechanical skill, because you have to hit your dynamites and outplay your foes with your bull. That’s not easy and take time and dedication to be really good with Lonestar. Imo, it’s not rewarding being a killer Lonestar cuz it’s really hard and on higher levels you can suffer a lot cuz Lonestar is weak on early game and you will get behind easily if your team didn’t carry you this time of game. But if you survive to it, being a split push based than DPS Lonestar will be more rewarding in game. It’s all about risk-reward. Split push = low risk high reward, DPS = high hisk, low~high reward. This can vary about the current matchups of the game, but most of time eu are more likely to win with split push than DPS because your foes will aways have to come back to hold their towers and if a tower trade happens, you will get winning because you cand push harder and hold your own towers better.
Your mindset when playing split push Lonestar
Forget about kills. Kills didn’t do ♥♥♥♥. I won so many games that i was 3 or 4 levels behind with this build that you should not care if you are feeding. You need to have a bit of League of Legends farm mindset. Each droid gives you 5 solar. In most of maps 4 droids are send per wave. It’s a simple math. You get 40 solars per wave and just 30 per kill because there’s more likely to a teammate get’s the kill than you, and you should let they get the kills. You are going to farm alone the droids when they are building tank/damage builds, that need early solar more than you. There’s no need to be hungry for kills because you don’t need them. Just focus on max your bull and let him destroy the towers for you.
Order buy and build variations
Why bull > dynamite > health > blaster?
First you need a safe way to split, you need to know that you are squish and can be easily exploded if crowdcontroled early game. There’s no logic to upgrade dynamite first cuz you need get closer throw it and getting this closer can be dangerous. Then after finishing full, your combo should already cleaning a lane alone. Then you should max dynamite to deal more damange to towers and make your siege easier cuz you explode incomming waves with your combo keeping your droids protected from tower and enemy wave damage. After it you build tankness and sustain to keep more time pushing and putting more pressure into your enemies. You put then in a decision, or they will 3v2 your teammates and you cleam up their towers or even destroying their drill or they will hunt you when your teammates rotate to damage/destroy another tower. It’s almost a win=win situation but you need to have teammates with a brain to make this work. After health you max blaster cuz you just have it to upgrade in this phase of game.
Why bull cooldown reduction/damage/explosion over big bull/slow?
Slow is very useless in my opinion, their push is enough to put way enemies that are chasing you and the slow is unecessary to kill a enemy by pushing a enemy to your tower because you aren’t rushing kills. The bigger bull can still be debated because i’m assuming that you have enough mechanical skill to hit your bulls at enemies against walls without needing a upgrade. It will delay your combo effectness a little bit but if you think that it worth, it’s up to you. You need cooldown reduction to spam your bull and damage/explosion to kill droids faster and protect your own droids of famage.
Why dynamite damage/bouce over explosion size/heal/cooldown?
You don’t need heal, you will build tankness ahead. Cooldown is useless cuz you are spliting push and your dynamite aways will return before another wave comes. And -1.2 sec for hiting 3 dynamite is not a big deal too. I really recommend you to go bouce of explosion size cuz you need to hit your dynamites from a safer distance. Droids are most of time very closer so you don’t need a bigger radius to hit them.
Why health/regeneration/solar over shield/debuff reduction/boots?
This time personal preference scream louder. I don’t see any cons on another options. Just health is 100% needed cuz you need survive. The less you feed your enemies, the more chances to win you have. Of course you can do ridiculous wins with 3 levels behind and 0/11 like i did a lot of times, but you shouldn’t aways coun’t with your enemy dumbness to finish a game, right? The solar is really necessary cuz you need a confortable early game and your late game isn’t big deal, so you aren’t losing much for don’t buying boots or shield. Every solar you can get on early game really worth it. The regeneration is really up to debate cuz the shield or debuff still worth it’s slot. It very very much about matchup, if you fight a full crowd control team i would recommend you to go for debuff reduction. Based on my personal experiences, like 80% of time i would go to regeneration. The boots are very useless for me. I don’t see any ultility on this build cuz you don’t need to be fast and third jump are just useful to switch lanes. If you didn’t bought solar on early game, the boots can considered as last item to get faster on drill at late game.
Why blaster damage/attack speed over missile/area damage?
This 100% personal preference. There’s bad and cons of both choices. I prefer damage/attack speed because i get a huge 1v1 potential if a manage to outplay the enemy with the bull and it easy to destroy towers with bullets than missiles (if there’s still any on late game). I don’t like shooting like klunk with lonestar, so i didn’t put it on build. If you disagree and prefer missiles, feel free to use it. I don’t think you loose much by using missiles.
Early/Mid/Late game
Early Game
Really, get ready because this will be a real hell for you. Try to get all solars possible on the “rocket mode” and after it buy the dynamite, bull and solar. This time you will be really squishy, so try to get safe, unless if you what you are doing. Get 185 solars and them make your first back to base. If you got low HP, don’t hesitate in coming before having 185 on the pocket. Some games i have to go to base 2 times before having 185 solars. After getting the bomb on bull, things will start to become easier, try to get solars fast and buy bull refresher. If you manage to do this before the 4:00 minute mark, you are doin’ really well. If you survived without dying, things are going well too.
Mid Game
This is where you are going to show up. Now your bull is complete and you are starting to build your dynamite damage and pushing harder. If you early game went well, you should start stomping right now. After you finish your dynamite damage, you are on your peak of power and you are melting waves of droids on the map. There’s no secret, dynamite and spam your bull. That’s your job in keeping all lanes pushed. There’s much to say about it. If you are struggling to end the game, that’s why you should build tankness/sustain and keep longer pressuring lanes and making enemies go defend their own towers. If everything went well on early game and you are ahead, you should win at 9:00 ~~ 18:00 minutes with no problems.
Late game
Well, if didn’t managed to win in mid game or you had to hold the game to the late, don’t get down. You still have chance to win. It’s simple. Tell to your teammates walk together and try to initiate a teamfight. If you win, you probably win the game or go
Special thanks and considerations
Lonestar is one of my fav characters because he is the strongest split push naut. I made this guide long time ago (sep 2016), its not 100% accurate but it still work, its not OP like before but still decent. If you read it until end, my big thanks. I with you luck into inproving your gameplay and climbing leagues.
**THIS IS NOT A CONTEST GUIDE**