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Tulen Item Builds
Core Items
These items are necessary in order to play Tulen optimally. Only diverge from a core item if you are a very experienced player or you have a very good reason for doing so
As with most other mages, Tulen gets a lot out of buying Orb of the Magi early. It offers mana, health, and ability power, all of which critically important to the mage. The regeneration it provides will additionally help Tulen stay in lane despite regular use of his abilities and enemy harassment. His role as a short-range mage makes the durability it provides critical, making the orb an even more important item to Tulen. Its usefulness falls off later in the game, however, so should be sold and replaced with Holy of Holies after filling all six slots. | |
A nice combination of offensive and defensive utility, Rhea’s Blessing will help Tulen stay up and fighting through conflicts. The magic life steal will reward his aggressive playstyle with life regeneration as his spells land. It additionally provides a shield whenever his health falls below 40%, allowing Tulen a bit of time to escape from a bad fight. |
Optional Items
Offensive Item Choices
While typically played in the middle lane, many have found Tulen to be a capable jungler. When jungling, he will need to take Loki’s Curse to ensure that he can quickly reach level four and start ganking. The item is no slouch later in the game either, its Apocalypse-like effect adding to Tulen’s burst while it offers respectable amounts of ability power and HP. | |
TUlen’s abilities don’t scale particularly well, relying instead on their base damage to tear down foes. As such, magic pierce will do far more in amping up his damage than stacking ability power. Staff of Nuul is a great choice in that regard, slashing through a percentage of an enemy’s defenses. This is especially useful on foes who have been stacking magic defense as a result, opening them up to Tulen’s attacks. | |
While not nearly as powerful on Tulen as it can be on other heroes, Hecate’s Diadem isn’t a complete write off for the mage. While his abilities don’t have the best scaling, ability power is far from useless to the mage and he can still find some damage increases from the large amount that it provides. This is best suited for when building three or four other items that grant large amounts of ability power, so give it a miss if buying several purely defensive items. | |
Soaring Aura is another source of magic pierce when dealing with enemies up close. This differs from Staff of Nuul in that it provides a flat amount of magic pierce rather than percentage based, making this a much better choice when dealing with squishier foes than tanky ones. The item additionally provides some health to its holder, giving Tulen a bit of extra durability as well. | |
The new active item Arctic Orb can be useful on Tulen, he previously a fan of the Endure talent. While it does not offer much in terms of stats, the ability to temporarily leave the fight and thereby lose enemy focus can be a huge advantage to the mage. | |
While very expensive and lacking any sort of interesting passive, Holy of Holies is still a great purchase in the late game. The item offers large amounts of both ability power and health, offering great value for a single item slot. |
Defensive Items Choices
Given Tulen’s reliance on his abilities’ base damage, he can afford to toughen his skin up with defensive items a bit. The Aegis is a great item when doing so, offering the mage a large sum of armor. It additionally provides mana and a significant amount of cooldown reduction, allowing the mage much more free use of his abilities. On top of all of this, the item additionally slows down enemies who try to attack Tulen, no matter their range from him. | |
Tulen can get a lot of use from Gaia’s Standard. First and foremost, it offers magic resist to help deal with enemy mages who try to shut him down. In addition, it adds to his high mobility with a movement speed increase, allowing him to chase, retreat, and reposition with ease. Finally, it restores a percentage of the wearer’s health whenever they take damage, giving Tulen a nice bit of sustain when caught in a fight. | |
While not offering any utility like some of the other items on this list, Crimson Banner is a great way to stay fighting in long engagements. It refreshes 20% of the wearer’s HP whenever they score a kill or assist. This helps offset the chip damage that Tulen might take in team fights. | |
While offering less utility than Gaia’s Standard, Medallion of Troy is a much stronger magic defense pick when it comes to raw tanking potential. It offers a greater amount of magic resistance along with a damage absorbing shield that will block the first points of damage taken from enemy magic abilities. It offers some cooldown reduction as well, allowing Tulen to cast his damaging abilities more frequently and regain charges of Lightning Strike more quickly. | |
A great answer to physical damage dealers, especially marksmen who will have the easiest time attacking the mobile Tulen. This item reflects a portion of the damage the wearer receives from physical attacks back at the attacker, punishing them for targeting the agile mage. This additionally offers armor and health, helping Tulen survive the attacks of those who are willing to deal with the reflect damage. | |
Berith’s Agony provides a modest offering of both ability power and armor which can be a decent boost for Tulen. It additionally offers cooldown speed, a more available ability set useful to any mage. In addition, its passive will assist with Tulen’s burst, particularly against high health foes. Berith’s Agony damages foes based on their current health, allowing Tulen to knock out even larger chunks from his foes’ life. |
Boots Upgrade
Gilded Greaves is the usual go-too for Tulen. His reliance on mobility makes him very vulnerable to control effects and thereby needs as much resistance as he can get. | |
If throwing caution to the wind and going for as much damage as you can, nothing will be Enchanted Kicks. The magic pierce that they offer is great for Tulen, he relying on his abilities’ base damage over all else to damage enemies. |
Sample Item Builds
This takes a rather typical approach to Tulen, starting off with ability power items before finishing off with some more defensively focused ones. Even then, the ability power items collected offer some defensive benefits as well, Orb of the Magi and Soaring Aura adding to Tulen’s health while Rhea’s Blessing provides a source of life steal. Conversely, the defensive items chosen here can offer some offensive utility to magic users as well. The cooldown reduction provided by the defense focused Aegis will bring Tulen up to maximum and thereby able to use his abilities rather frequently. Meanwhile, Gaia’s Standard ups his movement speed, making him less reliant on Lightning Strike to move around and position himself on the battlefield.
This build takes a combined approach to ability power and durability. It avoids any items that have a purely defensive purpose so that Tulen’s abilities can grow in strength as the game goes on. That said, all of the magic items present additionally buff his defensive stats. Soaring Aura and Orb of the Magi grant him additional health, Rhea’s Blessing and Arctic Orb have survivability focused effects, and Berith’s Agony provides armor. While not as tanky as possible, Tulen will be fairly durable as he flits in and out of fights. This is important due to how close he has to get to enemies to properly damage them.
Loki’s Curse | Gilded Greaves | Soaring Aura | Rhea’s Blessing | Gaia’s Standard | Holy of Holies |
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Orb of the Magi | Gilded Greaves | Rhea’s Blessing | Spoopy Mask | Hecate’s Diadem | Arctic Orb |
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Spoopy is good, cheap magic pierce, Arctic Orb is a good panic button. Orb of the Magi gives some tankiness, Rhea’s Blessing/Hecate Diadem combo gives good life steal. I believe this build was taken from someone on the ahq team.
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I saw Shurko using this build “Orb of Magi – Gilded Greaves – Rhea’s Blessing – Spoopy Mask – Hecate’s Diadem – Arctic Orb”, Spoopy is good, cheap magic pierce, Arctic Orb is a good panic button. Orb of the Magi gives some tankiness, Rhea’s Blessing/Hecate Diadem combo gives good life steal. I believe this build was taken from someone on the ahq team.