Admiral Kunkka is a versatile Strength hero whose skillset revolves around dealing amazing AoE damage. His passive ability, Tidebringer, makes farming easy while his Torrent and Ghost Ship can make any enemy team think twice about moving into a choke point. While Kunkka is most widely known for his skills as a carry and mid, he can also be played as a support thanks to his decent output of magical damage and his third skill X Marks the Spot. Since Kunkka is extremely dependent on positioning and requires some timing, he is recommended for more experienced players.

This guide will focus on Kunkka as a mid hero and how to build him in order to dish out as much damage as possible while still being able to survive in teamfights. Although he is a melee hero, Kunkka can still hang with the best of them in the middle lane thanks to his harassing capability with the help of Torrent and Tidebringer. Well then, let us start with our first part; namely, dissecting the abilities!

Abilities

Torrent: This is Kunkka's spammable Magical nuke with a cooldown of 12 seconds which after a 2 second delay, 0.4 being the animation time and 1.6 the actual delay, shoots enemies in an AoE of 215 up into the sky, disabling them for 1.53 seconds and after that slowing their movement speed by 35% for 1/2/3/4 seconds. This deals 120/180/240/300 damage, partly when the enemy first gets caught in the torrent and partly during the rest of the disable.

It is easy to know where you have cast Torrent, as everyone in your allied team will see a bubbling effect on the ground where the AoE will hit. This is, of course, not visible to your opponents so while your team knows what is going to happen, your enemy does not. This ability's casting range is also insanely long, as much as 1500 units, making it easy to cast from a safe distance.

Torrent is one of the two factors which will aid you in winning the middle lane. As soon as you have some extra mana to spend or have spotted a regeneration rune, use it to harass the enemy. Since it has a delay, it may be hard to hit them, but if you have some mana regeneration incoming anyways, it is always worth a shot, since a couple of Torrent hits alongside some Tidebringer bursts may be enough to win the lane for you, as was demonstrated by EG's DemoN in a game against Team Liquid's Korok playing Queen of Pain a couple of months ago, where the harass became too much for the squishy Intelligence hero, resulting in Kunkka handily winning mid.

Again, bear in mind that there is a delay for this skill. Therefore, never cast it where people are standing unless you have some form of initiation which will allow you to hit the enemies where they stand. The insane range of Torrent also allows you to try and hit your opponents when they are fleeing, which most likely will allow your team to finish them off if they are caught by it. Basically, it is always worth it trying to land a Torrent, since if you have a bottle that 120 mana is not too much despite Kunkka being a Strength hero.

Tidebringer: Kunkka's passive ability empowers his blade, giving it 15/30/45/60 extra damage as well as a cleave radius of 500 (600 at level 4) range for one attack. This effect has a cooldown of 13/10/7/4 seconds. The cleave damage on targets which are not your primary target will not be reduced by the amount of armor your enemies have.

Tidebringer is Kunkka's casual lane harass. Walk up to a creep, attack it, and deal damage to the enemy in the lane as well. If you opponent lacks sufficient regeneration, they may find themselves going back to the fountain way more than they would have wanted to as the game progresses. However, there is much more to Tidebringer than just that, as later on in the game, this ability only becomes stronger and stronger the more damage-increasing items you pick up. This ability may even become so strong that if you are sufficiently farmed and land a Tidebringer hit just right, you will be able to get a one-hit rampage, although that is quite an uncommon occurrence.

You will always know when Tidebringer is active, as it will give your weapon a watery glow. One useful thing about this ability in lane is that the damage bonus is also there when denying, but it does not get spent. So therefore you can deny a creep with Tidebringer off cooldown without spending one instance of it and then continue to attack the enemy creep wave as per usual.

X Marks the Spot: This is Kunkka's crowd-control ability, which targets any hero, friend or foe, and returns them to the spot they were targeted at, which can be seen as an X on the ground visible to Kunkka and his teammates, after 1/2/3/4 seconds. This ability has a range of 500/650/800/950 units and costs 80 mana to cast and an additional 50 mana if you wish to return the target to the X before its duration has run out.

Remember how it was mentioned that Torrent may be hard to land without some sort of initiation for it? This is the initiation unless you have teammates helping you out with that. At its second level, the return time is as much as the time it takes to cast Torrent, so if you cast X Marks the Spot on a target and then follow up with Torrent at the X, it will hit the enemy most of the times if timed correctly.

Since X can be used on teammates as well, it can be pretty nifty when doing some things with teammates carrying a Blink Dagger. Use X on them, then they can blink into the enemy team, do some damage and get out safely without other spells or items to escape. Of course, you could get a Blink Dagger on Kunkka as well and do this on your own, although that is far from the optimal item build.

Another very important thing to keep in mind is that casting X Marks the Spot will interrupt channeling spells. Therefore, if the enemy has a hero like Enigma who catches your team in a Black Hole and you do not have enough mana to cast a Torrent, you can simply X him and unless he has a BKB, the Black Hole will be cancelled. Since Magic Immunity cancels out X Marks the Spot, if an enemy uses BKB when affected by the spell, they will not be brought back to the target location. Therefore, try to not use X on enemies with BKB unless you do it with the intention of baiting a charge of the item.

Ghost Ship: Kunkka's ultimate summons the last ship of the Claddish fleet, which crashes 1000 units from where Kunkka cast it after 3 seconds, dealing 350/450/550 Magical damage to enemies in a radius of 425 as well as stunning them for 1.4 seconds. Allies in the ship's way will be doused in Kunkka's rum, giving them a delayed reaction to 50% of the damage they take as well as 10% extra movement speed for 8 seconds. This ability has a cooldown of 60/50/40 seconds and costs 150/200/250 mana.

His ultimate is one of the reasons as to why Kunkka is so strong as a support. The amount of damage he can put out simply by landing a good Torrent – Boat combo is insane. However, there are drawbacks to using this ability. The 50% not taken during the 8 seconds will be taken bit by bit for a couple of seconds after the Rum has worn off, and while it will always be non-lethal, it is very easy for mobile enemy heroes to snipe you and your teammates if the teamfight has not gone too well for your team and you are trying to retreat while losing lots of health. This damage is of the HP removal type, though, so you can use consumables such as Healing Salves when it kicks in.

Since the Ship is quite large and it takes quite a while for it to reach its destination, it would be a wise decision to cast a Torrent immediately after Kunkka's ultimate has been used in order to attempt to make the enemies stay within the Ship's area of effect. Should you catch more than one enemy hero with the Torrent, you should be able to win the teamfight off of that damage alongside Tidebringer and then pick stragglers off with X Marks the Spot. If your ultimate misses, it is far from the end of the world since its cooldown is so low.

Skill Build

Here is one way of building Kunkka for the Middle lane. However, do bear in mind that since Kunkka is so versatile, you can easily tweak this build to fit your particular play-style. For instance, if you seem to be having trouble timing X Marks the Spot to fit with Torrent, leaving X at its second rank will be just fine, as the only thing you really lose is the extra range and a couple more seconds before targets are transported back. Should your team lack a consistent initiator, it might be a good idea to get Torrent at level 1 and follow it up with 2 ranks of X Marks the Spot just to make sure that you have some form of reliable lock-down. All in all, how you build Kunkka is entirely up to you!

Level 1: Torrent
Level 2: Tidebringer
Level 3: Tidebringer
Level 4: Torrent
Level 5: Tidebringer
Level 6: Ghost Ship
Level 7: Tidebringer
Level 8: Torrent
Level 9: Torrent
Level 10: X Marks the Spot
Level 11: Ghost Ship
Level 12: X Marks the Spot
Level 13: X Marks the Spot
Level 14: X Marks the Spot
Level 15: Attribute Bonus
Level 16: Ghost Ship
Level 17-25: Attribute Bonus

Play-style

As a solo-mid Kunkka, your objective is primarily to farm up enough money for your core items, then make your enemies lives a living hell. To do this, you need to lane reasonably defensively early on if you are up against heroes with good harassing mechanics such as Queen of Pain. Try to get as many last-hits and denies as possible and harass the enemy with Tidebringer whenever it is off cooldown. Try to maintain rune dominance and if you get a good rune such as Haste or Double Damage, attempt to gank the other lanes to make the laning stage a little bit easier for your teammates.

As soon as you hit level 7 you should be able to do just fine in the lane since the cooldown of Tidebringer at that point is only four seconds (if you decided to max it, that is), and therefore harassing the enemy out of the lane should be easy to do. Again, just farm up, make sure you have most of the runes and make the most of the runes you manage to grab, and you should be just fine until the laning stage breaks down and teamfights start to happen.

When Kunkka has his Shadow Blade, he is essentially good to go, although some extra damage or survivability would be good to make sure he can be of as much use as possible. When ganking, you will want to have X Marks the Spot at level 2, use your Shadow Blade and attack the enemy follow up by a X into Torrent combo. This will deal enough damage to take down most enemy heroes.

In teamfights, your main priority is to deal as much damage as possible to as much enemies as possible. Whether this will be through landing a multi-hero Ship or a Tidebringer crit out of the Shadow Blade mostly depends on you and how well you have done in that game. As was mentioned before, a well-placed Ghost Ship often translates into a won teamfight for your team, so try to make sure that you can land those easily.

Allies

Shadow Demon has excellent synergy with Kunkka. His Disruption sets up Torrent beautifully and the extra damage from his Soul Catcher will make any enemy caught in a Torrent take a massive amount of damage. Because of this, Shadow Demon and Kunkka is one of the deadliest duo-lane combos in the game. Otherwise, since Kunkka revolves around AoE damage, he loves playing alongside people holding enemies in an area while the Ghost Ship comes crashing down on them. Therefore, Enigma and Magnus make landing multi-hero Ships a no-brainer.

Enemies

While he is a force to be reckoned with just through his DPS with Tidebringer later on in the game, Kunkka relies a lot on his spells to get him there. Therefore, heroes with a built-in Magic Immunity spell such as Lifestealer and Juggernaut do not give a single hoot about those. Lifestealer is especially dangerous since he is both tanky and has an innate Magic Immunity spell, and can therefore just turn around and auto-attack you to death with the help of Open Wounds after using his Rage. In the same spirit, heroes who get Black King Bar can easily disjoint your X Marks the Spot into Torrent and other combos. Therefore, try to make sure that they will not have sufficient farm to be a real threat through ganking and shutting them down if you have gotten the appropriate runes.

Item Build

This will be an item build for the solo mid who wants to deal a lot of physical damage as quickly as possible, although some items useful for survival will be highlighted as well. Keep in mind that the item choices, much like the skill build, is subject to personal preference. There is nothing stopping you from deviating from this if you want to play Kunkka differently. Just never build a Vanguard, that item is terrible for Kunkka.

Starting Items

This is the Bottle-rushing build. With 3 Branches and a set of Tangos, you should be able to survive most harass in the lane while getting your Bottle much more quickly compared to if you had spent all of your gold at the start. Of course, if you believe you will be harassed to hell before a bottle will become available, you can add a Stout Shield and a Healing Salve, although it will take significantly longer for you to get that Bottle.

Damage-dealing Core

While the Magic Wand and Bottle are just there in order to grant some extra Health and Mana when it is needed the most, the rest of this build offers no real survivability except the Shadow Blade which allows for some easy escapes should the enemy team lack detection. The purpose of this build is simply to deal as much damage as possible with Tidebringer, since the extra damage when attacking out of Shadow Blade works with Kunkka's passive. Therefore, one crit from the Deadalus coupled with the extra damage from the Shadow Blade has the possibility of dealing devastating damage to the enemy team.

Survival Core

This is the go-to build if you feel like you need to tank yourself up a bit. You could even opt to change the Phase Boots for Power Treads to get some more HP. Should you be up against a team which does not have any Magical nukes, stuns and the like, which is highly unlikely, you might not want to get the BKB. However, most of the time, it will be very useful for getting yourself out of trouble. Sometimes, it may be a good idea to mix these core builds up, such as getting a Drum and BKB alongside a Shadow Blade in order to stay alive in teamfights and chase the enemy more efficiently.

Luxury Items

Heart of Tarrasque should be your go-to item when looking to tank yourself up, whereas the rest of these items are more focused on dealing damage. Assault Cuirass will make your team more tanky while making the enemy team take more damage from your Tidebringer thanks to its Armor aura. Abyssal Blade is great when the enemy team has a carry which is very mobile or uses Magic Immunity, since the bashes and its active ability go through that.

Lastly, Divine Rapier will give you the possibility of performing a one-hit rampage, but it is a very risky affair due to it dropping on death, and should therefore only be bought if you are winning by a significant amount and simply cannot lose the game in any way or if you are losing relatively hard and it might be able to help you realize a comeback. Otherwise, opt for some other damage-dealing item like an Abyssal Blade or perhaps a Monkey King Bar.

Thank you for reading this guide! If you found it useful or have any suggestions, please let me know in the comment section. If you want to know when I release new guides or interviews, feel free to follow me on my twitter @OckE93! Until then, Good Luck and Have Fun!