Robert 'Bdiz' Tinnes of SK Gaming has took the time to write a Plague Rider guide with useful tips on how to successfully play him!

Hey guys, as you all know I'm a support player for SK.HoN, and as such one of my favorite heroes, and one that I play quite frequently, is Plague Rider. In this guide I'll be writing about the general playstyle of Plague as a Support hero, as well as item/skill choices and some of my experiences playing Plague!

First things first, and that's Plague is a support hero, and a very potent one at that. His first skill, Contagion, is a powerful nuke that also slows the opposing hero, and units around them with a little splash damage. It's a great tool for harassing in lane as well as ganking. His second skill, Cursed Shield, slows any melee attacking units/heroes as well as increases your targets armor (which is pretty much always going to be your teams carries) and causes them to take less physical damage. The most definitive spell that Plague Rider has, however, is his third skill Extinguish. This skill not only replenishes your mana, allowing you to harass even more with Contagion, but it also denies experience (and potential gold) from your enemies, and helps you keep the lane pushed back in a safer place for your carry to farm, as well as giving you even more room to chase in case you decide to play aggressive. Plague's Ultimate, Plague Carrier, is another very powerful ability. It bounces a total of seven times, from enemy to enemy dealing damage and slowing anyone it hits and is an extremely effective ultimate for ganking early, or teamfights later on in the game.

The skill build I typically use on Plague Rider is 3-1-1-3-1-4-1-2-2-2-4-2-3-3-stat-4-stats max. One thing that's important to keep in mind, is that carries will almost always out level support heroes, and also farm quicker. If you're facing a physical damage heavy team, featuring heroes such as Chronos and Pestilence, it's important to forego the third and fourth rank of Extinguish until later, and level up Cursed Shield earlier on because it's much, much more effective in team fights and it'll allow your carries to live longer. As far as items go, Plague is one of the least item-dependant heroes in the game. You can be extremely useful without farm, thus why you'll see me with basic items, such as Steamboots, Bracers and a Power Supply while spending all of the gold income I get on wards and counterwards. However, after a teamfight that you win and a push, you'll sometimes find yourself sitting on a large stash of gold, while already having your basic items. At this point, I'll usually start building up either an Astrolabe or a Barrier Idol, depending on the opposing teams make up. These items aren't necessary however, and they're mainly just luxury items. If you're getting a lot of kills in a game, and thus have a lot of gold, another powerful luxury item you could buy is a sheep stick, although its very rare for a Plague to be able to finish one while supporting, and I've personally never done it :p.

While playing Plague, or any support hero, the laning phase is extremely crucial to your teams success. I focus on harassing the opposing heroes in lane, maximizing the damage I do to them while minimizing the damage I take. At the start of the game, if I'm going to the easy lane, or the short lane, I'll extinguish a creep from middle lane first. This will put our mid hero at an advantage over his opponent, while hardly effecting our lane as it won't push up before extinguish is off cooldown again. Another important thing to note, is that extinguish was recently changed to only deny 50% of the experience, instead of 100%. Make sure whenever you can, if possible, to extinguish a creep while the enemy heroes are out of range of it, even if this means walking back to the creep wave and missing some experience on your own! One thing that I like to do, is look for opportunities to TP gank other lanes, either as a counter when they get aggressive, or just set it up on our own. Plague's Contagion is a very powerful ganking tool! As the game progresses, and the laning phase breaks down, I tend to focus on the warding/counterwarding mindgames more as well as stacking the jungle whenever possible for our carry. Inbetween doing this, I'll follow around a carry as he farms, to potentially scare off gank attempts, and gain some experience on my own to level up my ultimate or level up Cursed Shield further. The most important thing about team fights, is properly positioning yourself due to how fragile you are, avoiding most if not all of their initiation, and then finding the best possible place to land your ultimate. If you die on Plague, it's not the end of the world, as long as you get off Plague Carrier and Contagion as well as have Cursed Shield on your carries!

I hope this guide is a big help to all of you guys, thanks for reading!