Start Strong End Stronger He Bo Joust Build

This is a joust build. I love the power He Bo brings to a joust team. Being able to send a squishy Mage/Hunter/Assassin directly into a recall or even punishing them with Crushing Wave because they "flew to close to the sun" always brings a smile to my face. I am a casual player and have ventured away from He Bo many times but always seem to go back. Please feel free to comment I enjoy debating builds but please be kind.

To start, I almost always buy Soul Stone. It allows me the luxury of not needing the mana buff because of the +100 Mana and the increased MP5 but also grants me +60 MP at 5 stacks.

Next I roll right into Boot of the Magi (+45 MP, +10 Pen, and +18 Movement Speed). This, plus Soul Stone, are what allows for the huge power curve on He Bo within the first 5 levels. More on that to come later.

Some people may not agree with this next but I prefer a bursty Mage. Next up is Rod of Tahuti (+125 MP, +15MP5, and +25% MP).

Now we roll into our stackable items. Warlock Sash (+50 MP, +300 Health, +400 Mana and at full stacks +300 more Health, and +60 more MP). This is a great item and allows He Bo to gain some much needed Health and still gain MP.

Then Book of Thoth (+125 Mana, +15MP5, +100MP and at full stacks +750 Mana and 3% of your Mana becomes MP). IMO, another fantastic item.

At this point I will sell Soul Stone when I can buy Spear of the Magus (+40 MP, +15 Pen, and at 3 stacks reduction of Magic Protections by 30). While I know that Magus requires stacks to max out the pen/reduction I believe it still provides better pen/reduction then most of the other options.

The last item I buy is Soul Reaver (+100 MP, +300 Mana, and 10% of an enemy gods health as damage.)

I will normally put two points into Waterspout and one into Water Cannon and wait until level 4 to get Atlas which gives my Waterspout a base of 130 +85% of my magic power. As I stated above, I almost always start with Soul Stone and then work on Boots of the Magi. The combined gold for these two items is 2400 which is cheaper then most first build items depending on your flavor. I see many players buying Thoth or Warlocks first and by the time they finish it I'm already starting on Tahuti. Not only that, but you will be significantly more powerful then someone who bought a normal item as a starter. With both items you should be sitting at 65MP but with 5 stacks it raises it to 125MP. This only works for one ability and then the stacks are consumed, so the basic plan of action is to get to 4 stacks use Water Cannon (activating He Bo's passive Steady Flow {5% increase to MP for 3 stacks}) then get your final stack and use Waterspout to "poke" the enemy. I will use Water Cannon on NOTHING to max that Waterspout poke. Even at level four you will do approx. 248 damage with Waterspout. That can be half of a Hunter/Mage/Assassins life early game which means it can be very easy to get an early gank.

I will go for Rod of Tahuti next. Even though it is pretty expensive it will still give a huge boost to your MP and allow you to continue to harass squishies.

This is where I start to build stacks. At this point each ability is likely to kill the minions with ease so building the stacks is fast and easy. After I've acquired both Warlock Sash and Book of Thoth (in that order) I'll grab the Oh-So-Vital Penetration. I will go for Magus over Desolation, HUGE difference is cost and power. With Magus (at max stacks), you will be at around 55 reduction/penetration meaning you will do 100% damage to anyone with 50 magic protection i.e. most mages/hunters/assassins who don't buy any protections.

Ok, Magus should probably be part of the late game section but I didn't feel like moving it. Anyway, at this point you should be a monster. The last item I grab is the Soul Reaver. This will help cut through annoying tanks and make squishies even more squishy. Just to be clear on the amount of damage this build puts out, here are the final numbers per ability. (all number are approx. and can vary based on protections and Soul Reaver. but we will go with zero protection and use an average of 2000 Health for the Soul Reaver calculations.)


Water Cannon w/ SR 1,073 w/o SR 873

Waterspout w/ SR 1,099 w/o SR 899

Crushing Wave w/ SR 1,728 w/o SR 1,528

These calculations were also done as single hits which means Steady Flow wasn't taken into account.

I believe artifacts are very situational and you should be figuring out which one you want to start with while the game is loading.

Most of the time I will choose Sanctuary because, lets be real, He Bo has no real escape. Some of my other top choices are Meditation and Sprint but I also have a few exceptions below:

Odin = Phantom
Ymir = Purification
Medusa = Purification
Loki = Sanctuary
Hades = Purification
Ares = Purification

When facing a combination of the above gods pick the item that is going to help keep you alive the best.

I completely understand that there are many different items that I choose not to use so at this point I'll go into why they weren't chosen.

Spear of Desolation
While this item has a ton of MP but it is overall a very trashy pick for He Bo or any mage really. I could care less about the cool down reduction time. He Bo's cooldowns are swift enough even without getting any CDR items and the pen it brings cannot match Spear of Magus. The worse thing about Desolation is its cost 3800??!! Not worth is that's the cost of both Magus and Boots of the Magi put together. Not to mention that by the time someone gets Desolation completed I will be more then halfway done with my final item. Its cost out way any benefit it could possess.

Dynasty Plate Helm
This is a great secondary item in place of Spear of Magus. I use spear for the superior pen it brings in comparison. Yeah it offers protection but not much and only physical.

Obsidian Shard
This is an item that I will sometime replace Magus with but, only when there are two guardians on the opposing team or tons of armor is being built. Otherwise it simply offers less pen then Magus.

Polynomicon
This item I do not believe was created for He Bo to use. I know that you shouldn't neglect your basic attack but my play style prefers to burst the enemies down with abilities and this doesn't offer my play style help.

Gem of Isolation
This is a great item but I would rather have the pen and damage from the other items used.

Hopefully, this was found somewhat useful. Thanks for reading and once again please be kind with comments.