Introduction
“C'mon you whippersnapper!”
Gyrocopter is a ranged agility hero that is most commonly played in the carry role. His high early burst magic damage output and teamfight ultimate allows him to get involved in early engagements whilst his Flak Cannon ability can make him a late game monster in teamfights providing he has sufficient farm. Indeed, Flak Cannon is the reason Gyro was the go-to carry in professional Dota 2 for a very long time.
Gyrocopter's complete character profile can be found here.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Amazing late game carry
- Unlike most carries he has good early game impact
- One of the best late-game ‘comeback’ heroes
- Good attack animation
- Good base movespeed
- Strong teamfight ultimate
Cons
- Lacks reliable lockdown (Homing Missile is notoriously the worst stun in the game)
- Needs a lot of farm in order to carry
- Low attack range
- No escape mechanism
- Quite squishy
Item Build
Gyrocopter is usually given safe lane farming priority, given the potency of his Flak Cannon ability when he has acquired plenty of farm. Typically this will be in a safe lane scenario, although offensive trilaning is also a possibility.
A typical starting build for Gyrocopter will look something like this:
- A set of Tangos, a Healing Salve, 3x Iron Branches, and a Gauntlets of Strength.
This provides you with plenty of regen to see you through the early laning phase as well as a good set of starting stats to help beef up your health and damage, which can otherwise feel quite lacklustre initially and may cause you to miss a few last hits.
Early Game
Early on you want to grab some Basic Boots of Speed and then think about upgrading them straight away. The two most common choices early on are Power Treads (health, attack speed) and Phase Boots (move speed, damage). This is a choice that largely comes down to personal preference and may depend on how confident you feel about your place in the game; Phase Boots are the aggressive option, while Power Treads are the safer option.
Upgrade any Iron Branches you have into a Magic Wand, and upgrade the Gauntlets of Strength into a Bracer if you intend to build Drums of Endurance early on (recommended; it’s the go-to option in competitive Dota and is equally good in public matchmaking where you will be expected to fight early and often).
At this stage you can consider some early situational pick-ups: Ring of Aquila is good if you don’t intend to buy a set of Drums of Endurance but ant some early game stats. Hand of Midas is a greedy all-in farming option – it’s risky, as the opposing team if they spot you going Midas may force early pushes which will make it a poor item choice, but if you feel you can get away with it and you’re off to a good start it’s definitely worth considering.
A slightly less greedy alternative to Hand of Midas is Helm of the Dominator. You can stack your ancients with a dominated neutral creep, and then farm these ancient stacks up with Flak Cannon once you have enough damage. The other benefit of this item choice is that you can farm jungle camps early on as well, with the life steal ensuring you keep your health up and it gives you slightly more teamfight presence than a naked Hand of Midas.
Core Items
Drums of Endurance – A somewhat optional core item. You don’t HAVE to go Drums, and you may find that in certain games you simply want to move straight onto BKB. This is fine. However, Drums are fantastic if you find yourself fighting early and often (which will be the case in most games). Drums will give you solid all-round stats at an affordable price and it is one of the most cost-efficient items in the game.
Black King Bar - The ultimate defensive item for any carry. This will prevent you being locked down in teamfights by stuns or killed off with burst magic damage. The strength bonus increases your health pool a touch and the damage is always handy, but the main reason you buy this is for the Spell Immunity active, so make sure you use it for teamfights. BKB is 100% core on Gyro!
Luxury Items
Monkey King Bar – The go-to luxury item for Gyrocopter. +88 damage and +15 attack speed gives you that much-needed punching power to make your Flak Cannon’s impact felt in teamfights. Once you have core you really need a damage item, and MKB is the obvious choice.
Butterfly – The ultimate late-game luxury purchase for agility carries – huge chunks of attack speed, damage, and evasion. The only problem with Butterfly is that it’s hard-countered by Monkey King Bar. If the enemy carry is working towards, or already has an MKB, consider purchasing a different luxury item. It’s still a great item to have, but the evasion is countered and it thus becomes a cost inefficient item.
It’s recommended second to Monkey King Bar as it is the less damage-intensive option, and since Gyro lacks right click damage he needs that early damage-oriented item pick-up to really become a carry.
Satanic – If you didn’t get a Helm of the Dominator earlier then consider purchasing one now, so that you can flash farm the jungle during any downtime, take down ancients, and life steal during teamfights.
Eventually you should upgrade this in turn into a Satanic, which will give you phenomenal staying power in teamfights providing you don’t get stun-locked before using its active. You get a nice chunk of health, life steal from your attacks, and the chance to heal yourself back up when low on health using the Unholy Rage active. I like to liken this to the health effects of Roshan's Cheese. As long as you're able to attack, you basically get your health pool completely regenerated.
Daedalus – Damage, damage, damage. A solid carry damage item if you feel lacking in punching power but don’t want to risk getting a…
Divine Rapier – Gyrocopter is one of only a couple of heroes for whom Divine Rapier is a viable luxury item, and not just a situational ‘oh shit, we’re losing and only have more fight left in us’ item. +300 damage allows Flak Cannon to rip the enemy team to shreds. It’s risky and nerve-wracking, but it makes for very intense teamfights. Divine Rapier is often a 5th or 6th slot item for Gyrocopter, unless you’re falling behind and need to up its priority.
Situational Items
Boots of Travel – Aside from the aforementioned situational options of Hand of Midas and Ring of Aquila, the only other really viable situational pick-up on Gyro are Boots of Travel.
There are no better boots in the late game - when you need to free up a slot which would otherwise be taken up by a TP Scroll work towards these and replace your Power Treads. With this, you combine your Boots and TP Scroll slot into one, allowing you to put a slot to better use. They also make your split-push potential even scarier than it already is.
Skills
Rocket Barrage is a short range burst magic damage over time nuke. It is always skilled and maxed first. Rocket Barrage launches rockets at enemy units within a 400 unit radius of Gyro for 3 seconds. A total of 30 rockets are released over the duration, dealing 11/15/19/23 magic damage. In total it can deal 330/450/570/690 magic damage.
Rocket Barrage is one of the best early game nukes and the damage scales well with levels, making it Gyro’s highest priority ability early on. At level 1, if you manage to catch an enemy on their own, you will melt through their life points and it is quite easy to get first blood so long as you can maintain the 400 unit range.
Homing Missile is a stun that also deals magic damage, however it is widely regarded as the worst/most unreliable stun in the game. For this reason it isn’t skilled at all in competitive Dota, however it can come in handy sometimes in public matchmaking and so is skilled once early on but is maxed completely last, even after stats.
Homing Missile is targeted at a single enemy unit and, after a lengthy set-up delay of 3 seconds, will chase the enemy down until it hits them or until it is destroyed. If it hits the target it stuns for 2.2/2.4/2.6/2.8 seconds and deals 50-125/250/375/500 magic damage. In theory not a terrible stun, but in practice the lengthy set-up time, the fact that it is easily killed, and its slow move speed makes it very unreliable and fairly useless most of the time.
Flak Cannon allows Gyrocopters attacks to hit all enemies within a 1000 unit radius of Gyrocopter for 3/4/5/6 attacks or 15 seconds. It is maxed second. This is the ability which allows Gyro to be a carry. With Flak Cannon your attack range is essentially increased to 1000 units and you will hit all enemies (both creeps and enemy heroes) within that radius. This means that, with good farm, Gyro will deal immense amounts of damage to all enemy heroes in a teamfight.
The main downside to Flak Cannon, and one of the main drivers for Gyro’s decreased pick rate as of late, is the fairly lengthy cooldown time of 30 seconds, which means you’re unlikely to get it off more than once in a teamfight – if you don’t make you impact felt during this time then you become significantly less intimidating. The other downside is that it only lasts for 3/4/5/6 attacks. Nonetheless, despite these drawbacks, it is an incredibly potent carry ability which makes Gyrocopter the ultimate late-game comeback hero.
Gyrocopter’s ultimate, Call Down, is always skilled (levels 6, 11 and 16). This is a large area of effect magic damage nuke which, after a 2 second delay, hits an enemy units in a 600 units for 250/300/350 magic damage and 30% move speed slow, followed 2 seconds later by a further missile strike which deals 100/150/200 magic damage and 60% move slow.
Call Down is a very strong early and mid game teamfight ultimate – it deals huge amounts of burst magic damage and slow, which allows your team (or yourself, using Rocket Barrage) to follow up. The downside is the 2 second delay before the first missile strikes, which makes it possible to dodge and avoid entirely, and so positioning of the ultimate (as well as timing) is crucial.
Gameplay Tips
Rocket Barrage is one of the best level 1 abilities in the game – it can deal a total of 330 magic damage to a single target which, when combined with auto-attacks, should allow you to get a kill if you manage to catch an enemy away from their creepwave early on.
| Note: Rocket Barrage’s damage is spread across multiple units if they are within its 400 unit radius. It is thus an ineffective nuke if used on an enemy hero who is near their own creep wave or a jungle camp – only use it in such situations if you feel you can get a kill regardless, otherwise save it for when there are no creeps nearby. |
Homing Missile is notoriously the weakest stun in the game, thanks to its incredibly lengthy set-up time, slow travel speed, and the fact that it can be destroyed. It can nonetheless be useful in some circumstances, for example if seeking to force an enemy away from the creepwave (and if they don’t retreat then us Rocket Barrage on them whilst they’re stunned), or for popping an enemy’s Linken’s Sphere.
Flak Cannon’s cooldown of 30 seconds means it is no longer particularly spammable – you need to make sure you always have access for it in the event of a teamfight in the mid and late game otherwise your carry potential is drastically reduced.
Although your attack range remains 365 units, Flak Cannon essentially gives you the ability to hit everything within a 1000 unit range that you have vision of, providing at least one enemy unit or building is within your ordinary attack range. This is the ability which allows Gyrocopter to be an effective carry.
Save Call Down for teamfights or for engagements/ganks where you think it will guarantee you a kill. Remember that it has a 2 second delay, and so you will need to anticipate enemy movements when triggering it. Gyrocopter typical combo is to use Call Down at the centre of a teamfight, followed by Flak Cannon and Rocket Barrage. The slow from Call Down will allow you to get in range for Rocket Barrage as well as ensure it’s hard to enemies to flee outside of the 1,000 unit range of your Flak Cannon.
Last Updated - Patch 6.83.
