The Colorful Rainbow Gatekeeper, Hong Meiling
INTRODUCTIONHong Meiling, who will now be referred to as China because it's easier to type and I am a lazy ass, is a very hard-wired Strength hero whose main role is to tank and gank. She can prove to be a strong carry later on with her second skill, Fierce Tiger's Inner Strength, and a great initiator, with her first skill, Earth and Heaven Dragon Kick. She also has the fastest base move speed in the game at 320, tied with Hina Kagiyama and Youmu Konpaku. China's main strength early on is her amazing prowess at ganking, with her Dragon Kick, she can easily charge into the enemy lines, kick off her absolutely gorgeous three-hit ultimate before finishing them off with Fierce Tiger attacks. Nobody likes getting hit with repeated bashes that proc at one-hundred percent, and they most certainly don't want to get near China when she starts spinning with her Dance, a far more powerful and potent version of DotA hero Axe's "Counter Helix." Some people also will probably get pissed off at a good China for getting killed without her doing ANYTHING at all but CHASE YOU.
This guide will show basic tips on how to use Hong Meiling, and show some basic ideas for item usage. This guide will lean towards the gank and carry aspects of China, though there will be a portion dedicated to how she can tank. Hopefully this will give you a basic insight and a glimpse on just how powerful the girls in this Touhou game can be, and hopefully to offer you a look at how a simple gate guard can destroy entire shrines on her own :3
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSESPros- Decent attack animation
- Can dodge projectiles
- Proves as a creep tanker and killer
- Excellent ganker
- Has a very powerful bash
- Great for taking out girls 1v1
- Excellent Strength growth
- Very fast
- Has a potent blink strike
Cons- Horrendous INT growth
- Bad Mana pool
- Low base damage
- Always needs to be close and personal to deal massive damage
- You can get stuck (more on this later)
STATSBASE STATISTICSSTRENGTH: 26 + 2.9/lvl
AGILITY: 21 + 2.1/lvl
INTELLIGENCE: 13 + 1.5/lvl
ADVANCED STATISTICSAffiliation: Hakurei
Damage: 47 - 53
Armor: 4
Movespeed: 320
Attack Range: Melee (127)
SKILLSQI SIGN "EARTH AND SKY DRAGON KICK" (D)
Charges forward at an enemy target, pushing back any enemies in between China and her intended target and dealing damage. Once she reaches her target, it gets knocked back and gets dealt some damage.Mana Cost: 85
Cooldown: 17/15/13/11 sec
L1: Range 500, 70 damage
L2: Range 550, 100 damage
L3: Range 600, 130 damage
L4: Range 650, 160 damage
Dragon Kick is an extremely vital tool in ensuring China's success throughout the entire game. It is a unit-targeted spell which makes China do a flying kick to the targeted location. If you pass through enemy units that aren't your intended target, they get pushed away, which is good for helping your allies get to the enemy. Your collision becomes 0 and you can pass through most objects, if not all objects, until you hit end of range. You CAN use this to your advantage. If a massive wall of creeps is harassing your enemy, Dragon Kick
past them and land
behind them, before setting up with your skills and then walloping them down.
You can also use this skill to dodge AoE attacks in your general direction and even stuns, this most especially applies to stuns like Kanako's onbashira and Sanae's lightning strike (which has a delay). At last, you can use this as a chasing mechanism. If the enemy is too far, use Dragon Kick to catch up to their position - China's extremely fast movement speed is sure to get to their position. Furthermore, you can use this to initiate - Dragon Kick into the clash and throw your ulti at a strategic target, for instance. You can also use it to draw creep aggro since it synergizes with Chaos Dance, China's third skill.
tl;dr - Use this skill always, it is your bread and butter and swear by using this skill for almost every time you want to beat up someone.
NOTE, since your collision will be 0 when you use this skill, it is advisable that you make sure you aim where you're going if you're not going to hit a target with this skill! This could happen to you and you're stuck there until someone else kills you or you use a Gensokyo Bus Ticket to teleport out!
QI SIGN "FIERCE TIGER'S INNER STRENGTH"
China infuses qi into her basic attacks, causing her attacks to ignore the enemy's armor, and also giving a 60% chance to bash; dealing 50 additional damage and inflicting a 0.8 second stun. The buff's duration is infinite until all of the attacks the buff is applied to are used upMana Cost: 50
Cooldown: 12 sec
L1: Lasts for 3 attacks
L2: Lasts for 4 attacks
L3: Lasts for 5 attacks
L4: Lasts for 6 attacks
This skill is extremely powerful and the main reason why China has massive carry potential. With enough damage, she can instantly rip apart any girl with her bear hands! Not to mention, it also has an abnormally high bash chance - you will at least proc the bash 50% of the time during the entire duration of the buff! Do NOT use this as a farming tool, though. You can cast the buff before initiating or after, depending on your situation. The most important fact is that the buff lasts FOREVER, until you attack for the given number of times listed. It proves for some very nice mind games, especially given that it actually has a very intimidating Thunder Clap animation that doesn't actually do much if anything at all! You can also use this as a way to turn the tide in some tough 1v1 hero battles, such as a tough battle against Tenshi, who gains Mana every time you hit her. And she has a bash too. You can also use this to catch unsuspecting heroes unaware, or stop the escape of a dying hero by Dragon Kick and then hit them with the buff up.
tl;dr - A very straightforward skill with lots of power, USE IT
SUPREME COLOR "COLORFUL LIGHT CHAOS DANCE"
When China is attacked by melee units, she has a 20% chance to counter their attacks with a deadly spinning move that deals unblockable damage to everyone in a 300 unit radius around her. The skill has around 2 seconds cooldown before it can proc again. This skill can now work while China is moving; this skill also procs when you're hit by
ranged units, but the chance is much lower.
Passive
L1: Deals 90 damage.
L2: Deals 120 damage.
L3: Deals 150 damage.
L4: Deals 180 damage.
This skill is your main farming tool, and the reason why most enemies, girl or not, fear your tanking prowess. Even the tower's attacks may cause you to spin, which can be the cause of death for the enemy girl who's trying to get you killed by the tower by running around it. Note that it doesn't matter how much damage you take, all that matters is that you take damage. I don't believe it procs when you're stunned, but if it works anything like
Axe's Counter Helix, it WILL proc under
any circumstance, even if the enemy is missing you. Use this to mow down enemy creeps quickly and efficiently, use this to chase-kill enemies as no doubt enemy creeps you run by will attack you.
tl;dr - There is no reason why you shouldn't max this skill first
TRIPLE BLAST "ULTIMATE COLORFUL MOUNTAIN BREAKER"
China releases her inner qi in the form of a beautiful rainbow aurora, which is channeled into a series of three consecutive explosive punches. Each punch slows the target and those near it for a duration of time and deals damage to them as well. The target you chose is the focus and cannot be commanded to move for the duration of the skill.Mana Cost: 100/175/250
Cooldown: 120/90/60 sec
Level 1: Deals 80 damage and 1.2 second slow for each punch. 240 damage total.
Level 2: Deals 120 damage and 1.7 second slow for each punch. 360 damage total.
Level 3: Deals 160 damage and 2.5 seconds slow for each punch. 480 damage total.
Your ultimate skill, which when used under the right circumstances, can completely turn the tide of the battle or completely destroy at least ONE target, turning a 4v4 clash into a 4v3 one. The damage is AoE as well, so it can cause a lot of chaos in a clash. Note, since China
moves while doing the skill, try to position it so that your target takes all the damage, as the timing may cause China to miss her punches and only do the slightly weaker AoE damage to your intended target. Nevertheless, the slow is crucial and is somewhat like
Sand King's Epicenter. After throwing the ulti, wreak havoc with Fierce Tiger and go to town.
SKILL BUILDEARLY GAME Lv1-7Justification: You want to max out Chaos Dance as soon as possible to capitalize on farming the creeps. Since the distance of Dragon Kick doesn't scale very well early game and you aren't looking for the damage from it, and Fierce Tiger isn't very awesome yet without damage, you want the farming potential first. Chaos Dance's pure 180 damage at Lv7 is also very nice, and works well with initiating a gank on an unsuspecting melee hero. Dragon Kick's 500 distance is far enough for getting to your enemy and at least one or two bashes from Fierce Tiger out of three is well enough to knock out an enemy girl. Not to mention you have your ultimate skill!
MID GAME Lv8-16STATSJustification: Now's the time you max out your ganking tools and then go to town. You'll have a decent amount of capital from the early-game ganking and farming to form your core items and have some semblance of durability, damage and ASPD, so you can start initiating ganks and assist in defending and performing well in the clash. It's extremely straightforward.
LATE GAME Lv17-Finish off with stats, of course... Every extra point of HP counts. Don't forget to cap out your Power items, too. 30 extra STR is extremely beneficial for your survivability AND damage output.
ITEM BUILDEarly GameThis game is a little more generous than DotA in that you always start with 810 gold no matter what, so you have a little more flexibility with what you can buy at the start.
First thing's first, though.
Your one main starting item you must always start with is...
The Metallic Chest Protector, or "Bra." A 40% chance to block 30 damage is massive, and helps tremendously in helping you tank those creeps and get as much mileage out of Chaos Dance as possible. You also need it to make the PAD, one of China's most important core items for this build. It also only costs 300. Which is cheap as hell considering China's farming potential.
After that, it's all up to you what you want to buy. I'd suggest picking from any of these:
The build I usually would start with is:
300 + 325 + 159 = 783 Points
It gives you some stats, some much needed HP regeneration, and also the protection from the bra. Furthermore, the Dessert can be made into a Portable Bento if you're facing a magic spammer like Patchouli if you buy a Soft Drink with it. The cucumbers may be sold later on for 39 per piece, too.
Early to Mid GameIf you're farming well enough, you'll need to run back to town and buy the following items:
and
875 + 1100 = 1975
Together with the Bra, you will form the very useful PAD:
+200 HP, +4 HP/sec regeneration and a 65% chance
to block 40 damage.
This will be your best friend for most of the game, blocking a lot of damage from pretty much everything except nukers, synergizes very well with China's massive base STR, matched only by girls like Yuugi, and basically is one of her absolutely necessary core items. Not only can you now infinitely tank creeps for the whole early game with little problem, but you can also start tower-diving - the towers now do minimal damage to you as compared to earlier. You
WILL need this item always, so get this ASAP.
Don't forget your trusty llama, too:
+
=
500 + 500 + 700 = 1700 Points
You want the Strength Llama over the others, for obvious reasons. However, if you've got some spare cash, feel free to buy the
recipes of the other two Llamas to make...
The limited edition Llama, which gives you +10 to every stat.
From here on you can already gank and dominate, which opens you up to many possibilities on what to get next.
Mid and Late GameChina is actually NOT very item dependent. You can give her almost anything reasonable and she can perform well if you know what you're doing, but there are certain items you can get if you want her to do a certain thing.
DPS China
+
=
1600 + 1600 + 600 (recipe) = 3800
The Watermelon Sword has a corruption effect, or -9 armor when attacking the enemies. While this doesn't necessarily synergize well with Fierce Tiger, which ignores armor anyway, it still adds a whopping 38 damage and when you're NOT using Fierce Tiger you instantly destroy everything else.
x3 =
500 * 3 + 350 (recipe) = 1850
You'll need this key item to form another great item for DPS China, but the Lunarite works as an excellent build-up item since it gives China everything she needs - damage and attack speed.
+
=
1850 + 3600 = 5450
This is the ultimate DPS item for China. The active ability for this Devil's Milk Tooth is Rage/Frenzy, which increases China's ASPD by a further 180% and increases her movement speed by a further 30%, but makes her take 170% more damage for 7 seconds. This encourages enemies to attack you and thus proc Chaos Dance more, too, so you'll be dealing a lot of single target damage.
+
=
1600 + 2100 + 1200 (recipe) = 4900
The Internet Addiction Eliminator allows China to easily take down pesky nukers by completely gimping their speed AND intelligence (-60 for 6 seconds? Geez). Furthermore, it boosts China's already colossal damage at this point AND gives her extra stats. It's extremely useful.
Tank China
(Replaced by a Hat thing, it gives +160 HP/+130 Mana) +
+
=
1200 + 1000 + 1100 = 3300
A very basic item that gives you HP, Mana, Health regen and Mana regen... Very important given that HP is kind of hard to raise in this game, and Tank China needs as much of it as she can possibly get. It can be used to make a very good tank item, too...
+
=
3300 + 1400 + 500 = 5200
Activating this item's Tsundere skill
makes you immune to all damage, but you lose control for 2.25 seconds. This synergizes really well with this next item...
+
+
=
150 + 450 + 1000 + 550 = 2150
Dr. Jekyll gives a shitton of STR (+16) for one item and it has an active that
provokes everyone near you and lowers their damage by 30%. It means your Chaos Dance will wreck them and you barely take any damage at all. It lasts 6 seconds, so if you activate it with the previous item...
I wish I could add a Synergy section but this game is too new for that and not everyone knows the perks for every hero. We can only theorycraft right now.
