Predecessor Builds > Zarus > Zarus - Lightfoot Liquidator
This is an assassin build for Zarus, with some item alternatives to increase max health. With focuses on movement speed, and the on-hit effects of Omen, Berserkers Axe, Gaia Greaves and Augmentation, you can enter fights quickly with a high damage burst to initiate for your team. If the initiation proves less than favorable, Zarus' ability to disengage from combat and cause misdirection may ultimately turn things in the favor of your team.
This build is reliant on Blue buff and using your passive down-stack to sustain. Spear of Nyr is a relatively low mana cost ability, so if mana sustain is a struggle, do not blow all your abilities to clear camps - just spear them!
Engagements: Start charging your Barricade as you approach enemies, so that the full charge goes off after you dash into range with Evade. Immediately use Spear before basic attacking. This next basic attack will reduce all the cooldowns in your kit(Omen), so you may use Spear again almost immediately afterwards. A 2nd Barricade and Evade will be up very soon, which is when you will need to decide if they will be used to disengage, or collapse further onto the enemy. If you choose to collapse, use Ortus and then Coliseum on a priority target that will hopefully die within 6 seconds(Ortus and Ultimate stacks).
Coordinating your Gladiator(Passive) and Painweaver stacks will net you some bonus damage. This is why you choose to hold Coliseum until after initial engagement with basic abilities, so that Painweaver and Gladiator will be fully stacked for maximum dunk potential with Coliseum. If you expect it to be a short fight/quick kill, of course feel free to use Ortus and Ultimate immediately so you can put those stacks in your back pocket.
I prefer to level Evade 2nd priority for the decreased cooldown, granting additional mobility and Berserkers Axe passive. Feel free to go with Barricade if you desire that CC and damage to be on a lower cooldown in the mid game. Keep in mind that the shorter cooldown on Evade will allow Omen to proc more often, which may just bring the Barricade cooldown down to where it would be if prioritized 2nd anyways.
Remember with this build you are high-speed lizard man! Once you have purchased Painweaver and have a blue buff, you can use your Spear of Nyr while navigating the map to keep Painweaver fully stacked for bonus movement speed! Pair this with the out of combat movement speed from 2nd Fangtooth, and you can rotate obnoxiously fast. Do not sleep on the giant movement speed boost you can get while using Evade through a fog wall(Berserkers Axe). The juke, outrun and chase potential with this is ridiculous!
Have fun!
*Still messing with build order for V0.18
