notes
apollo is king of early to mid game, which means that u can generally bully people very hard in lane and get away with stuff 90% of heroes cannot get away with, especially if u hit ur 3 consistently. the general l->r order for lane phase is good. u can try buying cold front earlier since the burst it offers with ur combos is quite amazing; u can also skip extra regen if the lane is going good and ur not taking any dmg, but generally speaking u wanna brawl a lot early on since ur hero is extremely good at that. after lane healbane can be replaced by any 1600 from the greens category - spirit/weapon shielding are all strong items to deny heroes that do extreme dps in the mid game, i.e. spirit shielding vs yamato or pocket and weapon shielding vs haze/vyper/geist, reactive barrier for bebop/holliday, debuff reducer for teams with multiple slow hexes (when that happens u also wanna buy dispel later tho), return fire for brawling into gun heavy comps but idt that item is that good so u can avoid it. trophy collector is bis in pub play but might need some real testing in game, idk how much it does for apollo but considering it boosts range i can see some value. i do think buying boundless early is a good idea but it kind of messes with the pacing of the build and ultimately will be a slog to get into, once u get to that point u should dedicate urself to hardcore farming until u buy it, then spend the entire time after being an annoying prick taking fights with whoever u deem fit (just make sure they dont have insane resists vs u bc spirit resists destroy ur kill potential). late game doesn't have a good order but it's an order i would go for, get arctic blast so u can freeze people in place while hitting ur 3 onto them, torment pulse will add good dps on top of it and is also a very good item, trans cd will make all ur item cooldowns reset sooner. think of the last 3 buys in late as options; scourge for insane spirit res to avoid taking damage from spirit carries that nuke u with damage, escalating for even more dps on top of what u already do since it offers u spirit shred (very important for u late game since u fall off by the 30 minute mark pretty badly), ethereal shift can be treated as a way to deal with being put in a shit position where everyone looks at u and tries to gun u down. by the point u buy late game items unless you have played exceptionally well and kept urself at a soul advantage you'll find yourself unable to do as much dps - that is okay, prioritize living and consistent dps over committing to fights hardcore. slow hex shuts down 3 out of 4 of ur abilities so i dont recommend that u buy left to right, look out for how many slow hexes mid game has and if its 2 or more the best course of action is buying urself dispel magic/debuff reducer to not be disabled by enemy team. the dps options are decent-ish but like i said late game ur damage output is gonna be not that good, so treat them all as luxury buys instead of "i need more damage" buys. out of countering the only truly valuable item u can buy is slow hex, u can use silence wave/disarm too but there are other heroes who should do it instead that get better value out of it. if u are eating shit mid game u can buy curse to still help ur team by cursing whoever is caught out or hurts the most in a fight, but do that ONLY if u feel like u have truly not been able to provide any value in team fights and therefore need a way of helping ur team out that doesn't involve u instantly dying after committing in.0 items