Upgrade
Wind Waker
Stats
Abilities
Cyclone
Sweeps a target unit up into a cyclone, making them invulnerable for 2.5 seconds. Cyclone can be cast on yourself, enemy units or allied units. When cast on yourself, you can move the tornado at a speed of 300. Enemy units take 50 magical damage upon landing. Dispel Type: Basic Dispel
Components
Strategy
Why Buy Wind Waker?
Wind Waker is Eul's Scepter with one additional mechanic — and that one mechanic changes everything. When you Cyclone yourself with Wind Waker, you do not just go invulnerable and stand still like Eul's. You can MOVE. Freely. At a fixed speed. For the full 2.5 seconds of invulnerability.
Think about what that means. You press the button. You are completely invulnerable, untargetable, and immune to all damage for 2.5 seconds. And you are walking away from the five heroes who just jumped on you the entire time. By the time the cyclone ends, you are completely out of their range, your basic dispel has removed every debuff on you, every projectile that was in the air toward you got disjointed, and your cooldowns have partially recharged. You went from "I am dead" to "I am 600 units away and healthy" in one button press.
Against a five-man collapse? You walk through it. Against a perfectly executed gank? You walk through it. Against a Chronosphere that was about to trap you? You walk through it—Cyclone during the cast animation, and you are simply not there when it lands. This is why the item is obscene in the late game. The further a game goes, the more the enemy team has invested into coordinated initiations and combo sequences. Wind Waker makes all of that investment temporarily worthless every time the cooldown is up.
The offensive use—cycloning an enemy—works identically to Eul's and is still valuable for the same reasons: 2.5-second setup, unaffected by status resistance, good for combo timing. The ally save is also real—cycling a teammate who is about to die buys them 2.5 seconds of invulnerability, which in a chaotic teamfight is often enough time for the situation to change. One button turns a feeding support into a surviving support.
When to Buy Wind Waker?
Late game on high-value heroes who need to survive being the primary target of the enemy team's damage and initiation. Invoker is the poster child—a hero who is always being focused, who has enough spells that surviving 2.5 seconds completely changes the fight outcome, and who already transitions through Eul's naturally in many builds. Storm Spirit, Void Spirit, Tinker, and Morphling are mobile intelligence cores who are rich enough to afford it and valuable enough that the enemy team prioritizes killing them every fight.
The upgrade from Eul's to Wind Waker is the calculation. Eul's self-cast is already strong. Wind Waker's self-cast is game-winning when timed correctly. The price difference is significant, but in a game that has gone long enough that you have six items, spending on Wind Waker over a different sixth item is defensible on almost any hero who already has Eul's.
You can also build it purely offensively or as a save tool on supports who can afford it. In a game where your carry is constantly being collapsed on and you have the gold, Wind Waker as a position 4 item to save them every 19 seconds is an extraordinary value proposition.
Skip it when the game is not going long enough to use it—if you are winning convincingly and just need to close, the gold is better spent elsewhere. Also skip it when your hero has no natural path through Eul's. Forcing the build from scratch is expensive and inefficient. It is always an upgrade on an existing EUL, never a standalone plan.
Tips & common mistakes
- The movement during self-Cyclone has a fixed speed—it is not your normal movement speed. You cannot sprint away at Phase Boots speed. You move at a specific pace in whatever direction you input. Plan your escape direction before pressing the button, not after.
- The cooldown was increased to 19 seconds in a recent patch. It used to be much shorter, which was part of why the item felt broken. Even at 19 seconds, in a late-game fight that lasts 30-40 seconds, you can potentially use it twice. That is two guaranteed survival windows in one teamfight.
- Nullifier still destroys the play. If an enemy Nullifier debuff lands on you before you activate Wind Waker, your Cyclone is immediately dispelled. Same as Eul's—the Nullifier debuff cancels the cyclone on contact. Against teams building Nullifier specifically to counter you, activate Wind Waker before the Nullifier projectile reaches you, not after.
- Wind Waker and Eul's Scepter share a cooldown. If you upgraded from Eul's and Eul's cooldown was running, Wind Waker inherits that cooldown. Do not finish the upgrade mid-fight expecting it to be immediately available if Eul's was recently used.
- Cycloning an ally saves them but also removes them from the fight for 2.5 seconds. If your carry was about to land a fight-winning hit, saving them with Wind Waker also loses you those 2.5 seconds of their damage output. Save the ally when they are actually dying—not when they are taking moderate damage that they would have survived anyway.
Summary
Wind Waker is Eul's Scepter with the best possible upgrade: invulnerability you can walk away with. Every fight the enemy team builds toward coordinated initiation and layered disables. Wind Waker lets you say "not this time" once every 19 seconds — and in the late game, once every 19 seconds is enough to make you nearly unkillable in isolation.
It is expensive. It requires Eul's as a foundation. And on the right hero in a long game, there is genuinely nothing else in the shop that does what it does. The price is the only argument against it. The item itself has no real flaw.
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Lore
Proof enough to some that unseen forces manipulate the happenings of the material plane.