Gladiator Hero Guide - Heroes of Newerth(HON) Item & Skill Builds-II

Starting Items

x3 to build into a Power Supply / sell
for extra health and to make into a Fortified Cracelet
x2 for health regen
quick health regen

Early Game


More health
Help with the mana
From the side shop
If you need the extra regen (i would not recommend this. You shall better start your riftshards or end your Phase Boots)


 
Mid game
Lets you chase and increases your damage
Gives you good damage with an easy build up and if you are lucky the splash from Flagellation will be a crit for lots of AOE damage. Getting lvl 1 and lvl it up for 4 after getting a damage item(Runed Axe) would be the ideal
Gives you good mobility and the bonus damage splashes.(if you are lucky enough to get a crit combined with Assassins damage bonus you can easily take half life or more from an enemy hero depending on Riftshards level).
Gives you more splash, mana and health regeneration for easy farming. (this is an item you MUST have if you are having trouble with farming. But either way it will still help you with Flagellation damage due to his +65 damage bonus).

Luxury Items

Savage Mace - Gives you bigger splashes
Demonic Breastplate - Gives you some armor and attack  speed.
Doombringer - this is just for the lulz on pub games. Riftshards + Doombringers + Runed Axe + Flagellation.. just imagine the outcome :D.

Game Play:

Laning:

Gladiator should play on bot lane(Legion) top lane (Hellbourne) to take maximum advantage of his arras with the whip.

In lane, your main goal is to deliver lasthits where possible, and harassing enemies with Flagellation. If no creep is within a recognisably low amount of health, you should go inside of fog for a short timeor try the H trick to scare your enemies . When you're in the fog as Gladiator people start to act erratically, and this is general is just good for mindgames. If you see an oppurtunity to land a Pitfall, do so. If there isn't much of a way to follow up on a landed stun, simply whip a creep. A whip and Pitfall will do about 250 damage, and is a good bit of harassment necessary to winning lanes. You will in almost all cases be the secondary intiator. Pitfall is extremely unreliable for landing stuns, so you will want your ally to slow or stun the enemy enough that you can guarantee your Pitfall.


Ganking:

Ganking with Gladiator is all about landing Pitfalls, and that is mostly practice. Pitfall is best used either:

• From fog
• When the enemy has nowehere else to go
• When the enemy is disabled
• After Showdown

If none of those conditions are met, it is unlikely that you'll hit your Pitfall. But you could get lucky...

Timing of ganking is pretty general of all semi-carries. Take farm when you can, push lanes for map control and carry Homecoming Stones at all times for counter-gank opportunities. You can't initiate ganks very effectively without Showdown. Gladiator's strengths is in area of effect burst, and not so much single target burst. So without adequate support it isn't worth taking your time to gank a lone enemy carry by yourself. Your best bet is to either try to harass them out of lane or to go farm yourself to compete with them.

Team fights:

Line up your whips properly. This is extremely important for any teamfight, since once you have a few items your whip is dealing the majority of your damage. There is no point having a tonne of items if your whip only hits 2 heroes, the area of effect is huge. If you have the opportunity to, whip a creep instead of a hero. The only person who takes armor reduced damage is your main target, and if that target is a creep you're optimising your output. Try not to be in centre of teamfights while your skills are on cooldown. Gladiator's autoattack damage is pretty bad, and unless you're at a huge advantage in the fight maintaining good position is generally more beneficial than getting in 2 autoattacks. Whit this i don't to say that you can't maintain good positioning and hit enemy heroes at the same time... 
The rest is all about timing.. some times a good ultimate is not only the one that hits the enemy hero but the one that prevents a nuke. Remember that Call to Arms Buffs your allies for 5/6/7 seconds ("damage taken is halved.Prevented damage is taken all at once at the end of the buff and is nonlethal.").

For a more detailed  guide you shall look for RogerDodger's gladiator guide. Took a lot of inspiration from his guide to make this one.

To end this guide will leave just some amazing videos from what a good whip can do ;)