Sensei Golden-Tail, Fox Samurai

Sensei Golden-Tail is a highly mobile, highly evasive knife race. The most experienced Senseis can only be taken down with bash or roots as shooting them can be extremely hard.

Basic Info

 * Level Requirement: 700
 * Max Level: 48
 * Race Limit: 1

Abilities

 * 1) Spirit Cloak - 6 Levels - Your spirit cloak hides you from your enemies. Gain 40-65% invisibility.
 * 2) Enlightened Bushi - 6 Levels - You feel very little pain. Gain 1 health every 1.4 to .7 seconds, up to 125 health.
 * 3) Evasion - 6 Levels - You move too fast to be hit. Gain 5% to 25% evasion.
 * 4) Deadly Poison - 6 Levels - Your blade is tipped with poison. Grants a 40% chance to deal 2 to 5 damage a second for 5 seconds
 * 5) Knoggin Whack - 6 Levels - You hit the skull with the hilt of your sword. Grants a 25% chance to shake for .5 to 3 seconds.
 * 6) The Big Kill - 6 Levels - You speed up in anticipation of the kill. You become 30% to 80% faster for 3 seconds after being hit.
 * 7) Entomb - 6 Levels - Your enemy is stunned by your relentless attack.  Grants an 8% - 50% chance of bashing for 1 second.
 * 8) Grappling Hook - Ultimate - 6 Levels - Activated with +ultimate - You are an expert with a grappling hook. Teleport every 1 second. Higher levels increase movement velocity.

Restrictions

 * Sock of Feather, Longjump, Pistol Clip Extender, Crusader's Wish, Ring of Regeneration

Tips and Tricks

 * Use your ultimate to navigate the map -- only run if your ultimate is on cooldown or after landing near an enemy that is out of your knife range. This allows you to utilize your maximum mobility potential.
 * When using your ultimate to close the distance to an enemy, practice using your ultimate in a random direction in the air, air strafing (panning your mouse to the left/right while flying) to perform circles and alternating left and right to remain unpredictable, and eventually landing next to the enemy instead of simply using your ultimate straight at an opponent. An enemy shooting at you will have a harder time moving his crosshairs left and right than just shooting at you in a straight line. Using your ultimate directly at an enemy tends to get you headshot.
 * When going in for the kill, try propelling yourself forward so that you land behind the enemy shooting you. This grants you two advantages: 1) you can sweep your crosshair to the enemy's back for an instant backstab and 2) the enemy has to sweep his mouse to make his character aim at you if he wants to shoot you, throwing off his aim completely.
 * Try practicing the ult -> stab combo. That is, use your ultimate to close the distance between you and your enemy then instantly stabbing the second you get into range. Starting the ult at a distance allows you to instantly ult out right after you stab, allowing you to get in and out within a second. You can then try it again for a kill.
 * Usually it takes 2 stabs to kill someone. The first one is easy: use your ultimate to get into stab range and do it. The second stab is the harder part, as you have about a second of delay before you can stab again. You can either ult out and try for another ult -> stab or you can ult/run around the guy under the effects of The Big Kill.
 * The ultimate isn't the only mobility that Sensei has -- The Big Kill has a huge impact on how your mobility works. 1) It grants you *more* gravity, meaning the delay between your jumps are decreased. This also means you fall faster when using your ultimate -- aim higher than you normally would. 2) Sensei has one of the highest movement speeds under the effects of The Big Kill. Sometimes you don't even need to ult away/behind the enemy when going for a second stab: you can just run behind him and stab him with the huge speed boost you have under The Big Kill.
 * In the event that you need to chase someone down, slashing instead of stabbing will be more advantageous. Slashing will 1) let you attack the enemy at a longer range than stabbing will, 2) yield more hits per second -- meaning you will proc bash in more often. Switch to stabbing the helpless foe the second he gets bashed.
 * Bash is one of the skills that make this race so strong. All frag grenades have a 100% bash chance: stun groups of enemies with your grenades. Each tick of a molotov may bash, potentially locking enemies inside the fire until they die. Sensei almost always wins against other knife races because of bash: slash them at the maximum range, since they'll likely be going for a stab, then stab them until they die when they get bashed.
 * Sensei acts as a really good hit and run race. Ultimate into a group of enemies, stab/kill one, ult back to where you came from (while regenerating health the entire time), and go back in from another entrance. Their backs will be exposed to you since they expect you to come from where you retreated and you can repeat the process until the enemy is dead. Don't be afraid to ult back to spawn and sit for 20 seconds for the 40ish health you'll gain: we have a long timer on our server and you can use the time to plan where to hit next using the minimap information.
 * When the enemy team gets really organized and anticipates your assassination maneuvers, it admittly gets tough playing the race. You can either try to hit another area of the map where they don't expect you --- or you can play the distraction game. That is, you hold the entire enemy team at bay for your team to get to where you are and shoot the guys shooting at you, or they can plant at the now undefend bomb site. Once you notice the enemy switching focus off of you, you can then drop in for a kill while they continue to focus on your teammates.
 * Each tick of Deadly Poison can be affected by Claws of Attack +6 --- that's +30 bonus damage for the entire duration!

Counterplay

 * Sensei's weaknesses are bash (Ghost, Human Alliance, Human General), snares/roots (Night Elves, Dreadknight), Blood Hunters (Damage taken while moving), and Dread Knights (yes it's here twice.) Dreadknight hard counters any Sensei and makes them utterly useless. 3 seconds of root is more than enough time for the Dreadknight to find and kill the Sensei. Sensei can buy Holy Shield to counter bash and Necklace of immunity to counter night elves and blood hunters, but not both at the same time. If you playerinfo a sensei and he has the counter-item to your race, changerace to dreadknight or get a teammate to switch so he needs the other counter-item as well. Dreadknight's entangling root passive, however, is unaffected by either of the items. Changerace to dreadknight and the sensei will likely changerace too.
 * Some Senseis will blindly ultimate directly to you instead of circling around to you. This makes for an easy target as you can literally just spray at his general direction and his head will be half of your screen within a second because of the velocity of his ultimate.
 * For a Sensei being evasive at high velocities (The Big Kill/Boots of Speed), it helps to burst your shots instead of spraying. Take care to aim and you'll find a moving Sensei is just as prone to headshots as a still one. However, if you're using a bash race to counter the Sensei and know how to control your spray, frequently just spraying a magazine at him will bash him long enough for you to get enough bullets in him / aim for a headshot.