Lone druid is excellent hero in all tiers of play; scrub, intermediate and pro. I'll go over all 3 briefly and it will be up to you to decide what play-style will be appropriate for you.

One of the reasons he isn't seen as often in pro play anymore was a nerf icefrog gave him regarding his bear interaction.

• 6.72 - Spirit Bear's Demolish decreased from 60% to 40% bonus damage versus buildings
  
• 6.72b - Spirit Bear can no longer use Return if it has taken damage from a player unit in the last 3 seconds.
  
• 6.75 Spirit Bear can no longer be resummoned while it is taking damage (Has same duration and rules as his blink disable).

Demolish is an ability his summoned bear has, which causes it to do increased damage to buildings. 40% is still quite strong and I would say the nerf was pretty justified.





The next 2 nerfs are what stopped syllabear from being the powerhouse he used to be. It added some depth to the hero, but made him quite weaker. What you used to be able to do is let his bear chase heroes around with radiance and return him before it died and heal it at the fountain. Now if you use your bear too sloppy it will die and you might have to wait for that really long cool down.



In the scrub tier I suggest jungling with syllabear and just getting double midas. Just build random stuff like bashers on both heroes and assault cuiras. You'll be fine.

Now intermediate syllabear play requires you to enter the lane. The best thing to do is watch a replay of an experienced player laning lone druid, Start of with some tangoes and stout shield. As soon as you can, buy an orb of venom.

Now what you want to do is have your hero and bear on seperate hotkeys. As soon as the enemy heroes get close send your bear to chase them around. You don't have to focus too much on it, focus on last hits. It's ok if he runs out of leash range. He is quite tanky. In fact let him take as much damage as possible. You can just resummon him with full health when you get to level 3.

Just farm your midas in lane and try to get radiance as fast as possible. Keep your hero back and let your bear try to entangle enemy heroes.

Your ult makes you tanky, if it's too dangerous you do NOT have to attack with ur main hero, especially if you don't have any items on your hero.

You can go straight from midas to radiance or get boots. Best boots on sylla are tranquil boots. You can turn into ranged form and heal then go back into bear form. Phase boots are great on his spirit bear. This depends on your micro. He doesn't need the speed, but the phase makes sure he doesn't get blocked by ♥♥♥♥.

If your not getting too many last hits in lane, it's best to see if you can do some jungling. If radiance isn't gonna be ready between 15-22-ish minutes then you might as well get a maelstrom on your bear. If your doing really bad just get tank items, you can be support-ish by getting vlads/assault/pipe on your hero. But maelstrom is pretty much required for your spirit bear. It greatly improves your farm time.

Note hand of midas does not grant your hero experience if used on your spirit bear. It's best to move it to your hero before uses. But if your pushing or getting ready to engage, and don't want to risk sloppy item management, you might as well use it on the bear for the 190 gold.

Even though on paper syllabear sounds like a great late game carry, you have to realize the bear will start dying a lot faster. If you notice this happening, just put your bears items on your main hero.

A cool strategy to do, if you get an early game radiance is just to haras with it and farm lanes. If you are planning to go smoke gank for example, leave the bear in the creep wave and just use return to bring it to your hero when the action starts. Also If you see a enemy hero with <300 hp just send your spirit bear with radiance after it. Your hero doesn't need to be there. Be careful of fog of war though, your bear might lose track of the enemy target.