I have a few comments regarding this subject of Samuro, but I might as well start off with a disclaimer.
I have Samuro at level 153, so there may be some level of bias in my opinion.
With that over, let’s get into it.
Hard to Kill
Yes, Samuro can be pretty difficult to kill if the Samuro is playing safely and is prioritizing survival over actually doing something of value.
But it comes with the territory when the majority of Samuros skills are survival-based.
His Q, E and D are all abilities that can be used to stay alive/escape. If a Samuro are saving all these abilities for the sake of survival only, then yes he can be very hard to kill. (This is even more true if he also took survival talents over damage talents)
But it comes at a cost of not taking risks to do proper damage or finishing off heroes.
It’s like Azmodan. If he wants to, then he can also be exceedingly hard to kill — if he only ever throws Q’s from a long distance. But he’s losing out on a lot of potential by never taking risks.
His damage
Samuro is a unique hero in that 100% of his damage comes from auto attacks, aside from his level 10 Bladestorm. Although Bladestorm is more of an AoE ability; his AA’s are stronger against a single target.
While blinds can work against him, he does have the option of using Q or D to cleanse those off, but that comes at the cost/risk of using one of his survival skills in order to cleanse himself to continue AA’ing.
But what REALLY works against Samuro are block talents, particularly the ones that give a flat amount of block for x seconds, like Kharazim’s Earth Ally or Stukov’s heal-block talent at 4.
Varian’s Block and Illidans Evasion also works well against Samuro.
Since his damage is so based on AA’s so is his damage much more sustained and limited. His only burst would be when he’s attacking someone enough times to incur a natural crit (3-4 times) followed by an activation of his W allowing for two crits in a row.
He’s not the type that can jump in and just pop a bunch of abilities to do some quick AoE burst like Zeratul or others.
Talent dependency
His damage is honestly speaking completely laughable until at least level 7. Before that, his damage is pretty subpar.
And his next damage talent tier that adds proper damage is level 16. *
His waveclear is also pretty weak until level 10 when he can pick Bladestorm, which is a very strong waveclear ability no doubt, but it sacrifices Illusion Mastery which is a very strong survival skill.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Samuro is a 1v1 specialist by all means. When you are alone against him, you wont have much time to figure out which one is the real Samuro and you wont have the time to get rid of the Illusions in a timely manner which allows him to use his swap however he pleases.
Samuro’s strength comes from sneaking up on the backline while the enemy team is occupied and hitting them where it hurts or by chasing down low-health fleeing targets.
But therein is his weakness; he can’t make a move into an enemy team if they don’t have an opening. If they are moving as a team covering for each other and will instantly blow you apart if you get too close.
One time I was against a team that was moving together concisely; if I ever moved even a bit too close, the enemy ETC would stun me and I would get blown to bits. If I used my illusions, the illusions would die within a second thus rendering my swap ability useless as I had nothing to swap to.
ARAM is a good showcasing of Samuro’s weakness. Samuro is exceedingly weak at ARAM; there is little room to reach the backline and for large parts of the game so are they close to towers so little room to chase. The enemy will simply blow up Samuro and his illusions if he tries to make any moves and his illusions will just feed their quest-stacks. Typically Samuros in ARAM just end up being healing sponges that does less damage than the tanks.
While saying “Just stay as a 5man group” can seem pretty excessive as a strategy for dealing with 1 hero, so isn’t it that different than when you have to deal with certain other heroes.
If a Zagara is splitpushing alone and an Illidan uses The Hunt and kills Zagara, then she’s only got herself to blame. To counter such an Illidan, you would also roam as a proper group, as Illidan would have a much harder time in a 5v5 than he would in a 1v1.
But what about Aba?
Aba+Samuro is, at least in my opinion, an exceedingly powerful combo.
This does rely on that this is actually a proper Aba+Samuro combo and not just an aba and samuro who happened to be on the same team but the Aba is more concerned about split pushing and hatting minions than to support Samuro. (Or that the Samuro actually has a clue on how to play Samuro).
Aba and Samuro have insane talent synergy. As mentioned above, 100% of Samuro’s damage comes from Autoattacks, disregarding Bladestorm and activating Critical Strike.
Which means that Abathur’s 25% increased attack speed is akin to a 25% increase in damage for Samuro, not counting the damage abilities of the hat or the constant healing/shielding.
Combine that with the level 16 Abathur “W slows enemies hit” with Samuros level 16 “100% crit chance vs CC’ede targets.” This is a huge powerspike. Giving Samuro an AoE slow as well as giving him the tools to crit several times in a row can do some major hurt.
Abathur’s level 20 upgrade to Symbiote that puts a smaller hat on a nearby other hero also gets good value from Samuro since it can go on an illusion.
Taking advantage of this combo in Quickmatch with a friend allowed me to have a winrate between 80% and 90%, while mostly just being a duo-sized group and not 5man groups.
If you want to see some shenanigans of Aba+Samuro, then check out the videos below.
Some videos of Aba+Samuro
