I really want to be good with Tassadar, but am not having much luck. Small sample size, but since his rework, I’m 2-6 with him. I usually have a lot of damage with him, sometimes the most on my team, so I guess I’m doing something right, but I still die too much.
If you see any glaring errors here or have any advice, let me know. This is what I usually take:
1: Khaydarin Amulet (like it especially since bonus damage went up to 75%)
4: Plasma Shield (figured I need a shield to keep from dying so much)
7: Arc Discharge (free Psionic Storms are good, right?)
10: ??? Really not impressed with either ult. I’ve tried both. Black Hole usually simply does nothing, as everyone runs away while it creeps towards them at 3 MPH, while sometimes I’ll pick Archon and it seems as soon as I transform, I’m dived and I die in 2 seconds.
13: Feedback
16: Psychic Shock
20: I’ve tried them all except Force Barrier
The Archon ult gives you more survive ability because of the extra shield you get when you transform. It also allows you to stutter step (move and do dmg) while you can’t really stutter step outside of Archon. Theoretically you pop it when you get dived and not the other way around like you described because it can really punish some divers.
Personally i also like the forcewall talent at 4 and 20 in combination. In this case you can’t get the shield talent from lvl4. Give it a try.
If you die a lot it could also not be because of your talent choices, maybe you need to improve your pathing and positioning in general. It also helps if you have a good tank in your team.
Oh yeah, in all likelihood, it’s that I’m simply not positioning him correctly. I’m probably aggresive when I shouldn’t be and stuff like that. Maybe I’ll try your suggestions for forcewall at 4 and 20.
You mentioned having a good tank. Should I try and hang out with him when the team splits to all 3 lanes? Just follow him around?
The problem is that if you don’t see enemy players on the minimap, then you basically have to stay under your own towers. So a good tank will create space for you by showing you where the enemies are so you can know where and how far you can go without the risk of getting ganked/ambushed. For this the you don’t have to follow him around. Following him around (like standing right next to him) is probably still pretty dangerous for you.
Since Tassadar has extremely good wave clear i would recommend to rotate between two lanes and just clear waves defensively. The 3rd lane is occupied by your teams solo laner and that’s how your team gets all the exp. The tank should kinda cover the area between those two lanes so you can rotate safely.
Staying in one lane and just pushing is pretty dangerous because you have to move far away from your towers so you are basically overextending.
A tank can walk into unknown areas and scout because most tanks have a way to escape and also have big hp pool so they should not die even when they get surprised. Not like Tassadar who dies just by looking at him
Work with vision. Some heroes that aren’t tanks are also good at scouting / providing vision and space. For example Medivh…
there are a few things i have tried with tass and so here is what i suggest:
ranged mage:
static charge
plasma shield
beam alignment
archon
your choice. i tend to pick up feedback most often but the others are very useful too.
thermal lance
khala’s gift
AA / AoE:
khaydarin amulet
plasma shield or electric fence ==> the difference here is a little more survival vs combo ability
arc discharge
archon or black hole ==> if you went shield@4 go archon dont even think about black hole really. if you did go electric fence you may think about black hole to throw ppl into it.
feedback
psychic shock
this one… khalas gift if you went archon is good and kugelblitz if you went with black hole.
1: Q
4: shield
7: Q reset
10: archon unless they are ez team to coutnerengage wombo with black hole. Has to be easy, otherwise slow-moving projectile is simply too difficult to get value out of
13: oracle
16: 8% Q/executor’s will
20: Archon/Wall
Dying too much? Not positioning safely. You can tap things once every 6 seconds or something with AA to keep your stacks at 100. AA build is conducive to standing still a lot, for not much reward, at pretty close range mind you. Keep stacks at 100, reset your Q with the 7 talent at 100 stacks, poke liberally with Qs. Q does mongo damage, AA is newly glorified ticklebeam that looks cool.
Extra W at 7 is nice, but the lack of placement is bad and your baseline W is fine as it is, what you need is more Qs. Archon is almost always better, you can pop it to tank a hit and turn a teamfight or just to give yourself more mobility (not standing to channel autos), more damage and yeah. Really crap out the damage out of every orifice. Oracle spell armor and vision are very useful. With good positioning, you don’t need an escape. Unless it’s a tech pick vs. Butcher or… really don’t know what else, you just don’t need it. And it’s on a long cd compared to all-the-time 30 spell armor + valuable vision.
Overall playing Q build gives you more mobility because you’re not stuck channeling autos all the time, not to mention your AA range is increased with Q 7 so you can actually do autos even better than auto build, Q is superior poke, good waveclear, and yeah. You need to position well so you don’t die a lot. I’ve died like, 3 times with tass since the rework. Even vs. Tracer + CS Varian and stuff. Q has long range, just poke and pepper the tank/summons/minions with AA to keep stacks at 100 to keep the Q’s/mana/shields rolling. Use Oracle vision to ensure flanks/rotations are secured, or to scout. Maybe it even reveals, can’t remember, I just pick it anyway. Also 16 W talent means 5 ticks per second instead of 4, which is… ok, compared to more of every spell including W from Executor’s Will if you need to clear Zerg Waves or something (which Q build+16Will is insanely good at btw, you zap banelings to death before they even hit your gates), or 8% damage with Q, a slightly stronger W pales in comparison to those values.
everything you just read is correct, take notes. Also on the last point, you can provide that vision yourself with Oracle. Oracle is just a really good talent even though it’s competing with tass’ old (and absolutely essential) E button. Turns out the D is more powerful than the E was.
coming back to what i said here. i had a game where for some reason i started off with #build 1 of my templates and then it switched to #build3. so the difference here is Q build and AA build. i took the first talent static charge and then proceeded to take shield. normal.
then though i hadnt noticed things had changed and accidentally took arc discharge. when i realized what happened i was like ‘f*… now i have to work around this.’ its pretty much like when you leave your talent decisions up to the AI
well i made it work and surpisingly i found it worked better!
as a general mage build i have now found that this works great:
Based on what you guys said, I changed a few things. Here’s what I do now.
1- static charge- didn’t realize how much damage his Q could do
4- plasma shield
7-arc discharge
10-archon
13-feedback
16-thermal lance- the Q again!
20-still undecided what’s best. Usually alternate between twilight archon and khala’s gift.
This seems to be working. I think I’ve won 9 of my last 12 games as Tassadar. Which only means I’ll soon be FORCED to lose 9 out of 12 games!!!
Outside of Archon mode, Tass is burst mage, you wanna talent into bursting when possible.
level 7
-psionic echo, higher burst on your Q. pick this one.
-beam alignment seems nice but opponents will not let you hit them that often unless it’s vs IA.
-arc discharge is just useless.
level13
-feedback sucks. you need to stand still hitting someone on your storm assuming they stand still too. Srchon doesn’t have beam so turns this talent off
-walk gives you a weak escape.
-oracle gives sustain and further empowering archon. I usually go for oracle.
Amulet doesn’t considerable feel optimal due it enforces a stand still style which is very risky on Tass to commit, Q talent does a better job in providing solid damage and trait charge with very little rooting involved to get maximum viability in comparison to Amulet, for Amulet to be better it should have a baseline slow increase, can be 5% slow increase.
Q build Tass: 1-3-1-1-3-1-1
Plasma shield counters melees (stand still and click on Tracer). Oracle counters mages (stand still with spell armor and click on Kael). Archon dominates late game!!
