Explain Whitemane to me, please

General Discussion
1

I don’t get it. So you have this hero with meh damage whose gimmick is healing people by…doing damage. No escape^, no CC^^, and relies heavily on channeled abilities that require her to be stationary in range, and can be interrupted.

:thinking:

I’m not say she doesn’t have great lore. :nerd_face:

I’m not saying she doesn’t have great…aesthetics. :smirk:

I’m not even saying she’s not fun. :smiley:

But she is not very effective in my hands. :worried:

Would love to hear from some expert Whitemane players about how and why they do well with her. She just seems like a win-more kind of character, and/or very niche.

^ 4 - Indulgence: +5% movement speed per stack of Zeal
^^ 16 - Harsh Discipline: land Searing Lash while channeling Inquisition

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2

I summon… Hellobg into this thread - ex-WM main.

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3

She is very much a W bot now. I wish they gave her another mini rework to make her more interesting. W build is fun don’t get me wrong but its pretty much the only good build for her at the moment. Her rework was very rushed

4

Right now, there are far better healers for her job.

However she’s viable by taking all talents related to W or Inquisition.

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I imagine that if you’re fighting a comp who’s goal is to outsustain you, whitemane would be ok.

6

I’d say the best situation to pick whitemane over every other healer would be if you have a rather beefy comp (e.g., heroes that don’t get 1-shot by valeera) vs aoe combo team (and picking tyrael is not an option). Then the 40 aoe armor ult gets insane value. That ult is really her most distinctive feature.

7

I would argue currently, divine reckoning is a lot better. Placing it properly is a struggle in certain maps but its a lot more rewarding than aegis since the heals stack on top of your base heals that can also be amplified through your passive spell power. The mana refunds also mean you can spam Q on everyone and then have your mana bar filled up again. It’s much more clutch than aegis and doesn’t need your teammates to be grouped up and close to you

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8

Currently, you can play her in two ways. As W bot which is somehow viable or as very pathetic Tyrande clone (literally everything else). I

Her viable playstyle forces you to pick Pity the Frail, spam your E on cd to get cd reduction to cast as many Ws as you can, while her E itself does next to nothing. Basically, you want to self-root yourself and channel one ability as much as you can, which is super boring for me. I was never fan of original pre rework W build, but it was still much more fun than current W build.

Everything else is super trash. Her E build is now useless. I loved, when I could burst down enemy team trapped in Mosh Pit alone post lvl 16. Now the dmg is just too low. Than you have AA build which forces you to AA enemy tank the whole game. If you pick Tyrande you do the same, but you will heal much more and she has way more utility than Whitemane.

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If Auriel isn’t banned.

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Alright, my opinions:
(Disclaimer, I am not a pro or expert Whitemane. I have previously sucked with her, and have now improved significantly. This is my understanding of how/why)

Basic Build Overview:

Inquisition/Clemency build:

  • Pros: Point and click damage. Reliable way of reducing enemy damage at later levels.
  • Cons: The self root. I cannot trust my teammates to keep garrosh from moonwalking up to me and yeeting me into a different map. You can cancel early if you need to, but then you miss on a significant amount of damage/healing. Also, boring to me.

AA build

  • Pros: Mana efficient. Can get long durations of zeal on allies. Good sustain.
  • Cons: You need to land aa’s constantly. Less safe due to needing to aa constantly. Less burst healing compared to others. Also, boring to me.

Lash build

  • Pros: Probably best burst healing. Decent AoE damage. Most fun, personally
  • Cons: Reliant upon skillshots, which can be missed.

Personally, I prefer lash build with divine reckoning at 10/20. This build works best against slow teams that clump together. As for allies, you want reliable cc. This lets you proc 50% extra damage, and therefore more heals. Spam lash at clumped enemies. You can also use inquisition to get the extra damage from lash with the slow, with landing the second hit. If you are super fast you can get the extra damage from first hit as well. Imo, this build really gets going at level 13, with endless lash spams, provided you can land the second hit. Oh! important thing to note. Vehicles trigger reset from second hits. Which is nice against the mecha and dragon knight.

I like divine reckoning from both a mana tool, and an extra damage/healing tool. Even if Plus, it combos very well with long duration cc’s like Mosh (lvl 20 upgrade can pull them into mosh, too). Just remember to activate trait for more spell power! Even a couple people caught in it for a second or two can get a lot of health back out of it.

But! In the end, no matter what build you do, you have to remember to keep zeal up on the people who need it!

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11

Whitemane is all about positioning. You stand where you shouldnt = death. You are well protected by your tanks and staying away from danger = win

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Her big schtick is raw output. If you look at her ‘gimmick’ as doing damage to heal and then chalk that to “oh it’s not much damage” then you’re looking at the wrong numbers.

When healing is based off damage dealt, then the damage should be ‘meh’ otherwise they completely outclass a damage-focused role in favor of a hero than can heal AND deal damage. Esp since said damage doesn’t consume mana.

So, functionally, she has some of the best raw burst healing potential, but a lot of players generally don’t put themselves into situations that need that sort of thing as a good thing for winning games. Usually the healer offsets poke damage and then has a few utility effects for making 1 dramatic turn-around moment or by having cc to lock-down an enemy target and press a numbers advantage with more bodies – if players don’t take damage, they don’t need heals, so killing an enemy team is better for mitigating damage.

A good chunk of the game has enabled spamming a lot of poke damage and whitemane doesn’t so do well against poke compared to other supports. So when it comes to mitigating how they expect to play on top of the potential burn-out she has for dumping all her cds, it can feel like she’s a “bot” for players that don’t pay attention to half their complaints.

IF a team where in a situation where several heroes were taking a large chunk of damage (but surviving) then her raw burst seems super handy, however, usually only one target gets the bulk of the focus, and a number of other healers have the tools to save 1 ally while then having cc or pve or something else that whitemane was built around not having – esp since there’s still some fear of the double-healer meta and she has to be ‘balanced’ around those sort of concerns to not completely stagnate the gameplay.

If you watch replays for casual play, if one hero gets isolated, then everyone else stands back to watch instead of going in to help, so her capacity to target multiple characters doesn’t really help compared to a reghar ancestral or an anduin pull.

Furthermore, a lot of players generally fear considering a second healer (despite how many times they may lose to it in qm/aram) whitemane only gets her fanatical following if she’s allowed to have a lot of, well, OP moments compared to other characters on her own, so testimonials in that regard can be less-than-honest regarding game balance, and being less than that is then “boring”

I still have a decent w/r with her, but I generally don’t play her (pre and post rework) because unorganized players are too stressful to try to enable her when similar results can be posted from easier healers that compliment the cowardice of common play. If I can’t rely on allies to peel, take camps, etc etc, then having a hero built around potential aoe burst, no pve, conditional self-sustain, and so on, then it takes much less effort to simple play another hero instead.

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wm is op af. Go Pity the Frail, Matrydom, 7 doesn’t matter, Divine Reckoning, subjugation, Shared punishment, and then Scarlet Crusade. Someone get lows press d press q press r godlike healing. The 25% more healing for allies under 30% makes it really hard to kill someone, r provides infinite mana if you use it correctly. There have been games where I didn’t even use her 25% increased spellpower trait and still won.

14

Whitemane is pretty garbage. If you want a healer that heals by doing damage Anduin fills that far better. I’ve never seen her do any meaningful heals and whatever team she’s on crumples because of it. Please don’t play her, she’s the ultimate nightmare for the team with her on it. I feel bad when I beat them because it’s always a steamroll and it sucks having them on the team.

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15

There’s no explanation. Play her and see if you like her or not. I don’t.

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16

What? Whitemane is the furthest thing from garbage. Don’t confuse player skill with the heroes ability. Whitemane is a tough hero to play correctly but very rewarding if you master her.

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17

If I ever, EVER see a ‘good’ one maybe I’ll agree but until then I’ll absolutely dread ever seeing her. I just want to dodge whenever she pops up its seriously aweful. Honestly even if 1 out of a hundred manage to function even vaguely as well as the average hero that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. She blatantly needs fixing or she wouldn’t need such a 1 in a hundred player to function at all.

18

I’d recommend not wasting your time learning Whitemane. She has an incredible healing output, yes, but she lacks literally everything else. Such a high healing output is unnecessary in most cases, and any other healer can do just as good, while also offering way more utility than Whitemane.

Also Whitemane is harder to play than your average healer, while offering the same -if not less- rewards. But if you insist in playing her… Stick to W build, everything else is garbage.

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19

Please don’t play Whitemane, there are way more interesting and better made healers than her right now, Alexstrasza, Auriel, Deckard for example.

We should not play her out of protest, to force Lemon sky to fix the insult they call a rework.

Do not support the problem, be part of the solution. Do not play Whitemane.

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20

You can’t have a hero that heals when they do damage also do high damage.
Especially if they can heal themself, because then they can tank too.

She’s a bit below average overall.
Even if you sort by healers only she’s a little below middle.
But Anduin, Deckard, Kharazim, Stukov, Brightwing, and Lili have lower win rates and people don’t typically complain about them one way or the other.

I’m a little surprised to see Anduin at the bottom, since he’s more popular than any of these. But he is my absolute lowest leveled hero, something about him makes him less fun than Whitemane to me, so maybe I shouldn’t actually be surprised.