Help Me Understand the Power of Li-Ming and Zeratul

General Discussion
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Greetings friends. This is not intended as a particularly good quality thread. I am but a skeleton king who has played what some would consider many quick match games of Heroes of the Storm, but I’m sure my number pales in comparison to most people here.

I almost exclusively play Leoric. I like to think I know Leoric’s strengths and weaknesses, and I understand that some heroes straight-up give others a bad day.

I’m not here to talk about Leoric, though. I’m looking for some insight into two heroes who in the right hands seem incredible. Yes, I could look up their guides and play them to understand them better, but we’re here to talk, are we not?

So I had a match this evening. It was a fairly poor quality game in which my team ran around like headless chickens with no clear goal in mind and suffered many deaths. Three of the enemy’s heroes were very bad players, which made for easy pickings, but two of the enemies were exceptionally good, so it was a peculiar match in which I saw the constant repeat of my allies quite comfortably killing three very weak opponents, but getting destroyed by two powerful ones. We lost the game due to these powerful enemies. They were Li-Ming and Zeratul.

Towards the end of the game the levels of each team were in the early twenties, and I would say the opponent had one more level than us, so a small power advantage. Now I had of course fought Li-Ming and Zeratul both together and separately in this match, but towards the very end of the game, when Leoric ascends to true power, I realized how truly feeble I was against these strong players. I could’ve certainly chosen talents a bit more wisely, though I’m not so sure my kit had a perfect response to them.

Anyway, let’s get to the point. Putting pitiful team coordination aside, I would like to please be informed on how these heroes might “tick” in the context I describe. Now I’ve fought Li-Ming hundreds of times, but this player humiliated me. As I say, I almost exclusively play Leoric, so I don’t know the ability names of many other heroes, but this Li-Ming had the skill where she sort of does damage in a small area around herself - sort of an aggressive blink. Towards the very end of the game, when all was pretty much lost anyway, I decided to attack her one-on-one, and she just straight up destroyed me in a matter of seconds. What shocked me about it was that she was borderline in melee range for most of it - basically, she won even though she was right where I wanted her to be. She had in the region of 20+ kills in the match. Now this kind of “aggressive melee” Li-Ming is one I haven’t seen very often, but what’s the deal with her? Does she get increased damage with kills? When I attacked her we were both at full health, and she had what looked like 15% mana or so, and the “battle”, if it could even be called so, was over in about 3 seconds tops. I was left disturbed that a mage defeated me as a bruiser so effortlessly up close.

Next is Zeratul, who of course gets a lot of hate. Now I wouldn’t say this Zeratul was built in a particularly special way, but I similarly had a disastrous time in trying to fight him. Perhaps it is a question of latency, but towards the end of the game in our few encounters he would effortlessly destroy me by blinking at the exact moment I used my abilities, and slicing me up, as he does. It was just incredible and made it feel like we were playing two different games with just how quick and deadly he was. We’re talking myself being (properly) dead before I’ve landed a fourth attack. Skeletal Swing and Drain Hope were dodged effortlessly. I’m used to feeling like the slowest hero on the field, but this was crazy.

Now I took Burning Despair and Mithril Mace, which are generally my go-to abilities in matches in which my team is hopeless, since that combination can be very powerful in making short work of enemies on one’s own, but in this case it was just laughable how quickly these two heroes were able to kill me versus my damage output versus them.

I understand that I’m sort of asking a peculiar question here and am somehow expecting people to use a crystal ball regarding a match that they weren’t a part of, but I would like to please be informed as to what exactly the mechanics are for the Li-Ming “style” I’ve described and, I suppose, Zeratul in general. Is there something obvious I am missing, like some kind of power-accumulation that they gain by farming a bunch of heroes which enabled them to be so deadly? I know my skeletal power, and I know that for Leoric some heroes will just ruin your day in general, like Falstad, but I wonder if there’s anything I could’ve done in that match to have had even the slightest chance to kill those two. Is there some weakness I can exploit, or attack that’s particularly important that I should dodge that somehow enabled the amazing combos that killed me in a matter of seconds? I know some will say that Buried Alive would’ve shut them down, but I don’t rate my chances of having killed them in that window of time, and I suspect they would just sneak away quickly after the spell had worn off.

I look forward to any insight you can give into the mechanics of these heroes in powerful hands. Perhaps you can help me avoid total humiliation next time.

With kind regards, a humbled skeleton king.

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You can go to try mode with any hero.
Collections>Heroes>Pick the hero>Try

Ming E build and Zeratul in general reward engage knowledge (or punish bad positioning, as you prefer). Trying to “outplay” with micro don’t gonna work.

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See, now this is the type of thread I like. no hero bashing, just “help me understand”. More to the point… Shortened quote because I don’t want to add another massive text block.

There’s a build for ming, that takes a good deal of skill. I personally am not skilled enough to pull it off and I’m not ashamed to admit it. At 7, it comes online, causes teleport to do aoe damage in a small area. At 13, losing 20% hp resets teleports cooldown. Combined with other talents, and the wave of force ult, she can easily decimate teams if the kills keep coming. Reason is her passive. Every kill nearby, resets ALL her cooldowns, ultimate included.

Edit: Almost forgot, 16 has a talent that makes teleport also give a shield. So since leoric smacks things so damn hard, what probably happened, was she teleported into you getting a shield, you smacked her, which did enough damage to reset the cooldown. rinse and repeat.

As for the zeratul, I’m nowhere near qualified to answer as I have very little experience playing him.

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There’s very little strings attached to it, Li-Ming has many builds and deals a lot of high damage if you allow her to hit you even with the basic combo, E build scales in being aggressive and defensive using Illusionist and Diamond Skin (25% shields) with the latter being completely optional and flexible with Mirrorball (more magic missiles).

Leoric cannot catch her the only time he does is in melee, all she has to do is dance around him and combo constantly.

One thing I can mention about Zeratul though, he’s a scale hero, he’s pretty horrendous becomes playable by level 7 where he gets his mobility, 13 where he gets some defense, 16 where he gets his damage spikes and 20 becomes one of the most obnoxious heroes to play against.

I made an in-depth guide about her a long time ago, you could give it a read as it shows the character ticks.

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Yes! You seem to have described exactly what I felt. She danced around me and seemed largely impervious to my efforts to kill her. The high skill ceiling of this build you mention must explain why it’s so rare that I see this build and why I am much more familiar with the “standard quick match Li-Ming” who runs away and plays it safe, and which is much easier for me to kill - if ever I can actually catch her.

I will have to add this “rare” build Li-Ming to my list of problematic enemies, assuming it’s a game where I’m effectively working alone of course. It sounds like landing Drain Hope is the only way to actually harm her, and I’m probably better served by trying to do that and running away to slow her down as opposed to actively even trying to kill her.

Looks like a lot of effort was put into this. I will check it out, thank you.

Zeratul in skilled hands towards the end-game continues to be a conundrum. I fully understand the general advice of “just hit them” when it comes to these cowardly diver types that attach themselves to you. I crush Tracer with ease if she gets cheeky. She is very small and I am large. In the case of a good Zeratul, however, it honestly feels like he blinks absolutely everything I do and kills me effortlessly, which I suppose is at least partially a Leoric problem, since Leoric telegraphs everything so obviously, and, well, if both Skeletal Swing and Drain Hope are dodged successfully, you’re straight out of luck for what feels like an eternity against this fast little monster. Perhaps the only real solution is to attach oneself to an ally in the hopes of at least something landing against Zeratul, however questionably observant or skilled that ally may be.

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Both Zeratul and Calamity build Ming are very rough for any hero that doesn’t have hard CC. As a solo queue Leo, sometimes the best you can hope for is to reach level 20 when Buried Alive comes online, giving you a chance to swat them.

If your team seems willing to work with you, Wraith Walk build with the damage reduction can be strong, otherwise you may be better off with the extra slow on Q and AA talents to make them a little more wary about staying close.

There isn’t much you can do otherwise. Some days you are the windshield, some days you are the bug!

Edit: I know you sounded skeptical about Buried Alive, but both heroes have minuscule health pools, so they don’t live long when they can be focused.

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Thanks, Hoku. I think you’re correct in this case. Buried Alive might’ve been answer as they are of course both very easy to kill on paper. Building around Wraith Walk is something I have tried a bit and is interesting to see, but it feels better suited to teams one is very confident in, and so admittedly I avoid it in QM, which is all I play.

Now, of course I could just try the hero or read guides, but perhaps there is some nuance to this: what is the limitation on Zeratul’s teleporting? How many does he get and what is the cooldown? Is there any way to control it at all? It “feels” like a good Zeratul can just keep doing so effortlessly without limits, but that’s unlikely to be the case.

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I really enjoyed the read! My favorite part was when Zeratul enters stage right, but I couldn’t tell you why (shrugs) ^_~

Side tangent: As someone who duos with a one trick and a good chunk of my friends list consist of zera players, it feels like a misconception that he’s god awful in the early game, yes he’s not going to do much before 7 but at 7 and beyond all he needs is one teammate with him to secure any kill.

The later the game goes the less likely he will need his teammates for the kills if his enemies don’t smarten up about him by then.

A lot of times zera is going to be pushing lanes most of the match or all of the match depending on what his teammates are doing so ppl tend to suddenly have problems with him late game when his natural power spike comes around cause it seems like he hadn’t been around much all game.

He gets smaller power boost before 16 it’s just he needs a bit of help from his team before then to utilize those smaller boost (it being a team game that kind of only makes sense)
if his team isn’t going to back him it’s best to stay in lanes until he can start that 1 v 9 fight later on which perceives him as weak or useless in the early game.

As for what to do about him, for the really good zera players uuuuugh…point and click CC and hope his teammates aren’t smart enough to eat any of it for him?

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Liming just doesn’t really get bullied by leoric, there’s a lot of reasons for why it is, the only thing he can do is punish her being aggressive assuming she commits, good entombs especially buried alive can be good even if uses to divide teams.

Her counters are dive, outside of this the general, no kill = no trait, minions = no damage blocked, armour = no damage = no reset = liming sad and probably dies due to over extending.

Outside of this she’s a force to be reckoned with the only reason she’s not S tier is that she is very clear and easy to grasp even against.

But yeah liming is kinda spooky if you know how to play her.

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Haha! Well, that clip, especially the part with the Cho’gall trying to chase her and looking bad, encapsulated my experience with that Li-Ming pretty nicely, only I lasted far shorter than he did there.

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Zeratul has 2 teleports in his base kit, blink which has base 10 sec cd, and vorpal blade which had Iirc 25 sec cd. The latter can only be used to teleport to his last aa target, but blink is port anywhere around him. He has level 1 talent which makes his aas reduce blink cooldown, and level 7 talent which allows him to reactivate blink within 5 seconds of using it to return where he blinked from. He also can get level 20 talent that resets the cd of all his abilities, and level 10 that lets him repeat his last used ability, these two give him lot of blinks if he wants to use them for that.

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I like to look at what level 7 he picks to see how he’s going to engage and re-engage on me to kill me. :ghost: :sweat_smile: :headstone:

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Would agree here as well. Buried Alive is the key. Don’t use it when they are at 100% health pool. Use it when they are down to 50-75% life, and make sure your other abilities are off CD.

Both Blink Ming and Zera rely on being able to get in/out/in/out. Shutting that down, makes them both paper tigers.

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They’re both high burst high mobility heroes who really shine and can break a game when the user has mastered them.

Leoric is too slow and squishy to fight them one v one. What would’ve worked for you would’ve been buried alive which silences their abilities while your team blows them up and the defensive talent at level 20 which makes Leo invulnerable for a short time to negate their big burst

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Thanks for all the excellent info here, folks! Armed with this knowledge, I think I will at least be able to lose with some shred of dignity intact if ever I encounter these monstrous foes again and my assigned team is a hopeless bunch.

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