How to play Zagara

General Discussion
1

Ok so heres some things I don’t understand about her

  1. People say she has amazing wave clear. wtf? imo she has crap wave clear.
    Jaina casts blizzard once and the entire wave is dead.
    Azmodan once he has enough annihilation can wipe out a wave every 10 seconds.
    Zagara??? Her barrage of banelings dont kill even 1 minion. If you don’t throw them just right they’ll only hit the front of the wave and not the back, and this is impossible to do while your laning against another hero. Infested drop holds the wave still, doesnt actually kill the wave. So imo Zagara has terrible wave clear.

  2. Zagara can’t kill forts. Her fort destroying speed is nowhere near the other siege heroes. Azmodan with Hell Rift and Demon Army melts forts. Zagara? All she got is banelings and they dont do much. In fact I’d say Jaina has better fort killing power than Zagara.

  3. Zagara is worthless in a fight before level 16. All of her skills are impossible to land and even if you skill shot it, they do jack damage. Infested Drop and Banelings? Tanks laugh it off even at level 1. Corrosive Saliva makes her a dangerous tank buster, but people go mutalisk. and I’m like… wtf?

So I’m missing something here. Could you tell me what? She can’t kill forts. She can’t clear waves. I thought she split push/soaked until 16 and then start killing tanks, especially since fury of the swarm at 20 is really strong, but she can’t split push. She can solo bruiser camps but… is that how she’s supposed to push? Kill a camp and push with that? Because that’s unreliable as hell especially when your on the team that loses 5v5 fights.

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2

I used to main Zagara about a couple years ago, but I have since then rarely play her. My biggest gripe is how reliant on her creep she is for basic survivability. She has a giant hitbox, 5.5 attack range, no movement speed options aside from her trait, and no protection before level 13. She just feels really bad in team fights because of these characteristics.

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3

Zag is widely considered to be borderline trash tier. Her pushing comes from infest level 1, summons that tank for them and from you clearing minions. Ever since they nerfed her global in both number of nyduses and the way you enter them nobody has touched the hero. They tried to force her into TF role, only she does nothing there till 16 and even that is random damage you can’t target. She is simply not worth picking.

6 Likes
4

practice.
Because, it is entirely doable to hit most of the wave while there is an enemy hero in lane.

Remember, as Zagara, you’re a giant lane bully. Just watch your mana.

she isn’t meant to solo forts, she builds up minion waves.

:man_shrugging:
I really don’t think I can help you.

you shouldn’t be taking this talent generally speaking it is the weakest level 20 choice.
So there is one thing!

Nydus worm?
???
???
Literally can travel across the map in a few seconds?

I do think Zagara could use some tweaks to adjust the way her power scales, it feels out of place.

Remember, these tiers pretty much don’t matter until you get to high Diamond or Master level play. In terms of WHAT YOU CAN DO.
If you can learn to play a hero well, and “click” with the hero, you can do well.

If you just randomly choose a hero, choosing a hero higher up the tierlist will tend to allow you to perform better, of course!

I was a Murky sporting nearly as 70% winrate when he was trash tier, and I was using the “bad” ultimate of MotM.

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5

Call me a heretic, but I prefer our Murky pick that to zone objectives like the shrine on Infernal Shrines, especially if the enemy has cleanse and would remove octo anyway.

I do think the lv20 March upgrade is a bit of a gimmick though.

6

Yeah.

Some heroes just have locked potential.

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7

Tell me about it. Today I was playing with Zagara on my team. We were playing against 2 tanks and Azmodan. Zagara took E talent on lvl 1, which was good. But on level 7 she took some random crap. So I decided to make sure she goes for the right talent on 16, but telling her “Take % damage on 16”… She took Mutalisk xD
AND she did that after complaining that we lacked damage!

But when I play her - her E build is quite good. True it requires lvl 16 to actually start killing stuff, but she can still manage till then.
Sometimes I can go Q build, and her waveclear is quite good then.

8

look, it’s hard to give up the option of evolving your hydralisks into mutalisks, ok :expressionless:

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9

4-5 years ago, it was widely considered a meme ult.

Not sure why, it got results (for me)

And yeah, the change to MotM’s level 20 upgrade when Murky was reworked was dumb.

10

What’s the point of traveling the map in a few seconds when you can’t blow up forts? She can maybe defend better than some heroes but she can’t split push because she can’t blow up forts.

What good does a built up minion wave do? 1 hero comes in for 1 second and blows the entire wave up, and leaves. Wtf was the point?

11

Honestly, I don’t have the energy to do more besides suggest that this is a L2P/practice issue.

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  1. She does have amazing wave clear, but it requires aiming, so it’s not quite as ez mode as Jaina wasting her blizzard on minions or Azmo’s hit-everything Q. You have to approach from the side, aim at the middle minion and the banelings explode on all 7 targets. You’ll get 3 banelings like that, the after that, you have to adjust the aim to either take the backline in 1 more or the front line in 2 more. YMMV.

  2. Zag absolutely can obliterate forts. Stick the roaches and hydra on them with a minion wave. Aim your banelings to catch the structure and part of an approaching minion wave. She’s every bit as fast as Azmo tearing down forts if left alone.

  3. Zag’s hardly worthless in a fight. She’s a classic lane bully. She’s great 1v1 vs just about anyone without prominent lifeleech off minions, and even then she’s ok if you poke smartly. Bring that same mentality to a teamfight. Put that hydra on their healer or a back liner. Drop the roaches in the back line, then baneling their front line and AA whatever you can safely get to. That DoT from the minions adds up and few ever kill the minions. You can easily zone out a healer or a back line mage. You can also handle some of the more annoying things in the game like hypermobile bouncies like Genji, Tracer, Bambi, etc with a little hydra and roach focus. If you know they’re coming, hold your combo til they inevitably show up, then make them regret it. Chunk down 1/2 their life with a quick burst and they’ll usually run leaving your own back line unharassed. And seriously. Pick Maw. Like 95% of the time, you want Maw either to set up your team for kills or as an escape.

  4. Use your talents. You get banelings that apply a 20% slow. If you don’t need to be dual soaking lanes as the only macro player, take it to slow down their front line. You get roaches that do %dmg. Got a beefy front liner terrorizing people like DW or Muradin or have a team who just can’t help themselves from trying and failing to kill Garrosh? Get %dmg and just kill the guy for your tunnel visioning teammates. Your games improve instantly. If you’ve got a clumped up batch of squishes, get mutalisks up. Again, no one kills them.

  5. And you should be playing the macro game. You can dual soak, take mercs solo, split push as needed, and still show up to objectives and team fights if you can read a minimap and plan more than 5 seconds in advance. You do have to watch your mana. She’s one of the thirstiest heroes in the game if played right, but it can be done.

Zag’s not weak at all when she’s played right. 60%+ win rate with her.

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What you’re missing is you’re setting up unequal comparisons, and acting like it’s something elses’ fault that you did.

“oh hero with maxed quests and lots of talents can do something an untalent hero can’t”

  1. Blizzard (untalented) doesn’t actually kill the whole wave by itself. Now cone could do it, or about another 5-7 seconds of auto attacks afterwards, sure, blizzard doesn’t wipe the whole wave. That’s especially important to not if Jaina has to clear irregular waves as her reliance on having the minions compact into the area of blizzard can hurt her ability to deal with large waves.

So any sort of claim on her waveclear is pretty much hyperbole

  1. Zagara is about the best at clearing forts alone. Hit up a lvl 16 quest complete azmo dropping demons on the Try Me fort and you could clear it in ~35-40 seconds. Zag can do that too, only she doesn’t need a 90 second wave of summons to do it.

While some spells are actually mindless, and others only seem that way, like most skill shots, Zag’s work a whole lot better if people actually aim their shots, positioning themselves accordingly, and make use of all of the hero to do their thing.

Zag is generally the ‘best’ at influencing wave momentum. Most players regard "wave clear’ only as clearing a wave as fast as possible, but clearing something asap isn’t always best. Having a bit of a delay, expendable units, and automation allow waves to build up and have a stronger push – it’s not rocket science to point out that more minions = more sieging power. Now you’re experience is “oh, waves are pointless because 1 hero can kill it in 1 second” Not only is that hyperbole (eg. jaina blizzard) but your lack of experience and observation indicates you don’t even know how much you’re exaggerating, and why that’s bad.

While zag can go slow to clear up a wave, she can do so at any point of the wave because roaches are about the best summon for stalling a wave. The other key gimmick is that Zag has to make a lot of use of her auto attacks to set her apart from other heroes. On creep, she has Raynor-like range, and she gets multi-target attacks (that double her total damage) so her ability to clear waves, take mercs, pressure forts, etc etc is generally better than people consider because their attention on “wave clear” is about 1 second long.

Like other heroes, how Zag performs is based on how she talents; she’ll be better at team fights or split pushing depending on how she is built and it’s simply not uncommon for inexperienced players to take talents they’re effectively not using and be that much weaker by comparison to other heroes.

A key part of Zag’s lane power is in being a ‘bully’ where she uses her extra range and summons to poke down the enemy hero until it’s favorable for her to build up the wave and push it out. However, since most solo laners are bruisers these days (with lots of built-in sustain) her ability to bully a solo hero out of a lane is weaker, esp for players that don’t know what they’re doing with her. Similarly, the 4-man rotations generally dont make use of roach agro on towers, so her early game power isn’t as regarded as well as it used to be.

A key aspect of making use of zag tends to come from the flank position (from the side, instead of head on) summons/banelings can pressure squishier enemy heroes behind their tank which can either force them to back, or split the focus of the healer and collapse the position of the enemy team.

Downside that is pulling of a good flank with Zag requires creep, a good judgement of distance (to not get comboed by a tank) and timing so the enemy team can’t all just fall and chase on her while the ally side watches.

In layman’s terms, it takes more effort than people think to do well with Zag, so when their first impression flops, they don’t know what they’re lacking and go back to the "Azmo Q can clear waves super quick’ school of play.

Big thing with zag is that she mostly does lots of everything okay, but not individual things well. Ming is pretty bad at mercs, but she’s great at poke or risky finishers; Zag is better at mercs, but not as good at poke, and generally isn’t a finisher. She’s not flashy, but she is meticulously and steady damage over time, so a lot of players don’t have the patience for that.

I’d say she’s pretty broken in ARAM for sure as her roach-shields enable a lot of push momentum that is otherwise lacking when both sides clear waves too quickly and end up waiting around for the next wave before they clash again. A big thing with Zag is that basic rotations with her don’t do much, but she can dump her mana really quick, so ally heroes that can recover mana (deckard/malf/nydus) actually do a pretty good job of helping bring up zag’s damage/siege/etc.

Bottom line, she’s ‘better’ than is let on, but little of her impact or talents are directly flashy, so people dont’ do well with her, and then go back to other heroes instead. Since they don’t have motivation (flashy rewards) to do better with her, they’re content to assume she’s trash up until they encounter one of the few non-mindless split pushing zag’s that actually knows what they’re doing, and suddenly wondering how they lost that game.

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14

Try this build:

The lvl 1 talent helps your wave a lot, just cast your E on the towers before your minions reach the towers’ range. This helps building up minion momentum.

The lvl 7 Q talent helps with CC, really useful in fights and to avoid ganks.

Aim your Q on the mage minion, so it hits all the wave and suddenly you have good waveclear.

Nydus helps with lanesustain, plus since now we know how to have good push as Zagara, traveling quickly between lanes is useful.

Devouring Maw on the other hand helps with your mentioned problem: aim.
Plus it helps your team, or can provide as an escape.
Did you know that this Heroic works on every Unstoppable Hero (except Deathwing), so you can counter even stuff like a Charging Butcher.

I hope this helped.

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15

She is kind of the same as Li-Ming, Chromie or Hammer. Can’t be really strong (winrate, dominance) or else people would question her design.

People generally expect me to split push, including during objectives.
Clearing waves quick would actually go against that, since you can’t build your own wave. Fast wave clear like Jaina is either useful to conserve yourself (only casting W, ever) or to double soak.
That’s her big weakness, too. People know that she needs to be controlled, so you learn to never pass midline and push solo.

Her Q has a fantastic range. You can poke the enemy structures with it while handling the wave.
Nydus has a range of uses, ranging from pure safety (go to lane, D, R, show up, then run away) to excellent macro. Maw has its moments, too, be it isolation or buying time, or the odd saving of your teammates by focusing it on Stitches.

Play against Zagara and you’ll know what hurts you. For example, if you keep targeting the enemy hero with W and E, you’ll wear them. Unless it’s Sonya, in which case don’t use the AoE one, or just accept it’s a stall.

Saying that, bruisers are supposed to take over the split push role for a while, so option B is to stay with your team and just push. Infinite poke with Q, and fair bits of ability blocks and damage with WE.

Without checking winrates, maybe the ults could use a buff, likely in the form of a passive. Something like 10% PvE / PvP damage, respectively, number irrelevant. But maybe it’s unnecessary.

16

I don’t think people say she has the best wave clear, she can just bully pretty much anyone out of lane thanks to Hydra dps + Creep speed. She has to watch her mana though.

I like these two.

Depending what I want to accomplish (ranged aoe damage and pushing vs tank pressure)
And Viscous Acid is always an option on either, depending on enemies and allies.

Sometimes I take Nydus in ARAM even though it offers no global benefit there, because cooldown reduction, movement speed, attack range and damage still increases your killing capability.
And mana, she eats through that.

Why worry about building up a wave when you have damage output and summons.
If you’re going to split push all game, even during objectives, you’d get a lot of value out of Infest as without any stacks it brings ranged minion dps vs structures to what, 459? (I’m not certain on this. Their normal dps is ~108, they get 3x vs structures, Infest stacks additively so it’d be 4.25x?)

17

Why do people underestimate Mutalisk so much? If any Corrosive Saliva sucks given the massive unreliability the Roach quest is to complete. Mutalisk gives you a 30 second W. You can even have about 3 or 4 when you’re AA-ing using the Nydus Network passive’s CDR. You will melt forts and structures very fast.

Honestly split push Zagara with Q talent that increases her banelings’ damage at 1 and increase her charges to 6 (ignore all bile drop talents, their useless unless you know you can complete it), Nydus, and Mutalisk can wreck forts and keeps.

Plus, Fury of the Swarm is just trash 20 talent. Better off picking Endless Creep or Tyrant Maw. To be frank, her level 20 is even more embarrassing than Fenix.

18

Zag’s in a weird (Read: bad) spot right now. She’s a very strong pusher and is a massive headache in lane but her presence during teamfights can be very weak compared to other macro heroes.

Her waveclear is very strong, you just need to be lining up banelings so they splash on the entire enemy wave, ideally you just walk into kissing range of the wizard minion and spam Q.
You can normally do this safely by sic’ing a Hunter Killer on the enemy laner and since most heroes don’t have the ability to trade fairly into that they’ll hide behind gate for the duration.
That combined with E’s impact damage are more than enough to handle a wave.

Not ideal compared to something like KT but very serviceable for someone who can push down towers as easily as her.

Because with the way you can build Zag you want to compliment her AA or give her creeps something that will make tanks very, very afraid of fighting you.
Roach targeting is unreliable if you drop them in the middle of a lane but it’s much more manageable during a teamfight, and completing the quest isn’t actually all that hard if you’re aggressive with the cooldown. It’s almost 100% dodgeable by unCC’d heroes but if you path it right you can make enemies have the choice of taking the damage from your E or risk slowing down and getting ganked while suffering poke from you the entire time. 9/10 times they’ll just walk through the E damage because it’s the lesser of 2 evils. Same goes for when they’re chasing you. Zagara is a juicy target when off creep and 9/10 people will eat an E just for the chance to pursue you.

Just for example, the 1.75% damage from Corrosive Saliva adds up to 93 damage on a level 17 Arthas.
That’s almost +200% bonus damage for your 53 damage roaches and and a good 30% for you 163 damage Hunter Killer.
In my experience it’s not all that difficult to get all 3 roaches and the hydra on one target, that’s roughly 7% HP damage per second in addition to their regular damage. And unlike regular giant killer talents you can still actively run away from the target as this damage is being dealt.

Given the right circumstances, Zag’s giant killer is devastating and can easily shred frontliners who count on being aggressive like Imperius and Sonya or dive tanks like Muradin.

Mutalisk is a good talent but the most value you’ll see out of it is when it’s pushing lanes for a full 30 seconds. There’s too many ways for it to just evaporate in teamfights if you send it towards the enemy’s backline.

I agree Fury is an outdated talent though. The only hero it’s ever been a thing on is TLV and that’s because you get 3 (THREE) separate instances of flat bonus damage.
What she really needs at 20 is a protection talent. It wouldn’t be out of place to give her a burrow talent that let her regenerate a little bit, like a reskinned Ragnaros one.

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19

Ok there’s a lot of posts to read and I haven’t read them all but I will, a lot of experienced players telling me what I’m doing wrong is exactly what I want.

But those of you who say shes got excellent wave clear… she doesn’t. You gotta also be thinking of stacked waves and mercs.

A single blizzard from jaina or a single globe from Azmodan wipes out an entire stacked wave, or virtually wipes em out. Mercs do take some effort from both but the wave is dead at the start and they got other things to deal with the mercs.

Zagara with her full baneling unload cant come even close to wiping out stacked waves or Mercs. Because baneling AoE is that bad for a wave clear skill.

Some of you said to get the +20% baneling damage at 1, but you need the infested drop cd reduc to solo bruisers at level 1 no? Isn’t Zagara the one that should be getting bruisers? Or do you delegate that to someone else and focus entirely on lane?

20

You do realize they stack themselves when they assume formation to attack other minions, yes?
If you want to delete a wave freely while walking by it, that’s what a mage is for.
If you want to burn down a wave then freely push into towers and keeps, that’s what Zag is for.
Jaina and KT can delete a wave in 1-2 clicks.
Zag can burn down a wave after a few clicks but her minions will continue to do damage and soak shots afterwards. And you use the vision provided by your tumors to play more aggressively in the lane.

I consider good waveclear to be any hero that can solo a wave in a reasonable amount of time.

A hero with bad waveclear is something like Garrosh who, even with talents specifically for killing minons, will still take a while working down a wave.
Zag doesn’t have godlike waveclear, but it’s very good for what she can do after she clears the wave. You won’t see Jaina or KT walking up to a fort alone and chunking 15% of it’s HP before anyone can respond.

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