How does he have a close to 50% winrate? I play extremely cautiously but pretty much still top deaths every game.
Any tips?
Play aggressively early on. Illidan has great mobility, and can profitably bully people out of lane. Look for people who over extend and force them to either fountain or back.
If you need an escape, grab friend or foe at 4. During teamfights W forward then immediately Q and E onto a high priority target. Auto the target a few times to get Q back up, then assess the situation. If your team is retreating, Q on their (or your) front line and W away. If they are staying and you aren’t being focused, continue to attack whomever you are attacking.
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I would actually say play safe early on… At least, safer than you would post-7 and post-13. He’s a strong earlygame hero as well but you can’t get carried by your lifesteal and evasion as much as you can late game.
This feedback is pretty much focused on fighting and not anything macro related; OP just keep a reeeeeeally close eye on Evasion CD and only use it if you know you’re going to be either blocking lots of damage or if you’re about to eat a CC or something. Don’t go in without it being up unless you are 100% winning the trade. Also keep your Q to disengage. Take Battered at 1 and ride around on your mount and look for a good opportunity. That doesn’t mean Jaina is in Q range, look for a fight breaking out where the enemy tank engages and people want to follow up on him, that’s when you W through two people and start dismembering the enemy backline, and you have Q to the tank for an escape. Post-4 you can Q to your allies. Keep Q up for mobility only as much as possible, you don’t want to engage with it that often unless you’re mid-chase and then it’s still better to just stutterstep and bodyblock than it is to use valuable time for the Q animation to complete and put you in an often predictable position/waste damage.
For proccing Battered (which is as important for survival as it is for killing people), you can kite away and people will often reposition to either come chase you (together = battered proc) or leave, get used to how people behave based on how you move. Just attack people and walk up or down, sideways from the fight without retreating to your side of the map and they’ll often give you an opportunity for battered. Post-13 when you get often the Evasion CD from W, against AA-heavy teams you can start doing the famous illidan 1-v-X fighting where you Q to people at the corners of the fight so people have to reposition to start dealing damage to you again, then W through the clump to often reset your Evasion, hit while kiting away/sideways from people, then Q back over to another obscure target. The key is to keep people moving to try to focus you and make them give you free battered procs and reset your E with your W.
The biggest keys are:
- Don’t spam Q
- Engage with W from mount most often unless it’s just a free opening where you’re totally fine to hop into the middle of their team (not sarcasm)
- Stutter step like a madman. Unless you’re juking by standing still or standing still to let people reposition so your Q/W naturally will bodyblock them after the animation completes/as it resets, you should use walking around as your main mobility secret. Illidans who move and move with their abilities are >>>>> ones who don’t
- Always Be Cautoattacking. You no lifesteal = you die (and also do no damage). When it doubt, hit something. If you wonder why you can never pull off those insane down-to-1%-health-but-still-win 1v5 Illidan teamwipes, it’s because of losing faith. In your autoattacks. Always aa amap
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Butcher, Illidan and Kerrigan have all the same problem:
- No ranged poke
- All in playstyle
- No invisibility (which doges autos) or crazy escapes
- Illidan doesn’t have a big powerspike
This combined with the devs attitude to cater the ranged characters for bronze players make the melee-only characters much harder to play than ranged.
So here are my tips:
- Play LoL if you want to play a lot of different melee characters that always have a place in the meta
- Switch to a melee that has ranged poke and burst (Alarak or Thrall e.g.)
illidan is easy to counter and just weak at the moment. If you like a challenge practice Samuro.
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You can also abuse the macro game with Illidan, especially if you pick up The Hunt at 10. He can take camps easily, push down structures like crazy, and is very hard to gank. After 10, he can turn into a pseudo-global hero, and will put even more macro pressure on the enemy team.
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I always play aggressively in the early game. Forcing an opponent to retreat or use mana. If the opponent wastes mana, Illidan wins.
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Illidan was once listed as “very hard”. Not because he is mechanically challenging, but because he requires top notch decision making by his player every 0,5 seconds (at least during team fights).
What is your experience with other heroes? Maybe you want to give him a break for a while and come back once you gathered more experience with other melee.
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The biggest counter to any dive hero is tunnel vision syndrome and lack of thought process while diving. Figure these ones out first before pressing Q on someone.
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And watch felewin
Is he still playing HOTS?
Dont engage first, unless you want to tank all the CC.
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I think so just not as much.
Exactly most Illidans suicide into a target, and dont know when to back off.
Or go for a target with high self Sustain and die.
The player base is too obsessed with trying to rank up kills rather than win the game
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Butcher actually does have range poke - With both the reduced CD hamstring and increased hamstring range talents, he can poke safely and repeatedly. Sure, it doesn’t do much damage per Q, but you can spam the !@#$ outta it. Against teams without a sustain healer, their tank tends to start with 80% health in an engagement if I’m allowed to poke before engage.
Whats more, the slow on Hamstring really helps to let your strong poke heroes… well, poke harder.
Illidan is bad if there is no dedicated macro play, which is 90% of the playerbase.
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