So back in the day you were either good or bad with him. You had a nice E build and Q build.
I played a E build but he was very niche.
Rich brought him up and showed everyone how powerfull he is. They buffed him and changed some talents. Okay fair enough.
But now he is everywhere. More then I see Maeive. And I hate him. I can rant about the higher leagues where he never dies and getd 140 sadism but let me rant about my experience in mid/low leagues. I saw a guy who was bad but still was top dmg with him
Its because when you know his W Q E combo its very easy to pull off. 10 times easyer then a kerrigan and ktz. Even a monkey can do the alarak combo. We are banning him 95% of the time and if we dont we see a instalock on high ranks. Its maeive all over again. But a oversimplefied one.
Even notparadox said just play him . Learn his combo in try mode and you will dominate regardless if you know him.
And he does. In lower ranks people tend to feed a lot and he gets 130+ stacks after the first obj.
I dont like him anymore. I dont like to ban him to play with or without him. Im getting sick of him while he was fun and complicated to play.
His E range is great for picking off people.
He shuts down a lot of heroes with his silence and he can interupt a lot of ults. (I dont mention counterstrike because I find that one balanced)
People are so used to being safe in that backline not moving they never understand they are easy combo targets.
That’s why we all love that applied force.
Maybe one day they will force you to stutterstep and be hard to be comboed.
I ban him whenever possible. He has no true counters at all (if focusing him desperately as 5 to try and reset his stacks doesn’t count) and he will overpower your teammates 1v2 or 1v3 if he gains even a mediocre amount of stacks.
He’s not overpowered because he still needs good positioning to be of any value just like Kel’thuzad (and if he dies even once after level 16 he is ruined, and unlikely to recover any significant amount of Sadism).
But he is a threat in every comp, on every map.
Guess the Alarak player i had on my team who missed all his combos cant beat a monkey in a game. And he was lvl 35 with him just to point out how even more pathetic he was.
Alarak’s damage is front-loaded, and his sustain is pretty limited against single targets. If you can safely avoid or survive past his initial combo, you can turn around and punish him really hard so long as you keep his cooldowns in mind.
Bruisers and Tanks tend to be pretty effective because of his lack of sustain in a duel. I’ve beaten down many an Alarak in a head-to-head as Artanis or Muradin.
Rangers also tend to do pretty well, as they are often able to harass Alarak from a distance and are usually either mobile enough or beefy enough to survive his burst so long as he isn’t stacked too high. Zul’jin makes for a surprisingly good foil to Alarak because of his high damage and decent sustain. Alarak basically has to keep poking from a distance, and Zul can just heal through most of that after pressuring Alarak away.
Now, if you mean “hard counters,” then I’d agree. There are no heroes or mechanics that really stand out as exceptional counters, but there are plenty of heroes in this game who have few or no hard counters.
Abathur. Alarak can’t really do anything about Abby’s macro game, he can’t stack any of his quests or Sadism against him efficiently, and Abby can empower other heroes on his team to punish Alarak when his W is down.
Not really. Ask any Alarak main who they would least like to see on the enemy team, and a majority of them will list Abby. He exploits most of Alarak’s weaknesses.
I only play Alarak in ranked for the past few months, only hero I fear is a Genji (only if they’re good) because if they go ham on me they will easily kill me from 70% hp with the talented Swift Strike + shingan combo. My silence will just delay the inevitable.
Fortunately I barely meet any good Genjis. Not even many people who pick him at all.
Samuro can be a hindrance but his clones are a nice source of Q hits.
Also, If you see your foes pick Alarak, then don’t go double tank or one tank and 2 bruisers and also pick these heroes: ABATHUR, Raynor, Zul’jin, E.T.C, Li Ming, Li Li, Tracer, Varian, Cho’gall, Zagara, Hammer, Chromie, MEDIVH, Sonya, Gazlowe, Valeera, Anub’arak or Stukov.
The boy is fast and has a lot of range and damage and good Raynors land a knockback whe you use W.
She is a pain in the lane phase and she gets a lot benefits from your AOEs, constant blinds and slows are disgusting and she runs like Flash, I hate her.
Spin to win. She moves a lot and if you fail your Qs you are death.
Those Medivh players are a real pain, they nullify your combo and since Alarak isn’t slim, you eat all those Qs. Stupid bird-mage, he and Aba are the worst match up.