Been a while since I made something like this, and personally I do not want to put insane effort in visuals as they can take couple of weeks of work, so I’m trying something a little different, simple format with a way of ranking. It’s kinda inspired from a DND guide I read couple of weeks ago.
Introduction
Li-Ming is a range assassin mage who specialises in snowballing a fight in her favor, when a kill happens you better start running. She’s really good in being a generalist mage and ending up one of the top tier assassins with a high skill floor for a good amount of reasons.
Li-Ming special trait is to “snowball” meaning if she gets kills she can capitalize on it to get more kills or flee to safety, allow her to be a risky finisher.
Her hard counters is that she fundamentally and in theory has no trait by design because it requires a condition to occur, meaning if it never happens then she’s never gonna capitalize on it. Otherwise, mana consumption is critical for her as she can easily run out of mana and even to a point she won’t capitalize on the trait depending on how much she has left, which causes her to both limit the snowball and the capitalization value.
Simply, if she gets no kills she’s just holding herself from reaching her potential. Additionally, summons and minions are your worst enemy and anything that can make you explode or locked and finally armor, you will hate it with a passion.
She’s also this good that all her scaling for her abilities improve less, in other words, she gets WORSE the farther you are in the late game.
A reminder, when you level up the scale improves every value by 4%, for Li-Ming:
- Q = 3.5%
- W = 3%
- E [Calamity] = 3%
- Both Heroics = +5%
Allies and Enemies
Considered a Generalist pick and highly favored for a lot of things, its difficult to specify counters for her, but in general Ana, Whitemane and any tank that locks down targets in any form of CC enables her to do a lot of stuff.
Her weakness comes from spell power reduction, armor and being caught for an opportunity kill.
Her trait is also her enemy if she isn’t getting kills, and her best ally when she is getting kills.
Abilities
Critical Mass
Getting a Takedown will refresh the cooldown on all of Li-Ming’s Abilities.
- Including Heroics and Activate abilities.
Get a kill, Cooldowns are gone, repeat.
Magic Missiles
20 Mana | Cooldown: 3 seconds | Scale: +3.5%
Fire three missiles toward an area, each dealing 147 damage to the first enemy hit. These missiles do 50% damage to Structures.
- Blocked by Invulnerable targets.
Your primary damage, spam as much as you can in team fights, it hits like a truck even more when you hit all of them, this ability is extremely flexible for different type of actions and talents and its your safest damage in close range.
It also out ranges all structures (hence 50% damage modifier), if you get the chance, spam it, free damage.
Arcane Orb
40 Mana | Cooldown: 8 seconds | Scale: +3%
Fire an orb that powers up as it travels, dealing 135 damage to the first enemy hit. Damage is increased the farther it travels, up to 270 more damage.
- Hit box is smaller than the splash damage meaning she will hit more targets that are slightly out of the radius range.
- Damage scales 16 times over 1 second.
Your Area of Effect ability, the farther it moves the higher the damage, its slightly slower than Magic Missiles but in the end it will deal a respectful damage for multiple targets, normally you don’t prioritize to hit the most amount of people and it should behave like a secondary damage at most, if you hit multiple targets, good for you, but your objective is still to shutdown someone primarily more than multiple people.
Really good for wave clearing, try squeezing it into the wizard minion and you should weaken 5/7 of the minion wave really quickly.
Teleport
30 Mana | Cooldown: 5 seconds | Scale: +3% (With Calamity chosen)
Teleport a short distance instantly.
- Allows you to dodge most projectiles that follow you around. Example: Tower shots
A quick repositioning tool, from perspective a 4 range teleport is really silly, for comparison Tracer’s blink are 6 range, Zeratul Blink is 7.15 range and Valla’s vault is 5, its this small that it almost doesn’t feel like it will do much in comparison to other heroes, but honestly this ability even without being buffed is really powerful in the early game, first of all 5 seconds is a short duration even 3 with the right talent, allow yourself to quickly reposition helps you to dodge majority of the damage in a blink of an eye.
It also, despite the range allows you to still take unorthodox routes, walls are you friend, unless they have Diablo, they are still your friend… well sort of…
But the point I wanna throw out, you can transform the map into a linear path, skipping massive amount of chunk, all because you can teleport 4 range!!! Taking those safe routes that will waste 5 seconds? Just teleport in that specific spot and you just saved yourself a lot of time, having a problem? about to die? literally on the glimpse of death and nowhere to go? Just teleport to from these spots and now the enemy has to rotate through the whole area to reach you, and if they do, you can just go beyond that same point again and again.
For example, Cursed Hollow:
= Untalented Teleport can pass through.
= Bad symmetry and cannot teleport through.
So my honest opinion, open custom games, try exploring those points and see what you can do, a lot of these allows you to avoid strong points that the enemy would take cover in for ambush (Example Tomb of the Spider Queen and Garden of Terror), which helps you to avoid and even take safer routes.
Also because I talked about this gimmick, Hanamura Temple? Garbage, 0 value out of that gimmick. This map is just this bad with Teleport, you will love to hate it for yet another reason, the theme is cool though.
Disintegrate
80 Mana | Cooldown: 20 seconds | Scale: +5%
Channel a powerful beam, dealing 480 damage over 2.6 seconds to enemies while they are in it. The direction of the beam changes with your mouse cursor position.
Cast and Aim beam that pierce anything in its way, insanely good source of waveclear, but also quite expensive, used mainly to be the last straw of damage you want to deploy if someone runs away, but overall its really fine for a lot of reasons.
My only jest with this is that you are locked into place which is critical for you to be immediately killed, also don’t point this on Genji, I’m begging you.
Wave of Force
80 Mana | Cooldown: 30 seconds | Scale: +5%
Knock away all enemies from an area and deal 160 damage.
Very simple and powerful direct damage, you can never go wrong with this in any situation and is flexible to be used in a lot of situations, from shutting down mosh pits/consume souls to spreading your enemy away and closer to you and even as a finisher. The weakness is that its a long cooldown of 30 seconds. Anyone remember when this was 20 seconds? Good times, oh well.
Builds
= Main Pick
= Optional
Calamity Build
→ Aether Walker
→ Triumvirate | Dominance
→ Calamity
→ Wave of Force | Disintegrate
→ Illusionist
→ Mirrorball | Diamond Skin
→ Tal Rasha’s Elements | Repulsion
The recommended build in majority of situations, a mix of poke and going in for Teleport damage, while allowing Li-Ming to deal a good amount of damage.
You transform your Teleport into a powerful offensive and defensive ability on low cooldown, allowing you to kill and finish targets that are running away, while still being difficult to kill due to Diamond Skin or the fact you will fire at them 5 magic missiles up front.
AA Mage Build
→ Aether Walker
→ Charged Blast
→ Calamity
→ Wave of Force | Disintegrate
→ Cannoneer
→ Fireflies
→ Tal Rasha’s Elements | Repulsion
The a build that prioritizes PvE and also sustain damage dealing in the form of her Q, it enables her to be versatile into also objective racing on Battlefield of Eternity while still maintain in being a good damage dealer, this improves her Q to hit more accurately while also amplify her AA to hit like a truck which will also consume Charged Blast mark to deal an additional layer of damage.
Spam Q, hit your shots, attack, repeat, maintain your distance as a reminder and only use Calamity to finish a target or when you can guarantee to face tank and then finish your target with your Q.
Orb Build
→ Aether Walker | Force Armor
→ Triumvirate
→ Zei’s Vengeance
→ Disintegrate| Wave of Force
→ Glass Cannon
→ Mirrorball
→ Tal Rasha’s Elements | Temporal Flux
Turn your W to contest the damage dealt by your Q, making both of your abilities viable and strong from a safe distance, pick this if you guarantee a front line that will protect you, facing melee heroes that cannot dive, and you can play a game where you can utilize walls.
Use Aether Walker to position quickly for a accurate hits to get the cooldown reduction on W, your Q by 16 will hit hard and protect you if someone get close.
Talents Breakdown
= Highly recommended
= Situational
= Very Situational
= Not recommended
Level 1
In practice this is situational and should only be picked if you are facing strong poke or Diablo, this talent is also a popular choice with Orb Li-Ming players, which isn’t really bad as they are also playing ranged poke, personally favor this for the armor and not for the mana regen, hit Q and feel the comfort of a Pyroblast losing half of its damage.
But what is important is that you have no mana cost on E, your total consumption just went from 90 mana to 60 mana which is extreme, on top of repositioning and mentioned above in the teleport section, this talent is really powerful and also really good to reposition for good Arcane Orb hits, very flexible in ANY BUILD, you will never go wrong with Aether Walker.
This used to be the prime talent back in the day before the other two were over buffed. This talent focuses on a very extreme niche, which is utilization of regen globes, this is good on maps where Regen globes are common (including yes ARAM), in the end you will do more damage, personally very underperforming and you will likely not get a lot of value out of it, assuming it will maintain the spell power just in time before combat, unless you grab one prior of that happening immediately.
IMO, good pick if you believe you are always going to be safe and unlikely to be damaged, on top of not considering to just jump in with Teleport.
Level 4
Highly recommended, first of all for wave clear reasons, you can spread them on multiple minions and in the process you can attack those marked minions, just in time before casting the next one and repeat, it helps both in those situations and in team fights, even if you don’t hit all 3, Li-Ming auto attacking is weird, but honestly you priority is to always squeeze as much as damage as possible in all situations, so stutter stepping while keeping yourself on your toes will allow you to get the most out of it, if you hit mobile heroes with your Q, that extra layer of damage will come in handy.
Essentially very flexible in a lot of situations and a lot of builds, even if its the only W picked, first of all if you get the cooldown reduction, it goes to 3 seconds meaning you can repeatedly spam both Q and W from safe range constantly. Allowing for a continuous barrage of attacks. Even more if it splashes to multiple targets.
As was discussed in Critical Mass, this talent can become either very useful or downright useless if you get no takedowns, the extra health you regain is actually very positive and should never be looked down upon, if you play very strong risks for takedowns, the health regained will help, basically you avoid turning a “kill” to a “trade” (equal kills during combat from both sides), this helps a lot with Diamond Skin (25% max HP as shields).
However, this talent can still be picked if you believe the healer will not be sufficient during combat when used on you, which can happen with heroes like Ana missing because you teleported or Lucio unable to heal enough and Li Li not able to heal cuz of other low health targets, in no healer comps this is mandatory for self sustain.
Level 7
- Requires you to hit a target 3 times, works with Mirrorball
Comes too early in the game that only becomes effective in the late game if you pick Fireflies, this talent increases your PVE racing potential but in team fights is horrendous in every single way, your missiles are very fragile and against clumped targets will struggle in hitting what you want, which results in you unable to get the effect you want.
Mandatory for Orb Build as it increases the flat damage, by that point your playstyle is being protected by your frontline while you constantly barrage your enemy with Q and W, E is for repositioning.
Transform your E to both defensive and offensive, offensive allows you to apply an important layer of damage that cannot be dodged due being instant, if you miss a lot you can guarantee to get the most out Calamity, especially when kills start rolling, do be careful as bad utilization would result in you being melee and straight to your death.
Level 10
Be careful before you choose this and what you face as sometimes Wave of Force would play an importance against certain heroes that requires to be shutdown, like Mephisto’s Consume Soul and E.T.C.'s Mosh Pit.
Careful to not misuse this in the right moment and cause you teammates to miss, clearly I never did this before or never happened to anyone…
Level 13
- Diamond Skins is shield not health, it won’t proc it if you take 20% of HP as shield damage!!!
IMO, very good talent, that you can never go wrong with, as it allows you to reposition ever farther and even jump over more walls that you could not otherwise, both offensively and defensively,
- Affected by spell power.
Li-Ming dealing physical damage??? uhhhh, yeah, this talent isn’t really bad in fact I pick this more than Illusionist because it provides extra damage in the form of AA, which don’t miss to, recommended if you go Charge Blast on level 4, as it helps you all of the sudden pressure the enemy even when very close to them.
The misunderstood “meme” talent, because a lot of people die from it.
Personally this talent is extremely flat out broken, 20% damage increase? That’s like skipping 5 levels to get that same damage, don’t underestimate it, but also the risk is quite understandable, losing health on already squishy hero is scary, this is why this talent is picked mostly in Orb builds, because in Orb, you aren’t face tanking the enemy with a teleport, you are constantly poking, safe and comfortable and not in melee range.
This talent should be picked in this situation, in other circumstances I would not recommend at all as it serves as a choice for a build, if you pick Illusionist into Orb build you are throwing a tremendous amount of damage and probably have misunderstood the comp you are facing that you are now “regretting” picking Orb Build Li-Ming and now paying for your own sins.
Level 16
The final choice of going Auto Attack Li-Ming build is to shutdown the biggest weakness of your Q, being slow, this ability increases the missile speed quite a lot that it will hit the target you are aiming for, it’s meant to complement everything else you picked on level 1, 4 and 13, which are Aether Walker, Charged Blast and Cannoneer, meaning this plays an important role in that build.
This can be look upon as a sustained damage build using Q and Calamity.
Mana cost reduction is super nice, just spam your Q to amplify everything else you have.
Mana cost will be felt but its really not that much of an issue in the late of the game, this allows you to deal more damage in burst, hitting all 5 on one target is insane, this is also the preferred and recommended talent if you go Orb build, combined with Glass Cannon and now you have 2 ranged abilities deal insane damage, costing at best 25 mana and at worst 65 mana, Mirrorball if it hits all shots on one target basically deals +1 extra missile (cuz 20% spell power), which is a lot.
It also doesn’t really care about range, meaning that even when someone close to you has to be very careful to not eat all the shots, which is a lot of damage.
Mirrorball proves itself being a very strong talent in any build with the downside being the same, your Q is slow, it may miss some shots, but it buffs the burst, get one takedown and now you are spamming more magic missiles for another takedown, its a lot of damage and can turn fights in your favor really quickly, assuming takedowns happen again or at all of course.
- Triumvirate range considers the untalented range meaning it wont get anti-synergy.
Picked in Orb build for more orb damage, this talent is super weird, at first glance its basically long range orb that just deal +1k damage, which is a lot, but honestly this talent is really bad, not because it considers an interesting condition of reaching “max range” for the max damage, but that it hurts Li-Ming’s range of her Q.
Q by itself deals a lot of damage, but with Arcane Orbit now you have to oddly position to maximize the damage of an Orb while at the same time, your Q won’t even reach the target from that same position you casted it.
And if Q reaches the target then your Orb isn’t being maximized in increasing that damage.
Consider picking Mirrorball, Orb build is a very misunderstood because it implies that all orbs should be picked but in general its to improve both her Q and W to become primary damage source and not swapping the primary damage source from Q to W, additionally Q is your only useful damage from close range, if someone get close to you, they still have to consider that you have a strong damage source from your Q.
Arcane Orbit still does a good job in being a long range explosion, even going beyond your sight, consider this if you are playing on maps with walls like Towers of Doom.
- This shield value doesn’t trigger Illusionist.
- Every subsequent cast only resets the 25% shield amount, does not stack.
Picked for more survivability, if you find yourself being pressured a lot in close range this talent is for you, complements well her Trait when picking Dominance, primary pick for a full E in situations where you believe you need to just be this upfront against a target to fire everything at, every reset to her E resets the 25% shield value, making her extremely hard to kill.
Level 20
The only form of other CC other than Wave of Force, which is impossible to have both, but still, this talent is niche and used mostly to spam all your abilities in a target direction and then cast the laser to slow them down to guarantee the hit you want, this can happen to if you wait for your tank to engage for lockdowns, which does the same thing but better.
Pick this with Orb build, cast the whole combo, cast laser before it hits, repeat, pray you won’t get dived on though.
The upgrade for Wave of Force depends on what you are facing and how much are you required to utilize your heroic against certain heroes.
For example, if you need shutdown a channel such as Consume Souls or Moshpit, this helps a lot as you can do it from a far safer range.
You can also knock people back to your team or create a range between the enemy and your ally if they dive.
There’s a lot of reasons to have this but personally it really varies on what type of situation you are facing.
Borderline damage modifier, you can never go wrong with this ability nothing to say about it really, all damage dealt is buffed, that’s it, in a snowball from Critical Mass this gets better in securing kills.
Literally a meme that goes against everything designed around Li-Ming, you get no value out of Critical Mass which effects her abilities, and as was previously said: Being a sitting duck as Li-Ming is dangerous, this talent does this really well.
Also it has a 0.75 seconds channel to both go in and out of the form, something to keep in mind if you want to toggle it, you are stun locked in place, the laser in archon is a separate cooldown from her heroic abilities, you also cannot mount.
Pick this if you are winning unironically, otherwise IDK lmao this talent is just funny, laser go brrr.
Closure
Li-Ming, loved and hated, for being a high skill cap or downright “braindead” because someone picked Orb build (in the wrong circumstances) and won.
A cool hero to play, quite flashy, and has a lot of skins more than anyone else in the game, when kills role, dopamine goes to the brain and you want to just get more chain kills, and when it happened, you get MVP or fed 8 times in the row to be reported for AFK none participation.
Anyways, I wanted to share my knowledge, feel free to discuss!
