I mostly play the healer role, but often in QM i’ll switch it up to heroes I suck at.
I’ve found Zeratul’s hypermobility + insane burst to be silly in QM. So he can just dive and kill squishy heroes without being punished for doing so. He also has a decent wave clear, which helps keep the lanes pushed.
Any tips or advice on how to position, lane, damage, etc against zeratul would be super helpful. thanks.
Yeah, a good zera is a giant pain.
First off, zera has a pretty poor early game. Until level 7 hes only got 1 blink and as soon as he uses it, hes very vulnerable. His damage is also fairly mediocre until 10 and 16.
You want to use the precious time to make as much progress on the map as you can. Get towers down and take camps as a team when you can. You also stand a decent chance of stealing enemy camps as a team if they dont have to much zone control.
Secondly, pay special attention to his talents. Hes either gonna have good single target or good aoe.
If hes building single target, hug your teammates so your team can respond to him as quick as possible.
If hes aoe, he will do almost half as much damage if he only hits 1 hero with his Q so spread just enough to not give him that opportunity but still close enough that everyone can respond to his engagements.
For positioning, it’s usually pretty clear who he wants to jump on and is just waiting for the opportunity to do so. Not giving him vision of you unless necessary and keeping a close eye on other heroes zera might want to jump on.
Then stuff you can play and not be so weak against zera. Generally stuff that can either insta CC him or stuff he doesn’t one shot are good in to him.
Uther and Brightwing are outright counters. Whitemane and Morales are decent in to him if you build for it (take aegis on wm and Trauma Trigger on morales). Then, Rehgar can generally just survive his burst.
When you play healer against zera you basically want to warp your whole game plan around how you are going to deal with him sense aside from some tanks, your the only person on the team who can deal with him so its worth it to sacrifice your matchups against the other heroes in the game to make your match up against him a little better.
And then one last thing. If your out in the open and zera jumps on you with noone around to help you. Dont run away.
Your not going to escape him with out help so your chances are better if you stay and try to fight him.