I see a lot of people bash Arthas–that’s because they don’t know what his role actually is.
While Arthas is classified as a Warrior, his strongest role is as an off-laner and a brusier. While he has low mobility, he outright beats quite a lot of the popular off-laners, such as Artanis, Dehaka, and Blaze, and can transition into an unstoppable monster late-game, and BOTH of his Heroics allow him to make crazy powerful plays.
So here are some quick tips on one of my most played tanks/solo laners
- Mana conservation:
You should essentially never cast your abilities unless you have a very good reason to do so. Only cast Death Coil if you are actively being threatened and/or know it will secure the kill. Frozen Tempest can help a LITTLE bit with waveclear, but most of the time on Arthas you are focusing on freezing the lane, so only use it when the solo laner attempts to engage you/disengage from you. Use Howling Blast strictly to secure kills and/or peel for yourself and others.
Mana conservation gets a little more complicated. You can afford to spend mana on Frozen Tempest if you refund said mana with your trait, Frostmourne Hungers + Regen Globes from lane, and sometimes that can be worth depending on whether pushing said lane will lead to meaningful structure damage or a useful distraction for the enemy team during an objective. For this reason, I recommend the Trait Quest on level 1 and the Frozen Tempest quest on 4.
- Use your Heroics liberally and correctly:
Army of the Dead has a rather short cooldown (80 seconds). If you and a few other heroes are in a lane, feel free to use AotD to make a vague threat into a very serious threat. Army of the Dead’s summons actually provide a pretty large DPS increase when you don’t sac the ghouls, and can tank tower shots for your team (some quick calcs show that, with the standard 6 ghouls summoned at level 10, Arthas + Ghouls alone can deal at least 4k damage to a structure without any minion or hero support, all without Arthas taking damage from structures.).
Sometimes, the play in a teamfight isn’t to necessarily sac your ghouls on cooldown, but allow them to get damage on squishy enemies. Assuming optimal team composition where you as Arthas are the solo laner, you will often be joining teamfights from unexpected angles and at unexpected times. Being able to suddenly provide an additional 200 DPS and a bunch of skillshot blocking summons in the enemy backline is a game-winning advantage compared to gaining some extra health. Speaking on that last part espicially, against characters like Li-Ming or Zagara, having six 1000+ HP summons that block skillshots OFTEN gives more effective health than sac’ing all 6 for a heal of about ~2000 at level 10. Keep in mind this advice is for off-lane Arthas more-so than for Main Tank Arthas.
With Sindragosa, don’t be afraid to use Sindra to win a teamfight out of lane. Securing a few kills with the monstrous slow can often be worth more than turning off a structure for 20 seconds, ESPICIALLY MID GAME. Just read each situation as it comes.
- Builds:
There are two builds you’d usually go as Off-laner Arthas.
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[2231133], focuses on burst damage with trait and ghouls for back up damage. Death’s Advance is essentially neccessary in late game as the movement speed combined with the massive increase in attack speed slow and move slow makes it nigh impossible for any character to get away with the now very heavily stacked Arthas. Some situational talents may be Biting Cold on 13, if your team has very little burst but long sustained fights instead, and Heroic Upgrade if you are very quickly pushing core as you hit 20 and have Heroic off-cooldown. Legion of Northrend in particular lets you MASSIVELY amp up the amount of damage you personally can do to the core, while Absolute Zero can take a team by suprise and single-handedly win you the teamfight. Still, giving up both move speed and massive movespeed reduction/attk speed reduction sucks in the long term.
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Death Coil Build is a niche option when laning against really oppressive ranged assassins (Solo lane Valla or Sgt. Hammer for example), my favorite build for that being [2112112]. You still desperately need the mana/damage from Level 1 quest, and Sindragosa synergies very nicely with the ranged poke you’ll be doing most of the game, where as Army of the Dead’s minion AI will be too slow to get great damage out when you are from range. Death’s Advance is a little less useful without the level 4 Frozen Tempest quest, but still perfectly pickable, but having a powerful root almost makes up for the lack of crowd control and damage you’d get from the normal build.
all in all, I think arthas gets shart on way too hard, but that’s mainly from people drafting him as a main tank. As a main tank, he’s outclassed by almost everything. But as an off-laner, he’s pretty damn good and transitions very well into the late game, unlike characters like Rexxar.