Does Valeera actually win games?
I play her and she’s a lot of fun for a while because her kit is flexible and it’s possible to do much but it seems like the matches i always play as her end in a loss. It seems like all the kills, objectives, camps i get are just kinda there for feeling good but then late game rolls around and she fizzles out and brings nothing to the team. I’m going to address the elephant in the room, Eviscerate is worthless. According to the tooltip it costs 25 energy and deals less damage than a fully spec sinister strike.
IMO her kit could be a lot cooler… for instance maybe if she had an E(shiv maybe, pretty much makes all poisons 100% stronger + minor damage reduction… the catch is this will have a 10 second CD) and maybe at 3 combo points her damaging abilities changed. for instance Q is Eviscerate, W is Crimson Tempest(a powered up version of blade dance that applies a dot with a bit of a further range), and E can become Envenom(making poisons last 2x longer).
Her poisons seem lackluster and not even that great to use a talent tier on, even if the CD is short. Thistle Tea is also pretty underwhelming, like why would you want all these extra bells and whistles when you could just kill a person in 1 rotation.
Her whole hemorrhage + slice and dice build seems extremely undertuned atm. outside of stealth she hits like a wet noodle… I do like the fact she has openers but i think they should just be mainly utility with the free teleport after 4 seconds with very minor damage and a little CC then her base kit should be where she shines.
I’d like it if her level 1 talents were trait centric like xul or khara where she would be picking her core poison. Maybe Deadly(a DoT that shines with multiple applications, good with cleave skills), Instant(kinda like a chance on hit burst crit), or Agonizing(applied on abilities, makes abilities hit harder the more stacks applied). i’m no game designer but i’m just throwing it out there that they could make her better.
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I kinda recognize your name did you just play her on hanamura?
If all the games you play as Valeera end in a lose, perhaps you should reconsider your pick of Valeera and play characters that can contribute more.
Well, eviscerate certainly doesn’t come up very often when discussing Valeera’s weaknesses. It’s pretty respectable burst when used full combo. Her W skill on the other hand is pretty much useless.
Valeera suffers mainly because of two reasons. She is super reliant on her openers. Given how easy she is to knock out of stealth, you are usually better off stealthing right before your opener which kinda ruins the whole rogue thing she has going for her. Which brings us to her second weakness, her silence is just too good compared to her other openers but nerfing it isn’t really the solution either since it’s pretty much the only thing keeping her afloat. Take it away and you’re left with vastly inferior Zeratul.
So yeah, you can win with Valeera but you kinda have to play her with the mindset you’re there only to apply silence.
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This completely destroys a lot of Samuro, Fenix and other assassins but fortunately people aren’t too aware of this playstyle and she is an unpopular pick.
Maybe once in a hundred games I see someone who understands how completely her silence shuts down some heroes who rely on mobility to get out when under fire. But they wont be able to cast.
I don’t know if it’s enough of a reason to pick her, but it does ruin the day of some assassins.
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She’s a great hero. I play mostly ranked (diamond) and often pick her as solo, depending on enemy comp, though.
She is one of the best anti AA “bruisers”. 3 block stacks and a long blind before them? You can outduel most bruisers (provided you play smart enough), and has a great 75 spell armor ulti to block damage for yourself or to save an ally if needed.
She requires good map management to do ganks (only bother if they end on kill, otherwise, the solo lane will have a tough time).
As a side note, dont pick her on solo maps with huge pve involvement, such as Spiders or Braxis. She works better on big maps.
Just use your combo and leave. Repeat. Autoattack/spam Q only if it will lead to a kill. Remember you are the 2nd frontline, and need your healthbar high to provide support to your team.
IMPORTANT. She is one of the best Anti Diver melees in game. If the enemy team has strong dive DONT GO THEIR BACKLINE. Help Yours! That silence/blind can save your carry/healer from certain death, or secure a kill from an aggressive Artanis.
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Valeera is my second most played character, she is simply boring as hell right now. Her design needs another look, mainly openers and better build variety (take away opener talents). Also deep stealth mechanic is extremely unfun to utilize on melee range.
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I absolutely agree. I just meant the playstyle mentioned by Kettu is viable even in highest MMR, it’s a very dirty way to play but it has its’ merits.
In that style she basically does nothing but silences their mobile heroes over and over for 20+ minutes so they can’t use wind walk/warp/teleport. After they’re down to 30% hp she vanishes, then repeats it ad infinitum.
If the assassins aren’t available for silence she does nothing but wait for them.
Some good insight there and it’s great you know how to make her shine. The problem I still believe is her base kit though, which is just three straight up damage skills. You can talent her and take CoS, which is one of my favorite ults btw, but then you could have taken Varian for example and done pretty much the same and then some without having to worry about every stray skillshot being functionally a silence.
Well; right now there are many heroes that can replace others in a certain role, with Tank and Healer being the exception, mostly.
I personally play almost all heroes except 5-8, only because I find them pretty boring and simple. Varian is one of them jajajaj
I personally value much more a well placed silence/stun/blind from a good Valeera over the usual slow from the rage-quit Twinblades Varian. She deals more damage too, and she does not require their team to play around her, nor gets countered so easily.
Varian Chad-Tank is great, though. Both as 2nd front or main tank (here, depend on both enemy and ally comp, as he has almost no peel).
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She’s very situational and requires a lot of knowledge to play, but she can be absolute cancer on certain maps.
unfortunately no, the last maps i played as her were garden, dragon, and infernal.
i don’t really play her that often because QM seems bias against me not playing her if i want to have fun that night. Lately I’ve been playing more Maiev, Medivh, Mal’ganis, and Butcher.
This.
The devs wrote a good article about zeratul’s Master Warp Blade.
(MWB: Zera’s 3rd basic attack on the same target hits really hard.)
The devs said that burst damage is not fun to play against. MWB requires a fair amount of ramp up time granting the enemy team time to respond. However, if Zera is capable of risking being in a team fight for an excessive period of time he is rewarded with nice damage.
Same theory for valeera’s eviscerate. Nerf her SS damage but buff her evis damage. This will gut her burst but reward her for staying in the fight for a long time making for a healthier character
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I’d also love 5 combo points baseline.
Sounds crazy at first but think about it, 5 combos is actually hard to pull off especially in the early game. It rewards valeera further for taking that risk and also indirectly buffs some of her lesser picked talents like Initiative (openner grants 2 combos).
That would definitely be too much, but I could definitely see a level 20 talent that increases the max number of combo points to 5 but would also reduce their damage slightly.
I made a rework concept over on HeroesFire for her. It addresses all the major problems I have with her rework from 2017, such as her over-dependence on her opener’s teleports or SS/Garrote spam builds.
https://www.heroesfire.com/hots/concept/valeera-8367
It mostly comes down to “how hard is the enemy carrying on X” and “how well can team respond to the CC I provide” and also "can I stop them from getting out of my backline if they’re divey.
She use to be a pain with STEALTH!!!, so you know 
That was indeed the case with the old stealth system. But even then she wasn’t picked very often in higher ranks and was mostly used to stomp new players, like Nova was. Now she’s just slightly worse at it.
slightly? most of her builds are entirely unviable because they nerfed it to the ground. in lower lvl play it doesn’t matter as much what you get because they don’t know how to play against her.
Was mostly talking about the eyesight check version of stealth before it was reworked. You’re not wrong though. I believe hemorrage was the go-to build before it was nerfed, but apart from that I don’t think Valeera had much of build variety to begin with.