Teach me Samuro!

General Discussion
1

I have a good winrate but I feel unimpactfull. Teach me !
(Thank you in advance)

2

Obnoxious splitpushing is basically all he does well. Sit in a lane killing minions, sending a clone to another lane. When someone rotates to come deal with you swap with the clone and let your opponent wonder why they even try.

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3

Don’t even bother. Blizzard has nerfed him one too many times and you have to play perfectly to be on par with any other assassin.
There is no margin for error with Sam now. You’re 1 second late and your clone expires, guess what you miss out on the teamfight and the team will rightfully blame you.
You’re playing Starcraft II while every other hero plays a MoBa.
There are some easy fixes to Samuro that would make him more intuitive to play, but Blizzard’s not paying attention. No matter how good you get with him, the design is so janky and reliant on the insta-mount exploit, hearth-healing, and other tricks that require perfect micro.
Play as Greymane or Zeratul where you can demolish people without a million ways of screwing up.
They nerfed his burst recently, so now he can’t even fight. Before you could ambush a hero and win 1on1, now he can’t win 1on1 anymore. He can’t even fight.
If only they gave him an extra 2 seconds before clones expire, prior to level 20. But these days Blizzard isn’t even paying attention, and no one cares.
RIP Samuro.

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I summon Jamuro.

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Am lvl 15 Samuro.

  • Do camps
  • Splitpush
  • Gank

Push out a lane/do a camp then send a clone elsewhere. After you’re done, swap with the clone to instantly teleport from what you were currently doing, to what you’ll do next.

When engaging, usually begin with Wind Walker. When you eventually pop your Q during a skirmish, get a habit of sending one clone back to somewhere safe, so you always have an escape route.

As Samuro, you can also fully heal at any time, as long as you are quick and your Q is up.
Pop Q
Target clone 2 or 3
Make them hearth
As soon as they pop into the HoS, swap with them.
(During this, enjoy instant mounting for your clones)
After you’re fully healed, swap back.

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6

Sorry can’t help it.
Don’t waste your E when engaging.
You pick Mirrored Steel, hit Q whenever its up, hit Z and flank your opponent while mounted. Its like playing poker, you want to judge what they’re thinking and when they hit what they think is the real Samuro you have them juked. Then when the clone is at like 1 health you swap and inflict your damage, then Q again, Z and get the hell out so you don’t die while your team finishes them off. Your E is for escaping NOT engaging. You always engage with clones.

But again its so much trouble playing this hero with such diminishing rewards that you’re better off picking someone else.

2 Likes
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Im confused, I usually take the non E build and just hit the main target once then press Q for my clones.
^ is this the right way?

8

Nope, I already explained it. After you have insta-mount set up (really easy, all you do is hearth a clone and keep playing) you hit Q+Z prior to the engagement. (in fact, you hit Q whenever its up, and spread mounted clones around the map in a micro’ing frenzy as if its Starcraft II, so you are everywhere all the time with optimal map presence, Samuro is all about apm) Its always Q+Z. I even pay attention to the 4 second mount cooldown and synchronize them. I’ve played this guy to death.
I like to hide Samuro in a bush and wait till an enemy comes within melee range to land a crit. But you engage with mounted clones, and look for an opening on a healer or mage. You have to avoid taking damage because he gets squashed like a bug.
Teamfights are so hard to do correctly, there’s a razor thin margin for error. Move a mounted clone within melee range, look for the opportunity, R+W to engage, then Q+instant mount Z to get you out of trouble fast.
DO NOT swap if you’re not within melee range, or you will get kited like a clown.
Honestly if you come in with E and they see the outlined silhouette that’s a dead giveaway of who the real Sam is.
If there’s one nice thing about Sam it’s that he absolutely destroys Li Ming.

1 Like
9

Engage with E lol. E is escape and engage, you just want to time it to make it easier on yourself.

Almost never rotate anywhere, always rotate with clone. You always wanna be getting some kind of splitpush value while rotating, because you basically can always be doing it. You just still want to be on time to things. If your team is really good at holding, then see how long you can get away with splitpushing (someone might come to respond to you, and that’s when you really want to join the teamfight - 5v4 their team and win - unless you know you can easily kill them and win both sides of the map.).

When splitting and sending a clone to the fight, have your clone play footsies a little bit as if it were the real Samuro. You’ll start creating space without even being there. If they’ve been turning on your clones and blowing them up, that’s kind of good; send both clones instead, or swap in a little earlier and stealth instantly, play some footsies while in stealth so people waste skillshots on trying to pop you out.

How you engage kind of depends on… the moment, and also your build. If you’re running Phantom Pain you pretty much need to press Q to deal damage so come out of stealth with Q. If you have a crit lined up and you’ve taken Harsh Winds and you have Phantom Pain, make sure to also take Shukuchi at 13 and you’ll actually want to engage fights this way with Q+E when you have crit lined up. Q to gapclose past their tank and set your clones attacking him, and then E to teleport towards your actual target that you think you can chunk out or kill, do that, and then swap back to hitting the tank, but start microing your clones and ignoring the real Samuro.

In teamfights pre-10 you rely mostly on the standstill-juke, where you basically press Q at angles that gives you the most safety where people are mostly likely to target your clones before you (which is variably inside or outside of their team), and then you just AFK hit things until either you need to swap to refresh clone health, or swap out to safety, or E and run away if swap isn’t available.

Forgive me for the poor order of this post, I’m really trying to hammer it out fast before I go do other stuff today… So when you engage, typically wanna do it from stealth, that lets you go into the backline (where you’re typically pretty safe especially post-10), and yeah, depending on your build, if you take Mirrored Steel you can really do the AFK Samuro thing really well (actually this build is honestly really good and I haven’t played it in a little while, maybe time to freshen things up with it?), else Shukuchi gives you essentially two gapclosers so you can do really well to keep up with people with mobility. Your E timer resets while you’re in stealth, that’s why it’s good to, for instance, swap to your clone when you still have 5-10s to get to the fight and instantly stealth, then run to the backline, start hitting their Gul’dan or w/e, then press Q and then 4 and bring all your clones behind them so you can bodyblock with 3 bodies. You can hit 2 or 3 really quick and send them off in a random direction so you now have an escape if you need to, stealth is probably also back up by the time you’ve hit them a few times.

Build-wise, it’s like this for me:

  • Way of Illusion if I have a lane opponent I can stack off of which is most non-ranged sololanes (Blaze does not count as ranged, k), Way of the Blade if not. Way of the Blade has gotten way better, it lets you PvE way better earlygame and waveclear with Burning Blade even better later on, WoI still beats it in sustain and burst at max stacks but the difference isn’t huge and WotB makes up for it in its own way if you decide you can’t easily stack WoI
  • Lvl 4 just depends on comp and lane matchup (if it’s a map where lane matchup matters like DS/Braxis)
  • Lvl 7: I’ve been taking Burning Blade almost every game again since the nerfs to IM/WoI. His blowup damage is less strong, but if you know you don’t need the waveclear this game, PP is still good. Those are the only two talents on the tier, by the way. There is no 3rd level 7 talent, it doesn’t exist, just a 2-talent tier. I also just like Burning Blade because you can use Q as a gapcloser and just hit people out of stealth for a little bit, it also makes fighting Illidan/Malthael/Sonya easier since you don’t have to press Q and then micro 2 clones away from being lifesteal batteries for them
  • Illusion MAster duuuuuhhhhh
  • Shukuchi is really good, but so is Mirrored Steel, just make your pick based on mobility and how much you think you can get people to hit your clones. Mirrored Steel is really good for playing versus thicker teams, you just always have clones out and it gives you more Q’s for mini-gapclosers and synergizes perfectly with Press the Attack at 16
  • All 3 options at 16 are good, just depends on what you’re doing. If you have Keg Toss Chen or Arthas or something, Merciless Strikes is honestly insane. Or if you have Aba in comms with the slowing 16… your W forces a crit, right? So you can enter fights with a crit queued up and then 2nd crit someone with W? Well with Merciless Strikes, if you hit–>W crit on a slowed target, your damage will be Crit damage → 150% crit damage W, it’s been like this forever so it might not actually be a bug. But you make your crit crit with W, doign 50% extra total damage (which is even more broken with Phantom Pain because instead of being an additional proc on the side, Phantom Pain buffs only your crit damage, meaning the extra 50% makes this 2nd crit strike hit for like >1k damage or something insane like that).

Then Press the Attack is good for shredding frontline, Harsh Winds is good for blowing up backline.

20 is Three Blade Stylu ofc.

There is so much more detail I could go into but I want to wrap it up now, I’ll just say, clones can scout, can bait cooldowns, can bodyblock, you can do a lot with just clones. Also in fights try to micro your clones around a lot, it REALLY screws with people, you will find a rhythm where you can engage and then micro clones, then swap to clones people thought were you, etc.

And Pre-10 you can global, you just have to be far enough away from a minion wave that clones don’t auto-aggro to them, just click on minimap to where you want them to go and then press Q on that spot, I’m also in the habit of A-clicking there too. Probably an unnecessary habit. But your clones will spawn and immediately start walking in that direction. Super useful for any objective-based map, like top two altars on ToD you can send your clones to the opposing altar or even the lower one, then start channeling one altar and be at the other one immediately upon it finishing. Post-10 you should always spawn clones before channeling an objective, and use the clones to go up and catch peoples’ rotations to you, dismount them, bodyblock them, etc. Often times they’ll engage your clones, or if not, when you finish channeling the objective hop onto one of your clones that you steered into their backline and start killing them. …Also you can channel objectives with clones. It doesn’t actually channel it, but the animation stays the same, meaning people are guaranteed to be trying to interrupt your clone, wasting their skillshots etc.

Finally, watch pro samuros.

Twitch <— the esteemed OnePrickTony, MunkyS

Twitch <— the esteemed SMOrc 7 Korean GM Samuro 1trick

watching them will teach you everything I said and 10x more

ONE LAST THING that the streamers don’t always do, it’s when you take Way of Illusion: Go to where the first fight always happens, and about 7 seconds before you arrive, press W to pre-proc crit. Then, walk up REALLY FAR, like so their tank is like “holy crap this Samuro is free” and then Q BACKWARDS to send your clones onto the tank. They’ll crit, and then your W will be back up, hit W again. Then, as one of your clones is about to get focused to death, swap to whichever one looks safer to refresh both clones, and IMMEDIATELY stealth and run to your lane where you’ll be soloing, or dont stealth yet and start hitting people if on the off-chance your team happens to have already jumped down their throats in the first 3 seconds of the fight. Anyway, this gets you like 4-12 stacks right off the bat. In lane you can use the Q aggro trick to aggro your clones straight onto the enemy laner by either A-clicking him and Qing so your clones spawn far enouhg away from the minion wave to aggro to your intended, A-clicked /Q-clicked target. Cycling your crit, stealth, and D cooldowns is how you get stacked insanely fast. You can also beat ranged solo laners like Zag easily by doing what Rich does in this video:

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Idk why, but after reading all of this, I decided to open hots and play samuro :smile: (ty for also explaining how to engage and the build)

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11

Samuro is probably my saddest hero to have had his playstyle stripped away. A few Players practiced a LOT and became very skilled with him, and were rewarded by winning over raynors who put in minimal effort. Now, the first-time raynor wins and the seasoned player struggles. This is the problem with hots.

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I think its ludicrous that he has to rely on a glitch now to be effective.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard literally can’t figure out how to fix the instant-mount so they nerfed his dps some more instead.
Goes to show ya how badly Blizzard has been gutted by Activision.
That’s why I retired from this game.

2 Likes
13

Whenever I play a melee solo-lane like Artanis or Blaze, I always check to see if Samuro took this talent. If so, I am freezing my lane or waiting for your minions to push into my towers, while wandering around aimlessly, still mounted. No free stacks for you! Eventually you will get bored and leave, or at least try to convince someone else to occupy my lane so you can get some stacks in the 4 man.

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14

Yep, that’s what I always do, too. Take every inch of advantage!

If you’re the Samuro on the receiving end of this you can just send your clones down to mid with the Q/a-click trick, so long as you’re far away enough from the minions. It’s less reliable, but at least that way you’re still getting stacks. You can also spawn minions in the bush your enemy laner is hiding in if they’re hiding in a bush.

Objectives will generally be of huge help in those situations. I’m surprised more people don’t try to deny Samuro stacks, you see free stacking all the way up to Grandmaster (if you watch MunkyS’ videos. I am not GM :smiley: ). as well as people denying stacks below it. Just depends who you’re fighting

Random additional tip, you can gapclose across enemy gates/sidewalls with Q, and you can (I’m pretty sure) spawn both clones inside of gates if you hug the crap out of their gate and then Q away from it. I could be wrong on that one (I haven’t tried - but you can definitely press Q to enter inside the enemy fort, double-crit someone who is almost dead to finish them, and then immediately swap back to a clone on the other side, typically before the fort even lands a shot on you)

15

until they finally find a fix for it.

(yes, it is a bug that they’re working on fixing).

16

I like Samuro, but I also hate him. He’s a high skill ceiling hero with lots of small quirks and bugs, that make him interesting to play, like cheesy insta-mounts and clone hearthing to have infinite sustain anywhere on the map.

I wish they would optimize him a bit, and actually fix some of his bugs.
As explained earlier, you can’t afford to mess up on Samuro, and it is a bit sad that such a high skill hero gets dumpstered so easily.

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17

instead of teaching you, ima give you a very well detailed samuro guide written by some other dude.

https: // www. heroesfire .com/ hots/ guide/ samurebs- en- 16848

i cant post links but just remove spaces

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18

One optimization would be to color code his clones on the minimap more importantly for the team to realize which one is the clone.

Countless times I have had people follow my clones only to get ganked by the enemy team because I’m on the other end of the map doing a camp.

Samuro really needs better synergy so he is more of a “team player”.

Simple fixes, Blizzard! But I doubt they’re reading this so I’m speaking to the wind…

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Are they? Last time every single Samuro bug was brought to Blizzard in an AMA and they said everything is just “features”.

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Last I heard (earlier today. Some… 3-6 hours ago) it was something QA was working to fix.

I would give exact quote. But on phone and a wee bit drunk.

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