I hope this is getting repaired because her hp can’t handle gained up on attacks and jump onto attacks lately
The weird thing with player preference according to talent choice stats is how the majority naturally seems to flock towards 13-Windrunner. It just might be the dominant choice due to bad matchmaking which you would never see in a higher standard draft. Huge % gap between QM and Storm League.
1-Might is fine I guess but for some inexplicable reason everyone seems to be skipping 7-Barbed despite being the best obvious choice for this build. To make this really shine and make the most out of your first talent you would need 16-Evasive which is garbage and 20-Withering which is… ugh at best considering how useful your remaining choice is. I mean really, if you want to play a drive-by shooter build, pick Tracer instead. Q has unreliable targeting and you probably won’t get as many charge resets through takedowns. What’s the point of winning harder in a duel which you’ve already won? This playstyle doesn’t work well with Sylvanas’ team role, it just allows you to flex against mages and healers (nothing Valla couldn’t do better).
If you filter the chart to Master level only, you’ll see a big popularity shift into 1-Overwhelming, 7-Festering and 13-Remorseless. At higher level you will be forced to focus the tank player but now your attacks will bounce to a nearby target and make both vulnerable to attacks from someone with an Executioner style talent.
Single target dagger stacking will work if you’re playing against very stupid people and AOE stacking could be good in ARAM against subaverage healing, but to overwhelm Lucio or Brightwing you most definitely need Malfurion to feed you constant Innervate because how mana costly Haunting Wave is.
No one seems to understand how good 4-Possession can be. Stealing a catapults is such a power move, but stealing a ballista in late game is even better, because it actually might hit enemy heroes for a quarter of their health since animation delay is shorter. One other thing, if you have 20 minions attacking your buildings, possessing one of them will break their focus and taunt others in range. Literally no one knows about it and this can save Forts and Cores in situations where otherwise you wouldn’t be able to clear everything in time.
No, because E is Sylv’s best component of her kit, by lvl 7 she’d be dealing 4k damage when playing aggressive vs sustain AA build dealing roughly 2k per minute, both serve two completely different purposes but E13 just complements playing aggro, which is what she’s exactly used for.
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Strongest choice shouldn’t imply the smartest. This shoot first in order to win approach works well in QM without proper compositions, but intentionally diving with E against organized teams is an entirely different thing. In practical terms you’re just stacking on even more waveclear which you necessarily don’t need over group utility; executioner status condition for your teammates and some good extra poke capability. With Remorseless you can more safely poke the enemy and the bouncing Withering Fire effect has a very long range which will help you track the second closest target, someone who otherwise might be standing outside of your vision field.
Keep in mind my responses are from looking through the eyes of a vs A.I scrub, so take that with a grain of salt, but Windrunner I almost never take as chasing down the bots or zooming around them is generally ill advised as they will hit me unless they are cc’ed either by myself or someone else and on higher difficulty they get a hivemind mentality to where gank attempts are usually swiftly countered if they are all alive. Being a chaser is not something Sylvanas is really good at, so I view Windrunner as just additional mobility and/or chance to cheese A.I cc attempts that are telegraphed. As you said, if I wanted to play a drive by character or or some type of pursuer I would play as Tracer, Illidan, or someone else.
I would have thought that barbed and Windrunner would go hand in hand against other players, that or using Festering Wounds to burst stack Unfurling Shadow stacks.
I mean, if you are going to go with Might and Lost Soul you may as well go for Remorseless at level 13 for the safety if you have a solid frontline between you and the enemy team. At least that is what I see from where I am sitting at anyways.
Overwhelming and Remorseless do not surprise me as that improves her ability to survive (more so with Evasive at level 16 if necessary) but Festering surprised me until I realized that using puts the slow on EVERYONE hit.
I never cared for using Haunting Wave offensively in conjunction with Festering Wave as it feels sluggish and mana hungry. Usually with Unfurling Shadow I go Lost Soul at level 7 and Remorseless at level 13 for safer and more sustainable dps.
Also is Evasive really that bad? I usually take it with Overwhelming Affliction for additional kiting potential.
I would love to see footage of a seasoned player using Sylvanas’ E build offensively. I personally do not care for it as getting overly aggressive with Sylvanas always results in taking unnecessary levels of damage, and compared to most most vs A.I Sylvanas players I notice I am tend to be more aggressive when engaging the A.I without getting as suicidal if that makes sense.
Haunting Wave might hit like a truck but it is easily avoidable because of the slow moving animation. You can always see it coming because it is the first thing Sylvanas will want to cast once she stacks up the spell damage with Withering Fire. Question is only if she dares to come closer while using Windrunner against more than one enemy - not likely.
5x Q - wave - 5x Q - repeat wave - 5x Q
It’s a very aggressive playstyle which can work in niche situations but as soon as your opponents learn how to manipulate your attack pattern and Haunting Wave direction with their own positioning, you’ve got a dead talent which only helps with waveclear, something more of which you don’t really need. Essentially to execute the combo you need a very cooperative target dummy who won’t be using CC or immunities.
With Zeratul for example you’ll notice more experienced players moving in a predictable patterns or standing still, maybe even facing in a certain direction while expecting him to Vorpal back. It’s all calculated so your team can more easily help deal with him by knowing exactly where he will reappear.
Windrunner allows for more risky play but I wouldn’t count on it to save me when it matters the most. You are often put in a position where you feel forced to reactivate early so you cover very little distance and other time when you wait the last possible moment you catch an awkward crowd control effect and end up dead. Haunting Wave is best used to traverse across terrain to avoid an opponent or bait them into chasing you. Don’t expect to time Unstoppable frames correctly against Illidan or Tyrael flying towards you from across the map.
Just pick Will of the Forsaken.
Off topic, I am enthusiastically looking forward to seeing my account receiving a permanent ban with the release of next patch, it’s been a while since last suspension and the game has never been worse. Time to die.
Sylvia is built on her trait without she’s nothing and with she’s something, E7 rewards aggressiveness, E13 allows it better, there already been done comparison’s over which build would be effective and E focused build would be better because you’d do more effective DPS that isn’t tied to preparation.
It really ain’t deep.
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I’ve breezed through around 50 of Khaldor’s latest nation’s cup uploads and even went a dozen videos further for a reality check on how the game is played. It didn’t take me long, 10 min at most.
First, I’m shocked how much they sure love to play Sylvanas nowadays. Statistically I wouldn’t even place her within the top 10 increased by the number of ban slots. I have skipped the map selection process, but she is somehow always and only played on specific two or three.
Remorseless (+Overwhelming) doesn’t only dominate against, but it has an overwhelming (heheheh) pick rate over Windrunner, which got taken only against teams who more closely resembled something you would run into during quick match; hero combinations with predictable, delayed and telegraphed, or mostly without any punishing crowd control where one could reliably follow on top of another.
On two occasions it was so bad that Sylvanas successfully managed to pull off an Evasive Fire. Whenever Windrunner won the game, it already felt like a massive stomp. I tried to but I couldn’t catch a single successful instance of this dive-type of attack with double Haunting Wave. It failed whenever the target immediately started moving away, at best she would just scare them off.
I wasn’t as thorough in my analysis so I can’t offer stats on the success rate, but it is pretty obvious on what players agree on is generally the more practical and safer option in organized play with uninterrupted communication.
There were three noteworthy games, one where Sylvanas team got defeated on Braxis before level 13, another where she lost on Battlefield by level 12 and a final one where she deviated from the standard build and successfully kept enabling her team to obliterate enemy frontline through Mind Control and Cold Embrace armor reduction, simply amazing teamwork here.