I see people here and there missing the old Tyrande. But not all of them are talking about the assassin version we had before the current one. They are talking about an older version.
The version before that had a mediocre healing, and she had to constantly hit enemies with owls in order to heal amounts comparable to those of other supports. She was extremely mana hungry and she was healing herself for just 50% of the regular amount of healing, even when she was targeting herself with the heal.
She had some good damage potential with the basic attack build, as she had several talents to empower her basic attacks with, but she was lacking the survivability in order to fare well with such build.
I could see nothing great about this version of Tyrande, so I assume people were talking about some version before this one.
What was she like, and why was she “so great”?
Owl megakills with a talent that made the Owl deal more and more damage the longer it flew. And pierced every player.
That’s the previous Tyrande, not the OLD Tyrande.
That vid is from 2015, I don’t know how much older you mean. 2014 is closed alpha testing.
Hmm… so the OLD Tyrande had an owl build, similar to the previous Tyrande… Is that really why people liked her?
she was more like an assassin or 2nd support
with 1 good owl you could even snipe abathur if you guessed which bush he is in
Probably not the only reason, but Sentinel build let her do a lot of damage. Especially after 20 when she could Rewind and send out two massive nukes.
Now she’s a completely different hero though and more of a heal oriented hero. I even heard some play her as a split pusher but I don’t know if that is a thing…
Huntress Mark was also 25% instead of 15%, was very popular always on BoE map too (and vs. 2 tanks) since it lets the team burn immortals down faster.
Yeah, i remember this. She was a monster if played well.
Her trait used to be a lot stronger so you played like an AD carry. Right now her DPS with Mark is so low it’s not worth putting yourself in danger.
True shot aura used to be passive for all teammates as well.
Did the owl talent get nerfed? The Tyrande I remember when I started playing did indeed have an owl build, and it was indeed the most popular. But back then I thought it was good because it was the only build improving your healing, as you were getting cooldown reduction on your abilities by hitting owls.
Back then I thought that supports’ role is to heal, and not deal damage.
tyrande has had two different eras of owl builds.
Old tyrade owl talents trigger cdr over time + she had rewind. Hitting an owl, using rewind, owl again would be enough cdr to get a third owl going. it had youtube clips for the snipes, but not quest stacked-damage.
Back then she had a lot of generic talents to her trees, but generally went for damage talents to be an assassin with heals.
Back then, she was pretty much the only source of debuffing damage increases, so she was a shoe-in pick as a “hybrid” because her damage amp & cc were unique.
Her tree then was more dominated by lunar flare talents (length, width, damage increase) but her aa talents were okay too. She had searing arrows (active attack boost) and an ias boost, so she could overlay her procs and bring a hefty boost – the first itteration of darnassian archery (with shadow stalk) brought a similar style, but only against heroes, and not all target types.
She used to have a talent for using her traint on structures, but i think i was the only person to ever pick it 
She had the illusion of a lot of variety, but her picks were pretty stagnant; she stood out then due to stun/mark blow up comps being fairly unique to her slot.
I played old Tyrande the most on my account. I don’t know why but I just have more fun playing other supports/healers since then.
The current Tyrande resembles a bit the old in a sense that both were a “main healer”. This is back when dual support meta was about to become dominant so her less consistent heal was compensated by having some neat utilities.
It’s hard to bring up exactly what she felt like because her kit changed a lot between 2014-2015 but she had a lot more actives and her Q was only one method of healing. Mark of Mending for example was a temporary but superpowered version of TB Varian’s healing talent so you recovered 2.5% HP per attack. As for Owl build, that’s been a thing since at least 2015 and it only got buffed with successive patches up until her latest rework. So you could do that though it was considered a niche.
It should be also noted that Supports were much more capable of laning, camps and waveclear in the past so you could had some shenanigans in that sense. In general talents were much closer to items in MOBAs as most heroes got mana regeneration, attack increase and such abilities and there being a few dozen “generic talents” which many heroes had. So Old Tyrande was more janky but also less specialized compared to her newer reworks. She could be an utility-centric DPS or even a burst healer who could stack 4 different types of healing sources at once for a teamfight.
She was fun in the context of the game of that time. If I have to describe her in brief think of a Lili grade “main healer” but with three quarters the damage build of the pre-rework Tyrande (the healer/assassin hybrid). Her synergy was poor compared to her modern versions but she was fun regardless.
Old tyrande was odd.
She was super weak early on. A liability for the team even.
But…
Once stacked , she was a ridiculously strong duelist where she could melt multiple enemies single handedly.
A stacked owl could hit 3k+ at long range and 1k -1.5k at short range.
Flare could hit for over 1.5k .
I remember a game on sky temple where i soloed both a diablo and a dehaka with veey little concern lol mages like li ming or KT was no big deal since she usually out ran all other regular mages because she could easily run 120% - 130% all the time . which mean if you were alone vs her , you would likely not escape lol.
I have had many game with her being top damage and kills . i rarely picked the owl build , mostly the flare one .
Once she had finished her quest , she essentially because a manaless character because her healing was costing barely more than the natural regeneratiom would refund back , so there was games where when i was stacked , i never had to heal at the nexus anymore . 
played right she was a monster and i loved it .
But to shine the game had to last long other whise she was too weak to accomplish anything lol
Edit : Volun brought a really good point.
Tyrande was like tassadar , both had so many variation over time its difficult to be accurate without precision when we say “the old __________” . tassadar is currently on his 3rd iteration and tyrande on he 4rth i beleive. 1rst one was full support , i cant remember the 2nd properly , 3rd is the last one which was an hybrid of dps healer ( which i personally loved !). And then the 4rth one that we have now which is a weird mix but mostly focusing on the healing part.
tass ( v1 / full support ) and tyrande ( aggresive support ) were some of my favorite characters , i honestly miss them both alot lol
There are so many versions of Tyrande, so it can be confusing to talk about. However, the 50% self heal/Shadowstalk heal version of Tyrande was probably my favorite of all time.
Honestly, the best thing about her was her flexibility in the kinds of roles she could take on, and that her talent had a very real effect to fundamentally change up how you played the hero and they were all pretty much viable. You wanted to solo heal, be more of an AA assassin, shoot owls from a distance, or even plop down a mule lol. But even with AA builds, she still felt like a support because of the way her heal functioned and her trait for amplifying team damage.
Her range on her stun talent believe it or not was one of her least picked talents on that tie, which compared to her recent rework has been considered must pick. That’s how viable her talent picks were. Once they reworked her for no reason and Blizzard started heavily going into the force pick three themed tiers for other heroes, the game suffered heavily in my opinion.
Not really, I changed up my talents fairly often depending on the comps. She had her popular builds like owl because they generally required less skill, but that didn’t mean her other builds were not viable, her talent win rates were some of the most healthy hovering near 50% except for a few which is petty amazing considering she had 4 talents on every tier.
I think the best way to sum it up would be so say “she used to be fun.”
Looks at Morales
Looks at Tassadar
Looks at Lucio
Looks at Azmodan
Volun:
There are so many versions of Tyrande, so it can be confusing to talk about. However, the 50% self heal/Shadowstalk heal version of Tyrande was probably my favorite of all time.
This is the version of Tyrande that I fell in love with when I was new to the game. If I had the choice, I would play this version, with the generic and outdated talents and all, over current Tyrande or in fact any other healer.
She was SO fun and I loved her solo vulnerability as well as offensive style to being a support.
Now her heals are bad and her damage is bad. She lacks the build diversity and options tgat made her interesting and even through 2 re-works they have completely failed to capture again. Rehgar and Karazeem are allowed to be offensive supports, but Tyrande is now forced to do no meaningful damage until level 16+.
I miss classic Tyrande. I miss her every time I boot up the game.
That is the thing I hated about her. I could build my damage to some insane values with basic attack build (even if it was for a limited time), but I simply lacked the survivability required to trade with enemies.
Her rework fixed that (previous Tyrande), and I could win fights even 1 v 2 with basic attack build.
I like characters that have defined strengths and weaknessess. It makes it more fun for me to figure out the puzzle of playing them well.
Before this iteration of Tyrande we had this one…
I liked old tyrande, which apparently was mid tyrande, for lunar flare. You gained damage and aoe when completing quest, and she was just fun to play as a half assassin half healer.