eh, i dunno. It was a fun mechanic but the rest of the hero wasnt really designed with infinite mana in mind. Infinite mana + super healing is such a strong combo. She’d still need to have all the other lame parts of her kit just to keep that balanced. (only useful in fights, worthless pve)
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I can’t find any videos that shows her old design because I don’t know how she plays in her old design, are there any youtube clips for that? Or maybe what year was she reworked?
whitemane is just a mess. yeah you can heal really well with her but the design of this hero is all over the place. i don’t find it fun. 
I dunno about the worst offender. Scarlet Wrath exists.
Rambling time!
I wouldn’t mind if the active part of her trait simply got removed.
Always felt like it was a forced change because someone on the dev team liked the talent, but was butthurt it didn’t get used a lot.
Not to mention that it has ‘win more’ written all over itself.
Also, removing a single stack of Desperation with her W feels… eh (has a placebo vibe).
And I was never fond of the fact that her E has to hit with the first flame wave in order for the second one to appear (somewhat forced skill ceiling if you ask me).
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The way her mana mechanic works I think she needed some kind of baseline way to help. It does feel weird compared to before but that one talent was a must pick for a reason.
Yeah I don’t like it either. It makes her significantly weaker in my opinion because it’s just another thing that requires an enemy hero for value.
I miss old mage Whitemane.
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I used to play A LOT of Whitemane prior to the re-work. She’s still pretty much the way she was. Assuming you were playing her without relying on her cheesy (again for those that don’t know the origin of the term Cheap+Easy = Cheesy) mana regen mechanic.
What needs to happen is unnerfing her E build while keeping the added AA build. We need to remove the +spell damage trait as baseline just like before and make it a talent. Instead make the E+W root baseline or if that is too much then her speed boost with how many zeals are out can be.
Her out of combat healing is not bad. You just need to use trait->Q->W->Q very minimal amount of mana used but basically can get someone back to full in the combo except for tanks. If you really need to do more healing than that then they should be hearth back or should not be taking that much damage out of combat.
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Whitemane used to be good before so many changes.
My personal opinion is that if you’ve only played a few games with her it’s not a fair evaluation to have an overly positive or negative take on her.
Hopefully a white mane expert can answer
Ah, the good old Whitemane.
This rework (nerf) was done to address the issue with ‘‘W build’’ and right now the only viable build is W lmao haha.
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W-build isn’t “easier” to play in the classic sense. I think it’s actually harder than other builds because it relies on you consistently landing E-s which is harder as you climb the ladder. If you don’t then your W-build kinda doesn’t work. Add the fact that you need to be self-rooted a lot and you can see the troubles. W-build is popular because it’s the only one where you aren’t dependent on your team understanding your limits… because it kinda doesn’t exist. Similarly, W-build works like a charm in ARAM where you can just keep sustaining your team while other spellcasters run out of mana. It’s really curious, actually.
Same, E-build was pretty fun and you could burn squishies really fast before. She isn’t completely dead on that front but they nerfed her burst damage significantly compared to before. Your best bet is doing a Divine Reckoning+E+W root combo while popping your trait. It can kill a lot of people but before you could land some very fat E-s in rapid succession while under Fanatic Power to be a mini Li-Ming.
Overall Whitemane is in a very balanced place. She needs a player who really knows her but otherwise she doesn’t really have a high skill floor. The rework definitely succeeded in this. Yet they spectacularly failed at the other objective to make Whitemane more newby-friendly. If anything, unless you have the basic idea how she works you can’t get any value out of her, period.
Anyways, this might sound odd but actually Whitemane has both extremely tight mana tension and ability to be in the fights non-stop. Why? Because she both has Clemency which costs no mana and can do much of her healing through dealing damage which, again, costs no mana. So in the end you can often get by with spending fraction of what other healers do while still healing equal amount. Out of combat? She isn’t as terrible as it may seem but she’s needs to pop almost everything in a very tightly maintained order.
As for the self-root, it’s a matter of positioning. You need to know when to use your W and for how long. This is actually why I feel she’s even stronger in bronze-gold leagues because nobody would punish her. The other reason why self-root isn’t such a tragedy is because Whitemane excels at burst mitigation. She has:
- Excellent burst heal which she can use without much resource expediture
- Trait button to “panic heal” and deal more damage (thus heal more)
- Shrink Ray which can hit up to two targets and only few seconds downtime between uses
- Armor and various other panic buttons
Unless you isolate Whitemane she’s the worst target to attack. In a sense she’s like an inverse tank. She has to be in the backlines and when she’s it’s quite difficult to take her down. And yeah, Whitemane has one of the worst PVE capabilities. E-build mitigates this a slight bit but she’s still bad.
Anyways, what makes Whitemane unique? She’s a burst healer who can quickly pump up your teammates to full health and has some means to save them. She’s a great healer choice against divers but somewhat suffers against poke comps. She thrives in tanky or aggressive teams where you can force a huge engagement. Whitemane has big cooldowns which enable her to shine for a few seconds but she’s more mediocre outside of them. It should be also noted that when active in the fight Whitemane has a certain rythm to her. Disrupt this rythm and her efficiency suffers. She always has a few seconds when it’s really bad if the enemy tries to apply pressure. She’s ironically both extremely forgiving and also unforgiving of mistakes.
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I very much agree with this. She still feels very similar.
I agree with that too. It is a pretty strange mechanic
Stack removal sorta works but it’s indeed a bit clunky. I wish desperation stack removal would be more dynamic and perhaps better integrated part of her kit. It sounds really fun on paper but quite clunky in execution. It has some niche uses like:
- Q+1+Q combo to spread 3 Zeals rapidly
- Q+Q+1+Q combo for spreading 4 Zeals without paying the price of 3 stacks desperation
- Q+1+Q for single target heal for 4 mana and doing it without needing to wait 1s for Desperation to expire
- Q+Q+Q+W/1+Q for proccing your Radiance
My main gripe isn’t even the Desperation stack removal, my main gripe is how you can rarely make use of it because you have to sacrifice the benefit of your Clemency/Inquisition for it. If you could cast these channels while using the rest of your abilities then it’d be way more dynamic. Balancing wise Inquisition was always hard to do because it has to worth your time for maintaining the channels given all the risks it has. It should be encouraged to maintain the channel as long as possible. If you could cast other abilities while Inquisition/Clemency is up you wouldn’t have this trouble. It’s a relatively simple yet very elegant solution to one of her old problem. Whitemane is all about the tempo and rapidity of her abilities. Why have something which prevents you from doing anything else for 3 seconds? That’s almost an eternity for her.
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Honestly I barely even consider the small desparation reset when I play. For the most its just something that kinda happens while I play. I also dont channel a majority of my Ws for their full durations unless I’m boosting my spellpower. Instead opting to move around with AAs or cast a Q or E (pre 16 anyway). I wish W was more like guldans talented drain life where your actively looking for opportunists to channel the whole thing like its your big power move. E does a majority of the heavy lifting in the healing department while W kinda just feels supplementary (even in a W build sense a good E will mostly reset your W) when it should be the other way around.
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I honestly think Whitemane is in a pretty good spot currently. Most of my gripes with her is that she shines the most in double healer comps – although she can still solo heal.
My other gripe is that I’m very good on Malfurion and I find him slightly easier to get much of the same value out of as Whitemane. This is more a product of me having tons of practice on him than him actually being easier to pilot.
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Malfurion is more sustain and support style healer. He works the best with flankers since your buff remains for 20s and can theoretically be maintained for even longer. Both Malfurion (as he is now, previous versions were different) and Whitemane needs buffs on people to heal them but Malfurion’s style is more about management and upkeep while for Whitemane’s is more reactive. Basically the longer Regrowth is on people the better while the less you need to use Desperate Plea the better. So they turn out to be very different. That being said I played a lot of Malfurion before Whitemane and hence I made an easy switch. I’m not sure I can do the same with the reworked one but that’s how I grew familiar with her.
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Managing which allies have buffs on them and handling constant repositioning to maximize offensive healing while staying alive is something that overlaps between both of them.
The main difference is that Malfurion is almost rhythm based while Whitemane is more combo focused. I also find Malfurion easier if my allies are bad. Bad allies eat too much poke and refuse to actually fight once engaged on – which is where Whitemane is strongest. You want hard engage fights with minimal poke when playing her. At higher skill levels (Plat/Diamond) I found Whitemane easy to perform very well on, in lower ranks Malfurion was much easier.
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In lower ranks I feel you land your abilities more often and need your team to engage less. You also find yourself using the W way more frequently as Whitemane so it balances out. Then again, the problem with trying to measure skill levels apart from our own is that sometimes if the other player knows what we do then they wouldn’t be on that skill level to begin with. So I may think that since WM lands her abilities reliably and almost never gets punished she could be absolutely cheeky but perhaps the average silver-ranked player with experience on Whitemane would be just as timid and hence it doesn’t matter.
BTW, Whitemane also has a very typical rhythm in battle. Actually, I feel catching her in that rhythm is the best way to punish her.
No, simple some heroes are niche, not all heroes should be for masses.