1. About Me
2. Introduction - The Dragon Queen
3. When to Pick Alexstrasza
4. Basic Abilities
5. Dragonqueen
6. Talents
7. Playstyle, Tips and Tricks
8. Facing the Dragon Queen
9. Conclusion
10. tl:dr

Alexstrasza is a ranged support that is able to dish out large amounts of healing. Dragonqueen allows Alexstrasza to transform into her dragon form, empowering her health and abilities while turning her into a badass dragon!

Even though Alexstrasza doesn't necessarily have any hard counters, she is more suited for some situations and team compositions. The Dragon Queen is always a nice addition to melee heavy teams due to Abundance and Cleansing Flame, and may suffer against heroes that can easily dive her, such as Tracer and Genji, or heroes that can negate part of her healing, such as Kael'thas and Chromie. Examples of heroes that go well with Alexstrasza are Thrall, Kerrigan, Diablo, Blaze, Greymane, Sonya, Cho Gall, and Muradin.

Pros

• High healing output if well positioned and peeled;
• Ability to turn team fights with her trait Dragonqueen;
• Ability to engage, disengage, and obtain temporary invulnerability through Cleansing Flame;
• Ability to chase with Flame Buffet;
• Doesn't have any real direct hard counters;
• Thrives in melee heavy team compositions;
• Thrives on timed single objective based maps such as Infernal Shrines, Cursed Hollow, and Volskaya Foundry.

Cons

• Lower healing output if low health;
• Lower team fight potential outside of Dragonqueen and Cleansing Flame;
• Easily burst down;
• Both Dragonqueen and Cleansing Flame can be interrupted, reducing her effectiveness for 10
  seconds;
• Somewhat weak self-healing without Fire Within;
• Heroes with area damage such as Kael'thas and Chromie can negate her Abundance;
• Not as strong in maps that require somewhat constant fights, such as Garden of Terror or Dragon Shire, although not particularly weak on any map.

[Q] Gift of Life

Gift of Life is Alexstrasza's main single target heal. Alexstrasza sacrifices 15% of her current health to heal an ally for 150% of that amount. The lower Alexstrasza's health, the less healing she provides with this ability. This makes positioning and general skill dodging very important as Alexstrasza since getting damaged will reduce your healing output and general contribution to the fight. Due to this skill's interaction with some of her talents, you should aim to remain above 75% health for maximum effectiveness.

Talents that interact with Gift of Life:
Level 1 - Live and Let Live
Level 7 - Lifeblossom
Level 16 - Tough Love

[W] Abundance

Abundance is a telegraphed area heal that heals after 3 seconds of being cast, healing allied heroes inside of it for 20% of their maximum health. This spell is also Alexstrasza's way of healing herself so that she can remain healthy for Gift of Life to be effective. However, Abundance is visible to your enemies and thus its placement requires some thought. Abundance should be cast in advance so that the movement of both your allies and yourself won't be interrupted by the need to stand in the circle. This is especially important when chasing or when disengaging from a team fight. In cases such as these, Abundance should be placed ahead of your allies, in the direction where they are running; in this way, they can move without having to stop for heals. During laning, Abundance should be cast in safe spots, either close to or even behind your gate, so that heroes such as Kael'thas or Chromie won't be able to nullify your healing with their spells.

Talents that interact with Abundance:
Level 1 - Circle of Life
Level 4 - Surge of Vitality
Level 7 - Verdant Flourish
Level 16 - Overprotective

[E] Flame Buffet

Flame Buffet allows Alexstrasza to become a lane bully. Flame Buffet is a short cooldown skill shot ability that applies an initial damage over time effect on enemies. Enemies hit by Flame Buffet while suffering from this dot take extra damage and become slowed, and refund the mana cost of Flame Buffet. Thus, this skill allows Alexstrasza to apply pressure for free throughout the laning phase, while also allowing her to help chase other heroes through the constant application of slow.

Talents that interact with Flame Buffet:
Level 1 - Flames of Fury
Level 4 - Heat Exhaustion
Level 7 - Fire Within
Level 20 - Ancient Flame

Dragonqueen is both Alexstraza's trait and her most iconic ability. This skill allows Alextrasza to shift into her dragon form, granting her extra health and empowering her basic abilities. Dragonqueen also increases Alextrasza's range, allows her basic attacks to damage/heal enemies/allies in an arc in front of her, and reduces the duration of incoming crowd control effects by 50%. Dragonqueen has a cast time of 1.25 seconds which may be interrupted, putting the skill on a 10 second cooldown before it can be cast again. Therefore, it is crucial that Dragonqueen is cast away from danger and from heroes that can easily interrupt it like Anub'arak, Garrosh, and Diablo. You also can't mount while in Dragonqueen.

Once Dragonqueen is active, your basic abilities change: Gift of Life becomes Breath of Life, Abundance becomes Preservation, and Flame Buffet becomes Wing Buffet.

Breath of Life doesn't sacrifice health anymore and has a reduced cooldown of 3 seconds.
Preservation has increased healing and a much larger radius.
Wing Buffet is completely different from its basic ability counterpart. This ability pushes away enemies in front of Alexstrasza, while also applying a slow.

It should be noted that while in Dragonqueen, Alexstrasza becomes much larger, making her an easy target for enemy spells. Due to her size, she becomes more effective at body blocking as well, which might not necessarily be a good thing since she can block her allies from escaping when cast carelessly. Additionally, talents affecting your Gift of Life and Abundance have no effect while Dragonqueen is active.

Dragonqueen also allows for your Cleansing Flame to become instant, protecting it from interrupts. While channeling Cleansing Flame, Dragonqueen's duration is paused but her cooldowns are not. Furthermore, all of your basic skills will be fully recharged when you enter Dragonqueen, which allows for big healing potential if you cast your basic abilities, activate Dragonqueen and then cast them again. This is particularly strong when you cast Abundance, followed by Dragonqueen, followed by Preservation.

Talents that interact with Dragonqueen:
Level 1 - Flames of Fury
Level 16 - Draconic Discipline
Level 20 - On Ruby Wings
Level 20 - Ancient Flame

This Alexstrasza build starts with Live and Let Live. This talent empowers your Gift of Life, allowing it to recharge much faster when cast above 75% health. Live and Let Live will synergize later on with Lifeblossom, giving Alexstrasza the power to heal faster without sacrificing health.

Some Alexstrasza builds aim to empower Flame Buffet, making Flames of Fury the level 1 talent to pick. With Flames of Fury, your Dragonqueen becomes more reliable since you will be able to use it more often. As a solo healer, personally I have had better results with a Gift of Life based build. Once you get to level 7, your healing output will skyrocket as long as you keep your positioning and safety in mind. Furthermore, once you get Lifeblossom, you become both a great pve healer, as well as an anti-poke healing machine. With clever use of Dragonqueen, I haven't felt the need to use it more regularly throughout my games without Flames of Fury.

Circle of Life is simply weaker when compared with what the other talents bring to the table since it only adds some healing to Abundance and requires you to go around collecting globes.




Heat Exhaustion is the most reliable talent pick at level 4. It empowers your Flame Buffet, increasing your crowd control potential, which can be applied to secure kills or to disengage from a chasing enemy team.

While Surge of Vitality and Exuberance are not necessarily bad picks, they are not as reliable as Heat Exhaustion as engagement or disengagement tools. Surge of Vitality requires your teammates to stand in your Abundance and Exuberance requires Alexstrasza to be above 75% for it to work. Even if you consider taking Exuberance as a survival talent, it is very easy for you to drop below 75% health when being chased, which is when this talent would be most useful.




Alexstrasza comes fully online at level 7. Lifeblossom allows Alexstrasza to generate healing without having to sacrifice health. Coupled with Live and Let Live, Lifeblossom represents a big power spike for Alexstrasza. From now on, feel free to spam Gift of Life above 75% health, even if your teammates don't have that much health missing. Lifeblossom is great at dealing with poke and pve damage but remember to be careful not to expose yourself to danger while collecting lifeblossoms.

Fire Within is mostly picked in Flame Buffet based builds. While healing yourself with Flame Buffet sounds pretty good, Lifeblossom simply offers better synergy with Live and Let Live, making you a stronger and more reliable healer for your team.

Verdant Flourish is the weakest of the three talents since it provides less self-healing potential during team fights, when compared to Flame Buffet.




Cleansing Flame offers so much more when compared to Life-Binder. With Cleansing Flame, you get area healing, damage, mobility, and the ability to engage or disengage. With Life-Binder you get a pretty good heal IF you or your target are high on health, after 2 seconds of casting it. Life-Binder is not complete rubbish by any means, and may see some play when paired with Cho Gall, but Cleansing Flame just completely outshines it for the most part.

When casting Cleansing Flame, remember that it can be interrupted when not in dragon form so try not to cast it right in the middle of the enemy team. Cleansing Flame becomes instant while in Dragonqueen, allowing you to prevent it from being interrupted.

Cleansing Flame is best used when your allies and enemies are fighting in a group so that you can damage and heal at the same time. Feel free to use Cleansing Flame to guarantee a kill on very low health enemies that try to escape. If your allies start fighting your enemies when you're not nearby, you can also use Cleansing Flame to reach them quickly and outnumber the enemy. Cleansing Flame can also be used as an escape or as an invulnerability effect when you get targeted or caught in team fights. However, make sure to get value out of casting Cleansing Flame outside of objective/important fights since you won't be able to use it for the next 90 seconds.




Both Pacify and Life Unbound are good talents that have their uses. Dragon Scales might be worth taking against heavy crowd control teams, but Pacify and Life Unbound tend to offer more utility for your team.

Life Unbound is best taken when you're part of a dive or melee heavy team as it helps you negate some of the damage that your enemies will inflict as a response to your engagement, while also damaging them. Regardless, you might just want to use it as an extra heal for emergencies. It is quite a nice tank heal and its cooldown gets reduced if you heal a crowd controlled ally.

Pacify should be taken against either high burst heroes or heroes that can give you trouble during team fights. I particularly like taking Pacify against Genji, Tracer, and Illidan as it negates their damage and forces them to disengage. Similarly to Life Unbound, Pacify's cooldown also gets reduced if you heal a crowd controlled ally.




Dragonqueen is an extremely strong ability with a long cooldown. Thus, it makes sense that you want to make it last longer. Draconic Discipline increases Dragonqueen's duration by 7 seconds, allowing you to dish out higher healing and damage for a longer duration. Furthermore, a longer Dragonqueen duration also allows Alexstrasza to easily cast two Preservations per Dragonqueen, without having to use Cleansing Flame to "stall" Dragonqueen.

Tough Love might also see some use since you will be able to cast Gift of Life plenty of times with Live and Let Live and Lifeblossom. However, this talent won't work while Dragonqueen is active, so it kind of loses its value during important team fights.

The shield offered by Overprotective is simply not big enough to make this a viable talent choice when compared with the other two options.




Ancient Flame is one of the strongest and most fun talents that Alexstrasza has at her disposal. Ancient Flame benefits from all previous Flame Buffet talents, including Heat Exhaustion. This talent turns Alexstrasza into a complete assassin with crazy long-range area damage and crowd control through the constant application of slow. Ancient Flame also benefits from Draconic Discipline since you will be able to maintain this damage output for longer.

The other level 20 talents are alright, but they simply can't compete against Ancient Flame unless you're not being able to get much value out of Dragonqueen for whatever reason. Blessing of the Red is a 500 health boost on a 40 second cooldown that just may be enough to save someone, but it can't be used on yourself. On Ruby Wings is also a viable pick that allows you to extend Dragonqueen's duration by quite a nice amount, which you may ultimately not need due to Draconic Discipline. It requires you to hit at least 8 allies or enemies with Cleansing Flame for it to work, which is not particularly hard to achieve.

Ritual of Life requires Life-Binder, so it's not even up for consideration. Regardless, Ancient Flame would still be stronger.

When laning with Alexstrasza, your job is to remain in the backline while harassing your opponents and keeping your allies in good shape. When casting Flame Buffet, position yourself in a way that allows you to hit enemy minions while aiming for the enemy heroes; this way you can preserve your mana even if the enemy players dodge your Flame Buffet since you'll be hitting minions along the way. However, be careful not to position yourself in front of your team since you can be easily burst down. Try to avoid as much damage as possible since your health translates into how much healing you're able to generate.

Be mindful regarding your Abundance during the laning phase. Heroes such as Chromie and Kael'thas can easily nuke down the Abundance area, and your allies might end up with less health than before the heal. Remember that Abundance is visible to the enemy team, so try to cast it once you know that the enemy team's area damage skills are on cooldown. Another way to secure safe Abundance casts is to simply place it near or behind your gate. Always try to safely step into Abundance as well, to make up for the health you've sacrificed for Gift of Life.

Once you get Lifeblossom you become very effective with dealing with poke since you can spam Gift of Life for no cost. Be mindful of the enemy team's positioning when picking up your flowers as it is better to miss a flower than to die trying to pick it up. Regardless, Lifeblossoms tend to stay around for quite some time.

Avoid using your Dragonqueen or Cleansing Flame while laning, unless an important fight takes place. Try to save these cooldowns for objectives or other decisive fights. While you're not useless without Dragonqueen, you're a lot more effective with it. Also, don't be afraid to cast Cleansing Flame outside of Dragonqueen if you must. Sometimes you might simply not need to or have enough time to cast Dragonqueen before Cleansing Flame, and the latter has the potential to save your team by itself. Treat these two skills as two different ultimate abilities that are strong when used together but can also be used by themselves with great results. Due to their 1.25 seconds cast time, you might want to cast Dragonqueen or Cleansing Flame preemptively if you see that a big fight is about to start; just make sure that you don't waste them.


The previous tips regarding Dragonqueen and Cleansing Flame also apply to team fights. Furthermore, when using Cleansing Flame, try to use it as both a damaging and healing skill, if possible. This is why Alexstrasza is great in melee heavy teams since you are likely to hit enemies when healing your allies. However, don't be afraid to use Cleansing Flame to heal ranged heroes if necessary, even if you're only healing that one low health Li-Ming that is trying to escape. In this regard, Cleansing Flame may also work as a peeling tool. Cleansing Flame can also be used to secure kills on low health targets that manage to get away during the fight. Be mindful of where you're landing after having used Cleansing Flame since you don't want to get caught by your enemies after it.

Dragonqueen can be a great source of healing burst at the start of any fight. Since your Dragonqueen abilities have a separate cooldown, you can freely cast your basic abilities before using your trait. In situations when you know that your team will remain in the same spot for around 3 to 4 seconds, casting Abundance followed by Dragonqueen followed by Preservation can generate very high levels of healing. This is particularly useful if you can predict the use of big crowd control skills such as Ring of Frost and Mosh Pit. Also, while in Dragonqueen, remember that your range is amplified, and so is your damage. Once Ancient Flame comes online, your damage potential gets really high, so remain aggressive while healing your team. Not only can Wing Buffet be used to crowd control your enemies by slapping them against terrain, it is also a great anti-engage tool that can disrupt the effectiveness of heroes such as Diablo or Blaze.

As Alexstrasza, you do not have access to Cleanse. For this reason, you'll have to rely on your healing for the most part to keep your allies safe through crowd control. Wing Buffet and Life Unbound can be used to save a targeted ally, but getting used to predicting damage and movement, and using Abundance accordingly, can go a long way. Also, don't forget that your Flame Buffet slows, which might be enough to keep your enemies from chasing down your allies. Pacify is a great damage mitigation tool that should be saved for high burst or diving heroes. Genji, Tracer, Greymane, Illidan, Kerrigan, and Thrall are just a few examples of heroes against who Pacify is really powerful.


Lifeblossom allows you to become an out-of-combat healing generator. Feel free to spam Gift of Life between fights and rotations, or during mercenary and boss kills. Grab those flowers and watch the healing numbers rise.

A basic healing team fight rotation would be something like Gift of Life + Abundance -> Dragonqueen -> Preservation + Breath of Life -> Cleansing Flame -> Breath of Life x2 + Preservation.

Dragonqueen allows you to completely mitigate some skills. For example, using Dragonqueen while afflicted by Pulse Bomb should remove it and timing it right should avoid Pyroblast.

Cleansing Flame is a good tool to get Life Unbound and Pacify back up. Consider using these spells before Cleansing Flame if you are aiming to heal crowd controlled team members with your ulti.

You are a queen and you must lead your people! Without communication, you can used Abundance to sort of mind control people into moving where you want them to move. Of course, there will always be that one melee Jaina that is going to make it her job to run away from your circle. Alexstrasza calls that natural selection.

Alexstrasza is fairly susceptible to burst and displacement. Get her away from her team and she should be an easy kill due to her reduced self-healing output. When targeting Alexstrasza, either make sure her Cleansing Flame and Dragonqueen are on cooldown, or be ready to interrupt them. If Alexstrasza manages to cast Cleansing Flame she can easily escape any engagement.

Alexstrasza's healing output is greatly reduced once she is below 75% health. Even if she's not your main target in a team fight, it might be a good idea to get her low on health. Similarly, you want to poke her during the laning phase and force her to spend her Abundance, use the healing fountain, and eventually go back to base.

Remember that as an enemy of Alexstrasza, you can see her Abundance on the ground. Try to take advantage of this information and save your area spells and burst for when you see the circle and Alexstrasza's team moving towards it. This is particularly effective if you are playing a hero such as Chromie, Jaina, Kael'thas, Nazeebo, and Kel'Thuzad.

Dragonqueen is a very strong cooldown that makes Alexstrasza a lot more powerful. Avoid fighting her while in this form, if you can. If you must really fight her, try to crowd control and burst her down. Skill shots should be easy to hit since her model is quite big while Dragonqueen is active.

Alexstrasza is one of my favorite heroes, and she is a blast to play. Her simultaneously aggressive and defensive playstyle makes her a valuable team member, and her ability to turn into a dragon really sets her apart.

I'll try to keep this guide updated if changes occur in the future or if I find new tricks to share.

Hope you enjoyed my guide.

Thanks,
Shalla

• Alexstrasza is a ranged support with aggressive potential;
• Dragonqueen is a long cooldown that greatly empowers Alexstrasza's abilities;
• Alexstrasza can be easily burst down when isolated from her team;
• Alexstrasza sacrifices her own health to heal her allies;
• Dragonqueen and Cleansing Flame can be interrupted;
• Alexstrasza doesn't have access to Cleanse;
• Alexstrasza can be a valuable support in most team compositions, while shining on melee heavy compositions and static objective based maps;
• Alexstrasza doesn't have any real hard counters but she can struggle with heroes that can dive or isolate her;
• This guide is aimed at solo support Alexstrasza and focuses on empowering Gift of Life through Live and Let Live and Lifeblossom;
• Quick build: Live and Let Live, Heat Exhaustion, Lifeblossom, Cleansing Flame, Life Unbound or Pacify, Draconic Discipline, Ancient Flame.