Valla Build Guide : How to slay a demon :: Heroes of the Storm (HotS) Strategy Builds

Valla

Build: Demon Hunter Cheat Sheet

Level 1

Level 4

Level 7

Level 10

Level 13

Level 16

Level 20

Threats to Valla with this build

Threat

Low

High

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Threat		Notes
1	Chromie	If you're caught by CC she will one shot you but this doesn't make her the threat, but the hero who will CC you. Be careful about walking into her E or her R and otherwise she's kinda trash. If she extends enough into your team to try to hit you with R, just vault away and your team will kill her. She's new and already a candidate for a rework.
2		No Threat
3	Falstad	If you land rain of vengeance you'll win the fight. If you don't, you'll probably win it anyway. Try to tumble away from his Q and Hinterlands Blast (if he takes it). A likely scenario is that he'll have his gust so scaring him into using it is great counterplay to him.
3	Li-Ming	Can't duel you. If you dodge her orb you'll batter her. Gets destroyed by the burst rotation if she doesn't teleport away from rain of vengeance (she will).
3	Greymane	You'll mess him up if you hit Rain of Vengeance on him. Vault to juke his Human E or Worgen Q and generally just kite his Worgen form to make fast work of him.
3	Lunara	Hurts early game then just kind of does nothing. Dies to a rain of vengeance burst, a common occurance in this threat guide.
3	Malfurion	Nothing major but his root can zone you a little. Doesn't directly threaten you much but can heal up your targets quite a bit and still lower your teamfight chances.
4	Arthas	Not as threatening as other warriors as he has no guaranteed way to mess you up. Of all the Warriors I'd rather be against him than anyone, be sure to juke and vault his root and you're fine. Don't take him lightly though, he'll probably fuck you up in a 1v1.
4	Sonya	If she takes the leap and leaps on you, you might die for it. Otherwise she is pretty easy to kite and whittle down. Don't sleep on her though, she really hurts and will outduel you if you let her hit you.
4	Tychus	His early game damage will beat yours but you outscale him and outduel him soon enough. He can zone you out a bit.
4	Sylvanas	If she silences you, she can outplay you and win a 1v1. If you don't get silenced and hit a rain of vengeance then you will win. If you can take her ult outside of a teamfight when an objective is close to coming up without dying, then you will stand a good chance in the fight afterwards.
4	Nazeebo	Don't get stuck in the wall.
5	Kael'thas	Pretty much THE best hero so expect to see him a lot. He's much more threatening than other assassins because if he takes Pyroblast he can literally press R and you will die for it if unsupported or you don't have spell shield. Otherwise juke his gust and land rain of vengeance and he'll lose a 1v1. Spell shield is mandatory versus him.
5	Anub'arak	He's not too big a deal if you can juke his gal closer. Squishier than other heroes, especially if he doesn't take cocoon. The problem for him is that his threat comes from cocoon. Being cocooned is pretty bad for you though.
5	Jaina	Has really good CC which can disable you in a team fight. she'll lose a duel to you but she can delete you (without spell shield) or just make your life harder in team fights.
5	Artanis	Pretty annoying and persistent hero. His laser ult can run you out of a fight if you don't have sustain and he'll batter you 1v1 Position well so that you don't get swapped with him and die.
5	Xul	Xul is really threatening because he has a point and click ability that will mess you up. Luckily there's a delay between clicking and you being rooted, so turn off the aggro then hide away in your team and you should be fine.
5	Johanna	She's not as scary as other Warriors but the things she does can be hard to counterplay because she walks fast and can become unstoppable. Reposition well when she's aggressive and watch out for the stun heroic.
5	Kharazim	He's got two roles and both are pretty annoying to deal with. Assassin Kharazim will mess you up, Support Kharazim will just honk your chances of killing your primary target.
5	Raynor	You'll probably lose this fight 1v1. He really hurts, he has long range and he has that powerful healing passive.
5	Valla	QM boyz. Don't get hit by Rain of Vengeance and land your own one and you'll win so easily.
6	Sgt. Hammer	Really strange matchup that I experience a lot for some reason. Your burst sequence can delete her before she can knock you away and booster off to safety but if she's not exposed (any good hammer won't often be exposed) she'll just zone you out and melt you.
6	Cho	Cho and Gall can really hurt you and their chase game is very good. Fighting this hero is pretty much a test of your mechanics and dodging. Keep hatred stacks high so you can move fast and remember that Blood for Blood is super effective and gives you a second life to fight with.
6	Li Li	Lili's healing is really nice but it can't be targetted so she can't really directly save the hero you're trying to kill by those means. She has a blind which cuts your damage out by an insane amount which is why she's a pretty high threat.
6	E.T.C.	A true test of your positioning. He can't truly force himself on you but if he does, you're dead to a Mosh Pit.
6	Leoric	Leoric can either be a pretty easy to deal with hero or your worst nightmare. If he puts you in the arena with Entomb then you're fucked. You need Bolt of the Storm versus that Heroic. If he takes March then he's not really threatening at all.
6	Dehaka	Pretty persistent guy and his trait makes him super hard to kill. If he lands a Q, you will die to his team mates so you gotta position super well.
6	Tracer	Pretty hard character to fight. If you can land a Rain of Vengeance she'll be too low to fight you afterwards but she's really good at escaping scot-free. As a result, she really pressures you to use your ult to manage her so be sure to only ult her in situations where it really counts. This is why Tracer is threatening, because otherwise she'll blink up and bomb/melee you and you'll die. Spell shield is useful but if she times her melee and bombs you 1.6 seconds afterwards then your shield will expire and you'll get blown up.
6	Tyrande	She's a threat simply because of her stun. Remain vigilant of it.
6	Zagara	Not threatening by her own devices but she can maw you out of a team fight and cost you the game.
6	Thrall	No point confronting him alone because he will fuck you up. Target him in a team fight and be vigilant with kiting him. Also vault his ult.
6	The Lost Vikings	Olaf's stun will mess you up. Individual vikings are very easy to kill.
6	Muradin	He's super mobile and really hard to kite. His stun is hard to juke because he can just land on your face and throw it. Giant Killer hits him hard because he has a million, billion health apparently.
7	Kerrigan	Pretty scary and persistent hero but can be dealt with. A smart rain of vengeance can let you and others burst her before she just shields and shrugs off your dps while destroying you.
8	Chen	Very annoying but rare hero to be up against. Pressure point can completely disable you and it has a quick uptime. He hurts too. Attention from a support can cut his threat down a lot.
8	Brightwing	Be super careful when dueling in games with this hero involved. Having a global travel into a polymorph means every fight you choose is dangerous.
8	Nova	You really need spell shield if Nova is in a game, she'll mess you up either way especially as it's a level 13 talent and she's an early game hero. Just remain persistent and attempt to outclass her in team value. If your support focuses on keeping you alive, you should be fine as the new nova is a bit less daft than before.
8	Stitches	The hook isn't that big of an issue if you train yourself to avoid it but being eaten up and spat into his team is GG.
8	Diablo	Has a few ways to point and click on you and ruin your day. Super threatening.
9	The Butcher	Don't even bother fighting him. He's super persistent, has a point and click homing charge and will just destroy you. He's not as threatening as the max level threats but he's still super scary.
10	Illidan	The one demon Valla can't slay. Can dive on you in multiple ways and kill you with ease. His evasion makes it very hard for you to counterplay him and his mobility makes it hard to hit with rain of vengeance to kite to safety. Valla is often a safe pick but if there's a time to have second thoughts about playing her, it's when fighting Illidan.
10	Tyrael	A bit like Illidan in the sense that he can just dive on you. His dive is even scarier because it isolates you and ccs you for your team to burst down. There's pretty much no counterplay to this other than your spell shield talent and smart bolt of the storm usage. It's hard for a support to help you in this scenario if they get knocked away.
10	Zeratul	He will delete you or Void Prison you. You're probably not going to get to play the game much with him around.

Talent Choices, understanding what you want. Top

Valla is not the most versatile of characters when it comes to her talents, she is picked to do one thing; Ranged DPS via her auto attacks. While I am implying that she is one-dimensional or linear, I do not see this as a weakness as she does this job very well and the ability to do so is pretty valuable in the MOBA genre. There is a bit of diversity when it comes to her talents and even some alternate build styles but overall I find myself doing the same DPS build with little deviation which I have named the All-Purpose build. Positioning Valla correctly and maximising your damage while simultaneously minimising the risks you take is what you need to learn in order to play her well but I will break down her talents in order for you to get the most output out of Valla.

Builds
All-Purpose DPS:
Squishy Bursting:
Kiting Build:

etc etc

Tier 1
is a pretty straightforward talent that does exactly what it says on the tin. 30 less mana from an ability with lots of usage adds up over the course of a game for certain, if you find yourself poking a lot with Valla. The problem with this talent is that Rancor heavily outclasses it, and making your poking more effective at the cost of cutting your teamfight or dps potential will really lower your threat to the enemy team.
Siphoning Arrow is another straightforward talent and another vastly outclassed by Rancor. Sustain is definitely a desirable trait but if you really want to go for it then take Vigorous Assault at level 4.
is pretty important in a multishot build if you're going to go down that road, which I wouldn't recommend. Multishot Valla is pretty much an Oxymoron in my opinion.
is one of the strongest scaling level 1 talents. 15% attack speed increase at max hatred is pretty insane. This talent choice is a huge contributor in your DPS from the game starting all the way to the end. Attack speed steroids are hard to come by as Valla but she scales very well with the stat.
is a pretty solid talent if it becomes your role to hit-and-run or attempt to delete squishy, priority targets. While this playstyle is sub-optimal, sometimes you find your role in teamplay being to do that instead of just churning out damage. Gaining hatred stacks that fast can give you frightening burst damage.

Tier 2
is one of the two outstanding choices in this tier. Sustain is a really important trait, particularly in maps/against comps where you end up finding yourself dancing around objectives and/or being poked a lot. Another common usage of this talent is in QM when you don't have a support.
is the other outstanding talent in the tier. This talent can churn up a ridiculous amount of extra damage over the course of the game and play a part in taking down enemy heroes, structures, objectives.
is a sub-par talent choice. The extra bounce on puncturing arrow is nice on a singled out target but it doesn't equate to as much damage as manticore or offer you as much as vigorous assault. If you're going a caster/burst route then arsenal is much better.
as I said in the paragraph above is a better choice than puncturing arrow when it comes to a burst build as it offers a little more damage in a burst sequence than puncturing arrow's extra bounce, despite puncturing arrow's synergy with repeating arrow. Also, the damage is much more instant and it doesn't involve the risk of the bounce hitting something different.

Tier 3
caltrops is a good talent for kiting. It synergises very well with the Tumble talent allowing you to drop a bunch of caltrops and keep diving champs off your face.
is a so-so talent, it's main problem is that it is somewhat outclassed by other talents within the tier, not to mention that gaining and maintaining 10 stacks of hatred can be a pain.
adds a lot of burst to your burst sequence build, an extra cast of your q is pretty powerful, although to trigger this you do have to vault in. Be sure to hit your ultimate if you're going to vault in.
is a very powerful steroid for dps build teamfighting. 50% damage increase for 5 seconds can decide an entire fight, and on paper it's a pretty big deal. Synergises heavily with rancor and manticore.

Tier 4/Heroic Ability

and are both just high damage abilities so I'm comparing side-by-side. If your team can enable you to channel off a good strafe safely then it will outclass rain of vengeance in damage. Strafe is a big risk to take and certain champions can just negate the damage, like or even . Rain can stun melee champs and allow you to reposition which can change teamfights or entire games.

Tier 5

damage really adds up in a dps build, particularly if there are more than one warriors present in the enemy team. For every 1,000 hp your target has, you deal 15 extra damage for every auto attack.
is another good way to deal with warriors, as being able to reposition is more valuable than a little extra damage sometimes. I find this talent flexible but usually just max my dps for good measure.
is a pretty badly designed talent as you need to have 20 stacks of passive (not gonna happen) in order to heal the amount that Vigorous Assault heals you for all the time. Blizzard pls.
really shines versus / / and so on. Pretty self explanatory talent that stops you from being deleted by ability damage which against certain champs and comps will definitely be the right choice.

Tier 6
is a pretty big damage increase if your team has a lot of CC. Since it affects slows, it synergises incredible well with and his frozen tempest, giving you pretty much a permanent 30% damage increase.
is a good talent for repositioning and kiting. The other desirable talents in this tier give a solid damage increase but sometimes tumble will increase your damage so much. It also synergises with and the burst playstyle as it allows you to tumble in, burst rotation and then tumble out safely.
is a pretty versatile talent. Burst on a squishy, bringing a tank down, self burst sustain. It's worth mentioning that against this talent does loads of damage and heals you pretty much 100%.

Tier 7

Tier 7 is a comparison between whether you absolute require or not, in which case you get , an incredibly important Valla talent. Having both additional attack speed and range increases both your offensive and defensive play marginally. I'm actually unsure of how effective upgrading your with is because of how much more you get out of Nexus Frenzy. sucks.

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