Hello everyone, welcome to this guide.
Before we get started, I want to point out that I am not a pro
Illidan player and I'm open to suggestions to improve this guide but as I started playing him I didn't find a quick step by step guide on how to play him properly. Hence this guide.
I have spent the last week and countless games to improve my play with him and I came to realize that most of his power doesn't come from his build but from the way you play. If you don't play him right, you'll die all the time, it's a high risk, high reward hero.
So this is what this guide will be all about! No build, no high level strategy, ... There are already plenty very good guides about that on heroesfire.
So without further delay, let's dive into Illidan's versatility.
Growing strength
Illidan grows in strength as the match progresses :
- Before level 4-7 you are quite weak, engage safely because a lot of heroes can take you down
- From level 7-10 onward you can kill most heroes in a 1v1 situation
- You can win 1v2 encounter depending on the situation and the level advantage
- You should not engage at all in 1v3 situation even if you feel like you can do it
Be usefull
Out of battle,
Illidan has a lot of utility :
- You can clear siege camps from level 4 and bruisers from level 7 so if you have nothing else to do, get the mercenaries, use
Evasion and
Sweeping Strike as much as possible and it should be very quick
- Clear mercenary waves coming at your base when you have the time, you are good at it
- When you are low on health, pull back and attack minions, structures, ... to get back your health, it will be faster than going back to base
Other tips
-
Dive deals less damage than your auto attack so use it only to move around
-
Metamorphosis and
The Hunt can be used to engage but very importantly to disengage
- You can fight under towers if your
Evasion is active but beware that you will still get the movement speed debuf from the forts
- If you have a
Support, stay in his range, this will make you nearly unstoppable
- The
Evasion only avoids auto attacks and turret shots not abilities
- If you are dying too much, get mercenaries that will push your team in the right direction
Before engaging, you should know the hero you are attacking, they fall in different categories :
Auto attack based heroes :
|
- They can do very little to counter you while
Evasion is active
- They cannot run away from you because you can stick to them with
Sweeping Strike and
Dive
- You can usually kill them or zone them out easily
- Heroes such as
 Raynor,
 Valla,
 Nova, ... are auto attack based
|
Ability based heroes
|
- Your
Evasion is useless against abilities so they can deal a serious amount of damage to
Illidan
- The best way to deal with them is to wait for them to cast their abilities before engaging and catch them when their abilities are on cooldown
- Heroes such as
 Jaina,
 Kael'thas,
 Zagara, ... are ability based
|
Heroes with blind abilities
|
- Being blind makes you miss all your auto attacks and lose the effect of
 Betrayer's Thirst
- You will not deal any damage with your auto attacks
- You lose your main source of health regeneration
- You lose the ability to reduce the cooldown of your abilities
- You basically loose all your damage for the duration of the blind
- So avoid being blinded at all costs
- Heroes such as
 Johanna,
 Li Li,
 Artanis have blind abilities
|
Heroes with stun and roots abilities
|
|
For the same reasons as the heroes with blind abilities but mostly :
- They can isolate you and overpower you
- You are usually a bit out of position when in battle so you are an easy target
- When you are not attacking, you are just a sitting duck waiting to be killed
- Heroes such as
 Diablo,
 E.T.C.,
 Uther, ... have stun abilities
- Heroes such as
 Malfurion,
 Arthas, ... have root abilities
|
Azmodan, the lord of Sin
|
- His
 All Shall Burn is an ability channeled over time and your
Evasion is useless against it
- There is nothing you can do to cancel the channeling besides getting out of range
- At level 4 he can get
 Gluttony which allows him to heal from that death beam and that is more than you can handle
- At level 13 he can get
 March of Sin which allows him to move while channeling and so pursue you when you try to disengage
- Engage on him only if the death ray is locked on something else
- The good news is that you can body block him quite easily when he is on the run, using
Dive
|
I hope you enjoyed this guide and that it brought some insight to the understanding of how to play
Illidan
Let me know in the comments if I'm missing something or if you'd like to add anything to this guide, give me a thumbs up if this guide helped you :-)
I wish you a pleasant day,
Rengi
History log
2015-11-24 : Initial version
Assassin
Specialist
Mosh Pit
Shadow Shield
Immolation
First Aid
Giant Killer
Blood for Blood
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