I go by the name JMV, I'm a long time MOBA player having been around since the early DotA times in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. I've been playing since early alpha having peaked in the higher MMR bracket where I've played alongside a lot of the curret pro-scene players and had the great opportunity to learn a lot about this game. I've recently acquired my EU Beta key and am leveling up my new EU account (there was no EU server during most of the alpha).
I play mostly assassins, my favorite heroes being Valla and Nova (for whom I intend to write a guide really soon).

I'll also start to stream Heroes in my twitch channel where I'll be playing a lot of Valla and Nova to try and showcase some of the main points referenced in the guides in order to record footage that I'll post here to enrich and illustrate the text. A full video guide may follow if you guys show interest in that.

For updates be sure to check out my twitch as I'll be streaming every weekday during afternoon (UTC) and showing you how these heroes work!

With that said, a big thank you for choosing my guide and please do post in the comments if there is any other specific matchup you'd like to know more about or if there is any other aspect of playing Valla that you'd like me to elaborate on.

You can find me at: JMV TV

Now! Time for you to discover this rather musical guide. Do click the links, that's part of the fun.

Valla is a pretty straight forward hero when it comes to identifying what you're going to get from her. Damage. No matter how it is that it's going to happen you know it's going to be damage. But now you ask, but JMV if that's all she does, why did you title this as "Adaptable"? Well, my friend, that's where this hero becomes interesting.

Point being: Valla has the capacity to adapt her build to do damage no matter what. People who focus mainly on damage-dealing roles in MOBAs will be familiar with the issue.
Sometimes the enemy team presents itself with compositions that make it hellishly hard to do damage because you're so busy just stayin' alive.

Now that you've cleared that most important link and you've set the ambiance, you're ready to master the arts of the demon hunter (the diablo one of course, and yes kids, Illidan was a demon hunter in warcraft 3).





So we have three main ways to build Valla and here they are (each with appropriate theme song for you to listen after you've made your choice):

The Indestructible Valla: This is the optimal build. If you think you'll be able to survive most of the enemy threats without relying too much on your team saving your sorry *** then this is the build you want to chose.



The Village People Valla: IN CASE OF Illidan YOUNG MAN! THERE'S NO NEED TO FEEL DOWN! GET YOURSELF OFF THE GROUND! THERE'S A BUILD YOU CAN GO AND I'M SURE YOU'LL FIND MANY WAYS TO HAVE A GOOD TIME! Maybe.

This reliant build is the safe option to do a decent amount of ability-based damage and still have a decent array of tools at your disposal if you need to make a quick exit. This build assumes you're going to spam abilities while throwing in auto-attacks in between.



The S.O.S. Valla: This is the absolute panic button for when you've queued up in quick match and found yourself in a team with Zeratul, Nova, Abathur and Murky and you absolutely have to survive. If you think your pirmary goal in a game is surviving then take this build. Your damage output won't be nearly as good as with one of the other builds but you shouldn't get killed if you opt for the S.O.S. Valla because you'll have nearly endless escape options at your disposal. I don't recommend this build for any serious games because obviously people will understand that you're not a real threat, will not chase you and will simply take objectives and win the game. I wanted to cover it in this guide just to tell you guys that this build path exists and has a theoretical purpose, it's just not that great. Also now if you see someone using this build you'll know what to do. Don't chase.



With no further due, let's get down to business.

Q: Hungering Arrow


This is mostly a tool you rely on as a finisher for people running away or as a way to win damage trades in early stages of the game. Its upgrade-ability is garbage so even if you pick every single one of them hungering arrow talents you're not going to go very far.


W: Multishot

This is good AoE, it scales A LOT better than the . This is one of your primary damage sources should you decide that you can't put many autos in. This is your lifeline in case of Illidan. In conjuction with , this is the main tool to survive dive-heavy comps.



E: Vault

Your one and only get of jail free card. You might need to upgrade it with one or two talents (discussed further in the talent section) in case you're getting dove hard and your team cannot present an effective way to deal with that. Vault is also a great tool (like any dash really) to outplay people and dodge their stuff in 1v1 situations.



R: Strafe

The all-purpose ultimate you want to pick in most comfortable situations. If your team has enough CC and does not need a little bit of extra control from you (which it shouldn't right? You're optimal use is not CC) this is the way to go. It outputs most damage in realistic situations.



R: Rain of Vengeance

In an ideal situation, you could get more juice out this than but lets face it, when will you hit all the charges of on all of the enemies? This is the ultimate you pick when your team needs CC or when they just refuse to use any of their CC to help you against divers.


Trait: Hatred

You move faster and hit harder the more autos you put in. This trait has very good upgrade-abiltiy and is crucial in maxing out your damage output as well as in your ability to kite heroes with bad gap closing ability.

Sucks that you have to make such a big choice right at level 1, before you have seen how your teammates and your opponents like to play. As for the three talents I've excluded (smaller icons), I don't really see them having any medium to long term efficiency in the game, it's pretty simple. Now between and it comes down to a teamcomp based decision. If you're sure that you're going to struggle and your team is Nova, Zeratul, Raynor and Illidan, you lack CC, then you're going to have to try and make the best out of the tools you're given and the starting point to doing that is taking . In any common situation you want to take since it's such a great tool for maximizing your damage output.






The only talent that you actually exclude here is the one based on because it's such an unreliable ability. The comfort options are and . You should consider against squishy teams (for newcomers, that means teams with low health pools) but, against tanky teams and if you like dueling, you should go for which is definitely my level 4 talent of choice. It allows you to sustain and outduel most tanks once you get because you'll be doing more damage the larger their health pool is and getting more health back the more damage you do. While the damage potential against squishy targets is higher with , it becomes much more efficient to get health back when you maximize your damage output via stronger talents (eg. , ).






Once again, you exclude the talent based on . is the absolute panic option, if you need a way to escape and survive, this is what you take. The reasoning behind taking is when you need to improve your safety but you're not absolutely freaking now. This talent allows you to cast your abilities more often and while there's always the valid point that Valla has decently low cooldowns and reducing them by a small amount would be bad, this helps you cast your more often, and if you're going for that build, you'll do a lot more damage if you spam it. REMEMBER THIS IS ONLY USEFULL IF YOU CAN ACTUALLY GET AUTO ATTACKS IN, IF YOU CAN'T THEN JUST TAKE BECAUSE IT MEANS YOU'RE IN PANIC MODE AND YOUR EGO IS JUST TO FAT TO ACCEPT IT!

Needless to say, cool kids take , so if you're cool, take it. Cool kids dont feed though, remember that.






No rocket science here. Confort choice is . If you lack CC or want a little bit of an extra window/tool to run away from a dangerous enemy, take but bear in mind odds are it won't be a teamfight wrecking ultimate with the potential of strafe.







Whole lotta' talens up in here and a whole lotta' things to say so lets break it down one by one:

=> Can't hide my preference for this one. Mid to late game you tend to find yourself face to face with walking pots of health points trying to zone you out of fights and if you take this beauty you can not only refuse to get zoned, you can also say "**** you" to their face and murder them.

=> This one comes in as part of the panic build. With the cooldown reduction from it can be a viable kiting tool. If you've taken and then you're set for taking this talent too. You know what I think of you people, here's a little something for you people.

=> This is lie, just like the cake, you don't need to chase and if you ever need to chase you don't need this ****py *** talent, you already have enough tools. Looking at the other options for a level 13 talent this is just like a used cars salesman trying to get you to buy something you don't want nor need. Bad business.

=> I didn't exclude this for one reason only. Maybe there's some wacky game of duels where you just keep going at it and you need some extra dueling power. MAYBE. Assuming they don't have a lot of tanky heroes. MAYBE. Otherwise it's bad business just like .

=> This can be decent and would be my rank 3 choice after and . Be careful who you pick this against, this won't save your sorry *** from Illidan since a lot of his damage comes from basic attacks. For that you have to use the build that these guys sponsor. No, it's never too many times.
This can save you from Nova and Zeratul and any hero whose kit relies mostly on ability damage.







There is only onekind of talent here, and that's . If you didn't know that by now, you're one of those people. This talent has it all, helps you destroy tanks, gives you that deadly kiting/chasing tool with the slow and allows you to duel mostly anyone.

Now, for those people: Take , it's approved by. This allows you to escape a lot of sticky situations where one single vault wouldn't be enough to get you out of danger. Take into consideration that this is for absolute panic only because is also a kiting tool as it slows your target.

is good, sure. If you have a LOT OF CC in your team, and by A LOT I mean A LOT. Why? 40% is a huge steroid even if it's not for very long. BECAUSE by taking this you're passing up and that is one of the best talents in the game. I won't blame you if you take but if you do you have to make sure you don't need the slow or the dueling power, that your team can keep you safe and that your team has a lot of CC. That's a lot of check boxes.

=> % Max Heatlh shield uh. What's 30% of ****? Yup. A small bucket of ****. No, seriously, your health pool and health scaling is bad, don't take this ****. This is the used cars salesman all over again.







All these talents are valid. Take if you're fine destroying people with your autos using the comfort build or if you can a lot of targets during teamfights and not get killed, that's not supposed to happen a lot though.

Take if you're getting some good ultimates off and you think you can maximize the potential of this talent by hitting a lot of people frequently. If you're just looking for a reliable escape tool you should go with as this is probably the best get out of jail free card in the game.

You're not a godly killing machine yet. This is the one truth about Valla that you need to keep in mind at all times during the early game. You're built to survive the early game not to 1v5 and AFK BCUZ 2EZ4ME. You'll die 1v1 to most heroes in early game 1v1's. Stay back, soak as much xp as you can. Move around from lane to lane, that's your key to being usefull in the early game.

Be carefull not to be out of position for objectives but always go to empty lanes and try to soak as much xp as you possibly can.

I'd call levels 10-13 Mid game, it's made as a subsection here because the boundaries of what "Mid Game" is in heroes of the storm make for a debatable topic. I'll go more in-depth on this matter in a future general strategy guide I intend to write. This is the point where you start to become a seriously strong back line in most fights. Your job is to stay alive at all costs and do as much damage as you can. Depending on the build path you chose that might mean running around spamming spells with autos in-between or right clicking people to death but remember: Name of the game is stayin' alive.

And of course, get your team to take objectives/camps and always be there to help them in case fights break out because odds are they will lose a lot of fights if you're not there. Or if you die miserably because you got caught, that too.


At this point, with the optimal build you can easily 1v3 a lot of heroes and you're a key to winning games. You'll be able to take down a lot of tanks by yourself but getting CC'ed and bursted with a 1 minute long death timer might mean you just costed your team the game. Remember, Valla is very fragile. She can clean up teamfights and beat enemies even when you're outnumbered but that means you have to play smart.

Look at the heroes in the enemy team and identify which ones have pieces of CC that can possibly pin you down. Keep those heroes in mind and watch them at all times during a fight. When they blow their CC on someone else you can go more aggressive and ROFLSTOMP EVERYONE, but until they do, stay in a safe position from them. Of course you should also look at the whole enemy team and set a priority list in your head. You mentally identify who you want to kill first if hypothetically had equal safe access to every enemy target. Then, you focus people according to that list of priorities bearing in mind that there is some CC and burst that you need to wait out before you can get to the people that rank higher on your priority list. If you have to hit Muradin for half the fight that's fine. That Arthascan hold on to his cc and die with it and only then will you go in aggressively.

This is something that requires PRACTICE. To maximize your damage you need to get used to making this mental priority list as well as to identify all the potential threats that can kill you if you go in at the wrong time. Once you're comfortable with doing this, you can go on to the next level and envision exactly HOW the enemy threats can kill you so you're sure that even if that threat is full health but has that one crucial spell on cooldown you can go in and not be threatened by him at all because you KNOW FOR SURE that he needs that one spell to deal with you. While doing this you will be killed and surprised by some players finding creatives alternatives to kill you, different from the ones you've envisioned and expected. This is important because that's how you improve as a player. The more games you play against creative and skilled people the better prepared you'll be and you'll be able to predict more accurately every single possibility of what the enemy team can throw at you and play around it.

Thanks for reading and make sure to leave a thumbs up if you enjoyed my guide!

I'll soon be adding a strategy section for each specific map and gameplay videos that can illustrate some of the key points in this guide.

Be sure to check out my stream every weekday afternoon [UTC] as I'll be playing Valla the next few days in order to record the guide footage. I'll be more than happy to answer every question you have concerning this guide or anything related to Heroes of the Storm.

CHANGELOG

02/03/2015 - Guide Published

For now, until more content is added: