This is a good discussion on the two heroic abilites though, and I'm glad to see him incorporate these thoughts into his guide.

I'm going to have to agree with jolt here, if you are able to think clearly about how to use strafe in high tier game, it can be more effective than using rain. It is not the always go to heroic talent, but I would say I take it ~60% of the time. RoV is used a decent amount in high tier games, but strafe is simply very good, and RoV can be avoided easily in most cases. I also agree with jolt's explanation of baiting out interrupts early, or having them not use them. This really does increase the likelyhood your team will get a kill quickly, and be up 5v4 or 5v3 in some cases, at which point strafe is much safer to finish them off as the weakened members of your team have to back.

I do think blood for blood is a little better in most situations than executioner, but it is very dependent on the enemy team, the heal from it isn't that great, especially if you went frost shot, you can have an equivalent slow.

(Hero league as of this post)

EDIT: Strafe can also be very good, when your team needs to (split) push lanes. It is really hard for the enemy team to send just one or two hero(s) to take care of the lane that valla is in because using strafe after baiting out interrupts will almost certainly spell death for the enemy hero, or will allow valla to easily escape. This utility is really not found with RoV.

In most high tier games I have seen, when Valla goes RoV, it is usually easily countered by having a different positional awareness than when Valla goes Strafe. Also, for the past week, even with Anub'arak, most high tier games (and high mmr games), Valla's are going Strafe, simply because the positioning you get from it is much better than RoV. You enable your team to be able to isolate tanks because of the exact reason you stated, which will lessen the effect that the other teams assassins will have on your own team, since most of them have range, or escapes that allow them to easily position themselves away from RoV.

I'm unsure of what high tier you are playing at but, playing with the top tier player on top teams, and hotslog, most Valla's are going Strafe, but again it's not quite at the rate that I quote in the guide of 99% it's more around 75%, which is how I would say I have more recently chosen. It is closer to a toss up now, but you have to be aware of which one will be more impactful in a game given the compositions of both teams.

@Zycosis, I agree with that, you can however in a lot of situations be able to save strafe until the enemy team has used a lot of their interrupts, or you will simply have the upperhand most times if they wait on them, but in games where you reliably can't get off good strafe's I do go RoV, and will usually take blood for blood as well for more survivability and control. In high tier matches, I find my self still being able to use strafe very effectively, in most cases it's not from the actual use of strafe itself, it's from the potential time that it is used. I added my RoV build to the list.

Jolt, you're assuming that the enemy team has no way to get to you what so ever. The reason Blood for blood is so good lies not in the fact of its potential damage output but your survivability chance. In your build you have no way to survive anything for example a Kerrigan, Zeratul, or even another Valla running RoV. In high mmr games you have to assume people are going to be playing good, at all times. People will not use their single target CC's until you yourself have strafed. Strafe is very good, no one can argue its usage, but in terms of what will keep you alive AND kill the enemy team as well, RoV has the more potential to do both.

It's damage is better if you reliably get 4 seconds of channel off in every teamfight. You also have to take into a counter you can't use hungering arrow and MS while strafing unlike RoV if you add up that damage and the possibility of people stopping your ulti (which again in high tier play is a 90% chance) then RoV is better. You can position yourself well but again you'll only hit the tanks against good players unless the enemy team is locked down with dstorm/gravbomb/apoc which at that point RoV would be guranteed follow up. Like I said I played with strafe for 90% of my valla games (which is over 300) and against the best players in the game it's just bad even if you literally wait for the perfect moment.

Either way at the end of the day more high tier players are picking RoV lately because of how unreliable it is.

In all the high tier (currently playing games with diamond and hero league, and some scrimmages with top teams), RoV seems to highly lack, while it does take work to position it correctly and have your team take advantage of it, Strafe just has a much better output when used correctly, and hence it now has a much higher skill cap after the duration increase. You simply cannot just use it and expected it to burst down a hero if you do not position yourself correctly with it.

I agree blood for blood is decent, in some situations I do take it, but in most high tier play, the heal is really not what is going to help you the damage is and executioner does a much better job at that.

100% disagree, healing for 25-30% of your hp is a tipping point between surviving and not. If you use it on the right target then it's a guranteed chunk of HP and 25-30% of your hp in a heal by itself is an uther heal (at least before late game)

Using RoV properly will be a much bigger threat than strafe especially if you're patient with it, atm strafe tickles because the backline can run away from you and if you're just damaging tanks then strafe is pretty bad. If you're in a position to hit both the back and the frontline then you have a much higher chance of getting cc'd and killed unless you're playing against people with poor positioning which at that point it doesn't matter what talents you take.

In a high tier scenario though you'll never get a strafe that will be more effective than a proper RoV. Strafe is good against people who don't know how to stop it or against people that don't know how to position properly against it, the better the people are the easier it is to shut down a strafe valla and the more impactful RoV becomes. Not trying to argue or anything but atm strafe is just meh, it used to be amazing but after the duration increase to spread its damage out it's really not all that useful against good players.

I clarified the reasons I take Strafe over Rain of Vengeance. While I agree RoV is better than it used to be now because of some new disables, if you plan it properly Strafe is a much bigger threat than RoV is, because the enemy team has to decide on when they should use interrupts. I agree RoV is better if all you do is use Strafe immediately at the start of teamfights, which you almost should never do. Usually you should use it when you can get one or two enemies to really low health, and then finish them off with Strafe. This will force them to either die from Strafe, or for a teammate to interrupt you, at which point you can vault away and damage down the rest of the team, or for the low health enemy to have to turn and interrupt you, at which point you can aggressively vault and just burn them down easily. At first glance it seems that Strafe has a lower skill cap than RoV, but in reality it is much higher because of it being a much bigger threat that is harder to use (and get not interrupted).

I also agree that blood for blood is good on Valla, but her health total at any point in the game is not large enough for a heal of the size that blood for blood gives to be the tipping point between surviving and not. Blood for blood isn't really that good in teamfights because it usually doesn't do that much damage to heroes you want to be focusing down anyways. Executioner helps significantly more with the targets that you actually want to burn down, such as other assassins and healers.

Pretty decent guide, one thing though.

Blood for blood on Valla is rather good, especially used on tanks it can heal from 25-35% of your HP if used on the right target, or 15-20% of your hp if on targets like WD or high HP assassins like tychus. Saves my *** in teamfights and more often than not adds up more damage than executioner does in a teamfight again if used on the right target. Executioner is good don't get me wrong, love that talent and pairs with searing attacks/manticore so well, but when you take no other defensive BFB allows you to be aggressive and outplay people while being safe.

Just my 2 cents liked your guide though <3

EDIT: Regarding Strafe, it's a good heroic but in the current meta it doesn't do that much. You pretty much have to bank on late game to make it better than a properly used rain of vengeance, and I didn't start using rain till recently either strafe was always my top pick until this patch. Right now though strafe is just to easy to interrupt with heroes like Anub'arak (with webwrap) and many others that already stopped her strafe while RoV can counter those heroes and even divey assassins such as kerrigan, it's also amazing at fighting in chokes which is more common than not on most maps.