Introduction (It's been awhile) Are you prepared? Top
Hey and welcome to my 2nd guide starring one of my top 3 favorite heroes;
Illidan, next to
Raynor and
Chen. The jukey in and out assassin. I have 1220+ games on him. He is a blast to play in the right hands and is one of the most mobile heroes in the game. We'll go over how he works mechanically, my in-depth thoughts behind it and so on. Come in and be prepared.
Abilities Top
|
|
|
|
|
|
Illidan's passive is one of the strongest traits in the game. It heals you for 30% health each time you AA, but the CDR is the main strength. The biggest tip I can give is you should always be attacking something, be it hitting a wall, healing off the minion waves to get healthy, or to lower your important cooldowns like
Metamorphosis or your basic abilities. Q is your main source of initiation and escaping. It's 6 second cooldown is no stretch to
Illidan, as your longest gap closer, save it for chasing and escaping CC but don't keep it off cd as a illy your all about your AA's. Spamming your cd's to get them back with your AA's is something one should learn to master. W is your bread and butter ability to deal damage and gain attack damage and to close in on your primary target, When rotating on targets, it's better to start with your W than your Q because you lose on not having the buff from your W. Great for juking abilities likewise your Q. E is your on command defensive ability which evades all AA's for 2.5 seconds. Once you get
 Sixth Sense, it'll reduce 2 incoming abilities for the duration of your E. Great to buy you time under pressure and great for evading AA heroes other than abilities or AOE. Usage and timings is what will make or break you as an illidan player. Meta is what makes you a wrecking ball in team fights. It'll make you untargetable and invulnerable to everything until Illidan himself comes out of the ground. Also serves as a third gap closer. Normally you don't want to meta, unless there's these conditions; A) you got 2 kills and looking to chase using meta. B) You're in a bad position (in a corner or isolated from support) C) to hit as many heroes for as much health as possible. D) Surviving or escaping with it. E) juking important abilities. e.g
 Pyroblast,
 Wailing Arrow,
 Sundering,
 Emerald Wind,
 Divine Storm and so on. Hunt is a split pushing and mostly used to stop channeled ults like
 Jug of 1,000 Cups,
 Ravenous Spirit. It isn't as powerful in team fights than meta. But is good with globals on your team and to kill an important enemy like
 Lt. Morales. |
Pros and Cons Top
Pros
-Moblie
-Chasing
-High single target damage
-Escape artist
-Great vs heroes with no mobility, chases them for eternity.
-Excellent at 1v1'ing
-Pair's up well with support behind him
-Scales huge in the late game
-An iconic camp hunter
-Can't be bodyblocked, just
Dive's over blocker or
Sweeping Strike's out.
-Great vs AA focused comps thanks to
Evasion.
-Can backdoor the enemies core.
Cons
-Low health, meaning if he get's focused, he'll litterly explode
-Weak if he has no cd's
-Weak early game
-Needs a dedicated healer
-VERY susceptible to Crowd control
-Does not prefer 1v2's, 1v3's, 1v4's or 1v5's
-Useless body if behind
-Has trouble dealing with both CC and burst comps.
Talents Top
Level 1
| Ever since the buffs to
Battered Assault, I feel that both options are competiteve to each other. Immolation is still really good for it's magic dmg and clearing waves and mercs fast though. If they are 3 ranged, 2 melee you could consider this because it's usually rare to see the enemy clump as 2-4 especially if it's on
Battlefield Of Eternity or
Infernal Shrines or
Blackheart's Bay to clear the objective. You should also consider this vs
Nova and
Zeratul.
| BA is good if you're against 3 melee and 2 ranged but it's also good on most maps thanks to the recent buffs it got. You can get a ton of value with
Thirsting Blade,
Blades of Azzinoth and
Demonic Form whilst weaving in constant AA's. With most comps and maps, you can generally get away with taking it as it provides more value if you can hit 2 heroes in a team fight consistently. With a healer, you'll be harder to kill as well.
| It's mediocre, it just takes long and
Illidan is not a laner. immolation is just more consistent than this. It's got 20 dmg buff to it, but I still don't give it enough to warrant over the other options.
Level 4
| This is not recommended when a "Q to friends" talent exists DansGame.
| The best option at this tier, The increased range on your Q is insane, let's you initiate harder, and let's you escape with ease. You can Q to your allies with it so you can harass the enemy and Q out to an ally or juke an important spell with it. It's great.
| I'm happy to say it doesn't have that not smoothness anymore, which is great because it wasn't playable with it. if you took the other W talents with this, this will help you keep the uptime on your
Sweeping Strike while dancing around the enemy team doing lots of damage. + the 2nd charge means you'll have even more mobility which is good on maps like
Garden of Terror,
Dragon Shire,
Braxis Holdout and even
Warhead Junction. I still think
Friend or Foe is 110% better than this.
Level 7
| It's passive
Block everytime you use
Dive. You should take it vs
The Butcher,
Greymane,
Thrall,
Ragnaros,
Sgt. Hammer and
Raynor. However
Thirsting Blade if you manage to get the full duration off, you'll heal more than
Block can prevent. Also solid if you lack frontline.
| This is good vs low mobility mages like
Kael'thas,
Jaina or
Chromie. You can heal off a minion wave with it, adds more survivability in skirmishes, solo the boss, and in team fights. Combos extremely well with
Battered Assault,
Blades of Azzinoth and
Demonic Form. However it can't compete with hunter's talent in terms of raw sustain and you have to be AA'ing to get value.
| I find that this will give more sustain in and out of fights with 1
Sweeping Strike. Doulbed vs heroes is also a sweet bonus. If you need more lane sustain or just sustain this is your bet. I quite like this.
Level 10
| The regular option for team fighting and sockets a 3rd gap closer. It's great at; boosting your health in battle, juking important abilities, chasing low health isolated targets, and escaping. You should refrain initiating with it as your
Dive does that better. Only use for emergency purposes or to continue the fight (5v3 in your favor). More importantly, meta helps you stay in the fight longer and/or serve as a off-tank for your team. Also great for juking abilities thrown in your way to you to stay in the fight and win it.
| This makes you a
Dehaka basically as you can soak a lane and if the team needs you, you can just hunt in on the
Valla or
Lúcio, making the fight even. I really like this talent if I am on a large map or if I need to assassinate a priority target. You could argue that this is better than
Metamorphosis due to the cooldown but it falls off at level 20 because they will be grouped alot. But you can just take
Nexus Blades if you need more damage and chase or normally
Bolt of the Storm if you need to peace out for whatever reason.
Level 13
| 60-65% of games, you go with this. An all round great defensive talent to negate all damage when you hit an enemy hero with it. With it being an 8 second cd, and you're AA'ing constantly, you get 50% uptime on it which is nice. Also really good with the rest of your W talents, which only gets better at 16.
| Situational, but powerful in the right scenarios,
Samuro, or
The Lost Vikings or 3 melee, 2 ranged comps make this an enticing option. Hit
Evasion then
Sweeping Strike on all of them and you get insane cdr off your E. Making you able to spam it in a team fight as much as possible.
| A rock solid counter to ability focused comps. Perfect timings with your
Evasion come into play once chosen. Know when to pop your E at the precise moment and you negate 2 incoming abilities.
Level 16
| The normal and best option vs any comp, especially squishes. Since
Dive is on a 6 second cd, you'll be diving between every 3rd AA (auto attack).
| Only good vs cho'gall.
| Synergies with
Battered Assault and
Thirsting Blade, You get so much healing, it's actually insane vs 3 melee and 2 ranged comps. Together,
Battered Assault,
Thirsting Blade and
Blades of Azzinoth make you a AA sustaining machine, as long as you alway's hit 2 heroes to proc crit healing off AA's.
Level 20
| The best level 20 option for
Illidan, passive CC reduction on a melee character is fantastic. But it's the bonus attack speed that matters most since
Illidan has fast AA. Also works with other attk sped buffs. Effectively making you a god as long as you're attacking.
| Negligible compared to the others. People rarely separate and it'll see less use vs comps that are together all game. You'll just hunt to Africa and you're team will wonder where you flew to while your core is getting hammered by
Sgt. Hammer cause you hunted a
Gul'dan with 15% just to take his skull. You decide if that was worth.
| If you went with
The Hunt but you need more chase/damage, you can take this and kill
Valla quickly and gain an advantage + you will hit very hard with this and battered assault!
| If you need to peace out b/c you are one of the squishiest heroes in the game and you took
The Hunt, you alway's want this. Never a bad option.
Dealing with Solo Laners (He can deal with them if you're good at him, or kinda'ish) Top
Thrall, will win your lane harder than you can muster because well he's just better in lane than you.
Q him, fight him a bit until he pops all his cd's on you, dive the farthest minion to create space.
He burned both his W and E on you. For 12 seconds, he can't burst you down. This is your time to inflict as much damage to him as possible.
Charge him with W, and trade into him, if he responds with a Q and runs, attack the minions to get CDR (cooldown reduction) on your abilities. Now re-engage once he comes in melee range. Save your E for his
Windfury and you win for the moment.
Illidan, boils down to who is more experienced at being the true illi****er.
Evasion is key, everything else is secondary meaning he can chase you down but so can you with
Dive and
Sweeping Strike. Note that your trait once you AA him will
NOT work.
Zagara, will rain a zerg pod on you and a hunter killer that never stops. This is where people say Zag is unbeatable. This is false; here's why.
Attack the nearest minion then Q her, now you're into body blocking position. Attack move with her and force out cd's. Once she retreats to her gate, Q out to the closest minion away from her gate. Rinse and repeat the process until you wear out her mana. She'll either rotate to the next lane or call for help. If you notice the 2nd cause happens, esp if it's a hard CC hero like
E.T.C., play it safe. Don't engage until he decides to
Powerslide the minion wave for unknown reasons.
Dehaka, is an imposing threat, bait out the
Drag without getting hit (preferably). If you manage to bait his
Burrow, that's a huge trade advantage for you. Juke away and heal off the wave and/or capture a merc camp afterwards before objective. After fighting, beware of bushes shrubs or vents for him, if you hear him coming, bail out and play the solo lane game again.
Ragnaros, is a pretty hard matchup for you simply becuase of
Empower Sulfuras being able to keep him healthy in lane. What you have to make sure is that you don't take any free dmg he does to you so make him use his
Blast Wave and
Living Meteor. By the time those 2 come out and you've did some dmg to him, he would've used his Q on the wave.
Rehgar, is a formidable enemy now thanks to his raw numbers buffs. What you should look for is baiting his lighting shield and use
Evasion to dodge his
Ghost Wolf attacks.
Earthbind Totem is nothing to
Illidan. I mean a 35% slow on a movement based hero? Please.
Leoric, is a laughable solo laner to fight, as his
Drain Hope will fail if you outrange it. Besides you're like Sonic fast so it's lolerinoe. Bait his W, Q to the farthest minion within range. After that, he can't do much so you can give him the fists. You'll win the lane if you play your cards right, He'll sit there cause you're juking left, up, down, right and sideway's. Now for 11 seconds, he can't drain ya hope m8. Give him a beating in teh park. After you dealt with that skullhead, shove your wave up.
Arthas, is a little pest, Once you engage hard, he'll just pop his
Frozen Tempest and AA you do death, and he'll throw the occasional
Howling Blast to mess you up.
Initiate on him with your W while mounted, let him beat on you to fuel your hate towards him and his to you cause he ain't better, probably the biggest pleb known in this video game. Bait out his W, then for the next 12 seconds he can't pin you down. Kite away and attack the minions but don't kill them off (you need them to be a little ***** with you're Q and W), Re-engage until you force him out of lane. Watch the minimap for rotations while doing this as getting ganked while speeding around is not good (you won't have your Q and W to move you outta there).
Alarak, is a tough opponent, what you should look to do here is grind him to bait his
Telekinesis and
Discord Strike. Once you've unleashed those without getting hit by the combo, you can bang your head into him until he leaves. Once you know they're cd's, he stands close to no chance for you.
Artanis, is quirky, in a sense that he's radically funny to fight, only abilities to watch for is
Phase Prism, (but you can jump out lul.) and
Twin Blades. He'll look to bait you into his towers to phase you into them, follow him in but watch for his prism, juke it then you have only his W to worry about which you can
Evasion out of. He can't phase you for 14 seconds heh heh. He'll be waiting for them to come off cd. But it's ok, you can fight him indefinitely.
Chen, is a problem now, was a nuisance before, now is a legit enemy. Wait for his
Elusive Brawler, kite away then back on him once it faded. You can't bait out everything in the solo lane out of him cause it's all 5 second cooldowns, so best to just shove if you get the chance and wait for you're on rotation on him. Since you can't deal with him, you can force out his elusive then back off. If you can't deal with him, take a camp nearest to your lane and kill it quickly. Get someone to soak your lane while you do this. With the camp you can push with it and get him outta your gate. You can chase him forever so only chase if you can kill him. Otherwise play it safe but still aggressive to get value in you're lane without dying.
Tassadar, is ez pz, bait out his
Psionic Storm and jump him down. If you can force him to dimensional shift, you instantly win your lane til it is off cd. Always be prepared for the reckoning.
Rexxar, is dangerous cause he can stun you and effectively outtrade you with his bear. Here's a quick rundown to deal with him. Q behind him so his pet has more space to close on you, once his bear is about to close in, pop
Evasion and dive out to the farthest minion. misha charge is on cd and his
Spirit Swoop, during this opening you can trade into him without getting stunned. Battered is a big counter to him cause misha counts as a hero so think about it before committing to the choice. You can choose to use misha as cdr for your next move.
Xul, will
Bone Prison you the second you commit to him, bait it and kite out. Kite back in once it's down.
Cursed Strikes will DESTROY you! Either if you're with a partner let them bait it or you and dash out fast. Rinse and repeat and you outtrade him. Shove your lane quickly to pressure his lane. Take a (seige) camp if you have time or wish.
Nazeebo, is pretty easy to fight in lane, if he tries to pin you with his
Zombie Wall you can just use
Dive to get out. Note that your
Sweeping Strike will not "vault" through it anymore, ironically
Vault will.
Gul'dan, sometimes you'll be against this guy who should be with the 4 man if he went
Echoed Corruption. Anyway you have to trade smartly because he can spam
Fel Flame on you, if you commit to him, he'll just
Drain Life and gain what health he lost. Bait that and dash out, now that's 10 seconds of giving him good o'l justice.
Li Li, is really annoying, bait the
Blinding Wind, then re engage. don't chase to hard as her passive runs you into her towers. Heal off the wave if she hurts you.
Tyrael, is quite easy to deal with. His cooldowns are unforgiving if he just spams them or mis times them. So you win the lane if he can't already stop you or hurt you.
New heroes brawl and how illidonger fits in or does he? Top
-Illidan is a fantastic team fighter, but once the fight starts, he's vunerable to burst damage. He is at his best when the enemy committed all they're resources and low health.
-He is kinda poor in brawl because he can't get
Friend or Foe which is essential to his in and out playstyle.
-With the new hero, blademaster added, Illidan is a good matchup to him. Him and his clones give permanent CDR attacking them. They last 16 seconds to feed you free cdr so don't be afraid to hit them. We might see him coming back again b/c of this new AA focused hero.
-
Metamorphosis is godly vs
Mirror Image for even more bonus health. Use this to your advantage.
-
Critical Strike from
Samuro will not go through your
Evasion, but will unproc after he hit you. So the algorithm in the game thinks you got hit by it like
Windfury or
Betrayer's Thirst, but the game thinks the ability got through the victim but it won't allow them to hurt you. E.x;
Blinding Wind, Auto attacking,
Elusive Brawler etc.
-
Immolation will reveal Samey after a few seconds of him stealthing.
Burning Rage, mages counter him hard.
Illidan Comps and Matchups Top
Illidan works best with dedicated healers like
Rehgar,
Brightwing and sometimes
Uther for the
Divine Shield to allow you to go extremely deep without taking severe damage from any source. Semi supports like
Abathur,
Tassadar,
Zarya and
Lt. Morales all enable your aggression and buff you or shield you, which let's you prevent burst damage.
Tyrande,
Malfurion and medic to an extent don't pair well b/c of your mobility so they can't keep up with you. If you have one of them in your team, play your aggression smartly and don't dive deep.
stay with your healer(s).this will make you alot harder to kill without getting instantly blown up in a team fight.
Tyrael is also good with you b/c he can dive in with you, so can
Chen,
Anub'arak if he has
Burrow Charge so look for those moments to engage behind your warriors.
One of the best known comps with illy is
Rehgar,
Tassadar,
Muradin or
E.T.C. to prevent countering him, and
Li-Ming. This comp seeks to put all the eggs in the
Illidan basket if you will to enable him wherever he is. khala's embrace and
Leeching Plasma give illidan small burst absorption and more life steal. You will need another damage dealer when drafting this to give out more threats on the battlefield and not only illy himself and it helps because illy is mostly sustain damage.
The importance of aiming your sweeping strike and it's angles. Top
Sweeping Strike isn't hard by all means, however angling it in the right point for maximum value in pvp and pve. Ideally you don't want to sweep into a bad position in the enemy's frontline but you don't want to end up in their six because you'll be far away from your allies. If your the team's engage, you'll want to come in from your side of the map as going for a flank is risky as a squishy hero like illidan (you don't have any hard cc unless you took hunt).
When taking the bruiser camp, you can kite away from the melee mercs while attacking the mage merc, if it comes to you from the left side, kite right while stutter steeping away from it etc. As for team fighting, you'll mostly be hitting heroes in range to get the buff but positioning within range of your healer(s) in other words; aim it up and down rather then far east or west.
Maximizing your movement abilities. (Remember cooldowns are nothing to Illidan) Top
Ok so your movement spells is what defines
Illidan as a hero, so let's breakdown how you should be darting around eh? If you're on the run from the enemy,
Dive to an ally and
Sweeping Strike away. This will create the most distance from your pursuers. If an enemy catches up to you after you Q'd, save your W to dodge them.
Offensively, if you can't jump them right away, jump to the nearest enemy within range and W to them. You theoretically behind joined within they're body and you're AA'ing them, get two AA's off on them, this will bring
Dive up in 1 second. Now you are ready to continue the chase. If you have meta, don't use it if they are in range of your Q, if they aren't, Just W them instead and save meta for emergency or if you need to peace out fast. Sometimes you'll want the dmg buff provided by
Sweeping Strike, W them if they're in range of it, then Q to follow and move with them to get the most outta your AA's. Illy is all about his AA's too, it's his fundamentals to survive, cdr, and playmaking potential. So AA a'lot, even on the chase.
If you're in dire trouble, you can
Dive to an ally over terrain
Sweeping Strike, and
Metamorphosis to create as much distance as possible. Although burning it early means you'll be without it in a impending skirmish. If do it if you are below 30% health. Otherwise your Q and W were enough to pull you out.
Maps that Illidan excels/sucks at. Top
Example of good Illy maps;
Blackheart's Bay due to having an objective to collect chests to obtain coins. You need
Immolation to "burn" them fast like on tracer. The map is huge once it opens itself up to you. allowing you to punish them for pushing into your defenses.
Cursed Hollow with the right comp and build, you can do the boss with 3 people at the 9-10 min mark in the game or even earlier. Secure 1 tribute, sneak boss, take trib #2, push mid hard, rotate and take bruiser camp and hopefully hit 10 before them and win the first phase.
Garden of Terror is good for him b/c he can steal seeds and jump away with
Metamorphosis or
Friend or Foe if one of your allies is cheeky. Big map with plenty of options. You could try and take your seige just before your ally takes the terror to create more map pressure.
Infernal Shrines has lot's of options open to you, you can take mercs while the punisher is up (ideally on your side), split push if you know you've won the objective, run as 5 with it and afterwards capture mercs or follow with your team. Yet another map that is big enough to make it good.
Sky Temple is actually a good map for illy cause 1; there's a boss you can take. 2; bruisers and seige camps and you have
Betrayer's Thirst to sustain off the guardians should you fight them. Also pretty big once you roll over the enemy with your lead.
Warhead Junction is good b/c you can do one of two bosses and it's huge! Try and take seige once they come up as they spawn every 2:00.
Examples of average maps;
Braxis Holdout is weird but you can opt to be the solo laner if you have no other to do it. If after the zerg wave is done, you can do your mercs than look to invade if ahead. The boss attacks fast and rips you apart so only do if you get a full team wipe or if you have healers to back you up.
Towers of Doom is also okay for you as you can look to pressure any lane that has sappers nearby. if you win the fight/objective, take the bot sappers and gain more xp without dying preferably. Tale the boss after a wipe mid-late game for free core dmg.
Haunted Mines is (in my eyes) much like towers except you fight for 1 objective and with the seige camps added. You can take mercs while your golem is up which is broken esp if you have
Sylvanas on your team.
Dragon Shire isn't an amazing map but it's not bad either as it greatly depends on if your behind or not. Unless your an Illy comp, you should be piloting the dragon as you are melee. If there is no pressure on contesting mid, you can sneak the seige and take bot. After dragon dies, you take bruisers. Rinse and repeat.
Example of weak illy map(s)
Tomb of the Spider Queen is weak b/c of the layout. Yes it does open up but it's incomparable to others. Not that it's bad, but it's weaker than others as you generally fight for the objective and you really can't chase anyone early on.
Battlefield Of Eternity is another weak map for you, if you want any chance of winning, You'll need
Immolation to add more dps to the immortal.
How to Carry in Hero League as Illidan (being the playmaker for your team) Top
I can say as a player of this game since open beta. I can say the best way to carry on a carry hero like
Illidan is to minimize your deaths, have the most impact in team fights, try to top hero damage, take the bruiser camp just as the objective starts like on
Battlefield Of Eternity as an example and respect the fact that every team is different.[/u]
If you approach the draft as a first or third pick, don't pick him as that will result with you getting countered and your team salty; in other words, your chances of losing are far greater than if you were fourth or last pick. If you can, try to tell your team to play around you and pick heroes that synergies with you.
The maps to pick him are big maps that take the enemy team a long time to run to their gates. So the more the map opens itself up, the farther they have to run.
Illidan thrives on
Warhead Junction,
Garden of Terror,
Blackheart's Bay,
Cursed Hollow. Now if your behind, well that's a problem that you and your team will have to play around and kill the enemy that pushes to far into your base, but if your ahead, you will chase em down and kill them b/c of the extra distance they have to run.
How to approach fights with weird comps. (Unranked, QM modes) Top
Ideally you shouldn't be the one engaging, if you're in QM and you're the only initiator, you'll have to go in first. But be aware of they're cd's and they're ults. Your allies will back you up, or if they aren't say **** team (don't). Stay close to them and don't chase hard cause that's where you're alone with no help. Play your engagements smartly and if you got a healer,
stay with them! Once the big fight comes, bait they're cd's and juke out. If your allies understand what you're trying to do, they kite away with you. If they don't blow everything on you, wait for an opportunity and strike once allies bait them out. If you have another melee assassin, watch him/her, see how he/she plays things out, if he/she dies while trying to make plays, don't engage. If he/she excels at making it happen, jump in with him/her. If you have a range heavy comp, pick your engagements smartly and let them bait **** out first or bait cd's on you while dashing out for your damage dealers. Meta in the fight to keep the frontline healthy (that being you), just give it you're all for your allies to clean up the fight. Don't fred if you can't maintain just b and return or create an advantage elsewhere.
Metamorphosis in detail and taking camps. Top
Metamorphosis is your power, using correctly is a hard thing to do, but can yield great results if nailed it on m8. Don't go into fights without, you want it for baitcity. If it's on cd, just go to the brusier camp and don't use Q or W. Just AA the camp down and you'll reduce the cd on meta by roughly 60 seconds so 1 min due to it being 2 min. Use it in fights and get it back up in your downtime. Rinse repeat and life will be easier on you. Trust.
Knowing when to take camps. Top
If you're about to fight, don't do camps, you'll make the fight uneven so just show up to the team fight. Once the fight expires, take as many as possible on mostly your side of the map. If you can sneak in to they're side of the map and do their camps, go ahead and do it. If you think it's to risky, don't do it especially if you're doing the hard camp (brusiers) which takes 80-90 seconds to do. Seige take less especially with
Immolation so take their seige if you think you can get away with it. Point being; gain as big of an advantage on the battleground as possible.
Conclusion Top
Welp, thet's all for now. Hope you've enjoyed reading and I'm outerinoe. Peace!
You can check out my first guide on
Raynor here.
http://www.heroesfire.com/hots/guide/comprehensive-master-raynor-guide-zarya-patch-12084
Also the tooltip for sixth sense is
Kharazim's new sixth sense one, sorry if that's the case. Consider the in-game one for illidan.
Quick Comment (4) View Comments
You need to log in before commenting.