Hello fellow Heroes players! I'm Gengar, And ill be bringing you a guide on Raynor. This is the first guide I've written, and as I didn't see any currently available on here for Raynor I figured there would be no better a time to contribute my knowledge of the hero to HeroesFire. Raynor is a fairly straight forward hero, but he is undoubtedly an extremely powerful hero, capable of dishing out incredible damage while buffing himself and allies to also increase overall dps of the team. Also, in the right team compositions he is a competent Rat/Pusher, though heroes like Hammer or Zagara still do it better than he does in my opinion, but if you don't have one in your team you can fulfill the role quite well.

Pros

Incredible Burst damage for both himself and allies with Inspire
Relatively fast wave clearing ability with Penetrating Round
Auto-Cast emergency heal will save you over and over (even better when talented)
Lead From the Front trait reduces cooldowns, allowing you to use your spells almost constantly.
Both Ultimate abilities are effective at chasing down weak fleeing heroes (Banshee is better at it in my opinion however.)


Cons

* Poor mobility options make escaping characters with mobility difficult.
* While the heal does save you often, heavy burst can still burn through it before the heal kicks in.
* Limited crowd control with Penetrating round unless you talent for the stun

Lead From the Front

This Trait is amazing, and the basis for the build I primarily use when playing Raynor. What this does is reduce the cool downs on ALL abilities, including Adrenaline Rush and both Heroic Abilities, by 1 second for each minion kill and 10 seconds for each hero kill that happens in your vicinity.
When traited with Quick Fingers, available early game at level 4, it doubles the cool down reduction, meaning 2 and 20 seconds for minion and hero kills. Your main abilities have a 12 and 15 second cooldown, meaning EVERY hero kill in team fights resets them. In every team fight fight you should use both spells as well as Banshees right away, as each kill refreshes both Inspire and Penetrating Round and knocks 20 seconds off the large 100 second cooldown for Banshees. Banshees are also affected by Inspire and will chase down, and focus fire them instead of random targets like Hyperion, fleeing low health enemies, further lowering the cool down if they get the kill. Additionally, during laning creep waves consist of 7 minions; 3 ranged, 3 melee, and the regen carrying middle minion. With the talent that's 14 seconds of cool down reduction per wave, allowing you to constantly push and Inspire your creeps to keep lanes pushed in your favor.

Raynor's abilities are pretty straight forward, so I wont spend too much time discussing them, as the key points for discussion typically revolve around the changes to the abilities via talents, so I'll spend more time in that section going over the fun changes that talents apply.

Penetrating Round - Your basic skillshot ability, deals pretty good damage as well as knocks back enemies. Use the knock back to help get away from chasing enemies, but be careful as the knock back also helps fleeing enemies escape.

Inspire - Provides you with with an attack speed and attack damage buff while also giving nearby allies 50% of the bonus for 8 seconds. This affects summoned units as well. Acts as an aura traveling with Raynor, meaning allies that get too far away will lose the buff and if Raynor dies the buff does so with him.

Adrenaline Rush - Automatically heals you when you fall below 30% health. Its a pretty nice heal and will definitely save you often. Heavy burst assassin characters can still burst you down through this, as the heal is over a short time and not instant.

Heroic Abilities

Hyperion - Summons the Hyperion for 12 seconds to attack up to 4 random enemy targets in a path. Path is fairly wide, covering an entire lane. This works well for playing a Rat/Push build as it allows you to shell towers and forts while staying out of harms way, but it still hits only RANDOM targets meaning its not as reliable. additionally its path is telegraphed which allows players to simply move out of it if given the space to do so. This is not my preferred Heroic Ability for Raynor.

Raynor's Raiders - Summons 2 invisible Banshees that will attack Raynor's target. Attacking causes them to unstealth, and they can be targeted and killed by the enemy. They dish out great damage and they will chase enemies down, providing you don't choose a new target for them to begin attacking. I like to use this ultimate in every team fight, focusing on weaker heroes first to secure kills to refresh my abilities via Lead From the Front. Heroes that escape you will be chased by these, which can fly over walls and other terrain, to finish them off. This is the Heroic Ability I prefer for Raynor in almost every scenario.

Talents in Heroes are implemented in such a way as to allow you to pick them as the game goes on. For the most part you may stick to a primary build, but you still need to be aware of the way the game is progressing in order to make the best choice of talents. Typically, at least in Raynor's case, your first 3 talents are choices you'll be making based on information attained at the start of the match. These talents will dictate the direction your build is heading. You'll want to consider your teammate's heroes, the opposition's heroes, and of course the battleground you are on. For example, If you're playing on Blackheart's Bay typically you will want someone bottom to push that lane. If you don't have a hero suited to that, like Zagara or Hammer, then Raynor can take that role and you will wanna choose talents that allow you to push bases down fast.

Talents will be color coded as such:
Blue - Best in the tier for the Primary build I use.
Green - Best in the tier for the Rat/Push Build I use (in some cases both builds use the same talent and blue will be used.)
Yellow - Talents that cater toward Auto Attack heavy builds. While I don't find these builds as strong, when paired with the right heroes, such as Rehgar, they can be effective.
Purple - Neither good nor bad talents, may be better choices in certain match ups or battlegrounds.
Red - Not Great talents, for the most part there are better choices and these should be avoided except for very specific scenarios.

Early Talents -

These will for the most part dictate the direction your build is going. You'll make these choices based on what role you plan on fulfilling as well as the roles of your teammates.

Tier 1

Give Me More! - Increases the heal from Adrenaline Rush by 50%. Seeing as this build focuses on cooldown reduction, this will be off CD a lot, and having it heal for even more is great for your sustainability. Not the most exciting of talents, but the others in the tier aren't that great either.

Seasoned Marksman - Increases your basic attack damage by 1 for every 6 minion kills. Hero kills count as 2 minions. I don't find the attack damage increase to be significant enough to merit taking this. Builds that focus heavily on auto attack damage on maps with more minion presence (Garden and Mines) can benefit from this.

Demolitionist - Causes auto attacks to burn ammo from towers and do more damage to structures. Excellent talent for a Rat/Push build as it allows you to siege bases more effectively.

Bribe - Allows you to collect stacks of Bribe, 1 per minion kill, to take over Mercenary Camps. This talent competes with Demolitionist in the Rat/Push build, and overall this is just a straight up worse talent for that role as the bribe stacks aren't significant enough to aid Raynor in taking over Merc Camps. Other heroes with summons do it faster without even having to take bribe.

Scouting Drone - Allows you to place a Drone at a target location giving you vision over that area. the Drone can be seen and killed by the enemy. Basically this is a ward for you and your team, in the right battlegrounds and match ups having extra vision can be vital.

Tier 2

Quick Fingers - Doubles the cooldown reduction from your trait, meaning 2 seconds per minion kill and 20 seconds per hero kill. The foundation for the build I use with Raynor, this talent means your abilities will constantly be ready, both during laning and in team fights. The other talents in this tier all focus on auto attacking, and would potentially find a place in a heavy auto attack focused build, but I personally find the ability to cast spells, which Inspire already gives an attack damage buff, to be more effective overall.

Advanced Optics - Increases Basic attack range as well as sight range. The weakest talent in the tier. Even in an auto attack build the other talents have a larger impact.

Focused Attack - Every 10 seconds your next auto attack does extra damage. Basic attacks reduce this cooldown by 1 second. An auto attack build could benefit from this as it allows you to hit harder more, but ultimately more spells seems to be the stronger play style in most scenarios.

Vampiric Assault - Allows your auto attacks to heal for 15% of the damage dealt. This works to some effect in a Rat/Push build where your heal doesn't do as much due to taking Demolitionist instead of more healing in tier 1, but even when pushing Quick Fingers allows you to reset Inspire's cooldown with every wave cleared and push even harder. If you find yourself pushing against another pusher like Hammer or Murky then this can help your sustainability, but if you don't have much opposition when pushing then the minor heal isn't as important. Furthermore, Quick Fingers also lowers your heal CD making the minor heal from this less effective when you have your burst heal up more often.

Tier 3

Heavy Ammo - Increases the knock back distance of Penetrating Round and increases its damage against structures by 100%. Great for a Push build as it allows you to do double damage with Penetrating Round to structures.

Revolution Overdrive - Gain 10% movement speed when using Inspire plus an additional 5% movement for each ally Hero inspired. Raynor himself counts as an inspired ally, making the movement speed 15% minimum every time used. The extra movement speed is quite handy and will help you escape/chase effectively.

Fight or Fight - Adrenaline Rush clears all movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them for 2 seconds. This talent is good if you find yourself against a lot of CC. If you aren't against lots of stuns and slows then you won't have much use for this talent.

Searing Attacks - Increases basic attack damage by 50% for 5 seconds. Each attack costs 15 mana. This works if you're going for an all out auto attack build. Though I don't find auto attack builds as powerful, alongside the right support and in the right match ups it can work well.

Late Game Talents -

These talents aren't as dedicated to a particular role and the choices for these should be made with consideration to how the game is playing out. Are you ahead, are you behind, what kind of support do you have, what kind do they have, are you lacking CC, ect. These are all things to consider when choosing talents at these levels.

Tier 4

Giant Killer - Basic Attacks against heroes deal bonus damage equal to 1.5% of the heroes max health. If you find yourself up against extremely tanky opponents then this talent is fairly useful.

The Art of War - On using Inspire (meaning separate from the actual inspire aura, this only happens when its cast, not while active) nearby enemies have their attack and movement speed slowed by 10%. A great CC option for your team, especially if your team is lacking CC, that also synergizes excellently with tier 5 talent Executioner, allowing you to guarantee the bonus damage without relying on outside CC.

Activated Rush - Allows you to cast Adrenaline Rush when you want to, and doing so also decreases the CD to only 30 seconds. This is a great talent overall and will help you out if you are behind, but even when ahead its fantastic to be able to stay in the fight that much longer. a 30 sec CD is absurdly short for Raynor, meaning you'll likely have access to multiple heals in teamfights.

Spell Shield - Upon taking ability damage you will gain a shield that blocks 50% of ability damage for a few seconds. Can only trigger once every 30 seconds. If you find yourself up against some heavy spell nukes and without the necessary support to deal with it, then this is a good pick. Otherwise the slow or activatable heal is typically better.

Tier 5

Executioner - Basic attacks against slowed, rooted, or stunned enemies deal 40%. Great if you have lots of CC on your team already. If you're going an auto attack build and have taken the tier 4 The Art of War talent then you are able to guarantee the bonus damage due to Inspire slowing enemies.

Cluster Round - Penetrating Round damage is increased by 10% for each additional target hit and additionally is now 50% wider. Great for pushing as it allows you to clear waves even faster, and the damage can really stack up on large groups of enemies.

Bullseye - The first unit hit by Penetrating Round is stunned and takes 50% extra damage. If you have no good stuns on your team then this is fantastic. Due to constant uptime of this skill you can use this to incredible effect in teamfights, Stun and focusing down a target, refresh cooldowns, and then repeat on the next target.

Berserk - You already have an attack speed buff and can talent for movement speed. For the most part this is a longer CD, although better, Inspire, that only affects you. However an extra Inspire Vs the extra utility/damage supplied by the other talents means this one is pretty lackluster.

Tier 6

Fury of the Storm - Basic attacks bounce twice to nearby enemies for 50% damage. If you've been talenting heavily into auto attack damage, then sharing the love and having attacks now chain is great.

Bolt of the Storm - Allows you to use a short range teleport. If you find you need more mobility to either escape or chase mobility heavy enemies then consider picking this up.

Battle Hyperion - Hyperion now fires its Yamato Cannon and structures every 2 seconds and increases the number of shots per volley on a target by 2. Makes it even more effective for pushing down bases, if you need the extra push power this is the talent for you.

Hel's Angels - Banshees are now permanently stealthed and fire an additional shot per volley against targets. Makes your Banshees way harder to kill and also ups their damage output. All in all an excellent buff to your Heroic Ability. I typically take this talent.

Overall I find the build focused around Trait to be the most effective. There are great talents here for auto attack builds as well, but unless your paired with other heroes that can also buff your damage I don't find them as useful. Being able to constantly Inspire your allies with the absurd cooldown reduction provided from the trait and talents for it make you quite the presence in fights, and with every kill refreshing your abilities you can roll through teams in teamfights quite easily. Target weaker heroes and supports first, as even when they flee they will be chased by your Banshees. Works great on invis characters as the banshee harass will prevent them from cloaking. Raynor does have viable options to Push lanes heavily, but other heroes do it better and they should take priority on this role, but if you have none then Raynor can do it.

Thanks for checking out my guide! This is the first guide I've written and I'd love to hear some feedback!