Xul Build Guide : Spooky Scary Skeletons :: Heroes of the Storm (HotS) Strategy Builds

Xul

Build: Skeletal Push (Split Pushing Guide)

Level 1

Level 4

Level 7

Level 10

Level 13

Level 16

Level 20

Threats to Xul with this build

Threat

Low

High

Show all

Threat		Notes
1		No Threat
2	The Butcher	For a hero so popular, he is easily rooted by Xul's Bone Prison when he's charging in completely ruining the Butcher's combo
3		No Threat
4		No Threat
5		No Threat
6		No Threat
7		No Threat
8		No Threat
9		No Threat
10		No Threat

Introductions Top

Hi, my name is Sugimori! I have a Youtube channel, and a Twitch channel where I play some video games like Heroes of the Storm, StarCraft, and Overwatch mostly. I am and always have been an analytical gamer trying to discover the best builds, and hate playing the meta. In my opinion, if the enemy knows what I will build due to what the meta dictates then the enemy will have the advantage. Off stream I like to play games like Dota 2 as well, so I have no shortage of MOBA experience and many times inspiration comes from Dota as well. More guide stuff to come in the future.

The Build Top

Skeletal Push (Split Push Build)

Since is categorized as a specialist, this is the most obvious build for Xul. His talent allows him to raise skeletons and we will do just that. In any other style of play Xul loses the effectiveness of his talent, making it as if he didn't have one at all. As usual, if there is a different talent that you can pick to let you deal better with the specific enemy lineup, you should do that. The build I have set up above uses skeletons and our skills to the greatest effectiveness in wave-clear. We pick at level 10 to deal additional damage to the buildings standing in our way of the core. and we pick at level 20 to reduce the cooldown of as long as we keep our skeletons alive and hitting things which is the whole focus of the build anyway.

Why Split Pushing is Valuable Top

If you watch me stream on Twitch, or you watch videos of me playing specialists on Youtube you will probably hear me talk about this a lot when my allies get mad about the fact that I am not on the "objective." The true objective in the game is the core. Period. It does not matter how the core dies, as long as it does. If your hero is a split pusher (e.g. , , , , etc.) then it is most important that you DO NOT JOIN YOUR TEAM FOR THE SILLY MAP GIMMICK unless it aligns with what you are already doing (e.g. collecting spider gems), or if you absolutely must to stop the other team from winning right then and there.

The value that you provide is that the enemy team must make a choice. This is especially effective if the enemy team is unorganized like in a solo queue game where the communication is less effective and potentially salty. There are a couple things that may happen when the map gimmick appears:

If they decide to 5-man at the map gimmick against the 4 people on your team they have a better chance at winning the objective (this is where your uneducated teammates will start complaining about you). The objective may do some damage to your buildings, but you as the efficient split pusher will likely do much more damage to their forts, netting your team value overall.
If they decide to send one person to kill you, and 4 people to fight the objective, there will be fairly neutral value added or lost to your team. If the person successfully kills you, they might lose a bit of health on their forts/towers but gain experience from killing you. If they don't successfully kill you, and you instead manage to kill them (rare occurrence as you aren't built to battle other heroes, you are meant to battle buildings) then you are lucky and gain experience and plenty of building damage, while there is also an even fight happening at the map gimmick (large net value for your team).
If they decide to send more than one person to kill you, they will kill you. And that's a good thing, you want them to do this because your team will win the objective as long as they aren't completely hopeless. Of course if you see them coming, or you don't see 5 enemies at the objective, you want to try to get out of there and move to a different lane if possible. Since they are trying to kill you, your team should easily capture the map gimmick objectives and cause damage to enemy buildings which is a net value for your team.

Tl;dr the above list shows that in almost every situation split pushing during a map gimmick results in a net positive for the team. And in most cases you are able to do more damage with your abilities than the team would do if all 5 were getting the immortal to knock down 1 tower and 1 gate (which is about the amount of damage all map gimmick objectives do).

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