Curse Sneaky
Thomas "Sneakybeavr" Boccinfuso is the acting captain and main support player for Team Curse HotS. Once Heroes of the Storm was announced, he was selected to alpha test the game and has been playing it ever since. Known as a top level support player, Sneaky has made a name for himself as being a high skilled Brightwing, Uther, and Rehgar player.
The Faerie Dragons of Ashenvale are known for their playful demeanor, seemingly disappearing at a whim. The mischievous Brightwing is no exception, often materializing out of nowhere to save her allies or just to mock her foes.
Pros:
- Heals with
Soothing Mist and
Blink Heal
- Provides minor CC
- Great utility (
Protective Shield,
Cleanse, etc)
- Global teleport
- Able to disengage your team out of a sticky situation with
Emerald Wind
Cons:
- Very little self sustain
-
Phase Shift can be interrupted, leaving you helpless
- Very squishy
- Can be out healed by most healers in team fights
- Minimal damage output
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Brightwing lobs an orb of arcane energy through the air, splashing damage to any enemies within its magical blaze. This is your main source of damage, just make sure to hit your target in the middle of it as it will do more damage!
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Nothing slows down a rampaging enemy like briefly turning them into a cute, fuzzy critter. Plus, it’s a ton of fun. This turns the target enemy into a sheep! During this time they are unable to attack or use any abilities. However, they are able to freely move around. This is great for canceling out enemy heroic abilities or taking a key member out of the fight.
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It won’t let you fly, but a sprinkle of this pixie dust at least lets you run faster, and it even protects you from enemy attacks. Not too shabby, pixie dust. This ability provides yourself or target allied hero a shield that blocks 2 basic attacks and increased their movement speed. Great for helping to chase down enemies or if the enemy team is "right click" based.
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Brightwing does not have a mount, however she can active this ability to teleport to a target allied hero anywhere on the map. This is really nice as you can instantly support your team no matter where you are on the map!
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YES:
Bribe is the most useful talent 90% of the time. It will allow you help take merc camps and even go steal the enemy team's camps.
NO: Arcane Precision increases the inner damage of your Arcane Flare by 33%, not really needed since Brightwing is a utility support.
NO: Scouting Drone is the equivalent of a ward from other games in this genre, except this one dies in one basic attack. It's always nice to have vision, but it's not better than
Bribe.
SITUATIONAL: Shield Dust is a good pick if the enemy team is running a
Bloodlust comp or is just heavy in "right click" damage.
YES:
Protective Shield is a great activate talent to shield your target allied hero. This is very good on Brightwing to help counter burst damage on your team.
NO: Anti-magic Powder boosts your Pixie Dust ability. It blocks one instance of spell damage by 50%. This may sound good but you are always better off taking Protective Shield.
NO: Promote will buff the target allied minion, resulting in better pushes. As Brightwing we are not a pusher so we skip this talent.
SITUATIONAL: Envenom is a really good talent to add extra damage and clean up kills. I only suggest picking up this talent if you are going for an early game win on
Haunted Mines or your team is extremely tanky.
YES:
Cleanse will remove all CC(crowd control) from the target allied hero and prevents that exact type of CC for the next 1 second. This is a very strong active talent to use if the enemy team is heavy on stacking CCs.
NO: Mule is used for repairing structures and/or providing vision to an area. This isn't very useful currently given how strong the map objectives are.
NO: Gust of Healing turns your passive into an active, allowing you to heal for 4 seconds in an AoE around yourself. There are much better picks on this tier overall.
SITUATIONAL: Regenerative Rains is very useful for boosting your healing output since every time you cast an ability you will pulse out an extra heal. If the enemy team is lacking in crowd control you should skip Cleanse and pick this up for extra healing.
YES:
Blink Heal is the heroic ability to take for healing. It gives you 2 charges at the start and recharges every 10 seconds. When using this ability you will teleport to the target allied hero and burst heal them. The one thing to watch out for is using it on your tank(s) in the middle of a teamfight as it will leave you in a vulnerable position.
SITUATIONAL: Emerald Wind is the heroic ability to take if the enemy is heavy on engaging so you can knock them away and allow your team to disengage or just to disrupt the enemy team. If the enemy team has 3 of the following heroes you should take
Emerald Wind: Kerrigan, Arthas, Uther, Sonya, Tyrael, Diablo, Muradin. It is also a great heroic ability to take if the enemy team is running a team built around
Bloodlust.
YES:
Rewind is the talent to take at this level as it will allow you to put out 2 rotations of your spells. that means you get to polymorph 2 people in a fight!
NO: Stocky Flare will slow the enemies hit by your Arcane Flare. It sounds nice but you will be giving up
Rewind for it.
NO: Phase Shield will provide a shield to the target allied hero after you teleport to them using your Z ability. Again, it sounds nice but
Rewind is much stronger.
NO: Sprint would be useful as an escape, but since you have
Blink Heal that can also be used to escape. Plus Ice Block will help much more.
SITUATIONAL: Ice Block is your defensive talent. I ONLY recommend using this if the enemy team is running some for of wombo-combo (High amount of stuns and high burst damage).
YES:
Critterize will cause your polymorphed target to take 25% extra damage. Just make sure you announce to your team who is being polymorphed so they can focus down that target and kill them right away.
NO: Hardened Focus will cause your basic abilities to regenerate (cool down) 50% faster when you are at 80% life or more. It's really nice but the
Critterize will provide more for the team.
NO: Sticky Powder will cause your polymorph target to also be slowed by 50% for the duration. There are better picks at this level.
SITUATIONAL: Stoneskin should only be picked up if you are dying right away in team fights and Ice block isn't cutting it.
Critterize should be your pick every time though.
YES:
Storm Shield will grants all nearby allies a shield equal to 20% of their maximum health for 3 seconds. This is really good against AoE comps, and will also provide more sustain than picking the upgrade to
Blink Heal.
NO: Ysera's Blessing gives you another maximum charge of
Blink Heal. It's nice because that will give you another burst of healing, but
Storm Shield is too good to pass up for this.
SITUATIONAL: Bolt of the Storm should only be picked up if the enemy team is able to jump on you, it will help you get out of the fight and you can just
Blink Heal back in.
SITUATIONAL: Continuous Winds should only be picked up if the team have 3+ heavy engagers and your team is having a hard time dealing with the initial CC.
During the early game as Brightwing you will be wanting to lane and collecting stacks for
Bribe. You excel at being in a solo lane or in a lane with 2+ people, although I would suggest lanign with someone to take advantage of your
Soothing Mist. If you do go and solo lane though make sure you keep an eye out on your other lanes and be ready to teleport in and help if your team needs you.
If you are going to go and steal the enemy team's merc camps using
Bribe, make sure to let your team know to either help you of keep them busy. Once you do get camps go back and collect some more stacks while continuing to support your team.
Once the objective time comes you should go group with your team as you won't be able to get much done on your own. Brightwing excels with her team!
Mid game is very similar to early game in the sense that you continue collecting stacks for
Bribe and fighting with your team.
One thing you can do on maps such as
Dragon Shire,
Garden of Terror, and
Blackheart's Bay is push another lane to keep pressure on the enemy team while the rest of your team pushes another lane/objective. You can instantly join them using
Phase Shift! Just make sure that you are always keeping an eye on the minimap to see the location of the enemy team as you don't want to be caught out.
In the late game you want to make sure you are almost always with your team and ready to fight since death timers are getting long. At this point
Bribe won't be as useful since you won't be in lanes very much, but if you do manage to get even just 1 stack feel free to go use it.
During the late game teamfights is very crucial for Brightwing due to the amount of utility you bring to your team. Make sure you
Polymorph the correct targets (assassins and/or supports) and use
Storm Shield/
Protective Shield at the correct times to nullify burst damage. Being able to read the enemy team will give you the edge in these very important late game fights!
On Cursed Hallow,
Bribe won't be the biggest help since it has limited merc camps and the location of them. Since this map's objective spawn quite often you will want to be ready to join your team at a moments notice, assuming you are away from them.
It is recommended that you stick with them come tribute spawning time, and only really split off if you have to go and do a merc camp. Other than that make sure you are grouping with atleast one other person and prividing your support and utility as needed.
When your team curses the other team try to push a lane with someone as your
Soothing Mist will help keep your team going if you do happen to get into a fight.
On Blackheart's Bay you are able to push other lanes/solo lane much easier than Cursed Hallow. Just make sure if you do go off and push alone to keep an eye out on your team to see if they need instant support and to try and see if the enemy team is coming to gank you.
Collect
Bribe stacks as needed and use them to clear camps faster so your team can get coins fast. I recommend using Bribe stacks to instantly clear the enemy's Giant camp, this will distract them in the bottom lane and allow your team to secure the bottom knight(hard) camp.
Once it's time to turn in make sure you are already there with your team and ready to fight for "boat control".
Dragon Shire is another map that allows you to solo lane or split push while collecting
Bribe stacks, but like every other map just keep an eye out for enemy gankers and to see if your team needs you to
Phase Shift for support.
Try to hang around the bottom lane as it has the most amount of merc camps and with
Bribe you can help to get he "Giant Train" going. Plus you will also but there for the bottom shrine fight.
When it comes to deciding who get's the DK, you can be one of the people to get it. Just try to DD, or Dragon Dance with it and prioritize taking low health forts over high health ones. If bottom or top lane has towers/gate down and mid doesn't, make sure you take it to that lane. Many people try taking it mid lane right away because it is so close to the DK, but it also makes it the easiest to defend.
On this map you can be a strong solo laner to collect your
Bribe stacks and instantly join your team to take on one of the big plant golems or steal merc camps. Like always, watch for ganks and be ready to join your team at any time, even if you have to sacrifice stacks.
You are able to get he Plant Terror for your team if no one else does. The key thing to do is try and split push with it during the early - mid game, while your team pushes another lane. Come late game though you want to take it with your team and head down a lane together.
This is one of the better maps for stealing camps with
Bribe, but I highly recommend to have a teammate comes with you since you have no escape outside of
Phase Shift... remember the buddy system!
Haunted Mines is much more focused on early game as getting a 100 skull golem can cripple the enemy team and if played right, secure a win for your team.
This map you should strongly consider picking up
Envenom as it will help kill people faster during the teamfight in the mines. Also during this fight make sure you
Polymorph the correct target (support or high burst assassin). I also recommend skipping
Bribe and taking
Shield Dust if your team is going for that early game win. You won't be able to get enough stacks of Bribe on this map due to the roaming involved.
If your team loses the fight in the mines, rotate up and start taking the merc camps to try a bit of a counter push, then get ready to clear out the golem. You won't due much damage to it but try and basic attack as much as you can and provide utility to your team as needed.
- Brightwing is one of the harder support to master. You will have many active talents to manage on top of your abilities, and using them in the correct order and time will take practice.
- Brightwing has a global teleport with
Phase Shift. You can do a lot with this ability such as escaping ganks, supporting your team, and if you have a Falstand you can both go steal enemy merc camps with ease.
- Keeping an eye on your minimap is one of the most important things if you are in a solo lane or off split pushing. You need to be able to see a teamfight incoming and be ready to teleport to you team the second it breaks out. This takes many, many games of practice.
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