Hello all.
Not much has changed about
Greymane in the last patches. Right now I actually play
Greymane in 3 different ways, and I had some great success with the AA Range build in particular. So I decided to share my builds for the 3 play-styles with you all.
A small disclaimer: This is a beginning of a guide, so right now it has countless gaps, that need filling. I apologize, but at the moment I am limited on the time I have to spent on all my guides.
Please treat this as nothing more, than an explanation of the 3 play-styles. The talents shown in the builds are examples, that are good in the general case. I realize that depending on the situation, there are better choices.
As always I recommend you decide what talents to pick, depending on the game you play, and treat guides as guidelines to help you find what is best for you.
Range AA with dive finisher.
With the last changes to Graymane, I find this to be the most reliable way to play him. It is definitely not as impactfull, as the "dive and blow people up" play-style we all know. However you score nice damage, and do not rely on team composition, to keep you alive.
The basic idea is, for you to use
Inner Beast as much as possible, and poke the enemy from afar. As with all Graymane builds, at the right moment you use
Darkflight to leap at a low health enemy and finish them up with
Go for the Throat.
But for the most part you keep your distance and just hit whatever enemy you can reach safely. Since we are going for mostly Ranged AA damage we use
Wolfheart to get as much up-time for
Inner Beast as possible, by reducing cool-down to few seconds. Ranged attack can easily keep it active for long periods of time so basically it is on, any time you have to fight.
Quicksilver Bullets are to keep you safe, by giving you just a bit more reach, but if you are sure the enemy can't get to you,
Wizened Duelist is a nice option instead.
Eager Wolf and
Hunter's Blunderbuss are the main source of your damage, so this build is really powerful late game. As a whole Graymane has strong early and mid game, thanks to his basic ability kit, so
you are relevant and strong the whole game with this build. It is just stable and reliable.
On the Prowl is taken to give you mobility in combat. This is useful both as disengage and gap closer. It helps you keep attacking, to maintain
Inner Beast, juke skillshots, stutterstep, or simply to get in position to use
Go for the Throat. The level 4 talent
Thick Skin is just for some extra safety, when you finally decide to leap on someone.
Melee Greymane. Long disengage.
This is the exact opposite play-style to the first one. However it might be the safest due to the double disengage.
The idea is to treat Graymane as melee hero. You use
Darkflight as soon as you can and stay in melee form. The advantage is extra damage and the double disengage. The downside is that you have to be in melee, and you must be in melee before the enemy heroes gets near you.
This style of play is good against multiple enemy melee heroes. Also it relies on having short fights, like you get in a blow-up and dive compositions. After you deal all the damage you can, and get low on health, you disengage and basically, all the damage the enemy team put on you is wasted.
What is the double disengage? In a usual fight you will use
Darkflight to leap on an enemy kill it with
Go for the Throat and then you will be stuck in melee form, until
Disengage gets off cool-down. Those are 3 or 4 seconds, when the enemy team will focus you and blow you up like a birthday balloon. Unless your healer or tank can somehow keep you alive. But with this play-style, you are in melee form already, so
Disengage is off cool-down and can be used at will.
So the double disengage, is using
Razor Swipe in the direction away from the enemy, and then immediately using
Disengage to get even further away. To make this a 100% sure way to survive, we take
Unfettered Assault and
Eyes in the Dark to maximize the distance and get stealth.
The talents.
Viciousness at level 1 is preferred over
Wolfheart, only because in melee form, during team fights its much harder to maintain
Inner Beast. Also we aim for fast fights, with the expectation, that we will take lots of damage and will have to go back to the base anyway, so lowering the cool-down is not important.
Eyes in the Dark is preferred over
Thick Skin, because block is nice, but making sure you get away is better.
Wizened Duelist is kind of a must, and it is the only melee talent in the tier anyway. Besides the double disengage will make keeping the stacks much easier. In the general case
Visceral Attacks is the best talent in the tier, and is much better than
Unfettered Assault. However we need
Unfettered Assault for disengaging. It also gives us the ability to move around the battlefield to reposition in a fight. Note that after taking
Unfettered Assault it is recommended to use
Razor Swipe only as a disengage and reposition tool. If you use it for damage, you can easily get yourself in a bad spot with the extra length, with one of your disengage tools on cool-down. This is not really a problem as
Razor Swipe actually does, just as much damage, as your basic attacks. It is just AOE damage. So when you take
Tooth and Claw on level 20 your AAs will splash for 100% so every basic attack is like using
Razor Swipe anyway. That in combination with the damage speed increase from
Eager Wolf makes you a total beast late game. Level 16 for Graymane has great talents across the board, so depending on the situation
Alpha Killer or
Executioner are also perfectly good choices.
Worgen kills. Leap and burst.
Well this is the standard play-style, we all know. Poke a little bit and then just leap on top of some squishy hero, and delete them from the game with extreme prejudice.
All talents are based on doing as much burst damage as possible. This is where it has to be noted that
Visceral Attacks is great gap closer, as well as incredible source of extra damage, as long as you can time
Razor Swipe, so it is executed between 2 AAs. As the main point is to murder 1 hero fast, after some poking,
Hunter's Blunderbuss is the better option at 20. However
Tooth and Claw works really well too.
I hope you enjoyed my play-styles for Graymane. Please leave a like and a comment if you did. Also you might want to check out my other build guides.
Good luck and see you in the Nexus. :)
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