Kerrigan
![]()
Build: Zerg Rush
Level 1
Level 4
Level 7
Level 10
Level 13
Level 16
Level 20
This build takes Kerrigan's normal role and flips it on its head. While Kerrigan can definitely be built to make a fantastic assassin, I find that this style of play too often leaves her very squishy and too reliant on the enemy team's poor positioning. This build, however, focuses on a talent she has for split pushing. Not only can she out push most specialists, but by doing so, she empowers herself for team fights.
This build relies on a few synergies in her talents. She gains massive staying power in lane through Siphoning Impact and Assimilation Mastery. Assimilation Mastery, while being helpful for HP, is mostly useful to keep her mana pool full at all times. Siphoning Impact gives her a huge healing boost when you get low on health.
The most important synergy of her kit comes from Fury of the Swarm, Double Strike, Assimilation Mastery and Aggressive Defense. Essentially, your attacks will splash, when you use an ability (like your Ravage), you gain a secondary attack that hits for 75% of your aa damage to ALL enemies in the area. So you jump on the middle minion, and auto attack, then jump on each ranged minion. Your splash will quickly clear the lane. Due to this extreme aoe damage, you generate shields very quickly, while active, you will regen health and mana.
Other builds have done similarly. The odd-man-out in this build is the Ultralisk, rather than Maelstrom. The reason is that at level 20, you can send your ultralisk down a lane to split push, while you are pushing out a different lane. This gives you enormous push potential. Additionally, you can call it to team fights to kill their back line if they try to escape. Given that you will spend most of your time pushing lanes or getting mercenaries, you will always have a full shield when entering fights. When your ultralisk deals damage, it refreshes your shield, guaranteeing that your shield will likely never be down for team fights.
It's not uncommon to see Kerrigan utterly trounce everyone else's siege damage. After all, you have perfect sustain, no mana issues, you push two lanes simultaneously, and have incredible wave clear. Kerrigan's talents rarely improve her damage all that much. You aren't taking a serious dps loss by taking these talents, but you are ensuring that you will never have less than 160% of your life pool in team fights.
The Ultralisk is really central to this build. Each time it does damage, it refreshes your shield's cd. You can also send it to mercs to fight the merc camps. When it's almost finished, you can run to the camp yourself and simply claim it.
But why not Maelstrom? I'll admit it freely, I hate Maelstrom. It's an odd choice to give a burst assassin a high sustained damage ultimate. Also, in team fights, you'll likely never build your shield very high when you jump on an assassin and activate your ult. You immediately become a big, purple target. So you'll likely begin the fight without your assimilation shield, place a large purple target with you in it's bullseye, and wish fleetingly that you had picked the ultralisk and your life escapes you.
Quick Comment () View Comments
You need to log in before commenting.