The Late Show with Illidan Stormrage Top
This build gets better and better as you level up. It starts off with the basic shield which can save your butt if you mistakenly leap into the towers while doing some lane xp. It can give you enough time to use
Sweeping Strike and get away from the enemies as fast as possible. A lot of people will not chase Illidan away from their safety net at early levels unless there are two of them vs. you. If you see them coming back out at you, keep an eye out for an additional team-member who may be coming in to surprise you.
As you add more abilities every time you hit a tier, you start adding survivability. In Illidans' case, this comes by way of area damage, first aid and at 16 you get Blood for Blood.
Seeing as your attacks reduce your cool downs by one second every time you hit, keeping in melee range is key. If you need to get away, you can choose to Hunt a weaker enemy, or hunt a minion away from the players attacking you so you can get away and/or get a free hit or two to get 'some' health back. It could mean the difference between living and res-timers-of-doom!
For Offense, you get Giant Killer for those massive Team Battles You Love! As well as the almighty ability,
Nowhere to Hide at 20. This allows you to practically move freely throughout the map whenever
The Hunt is off cool down. Need to do an emergency defense on a tower system? Port to a minion/enemy attacking it and get to work.
The only downside to this build, is that in Co-Op you rarely ever have time to use the level 20 ability, even if more than once. Twice if you're lucky, but it's so over powered against the AI that it just shouldn't be allowed to exist... but shhh... in Versus it's fine. It's extremely exhilarating when you hit 20 and go "BOOM" in the face of someone on the other end of the map!
Talent Choice Alternatives Top
Tier 1
If you know that you are going to be teaming up with a healer, you can try to avoid the Shadow Shield, but really it's one of the better options. Next step down would be Seasoned Marksman. If you are going to be killing NPCs and such, then it may give you an advantage, where you kill a few npc packs with a healer, and then go take on a group of enemy players.
Tier 2
When you try to solo NPC groups, you will find anything more than 2 players at level 4 can be strenuous on your health bar. For this reason, if you are assigned to kill NPCs to push lanes forward, then you 'may' want to get Thirsting Blade instead. It will help heal you early on to get fast pushes out of the gate. The damage increase is almost negligible when you compare that doing more damage means you will be sitting around more often doing nothing. This means if you picked Seasoned Marksman instead, you will most likely run into problems of guilt. Feeling that you picked a talent you never get to use anyway... but next time... next time.
Tier 3
Always First Aid. If you really wanted something else to pick though, I would only suggest Follow Through or Reflexive Block if you are going to be doing strictly team battles.
Tier 4
Depending how the match is going at this point, and who you are facing. If you have seen the enemy players tent to group up together, be it by choice or by your own teams assistance... Well then Metamorphosis may be a better choice. But on the larger maps, it may give you a hinderance in late game, due to the shear mobility reduction you will lose. The range on it is not nearly as far normally, and just cannot be beat with the level 20 Nowhere To Hide.
Tier 5
If your team battles end poorly due to AoE damage, and they tend to focus you a lot and leave your healer alone to free-case, then you may want to consider doing Sixth Sense. It would go nicely with the Tier 2 Thirsting Blade trait to actually appear to 'increase' the amount of healing you do, because you won't be taking as much damage.
Tier 6
The splash damage of Immolation + Sweeping Strikes will make Hunter's Onslaught be a great asset when taking on large groups of npcs, or rushing into a group of mebs with the entire team along for the ride. It can also be used to heal you when you run away, by sweeping strike into a group of minions. Stoneskin would be useful if you are going to be taking on structures.
Tier 7
Nowhere to Hide. That is all. If you do not take this and you have The Hunt, you are gimping yourself. If you have chosesn Metamorphosis, you will really only be picking up Demonic Form anyway. The other two really don't do anything to boost this build, however, other builds may have a use for them.
In-Action Replay Top
Replays of Me Playing this spec so you can see how it feels. Note, I am not the greatest, but you can see how it works at least. I still destroy.
Illidan - Sample Gameplay
Times of Note
@03:00
Using Dive (Q) but go behind enemy lines, and using it quickly to pop back out. You can use
The Hunt to accidentally port behind enemy lines as well, then instantly use Dive (Q) to pop back outside, hopefully you have better luck than I did.
@03:45
Start of a mine massive team battle on boss. Shows how Illidan can survive with heals and team support. I was so happy about this encounter!
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