Kerrigan, like the Zerg race in Starcraft, is all about balance. You need to have enough self-sustain so you can actually survive fights and do damage. You also need to have mana-control, because you are dependent on your abilities to do damage. And last but most important, you need to be able to do
enough damage. Picking talents is about making trade-offs between those 3 things.
"All In - Easy mode."
Currently the most popular build for
Kerrigan. It is still the highest win rate build on hotslogs. This is the only reason I included it in my guide. It is powerful build as far as damage is concerned. It is an OK build, that doesn't require too much from the player, (as far as skill is concerned), to get good results. Or maybe I should say, there are builds, that will give you better results, but they require much more skill and practice. So the trade-off other builds provide, is often not wort it for most people, unless you want to get really good with
Kerrigan. In my personal opinion the lack of self sustain, mana-control and mobility is too "All in" way to play her, so I personally prefer, to use other builds, that require much more skill to pull off, but also offer more success, if you play them really well.
You go full-damage, and
forget about any utility or self-sustain. The benefit is that
Double Strike actually activate
Battle Momentum and the slow from
Nexus Blades 2 times.
The last patch nerfed 3 of the talents in this build, and with perfectly good reason. If you try it, be warned that it is very mana-hungry, so it forces you to go back to base and leaves you an easy to kill, squishy hero, after you engage.
"I am the Queen of Blades."
This is the standard build I recommend for most people, that want to master
Kerrigan. Useful for diving the enemy and landing combos on multiple enemies. Gives you good balance between damage, self-sustain and mana-control. Works best against melee-heavy teams. Your main source of damage is your combo
Ravage->
Impaling Blades->
Primal Grasp. Use it to poke the enemy, then you retreat and wait for your cooldowns to recharge.
If you go for hard engage pop your
Maelstrom before going in with
Ravage. Then follow up with
Impaling Blades->
Primal Grasp combo.
Maelstrom is the only thing you can do, to keep yourself alive, so use it before getting in the middle of the fight, not after. Extra range on the
Ravage ensures optimal engages.
Nexus Blades is just too good damage and chase tool, but if you find yourself heavily focused in fights take
Bolt of the Storm instead.
"You can't stop the Swarm."
This is the old "Q-build" with a little twist. The play-style of this build is quite different, and relies heavily on fast re-positioning with
Ravage. The build excels on
Infernal Shrines.
Eviscerate can let you run circles around the enemy team, making you a poke monster.
Overdrive is the best option to give you a little more bang, since you can sacrifice some self sustain with the Q build setup. The build is kind of situational however. Mainly use in compositions without a full healer - Quick Match, or
Tyrande,
Tassadar,
Medivh, as solo supports. Keep in mind that this build is far harder to execute properly, as you have to be perfect at timing your
Ravage, to clean minion waves and skeleton defenders on
Infernal Shrines. If you fail the chain Q->AA->AA->Q->AA->AA->...... you will be useless for 5 seconds and an easy target. At later stages of the game the chain usually takes only 1 AA, instead of 2, so it gets easier to use.
The other 3 I feel, are for veteran players, who have lots of experience playing
Kerrigan, and want to try something new and fun. Perhaps test the limits of their skills. Playing a melee assassin is hard enough, but one with lack of early escapes is another level of difficult. It reacquires a lot of understanding to the limitations, the hero has.
"I am the swarm."
This is build made around the concept of CC, enemy displacement and poke damage. Highly situational, usually works with lock-down compositions or dive compositions. The intention is to be able to push and constantly cast
Primal Grasp alone or in your combo, without running out of mana and backing every 2-3 minutes. (And I do mean Spam you abilities). Also really helps with wave-clear if you need it for some reason. The play-style is dedicated to more gradual pressure, rather than diving. I mainly use it in teams where you don't have a teammate hero, that can enable you to dive. Such as
Tyrael,
Uther, etc.
Summon Ultralisk is better in this situation, so we pick it up. As a matter of fact,
Summon Ultralisk works better than
Maelstrom in all games where you can't dive, no matter the build.
Queen's Rush and
Bolt of the Storm in this case are defensive options, to let you get out of bad situations, since you won't have
Maelstrom.
"You will be assimilated."
Survival build. Highly situational. For those cases, when you must defend constantly. Or the other team is successfully focusing and killing you when you engage. Or you are in composition, where you simply need to have full survival talents, due to lack of tank or some other reason. Or if you just want to have some more beefiness, so you can go HAM with a diver composition. ;) The only compromise in defensive talents is
Double Strike instead of
Queen's Rush. The reason is that
Double Strike actually activates and apply damage to all enemies you hit with
Fury of the Swarm. So you get more shields, for the price of a mediocre escape.
"I am the Queen of the Nexus."
My favorite build. Run like a race car, hit like a truck. This is one High cap build, but really fun to play. Until level 10 it's basically the same as "I am the Queen of Blades.". And after level 10, you get the highest possible mobility and damage, that you can from late game talents. Playing this with default cast settings, can be almost as hard as the famous "Piano
Uther build". Well for me that is the best part - its the most challenging and fun, but for those of you that want things a bit simplified, I recommend you turn on your Quick Cast settings for
Impaling Blades and
Primal Grasp. Also I have
Queen's Rush and
Overdrive bound to my mouse's side buttons so I can use them as soon as I need them. Make sure you activate
Overdrive before every combo if it is not on cooldown. Also always use it before
Maelstrom. The extra damage is really good, but the amount of extra shields you get for that damage is the more important thing, since it helps you survive. Keep
Queen's Rush for few seconds after the initial engagement. If things go well use it and start chasing. Every kill will refresh the ability, so you can chase for days. If the fight goes bad use it to run away instead. Same deal with
Bolt of the Storm. It should be the last ability you use. If you won hard use it to finish off the last struggles. Now after you get used to this playstile you can do fun things like engage with
Queen's Rush+
Maelstrom, after you get focused use
Bolt of the Storm to get out, and then surprise everyone by going back in using
Ravage. Of pop
Maelstrom use
Bolt of the Storm to appear in the middle of the enemy team, do a combo on as many people as possible, then use
Queen's Rush for mobility to disengage or secure a kill, depending on the situation, and just kill everyone left with chaining
Ravage.
As with all my guides, do not take my builds as set in stone. Any game is different and so you need to take talents according to the current game, your team and the enemy team. Take my builds as simple guidelines and make the hero best suited to your play-style. I will update and add sections about the builds, and how to pick talents according to situations at later time so feel free to check later. Most importantly have fun playing :)
Feel free to skip this, if you are not interested in my opinion on the changes. Also if you are new to the hero this will probably not concern you at all. Here I describe why I think
Kerrigan has become such powerful hero. The changes are in blue my notes in white. Lots of numbers and math.
Stats
Base Health increased from 1680 to 1848 (and then back to 1680 in patch 19.3).
Health Regen increased from 3.5 to 3.8 per second
Time to make up your mind Blizzard ;) I personally think the removal of the extra health was mistake, but oh well...
Base Attack damage increased from 109 to 120
Another 10 % buff. It might not seam like a lot but it is. For starters
Kerrigan's trait
Assimilation gives her shields based on % of her damage, so she gets more tanky. One of the more popular ways to play
Kerrigan is to chain her
Ravage on the minion waves to clear them. This little bonus can be the difference between a long successful chain of kills, and having to wait for 8 seconds cool-down. At lvl 20 the increase to AA damage is from 230 to 263. Taking attack speed into account that is increase from 287DPS to 329DPS. Also this further buffs
Fury of the Swarm and
Double Strike, which too are % based.
Abilities
Ravage (Q)
Mana cost reduced from 50 to 40
In order to be relevant to the game,
Kerrigan needs to keep casting her abbilities, and landing her Q->W->E combos. So she is among the few heroes that will be starwed for mana, if you are not carefull with casting your abilities.
Talents
Siphoning Impact (Q - level 1)
Now only applies if the target is killed by Ravage
Not precisely true. It applies if the ability is reset. (which is reset if the target dies within 1.5 seconds after casting
Ravage). So the nerf is that now you can't
Ravage a hero to get healed.
Clean Kill (Q - level 4)
Mana refund reduced from 100% to 75%
Damage bonus increased from 20% to 25%
Mana cost was already reduced. So if you are going the popular Q build this is a bit of a nerf, but honestly you cant even feel the difference. Damage increase however is very handy. In numbers its 13 more damage at lvl 4 and 25 more damage at lvl 20, but combined with the basic attack boost now you get guarantied chain kills on the minion wave.
Adaptation (Q - level 7)
Mana refund increased from 50% to 100%
More mana management, but it wont change the fact that this talent is not good at all. ;)
Sharpened Blades (W - level 1)
Damage increased from 20% to 30% (and then back to 25%)
Untalented
Impaling Blades do 261 damage at lvl 1 and 550 at level 20. The increase
change in numbers is from 313 to 326 at lvl 1, and from 660 to 688 at level 20.
Blade Torrent (W -level 7)
Moved to Level 7
Now some people might actually take this. Still not a good talent though. ;)
Psionic Pulse (E - level 4)
Damage increased from 17 to 24 (and then back to 20)
The description is a bit confusing. What it means is you get ability similar to
Burning Rage for 5 seconds after casting
Primal Grasp. There are 2 damage tics per second (multiple small damage waves) so it damages 2 times per second for 20 damage. In DPS numbers this is increase from 30.5 DPS to 45DPS at level 4, and from 60DPS to 85DPS at level 20.
Assimilation Mastery (Trait - level 7)
Now increases the duration of Assimilation Shields by 100% in addition to its current functionality
What Blizzard have done, is include a weaker version of the now removed talent
Lingering Essence, with
Assimilation Mastery. In reality this doubles the regeneration bonus from the talent, outside of combat. And allows for some shield stacking, before you start a fight.
Fury of the Swarm (Passive)
Splash damage increased from 50% to 60%
We got more base damage and now we get even more splash damage. With current DPS the increase of splash is from 165 to 197 at level 20.
Queen’s Rush (Active)
Movement Speed increased from 25% to 30%
Cooldown reduced from 75 to 50 seconds
Boost to your "Get-out-of-jail-free" card and you can use it more often. Great for chasing too.
Bladed Momentum Cool-down reduction per hit reduced from 0.75 to 0.6.
It's actually quite impactfull, if you are making a build heavily dependent on the talent. If you have it in your build, but not as a core talent, this change will not make much difference to you.
So here is the verdict. I had
Kerrigan sitting at level 12 for months, before the changes. And I always felt, that what she really needed, was not some fancy talent reworks or gimmicks, but rather some nice boost to her base stats. You know make her relevant outside of her combo. Give her some boosts, so she wont die in 2 seconds after she is stunned. Allow her to have some means of disengaging, like all other melee assassins. Provide her with some lesser, secondary means to self-sustain, without having to sacrifice half of her damage potential. I think Blizzard did a great job and delivered on all points. Kudos gues. :D
Here is a breakdown of all the talents as well as some notes on them. I have rated them as:
[bad] - No useful benefit and no synergy with other talents.
[average] - Useful only in builds dedicated to 1 function / boosting 1 ability.
[good] - Nice talent with good synergy with other talents. Useful in multiple situations.
[best] - Talents with huge individual benefits. They outclass all other in their tier, and have strong synergy with most of the other talent tiers.
Level 1
On the very first tier you are given 3 powerful choices, leading to 3 different pats. Yet remember starting on one path doesn't mean you have to keep following it strictly. Make adjustment and experiment.
[*]
Siphoning Impact -[good]- "You can't stop the Swarm." This is the path of the fully self-sustained
Kerrigan. First step on the road to the old "Q-build". With the minor tweaks the talent got, you can no longer use your
Ravage, to heal from enemy heroes, but still this will let you chain
Ravage to whole minion wave and return from near dead, to full health in no time. The synergy with
Clean Kill at 4 is really nice for mana sustain. Even though no longer the only viable choice, still this is insanely powerful on
Infernal Shrines during objectives. Also a must, if you decide to run a composition with no healer, or solo semi-support such as
Tassadar or
Tyrande. Or in weird compositions in Quick Match. ;)
[*]
Sharpened Blades -[good]- "I am the Queen of Blades." The path of the true Queen of Blades, raining death and destruction. I was very much against this talent before. But with the recent buffs across the board, its my go to talent. The reason is that now you have the option to make build based on your combo damage, and still get some moderate self-sustain, and mana-control later on. (For the people that don't know, the combo is placing
Impaling Blades on the ground, and dragging heroes on top of it with
Primal Grasp). The beauty of this talent is, that with practice, you can easily land your combo on 2 or 3 people during team-fights. That is not only insane amount of damage, but also generates lots of shields through your trait
Assimilation and can prevent damage to your health, so you can keep fighting without
Siphoning Impact.
[*]
Energizing Grasp -[good]- "I am the Swarm." The path of the constant pushing. As far as mana control is concerned this talent is king. In the long run it will help you the most of all mana talents. You have to give away lots of self-sustain and some damage for it so it is situational. But if you have solid healer, or even 2 supports, you won't need the self-sustain of
Siphoning Impact. In those cases, I would recommend taking this talent over
Sharpened Blades, when the other team has many ranged heroes. With multiple ranged heroes, you won't be able to land your combo on more than one person, most of the time. So casting the combo more times, will be better than the combo doing more damage.
[*]
Block -[bad]- This is one of the generic talents, that are still fighting to remain in the nexus. It is good pick on a warrior, but won't work well on
Kerrigan. It is simply outmatched by everything else in the tier. And to be honest both
Siphoning Impact and
Sharpened Blades will give you more sustainability. Actually the win-rate of
Block is quite high, but that is due to 2 reasons. First because Diamond league and Master players take it in the few situations it is actually useful on high level of play. And second because it can often save Karrigan players, that systemically mess up their combo. If you are in the first category good for you. :) If you are in the second category, than it is better to improve your skills and take another talent.
Level 4
[*]
Clean Kill -[average]- Another mana-control talent. However this one is based on your
Ravage. Casting
Ravage in quick succession, will be necessary, only if you took
Siphoning Impact, so you heal by chain-killing a minion wave with it. Or to quickly do the objective on
Infernal Shrines. Naturally, there are other situations you use
Ravage, but they are not mana intensive. Especially with the reduced mana cost of
Ravage, and the fact, that now you get 75% mana back not 100%. The trade-off is damage. 25% extra damage on a targeted ability is a lot, but you need to spam it to get results. This talent is not a must, even if you took
Siphoning Impact at level 1. In fact
Fury of the Swarm often gives you better results.
[*]
Psionic Pulse.
-[good]- Imagine you have
Burning Rage. But with double the amount of damage. And instead of level 13, you get it on level 4. Granted you have it for only 5 seconds and have to activate it, by casting
Primal Grasp, but its double the damage! If you manage to stay in range of 1 or more targets for the full duration, that is 420 damage per target at level 20. (There are 2 damage tics per second (multiple small damage waves) so it damages 2 times per second. In DPS numbers this is 45DPS at level 4, and 85DPS at level 20.) Also remember that your trait
Assimilation gives you a sizable portion of that as shield. For reference
Kerrigan's heroic
Maelstrom deals 186DPS at level 20, in basically the same radius and it's on 90 second cool-down. The reason this talent is suppressor to
Fury of the Swarm is that you don't need to hit your target, just stay in range. The heroes that managed to run away from you after your combo, no longer can.
[*]
Fury of the Swarm -[average]- The similarity with
Psionic Pulse is great, but the 2 have some fundamental differences.
Fury of the Swarm has some upsides. It is always active. You don't need to cast an ability. Also no mana is used. Lastly the splash damage is almost 2 times more, than the AOE damage from
Psionic Pulse. This talent can also help you stack your shield before a fight. So in pure wave-clear
Fury of the Swarm wins. However in 99% of the cases wave-clear is not you job and when it is there are other ways. In hero fights, this is only useful in prolonged combat, with multiple melee heroes in range. But the heroes that would stay and fight you, you don't want to fight. ;) Worst of all this provides no extra damage to the primary target, so if you are fighting 1v1 it's useless.
[*]
Envenom -[bad]- Second leftover generic talent from far back. Blizzard removed it from most heroes, and with the long time it takes to apply the damage, I suspect they will remove it from The Queen of Blades as well. There is no upside to it - low damage, spread over long period of time, and the cast range is incredibly short.
Level 7
[*]
Adaptation -[bad]- This is basically the same as
Illidan's
Friend or Foe talent. But unlike
Illidan you have to walk into fighting range, so
Ravage is not on cool-down. Also The Queen of Blades has no extra mobility like
Illidan, to reposition. Since Karrigan has no escapes until
Queen's Rush on level 13 and
Bolt of the Storm on level 20, this talent can save your life on occasion. However in all games I tested this, either
Ravage was on cool-down when I needed to get out, or there was no suitable target to jump to, due to the small range of
Ravage.
[*]
Blade Torrent -[bad]- I didn't like this before when it was on later talent tiers, and I don't like it now. In a way it makes you complacent, and lets you play sloppy. If you are learning to play The Queen of Blades, than this can help you in the beginning. However landing your combo should be easy without it, after you have some practice. Even grabbing multiple heroes, is not hard to do.
Blade Torrent can be helpful with wave-clearing and zoning enemies, but again - that is not your job. And even if it was, using your most mana draining ability for it, is not a good idea. In all games I tested this I just felt like I am missing a talent at level 7.
[*]
Assimilation Mastery -[good]- This talent provides the mana-control
Kerrigan desperately needs to stay in long fights, if you didn't take
Energizing Grasp. Think about it. You start with 3 mana regeneration (per second), and it goes to 4.85 at level 20. With
Assimilation Mastery that is 9.7. It is active for 12 seconds even out of combat, with the added duration. If you do not take any other mana-control talent this is still 116 mana regenerated in the time it takes all your cool-downs to reset. For reference your combo talents take 135 mana total. And now add to that the health regeneration of 16.66 (at level 20). Its basically
Conjurer's Pursuit + half the effect of
Regeneration Master, without having to farm regeneration globes. The cherry on the cake is the added ability to stack shields, and begin combat with up to 2200 extra shields (again level 20 :)).
[*]
Bladed Momentum -[good]- Very powerful. If you stay in combat this can effectively lower your cool-downs in half.
Kerrigan executes 1.25 attacks per second. But even if you just trow your abilities and sneak couple of hits, you can still shave off 2 seconds. Sometimes this can be game-changing. Sometimes irrelevant. The big problem with casting abilities more often, is the speed with witch you run out of mana. Still there are many uses for this talent. If your fights will be fast this is your talent of choice. If you know you will participate in prolonged fights than
Assimilation Mastery, will perform generally better.
Level 10
[*]
Maelstrom -[good]- Still the more popular heroic. Despite what many people think,
Maelstrom is not as much offensive talent, as it is defensive. The damage that you will do is relatively mediocre, compered with many other hero's heroics. And even if it is AOE, hitting multiple heroes won't cause enough damage to kill them all, before they blow you up. The high damage is more of added bonus. The real power behind
Maelstrom is the shield generation, provided through
Assimilation. You see jumping in the middle of 5 enemy heroes is suicide. But if you are smart, let your tank get in, and then pop
Maelstrom and jump the 5 heroes..... Any good team will target you immediately. But you will generate enough shields, to live long enough, for your team's back-lane to follow you up and finish the job. Just remember, that a good
Maelstrom must hit multiple targets. Best if there are a bunch of minions around as well. That is why
Maelstrom works better on heavy melee compositions, while
Summon Ultralisk shines against squishy, spread out, range heroes. The downside of this heroic is, that it is an engage opener. So it is not meant to necessarily kill, (even though it does :D), but rather damage people you hit with your combo and zone the rest. So you rarely can use it, to chase down targets. And if for some reason your team coordination is not good, and no one follows you in, you will die 100% of the time.
[*]
Summon Ultralisk -[good]- "So
Maelstrom is powerful, gives you shields and looks so damn sexy. Why the hell choose
Summon Ultralisk?!" Yeah you didn't say it..., but you were thinking it.
(You are still a pig Jimmy ;)) If
Maelstrom is an opener, then
Summon Ultralisk is a closer. In fact the Ultralisk deals more damage than
Maelstrom, and can run faster then the enemy heroes. So if you see a hero with low health, just unleash your ultimate expression of Swarm evolution. The Ultralisk will chase them down and kill them for you. (It's basically like
Zagara's
Hunter Killer on steroids. But don't treat your Ultralisk like a fire-and-forget missile. If you pick you moment wisely, you can create chaos in the enemy back-lane, and score multiple kills on the damaged squishy targets. Make sure to re-target the ability and move the Ultralisk with your "R" key. It helps a lot if you ever played
Rexxar or
Jaina with
Summon Water Elemental:) The worst thing about
Summon Ultralisk is also the best thing about it. It creates another body on the field. Yeah the Ultralisk can be killed, but it is somewhat tanky. If you use it in the right time, the enemy won't have the damage to spare killing it, so it will wreck havoc on the field, or they will waste lots of damage, that will not be used against you and your teammates. At worst it will soak some damage and zone a hero away. Also you can use this on a fort to soak damage, so you can dive it and kill it without a tank present. Or soak damage from a boss while you take it. Lastly you can use
Summon Ultralisk defensively, to cover your team's retreat. Often the couple of seconds the Ultralisc can buy your team, is the difference between your teammate getting away and being killed.
Level 13
Level 13 is all about utility so pick your poison :). In fact after 10 all talent tiers are about getting what utility you need in the current match.
[*]
Eviscerate -[good]- I love this talent. You can engage and disengage from much further away, so now its easy to get on top of the hero(es) you want, without the risk of taking damage. Also you have longer reach for disengaging. Especially if you took
Adaptation at level 7. And no one can run away from you now.
[*]
Double Strike -[good]- Extra damage. If you need it. Damage still counts as utility right? But in all fairness you can never realize this talent to its full potential, since you need to use your abilities in a combo. The power of this talent lies in the fact, that it activates
Bladed Momentum, and the slow from
Nexus Blades 2 times (for the attack after casting abilities), due to the mechanic used to apply the extra damage. Also if you take
Fury of the Swarm, the extra damage is applied to all targets.
[*]
Queen's Rush -[good]- This is my personal favorite. Rarely picked, because its kind of situational. However it has great utility both for escape, if you are running away, and to chase down and kill a target. Mainly designed to be used, for securing a first kill. After that it just reactivates, and you clean off the remains of the enemy team, this talent has surprising synergy with
Summon Ultralisk, when you are chasing. To be honest, before testing
Queen's Rush, I never felt that I have the mobility and escape mechanics of
Illidan, while playing
Kerrigan. Now I do.
Level 16
[*]
Aggressive Defense -[good]- 2 times more powerful trait. The best defensive option on the tier. Great synergy with everything, especially
Maelstrom at 10 and
Omegastorm at 20. What more do you want? Just take it.
[*]
Essence for Essence -[average]- For the people who believe that offence is the best defense,
Essence for Essence will do wonders. You can pop it every time you are low on health, and have some enemy tank nearby. But I recommend to use it mainly as finishing move, to kill targets that lived through your combo, and have little health. This is especially effective against
Cho/
Gall.
[*]
Overdrive -[good]- If you do not need any defense at this point, you can go the pure damage road. Just pop
Overdrive and execute your combo. Remember this applyes to your heroics as well. It works nicely with the
Assimilation Mastery at level 7. The 2 provide a nice damage to defense balance. It's certainly more risky and aggressive than
Bladed Momentum at 7, combined with
Aggressive Defense at 16. The talent purpose is to hit like a truck, but you have to pay for it in mana. The cool-down is about 2 times longer than
Impaling Blades so you can use it for most of your combos. Other nice synergies are
Sharpened Blades at level 1 and
Psionic Pulse at level 4.
Level 20
[*]
Omegastorm -[good]- Need that extra shields to stay alive after you engage? Go for it. This is your ultimate defense :)
[*]
Torrasque -[average]- OK if you want to play with this just select
Rexxar in your next game. :) Jokes aside having your Ultralisk with you all the time is mighty nice. Just ask
Nazeebo and his
Humongoid
Gargantuan. However in my opinion having to babysit your Ultralisk all the time is just too micro intensive to be worth it. Granted sometimes it makes for great plays, but this is way too situational pick in my opinion.
[*]
Nexus Blades -[good]- If you have no problem surviving fights, and never worry if you will have to get away, than just take some extra damage and go for the kill.
[*]
Bolt of the Storm -[good]- Mainly a tool to get you out of trouble. But in some rare situations it can be fun play-maker too, letting you reposition on the field to strike or even chase down enemies.
Thank you for reading. If you liked this check later for updates. I plan to add lots more stuff, such as how to play
Kerrigan well, and the different play-stiles with the different builds. Perhaps section on choosing talent depending on your game and how diferent maps affect The Queen of Blades.
Please vote and drop a comment. Also feel free to check some of my other guides.
Good luck and see you in the Nexus :)
Auriel.
Varian in a tank build! Added further explanation on the playstyle of the different builds.
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