Introduction Top
Ragnaros is a hearty melee assassin, able to stand in a fight longer than most other assassins between a high hit point total and
Empower Sulfuras. Additionally, with the use of
Molten Core, Ragnaros becomes the ultimate shield for a key building, or a powerful offender when taking a destroyed enemy fort.
With
Living Meteor, the player is able to soften an entire wave of lane minions from a distance, chase fleeing opponents, or discourage targets in pursuit of themself or others.
With
Blast Wave, the player can close the distance, flee, or cause havoc in a team fight all with the same skill, and with any non-structure target as the recipient of this buff, although after the tier 3 talent
Superheated Ragnaros should be the only recipient unless an ally is in dire need of speed to survive.
Molten Core allows Ragnaros to effectively become a meat-shield for a fortification, as well as take over the ruins of a building to attack from. In both instances, any damage is dealt to Ragnoros's disposable hit-point pool (Should it deplete, he simply is pushed back into his normal, mobile form with the same health he had before casting Molten Core). This allows for him to absorb massive damage on behalf of a building, although remember
YOU ARE STILL A HERO.
Giant Killer,
The Bigger They Are... and similar effects, as well as
Sand Blast and other anti-hero attacks have a friggin' field day with a Molten Core Ragnaros.
Sulfuras Smash is a powerful damage dealing ability, doing reasonable damage in a medium circle, but triple damage in a smaller circle in the center and stunning in addition to dealing damage. The hang time to this ability is only .75 seconds, making it possible to interrupt many different channeled abilities with ease.
Lava Wave provides the ultimate method of gathering experience, instantly killing any lane minions and dealing heavy damage to mercenaries and any heroes that happened to be caught in the fire. Note that this skill never damages structures.
Tier 1 Talents Top
Sulfuras Hungers is a quest with very little for completing part of it's objective of killing a minion with the
Empower Sulfuras skill, providing a meager
one additional damage per slain minion. When the user finally kills thirty lane minions (which in a perfect world means waiting through five waves of lane minions), the quest provides an additional 120 damage, for a total of 150, which is an additional 60 healing per hero hit (150*0.4=60) With
Cauterize Wounds, this bonus would become a total of 96 per hero hit. In general, this is an underwhelming gain unless there are multi-character heroes at play such as
Rexxar or
The Lost Vikings
Shifting Meteor is a quest that has only rewards the user after it is complete, and the reward is an additional half of a second of use, and the ability to redirect a
Living Meteor once per cast. Living Meteor has it's many uses, but the build to be described benefits more from
Engulfing Flame.
Engulfing Flame is a talent that is not a quest unlike the other two tier 1 talent, and so it provides a massive benefit immediately will not scale like the other two choices. However, the benefit that it provides are very noticeable. Reducing the cooldown of
Blast Wave to eight seconds and providing a small increase the area of effect greatly benefit further talents for this build.
Tier 2 Talents Top
Fire Ward is a nearly guaranteed source of two stacks of Spell Block, or even more if the player is damaged by an ability while the meteor is active. While this is beneficial in many situations in which a caster is at play, it is not a general or automatic standby. If the player finds themself against multiple casters or even a single, powerful caster such as
Li-Ming, feel free to take this over
Catching Fire.
Slow Burn is a useful talent, but it is forced to compete with two survival talents on the same tier, and can only be reasonably considered with a powerful healer on the team.
Catching Fire is a quest that functions similarly to
Regeneration Master, but rather than increasing hitpoints by 500, Ragnaros gains the ability to manually activate a three second Resistance buff. With proper timing, the player can negate much more than 500 damage in a single shot. Furthermore, Catching Fire provides 2 hp/s rather than Regeneration Master's 1 hp/s. To negate both of these points, Regeneration master is a Tier 1 talent, whilst Catching Fire is a Tier 2 talent, and only requires 15 regeneration orbs. Focus on lanes for as long as possible to maximize this or at least catch up to heroes with Regeneration Maser active.
Tier 3 Talents Top
Hand of Ragnaros provides a benefit to the user only in a team fight, and must compete with a more general purpose skill that also benefits the user in a team fight (possibly moreso), and so is not recommended. If it does proc, it will effectively make
Empower Sulfuras cost 15 mana and have a 2 second cooldown, which potentially makes for more damage when dealing with two heroic targets, but again it is not recommended as it is not as versatile as other choices.
Molten Power increases the damage of
Living Meteor based upon how many
different heroes are harmed by the previous casting of the ability, and without
Shifting Meteor this talent is lackluster, nearly requiring external aid to make it truly dangerous and gain the full 75% damage and keep using it at such a level (Unless the player fights against
The Lost Vikings or
Rexxar, in which case this becomes moderately viable without a foundation to build off of.
Superheated doubles the damage of
Blast Wave, but only if it is cast upon the caster. This, in combination with
Blast Echo, further emphasizes the uses of Blast Wave, punishing pursuers that are exceptionally good at sticking to fleeing targets, such as
Illidan, as well as simply providing a massive increase to damage in a team fight.
Tier 4: Heroic Talents Top
Sulfuras Smash provides immense burst damage to one or two targets in a selected area, and reasonable damage to anyone outside of the center targeting circle, albeit with a slight delay. It is best used as a stun for targets channeling abilities such as 'casting' the Nuclear Launch in Warhead Junction,
Triple Tap,
Disintegrate, et cetera. If it doesn't have unstoppable tagged to it, you might as well counter it.
Lava Wave is a useful utility heroic, although damaging the enemy team with it is unlikely unless they are in melee with your core. The mini map will display a color-appropriate fire icon and a matching trajectory line, despite fog of war. With this said, the strength of this skill lies in the ability to clear a path for mercenaries or even just lane minions and catapults without personally clearing the way, allowing for pressure from two lanes. Note that experience is also provided, just like it is for [[Abathur] with his locust minion(s)
Tier 5 Talents Top
Cauterize Wounds Further heals Ragnaros, but the user must damage heroes for any benefit. With this talent,
Empower Sulfuras will heal the user roughly all of the damage dealt, as the skill already heals 40% of damage dealt and Cauterize Wounds heals for an additional 60% over time. This Skill is undoubtedly useful if the user can find themselves in a fight against two heroes and can make heavy use of
Hand of Ragnaros.
Tempered Flame is an interesting ability that provides a one-for-one shield based on damage dealt with Blast Wave against heroes. In a team fight, this proves to be quite useful, and if the opposing team lacks methods of stunning any targets then this should be taken as the alternative to
Resilient Flame.
Resilient Flame provides a 50% damage resistance upon being stunned by any source, without cooldown. This is most appreciable when fighting teams with multiple methods of stun, but if there are none or even just one method,
Tempered Flame makes for a fine alternative.
Tier 6 Talents Top
Giant Scorcher further damages heroes when the user casts
Empower Sulfuras, burning the heroes hurt by the skill for 9% of their maximum health. In conjunction with Hand of Sulfuras, this is undoubtedly useful, even if the 9% damage will not heal the caster. Unfortunately, it competes with an alternative and more all-around choice at this tier.
Meteor Bomb causes the
Living Meteor to detonate for reasonable area damage at the end of its path. Note that this explosion does
not count for either
Shifting Meteor or
Molten Power.
Blast Echo causes every cast of
Blast Wave to create a fully talented copy of
Blast Wave to be cast upon the caster when the first expires. This can be used to buff an ally and then yourself, or to simply buff yourself twice. If self-cast, Blast Echo creates a virtually seamless transition between the two blast waves, effective making for 3 seconds of uninterrupted speed to use.
Tier 7: Final Top
Flames of Sulfuron causes
Sulfuras Smash to now slow all targets for 2 seconds, and the stun becomes one second as opposed to half of a second. Generally useful, but not the best in the world.
Lava Surge is unavailable in this build, but deserves credit as it allows for two shots of
Lava Wave.
Heroic Difficulty increases the health and damage of
Molten Core by half, as well as reduces the cooldown by fifty seconds (meaning it is only 70 seconds). Max Health with this talent goes from 8,762 to 13,143 which is an appreciable change. Do note that molten core still burns away over 18 seconds on it's own so the health degen also goes up by 50%, however the increase to health and damage is generally worthwhile.
Submerge is reminiscent of
Dehaka's kit. For both, the user burrows, goes into stasis, and heals heavily. Much like Dehaka, this falls into the danger of being stuck in a position in which when you resurface, you will be surrounded. If taken, use with extreme caution, and cancel
before the reds surround you.
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