Hi, this is Jairoe03. Regarding myself, I am a fairly experienced MOBA player having played since the days of DotA (regular DotA) on Warcraft 3 or even Aeon of Strife if anyone remembers that. I moved onto playing League of Legends for many years. Overall, I haven't gone too competitive with any game but noticed an opportunity to share my approach with Tyrael which might differ from others and my strategy and approach especially since the game is still in Beta.

This Tyrael guide is focused on players that prefer to playing a little more balanced rather than going all out damage or all out tank. I'm more of an in-between type player and I like to be versatile. Tyrael is arguably one of the most versatile in the game (which means he isn't the greatest at any single thing).

Everything in this guide is based on personal opinions and preference and does not reflect current professional play since my experience watching them or playing as one is severely limited. This guide is not a comprehensive guide on all of Tyrael's talents, it will focus on my preferred talents and a couple other variants where I see fit with explanation on why I chose my talents.

4/5/2015

- General update of entire guide via corrections or small additions.
- Added Imposing Will to Level 13 Talent alternatives.
- Expounded on why I didn't choose Angel of Justice at Level 20.
- Added colors to everything with an icon (please let me know if I miss any)
- Added a Learning Progression/Tips section

Currently, Tyrael is my favorite hero out of the bunch. My reasons are mostly because he's extremely mobile, fights on the front line and can support his allies. He's a utility hero, jack of all trades and master of none. I'll go over some quick major pro's and con's.

Pros:

[*] Extremely mobile, his teleport move is one of the best moves in the game IMO
[*] Supports through movement speed and slows, shields (which also work on minions)
[*] Versatile warrior, can be made to be tanky or damage
[*] High attack speed, this makes Battle Momentum an auto include given his role as a supporter

Cons:
[*] Base damage is low, going all tank can lead to very low damage output for Tyrael
[*] Easy to drain mana, spells can be fairly costly especially when team fighting and using Battle Momentum
[*] Archangel's Wrath is arguably one of the worst Traits in the game, you generally don't want to die

This section will be an ongoing section as I come up with ideas, but I wanted to provide first a progression or list of priorities to focus on while learning and playing with Tyrael that I find most important. The end of this section will include odd tips that I think are useful and other people might want to know.

Beginner Tyrael

• Do not spam abilities, conserve mana and try to stay above 50% when NOT in team fights.
• Focus on your teammates and trying to save them, do not chase other heroes for kills. Smite teammates for movement speed buff, El'druin's Might opponent's (be sure to also teleport to it even if you don't need to because this will pop another movement slow onto enemy)
  To expound on this, Tyrael's damage is low and you don't know what else that hero might have to prolong your attempt at killing him/her. The longer you are away from your team and not supporting them, the better the enemy's chances are at winning the team fight.

Intermediate Tyrael

• Early game, emphasize laning, try to get ahead in levels. If Regeneration Master was picked up at Level 1, focus on killing healer minions and gathering healing sphere.
• Try to always working with a teammate. Tyrael has the most effect when around and supporting others. This is mostly due to his low damage output.
• Use El'druin's Might to teleport over walls. Save El'druin's Might for your own escape or to help teammates escape via slow. Do not use it as a way to damage unless you are trying to secure an objective or the match win.
• Late game, emphasize objectives and lead team towards capturing mercenaries or collecting map objective tokens i.e. Crystal Shards, Skulls etc. Push team towards preparing to take objectives in advance rather than trying to catch up to each team fight. As Tyrael, place yourself inside bushes and help team look out for incoming enemies and do whatever you can to slow them down. Your teammates can secure objectives like Tributes etc., your focus is on supporting your teammates.
• Prioritize Judgement on Assassins and Support heroes first. If you can keep them away from the fight and have them waste time with trying to fight and attack you then your teammates will have a better chance on securing the team fight. This is my only exception to being away from teammates is if you can keep an Assassin or Support away from fight.

I will just go through my selections tier by tier and explain my reasonings behind my choices. I will also lay out alternatives in the tiers that I find applicable.

Strategy
The overall strategy is to have a Tyrael that is tanky enough to still fulfill its normal role while still being able to contribute damage which is just as important as surviving hence my preference to not go full tank. I find in my experiences with MOBA's that full tank builds generally means your champion gets ignored in team fights and you want to try to give the enemy team a little more incentive to attack you i.e. being more disruptive, being dangerous damage-wise etc.

My primary offense will be based on auto attacks. This is because Tyrael's spells cost a bit more and he can find himself easily drained of mana. I find one of the most important parts of playing Tyrael successfully is tracking his mana, it's fine to spam Smite, but if you are heading below 40-50% mana, you might want to save it for a team fight.

Talents

Level 1 Regeneration Master

This helps lay the foundation for Tyrael's tankiness later on especially in conjunction with the Tier 2 pick. Be sure in early game to focus on taking out enemy healer minion to collect regeneration spheres.

Purge Evil is another popular choice but not my preference since I want to rely on auto attacks for the bulk of my damage and I prefer to use Smite more for the movement speed buff for my team rather than the damage potential it brings. In addition, not depending on Smite mostly for damage helps pace mana spending during fights.

Level 4 Amplified Healing

Works well in conjunction with Regeneration Master and Angelic Absorption at Level 13.

I don't feel the rest of the talents at this level are worth getting. Vampiric Assault might seem worth getting, but Tyrael's damage output overall isn't too high and 15% of it isn't really doing much for you IMO.

Level 7 Battle Momentum

This works great with Tyrael's attack speed. I know I mentioned before you don't generally want to spam his abilities but during a team fight, you are going to want to be able to use a lot of your supporting abilities as much as possible. This also gives you more of a reason to hit things with auto attacks.

Angel's Grace would be another talent I would consider using if you find positioning to be more important then reducing cooldown and would be my second option. Keeping Tyrael's support role in mind, I don't see the benefits of this talent outweighing Battle Momentum.

Level 10 Judgement

This Heroic ability basically defines Tyrael's main role on the team which is as an initiator. Can be used to single out a key member on the enemy team ideally to take him/her out or at the very least push them away from the team fight.

I would go with Sanctification is you already have an initiator on team or intend on playing more of a support role i.e. playing back more instead of up front. This personally isn't my style but I don't want to entirely discount its potential use depending on team composition and game states etc. Be sure to communicate to your team about this Heroic ability, it only works if teammates understand it.

Level 13 Angelic Absorption

This is the crucial part of my defense in this build. This provides me with enough tankiness and makes me feel safe enough to be able to start adding more offensive capability in the next two talent selections.

Having Amplified Healing in conjunction with this talent allows me to feel content with Tyrael's defensive capability for the rest of the game.

Imposing Will is currently most people's go-to. I would recommend this talent against teams that rely more on auto attacks instead of abilities for damage otherwise I still prefer Angelic Absorption for its healing mechanic, which I find more universal, but both of these talents are great and you can't be wrong with either IMO.

Level 16 Blade of Justice

I wanted a consistent way to boost my damage and I felt this was the most consistent.

Blood for Blood is a great talent but it's on a 60 second cooldown, doesn't benefit from Battle Momentum, so you might be popping it once or at the most twice per team fight where El'druin's Might is on a 12 second with cooldown reduction making this more reliable more often.

Level 20 Nexus Blades

This helps better balance out my build giving it more offensive power and also adding a slow to its attack which gives you more disruptive capability and provides more incentive for the enemy to want to attack you.

Angel of Justice does seem great with cool down cut in half and the range extended, but I don't see myself using this more than once that often in team fights and team fights will make or break your game when it comes down to end game.

Keep in mind, this is my preferences in its current state with the experiences I have had with Tyrael which doesn't encompass having tried all the things that I wanted to try with Tyrael. Future builds that I will be experimenting with include...

Exploring more support elements from talents

Finding uses for Sanctification with Holy Arena, using Imposing Will and making up the lack of Angelic Absorption with Hardened Shield or Salvation. I also haven't explored denying enemy position using Holy Ground which might be worth adding to my current build by it self depending on what type of advantages I can create while testing it out.

Relying on Angelic Absorption and Hardened Shield for defense instead

This would most likely depend on Smite spamming and boosting it with various talents such as Purge Evil, Retribution. It might also be worth using if depending on Regeneration Master instead of Angelic Absorption freeing up being able to use something more aggressive at Level 13 like Burning Rage or Angelic Might.

As you can see this is a work in process, feel free to leave comments about my guide below or any suggestions especially ones where I can make this guide shorter or easier to read. Any errors that I can correct is also appreciated.