Hi! I'm Severage, long-time casual gamer and more recently a Heroes of the Storm addict. Since my HotS invite I've played 1200+ games on (primarily) assassins. I picked up Muradin more recently and have been having a TON of fun on him, compared to most Warriors that I find fairly dull. Currently I have 57 games on him at roughly 72% Win Rate (But 81% Win Rate with Haymaker).
I have played a lot, and thus know a lot about the game in general, as well as reaching (and maintaining for a long time) 4K+ MMR on Hotslogs, etc.
Places you can find me:
Twitter
HotDogs
Hero.GG (Currently out of date)
Thanks for your interest, and thanks for reading!
Table of Contents - For Your Convenience!
I'm going to break from the pattern of my other guides here - at least for now. There are other guides for general Muradin use, this one will be specialized for my super fun Damage Build. As such there will be less general all-encompassing matchup/map/ability/talent information, and a LOT less text. Perhaps I'll do a full comprehensive guide in the future, but currently the top Tank Muradin guides aren't so out of date that I feel I need to reinvent the wheel.
So without further ado, check out the shortest guide I've written to date!
This is the best talent in the tier by a long shot IMO. I know, people will say "But just get
Reverberation for more mitigation and manage your mana pool better!" But managing your mana pool will prevent you from doing things like soloing merc camps (Muradin does this very easily post-13), poking structures (In games that get poke/siege-y instead of getting hard engages this racks up a lot of damage), etc. Essentially, you get this because
Sledgehammer is amazing and you want to be utilizing it as much as possible.
Note: Reverberation + Thunder Clap is a useful combination if you absolutely have to use it, E.G. vs
Illidan,
Sgt. Hammer, etc. I honestly hate having to take those talents and not be able to solo merc camps, wreck early turrets, and never go oom, but your carries may live to thank you.
Thunder Clap will proc Reverberation a second time, but not Thunder Strike.
As already said above, the reason for
Infused Hammer is so you can use this like nuts. Being able to use it with 25% mana cost (And after
Piercing Bolt you
gain mana from it) means you can liberally spam it on mercs, minions, and structures. This may not sound like it's useful, but trust me, it is. Taking chunks off of turrets early (Not to mention a lot of ammo), able to solo mercs (13+ it gets even faster), and able to deal significant damage to objectives like Grave Golems or Boss Camps is very worth the talent pick.
Honestly not a lot to say here, extremely powerful talent in all cases. Very potent for hitting multiple enemy Heroes, hitting multiple Mercs when taking merc camps, hitting through a minion to hit a Hero, hitting 2 structures, and of course you gain mana instead of losing it for hitting 2 targets with
Infused Hammer.
This is a crazy fun Heroic to pick up. Useful for "InSec"-ing squishy targets in teamfights, using it defensively so that you can't be chased or to save a teammate, and even as a kill finisher (
NOTE: If you don't execute with the ability, you'll almost certainly knock them way out of kill range. Take care that they are low enough to be executed by Haymaker. You'll get a good feel for this in a few games, but until then use it either only when they are very low or only when you will knock them into your team. DON'T KNOCK
Divine Storm UTHER INTO YOUR TEAM).
Another amazing damage talent. Primarily you will use this when singling out targets in a teamfight. More on your rotation/combo later, but be sure to be away from other targets to get this to work. It will do around 450 damage at level 13, and scale up for more later, which gives you significant burst for the amount of CC you pack.
Aside from enemy Heroes, this is nice for taking Siege camps. To take sieges most effectively pre-16, you get on one side of the camp and Q such that it hits both Giants. W instantly afterward so you get the Thunderstrike damage on only one giant (Let's call it Ogre 1). Continue AAing Ogre 1 until your W is almost up. Walk through the camp to Ogre 2, W so that you get the Thunderstrike damage on Ogre 2, Q through both Giants again, and finish the camp.
Essentially, this talent is
Executioner on steroids. With the very high uptime on your CC, your opponents should be giving you bonus damage AAs almost 100% of the time you are fighting them with Rewind, and without Rewind you will get around 3 empowered AAs during your burst combo which adds significant damage to it. Many times this will give you the edge you need to be able to Execute with
Haymaker or just straight-up finish kills with your AAs after a combo.
Note:
Stoneform if you get
Avatar. While Give Em the Axe is still ok with avatar, there's less reason for you to take it because obviously you're actually trying to be a tank instead of killing enemy carries. Make sure to use Avatar before popping Stoneform when possible as it works off %age HP.
Of course, nothing compares to the power you gain by picking
Rewind. Allows things like chain-CCing 2 targets for 3 seconds, or simply bursting one target extremely hard. With this talent, you can 100-0 many squishies if you are able to get AAs between your Qs and Ws, assuming you are about the same level as the opposing team.
Can also be used for things such as:
Dwarf Toss (E) over a gate/wall into enemy territory, Q a target, W as you walk around them, R them through the Gate/Wall to your team,
Rewind, E back over the gate, Q/W again if necessary. This can be hard to pull off unless an enemy target is standing close to a wall or has something like a Root on them already however, and is a bit dangerous. Still, very satisfying to pull off.
You can also Q through the gate and hit a target BEFORE Eing over the wall, since your
Piercing Bolt will go through the gate. They'd have to be really close to the wall, but it works often on
Haunted Mines.
Note:
Hardened Shield is ok here, it's not amazing like on
Anub'arak but it's solid if you are actually dying in teamfights for whatever reason. Pop Avatar, Stoneform, and Hardened Shield and watch as you heal 1v5.
I won't get into the early game here, as most your damage comes in later. Play Muradin like you do any other time in the early game (Except make sure to utilize
Sledgehammer!), and this is what you will want to do in the later parts of the game. As you may have guessed, lategame damage Muradin is
BEAST MODE.
InSec Combo:
->
->
->
The InSec Combo is your standard throw-their-carry-into-my-team move. You can do this 1 of two ways: Flanking or wait for a carry to walk close enough for you to leap onto him. Flanking is more effective, but if you're bush ganking or something it's not necessary.
When flanking, you can leap in, W, AA, Q, AA, R. You have plenty of time for AAs since you don't need to walk behind them while they're slowed/stunned. Remember to ALWAYS use W first just for that extra guarantee you don't miss your
Storm Bolt.
Note it can be difficult (People like
Diablo can ruin it) to pull off this move when you're not flanking and don't have the element of surprise, and it's usually better to wait for a carry to overextend to kill one of your squishies. When one tries to do this you can Q before you even need to E, so your combo turns into
Storm Bolt at range ->
Dwarf Toss behind them ->
Thunder Clap ->
Haymaker (But please don't R them into your 10% HP Teammates). When your carries are getting dove and you don't have the damage to burst a target (Due to losing teammates in a fight or CDs), you can always Q/R your opponents away for an easy escape.
REMEMBER: Your
Haymaker is on a 40 second cooldown. FORTY seconds. Use it whenever necessary - don't hesitate to use it defensively.
Your Burst Combo that basically murders any isolated squishy is fairly obvious, but here it is:
->
->
->
->
->
->
->
->
->
Be sure to weave in as many AAs as possible - as listed above, you should be able to get 1 AA after your W and then 2 AAs after your Qs if you use Rewind + Q quickly enough to keep them chain CC'd
(Keep in mind this does leave them with about 0.4 seconds without being CC'd, so if they're spamming their
Bolt of the Storm key they might get away. For opponents with this talent, only AA 1 time for each Q). Weaving in these AAs with
Give 'em the Axe! will greatly increase your damage output. If for whatever reason you pull this off on a beefy target like
Azmodan, you have 3 whole seconds to walk around him as you AA to Haymaker him backward since you shouldn't have enough damage to execute with it. Plenty of time, though I'd question why you really need to do that to such a beefy Hero. But ya know, in case the need ever arises, don't think you can 1-shot a Diablo with the combo.
Team Compositions
You may be wondering by this point, or even prior, what good is all this damage on a Warrior when you can be an assassin? Let me tell you why playing damage Muradin is not only fun, but can in fact be the better option.
1- You pack massive amounts of CC for the damage you deal - a luxury most assassins don't have at all.
2 - You still have a nice health pool and synergize very nicely with healers like
Brightwing and
Malfurion who can easily keep you up despite not having
Avatar/
Stoneform.
3- You can
Haymaker people into your team, a powerful displacement tool that Assassins don't have and have to dive the backline for. This synergizes well with Ranged DPS who can feed off your plays.
4- Rewind. Need I say more?
So, surely this isn't the best build in the world or you'd use it every game. There are conditions to this build, and I highly advise following these conditions prior to picking the build or you might just get blown up every fight. This calls for another list!
1 - You must have at least 1 Support. A hard healer + soft healer is optimal (E.G.
Brightwing +
Tassadar)
2 - Another Melee (Either Warrior or Melee DPS excluding
Zeratul) to help spread damage out. Unless you're support-stacked, being the only Melee will hurt in teamfights as you'll get focused the moment you go in and will want your tank talents. Zeratul doesn't sit in the fight like other melees so he really doesn't spread damage well.
3 - Not a requirement, but preferably you'll want a bursty ranged DPS (E.G.
Kael'thas,
Jaina) to follow-up on your InSec plays. Something like
Valla works fine but gives the opponent a moment of respite between CCing and dying, which lategame can allow for things like being able to use
Bolt of the Storm to escape. Either that or a lot of CC on your team so that you InSec into more CC.
Once you have at least the first 2 of these, but preferably the optional boons as well, damage Muradin seems godlike.
The best part? It doesn't matter if you're in QM or HL - Muradin is flexible. If you first pick Muradin in HL, your teammates can pick whatever they want. You can swap to tank build and be more than useful just as well.
I truly think this is not just some gimmicky build. It's not like the one-AA-wonder
Rehgar build that's just cheesy and not actually viable. This build with the right comp is legitimately strong.
That's it! So short! Maybe I'll flesh it out later, but I wanted to get this up. Thanks for reading!
Changelog
-
5/16/15 - First iteration of guide goes live. Edit: Fixed Image Sizes, fixed lists, made images easier on the eyes.
6/15/15 - Updated some things, made notes in talents for other options, etc.
7/2/15 and 8/27/15 - Muradin wasn't really effected by these patches, so I'm just bringing this up to date.
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