Workhorse Azmodan - My Playstyle Top
Workhorse Azmodan is a build designed for the player who wants to get everything done themself. This build is a high-impact one that will see you topping both siege and hero damage. In order to play this build effectively, your mindset must always be on
value. Rather than having a specific goal in mind, you should always be focusing on getting the most out of your abilities, especially your Globe. This usually takes the form of going for as many stacks as possible as quickly as possible, and while not always viable depending on the situation, your stacks should be anywhere between 10 to the level to
40 to the level, meaning you may complete your baseline quest before you even have your heroics.
When playing this build right, every aspect of the game will bow at your fingertips. You may find yourself
Triple-laning while also participating in a teamfight objective. When you play like this, the enemy team will find it hard to find any kind of foothold.
The abilities Top
Globe of Annihilation: The workhorse tool. Your Super Shotgun. You'll want to see this ability off cooldown more often than not. Whenever it
is off cooldown, you'll want to ask yourself what you can do to make it as useful as possible. This doesn't mean constantly looking to get multi-hero dunks, but nor does it mean constant laning. It means assessing the situation and asking "which option will get me the most value at this very moment?" Maybe that means trying to get a pick on the healer, maybe it means throwing the orb at a minion wave that everyone's ignoring because of the teamfight.
Speaking of teamfights, you need to learn very quickly what is and what isn't a viable dunk target. If you think you can land a triple, then go for it. But it's better to land a guaranteed wave-wipe than it is to go for a spray-and-pray style snipe. Remember that the closer you are to a target, the easier they'll be to hit. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go for maximum-range snipes, but learning how to do those is an intangible skill that's hard to teach, and isn't the point of this guide.
Demon Warrior: Scouting and softening up waves for an orb, that's really all these are good for. Sometimes they can block skillshots or attract the attention of monsters while you channel objectives, though, so there's actually quite a bit more to them than meets the eye. Try not to summon them against foes with strong AA tools when laning, however, especially against foes like Illidan, who relish the chance to heal or lower their cooldowns.
One thing you can do with them is aim them at a lane while you go off to do something else. While you may end up deleting a minion that you could've otherwise gotten experience for, mixing these with a Lieutenant or Globe can be the door you need to pull off some triple-laning.
All Shall Burn: Your emergency tool. Aside from focusing down a structure, keep this off cooldown, because it is the one thing that will give your counters pause about engaging on you. While you'll primarily be relying on your high health pool to avoid death, enemies with high CC or mobility are really just trying to get you to waste this move before they fully commit to your death. If you can bait out a deflect or blink or the like, then use All Shall Burn to punish them for it. Your health is usually high enough that even 100-to-death characters like Valeera can rarely do enough damage to actually kill you. That said, if you've already had your health chunked and there's no one to help, then it's time to just turn tail and leave. Your huge healthpool can overcome the need for mobility, but that doesn't mean you should Slow yourself by channelling an unnecessary ability.
Demon Lieutenant: Put these in lanes as often as you can. Make sure you put them in with a healthy minion wave, rather than to assist a dying one, as you'll want those minions to soak up damage so the Lieutenant lasts as long as possible. Its instant-kill ability means a lot of free pressure and exp, and all you need to do is press a button. Just remember though, that it is fairly easy for heroes to kill, so don't try to use it to babysit a Murky or a Zagara.
The Build Top
Gluttony: A must-have for this build. The lowered cooldown may not be immediately noticeable, but the rate at which you gain stacks absolutely will. This does, however, mean that you'll need to know how to properly assess which situations will actually lead to clean hits. Leading your shots and reading the enemies will absolutely be necessary, but above all you need to know when
not to throw your orb. However, that doesn't mean you should just hold onto it and wait for the perfect moment, as in most cases you should be able to find
something worth dunking on, usually a wave of minions. The cooldown reduction from this talent will get you your orb back sooner than you think. However, due to the need to need to actually gather exp from your dunks, you will want to make sure you actually
kill the minions, so having high stacks in the early game and making liberal use of Tide of Sin is vital.War
Also remember that your orb can be used to block off an escape route, and although you won't be gaining stacks that way, sometimes missing out
can be worth it to help secure a kill.
Hellforged Armor: Army of Hell is a grossly overrated talent. The extra duration and the armor can greatly increase the summon's scouting value, as well as making it an easier tool to leave in a lane while you do other things. It's also less likely to actually destroy the lane by itself, which means more stacks for you.
Art of Chaos: While a bit of a dud talent once you reach maximum stacks, once you're good at this build, Art of Chaos should represent an additional 40 stacks, minimum. Being reimbursed the mana also lets Azmodan take full advantage of his reduced Q cooldown, as you will rarely be hurting for Mana during a teamfight, even when making liberal use of your abilities.
Tide of Sin: If your stacks are ahead of the curve, then Tide of Sin will make them
ridiculously ahead of the curve. Remember that your aim is
value, and that means it's okay to use this talent just to delete a wave. Once your stacks are high enough, it can clear all seven minions from full health. Using a heroic to delete a wave may seem wasteful, but being able to soak an entire wave in a single second is what gives this build its edge.
Level 13: A flex tier. Cydaea's Kiss is useful for surviving certain matchups and if your team's healing is low. Brutish Vanguard is generally the best general option as it has a multiplicative effect with Hellforged Armor's armor, meaning you have a 20% slow on a summon that requires focus-fire to delete. Chain of Command is really only useful for this build if you've found out only too late that you should've gone with a different build and want to course correct.
Total Annihilation: The extra damage will make itself known, even against squishies. Remember that your orbs should be seeing a lot of cooldown reductions with each cast, so the damage will ramp up quickly. By this point you should also be approaching 300 stacks, and so with this talent, a Tide of Sin empowered orb will look to do about 1200 damage, which is absolutely terrifying when it comes from an ability with such massive range.
Pride: Self-explanatory. You may take Trample if the enemy team is good at locking you down, though if they are, this was probably the wrong build to take.
Alterac Pass: Surprisingly effective despite the size of the map. This is mostly because you're within range of two lanes while fighting objective, can put a lieutenant on the third, and the objective area is hard to avoid globes in while fights are going down. You can also channel the objective without killing the monsters by using your summon to draw their attention.
Battlefield of Eternity: Not the best choice here, just due to the lack of vision and tendency for the lanes to be out of your reach.
Blackheart's Bay: Can be effective, but there are usually better builds here due to the lack of teamfighting.
Braxis Holdout: Not too bad if you're not the solo laner, since heroes tend to clump up, but you may be better off with a different build.
Cursed Hollow: You can both defend against and push with the objective very well here, but more importantly the tightness of the map during objectives can be easily exploited, and like Altarac you should be able to reach the lanes mid fight.
Dragon Shire: If you're the mid-laner, you can easily assault both top and bot's teamfights with minimal risk. Just be wary of getting caught out while doing so, since you will need to partially rotate to hit the objectives.
Garden of Terror: Similar to Cursed Hollow, but a bit harder to land globes due to the more open areas. In a pinch you can use your summons to draw attention of the monsters while you channel.
Hanamura: Generally hard to use this build, but depending on the enemy team, you may be able to pull this off by taking advantage of heroes clumping around the payload.
Infernal Shrines: While killing monsters with your Q can be difficult, a well timed globe can easily steal them while also hitting multiple heroes. Plus, you can reach multiple lanes with ease during the mid or bot objective.
Sky Temple: Due to not needing to siege directly, this build's lighter touch to sieging structures is greatly compensated for.
Tomb of the Spider Queen: You can reach everything and blow it the hell up, and rarely need to put yourself in danger.
Towers of Doom: Lane pressure is underrated in this map, plus there are many areas where avoiding globes is difficult. Stall the objectives as long as possible and you can get a substantial lead.
Volskaya: Similar to Hanamura, but you can easily reach many lanes. Your globes cover a lot of the objective area, so farming stacks there is fairly easy.
Warhead Junction: A bit difficult to get value here sometimes due to its size and the spread out nature of the objective.
Checks and Counters Top
Soft Counters (characters that can restrict your options, but can be played around):
: It's hard to get any value off of hitting Fenix with an orb beyond him being just another body, but ultimately what makes him tricky is that he will usually win the war of attrition if you match him in lane.
: Characters like Tracer or Illidan have the ability to bully you out of lane, but where those characters Azmodan can easily retreat from with health to spare, Orphea's damage is much harder to overcome. Fortunately it's fairly easy to work around her due to a lack of a hard engage, so as long as you don't overextend, she won't be able to punish you.
: Murky is troublesome to beat in lane, since Azmodan struggles to pop his pufferfish, and both of Murky's heroics can be difficult for Azmodan to deal with. That said, this relationship absolutely flips around by the lategame, as Azmodan will just delete any pressure Murky can create, without even having to enter his lane.
: Surprisingly annoying, Rehgar's Chain Heal can unwittingly harm your ability to gain stacks off of minions, as well as quickly mitigate the damage dealt to groups. Being hard to hit while retreating doesn't help things. Fortunately Rehgar does tend to encourage his allies to group up, which you can take advantage of.
: Can close gaps and slam you repeatedly with his heroic, and grants a lot of movement speed, making it easier for his allies to escape an orb. That said, watch out for his allies grouping up for his W heals. The fact that he will often be looking to dash to an enemy to activate his trait can also make his movements predictable.
: Insufferable, but not actually a counter since she can only knock off about half your health in one go. She will make you hearth more often than you want to, however.
: If he comes up to you riding a mount, you're most likely dead. Just rotate often and either scout or defend yourself with your W, which can dismount him.
: Just another character who won't let you escape. Treat her like another Garrosh, but one who doesn't need the backing of her team. Funnily enough you can laser her while she's spinning around you, but since it won't hurt her, there's no point in doing it unless you know she's not going to re-activate it (for whatever reason).
: While not too much of a threat early game, her mix of Roots, high damage, and the Water Elemental can make it impossible for you to escape should she start focusing you. She's also good at deleting your summons and makes short work of a wave you may have built. That said, if you can get enough of a lead, she won't be much of a threat, especially if she doesn't finish her quest, as that leaves her very open to All Shall Burn.
Checks (characters that neutralize your strategy, but don't outright beat it):
: If you're fighting a Ragnaros, expect a long game. Lava wave will negate any of the pressure you manage to build, but the extra pressure he creates can help you build stacks quicker. Generally I'd advise to go with another build against Ragnaros.
: Those protects will turn the teamfight element of this build against you due to their similar cooldowns, and he's hard to build stacks off of.
: Not that much of a Check, but the reduced bodycount will reduce the value of a lot of the talents here. Just build something else that either lets you exploit the enemy team's inability to deal with your pressure, or something that lets you focus some damage onto Cho.
Hard Counters (characters that can take advantage of or just overwhelm your strategy):
: The one character who may just turn your pressure against you by building up his stacks at an astonishing rate. If the Nazeebo is good at running more than one lane, you may be in trouble especially as he's one of the few characters who can kill you from full health, especially with Vile Infection. Fortunately most Nazeebos don't recognise the opportunity you represent. Against a Nazeebo you may will want to take a different build.
Hard Dive: If the enemy likes to start and end teamfights in a matter of seconds, then you won't have enough time to build stacks, find opportunities for multi-hit globes, or even build lane pressure while stalling objective. In these scenarios you're better off going for a hard solo-lane build, or potentially even trying for a laser build.
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