Q)
Hammerang A few points to make. First, it deals so so damage(un-buffed at lvl 20 deals 290 damage. However, it pierces so it's good for clearing minions. With
BOOMerang, it's even better at clearing waves, and good team battle synergy. With
Power Throw and
Secret Weapon, it unlocks some very powerful auto-attack damage. If that wasn't enough, it also causes a slow to all targets hit, which, with team members with
Executioner is really good, and
Hammer Time, also gives Falstad a stun mechanic, which is never a bad thing. One thing to note as well, is that it will deal it's damage on it's way back, so if you can get the spacing right, you can hit someone just within it's max range, and they can't dodge the 2nd hit on it's way back. At lvl 20, fully buffed with
Gathering Power, that's a very generous 667(333.5 * 2) damage.
W)
Lightning Rod Falstad's single target burst damage. This basic really melts those pounds off your victims. At level 20, un-buffed, will deal 235 damage, plus 165 damage per additional hit per second for 4 seconds. If you manage to keep your target in range for all 4 seconds, that's a ***ing total damage of 730 un-buffed damage. With max
Gathering Power, that's 839.5(270.25 + 189.75 * 3) damage, and with
Thunderstrikes, that's 949 damage(305.5 + 214.5 * 3). With
Charged Up and
Thunderstrikes, that becomes 1219(270.25 + 189.75 * 5). That's like heroic level damage, from a basic attack.
E)
Barrel Roll Falstad's escape ability. Falstad's very squishy, so the moment that you start taking damage, get ready to barrel roll out of there. You dish out tremendous damage so you will get focused down quickly. You could be surprised how quickly your health will get dropped, so be safe, barrel roll, and live to continue the damage, and prevent giving up xp to your opponents as well. Also, Barrel Roll can be doubled as a chase option, to keep someone within your
Lightning Rod range, or to finish off a runner with an AA. Be careful if you do this, you may be running into a trap and get ganked, so don't over pursue, ever.
R)
Hinterland Blast/
Mighty Gust I will go into details of these heroics in my tier 4 section below.
Tailwind Falstad's passive. It's a weak compensation for the lack of a mount, but it's better than no speed bonus at all. Thankfully Falstad has his flight ability.
Z)
Flight Falstad has no mount per say, but his flight ability is pretty awesome. It is very useful at getting to support an ally in a hurry, or getting to an objective in a hurry, gives you the option to hearth back for life and mana, then fly back quicky. There is a cast time, so it can't be used as an escape, and there is a range limit to it, so on larger maps it's not an instant teleport like
Brightwing, but it has it's uses.
Tier 1(lvl 1)
There's a few good choices here. As a matter of fact, Falstad doesn't have a tier where he has a clear cut choice of talent, all tiers have good options for good potential builds. Planning ahead of time will help choosing your level 1 talent, as with all other tiers.
Power Throw To be honest, I only ever take this talent if I plan on taking
Secret Weapon later on, so you can take more advantage of the AA damage bonus. Other than that, I actually prefer the shorter range. The longer range makes it harder to get a double hit.
Updraft I used to take this often as it has good utility. It gives better peel potential to get out of danger, and gives better chase potential to finish off any runners.
seasoned marksman Falstad's AA is decently fast, and deals decent damage, so one can argue that Seasoned Marksman is a good buff for an AA build and some may argue that the damage buff to Falstad's auto attacks is minuscule and not entirely needed.
Conjurer's Pursuit For the most part, Falstad roams a lot, what with
Flight jumping from skirmish to skirmish. Due to this, you won't be picking up lots of globes. With good management of mana, this talent isn't very needed, and with
Flight, it's not difficult for him to hearth back, get full mana, then fly back into the fray. I'll take this talent depending on the map and how heavily my build will be using abilities. Obviously not needed in an AA build.
Bribe It's a decent talent for other heroes, but Falstad's role is wrecking heroes and being a feared presence in team fights. Also, there are more important talents to pick from. On hind sight, I found a use for this talent. Go see my description for my merc support build for more details.
Tier 2(lvl 4)
This tier I lean towards
Gathering Power more since I'm just a huge fan of this talent, but once again, all depends on what your end game plan is.
Charged Up As mentioned in my calculations above, this is a massive damage boost to
Lightning Rod, as long as you can keep your target in range for all 6 hits. If you're looking for a spell caster build for max burst damage, look no further than this talent here.
Flow Rider It can help you with mobility, allowing you to
Barrel Roll more often, allowing to pursue more safely, knowing you'll have a quick escape in your pocket. However, if you are playing that recklessly with Falstad, you are most likely dying often, which is giving the enemy team free xp. On behalf of the other players you are playing with, stop that. This talent is not needed if you are playing smart.
Vampiric Assault Falstad attacks fast, and un-buffed his AA deals good damage, and specked for auto attacks, hits really hard, so this will give you good sustain. That being said, you are not Ilidan, your health regain isn't that amazing with this, so once again, please don't be over aggressive, know when to pull back.
Gathering Power Amazing talent. Where
Charged Up gives a massive boost to
Lightning Rod, gathering power gives a good damage boost to all your abilities, this includes heroics. This is why this is my pick for my Boomerang build.
Feb. 21st edit: So, on this site, the tooltip for
Gathering Power says it's a max of 10%, but in game is 15%, so I will fix my calculations throughout my guide accordingly.
Tier 3(lvl 7)
This tier is tough. Two good damage boosting talents, 2 good survivability talents, and probably my favorite utility talent in the game.
Battle Momentum Love this talent, and it's all thanks to
Thrall(too bad he doesn't have it anymore). Falstad has a pretty good attack speed, so this will allow you to spam your awesomely powerful abilities more often, but the true awesomeness of this is it also cuts down on the cool down of your heroics. The downside though, and the reason it's not in my builds, is that it competes with some of the important key talents.
Secret Weapon Key talent for the AA build. 80% boost!! holy mother of....okay, gotta keep this pg. This is a massive damage boost. If you're chasing someone, what I've done was to throw my hammer the opposite direction so that it takes longer to reach back to me, giving me a few more auto attacks to throw out.
BOOMerang Love this talent, and when I first played Falstad, it was the basis of my build then. There are so many creative uses to this talent. It can be used for quicker minion clears, really helps in the mines and in the gardens. It helps you spread the slow effect during team fights, making more people vulnerable to your partners with
Executioner. My favorite, and this happens often enough for me to make note of this, is getting that additional damage on that hero that ran behind his gate, thought he was safe, and then BAM!. heheheh so satisfying. I've read other guides that say the timing is difficult, but I've never found the timing hard to land the explosion, unless you try to do it point blank, but instead of detonating it on it's way out, detonate it on it's way back, if your target is point blank. With fully charged
Gathering Power, this adds 291.5 damage at lvl 20 to your
Hammerang. If you can land a double hit with said hammerang, you are looking at a very nice 971.75(333.5 * 2 + 304.75) damage.
Free Roll Do I really need to talk about this talent? After how amazing the previous 3 talents are? Yeah I didn't think so.
First Aid Good for survivability. As I list under my Food for Thought section, Falstad has alright health pool, average really, in comparison to other assassins that is, so first aid is decent. I mainly take this in my lightning build since
Lightning Rod requires you to be closer to the front, which means you'll take more damage, so this will help with staying power.
Tier 4(lvl 10)
If you notice, I only use hingerland blast. I do understand the usefulness of
Mighty Gust, it has great utility, but I find it is more useful with a team with good communication. As is I only do pubs(although would love to join an actual team and try my hand at competitive play.
Hinterland Blast "And they call Nova a sniper". Love this heroic. Don't waste it though, it is awesome at finishing runners off, especially if you can catch 2 or more in line. In a panic, they won't have time to dodge out of the way. Even if they do, that juke will slow them down enough for your melee to finish them off instead. It is very satisfying when you can take 2 or more down in one shot. At lvl 20, with max
Gathering Power, and without
Call of the Wildhammer, it dishes out 990 damage.
Mighty Gust So, I haven't played around with this too much, but I do see the potential here. Falstad deals quite a bit of damage without
Hinterland Blast, so some utility for a heroic is nice. It also has a shorter cooldown, no longer of a cooldown then what you would get from an
Envenom or a
Blood for Blood. With some practice and precision, you can use this to push away a pesky healer from a fight, or a particular deadly damage dealer like
Sgt. Hammer, or a major threat like
Stitches, but good luck finding him out of place to get to blow him away without the rest of this team. The more obvious use of this talent is, if you're team finds themselfs in a 4v5 or worst, and are in serious trouble, blast your enemies away so that you and your team can make a safe get a way. An other use would be to use
Flight to get behind the enemies, then blow them into your group for shear chaos. If I ever get to join an actual team, I can see myself using this heroic more often than
Hinterland Blast.
Tier 5(lvl 13)
There's only 2 talents at this tier I like, which is still more than some tiers for some other heroes. Both choices are huge damage increases, and your choice will be decided by the build you are going for.
Giant Killer A must for AA builds, and even if you aren't going for an AA build, it's just nice to have, especially if your up against a meaty team(
Stitches,
Chen,
Diablo,
Azmodan and
Nazeebo come to mind)
Crippling Hammer It's alright, helps with chasing or getting away, but not so much. Plus, it's contending with some more very key talents. Not worth it at all.
Thunderstrikes If you're building a caster Falstad, this is a nice damage boost to your nuke. Seriously, this, combined with
Charged Up, makes your
Lightning Rod deal more damage than your heroic(if you can manage to get all the hits in).
Static Shield If you feel like your team has enough dps but lacking in meat shields or healing, then go ahead and grab this instead of
Thunderstrikes for the lightning build. Possibly grab this for the boomerang build too for the same reasons, but that build allows you to fight from a further distance so not needed as much. Not for AA build because you are giving up too much by not taking
Giant Killer.
Tier 6(lvl 16)
Three good choices here, but in my presented builds, I only use 2.
Overdrive is a good pick of a talent, so it's not a bad choice if you prefer it.
Aerie Gusts It's alright, I suppose, if you are looking for more mobility outside of combat. I personally feel like this is a wasted talent.
Hammer Time Really good for any build. I particularly like it for my
Lightning Rod builds, because a stunned opponent means that's at least one more additional bolt he/she is gonna get hit from. A stun is never a bad thing. Try to use it to interrupt a cast, but it's not consistent enough to be rely on. Hopefully a hero on your team has a more reliable stun to interrupt that
Nazeebo,
Valla,
E.T.C., or
Nova.
Afterburner At this point, if you notice, all my builds I haven't dedicated a single talent to escape. That's because
Barrel Roll is decent all on it's own. If you find yourself getting ganked by ilidan, or
Zeratul, or
Tyrael, or
Stitches, this is even better than
Sprint for escaping, or chasing, with a much shorter cool down. I just noticed that the tool tip doesn't show the %. It's 60% boost, 15% less than sprint, but 60% after you barrel roll is good enough, and as mentioned, 16 second cool down vs 60 second cool down. Yeah, I love afterburner.
Overdrive A very good ability damage boost for the caster build. I find it's not really needed as Falstad already is dealing loads of damage, so I like to save this tier for utility. As I mentioned, this talent is far from bad, so if you prefer to use it, nothing wrong with that. One point to note, the indicator you get when you activate this ability warns your opponents of danger so they'll just avoid you until it's over.
Tier 7(lvl 20)
As with most heroes, all tier 7 talents are great. No real terrible choices here.
Call of the Wildhammer A good boost to your heroic. At level 20, this makes your heroic hit anything it's considerable range for 1125 damage, a definite finisher to make sure no one can escape with their lives.
Wind Tunnel Since I haven't really played around with
Mighty Gust so I don't know how good this is, but it sounds like it could be avoidable and unnecessary.
Nexus Frenzy very nice for AA builds. Increased attack speed and range? Permanently? Awesome. That means you can attack from a safer distance.
Epic Mount This is my new pic for lvl 20. The uses are many. You can move around the map a lot more, support your team mates where ever they are, whether turning in coins or going for knights. Pay attention to the mini-map, and make sure that your teammates aren't left alone. An other use is getting behind enemy lines. A few times lately I've come up against pre-made teams of
Sgt. Hammer with
Li Li and
Malfurion, which was annoying as well let me tell you. Have someone flank them, then fly over and take that tank from behind, then the rest falls apart. Lastly, that 0.5 cast time makes it so you can use your
Flight ability to make quick get aways, live to fight again. This is probably the most useful aspect of
Epic Mount.
So, I had a thought while I was at work, because, you know, I have nothing better to do at work than dream up of new ways to play Falstad. lol
I thought of this build. With Falstad's
Flight ability, he can travel from merc camp to merc camp very easily, and not be far out of the fight for long. Here's my reasoning behind the build.
Tier 1(lvl 1)
Bribe Falstad's the only assassin that gets this talent. With
Flight, I started to think that he can be very effective on large maps with lots of mercs, especially once he gets
Epic Mount at level 20. Also, with
BOOMerang, Falstad can gather up stacks of bribe fast with how quickly he can dispatch minions.
Tier 2(lvl 4)
Gathering Power Even though this is a build that is more of a specialist build, don't forget that Falstad's an assassin and his damage will be needed in team fights. Also, this helps in taking out minions in one shot, and spend less time on mercs as well.
Tier 3(lvl 7)
BOOMerang I think I've said enough throughout this guide how much I love this talent. It's really powerful, and it pretty much one shots minions and creeps(garden and mines). This will help you rack up those stacks of bribe fast.
Tier 4(lvl 10)
Hinterland Blast Once again, you're still an assassin, and you will still be expected to play that role. This is a great finisher to take out those runners.
Tier 5(lvl 13)
Static Shield There is no avoiding taking damage from taking mercs like knights, and the most you can take out with
Bribe is 2 out of 4 knights. This will help you come out of that fight relatively un-harmed. Doesn't really help vs heroes though, they blow this shield up fast.
Tier 6(lvl 16)
Hammer Time Once again, helps with knights. Take 2 out with
Bribe, throw out a
BOOMerang, then the first knight you hit will be stunned, reducing the amount of damage you are taking for 0.75 seconds.
Tier 7(lvl 20)
Epic Mount This is where your map presence becomes awesome. Fly from merc camp to merc camp, while the rest of the team is keeping the opponents busy, and if things get harry, fly back to help out with the team fight.
That's the moral of the story. Even though this build is for quick merc clearing, do not neglect team fights. You're no good without back up, and a team fight goes much better with your dps. Maintaining good map awareness is paramount.
So far, I'm seeing less success with the lightning build compared to the boomerang build, simply because the lightning build does require you to get in closer, which means it is riskier. Also, even though on paper, doing the math, this build should be blowing up the damage chart, but it's easier said than done to keep your target in range for every hit, and with the high risk nature of the build, I've been dying more, which cuts down on my total damage dealt. So far, my favorite build is still my Boomerang build.
Feb. 21st: So, just to give an update, I have now singled out my boomerang build. It is most definitely seeing more success. I tried out
Mighty Gust some more, and it's alright, but now I'm convinced that unless I use it in a pre-made team with good communication, it's no where near as good as hingerland blast. My boomerang build has much better mobility than even the AA builds. The more you stand in one spot, the greater the odds of getting ganged up on and killed. Constant movement, with throwing out your
BOOMerang on cooldown will net you with good team work, constant damage, and a much more consistent performance.
Please leave comments to let me know what you think about my guide and what you're experiences with Falstad are, and also let me know of any sections you would like for me to add to this guide. I'm very glad I got an upvote, would still like some feedback. Did you try out the boomeerang build and like it? did you have more fun or success with the other builds? Any comment, positive or negative, is welcomed.
At the beginning of this guide I mention that my Falstad is lvl 7. That was when I started this guide. After a week of putting in about 4-5 hours a day, I have gotten him to lvl 9, and sporting a pretty good win ratio with nothing but pubs. :)
I would like to add a video detailing the builds and general game play, I just don't know how yet. Once I figure that out, I'll add it on here for all to enjoy. Also, if anyone has experience in making videos of such, please leave me a comment with advice on how. :)
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