Foreword:
I am neither a good HOTS nor a good
Zeratul player yet.
BUT, I love Zeratul. So, I decided to get it as my main and to rise from rank 28 to rank 1 by playing Zeratul whenever I can. To get there, I will need to know as much as I can about Zeratul and to adjust as much as needed to win.
What is this Guide good for?
Please look at it as
my personal summary of the "current best guides and builds for Zeratul" imho on heroesfire. I will update it with links and references to everything, which I like and use at the moment and delete everything, which is not valid for me (outdated or similar). I don't want to steal anything from everyone but only to summarize everything usefull in one place, and to help others to find faster good information and advices of better players. Hopefully it will
help new Zeratul players to pick up that awesome hero faster.
There are many much better players and authors, who have already created some Zeratul guides in the past or recently and are better at explaining. Sometimes I might use something from them, but will then put a reference to the original text, so the glory can be shared. I am also not an english native, so my grammar and formulations might be unintentional wrong, which I will try to avoid or adjust afterwards.
!!! If someone of the authors don't like to be mentioned or believe there is something im my guide, which was stolen from them, please inform me and I will accordingly to your wish!!!
There are some decent and only a few great Zeratul guides. Being a noob I started to use one guide in 1-3 games, then randomly switched to another, then to the next. Sometimes it worked, most times not really. My main problem was to think, that there is one best build and I just need to find and to copy it.
But, there are
MANY VALID BUILDS and it is one of your major skills in the game to
RECOGNISE WHAT WORKS BEST in THAT game for you to help your team most.
First of all, I will put in several builds with talents only and write some basic stuff about Zeratul.
Afterwards, in the coming weeks and months, I will adjust and add more the content to the specific builds.
Skills and Talents:
Get good understanding of how Zeratul's skills and talents work by reading:
DunkTrain
Sike's little outdated but still one of the best Zeratul guides
Dryeck
How to play
For your Yearly, Mid and Late Game Basics, use
DunkTrain
Dryeck (here also how to use Void Prison)
Very nice section on rotations (use of AA and abilities) in 1v1 and in team fights by Switchblade (you get here the basic idea of how important it is to use correct rotations depending on level and your talents
What to avoid
Don't take following talents (all from
DunkTrain):
1. Giant killer
Quoted:
I don't particularly care for this talent. Giant Killer is really only good against tanks, and only if you're sustaining attacks on them for longer than 5 seconds at a time. The high health tanks are not Zeratul's primary concern, and since killing the front line isn't his primary role in a team fight, I can't recommend giant killer over Assassin's Blade unless the enemy team has 5 warriors.
2. Stoneskin
Quoted:
Please don't ever pick Stoneskin on Zeratul. This is the worst exchange of Damage vs. Survivability of any tier, and you should always pick a damage talent here. If you have issues surviving with Zeratul try picking some of the more utility/survivability oriented talents earlier in the tree, or change to a more conservative playstyle.
3. First Aid
Quoted:
First Aid is an incredibly bad talent on Zeratul, because the healing is based on his small health pool, is a slow heal over time, and the cooldown is very long. Never pick this.
Right now (Feb 2016), this build is for me the best way to
get most DPS in a short time period (mainly during a team fight),
WHEN you will be able to dodge the stuns and blinds from the other team (and get at least 3 AA on one enemy).
Some good references I could find on heroesfire are:
AA-Build from Ghost7718
AA-build from Linmur
Very important note on L1 Talent Seasoned Marksman
according to DunkTrain (one of the best in the business)
Quoted:
Seasoned Marksman is a very bad talent for Zeratul. During the early game you don't want to be holding a lane from the creep line trying to get last hits. You want to be roaming, putting pressure on the map, or at least hiding in a side brush in lane so that the enemies have to be wary. Seasoned Marksman is everything Zeratul doesn't want to be doing.
This makes a lot of sense, but on the other hand, it is easy to kill Minions with Zeratul and you gain stacks during the time you wait near Minions for an overextended enemy. And going the AA build you will benefit mostly from increase in the AA-damage in the late game, where no block will save you and you enter fights mostly with full health (again, AA-build is best vs teams with little blinds and stuns).
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