• The vast, vast majority of Lunara's damage and talent upgrades are loaded into this poison. At the bare minimum, ensure that every enemy hero has at least one stack of poison to maximize your damage output.
• The Lunara player sees a "rough estimation" of how long the poison is on an enemy by up to three green leaves under an enemy's healthbar. Each full leaf represents 3 seconds of poison. Don't be like me in thinking that the poison stacks - it doesn't work that way. Instead, you just increase its maximum duration.
• You should use your auto attacks as the easiest way to apply poison. Meanwhile, use your Q and ultimate abilities to apply poison to enemies outside of your range. An advanced tactic is to interweave abilities between your auto attack cooldown e.g. attack, Q something else, then attack a third target.

• A rather basic ability. Use it to hit clustered minions, mercs, and heroes. Definitely use it to give a bit more instant damage when focusing a target down.
• Due to the fast casting animation, it's best used right after an auto attack, and preferably with the aid of a slow from your W.
• If you were to pick up Splintered Spear or Choking Pollen[7] at 7, suddenly your Q becomes a significantly more important ability! Always think about boosting the damage of Choking Pollen[7] with at least 1 stack of poison. Remember to position yourself in such a way that your cone-shaped angle body can hit several enemy heroes with Splintered Spear. Bonus points in pre-arming the buff before a fight begins.

• A crucial component to Lunara's kit! Spread your poison to as many people as possible and then activate your W to double the duration. You can fit in roughly 3 auto attacks in before the first enemy's poison expires.
• If the enemy team is heavily stacked on poison, and preferably you have Let Them Wither[13], you may prefer using your W for slowing rather than poison damage. Wait for your team to get in position and start sparring - when they sense the enemy team got slowed, they can lay down the pain.
• Don't hesitate in activating Crippling Spores in favor of the slow rather than extending the poison duration if your team is chasing a fleeing enemy.

• My #1 tip is to have the wisp on the field 24/7. It's free, it's global, and its existence benefits you. There is no reason to have it waiting off cooldown!
• You should never check bushes with your body. You have a summon that was purpose-built to suicide itself into a lurking Alarak who was hoping to munch on your bones.
• If you don't need the wisp to protect yourself, then think about how it could help your team. Send it out to protect a bush closer to your team and it will reduce the odds of them dying.
• You can command the wisp whilst channeling to redirect it without interruption. Examples include Hearthstoning home or capturing an objective's tribute.
• If an enemy is hunting your wisp, annoy the hell out of them by commanding it to a different bush. It's very fast and tiny, most people will give up as soon as it runs away and you will still have a wisp available to spot enemies!
• The duration of the wisp is longer than the cooldown. If the wisp lived half of its life, you may command it to check a more dangerous place for enemy locations. I like to send them to mercenary camps to see if they're on it or not. Should the wisp perish, another is ready to take its place.

• An excellent ability that helps me spread my poison to all 5 enemy heroes for maximum W value. You should primarily use your Vines as a method to spread your poison and activate your important talents. Choking Pollen[7], Endless Spores[13], Unfair Advantage[16], etc... Although it does decent damage in a pinch, it's not as strong at smashing an enemy as hard as Leaping Strike, so think of it more as a supporting ability to help spread poison!
• I love using one charge of Vines on an incoming minion wave. It'll travel through the whole line and do massive damage to it. For the sake of building good habits, limit yourself to one charge per wave (or 2 if it's absolutely massive). If you blow all of them on a minion wave and not have any for the incoming teamfight, then you won't have an ultimate!
• Look for opportunities to line up your ultimate and hit multiple enemy heroes at once. This will happen most often when fighting in corridors, or when you're amongst your team and the enemies clash upon yours.

• Leaping Strike shines best when you jump on a defenseless, or routing opponent. Cornering your opponent whilst inflicting a huge nuke + slow on them is simply lethal.
• Whilst leaping, you have brief frames of being unstoppable. It may take some practice but nullifying CC from ultimates is the difference between winning or losing a fight!
• Against melee heroes, especially bruisers, wait to use your Leaping Strike only after they've closed the gap between you and them. You'll reset your positioning back to being at max range away from them so you can continue kiting them down until they drop dead.
• Be very judicial of where you'll land behind an enemy. You are safest when jumping in wide open areas and landing far from dangerous heroes; you are at most risk when jumping into an entire enemy team, or in tight corridors where you'll stop short and hit the wall. I've died too many times using Leaping Strike for the damage and only ended up dying because of it.

• Green indicates "Recommended", "Very effective", "Flexible and useful"
• Yellow indicates "Situationally powerful", "Alternate", "Team dependent"
• Red indicates "Not advised", "Average talent for niche scenario", "Uncompetitive on its tier"

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[Sentinel Wisp]
Map-hack upgrade to your wisp. I love picking it up for the vision over walls on maps with heavy foliage and bushes near objectives. Should you pick this talent, you REALLY need to remember using wisps 24/7. There is no excuse not having a big chunk of the map revealed for free. If you don't need the vision, then send it out for your team. Knowing what is safe and where enemies tread allows your team to make more intelligent decisions.

Also, Sentinel Wisp[1] hard-counters every stealth hero in the game by a long shot. The vision pierces stationary invisibility, and seeing an enemy assassin will thwart their plans of killing someone.

I especially like Sentinel Wisp when split pushing. Lunara with Nature's Culling[4] can cull an entire lane of minions and buildings within seconds. Between her faster-than-average movespeed and advanced forewarning, she is never in danger when splitting.

To lower the odds of it being found, consider setting up the wisp in a micro-bush. Some maps, like Sky Temple, have tiny bushes that are rarely used, but still promise strategic vision.
In other circumstances, I may find it better to set the wisp in a bush further behind the enemy team, or much closer to our team's position. It's very tempting to place the wisp in the "perfect" bush, but if your team does not have good zone control capabilities then it's extremely likely the first person will find it and kill it immediately w/o repercussions.

[Natural Perspective]
An excellent source of vision to keep tabs on the enemy team. Eliminating vision juking shenanigans and putting a lid on mid-fight flanking strategies is an inconspicuous advantage to your entire team. Meanwhile, you can stalk enemies without them seeing you coming.

Some heroes with long range executions, like Nova and Kael'Thas, can target enemies seen by your poison. Pay one thought to the heroes on your team.

[Hippity Hop]
Big-map mobility fixer. I pick it for Alterac Pass and Warhead Junction - it's unnecessary for other maps, unless you plan on split pushing all game long and want the extra speed.

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[Blossom Swell]
An excellent buff to your Q in making it vastly more reliable. Larger radius for easier aiming, longer range for safer application, and double poison for more spread out damage.
However, I only take Blossom Swell in my anti-artillery build because of Choking Pollen's[7] gravity. The entire build is centered around hitting that talent on a distant and dangerous enemy, hence the range and radius are needed. In other builds - the buffs aforementioned may be nice, but they don't let you do anything new. It doesn't help you win the game, so to say. Nature's Culling[4] is too prevalent a talent to miss out on.

[Siphoning Toxin]
In the rare game where you're not on a map that requires Nature Culling to get the objective, and you're fighting an enemy team with high amounts of poke, then Siphoning Toxin is not a bad pickup. Otherwise, I consider this an extremely meager talent. Not having Nature's Culling[4] makes you much less independent in taking over the map by yourself. Lunara's healthbar is pretty small, most healers will stitch up any wounds you accumulate with ease. Speaking of small healthbars - if you fight a hard engage comp or those with heavy hitting combos, you'll pop right away. No point to the healing.

[Nature's Culling]
The clear winner of this talent tier! Nature's Culling[4] is unacceptably powerful. Lunara's siege damage triples merely by picking up this talent. Not to mention it works on enemy hero summons and every objective monster!
And unlike hero damage, this excess damage isn't "fake." Damage done to structures is permanent. Minions killed is XP and map control for your team. Maps whose objectives are reliant on killing a 'guardian' or something become trivial.

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[Splintered Spear]
Level 7 is the most important level for Lunara as she decides how she'll like to apply her damage and in what manner. Splintered Spear is cool. But it is NOT an automatic pick up! I pick it up when I'm not fighting a sustain healer ( Malfurion, Stukov, Auriel) as their healing will simply outpace your poison damage and you will not have any burst damage. Furthermore, I don't like taking it against highly mobile melee and ranged assassins. You can't splinter a spear around them due to their lone-wolf nature, nor do you have any up-front damage to defend yourself when you get jumped on. Lastly, be careful about Splintered Spear[7] against enemy tanks. If your team lacks damage sources, the tank will run amok among your team with no worry in the world. Wild Vigor[7] + Invigorating Spores[16] is necessary to take them down.

Alright, enough doubts! Why is Splintered Spear[7] good? Let me talk about how it works, first. After casting Q, your next attack projects an invisible 55-degree cone stemming from Lunara's position up to 11 range away. The cone is centered on your main target - 4 Random targets, prioritizing heroes, will receive an auto attack. Yes, you read that 11 range right, attacking target A will cause a spear to be thrown at target B standing 2x as far as A.

Splintered Spear[7] is all about applying poison. You've go no bonus damage, but loads and loads of easily spread poison stacks to the enemy team. These kind of tactics work best in slow-paced game environments where the poison can last the full duration for maximum hurt. It works wonders in supporting your team and stressing the enemy healer of mana, cooldowns, and outright pressure when engaged upon.

I find Splintered Spear[7] to be an EXCELLENT vehicle to apply your other poison talents. Endless Spores[13] gives more poison and frequent slows, Let Them Wither[13] is an on-command team-wide 40% slow for initiation purposes, Unfair Advantage[16] is always present, and lastly Intensifying Toxins[20] will actually have a chance to crit on multiple heroes for more than 3 seconds.

PRO TIP: Your Splintered Spear[7] buff will not expire. When recalling, always cast it in fountain before heading back out. Your next attack will proc the splinter, and then you can immediately follow up with another volley for 3 poisons on all enemies!
PRO TIP: If you have automatic-attacking on like I do, (good lord how do I turn it off! Please help!) Lunara may randomly target an enemy that is no where near the people you want to hit, wasting your Splintered Spear[7]. You can get around this situation by queueing a command! Press Q, then hold down shift to queue a move or attack command. This 'stagger' you introduce will hold off the attack until you can hit an enemy you desire.


[Choking Pollen]
Noxious Blossom isn't much of an ability aside from a second arm to apply poison. Suddenly, with Choking Pollen[7], it is capable of doing an outrageous amount of damage. Doubling and near tripling its damage is relevant all game long on any enemy. I pick Choking Pollen[7] if I need to apply more damage in an extremely fast and "elastic" manner, preferably against squishy and dangerous targets. Whereas Wild Vigor[7] may be more overall damage, you must spend time and put yourself in AA range until you get the full value. A single hit, some help from your ultimate, and then the brief but strong 40% slow from W guarantees the Choking Pollen[7] to connect. I've got these combos in mind for fastest execution:

>>> Auto Attack >>> >>> >>>
>>> >>> Auto Attack >>>
+ Forest Wrath[20] >>> >>>


[Wild Vigor]
I've slept on Wild Vigor[7] for so long. I really underestimated this talent, for I was so fervent in my loyalty to the other two talents that I simply never bothered trying it. It's AWESOME. Lunara's attack damage is fairly respectable, and amplifying it by a whopping 70% for 4 attacks gives you +280% damage. You're condensing 7 attacks into just 4, as well as maximizing your poison on an enemy. That's a lot of reliable damage, and is my preferred pick for dealing with high health opponents. Not to mention it's still excellent against squishier heroes. Unlike Choking Pollen[7], the damage is physical and tied to your attacks, making them less susceptible to spell armor and unavoidable with mobility spells! However, watch out for blinds and big armor boosters.

TIP: Wild Vigor's[7] bonus damage buff DOES NOT EXPIRE. You may have casted your W 5 seconds or 2 minutes ago, you'll still have the 4 stronger attacks. I highly recommend making preparations for a fight by poisoning a minion with Q and then W before it breaks out.

Don't stop quite yet with this talent - we're going to make it better in future talents.

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[Thornwood Vine]
Thornwood Vine is the less flashy, more reliable option of the two ultimates. It's more versatile in its application and can be used for every situation imaginable. Your Vines will actually deal more total damage than Leaping Strike because of the poison and chance to hit multiple heroes. With an extra charge in hand, Vines will certainly outpace Leaping Strike over the course of a battle. Mind you its a slow burn rather than instantly dropping two Leaps on an enemy, so pick your poison appropriately for the enemy healer!

You want to pick Thornwood Vine if you're going the Anti-Artillery build so you can safely apply a stack of poison to these long range mages. Alternatively, I like to pick it up in games where I don't have any predators and can freely attack my enemies. Lunara is excellent at outmaneuvering opponents, so I rely on my positioning and choice of engagement rather than the reckless gameplay of Leaping Strike.

Lastly, do not sleep on Thornwood Vine's wave clear. One charge + W with Nature's Culling[4] can kill an entire minion wave without any further input. If your team is struggling for macro, you are more than able to cover that gap.


[Leaping Strike]
Should you need a high concentration of damage on a single target with mobility attached, look no further. Leaping Stike is an incredible chasing tool that can doom a helpless target. I tend to pick Leaping Stike against AoE healers, dangerous bruisers, and most melee assassins. For the former, you need to output a high amount of single-target damage (and 80% slow!) as fast as possible. In this manner, you'll be able to burst down enemies with your team before your damage gets invalidated by those heals.

Almost all melee assassins are extremely dangerous, have high mobility, and are melee. The mobility given by Leaping Stike can allow you to run circles around them whilst you kill them off. The unstoppable frames and overall mobility is also vital in saving yourself from being jumped on.

One huge downside is that the huge damage of the ability is tied to the mobility. Remember to not be greedy and leap straight into danger or enemy abilities. You can immediately compromise your safety with the predictable landing vector of a leap.

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[Endless Spores]
Here's one talent I didn't think I'd like as much until I gave it a spin! Reducing the cooldown of your W allows for a nice mixture of more slow utility, damage, and re-application of talents that give benefits from W. Let me elaborate:
Should your team already have strong slows, then more frequent soft slows will cripple the enemy team. Remember, the slow is 3 seconds long, and the CD is 6 seconds. That's a 50% uptime.
Usually, the maximum # of poison stacks you can afflict is 3 per person. That's poison damage for 9 seconds. If you can find other ways to apply 2 stacks of poison on 2+ enemies, pressing W will bring them to 3 stacks (9 seconds) and then Endless Spores[13] will be off cooldown again before the poison expires! Essentially, you'll have dragged many enemies through 12 seconds of poison with minimum input. Find time to give them 1 more stack and then throw a third cycle in for 18 seconds. This kind of endless burden is nightmarish for a healer to handle on their own.
Lastly, reducing the cooldown by 40% gives you 100% uptime on any kind of W buffs - Wild Vigor[7], Invigorating Spores[16], and Star Wood Spear[16]. This CDR greatly accelerates your overall damage. Or, you could opt for Unfair Advantage[16]. Remember the 12 seconds I talked about? Your W activates twice, meaning your enemies are slowed and being poison-crit for a minimum of 6 seconds.
I also find Endless Spores[13] to be extremely good in your anti-artillery build. Your level 13 talents don't help the build that much, but you'll find re-applying your high slow and keeping enemies hovering around 2 stacks of poison to be immensely helpful. Furthermore, you can keep an enemy suffering from poison and bring him up to 3 stacks for a nasty crit without ever auto attacking them. Nasty, is it not?

One more thing: Natural Perspective[1] at level 1 makes it a lot easier to see if you've poisoned at least 2 heroes so that you're never guessing if you'll score the cooldown reduction.

[Let Them Wither]
With how easy it is for Lunara to spread her poison over an entire team, having an on-command 4 second 40% slow is game-winning. If your opponents are prone to being kited around, then your team will love the speed advantage over your withering enemies.

[Greater Spell Shield]
Arguably the best spell shield talent in the game. Not only is it an exceptional 75 spell armor, but the cooldown is merely 30 seconds. Pick it up when you're having serious trouble approaching enemy teams because of the fear of huge, magic burst retaliation.
Also, get in the habit of leaving the shield OFF. Turn it ON with the hotkey when you're in trouble as if it's an activatable ability. Takes a bit of muscle memory but I promise it'll help a lot! This lets you avoid wasting the shield to a 100 damage ability that accidentally hit you. If there's a real possibility you'll get jumped and CC-locked, then leaving it on for auto-safety is OK.

The only reason this talent sits at a YELLOW is because it is Spell Armor and because it is a defensive-oriented ability. No point in having it if everyone does physical damage, right?

[Abolish Magic]
WOAH HOLD ON - A CLEANSE ON A RANGED ASSASSIN? My, my, what a lovely and fun talent. Unfortunately, it's a soft-cleanse and not an unstoppable effect, which means you must be reactive with it. Still, on-command stun/slow/silence/root/DoT removal for yourself and an ally for a 20 second CD is nothing to scoff at.
I recommend considering the win-condition of your team. Are you the main damage dealer and your team is built around you? Then you must take more damage talents to keep up the tempo. Are you just a bonus damage dealer, and you must protect someone else from a hard engage-team? Then Abolish Magic is interesting! In all circumstances, Abolish Magic demands pre-meditation and practice to get good. So utilize it frequently until it becomes second memory!
DoT: Gul'Dan's Corruption, Mal'Ganis's Dark Conversion, Xul's Poison Nova, Kael'Thas's living bomb, friendly Chen's Stagger, Blaze's Combustion.
CC: Diablo, Anub'Arak, Brightwing's Polymorph, Valeera's Garrote (not her blind!), Sylvanas's Mindcontrol and Wailing Arrow, Muradin's Stormbolt, Gul'Dan Horrify, Butcher's Lamb to the Slaughter, etc...

As much as I praise Abolish Magic, you need a lot of things to happen for it to be a useful talent. And you need to be good at it. Also, it's a defensive talent, giving no offensive power. When you're new to Lunara , this added complexity can actually make you perform worse than tacking on a different, consistently useful talent.

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[Accelerated Contamination]
Your other options in this tier are vastly more important in being a pay-off for your talent build's focus. I'd pick this talent only in my anti-artillery build since that relies upon Choking Pollen[7] as its primary damage source. Your Q's cooldown is now effectively 5 seconds.
In all other cases, your Q is not a good-scaling ability that bears much of any impact. Focus on other areas to stay relevant.

[Star Wood Spear]
A safety tool should you find it dangerous to approach and apply your auto attacks. You'll get the longest AA range in the game, bar a fortified Sgt. Hammer, allowing you to absolutely dominate no-man lands that pre-empt a teamfight. I only ever pick Star Wood Spear[16] against teams with a highly saturated backline, or against several right-clicking ranged assassins. Or ARAM. Since you can't dodge right clicks like you can to abilities from mages, you must outrange them.
I do not like picking Star Wood Spear[16] with other utility talents. Level 13 and 16 are important points to boost your damage. Should you miss out your other talents, what good is applying poison safely 30% of the time when you cannot kill them?

TIP: You can outrange forts and towers with this talent! However, you must dance back and forth to avoid having your fat body's radius inside of range, but it's perfectly safe to apply damage if you can put in the effort.

[Invigorating Spores]
Faster attack speed is INCREDIBLE for many reasons.

• All Lunaras must use their auto attacks to spread poison to as many people as possible. Higher attack speed makes this an easier process.
• Higher attack-speed helps in killing an enemy of your choice. Remember, your spears still deal decent physical damage as is!
• If you picked up Wild Vigor[7], then you can unload all 4 damage-boosted attacks onto a single target in frightening speed. That's a death sentence against most heroes.
• Of all the options on level 16, this is the only talent that boosts PvE damage output. More attacks to take down forts, core, and bosses easier.
• Faster auto-attacking means your attack animation starts and finishes quicker. This means you get to start moving between every attack even swifter than before! With crisp micro, you'll feel like you're gliding on water.
• Finally, the talent eliminates "over stacking" when attacking a target with 3 poison stacks. The 1.5% HP scaling is a welcome addition to your damage. That represents anywhere from 30-70 bonus damage per attack, which is not shabby.

[Unfair Advantage]
An extremely strong buff to your poison when you have the right talents and team composition. Unfair Advantage[16] is near mandatory when your team has a plethora of various CC and easy slows. At the bare minimum, Endless Spores[13] can keep the enemies slowed for 50% of the poison's duration for a lot of bonus damage. Let them Wither[13] makes this talent marginally better in addition to its lethal slow boost.

I prefer Unfair Advantage[16] when the enemy healer has trouble keeping up with your DoTs, and the fact that fights last long enough for it to matter.

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[Forest's Wrath]
An assortment of seemingly miscellaneous buffs to Lunara . I view this talent as a " Choking Pollen[7] enabler." The double stack + W will immediately bring everyone you lashed up to 3 stacks of poison. From there, you can exploit Choking Pollen[7], Endless Spores[13], and Invigorating Spores[16] to great effect. Speaking of Endless Spores[13], if you tag two people in a line with a vine, you'll W them and it will be back off CD for a 2nd round before the poison expires. Imagine applying 12 seconds of poison without ever pressing Q or attacking them!

All in all, it's a versatile talent. It boosts your waveclear, your zone of control, spread-out damage over the entire enemy team, and enables some builds to really shine. It's a mixture of safety, damage, and utility all in one. It helps a lot that an already long range ability will now reach 35% further, AND it will travel 35% faster too! The high speed projectile helps a lot with accuracy. The extra vision is your inheritance of being from the Night Elf race. It's a nifty boost but nothing groundbreaking.

[Boundless Stride]
Are you absolutely demolishing the enemy team with free reign with some Leaping Strikes? Is the unstoppable frame vital to your survivability? Do you need an immediate escape plan from some assassins? Here's some extra mobility and options, plus what is essentially a ~62% reduction in CD, should you use both charges.

Cool tip - you can jump over ANY friendly entity. Yes, that includes jumping over your wisp. Other examples: Zagara summons and creep tumors; Gazlowe's turrets; Abathur toxic nests; etc.

[Intensifying Toxin]
Has your build ended up taking all the poison applicators -- I.E. Splintered Spear[7], Vines, Endless Spores[13]? Such a build can feel fun but very unsatisfying in the damage department. This is the penultimate pay-off talent for overstacking poison. The damage bonus you get is pretty monstrous with so many applicators against heroes, but the real shining moment is versus structures and big monster objectives. Since you need to focus fire them and they have a huge health pool, you'll love seeing the numbers go right up.

[Galloping Gait]
Speed. I am speed. An absolutely gorgeous amount of speed for a long duration on a short cooldown. I love picking Galloping Gait on wide open maps where I have a lot of room to out-maneuver my opponents. When I feel like it's simply not safe enough for me to get in and do anything, then I need this. It's great against mages since they don't have much mobility and are highly dependent on hitting a stationary target, as well as melee heroes for obvious reasons. It's also a good "get me the hell out of here" card if you tend to get focused on. Just remember where you're running off to and not run into a dead-end like a deer.