Fill 'Em Full Of Daylight! by Bebhead

Fill 'Em Full Of Daylight!

By: Bebhead
Last Updated: Oct 22, 2015
11 Votes
Build 1 of 2

Raynor

Build: Bully

Level 1
Level 4
Level 7
Level 10
Level 13
Level 16
Level 20

Raynor

Build: Tank Buster

Level 1
Level 4
Level 7
Level 10
Level 13
Level 16
Level 20

About The Author Top

Hello there I'm Bebhead, as of writing this guide I'm rank 1 on HotS and am currently among the top players on the hero league ladder with an MMR of 4.5k on hotslogs. I have a pretty long history and experience with MOBA games dating back from the original WC3 DotA, HoN, LoL, and Smite.

I wrote this guide because I get a lot of questions from people regarding how to play specific heroes, or how to win in hero league. I figured rather than give quick and broad advice every time someone asks I might as well try writing a guide that attempts to thoroughly explain my choices and the thought process behind them. I hope you find this guide useful, and I'm always open to feedback, questions, or suggestions. Enjoy!

Intro Top

*Revision #1, written for patch 14.2 (Artanis pre-release)

Despite being one of simplest heroes in HotS, and only having 2 usable basic abilities, Raynor is one of the hardest ranged assassins to master. Without any real escape ability, and the need to rely on auto attacking to do most of your damage, playing Raynor effectively boils down to having very strong mechanics.
In this guide I'll be diving into what I think are currently the best talent builds, specific mechanical skills key to mastering Raynor, as well as talking about various strategies, techniques, and considerations to keep in mind that are applicable to any hero.

CHAPTERS IN THIS GUIDE:


1: THE 'BULLY' BUILD

2: THE 'TANK BUSTER' BUILD

3: MECHANICS

3.1: POSITIONING
3.2: THREAT ASSESSMENT
3.3: ORBWALKING
3.4: TARGET PRIORITIZATION
3.5: TRADING

4: STRATEGY/TACTICS

4.1: MAP AWARENESS
4.2: RAW KNOWLEDGE
4.3: TEAM COMPOSITION
4.4: SOAKING

5: PSYCHOLOGY/LEADERSHIP

5.1: The Price of Rage
5.2: The Rager Compendium

5.2.1: The Commander
5.2.2: The Princess and The Coach
5.2.3: The Vendetta
5.2.4: The Lone Ranger
5.2.5: The White Flag
5.2.6: The Troll
5.2.7: The Sniper

5.3: Leadership

6: CONCLUSION

The 'Bully' Build Top

Intro


The "Bully Build" (Talent choices and explanations shown below) is the most common build I use when playing Raynor. It prioritizes being able to shut down enemy melee & ranged assassins and also gives Raynor a lot of playmaking potential and surviability while still maintaining good overall sustained damage.
This build is particularly attractive in solo queue matches when you can't always depend on your team to peel for you or make plays themselves.
Bully Build Details

The 'Tank Buster' Build Top

Intro


The "Tank Buster Build" (Talent choices and explanations shown below) is the second build I primarily use when playing Raynor. It prioritizes being able to deal optimal sustained damage. I use this build when the enemy team composition either has a lot of tanks that I need to burn through, or they have a very low threat of being able to punish me for auto-attacking.
In my opinion, this build thrives when at LEAST 3 members of the opposing team are tank or support heroes. But the more they have, the more value you'll get out of the extra sustained damage.
Tank Buster Build Details

Mechanics Top

Intro


If you're not familiar with the term, mechanics in MOBAs are basically just the fundamentals of the game. A good mechanical player in HotS has the ability to create small advantages for their team throughout the game with their superior laning & trading skills. More importantly they also contribute the most to team fights by having optimal positioning, understanding the flow and threats in a fight, and constantly adjusting their position throughout the fight for highest effect.
Positioning
Threat Assessment
Orbwalking
Target Prioritization
Trading

Strategy/Tactics Top

Intro


Regardless of his/her individual mechanical skill, a player with a firm strategic and tactical sense has the ability to carry their team by guiding the team to securing important map objectives at critical points in the game, bringing useful game knowledge to the team, bolstering the team's effective map awareness, determining win conditions, and keeping the team even or ahead in global experience.
While you can get pretty far with just solid mechanical skills, there is a point at which having at least a basic strategical sense becomes a necessity to winning your games.
Map Awareness
Raw Knowledge
Team Composition
Soaking

Psychology/Leadership Top

Intro


While this section isn't specific to Raynor or his role, I still think it's such an important topic that it deserves its own chapter. Something that makes HotS very unique compared to other MOBAs is that individual skill in terms of laning matters a lot less. Now that doesn't mean you can't carry games, and that individual skill and laning aren't still important - it just means the technique to carrying is different. In a game like LoL or DotA it's much more straightforward to carry a game as you can simply out-play your opponent in lane and then snowball the advantage you get with your superior items and experience from there.
However in HotS, even if you completely out-play an opponent in lane, you're only giving your team a slight advantage. It's still great of course, but it's not really enough to win on its own. What really matters is being able to secure objectives and work together with your team as one cohesive unit.
The Price of Rage
The Rager Compendium
Leadership

Conclusion Top

If you made it this far thanks for reading my guide and I really hope you learned something from it!

As a closing note I want to give one last word of advice. If you want to be a better player the best thing you can do for yourself is constantly work towards it. What I mean by this is try to be extremely critical of your own play and your own mistakes. Rather than falling into the trap of blaming things out of your control for a loss, try to really analyze your own play and ask yourself if there was anything you could have done better or differently.
The players I truly dread having on my team aren't the unskilled ones, but the ones that are in constant denial of their mistakes and refuse to take any personal accountability for their losses. Even the best player has something to learn and improve on.

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