Valla is not the most versatile of characters when it comes to her talents, she is picked to do one thing; Ranged DPS via her auto attacks. While I am implying that she is one-dimensional or linear, I do not see this as a weakness as she does this job very well and the ability to do so is pretty valuable in the MOBA genre. There is a bit of diversity when it comes to her talents and even some alternate build styles but overall I find myself doing the same DPS build with little deviation which I have named the All-Purpose build. Positioning Valla correctly and maximising your damage while simultaneously minimising the risks you take is what you need to learn in order to play her well but I will break down her talents in order for you to get the most output out of Valla.
Builds
All-Purpose DPS:
Squishy Bursting:
Kiting Build:
etc etc
Tier 1
Cost-Effective Materials is a pretty straightforward talent that does exactly what it says on the tin. 30 less mana from an ability with lots of usage adds up over the course of a game for certain, if you find yourself poking a lot with Valla. The problem with this talent is that Rancor heavily outclasses it, and making your poking more effective at the cost of cutting your teamfight or dps potential will really lower your threat to the enemy team.
Siphoning Arrow is another straightforward talent and another vastly outclassed by Rancor. Sustain is definitely a desirable trait but if you really want to go for it then take Vigorous Assault at level 4.
Composite Arrows is pretty important in a multishot build if you're going to go down that road, which I wouldn't recommend. Multishot Valla is pretty much an Oxymoron in my opinion.
Rancor is one of the strongest scaling level 1 talents. 15% attack speed increase at max hatred is pretty insane. This talent choice is a huge contributor in your DPS from the game starting all the way to the end. Attack speed steroids are hard to come by as Valla but she scales very well with the stat.
Punishment is a pretty solid talent if it becomes your role to hit-and-run or attempt to delete squishy, priority targets. While this playstyle is sub-optimal, sometimes you find your role in teamplay being to do that instead of just churning out damage. Gaining hatred stacks that fast can give you frightening burst damage.
Tier 2
Vigorous Assault is one of the two outstanding choices in this tier. Sustain is a really important trait, particularly in maps/against comps where you end up finding yourself dancing around objectives and/or being poked a lot. Another common usage of this talent is in QM when you don't have a support.
Manticore is the other outstanding talent in the tier. This talent can churn up a ridiculous amount of extra damage over the course of the game and play a part in taking down enemy heroes, structures, objectives.
Puncturing Arrow is a sub-par talent choice. The extra bounce on puncturing arrow is nice on a singled out target but it doesn't equate to as much damage as manticore or offer you as much as vigorous assault. If you're going a caster/burst route then arsenal is much better.
Arsenal as I said in the paragraph above is a better choice than puncturing arrow when it comes to a burst build as it offers a little more damage in a burst sequence than puncturing arrow's extra bounce, despite puncturing arrow's synergy with repeating arrow. Also, the damage is much more instant and it doesn't involve the risk of the bounce hitting something different.
Tier 3
caltrops is a good talent for kiting. It synergises very well with the Tumble talent allowing you to drop a bunch of caltrops and keep diving champs off your face.
Hot Pursuit is a so-so talent, it's main problem is that it is somewhat outclassed by other talents within the tier, not to mention that gaining and maintaining 10 stacks of hatred can be a pain.
Repeating Arrow adds a lot of burst to your burst sequence build, an extra cast of your q is pretty powerful, although to trigger this you do have to vault in. Be sure to hit your ultimate if you're going to vault in.
Searing Arrows is a very powerful steroid for dps build teamfighting. 50% damage increase for 5 seconds can decide an entire fight, and on paper it's a pretty big deal. Synergises heavily with rancor and manticore.
Tier 4/Heroic Ability
Strafe and
Rain of Vengeance are both just high damage abilities so I'm comparing side-by-side. If your team can enable you to channel off a good strafe safely then it will outclass rain of vengeance in damage. Strafe is a big risk to take and certain champions can just negate the damage, like
Brightwing or even
Tychus. Rain can stun melee champs and allow you to reposition which can change teamfights or entire games.
Tier 5
Giant Killer damage really adds up in a dps build, particularly if there are more than one warriors present in the enemy team. For every 1,000 hp your target has, you deal 15 extra damage for every auto attack.
Frost Shot is another good way to deal with warriors, as being able to reposition is more valuable than a little extra damage sometimes. I find this talent flexible but usually just max my dps for good measure.
Tempered by Discipline is a pretty badly designed talent as you need to have 20 stacks of passive (not gonna happen) in order to heal the amount that Vigorous Assault heals you for all the time. Blizzard pls.
Spell Shield really shines versus
/
/
and so on. Pretty self explanatory talent that stops you from being deleted by ability damage which against certain champs and comps will definitely be the right choice.
Tier 6
Executioner is a pretty big damage increase if your team has a lot of CC. Since it affects slows, it synergises incredible well with
Arthas and his frozen tempest, giving you pretty much a permanent 30% damage increase.
Tumble is a good talent for repositioning and kiting. The other desirable talents in this tier give a solid damage increase but sometimes tumble will increase your damage so much. It also synergises with
Repeating Arrow and the burst playstyle as it allows you to tumble in, burst rotation and then tumble out safely.
Blood for Blood is a pretty versatile talent. Burst on a squishy, bringing a tank down, self burst sustain. It's worth mentioning that against
Cho this talent does loads of damage and heals you pretty much 100%.
Tier 7
Tier 7 is a comparison between whether you absolute require
Bolt of the Storm or not, in which case you get
Nexus Frenzy, an incredibly important Valla talent. Having both additional attack speed and range increases both your offensive and defensive play marginally. I'm actually unsure of how effective upgrading your
Strafe with
Vengeance is because of how much more you get out of Nexus Frenzy.
Storm of Vengeance sucks.
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