COMBAT TRAIT

Timewalker Combat Trait

"You've traveled to the future, and as such, will learn your Talents 1 level earlier than your teammates!"

ABILITIES

Sand Blast (Q)

Mana: 20
Cooldown: 2.5 seconds
"After 1 second, fire a missile that deals 416 (+4% per level) damage to the first enemy Hero hit."

Dragon's Breath (W)

Mana: 70
Cooldown: 12 seconds
"Fire a blast into the air that lands after 1.5 seconds, dealing 499.2 (+4% per level) damage to enemies in an area. Enemies cannot see where the blast will land."

Time Trap (E)

Mana: 25
Cooldown: 18 seconds
"Place a Time Trap that arms and Stealths after 2 seconds. The first enemy Hero to touch it will be put into Stasis for 2 seconds. Only 1 trap can exist at once."

HEROIC ABILITIES

Slowing Sands (R)

Mana: 4 per second
Cooldown: 5 seconds
"Place a sand vortex that greatly slows enemies inside it. The longer it is active the more it slows, up to 60% after 3 seconds."

Temporal Loop (R)

Mana: 60
Cooldown: 70 seconds
"Choose an enemy Hero. After 3 seconds, they will teleport back to the location where you cast Temporal Loop on them."

First of all, thanks for stopping by and taking a look at what I've offered here. In the interest of total disclosure I will admit this is my first foray into drafting a guide, so please forgive me for the rough edges. I go by Bueler, and played a Troll Fury Warrior main through almost 11 years of WoW, mostly dedicated to raiding. Although I PvP'd extensively during vanilla WoW, HotS is my first experience playing a MOBA. At the time of drafting this guide, I own a level 15 Chromie, own and have played every other hero to at least level 6 (1/3 of which are levels 10-20), and have roughly 4000 HL games experience under my belt. As a result, I would describe myself a fairly knowledge (if casual) HotS player, and hope this guide offers some useful insights. So without further ado, on to the good stuff.

The primary build is meant to put out as much sustained damage possible for the amount of mana spent, but still have the punch to record a large number of killing blows. This build is intended to make you the team's covering fire by consistently damaging the enemy team's front and back line at the same time, and thereby keeping their healer(s) overworked and short on mana, while still allowing you to make any squishy/low health enemies explode at long range.

The secondary build listed is solely for dishing out sustained damage with maximum mana conservation, but without a big finisher. It has the same purpose as the primary build, but relies heavily on your teammates' ability to record kills you've set up.

The HotS tool tip describes Chromie's difficulty as "hard," because she is the textbook example of a "glass cannon," meaning she is awesome at quickly dishing out an insane amount of single target burst damage, but can be killed just as quickly when directly engaged by pretty much any melee assassin. Chromie's ability to produce huge burst damage comes from consistently landing her Dragon's Breath/ Sand Blast combo, and peppering the opposing team with Sand Blast during the long Dragon's Breath CD. This means Chromie is most effective on maps where fights occur in predictable locations with close quarters and/or where fighting for an objective necessarily requires an opposing team to clump together. Conversely, she is least effective on wide open maps with few choke points, because this type of terrain generally denies you the ability to reliably predict the likely spot a potential target intends to pause and attack, which means you won't consistently land your combo, while also leaving Chromie's sides/flank open to ambush.

Thus, Chromie is a highly situational hero, and IMHO really should only be used on these five maps, listed in the descending order of her effectiveness: (1) Towers of Doom; (2) Battlefield Of Eternity; (3) Infernal Shrines; (4) Dragon Shire; (5) Cursed Hollow. For any map not mentioned, Chromie's extremely limited ability to escape from a bad situation reduces her utility to the point almost any other ranged assassin will be a better choice.

LEVEL 1

Compounding Aether
Because of the short CD and low mana cost, you will usually be casting Sand Blast 3-4 times more often than Dragon's Breath. This build embraces that reality, and the talent choices build on each other to quickly put out the most damage for the lowest cost. Compounding Aether maximizes the damage of Sand Blast, and when coupled with the next talent choice, you should be able to finish the quest very quickly - usually about 6-8 minutes into the game. Receiving the benefit from completing Compounding Aether so early in the match usually allows Chromie's damage output to stay one step ahead of your opponents' health pools as both teams level. All other talents in the tier simply don't compliment the intended purpose of this build.

LEVEL 3

Piercing Sands
Piercing Sands is really what makes this build shine, because it permits your naturally long-range Sand Blasts to consistently hit two targets - essentially making your quickest/cheapest ability twice as effective on team fights. This is true, in that unlike most other hero's "piercing" talents, Piercing Sands's extremely long range allows each Sand Blast the ability to hit the enemies' front-line and back-line simultaneously. To accomplish this, simply position Chromie so that a front line opponent is between you and a back line opponent (who is your primary target), then fire your Sand Blast at the back line opponent. Piercing Sands allows a Sand Blast set up in this manner to hit/pass through the front line enemy, then hit the back line opponent, doing full damage to both. Thus, you are essentially getting two Sand Blasts for the price of one, and making things extremely difficult on the other team's support. Moreover, Piercing Sands assists with the quick completion of Compounding Aether, and enhances the effectiveness of the later-acquired talents Reaching through Time, Fast Forward, and Past and Future Me. Bronze Talons is meant for laning, and Enveloping Assault is awesome for Dragon's Breath-oriented builds, but neither advances the sustained damage focus of this build.

LEVEL 6

Dragon's Eye
This talent choice is what gives your Dragon's Breath/ Sand Blast combo its punch, and what allows you to consistently one-shot squishy/hurt opponents when it connects squarely. The alternative "pure sustained damage/mana conservation" build instead utilizes Mobius Loop, which trades a good portion of Dragon's Breath's burst damage in exchange for more frequent use (with this build's effectiveness very highly dependent on the right team composition). Chrono Sickness is a very nice talent, but just doesn't compliment the focus of this build.

LEVEL 9

Slowing Sands
As explained in detail below, although it is an extremely tough choice between this talent and Temporal Loop, the incredible utility factor of Slowing Sands outweighs the "shock and awe" value of the Temporal Loop ultimate combo (explained in way too much detail below) in the majority of circumstances.

LEVEL 12

Reaching through Time
Keeping your distance from the other team is what keeps Chromie alive, and Reaching through Time allows you to stand off farther for increased safety while still being able to shred your opposition. It is also the talent that will have the other team screaming "that's not fair!" when you're blowing them up despite the fact they're "protected" by barriers and/or you're not close enough to even be visible to them, i.e., Reaching through Time is extremely useful for making easy kills on low-health opponents who have paused to tap a fountain/hearth in a predictable location they believe to be "safe" because you're not in each others' line of sight. Even without the increased sight radius of Deep Breathing, just getting in the habit of firing a Sand Blast at the closest location a low-health opponent who managed to "escape" behind the wall of a fort would pause to tap that fort's fountain or hearth will score you a kill or two a game. Neither of the other talents in this tier advance the purpose of this build.

LEVEL 15

Fast Forward
It's really a toss-up between Fast Forward and Shifting Sands (with Quantum Overdrive a close 3rd), I am amazed how many times Fast Forward has allowed me to kill 2-3 opponents during late-game team fights in the span of 3-4 seconds using Sand Blast, which is the reason it slightly edges the other two talents in this tier. Fast Forward turns you into a semiautomatic with devastating effect. Because it costs 20 mana, once you land the first long range Sand Blast triggering Fast Forward, you will thereafter be able to fire off as many Sand Blasts as quickly as you can press the 'Q' key, until either your mana runs out, or everyone on the other team is dead (which ever comes first). You can realistically put 2500 damage firing into an area during team fights because Piercing Sands guarantees hitting 2 enemies. In the same time it takes for one Sand Blast boosted from Shifting Sands you can fire 3 Fast ForwardSand Blasts. Late game, it can destroy the other team.

LEVEL 19

Past and Future Me
Choosing Past and Future Me is a must, because it completes the synergy of the build. Every time you fire a Sand Blast, an echo Chromie is left at the casting location that will fire a 40% strength Sand Blast the next time you use the ability. Thus, whether Chromie remains stationary or moves laterally between successive Sand Blast gives you the option to either focus her normal and echo Sand Blasts on one target or spread the normal/echo Sand Blasts among several targets in an area. To concentrate damage on one target, simply remain stationary/move forward/backward perpendicularly to the angle of fire between successive Sand Blast casts, which allows your talented Sand Blast and 40% echo version to both hit the same target. Should you want to spread your normal/echo Sand Blast damage between several targets, simply move left/right laterally between successive Sand Blast casts. Doing so allows you to form a V-shaped kill zone by aiming at a point behind the area you want both San Blasts to impact/pass through, i.e., by aiming your talented Sand Blast at a location several steps behind the kill zone, it travels to that location on one vector with your echo Sand Blast simultaneously traveling to the location on a converging vector, with both passing through the kill zone toward the point of convergence at the tip of the V should either fail to hit an enemy hero. The tactic I find most effective when the opposing team is loosely grouped, is to simply aim for an opponent in the back line (or a point behind bunched-up opponents) that is roughly the midpoint between two front line opponents (or bunched-up group), and you will generally hit 2-3 targets with one shot.

It should go without saying, but just so I make this point as clearly as possible: Chromie can't carry out her primary function of pulverizing the opposing team when she's dead, and carelessly positioning Chromie results in her being dead a lot. Therefore, the most important trait of every successful Chromie brings us to Rule No. 1 of Best Chromieing Practices: ALWAYS make certain Chromie is safely positioned prior to doing anything else - Chromie's Prime Directive and your absolute first and overriding concern at all times is to ensure Chromie is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS positioned to maintain the farthest possible distance from the opposing team's front line, while still being able to hit their back line with your Dragon's Breath, preferably at a location you're protected from attacks coming from the sides and/or rear. ALWAYS. Period. No exceptions. ALWAYS. 100% of the time. Did I say ALWAYS? Do not attempt to cheat this solemn mandate, just blindly accept it, and revel in the sandy Chromatic glory it will bestow upon you. Proper positioning is closely followed by Rule No. 2 of Best Chromieing Practices: Upon safely positioning Chromie, ALWAYS drop your Time Trap about 2 steps behind the point at which you intend to start firing on the opposing team. Time Trap has a long 18 second CD and is intended to be used as your last line of defense which only comes into play to allow Chromie to escape when the **** hits the fan. The reason for placing the Time Trap a little behind Chromie is to keep it safe from being destroyed by the rare long range attack from the opposing team that still manages to hit a properly-positioned Chromie. Placing your Time Trap in this manner provides the escape hatch you need when your front line is unexpectedly killed, CC'd or collapses, as it permits you to retreat directly back through the Time Trap, which usually results in the nearest pursuing opponent freezing him/herself in the trap. When this happens, it gives you choice of either making your escape, or if the frozen opponent is alone (and especially if hurt), drop your combo on their head for an easy kill when the trap breaks. The topic of easy kills segues nicely to Rule No. 3 of Best Chromieing Practices: Chromie's sole purpose is to put the fear of God in the opposing team by regularly causing its members to explode when they least expect it, and you do this by consistently landing your Dragon's Breath/ Sand Blast combo squarely on the head of the squishiest opponent available. The ability to consistently land the combo is derived from your capability to consistently anticipate where an opponent who is (or, for more advanced Chromies, is not) currently in your line of sight either is, or will be, when your combo arrives for it to connect squarely for maximum effect. So, how do you this consistently is you're not telepathic? What's Chromie's secret?

To borrow a gambling term: the answer to Chromie's secret is simply to always "hedge your bet." For the non-gamblers, "hedging your bet" just means to protect yourself from making the wrong choice. In the context of playing Chromie in HotS, you hedge your bet by only playing Chromie on five maps listed above, because matches played on these particular maps reliably follow essentially the same predictable pace and course of events in every single match, and the interaction between teams almost exclusively occurs in constrained, close-quarters locations where your opponents will be clumped together, or solo opponent will reliably always be standing in a specific spot at a specific time during the match. Granted, obtaining this "HotS intuition" to just know/feel the ebb and flow a match is taking on a particular map requires a certain level of familiarity with HotS, with the requisite familiarity reasonably only coming through the experience gained from playing 500+ HL/TL games - and honestly, 1000+/- is probably closer to the mark. I mean no disrespect to you AI/QM/UD folks, but by and large these formats simply do not provide the same intensity/level of play found in HL/TL (regardless of rank), and, therefore, the experience gained in AI/QM/UD really doesn't translate.

Although this build is structured around maximizing the effectiveness of your quickest and cheapest ability, Sand Blast, which you be firing about 3-4 times more often than Dragon's Breath, being able to combine these abilities and squarely land them simultaneously as the Dragon's Breath/ Sand Blast combo so often is what wins games and sets Chromie apart from other assassins. Dragon's Breath has a fairly long 12 second CD, so when you use it, ensure it connects by taking your time to aim and make sure as best you can that it lands centered directly on top of your target. Proper positioning affords you the luxury of taking that extra second to aim, and thereby land, the combo squarely, which maximizes the damage output of the more powerful Dragon's Breath-half of the combo by taking full advantage of the Dragon's Eye talent. The combo is just a quick W/Q, whereby the instant your brain acknowledges you just depressed the W key initiating Dragon's Breath, you immediately hit the Q key to follow up with Sand Blast, resulting in both abilities hitting your victim at essentially the exact same time due to the disparity in the abilities' respective casting times - WHAM-BAM - hopefully a killing blow. Your ability to consistently and squarely drop the combo on an opponent's head every 13-14 seconds a team fight lasts exponentially increases your odds of scoring killing blows with follow-up Sand Blasts. Which brings us to . . .

. . . taking Slowing Sands instead of Temporal Loop, which gives you the "ultimate combo" - what may be the coolest and most effective combo in the game. The ultimate combo is when your normal combo becomes the coup de grace awaiting your target at the conclusion of the flashy level 10 Temporal Loop ultimate you unleashed on them seconds earlier. This written description doesn't seem that much more exciting than killing an opponent using your regular combo. However, killing blows resulting from this three-ability sequence have such an incredibly dramatic demoralizing impact on the psyche of an opposing team, it can be a game-changer, i.e., if the match has been going poorly, the ultimate combo can instantly reverse the tide of the match into your team's favor.

So why take Slowing Sands? The incredible utility of Slowing Sands outweighs the demoralization factor of the ultimate combo's Temporal Loop component most of the time. Dropping Slowing Sands on the opposing team's side of a shrine/tribute/etc. will keep any enemy entering it from quickly escaping, and allows you to hammer them with impunity. Slowing Sands is also extremely useful to allow you and teammates to escape from a bad encounter, in that its large size usually means it is impossible for pursuing enemies to avoid.

With that said, the panic-inducing power of an ultimate combo resulting in a killing blow cannot be discounted. Obviously, your team gains an advantage any time you kill an opponent, but killing an opponent with the ultimate combo often causes the other team to panic, retreat - or both, which, in turn, many times allows your team to wipe the remaining enemies as they're trying to run away - and wiping the opposing team (especially late in the game) can transform what looks like a certain loss into a win. Thus, the ultimate combo is a skill every good Chromie MUST master; you really can't be a Rockstar Chromie without it. In my experience, the only other ultimate that comes close to instilling the same level of fear in opponents is the sound effect that accompanies a skilled Illidan's Hunt. As silly as it may sound, Chromie's perfect execution of a killing blow from her ultimate combo thereafter causes the opponents who witnessed it to immediately break off an attack the next time they hear the Temporal Loop sound effect starts up. Scoring several killing blows in a row using the ultimate combo routinely causes squishy opposing teams to almost completely stop "poking" at your team. Seriously. Almost all poke-style attacks just suddenly stop like you flipped the "off" switch. The ultimate combo is THAT demoralizing on squishy opponents. Moreover, the technique for pulling off a perfect ultimate combo every time is incredibly simple: After initiating Chromie's Temporal Loop on a target, quickly count "one thousand one, one thousand two" in your head, then trigger your normal Dragon's Breath/ Sand Blast combo on the target location. That's it. You'll execute the ultimate combo perfectly every time if you just use this dumb mental exercise. Now of course it's very possible to properly estimate the timing without doing the mental count. However, I find my execution rate drops from about 90% using the count to about 50% when estimating the timing, so I use it. Obviously, do whatever works best for you. Undershooting/overshooting the timing has the same result: your Dragon's Breath will be wasted by landing in the last instant before your target arrives/or instant after your target has appeared and moved, meaning he/she/it will only be hit by the Sand Blast - which almost never is a killing blow and, thereby erases the "shock and awe" factor. Bottom line, consistently executing the ultimate combo (even if you choose Slowing Sands most of the time) means the difference between living up to your rightful role as the Rockstar MVP player of your team and, just another mediocre player who should probably be playing a more forgiving (read: easier to play) hero.

So, if you got through all of my long-winded babbling, I'm impressed, and hope you are able to take away something valuable. If not, please let me know why in the 'Comments' section. Finally, when you're playing Chromie always keep in mind: you're Chronormu, dammit - a big fricken dragon and representative of the Bronze Dragonflight (that for some ungodly reason finds it amusing to masquerade as a gnome . . .), so try and act like it.

Thanks again for reading, and I welcome all comments, good, bad, or indifferent.

Cheers!