Leoric is a slow, lumbering, warrior with talents that can take him two very different directions. You can either have an absurd amount of health regeneration while dealing solid damage and slowing/disrupting the movement of your opponents, or you can go nuts and just put out a ton of damage by sacrificing some survivability.

I call him "slow and lumbering" mainly in reference to his attack speed which, at 0.77/second, is quite slow. Stitches, Diablo, and Johanna are tied for next slowest Warrior attack speed at 0.91/second. Naturally, his attack does a large amount of damage to compensate for the speed, but suffice it to say that your abilities, not your auto-attacks, are your greatest weapon.

His trait Undying, which lets you remain in wraith-form after death, keeps you on the battlefield at all times providing vision to your team, slowing the movement of the enemy team, and reducing your death timer based on landing your wraith-form abilities.

The Undying trait may lull you into sacrificing yourself for a kill, or a chance for a kill, much like Murky will because you get to remain in the fray, so to speak. Don't do that. You still give full XP to the enemy team when you die. You still are leaving your team without a tank to protect them when you die. Potentially slowing some members of the enemy team is nowhere near as useful as if you just pull back, use your huge HP regen + Support to quickly return to full health, and get back in the fight.

Treat Undying like insurance: you have it in case you need it, but you're much better off if you never need to use it.

PROS

• High health regeneration.
• Able to damage and slow large groups of enemies.
• Skeletal Swing does very high damage to minions and towers.
• Always on the battlefield with Undying.

CONS

• Very slow auto-attack speed.
• Heals are mostly regeneration-based until late game, not instant: can be bursted down.
• Escape leaves you vulnerable to continued damage for the duration.
• Skeletal Swing has a large arc, but reaches a fairly short distance in front of you.

Trait: UNDYING allows you to remain out on the battlefield after your death and respawn on the spot when your death timer runs out. Using your abilities slightly reduces your death timer. This trait is excellent for several reasons: 1) You can continue to provide vision for your team at no risk to you since you're dead... as long as you get out of harm's way before you respawn. 2) You have zero travel time from your hearth to wherever you need to be on the battlefield. 3) Your death timer is almost always shorter than it would normally be due to your landing wraith abilities or using Ossein Renewal. But remember, no matter how many benefits this trait gives you while dead, being alive is infinitely more useful. Don't unnecessarily sacrifice yourself!

Q: SKELETAL SWING is your main offensive ability. It deals strong damage (double to non-Heroes) and has an absurd 180 damage arc. You can easily hit an entire minion wave with one swing and can almost one-shot said wave right out of the gate. The ability to hit many enemies at once plays into the talent choices Mana Thirst and Consume Vitality. More importantly in skirmishes and team fights, it applies a serious slow, 40%, for a serious amount of time, 2.5 seconds. Aside from the obvious offensive and defensive uses of slowing the enemy heroes for your teammates, this slow also allows you to land more of your Drain Hope (since drain hope slow your own movement speed). Ghastly Swing, your wraith-form version of Skeletal Swing, is the 1st of your 2 abilities available when in Undying form.

W: DRAIN HOPE is your main combat heal. An excellent heal and lane-bullying ability, Drain Hope is a life draining skill-shot move that drains up to 25% of your opponents health over 4 seconds, or as much as you can get while maintaining the connection (staying close enough). The range is, however, very reasonable and the only way an enemy can break the connection (without something like a Dimensional Shift or Ice Block to grant invulnerability) is to completely disengage from the fight. Leoric is also slowed by 20% while maintaining the connection. Note that your choice of target does not determine the amount of healing you get. It is always 25% of your opponent's health as damage and 25% of your health as healing regardless of the number of HP in damage you actually dealt - not a direct transfer like Blood for Blood. Try to use it at the beginning of a fight so you immediately begin the 4 seconds of damage/healing while you battle. Do not, however, waste it on an opponent who is already a good distance away from you as they can simply take a couple steps back and break the connection before you get any use from it. Use in combination with Skeletal Swing to ensure your enemy's movement is slower than yours and they cannot escape the drain. Drain Essence, your wraith-form version of Drain Hope, is the 2nd of 2 abilities available while in Undying form.

E: WRAITH WALK is your escape/chase mechanic. Your wraith form leaves your body behind as you gain 50% move speed and unstoppable status for 2.5 seconds. After the 2.5 seconds, or when you cancel, your physical body jumps to the location of your wraith form. Note that your physical body can still be damaged while wraith walking! Keep an eye on your health bar if you're using it as an escape mechanism. Also note that the movement speed boost is an accelerating boost, not an instant 50% boost. You cannot move through map obstacles with Wraith Walk but can move through hero summoned structures such as Zombie Wall and break free of roots from abilities like Entangling Roots and Howling Blast.

Heroic 1: ENTOMB is your disrupting heroic ability. You throw up a "U-shaped" wall in front of you (positioned so that you are blocking the only exit) trapping anyone caught inside for 4 seconds. Can be used offensively as a trap, defensively to stop an enemy from chasing a teammate, or simply as a wall to close off a section of the battlefield since it is quite large. Excellent if your team has burst or AOE damage to take advantage of it. Short cooldown at only 50 seconds.

Heroic 2: MARCH OF THE BLACK KING is your offensive heroic ability. You become unstoppable and move forward taking 3 swings, like your Skeletal Swing, but each deals 100 more damage and heals you for 7.03% of your maximum heal per enemy hero hit, per swing.

One of Leoric's greatest strengths is his vast array of talents that allow for increased health regeneration or theft. Every non-gimmick Leoric build will include several of these talents. The difference will be knowing when you can get away with sacrificing the "standard" tanky health regen talents for something more aggressive. Thus, this build will be mostly keyed toward survivability, but will offer suggestions as to when a deviation can and should be taken.

Remember, you regenerate health. That is your main schtick. Don't die unless it's unavoidable or you're getting a large value for your death, because you can back out and quickly come back into the fray at full health.

Reanimation is essentially Regeneration Master customized for Leoric. You get the exact same health regeneration boost at 1.5/second per globe. The only addition is that Reanimation specifies that the extra health regeneration does in fact hasten your death-timer countdown. It also allows you to gather globes while in Undying form, which is pretty rare, but doesn't hurt. Just a generally strong regenerative base for a hero that revels in health regeneration.

Solid choice on any map that involves a fair amount of laning, taking out lots of mercs, or those juicy garden terrors that drop multiple orbs. This is slightly better than a usual Regeneration Master talent selection because it contributes to the reduction of your death-timer as well, but it's not good enough to be a do-or-die pick since 40 or so extra health/second in a team fight isn't really gonna swing the tide of battle. Take it to boost your self-sustain in laning/push heavy maps like Tomb of the Spider Queen and Garden of Terror. Maps that involve a lot of team fighting out of lanes or include objectives that don't drop you orbs are ones where you can opt against Reanimation: Battlefield of Eternity, Haunted Mines, etc.

Hardened Bones is great. The fact that you get it this early is even better. This turns Wraith Walk from an ability that lets you move around the map a little faster to a legitimate escape ability. Taking 25% less damage while using Wraith Walk will make you much harder to finish off and seriously increase the number of times you escape a fight when you otherwise wouldn't. You now have the time to wraith away while the enemy is wailing on your physical body without having to worry about them killing you before you get to safety. It also allows you to hang in there to land one more auto-attack or one more Skeletal Swing before you have to back out.

Note you can also pop Wraith Walk when you see big bursts of damage incoming that you don't have time to dodge - i.e. Precision Strike, Blizzard, Flamestrike, etc. - and take 25% less damage from it instead of having no choice but to eat the full 100%.

Ossein Renewal is life regeneration that you'll almost never want to give up. 20% self-healing every minute goes a long way in keeping you in the fight and out of the hearth. If that wasn't enough, it is also useable in Undying form to significantly speed up your death timer.

Entomb is the default Heroic for Leoric by far. With a multitude of uses both offensive and defensive (described in the abilities section), you will set up far more enemy kills than you could ever hope to achieve with March of the Black King. You might even save a few friendly lives from aggressive chasers. Unless your team is seriously lacking in DPS, and thus won't be able to take advantage of the trap, this should be your Heroic choice.

This tier has some good choices, but you're most likely going to want to pick one of the Drain Hope talents. Which one depends on how the game has been going and the enemy composition.

Drain Momentum removes the 20% speed decrease from Leoric when using Drain Hope, making it much easier to and more likely that you achieve the full drain from Drain Hope. This is useful if the enemy composition has several quick heroes with "dash" abilities like Vault, Run and Gun, or Barrel Roll and has been quickly breaking your drains all game. Also, this allows you to maneuver through fights at full speed.

Crushing Hope, on the other hand, deals an additional 10% damage to the enemy (does not heal you) if you maintain a full drain. So if you've been landing the full 4 seconds of Drain Hope most of the game, likely because your enemies have a larger melee composition or you have a good amount of Crowd Control on your team, then absolutely take the extra damage boost. That's 35% of your enemy's HP gone.

Another tier with several good talents, I often feel that the burst heal from Consume Vitality edges out the others - again, taking into account that this build is leaning toward the tanky, self-sustaining side of Leoric. Having said that, all of the other talents in this tier are perfectly viable giving the individual situation of each game and your individual play style. But as for Consume Vitality, 2% of your maximum health returned, up to 10%, for each enemy hit with Skeletal Swing is useful for several reasons:

1) As mentioned before, it's a burst heal of potentially 10% of your HP when you've largely been relying on slower heals-over-time and regeneration up to this point.
2) The Skeletal Swing arc is huge and hitting multiple enemies is very easy to do if they are close to each other.
3) This allows you to gain a quick 10% HP top off from any minion wave, giving you great sustain in a lane, and also letting you back out of a fight, swing at some minions (along with your other heals), and basically get right back in it.
4) It is useful in Undying form and will greatly reduce your death timer.

If, however, you often find yourself hitting a single target in team fights with Skeletal Swing, you will likely want to forgo Consume Vitality for one of the other excellent talents in this tier.

Spectral Leech adds damage and healing equal to 5% of the enemy hero's HP to Leoric's basic attacks. We take this for the additional burst heal and because Buried Alive is so lackluster (since most of the time you will be taking Entomb). The extra damage is a nice boost, but isn't going to be changing the game. Just another heal to the growing pile of small heals that keep Leoric's health coming back.

Coming soon...