Alexei Stukov grew up on earth and became an influential member of the Earth military. When the Protoss and Zerg were discovered he was sent as second in command of an expeditionary force with the purpose of dealing with the alien threat. He was ultimately unsuccessful and overrun by Zerg forces that then reanimated him. He is now a human and Zerg hybrid who serves Kerrigan in her Zerg swarm.

Pros:

• Stukov has a very high healing per second to the entire team
• Stukov has virtually unlimited mana once you reach level 4 and get One Good Spread...
• Stukov has a ranged slow and silence that can augment dives and catches
• Stukov has a very high attack damage that lets him brawl
• Stukov can counter dive on a long cool-down with his ult Flailing Swipe
• Stukov is an insanely strong healer in a 3 or 4 man lane.

Cons:

• Stukovs healing style makes his team vulnerable to single target burst damage
• Stukov can become vulnerable if he holds Lurking Arm for too long
• When fighting against stukov time your burst for after the Bio-Kill Switch as he and his team will be vulnerable for 16 seconds

(Q) Healing Pathogen Healing pathogen applies a heal over time to the target that spreads to nearby allies every one second. Each cast of healing pathogen can be applied to each hero only once. In order to maximize healing try and wait until your heal over time is on the most targets you can before triggering your Bio-Kill Switch

(W) Weighted Pustule Weighted pustule is a very narrow line skill shot that applies a slow. The slow is VERY noticeable it is a slow that scales up to a fifty percent slow over three seconds on a five second cool down this has a huge amount of up time. Bio-Kill Switch can be activated to slow by a huge percent for 2 seconds.

(E) Lurking Arm Lurking Arm creates a pool that does high damage and silences each opponent in the pool this includes minions and heroes. lurking arm is best used in combination with slows and roots including your own slow from Weighted Pastule. be careful of over-channeling because you do need to maintain a safe position within the team fight and continue your healing and slowing output.

(Trait) Bio-Kill Switch Bio-Kill Switch timing is what separates the good stukovs from the great stukovs. This triggered trait will consume each of your heal over times and damage over times to instantly trigger a massive heal or an enormous slow and moderate damage. For the heal over time you want to trigger it just as the heal is about to expire to maximize your healing per cast of Healing Pathogen. For the slow it is situational whether you need the massive slow now or you want to wait till the end of the slow in order to maximize the time they are slowed as it will add an additional two seconds to the slow.

Heroic Abilties:

(R1) Flailing Swipe Flailing Swipe should be your default ultimate choice. It can allow you to protect your dps when they are getting dove and can help punish an enemy player when he is out of position. It is a fairly long cool-down and can save you and others in a pinch so be conservative with its use.

(R2) Massive Shove Massive Shove allows you to take one member of the enemy team and send them flying across the map. This is the more specialist choice. I would recommend only taking massive shove when the enemy team only has one tank and it is a low mobility tank like arthas or johana or varian or muradin. Try and find an angle that will push them the farthest away from the fight that you can and let that massive arm fly!

I have laid out three different builds the sustain healing build, the burst healing build, and the crowd control build.

Sustain Healing Build:

This build is centered around consistent healing and consistent slows to the enemy team. You should be spreading your contagion and firing your pustules on cool-down which should be fairly short from the level 1 and level 4 talents. The main idea of this build is to sit in the back with your team and spread that hot virus love. You will only use your lurking arm sparingly focusing more on healing and slowing.

Burst Healing Build:

The Anti-dive/ Burst healing build focuses on getting as many Bio-Kill Switch's out as possible and maximizing the healing of each bio-kill switch. The level 4 and level 7 talents are key to this endeavor as they will allow you to have a MASSIVE heal every 5 seconds. Make sure to focus on landing the slow on one enemy target preferably the enemy tank so you don't have to get out of position each time you use your burst heal. This should allow you to effectively heal through LOTS of incoming damage. You will be using the lurking arm and slow very sparingly with this build instead focusing on hitting the one target with the slow and outputting as much healing as possible.

Crowd Control Build:

The Crowd Control Build will focus upon the ability Lurking Arm to lock down enemies and allow your team to finish them. This is a very powerful build if you want to catch enemy team members or siege enemy bases. Placing a gigantic lurking arm at the entrance to the enemy base can allow you to freely kill the towers. This build is also powerful with teammates with powerful slows and roots such as Jaina and Arthas as the enemy team will have a harder time getting out of the silence area. The primary weakness to this build is the fact that you have to stand there and channel the arm. This opens you up to getting dove on and killed. Make sure to cancel the arm if you feel that your life is in jeopardy from the enemy team.

1. I would recommend self casting Healing Pathogen so you can control who it is spreading too and make sure it gets to your front line and your back line. I wouldn't do this if someone needs an emergency heal and you must Q and then bio-kill switch right away.

2. The sapper minions on towers of doom and haunted mines can be silenced as they come in to self destruct this will stop them from charging and instead make them auto attack.

3. Lurking Arm can be used on top of targets that are made invulnerable with Crystal Aegis or Cocoon to make for an easier kill.

4. Lurking Arm can also be used to cancel incoming damage from enemies a good example of this is to silence the enemy Chromie after she uses Temporal Loop so she cant combo your teammate.

GentleCream is a avid MOBA player and streamer. He has been playing Heroes of the storm since its inception and before that played League of Legends from open Beta. Gentlecream has been master or grand master every season and the current season has achieved Grandmaster 50. He streams at twitch.tv/gentlecream every weekday from 8pm to 12am central time. Stop by and say hello and maybe ask some questions about your favorite hero or Stukov.