I am a high ranked (top 750) Master Rank Assassin player, I have been playing since the beginning of the closed alpha and in total have over 500 games just on Heroes of the Storm. Along with that are around 2500 games on Heroes of Newearth at a high level and 600+ games of League of Legends.
Having been a Sylvanas player for quite a while and with a significant amount of tweaking to builds this is what I have come up with that gives me the highest win rate along with my thought son each and every talent available. Including a guide on how to play in the three main different stages of the game.
Sylvanas is an amazing hero to play, she can do two things at once very very well and completely change priorities for the enemy team.
Sylvanas' pushing is just as good as a golem/boss camp when alone and her assassination is still high tier with the same build. For this reason she is one of my favorite heroes to play and I would love to see more Sylvanas players on the field.
The Evolving nature of this guide means that it will be updated for future use after considering others opinions, ladder play, and statistics.
Combo Rotation in most scenarios
Use your Ultimate either to catch them off guard at the beginning
OR just after you have blinked in to stop them from using any type of mobility spells to escape.
It is very important that you are weaving in as many
Withering Fire and Basic Attacks as you can while you are performing the rest of the combo for full damage potential.
The nature of the Rotation
Your sustain DPS is fantastic and Sylvanas in general is best when singling out a target to pick off first. You will be critting due to your
Remorseless and they will have a hard time getting away due to the speed bonus from
Evasive Fire and silence from
Wailing Arrow Sylvanas has strong burst with this but not
Nova
Zeratul strong.
Wailing Arrow/ Black Arrow
There are generally 3 ways to use this ultimate in any scenario
1.Assassination/1v1
- The 1v1 scenario where they have an escape and you just kill them before they are able to get out of the silence. Either use it before they notice you are coming or use it as they are running for their lives. Either way it is very effective and great for you assassination needs. People like
Falstad and
Jaina are easily outplayed and destroyed if you can dodge at least something with either of your teleports in combination with the combo and this ultimate.
2.Team Fight
- This is by far the time you want to use it the most, the long silence is exceptionally good at disabling most if not all of a team for the entirety of the time and can cause your team to snowball and just destroy them through one well placed ultimate. Along with this its damage is nothing to snuff at and allows more risky plays from your team in general. Try to use towards the beginning of the fight for maximum potential.
3.Very Niche
- As mentioned above as a stand alone assassination in combination with
Unstable Poison to at the very least take 3/4 health away from a squishy hero that is sitting in the middle of a creep wave.
Possession
There is 1 way to use this talent.
1. To push/ Split push
-
This ultimate should in general not be picked, it does not have NEAR the game impact that the other does and will surely (hopefully) be buffed in the very near future to be useful. Use it on enemy minions first then mercs and attempt to push as hard as possible. It has the potential to be very good and gets close to that Late-Game with
Dark Lady's Call but for a majority of the game
Wailing Arrow is far superior.
Laning
General
During the laning phase always be looking for the chance to harass your opponent with
Withering Fire and auto attacks to safely lower their health. Remember that your sustain is rather low and you will be relying on regeneration globes and the well to keep yourself alive from their poke. Your
Shadow Dagger should be used on creeps when you decide to begin pushing and will disable everything while doing great damage. Every time that you approach the towers with a descent amount of minions (4-5) you should throw
Shadow Dagger at the towers to disable them and enable more damage on the push every wave. Just make sure that you are not using this too much as it eats up your mana rather quickly. If you ever get in a sticky situation make sure to use your
Haunting Wave and
run in a different direction than you throw it while you wait to use the reactivation. If you want to play well never use
Haunting Wave to push it adds little damage or use to the push.
Duo Laning
In the slightly more specific scenario that you are with a teammate you can feel free to use your spells more at will. Teammates allow more aggressive play and easier punishes against the enemy. Ideally your teammate should make up for your lack of CC or healing with someone such as
Uther. Or add to your amount of poke and push to make a dangerous lane to leave alone with someone such as
Tassadar.
Solo Laning
Just take advantage of your extremely potent push and attempt to exert pressure on the opponent. Your harass against most heroes will keep them at bay and if they ever engage just be ready to use
Envenom and turn around on their most likely mistake.
Mid-Game
During this phase of the game you are able to split push very strongly and be rather independent. Often times if your team is completing the objective on the other side of the map it is OK for you to be alone and pushing. Other than the pushing aspect in team fights you should be landing as many empowered auto attacks on the enemy as you can and spreading the
Shadow Dagger and
Withering Fire around. Pick a target to focus and use
Envenom on them when the engage begins with your team. Use
Wailing Arrow to hit the most people it can (in general focusing for any casters), during the initiation or counter-initiation.
Late-Game
Now you have your full burst and are on the way to ending the game. Always be looking around for waves to push back or mercs to go and get solo or not. Your
Wailing Arrow is an invaluable team fight asset and you should be at the teamfight to use it. Your
Shadow Dagger allows for amazing push with or without your team. There are people that deal much more damage than you at first but your sustain DPS and speed at this point in the game is daunting. Kite in and out of teamfights critting and using
Withering Fire on people that attempt to oppose you. You are an amazing chasing asset with this build and don't be afraid to use it to finish off people in the end.
Barbed Shot, barbed shot is very very good for pushing and especially in the early game it allows earlier taking of merc camps and some mean pushing power from level 1. This also goes nicely with
Splinter Shot later.
With the Wind, this is a great option if the enemy team has large amounts of poke or if the build you are going for is not very push oriented. This helps with early game poke and team fight positioning later in the game. Can be an invaluable asset for staying alive and getting more
Remorseless empowered auto attacks in.
Lost Soul, this is great for the dagger build above which allows you to be tankier through
Life Drain and infect the enemy team almost consistently with vulnerability through
Cold Embrace. It has great synergy with some later but is by no means a standard needed.
Corruption, this talent reduces the ammunition of of turrets.... your passive is to make it so that they can't attack. There is no point to getting this talent you can freeze both turrets at the same time with creative positioning auto attacking one turret and using your Q to freeze the other turret.
Envenom, this adds HUGE early game pressure to any person that you are playing against and provides you with the most early game damage that stays consistent over the rest of the game.
Required for assassination builds! Most likely you will not be able to kill early without this talent.
Overflowing Quiver, this is ONLY GOOD if you do not have the mechanics to press Q as much as you can during your combos or pushing. There is for the most part no point in getting this talent.
Paralysis would be decently good for Sylvanas if envenom wasn't at the same tier. It has the potential to be descent but alas it pales in comparison to the poison damage and potential of envenom.
Ranger's Ambush, this would be great once again if it wasn't right next to envenom. Envenom is such a dominating damage talent that it just shadows this a bit too much. If there is a
#2 talent in this tier it is Ranger's Ambush it helps with pushing and assassination and scales with the faster you can press Q.
Remorseless,
this is very mechanically dependent. I have very high mechanical skill in this game and I can't make the full value of this talent come out without playing this build specifically. The amount of potential damage that it can provide however is massive, it essentially allows you to crit every auto attack, making your auto attack damage near that of carrys.
Shade Form is also a good talent if you are willing to sacrifice the push from the poison for you to be able to escape from some situations that you have no business getting out of. Very good with an assassination build.
Life Drain, this should generally only be chosen for the dagger build that is illustrated in one of the pull down menus. It provides insane lifesteal and survivability when you hit multiple targets and has some real value in more niche scenarios.
Unstable Poison, this has more detailed explanation in the long story short it makes some insanely quick pushing pushing power and allows the clearing of waves within the original 5 shots from your Q. If your
Shadow Dagger
Withering Fire or
Wailing Arrow kill a minion it will blow up and deal great damage to the hero next to it. Mentioning that you can assassinate many squishy targets such as
Jaina and
Kael'thas just by them being near a large wave and your ultimate or dagger exploding every creep near them.
Mercenary Lord,this has the potential to be a very good talent for split pushing but you could also just personally do it as Sylvanas and have much more success and gain exp for it. Mercenary Lord is also good only on maps that have many mercs and only affects when you are taking them unlike the unstable poison that helps in many scenarios.
In-Depth analysis of the ultimates are above in the "How To" section.
In general pick
Wailing Arrow.
Evasive Fire, it is essentially a straight upgrade to overwhelming affliction and allows for greater chase and and better positioning in fights.
Splinter Shot, this doubles the damage of your Q even in team fights and allows for some quicker and insane push. This includes the rapid and extremely low cost in health and mana for taking all merc camps except boss. When using this make sure that you are immobilizing as many mercs as possible as long as you can when taking knight camps. Three should constantly be paralyzed when fighting them.
Overwhelming Affliction,this is fantastic for a pursue/chase build it slows everything down by a significant amount if you can chain these slows and build the stacks. However at the same tier you can take
Evasive Fire and have a more versatile talent that provides more chase.
Spell Shield, this talent is relatively useless compared to the other talents that are here. It makes you tankier and can be chosen if you are getting shut down by
Nova or
Zeratul.
Blood for Blood, this is fantastic for assassinating a target it takes 15% health for them which is just 15% less that you have to do in damage. This will also commonly get you out of bad spots and be a massive heal if used on tanks. This can also provide some amazing turnarounds in fights that will leave you feeling awesome.
Cold Embrace, this causes MASS vulnerability among the enemy team and even helps with pushing. This has the potential to be ridiculous with auto attacking teammates to get even more crits on the other team.
Will of the Forsaken, this talent would be awesome on another hero, but Sylvanas does not need this if you want movement speed you can get it from another place and you don't really need the unstoppable once every
60 seconds.
Windrunner, this talent is good for escaping and has some fantastic synergy with other talents that use the wave. But you could also just have good enough positioning to not really need this talent and instead take great talents such as
Blood for Blood, which helps escape anyway]] or
Cold Embrace.
Deafening Blast, this talent is very good if you can position it correctly. This is generally the best when when you have some stun based initiation on your team and can cause some much larger affects on the enemy team.
Bolt of the Storm, I cannot say enough about how good this talent is for my aggressive play style. It allows me to make some huge positioning mistakes, then get away with it, and often turnaround on whoever is engaging on me. This can also allow for some great engages "taking the enemy completely by surprise".
Dark Lady's Call, this must be picked if you picked possession earlier it will make it actually useful. This also allows for some truly great split pushing towards the late game. You will be surrounded by promoted minions and put even
Azmodan in his place.
Fury of the Storm, the only talent that you have no business taking on this tier. It provides little to no burst extra for such an otherwise amazing tier.
Sylvanas ALWAYS has something to do, it is one of the reasons I have been maining her as of late. If you are not split pushing you should be getting mercs, if you are not getting mercs you should be grouping up with your team in some manner. You can solo most merc camps very early and win many early lane trades. Play aggressive in lane and show the enemy that they are forced to sit behind their wall and cry for ganks. This hero can be played as a play making hero or as a split pushing annoying nightmare for the enemy team. At the end of the game you should see that you have one of the top 2 if not the top EXP and Siege damage on your team or in the game.
If you have any comments or recommendations please post below!
Remember this is an Evolving Guide, meaning that I will take the input given to me to consideration and would love to discuss changes in the comments below,
Thank you for reading my guide and happy hunting!
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