This is my first guide, so please excuse silly mistakes I make. Please leave feedback to help me improve the quality of my guide, I will even accept a "this guide sucks", all feedback is welcome!

I've been playing Heroes of the Storm since the closed Beta, I got a Beta key from a friend and decided "Why not" and gave it a try. My very first character was Uther, and boy was he a great first pick. I learned how to play the majority of the game playing as Uther, so I know what works, but more importantly, what doesn't. I have currently 100+ games as Uther, so I'm certainly no expert, but I still have some good advice to give to new players, or those who aren't sure how to properly play the character.

Uther is a character from the Warcraft universe. He trained Arthas in the ways of the force, and helped him on his path to become a Jedi Master. But Uther was powerless to stop Arthas from being corrupted by the powers of the dark side...wait

Uther is a melee Support, and a damn good one at that. He has very powerful healing, as well as great crowd control abilities. His trait eternal devotion allows him to rapidly heal his allies for a short time after his death, so even when you die, you're not out of the fight.

Let's summarize everything with a quick Pros and Cons list.

PROS

• Great burst healing
• Fairly tanky for a healer
• Good crowd control
• Useful even when killed
• Very versatile
• Basically Ben Kenobi

CONS

• Long cooldowns
• Can't do much damage, despite his massive hammer
• No escape mechanic
• Fairly team dependent

(Q) Holy Light

This is your main healing ability, it's pretty straight forward. While you want to be using it frequently, you don't want to be spamming it, 12 seconds is a punishingly long CD. Using Protective Shield with Holy Light + Holy Radiance can provide a stupid amount of burst healing, but you'll be 12 seconds without heals. Use this combo sparingly.

(W) Holy Radiance

This is quite a nifty ability, it's your secondary healing ability, and simultaneously your main damaging ability. It is a skill shot ability, that fires in a straight line, healing allies, and damaging enemies that get caught in it's blast. You can use this to help clear minion waves, finish off fleeing opponents, or just heal and damage at the same time during a team fight. I'd recommend using this 6 seconds after Holy Light(or 6 seconds before) so you can pump out healing more efficiently. It has the same CD as Holy Light, so using them both at the same time, could leave you burned out, and left without life saving heals. Protective Shield + Holy Light + Holy Radiance is still an effective combo, but use it wisely.

(E) Hammer of Justice

A basic, but effective stun. This can be used to interrupt many threatening abilities (i.e. Overkill, Strafe, and Whirlwind) that might otherwise put a dent into your team. Use this to engage, zone, or stop fleeing targets to help your team secure kills. You can't do much damage on your own, so don't use this to engage by yourself, that's just silly. You do have a fair amount of bulk, so you can potentially use this to help zone for your allies, and help secure objectives, just don't get carried away. Using Benediction + Hammer of Justice + Hammer of Justice + Divine Storm can lock down a target for stupidly long time, make sure your team can take advantage of it though, I've made the mistake of executing the combo with no follow up. Divine Storm is completely optional for this combo, just the double stun works perfectly fine at locking down targets.

(Trait) Eternal Devotion

After you die, you become a ghost and you gain the ability Flash of Light as your new Q, you can pump out a ridiculous amount of healing with this. You only get 10 seconds, so make every one count. Not really much else to say about it.

(R) Divine Shield

My personal favorite out of the two ultimate abilities. It grants a shield of invincibility, while also giving the target 20% bonus movement speed for 3 seconds. Being able to save an ally from certain doom, can mean the difference between winning a team fight, and losing one. Granted, a well placed Divine Storm can help win team fights too, but if you're team already has great CC, Divine Shield is the obvious pick.

(R) Divine Storm

One of the best stuns in the game, if I do say so myself. Sure it's no Mosh Pit, but it's an instant cast ability, so firing one off isn't as big of a risk. That being said though, getting a well placed Divine Storm safely can be fairly tricky to pull off, and getting your team to take advantage of that stun, can be quite the challenge too. More often than not, you won't be using Divine Storm to the best of it's ability, which is why I recommend Divine Shield over this ult. But if your team is lacking CC, feel free to pick this ability, and you might as well pick Divine Hurricane at level 20 if you do. You aren't limited to using this in a crowd, you can Hammer of Justice into a Divine Storm to help secure a kill, but once you get Benediction, this combo isn't as necessary.

Talents are one of the best things about Heroes of the Storm, and one of the key features that set it apart from other MOBA style games. While there are builds, and other such sets to follow(much like the ones on this guide), you want to be picking your talents based on your team, and the opposition, you want to be able to adapt to whatever best suits your situation. I will be looking through all of Uther's talents, and informing you which talents are worth picking, and why.

LEVEL 1

Good. I believe this to be the best pick at level 1. You never want to be low on mana as the healer, so getting this allows you to stay with your team longer, without having to take a sip from the fountain, or hearthstone back to base. If you're playing on a map with small gaps between lanes ( Blackheart's Bay, and Tomb of the Spider Queen) it's not a bad idea to jump from lane to lane, to collect more health globes. Although only do this when you can, don't leave an ally stranded, or lane unoccupied.

Situational. Only grab this talent if you have a dive heavy hero like The Butcher, or Sonya, not very useful in solo-que, but good when you can communicate with the other hero. While they dive into the team, you can heal them from further away, giving your ally a buffer before you're in range to cast Divine Shield.

Situational. Doesn't help you as healer, and requires you to be auto attacking to get the most out of it, which can leave you quite vulnerable. If your team is lacking CC, or zoning potential, you could pick this, but you'll be left quite mana hungry, and probably taking more damage than you should being too aggressive. It does synergies well with Hammer of the Lightbringer, and is recommended in the "Hammer Time!" build.

Good. If you believe you can properly manage your mana, and somehow don't need Conjurer's Pursuit, or you just can't collect regen globes very well, then this talent is for you! Block can help your survivability quite a bit, it stores two charges, and halves the damage of incoming auto attacks, making heroes like Sgt. Hammer, Nova, and The Butcher a lot less threatening. Watch out for mages like Jaina, Kael'thas, and Falstad, Block doesn't defend against ability damage, so you'll still be taking the same amount of damage from them.

LEVEL 4

Situational. I've recently had a change of heart towards this talent, one of Uther's biggest weaknesses is reliable AOE healing, Boundless Conviction really helps make your AOE healing much more reliable. At first, it's fairly underwhelming, but this talent really shines when paired with both Wave of Light and Benediction. Protective Shield is the safe pick, considering Uther's strength is massive single target healing, but if the enemy team doesn't have a lot of single target burst damage, and has more sustained AOE damage, do consider building for Holy Radiance.

Situational. Conjurer's Pursuit is better for mana regen, in order to get the most out of this talent, you have to be constantly auto attacking. This could be a good choice if you picked Block as your first talent, but it's hard to pass up Protective Shield. Getting Conjurer's Pursuit and Hammer of the Lightbringer is not recommended, but can be useful on Garden of Terror and Haunted Mines, so consider this if you find yourself low on mana when collecting seeds/skulls.

Bad. While you want to be healing yourself to stay alive, your highest priority is keeping the team alive. If you find yourself dying more often than you should, get Block at level 1 for survivability, you want to be taking less damage on Uther, not healing more back. This is the core talent of the "Tank Uther" build, but I do not recommend it for any other Uther build.

Good. This is your best pick at level 4 by far, this can help increase your teams survivability by a good amount. You can Protective Shield + Holy Light + Holy Radiance on an ally with low health, so you can heal them to near full with little to no health loss. You can also use it to preemptively stop incoming damage, or when your healing abilities are on CD, protective shield can help keep an ally alive long enough for you to heal them. This helps you as a support more than any other talent at level 4.

LEVEL 7

Situational. only worth picking if you've already picked Boundless Conviction, otherwise, choose something else. When paired with Boundless Conviction you can really get the most out of this talent, you'll be able to heal more often during team fights, and even put out some good sustained damage if positioned correctly. Unfortunately you only get CD reduction and Mana return when healing allies, I might've made this a standard pick with any build if it also stacked with enemies damaged. When this talent really reaches it's full potential is when it's paired with Benediction, You will be gaining mana when using Holy Radiance, and you'll be able to fire off both waves in quick succession, whereas you'd normally have to wait 2 seconds before your next wave. This gives Uther great AOE burst healing, and strengthens one of the weakest tools in his kit.

Situational. Can be a good pick, but doesn't help you fulfill your support role. If your team is lacking in CC, this can be useful to help secure kills, and is excellent at zoning. This is a very good talent, but your main job isn't to stun, which is why this is only a situational talent.

Situational. If your team doesn't have an effective way of removing Creep Tumor's from Zagara, this can be a good talent to pick. If you already have characters that are good at clearing the Creep Tumor's, or someone else is picking Burning Rage, this talent is not necessary. This can be useful for revealing Nova, and Zeratul, but Clairvoyance is better at that anyway. This is also handy at clearing minion waves, so if your team is struggling with lane presence, consider taking Holy Fire.

Good. A great supportive talent, this removes any currently applied CC, and then reduces any further CC effects by 50% for 2 seconds. It's hard to come across a team that doesn't have some sort of CC, so it's usually always a good pick. If you're used to the old version of Cleanse, then you'll have to get used to not preemptively cleansing targets before they get hit, its much more reactive now.

Good. If the enemy doesn't have much threatening CC, this is a great pick. Vision is an important part of HotS, and the more vision you have the better. It has a global range, so anywhere you think your team needs vision, go ahead and pop it off there. Even if your teammates don't pay attention to where you place it, you still get valuable information. This can be especially good on Cursed Hollow, since it is a fairly large map, you might struggle to keep track of where the enemy team is. If you just feel like using it to reveal Murky's Spawn Egg, or find Abathur, feel free to do so. Clairvoyance can also reveal Nova, and Zeratul, but if you notice their shimmer, just use Holy Radiance to knock them out of stealth.

LEVEL 10

Good. The more useful out of the two, but not as big of a pay off, This is the safe pick. I talk more about it on the abilities portion of the guide.

Good. Getting a well placed stun, and your team to follow through on it, can be devastating to the enemy team, but is much easier said than done. Not as generally useful as Divine Shield, but has a much bigger pay off.

LEVEL 13

Situational. Not going to lie, I hardly ever pick this talent, but I can see why it can be useful. Uther doesn't have reliable AOE healing, so Blessed Champion can help mitigate damage from AOE attacks, such as Kael'thas's Flamestrike, or Jaina's Blizzard. However, you lose the utility of Shrink Ray by picking this talent. The problem with Blessed Champion, is you have to auto attack in order for the heal to take effect, and that makes it fairly difficult to get the most out of this talent.

Situational. Is Block just not saving you from Nova? Are pesky mages killing you too quickly? Then Spell Shield is the talent for you! I'd recommend you to just have better positioning, but if the enemy just has a knack for singling you out, this might not be a bad choice, especially if you're the only melee character on your team.

Bad. As a healer, you want to be using your primary healing ability to HEAL! This really is a ridiculous choice, the damage is decent, but sacrificing a heal isn't worth it. Not to mention you can missclick on a enemy instead of healing teammates, it can actually hurt your role as a support. Benediction makes this ability less useless, because you can deal damage, without putting your Holy Light on CD. But it's better to save Benediction for double stun, or faster healing.

Good. The best pick at this level, Shrink Ray can reduce the movement speed, and damage dealt by the targeted hero by 50%, so using this against an enemy Assassin can prevent a lot of incoming damage. You can also use Shrink Ray on fleeing targets to help secure kills, it's very amusing to watch a tiny hero helplessly try to outrun your giant team.

LEVEL 16

Not Recommended. This is actually one of my favorite talents, it clears minion waves stupidly fast, making your Holy Radiance actually do decent damage. However, the problem with Gathering Radiance, is that you get it too late in the game, and you sacrifice so much on the level it's at. You have to sacrifice Benediction, and Hardened Focus, which help you heal much more effectively, and Imposing Presence which could give you much needed survivability. If this talent was at an earlier level, I'd highly recommend it, but Gathering Radiance is unfortunately out of place.

Good. One of Uther's biggest weaknesses are his painfully long CDs, so Hardened Focus can help you pump out more healing more often. However, you must be above 80% life for this talent to even work, so it may be difficult to get the most out of it. If you are good at positioning, or just have a good Warrior to keep you safe, then you shouldn't have to worry about getting the most use from this talent. You can also pick this talent if you are struggling to get use out of Benediction.

Situational. If you find yourself getting singled out by auto-attacking heroes, Imposing Presence can be a good pick. You can effectively halve the damage of characters like Illidan, Valla, and Tychus, or keep slow attacking heroes such as Sgt. Hammer, and Nova, from ever getting another attack off. Using this talent and Block together hard counters those two heroes. While you should just be taking much safer positioning, if that is not an option, Imposing Presence can really help you stay alive.

Very Good. This talent let's your next basic ability used reduce it's mana cost by 50, and reduce it's CD by 10 seconds. You can activate this talent at any time, it only takes affect whenever you use one of your basic abilities. To put it simply, this is Uther's version of Rewind, but it only works on one ability. This is the best talent in your entire talent pool, with Benediction everything you do is better. Benediction + Hammer of Justice + Hammer of Justice + Divine Storm locks down a target for a ridiculous amount of time. Benediction + Protective Shield + Holy Light + Holy Radiance + Holy Light can all be used in a very short period of time, so you can heal up your entire team in no time. If you picked it, I guess you could Benediction + Holy Shock + Holy Light so you can still do damage without wasting your heal. This talent is incredibly versatile, and fits into pretty much any build.

LEVEL 20

Situational. Storm Shield is a better supportive pick, but Bulwark of Light is very useful if the enemy team has a lot of single target ultimates such as, Judgment, Triple Tap, Pyroblast, and The Hunt. It can also be used offensively, shielding a dive heavy hero like Kerrigan, Sonya, or The Butcher keeping them safe as they deal massive amounts of damage to the enemy team. Keep in mind, grabbing the talent puts Divine Shield at a 50 seconds cooldown, so you can use it much more spontaneously.

Good. If you picked Divine Storm there really is no reason not to pick Divine Hurricane, more stuns more often, not much else to say. It just makes an already great ultimate, into an even better ultimate with less CD.

Situational. At first glance, this talent seems really powerful, but it's surprisingly more situational than you might think. If you find yourself being the first to die in team fights, this is a great talent pick, but if you're usually the last to die, this talent pick is a complete waste. Pick it if you know you'll be able to get the most out of it, there's no reason to have an extra life if your team just wiped.

Good. As I've said before, Uther struggles with AOE healing, so this is a way to compensate for that. This is a very strong pick against Kael'thas, and Jaina, since it can really soften the blow of their AOE spells.

As I said before, you want to pick your talents based on your team, and the opposition, but picking a good build doesn't hurt your chances in winning games. Use these as templates, and tweak around with some of the talent picks to help better suit your play style, or situation.


The Standard "Too Many Hotkeys!" Build:

The most effective, and versatile build. This is a full Support build, so it helps you fulfill your role to the maximum amount. However this is also the most difficult build to use, you have FIVE, thats right, FIVE other abilities you're going to have to keep track of, as well as the 4 abilities your hero has. So if you're not sure you can keep track of when to use all 9 of these abilities, then maybe switch out a few talents to help ease your burden.
The talents are:
Conjurer's Pursuit, Protective Shield, Cleanse, Divine Shield, Shrink Ray, Benediction, and Storm Shield

The Noob friendly healer Build:

Another full Support build, that is significantly more lax than the standard "Too Many Hotkeys", and don't be discouraged by the name if you're an experienced HotS player, it is still a good build. Basically, I tried to have a build that maximized your healing, while requiring minimal effort. This is perfect if you haven't played many Support heroes, and want to better familiarize yourself with the basics. I also consider this the "AOE Healing" build, so if you'd like better AOE healing on Uther, consider this build.
The talents are:
Conjurer's Pursuit, Boundless Conviction, Wave of Light, Divine Shield, Blessed Champion, Hardened Focus, and Redemption

It's Hammer Time! Build:

If you played Retribution Paladin in WoW(much like I have), then this is probably the build you want to take. I do enjoy this build, but it's fairly situational. You have to become much more aggressive in order to get the most use out of it, and you sacrifice supportive utility in Protective Shield, and Cleanse. You become a sort of Warrior Support hybrid using this build, and that might not be what your team needs. If your team already has another Support hero, and not a lot of CC, then this build could be useful. You are slightly less team dependent with this build, but slightly less useful to your team, so this is a decent solo que build when playing in the lower ranks.
The talent are:
Fist of Justice, Hammer of the Lightbringer, Burden of Guilt, Divine Storm, Shrink Ray, Benediction, and Divine Hurricane

The Nova Counter Build:

ehehehe, I really just made this for the lolz. If it's Nova free week, and you want to make the enemy Nova feel completely useless, then go ahead and try out this build, it's quite amusing. Block + Spell Shield + Imposing Presence effectively shuts down Nova in every possible way, watch her attempt to pick you off, as her combo does next to no damage. Protective Shield + Divine Shield are there to protect you, and your teammates from Triple Tap. Clairvoyance is just a little something extra, so you can always keep that pesky Nova out of stealth. Holy Fire isn't a bad pick either, you can just stand near Nova to keep her from getting back into stealth, it's hilariously effective. However, if you're playing on Blackheart's Bay or Tomb of the Spider Queen, and you're paranoid Nova is going to burst you down making you lose all of your coins\gems, then this build could be viable, and not just a silly troll.
The talents are:
Block, Protective Shield, Clairvoyance, Divine Shield, Spell Shield, Imposing Presence, and Bulwark of Light

The Tank Uther Build:

I need to test this build more before I will recommend it...
Basically, what I set out to do, is make a build that effectively turns Uther into a Warrior. With this build, you want to be doing everything a Warrior does, fight in the front lines, take loads of damage for your team, and stun the **** out of the enemy team. What I found so appealing about this idea, is that most players want to focus down the healer, so you're already the prime target for damage, and the best part, you are your own healer, and then the fact that you can revive with Redemption, allows you to take so many more hits for the team. However, there are a number of flaws with this idea. Most of your tankiness comes from your ability to sustain yourself with Amplified Healing, so you are very susceptible to ability damage from Jaina, Kael'thas, Zeratul, and other burst heavy Assassin's until level 13. Since most of your tankiness comes from your talents, you're going to become quite mana hungry without Conjurer's Pursuit and Hammer of the Lightbringer, so this is a fairly difficult build to pull off. You also aren't going to find a lot of teams willing to follow through with a Support tanking for them, so you're probably going to have to que with a few friends to get this to work. Feel free to test this build, I haven't found many opportunities to use this, but maybe you will, let me know how it works for you. :)
The talents are:
Block, Amplified Healing, Holy Fire, Divine Storm, Spell Shield, Imposing Presence, and Redemption

Aggressive Self Sustain:

As the name of the build says, you have to play fairly aggressive when using this build. It's pretty useful on Haunted Mines, and Battlefield Of Eternity, since you won't be able to collect very many regen globes. You do have to sacrifice Protective Shield for this build to work, but it also lets you use Blessed Champion more effectively. It is also a bit more lax than the standard build, since you'll have only 2 or 3 hotkeys, instead of the usual 5. Definitely situational, but it has it's merits.
The talents are:
Block, Hammer of the Lightbringer, Clairvoyance, Divine Shield, Blessed Champion, Benediction, and Redemption

Kerrigan is a very strong melee assassin, but she struggles with survivability, Uther gives her the support she needs to thrive in team fights. Divine Shield lets Kerrigan be so much more aggressive in team fights, and allows her to get the most out of her Maelstrom ult.

This combo is very amusing, as long as you're coordinated with your stuns, you can completely halt even the most evasive of heroes. You don't do much damage as a pair, so outside of a team fight, you'll mostly be using this to zone, rather than to pick up "easy kills".

One of The Butcher's biggest weaknesses, is crowd control. Uther has access to Cleanse, and Divine Shield, so he can keep The Butcher alive longer than any other Support. Divine Shield can be used with Butcher's Brand, so he can easily get back to full health, before the enemy knows what happened. Bulwark of Light is highly recommended if you have The Butcher on your team.

A surprisingly good pairing, if Kharazim goes for a damage build, two full time Supports isn't what makes this duo so strong. The Monk can deal some serious damage when he's able to get off all his Deadly Reach attacks, unfortunately, people usually don't want to stand in front of a martial artist on steroids, thats where you come in. You use your stuns to keep targets still so Kharazim can completely burst enemy heroes down, both with Deadly Reach, and Seven-Sided Strike. You will also be making sure that he can dive into enemies, with little risk of dying. You'll be using Divine Shield to keep him alive, and also keep a fair amount of distance away from him, so Kharazim can Radiant Dash to safety.

I hope this guide helps, please be sure to leave some feedback, and let me know if there's anything you think I could to do to improve this guide. :)

Please be sure to check out my new E.T.C. guide here