Introduction Top
Welcome to my prototype Uther build!
Firstly let's clear up who I am, and why I decided to write this. A lot of people would consider me a noob. In my first ranked season (2016 S3) I placed into Silver 3. My friends who are Gold and Platinum say I deserved to place higher, but I'm not complacent. If the game says I'm silver, I'm silver. For this reason, I am not suggesting this build will work in the higher realms of play, nor am I suggesting I am in any way a credible source of information with which to be improving your gameplay. Uther however is one of if not my outright strongest Hero, and certainly one I have a lot of fun playing.
...Take this with a pinch of salt is what I'm saying.
"So if you're a bad player, what's the point of this?" Top
Good question. This build has the following aims:
- To be a forgiving build, that does not as such require high level gameplay mechanics such as last-second quick casts of abilities not suited to lower level players such as myself.
- To be an Uther build that fits into the chaotic meta of Quick Match and to a certain extent Unranked Drafts.
- To be a solo-support build that supports melee-focused compositions in organised team situations, especially if the opposing team lacks in damage potential.
Overview Top
This build constructs Uther as an aggressive medic, focused on raw healing output over utility. It requires Uther to be able to pull off strings of basic attacks, and hence may struggle against mobile or ranged opposing team compositions that are difficult to stick to. It rewards aggressive play, and is very powerful when combined with melee-focused teams, once past Level 13 as discussed in the Breakdown. Uther is often considered underwhelming when put up against the other Supports. Against a Piano Uther who isn't good enough to reap the full benefits of such a high-stress build (common in the low levels), I can see why people come to this conclusion. That is where this build comes in. I have consistently out-healed those who are considered "main" healers, ie
Morales and
Malfurion, even when on a losing team. The increased damage output from
Holy Fire and aggressive basic attack-led playstyle often catches unwary opponents off-guard, and in 1v1 situations I have often picked off weakened stronger opponents such as Artanis and Samuro.
Tier-by-Tier Breakdown Top
Level 1 - Hammer of the Lightbringer
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"Not Conjurer's Pursuit?" I hear you cry. No, not
Conjurer's Pursuit. Life's too short to farm for regen globes. I prefer taking Hammer simply because it's an instant payout. Uther is tankier than a lot of people give him credit for, and in the early game he should have no problems staying out slapping minions with his foam (at least it feels like foam) hammer. In fact once paired with
Holy Fire and more importantly
Blessed Champion, Uther becomes a surprisingly strong duelist.
The only weakness of Hammer is in very long, drawn-out early teamfights, such as the first few objectives on Infernal Shrines and Haunted Mines. If Uther is focused, which given the aggressive position one must be in to pull off strings of basic attacks, is definitely likely, he does not yet have the survivability to stay in the fight and string basic attacks to keep his mana refreshed throughout. These are the only situations I find myself having to hearth for mana. Hammer of the Lightbringer allows (and to a certain extend condones) Uther to stay in the fight almost indefinitely.
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Level 4 - Beacon of Light
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Beacon of Light serves the simple purpose of allowing Uther to henceforth spend more time healing his allies than worrying about himself. Although one is sacrificing the potential utility of
Protective Shield, it has a long cooldown and having the security to cast
Holy Light on an endangered ally to sustain both them and Uther himself in my opinion gives him the strongest hand. This substitution becomes stronger at Level 16 with
Hardened Focus (or
Righteous Defense), as this allows Uther to cast Holy Light more often (or provide Armour in the case of Righteous Defense).
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Level 7 - Holy Fire
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No, I haven't put down
Cleanse. Heresy, I know. Like I said earlier, this build is designed to be forgiving and easy to get the full capability of. Good Cleanses are hard to pull off. They require good attention and fast reflexes. I often found myself thinking not "I should Cleanse... NOW" but "I should have Cleansed then, shouldn't I." It is for this reason I have not put Cleanse in this build. If the enemy team has certain characters that Cleanse is a strong counter to, AND in a way that gives you time to notice that the Cleanse is necessary and prepare to cast it (most notably a charging Butcher) then it is definitely worth taking.
That is not to extinguish (hah, extinguish) Holy Fire at all. It provides Uther with some much-needed waveclear, which proves to be incredibly useful in the chaos of quick match if you find yourself alone in a lane. The increased damage from basic attacking heroes also allows Uther to do significantly increased damage in teamfights, turning him from a pest-but-only-every-12-seconds into a real threat. Holy Fire also further builds into the synergy with
Blessed Champion after Level 13, rewarding aggressive play with strings of basic attacks as mentioned in the Overview.
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Level 10 - Divine Shield
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I don't have a lot to say about Divine Shield to be honest. One could argue that
Divine Storm synergises well with the aggressive positioning this build requires, but at the end of the day, especially in low-level play Divine Shield provides a Get Out of Jail Free card that is just too strong to pass up.
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Level 13 - Blessed Champion
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Now this build really comes alive, and the reasoning behind
Hammer of the Lightbringer and
Holy Fire should become clear.
Holy Light heals for 427* health. 20% of that is 85.4* health. Uther's basic attack speed is exactly 1 per second. That means for 5 seconds, every 12 seconds, Uther is now healing his allies around him (in a surprisingly large area) for more than
Malfurion's
Tranquility.
Pretty neat, right? But it gets better. Remember, we have
Beacon of Light, so Uther is getting a further 30% of the healing we do to EVERY allied hero around us. In theory (rarely in practice, of course) if all 4 allied heroes are in the aura (I've done the maths so you don't have to), Uther is now healing for 187.88* health per second. That's only 5 HP/s short of a
Morales
Healing Beam. Did I mention he's also doing 29.95* damage per second to everyone around him (assuming he has attacked heroes) because of
Holy Fire? And that he's more than topped up on mana because of
Hammer of the Lightbringer?
With this build, positioning him aggressively with a melee-focused team, we have just turned Uther into a self-sustaining AoE-healing machine. Oh yeah, and we have
Holy Radiance and
Hammer of Justice too. Just in case, y'know.
*Base values. Level modifier is +4% per level
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Level 16 - Hardened Focus
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So what could we do to improve the fact that Uther is now a self-sustaining AoE healing machine? Well, how about if we could do it 50% more often? If the enemy team fails to realise the potent threat you suddenly pose, I have found from experience that the raw sustain from
Blessed Champion in a teamfight is often enough for Uther to remain above 80% health. Now our healing train (for lack of a better term) is active for 5 of every 8 seconds, a 62.5% uptime almost never stops. One can always fire off
Holy Radiance in the down time to make up for it.
Alternatively, it may be fruitful to sacrifice the uptime of
Blessed Champion if one allied hero (maybe even Uther himself) in particular is getting nuked hard, then
Righteous Defense is the way to go. Although
Benediction is the popular choice, I still believe
Righteous Defense is the way to go with this build, as
Benediction effectively wastes 5 seconds of
Blessed Champion uptime, when instead our endangered ally could have 50 Armour (or Armor as you pesky American folks call it). To be honest, all 3 are valid choices. I find Hardened Focus reaps the best results, but your mileage may vary.
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Level 20 - Redemption
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Not a lot to say on this one either. It's a full-on Get Out of Jail Free. If the healing train isn't enough and you do get taken down, you can cover your allies on the retreat (or in the fight if they are still going) with
Flash of Light and then immediately restart the healing train, albeit without the assistance of
Hardened Focus to begin with (assuming you took it).
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That's it, really. Top
Like I said, I'm not an expert player, it would be incorrect of me to go deeper into the complex and specific tactics of playing Uther. There are other guides on this site for that and they do a better job than I could ever do. Do give this a go, when I first started playing Uther (using standard Piano) I found myself overwhelmed by the stress and found it impossible to keep up even with a pre-patch Tassadar's support efforts. After hammering (get it? Because he has a hammer? Oh, whatever) out this build Uther has quickly become one of my best performing and most fun heroes to play.
If you think I've talked bollocks in this, please don't hesitate to criticise, but please consider what I said at the start, this is not meant to be "by the best, for the best," this is meant to be "by a noob, for noobs."
For The Light.
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