This is a starters guide for Nazeebo which goes into detail about his basic abilities, patterns of play and standard talent builds / variations. If you're just starting out with him and want to get a sense for how his abilities are used and which talents are picked as standard you'll find information on that here.

The guide contains three talent builds viewable above, two fairly standard and one which is extremely map dependant. Hover over icons to get detailed information on a skill / talent.

Nazeebo's strengths include lane presence, area control / zoning and sustained damage output. He is good at poking but has no innate movement / repositioning abilities. Although all of his basic abilities can contribute to both damage and zoning their effectiveness is heavily affected by player judgment and use as they all depend on positioning and timing.

Basic Abilities


Nazeebo's voodoo ritual is not just his trait, it defines him, perhaps in the way traits ideally should but seldom do. The poison gives his basic attack the extra potency to make it a threat, the health and mana regain give him sustain and presence in lane, and the death ritual stacks he can gain from poisoned foes make him an increasingly resilient and persistent opponent as the game draws on.

As you kill lane minions (and indeed anything else) you will regain portions of your health and mana; in much the way Zagara relies on creep to recover her health as she lanes Nazeebo relies on voodoo ritual.
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The plague of toads , like many Nazeebo skills is versatile and capable of zoning opponents out of an area. The toads spread out as they move, and cause AoE damage when they hit something. As his main wave-clear they need to be used at a good, close angle to hit the most minions possible

It's a lot like Zagara's banelings, except of course that it doesn't need to be channeled and doesn't travel in a line, both of which can be real advantages. However, just like the banelings, it does most of its hero damage when thrown at point blank range at an enemy hero who has gotten too close.
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Corpse spiders creates three spiders at the impact area which initially do similar damage to Anub'arak's beetles. They attack the closest enemy (favouring heroes) but have no health bar. They do not soak tower ammo or block skillshots, but they also can't be killed or moved, and so they disrupt channeled objectives very effectively. They also apply your poison.

Before leaping spiders they are most effective when the opponent has to stay close to them, after leaping spiders they're pretty much guaranteed to hit even rapidly fleeing enemies and become effective chase tools, dismounting and damaging enemies consistently over time.

Finally, like any ability throwing them into a bush will grant vision, but unlike most you'll retain vision until all the spiders die, and if they follow a hero you'll retain vision of their movements in that time.
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Perhaps Nazeebo's defining basic ability and the closest thing he has to crowd-control, the zombie wall varies from a root to a force wall on demand. The ring of zombies will hurt and obstruct opponents that are in contact with it, so large enemies such as Azmodan really suffer, but can be disrupted by knockback and damage(so both powerslide and face melt) and any dash ability will foil it.

Not all heroes can so easily circumvent it however and the wall doesn't have to encircle an enemy to be effective. Place it in chokepoints to cut off escape, use it to zone opponents out of an area, to help an ally escape, or even just to slow an opponent down by making them walk around it, but remember that the delay means you need to cast it below yourself while fleeing, and in the path of a fleeing enemy. Vision can help too, if an opponent pursues you through smoke or bushes they will usually walk straight into the zombie wall and have no time to react.

Finally, zombie wall is a combo piece which allows guaranteed full hits with Nazeebo's other abilities and follow-ups from allies. In these situations Nazeebo's kill potential is very high for a specialist.

Oh, and you can stop the wall early by pressing W again, very important if you just death-trapped an ally.
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Heroic Abilities

Gargantuan is a summoned creature which acts autonomously, though they will follow you around as you move and try to attack your target. The AI can be pretty cumbersome but they hit hard, have a low cooldown and can slam, damaging and slowing enemies in an area on command (though the slow animation and awkward gait make it hard to hit fleeing heroes with this).

Ravenous spirit is a damaging, mobile spirit which must be channeled and dissipates if you are interupted but allows you to do focused damage to specific targets or clusters of targets. Since the march patch however its damage and area of effect are much lower, and the potential of the ability is considerably weaker. It hinges on two specific skills: positioning and timing. You must be positioned so that it is hard for your opponents to simply walk over and interrupt / kill you (bushes, walls etc are especially helpful here), and you need to find a moment when you can hit as many opponents as possible with the least chance of escape possible. The storm tier talent Annihilating Spirit makes both of these easier by extending the cast range and movement speed of the spirit.

Before the Sylvanas patch the normal way to play Nazeebo centred on ravenous spirit(RS) and specialised toxin, with the heroic inflicting sometimes game-winning damage in team-fights. The march patch changed all this, comprehensively nerfing that playstyle, but also buffing the gargantuan into usefulness.

The somewhat heavy-handed set of nerfs to RS and toxin made both that way of playing Nazeebo and the witch doctor himself fall out of favour. They also created space for his spider-focused talents which had never been weak, but didn't measure up to the standard build, largely because the spiders produce solid but diffuse damage. As a result the modern Nazeebo's damage numbers are still very solid, but his ability to get kills is weaker.

The spider build is now fairly standard and the three builds in this guide are mere variations on the same structure.

T1

Death ritual remains by far the best tier one talent for Nazeebo and is even more effective on Tomb of the Spider Queen, where reaching 200 stacks is pretty much guaranteed. It gives nazeebo greater sustain by boosting his maximum health and mana values (which he gains 2/1% of per kill with voodoo ritual) and makes him extremely resilient in the late game, far more so than almost every other non-tank. It ramps up slowly and blood ritual beats it on sustain but the benefits more than outweigh any shortcomings.

T2

Gathering power has fallen off a bit since the nerfs, the ability damage boost doesn't fit as well as it used to and the downside threat of dying and losing stacks was never attractive. Even before Nazeebo's RS and toxin build was laid low gathering power itself had been directly nerfed in a previous patch, and was sometimes being replaced, often with envenom.

Spider cluster starts the slow ascent of the spider build by spawning one more spider per second for three seconds. The talent substantially decreases their potential damage, and how long they can deny an objective for, but the spawn-over-time means that if an opponent is avoiding them they are unlikely to be attacked, as non-leaping spiders will generally hit whatever is closest and take time to travel.

For this reason on haunted mines it can sometimes be beneficial to go for envenom instead, giving a much better burst of controlled damage in the early game. If this is taken infested toads becomes more attractive at level 16, but if spider cluster is taken leaping spiders is almost always better.

T3

There have only ever really been two choices at tier three: Gidbinn and Mule. Gidbinn improves everything Nazeebo does, but despite this losing gidbinn is a much softer opportunity cost than Brightwing, tassadar, malfurion and others pay to get mule, as each sacrifices critical healing or damage talents to get it while Nazeebo can function extremely well without gidbinn.

And mules can decide games on some maps, most notably on haunted mines and sky temple, but they have a lot of value on other maps. Fewer structures lost means less experience for your opponents throughout the game, and mules mean that if a structure doesn't go down it will heal up.

Remember to communicate with your team if you plan to substitute mule in. Not everyone realises that Naz *can* take mule, let alone that you intend to. But if it's between you and Brightwing, you can spare the team a diminished-healing related headache.

T4


While RS remains an option the reason that gargantuan is now often taken is that it has a shorter cooldown, packs a significant (if uncontrollable) punch, and allows you to act normally during its uptime. It also happens to instantly do AoE damage at the target location, which means it can finish off enemies, or spawn on top of one of your zombie wall detainees, but this is secondary. Nazeebo can contribute a lot to a fight on his own, and the gargantuan allows him to. As ravenous spirit now struggles to deal significant damage to multiple heroes and has to be channeled it has fallen behind in popularity.

T5

Sprint is, as it has ever been, king of tier five. It's better in most non-pyroblast-to-the-face scenarios than ice block and fills Nazeebo's need for an escape. Blizzard improved the toads of hugeness talent in the Sylvanas patch, but it remains fundamentally a bad pick. Toads are used for zoning at range and for damage at close range in most situations, doing more damage in scenarios where your opponents have the least chance of being hit is not that helpful. Likewise while dead rush lets your zombies stretch their legs and can add a bit of damage, it's rarely going to be worth losing out on sprint over.

Besides, let's not forget you can sprint forwards and plant a zombie wall in front of retreating enemies. Let's not forget how good that feels.

T6


Tier six offers a lot of choice for Nazeebo, but it's somewhat strangled off by confounding factors. Infested toads are genuinely good, but for an out-and-out spider build leaping spiders are generally always better, and specialised toxins was nerfed too far to really be worth it. Even so, they're all good talents that could in principle be good picks.

Infested toads is worthwhile as part of a haunted mines variation where you take envenom and mule, as really none of the synergistic pieces of a spider build are in place, and infested toads are great for out-and-out damage. You get an extra five spiders, and while they lack the tracking and damage that leaping spiders gives you, they're good for damage on fairly static targets, such as the grave golem, or in siege damage.

Spiders always prefer to attack enemy heroes, but normally their range and movement speed limit this and they tend to just hit whatever they're next to. Leaping spiders have a much better chance of targeting enemy heroes, and pursue them relentlessly as they run, this maximises their damage in most situations. They're also great at banishing summoned mounts and generally being a nuisance. However, their damage is always likely to be distributed in a fight, as they won't focus down your team's target, they'll just hit whatever's closest to them.

Specialised toxin of course allows you to apply damage in a focused way, hitting what you want to. It greatly augments your basic attacks and abilities, or at least it used to. It still augments them, but the effect is far less impressive than it once was.

T7


It used to be that Naz would always take annihilating spirit at tier seven. It's a huge boost to RS, and you could get by with the large health pool and sprint. Taking bolt of the storm isn't attractive even when you take the gargantuan, you very rarely feel you really need it. That said, it's still a great ability and noone will shun you for taking it.

They might have shunned you for taking Humongoid though which feels very lacklustre. The obvious benefits are its permanence, which given it heals atrociously slowly isn't always that impressive, and becomes a siege/merc killing monster. There is however a less conspicuous virtue to this talent-- the cooldown keeps ticking from the moment you summon Garry, and by the time he dies in a teamfight you'll often be able to immediately cast a second one. This makes him very much a constant companion to Nazeebo in the late game, and when I say he's a merc killing monster, I mean his AoE slam will usually two-shot a bruiser camp on its own.

By level twenty you can walk into a merc camp and take it on your own inside a few seconds. It's a lot like a better, never-ending version of bribe, with a giant hero-punching zombie attached.

Moreover, if you die the AI now causes the gargantuan to return to lane. Only, at 20 it never expires. So it just walks along hitting keeps and cores for absurd amounts of damage until the enemy team realises what's going on. It may not be remotely as tough, but it's not unlike a boss in that situation. I'm not entirely clear if this is intended, or what they intended (it used to just stand around forever, never expiring before the kael patch), but it's a nice consolation prize.

Nazeebo is a damage-focused specialist who is strong in lanes, resilient, sustainable and versatile. His easy access to the mule, and the potency of his abilities against static targets make him effective in both defending and destroying structures. He has strong zoning potential and conditional soft-CC in his zombie wall, as well as sustained damage coupled with a high health pool in later fights as his death ritual gathers steam.

He can no longer turn entire team-fights around on his own with RS, and he lacks the sharp focus of other heroes. He can't burst down heroes like Jaina or ruthlessly dominate a lane and crush structures underfoot like Zagara. His kit emphasises versatility with each ability able to do a lot of different things, their potency largely down to the player's skill and judgment.

He is however a fun and dynamic hero who remains remarkably viable, if not an especially high pick in hero league.