I’ve started playing a lot more Heroes of the Storm recently, and I’ve formed a particular liking for Sylvanas. She seems to be a hero that, if left unattended, can cause massive destruction to the enemy team. Due to her great pushing power, as well as decent mobility, I’ve been playing her a lot and trying to figure out the best way to abuse her skill set.

Similar to how I’ve done in the past with Diablo, I decided to use my blog as dumping ground for my thoughts and notes. I decided to go through Sylvanas’ talents and pick out the ones I feel would be viable to use.

This isn’t necessarily designed for public use, and more of a place for me to organize my thoughts; it’s also def­i­nite­ly not guaranteed to be “correct,” and shouldn’t be used as a guide. Still, I decided to post it publicly in case there are people who are completely lost, and would like a starting point for theorizing about Sylvanas’ talents.

Like always, I recommend using guides as a way to help you direct your thinking, rather than something that you should mindlessly follow.

Tier 1

• Lost Soul: Reduces the cooldown of Shadow Dagger by 2 seconds. I think this two seconds is a huge deal, because often times, when I need to use this ability, there’s a few seconds left on the cooldown and I don’t get maximum value from it. It’ll also be helpful in team fights, as being able to use this ability more often means I get to heal more off my Tier 7 talent.
• With the Wind: Increases Withering Fire’s range by 25%. I used to use this talent, but decided that lower Shadow Dagger cooldown is a bit better. This helps with long-range poke, but if I’m basic attacking my opponent at the same time, I don’t feel like this 25% is worth that much anymore.

Tier 4

• Paralysis: Increases duration of Black Arrows by 100%. This talent synergizes well with the Tier 13 talent Overwhelming Affliction, as well as helps Sylvanas out when clearing mercenary camps. This talent allows Sylvanas to solo a siege camp while taking no damage by constantly basic attacking one monster and using Withering Fire on the other. It refills just in time for Black Arrows to reapply before running out.
• Ranger’s Ambush: Using Haunting Wave to teleport refills all charges of Withering Fire. This ability is good for bursting people down, but I feel as if it’s outclassed by the synergy between Paralysis and Overwhelming Affliction.

Tier 7

• Life Drain: Shadow Dagger heals you for 10 each time it spreads to a new enemy. I think having sustain on Heroes of the Storm is extremely important, and this allows Sylvanas to stay healthy and lets your healer save their cooldowns for someone else. During fights, this can be used as a baiting mechanic when people are focusing you down, because you can throw out your Shadow Dagger and keep healing. If you’re forced out of a fight, you can go over to a nearby minion wave, heal back up, and rejoin the fight.
• Unstable Poison: Minions and Mercenaries that die under the effects of Black Arrows explode, dealing 75 damage to nearby enemies. I guess this talent is fine for a double-support composition where you need more damage and you have plenty of healing from your allies. This feels like more of a surprise talent where people run away into a minion wave, then die for it because they don’t expect their own minions to blow up and hurt them.

Tier 10

• Wailing Arrow: Shoot an arrow that can be reactivated to deal 200 damage and silencing ene­mies in an area for 2.5 seconds. The arrow detonates automatically when it reaches maxi­mum range. This heroic ability deals a good amount of damage and disables the enemies from using abilities. This seems way too good to ever be a second choice behind the other heroic, Possession. All Possession seems to do is give you more pushing power, which I believe Sylvanas has plenty of. Possession also encourages constant laning and split pushing, which is counter­productive in Heroes of the Storm.

Tier 13

• Overwhelming Affliction: Black Arrows now also applies to Heroes, slowing their Movement Speed by 5% for the duration. Stacks up to 5 times. This synergizes well with Paralysis, and can cripple the enemy team over the span of a long team fight. This stacks up to 5 times, which means that you have a 25% slow – yes, this means you slow people as much as Jaina does, and she is a frost mage. This movement will massively turn fights into your favor because low-mobility heroes now have even lower mobility, and anyone with a gap closer can easily catch up and lock them down.
• Spell Shield: Upon taking Ability Damage, reduce that damage and further Ability Damage by 50% for 2 seconds. Can only trigger once every 30 seconds. This seems like an okay talent if you’re getting focused down a lot and the enemy team has a lot of burst damage. However, this seems like a talent better fit for someone with no mobility abilities who ends up getting forced to tank through spells. Sylvanas should be able to get away, so Overwhelming Affliction generally seems like a better idea in most situations.

Tier 16

• Cold Embrace: Shadow Dagger makes enemies Vulnerable, taking 25% more damage, but the range of Shadow Dagger is reduced by 25%. By this point in the game, you should be constantly moving around with your team, and making enemies vulnerable will help out a lot during team fights. Remember that Shadow Dagger spreads a lot, and already has its cooldown reduced from the tier 1 talent, so this will be a massive damage boost during team fights. Shadow Dagger already has a pretty long range, and this range reduction shouldn’t cause much of a problem – I barely even notice it.

Tier 20

• Deafening Blast: Enemies at the center of Wailing Arrow’s explosion take 50% more damage and are silenced for twice as long. If you’re able to initiate with this spell and catch a large number of people, you basically have five seconds to kill the enemy team, which has effectively been reduced in usefulness to a bunch of minions (because they can’t use their abilities anymore). The damage increase and silence duration increase seems too good, as it brings way too much powerful utility to your team. Mix this in with the vulnerability from Shadow Dagger and a good Sylvanas initiation could mean an instant team fight win.
• Fury of the Storm: Every 5 seconds, your next basic attack will deal an additional 20 damage to the target, and 20 damage to all nearby Minions and Mercenaries. I’ve taken this talent once to save my Core and won the game off of it. This is obviously a very situational talent that should only be taken if you are about to lose the game to minions, and the only way you can clear all of them quickly enough is to use Fury of the Storm.