Heroes of the Storm Alexstrasza

[Caeren 44]

If you pick Cleansing Flame as the heroic talent you won't be able to pick Ritual of Life at level 20 if I am not mistaken. So what is the recommended talent choice there?

 

 

 

Edited December 6, 2017 by Caeren

[positiv2 953]

On 6. 12. 2017 at 1:38 PM, Caeren said:

If you pick Cleansing Flame as the heroic talent you won't be able to pick Ritual of Life at level 20 if I am not mistaken. So what is the recommended talent choice there?

If you pick Life-Binder over Cleansing Flame, you can also pick Ritual of Life. What it means is that you can go for it whenever you choose Life-Binder without losing out on value. However, Cleansing Flame still provides better value on average.

[shanghaied 55]

I feel like the Life-Binder build's standard level 20 talent shouldn't be Ancient Flame.  Without Heat Exhaustion and Fire Within I feel like Ancient Flame will reduce your healing output.

Then again, it's a bit of a quandary, because the other options are pretty miserable too.  I honestly think Cleansing Flame/ On Ruby Wings are better lvl 10/lvl 20 choices for Alex in that build, even with the recent CD reduction buffs.  If Alex gets knocked below the Lifeblossom threshold popping her R and having an extra Dragon Queen proc is gonna help her continue to add value in the fight.

[xevex 41]

On 11/30/2017 at 11:20 AM, Bumble said:

when/if you hit about 45% HP during a skirmish your allies are done for

why are you hitting 45%? youre pretty much useless with anything lower the 75%. Go heal.

On 11/30/2017 at 11:20 AM, Bumble said:

if she could damage/slow/mark enemies near her Q target (minor dmg) if she does

You can already slow people near your Q target with your flame buffet. 

On 11/30/2017 at 11:20 AM, Bumble said:

I know she can shine with high hp warriors and she's kind of niche etc

The thing about her shining with high hp warriors is a bogus. Shes actually has more compatiblity with ranged squishies. Yes her Abundance and Preservation heal more on high hp targets but thats not where most of her heal come from. Wouldnt call her niche, every burst healer is good with squishies.

On 12/2/2017 at 7:15 PM, Trensicourt said:

W is underwhelming and difficult to use. Q is powerful, but gets weak quickly as health drops. Her E is strong and balanced;

W is about average and above average heal for high hp targets.
You get multiple choices how to not lose health or heal yourself and spam Q all you want. 
Her E is weak aside from her slow which can completly deny the enemy team a chance to retreat if talented into.

On 12/2/2017 at 7:15 PM, Trensicourt said:

I think she her healing potential is really limited.

I usually get healing numbers around the same as BW or more. 

----------------------------------------------------------

I think people didnt even bother to read the description of her abilities. She is indeed hard to play well because the most important part of playing her is staying at 100% hp.
Just pick the right talent git gud and dont cry how bad she is. Here is a solo healing build for you: 
https://www.icy-veins.com/heroes/talent-calculator/alexstrasza#26.0!1312312
You can switch up the lvl 13 talent for Pacify if you dont have anyone who will benefit from Life Unbound.

Edited December 22, 2017 by xevex

[SleepySheepy 41]

On 15. 11. 2017. at 1:06 PM, KendricSwissh said:

No, % based healing does not get empowered by healing boosts. Same goes for % based damage, which will not benefit from any damage boosts. 

 

Is there any confirmation for this? Because if Ana's Grenade stops it fully and tooltip states -100 (you can lower that number with your skills to be -60 let's say and heal goes through), why +25 wouldn't work for it? 

Sorry for quoting you in this sleeping comment section! 

[Mefi 4]

Quote

Blessing of the Red may even prove to be counter-productive, for instance if the enemy team features Heroes like Malthael or Leoric who use percentage-based damage on some of their abilities. These abilities would then actually deal more damage than before.

There is a common misconception while deciding to build HP vs %based damage.
The bonus health is never counter-productive in terms of your survivability.

Let's assume there is a teammate affected by Malthael's untalented passive which deals 1,75% HP/s and Malthael is using only Death Shroud to maintain pure %HP damage.

That means that virtually any character will die from it after 100%/1,75% = ~57 seconds (ignoring natural health regen ofc) and whether you have 3000HP or 3500HP won't affect the tempo of health loss, so in this case %HP damage is ignoring the bonus HP, giving a zero income, but it doesn't have a negative impact at least.

But in reality we know, that most of the damage in the game is not %damage based.

Let's add some Basic Attacks on top of the Malthael's Passive, so we can check bonus HP effectiveness in a more balanced situation. 
Level 20 Malthael deals 180 damage with 0.91 attack speed, giving him 163,8 DPS.

Our target teammate has 3000HP without Blessing of the Red.
That would mean, that every Malthael's tick will deal 3000HP * 1,75%/s = 52,5HP/s
Adding an already established 168,3 DPS it gives 216,3 HP/s loss to our hero.
The hero will die in 3000HP/216,3HP= ~13,87s

Now let's try it out on the same guy but with bonus 500HP from Blessing of the Red (3500HP total)
Malthael's ticks damage him for 3500HP * 1,75%/s = 61,25HP/s
Basic attacks DPS stays the same at 168,3, giving a total of 225,05 HP/s loss.
The hero will die in 3500HP/225,05HP = ~15,55s
15,55s/13,87s *100% = ~112,11% 

It means we've got about 12,1% increase in survivability and it gets even further and further(up to 16,7% in this case) once we'll add Wraith Strike's and Soul Rip's flat damage or another 4 heroes in Malthael's team, which will still mostly deal flat damage.

What's actually more interesting is that Malthael will heal himself a bit more with Soul Rip while using it on a higher health hero, but then again Alexstrasza's Abundance scales with target max HP, so... we'll get into it another time.

 

Edited February 11, 2018 by Mefi

[positiv2 953]

The problem isn't your teammates dying faster (as the opposite is what happens), but you not being able to outheal the damage so easily anymore, especially in a teamfight.

[Mefi 4]

I get your point and I hope you guys are ready for some more simulations.
If you're dealing purely with %HP based damage, then the additonal HP fully covers for the bonus damage it causes (as mentioned above) for the first 3500HP of the damage you take in a fight, but then if you'll even heal up to the initial 3000HP, then indeed % based damage will still do a bit better, but how does it go against alexstrasza's kit? Flat damage is unrelated, so let's do some calculations on the actual healing output vs bonus damage based on max HP.

Let's imagine that Alex was matched against 2 best %HP sustained damage dealers , which I assume would be Malthael and Leoric (calculating Tychus' HP based DPS would be harder, as he has a lot of flat damage mixed with HP based, so nah).

-Malthael has a Memento Mori level 16 talent, which gives him bonus +80% damage from his passive trait after 4s, so he will deal 1,75%HP/s at the beginning and then 3,15%HP/s.
-Leoric has picked Unyielding Despair at level 13, which basically reduces Drain Hope cooldown from 11s to 7s, assuming he can keep the target chained for the whole time (which he will for the sake of our little experiment). He also picked Crushing Hope at level 16, which deals additional 15% of enemy max HP as damage with similiar requirement as above.
tl;dr He's dealing 35% of max hp each 7 seconds during the first 4 seconds.

Damage taken at any HP:
-First 4 seconds (pre Malthael's bonus, but with Leoric's Drain Hope) go like this:
1,75%*4s+ 35% = (42% HP lost )
-Next 3 seconds are for Malthael purely, where he deals buffed damage
 3,15%*3s = 9,45%;  (51,45% HP already lost)
-Next 4 seconds long Drain Hope phase kicks in, but with Malthael's trait already buffed
3,15%*4s + 35% = 47,60%  (99,35% HP lost)
Meaning that the next tick of Malthael's trait will kill our test sample hero, which has survived for 12 seconds, gg wp, report healer.

Alexstrasza sadly has her trait, ultimate and life unbound on cooldown. She's using the regular Heal build and is able to sustain herself at 100% HP at any given time.
Her Q then heals for exactly 838 HP each 3,5s (cooldown reduction from the first talent) at level 20.
Her W heals for 20% of max HP, so it heals for either 600HP (3000HP) or 700HP (3500HP) each 16s, with a delay of at least 3 seconds.
What would Alex do during those 12s?
0s - time for reaction
1s - Setting up a W
3s- waiting for a Leoric's final tick to avoid overheal
4s - 1st Q and W goes on
7,5s - 2nd Q
11s - 3rd Q

So during that time she would heal our 3000HP guy for
Q: 3x 838HP = 2514HP, which is 83,8% + W: 20% HP
= 103,8% of his HP which is 3114 HP

How about the one with 3500HP?
Q: 2514HP, which is 71,8% + W: 20%
= 91,8% HP, which is 3213 HP

It means that in this case healing has proven even more effective on a buffed character (probably will even out in the long run), even as we've matched one of the top sustained %HP based DPS in the game with only basic unbuffed (at least not by trait) abilites.

Edited February 12, 2018 by Mefi

[Guest Redpara]

Bad build. The CD reduction for dragonqueen using flame buffet is the best choice. U get brust heals with no life taken from you. 

I guess it comes down to skill when completing that quest. Usually takes me 2 to 5 minutes. Not sure why it's taking you so long to complete it. 

[KendricSwissh 66]

Hey guys! 

Applied several changes to the Alex guide to make it a bit more up-to-date. These changes should go live tomorrow! 

Thanks and enjoy!