Chromie Abilities and Strategy
Welcome to our Abilities page for Chromie. Here, we give you an overview of every ability in Chromie's kit. For each of them, we explain what it does, how to best use it, and how it works in combination with Chromie's other abilities. We also give you strategy tips to play Chromie efficiently.
Chromie's Tips and Tricks
- Time Trap can sometimes be manually activated to prevent damage on allied Heroes as well.
- Slowing Sands is most efficient on narrow choke points, especially near Map Objectives.
- Do not be afraid to miss Sand Blast. It is better to cast this ability too often rather than to wait too long.
Sand Blast
- Mana: 20
- Cooldown: 3 seconds
After 0.5 seconds, fire a missile that deals 305 (+4% per level) damage to the first enemy hit. Deals 50% damage to Structures.
Casting Sand Blast leaves an Echo behind that mimics Chromie's Sand Blast and Basic Attack, dealing 40% damage. Maximum of 1 Echo active at a time.
Chromie is a Ranged Assassin who excels at damaging and finishing targets from a large distance. As such, Sand Blast is her primary Ability, since it has a low cooldown and decent damage numbers, especially when her Sand Echo hits the same target as her. However, Sand Blast comes with a major twist: its projectile gets activated after a 0.5-second delay, which requires you to carefully anticipate your target's movement path.
As a rule of thumb, it is important to note that you should not be afraid to use Sand Blast whenever it is off cooldown. Its Mana cost and its cooldown are very low, which makes missing your target quite forgiving.
Dragon's Breath
- Mana: 65
- Cooldown: 14 seconds
Vector Targeting
Launch 3 blasts into the air that land every 0.75 seconds towards the targeted direction, dealing 215 (+4% per level) damage each.
Dragon's Breath is Chromie's only source of waveclear. It has a longer cooldown and casting delay than Sand Blast, which requires you to use it very diligently.
Time Trap
- Mana: 20
- Cooldown: 15 seconds
Place a Time Trap that arms and Stealths after 2 seconds. Chromie's Trait can be activated to detonate the trap, placing all nearby allied or enemy Heroes in Time Stop for 2 seconds. Maximum of 1 trap active at a time.
Time Trap is Chromie's only means of self-protection. Despite its activation time of 2 seconds, Time Trap proves to be a quite useful Ability, as it can disable engaging threats like Tanks and Melee Assassins. You should always have a Time Trap near Chromie when you notice that a larger team fight is about to erupt. In the case of an emergency, you can bait an enemy Hero into it and run away to safety.
Another good way of using Time Trap is to activate it to protect nearby allied Heroes. The Stasis can sometimes buy enough time for reinforcements to arrive or prevent big burst damage from the enemy team.
Slowing Sands
In this section we discuss how this Heroic Ability works and give some tips on how to use it. If you are looking for a detailed explanation on when and why you should pick it, check out the dedicated section in the Talent Build page.
- Heroic
- Mana: 4 per second
- Cooldown: 5 seconds
Summon a sand vortex that Slows enemies by 10% every 0.25 seconds, up to 70%.
Slowing Sands adds more crowd control to Chromie's kit, which can be quite impactful during prolonged team fights. One of Slowing Sands' biggest advantages is its extremely short cooldown and low Mana cost. Furthermore, Chromie can deactivate this Heroic Ability even while mounted, which makes it very flexible and easy to re-locate.
The best way to use Slowing Sands is on narrow choke points or around Objectives. Doing so will force the enemy team to either take a different path or fight in an unfavourable position.
Temporal Loop
In this section we discuss how this Heroic Ability works and give some tips on how to use it. If you are looking for a detailed explanation on when and why you should pick it, check out the dedicated section in the Talent Build page.
- Heroic
- Mana: 60
- Cooldown: 50 seconds
Choose an enemy Hero. After 3 seconds, they are teleported back to the location where Temporal Loop was cast on them.
Basic Abilities recharge 500% faster for 3 seconds after casting Temporal Loop.
Temporal Loop needs careful timing and anticipation in order to unfold its maximum value. However, the displacement effect it provides has the potential to lock down and kill a single enemy target in an instant, especially if your teammates follow suit. Heroes affected are not dazed before the teleport happens, but stationary-channeled Abilities will be interrupted immediately after that.
When using Temporal Loop, make sure to carefully watch the 3-second time window. It is important to time Sand Blast and Dragon's Breath very precisely, since they both come with a short delay before getting activated. The ideal way to follow up on Temporal Loop is to cast Dragon's Breath while having 0.8 seconds left before your target gets relocated by Temporal Loop and follow up with Sand Blast when there are 0.5 seconds left on the clock. In a best case scenario, both Abilities will impact on the target location at once to deal a heavy amount of damage immediately after Temporal Loop has expired.
Timewalker
- Passive
Chromie has traveled to the future, and as such, will learn her Talents 2 levels earlier than her teammates!
Detonate Time Trap
Detonates active Time Traps.
Timewalker is an incredibly useful passive trait, since it allows Chromie to reach power spikes earlier than any other Hero in the game. The ability to gain access to one of her Heroic Abilities at Level 8 alone is enough for Chromie to dominate mid-game team fights, especially while the enemy team is stuck at Level 8 or 9 as well.
Changelog
- 02 Jul. 2020: Guide has been reviewed and no changes are needed.
- 19 Jul. 2019: Updated Chromie's standard build.
- 29 Mar. 2019: Updated Chromie's abilities in accordance with the latest rework.
- 13 Aug. 2018: Updated Chromie's abilities in accordance with her rework in the Whitemane release patch.
- 21 Sep. 2017: Updated Sandblast's description in accordance with the latest balance update.
- 15 Sep. 2017: Updated Chromie's abilities in accordance with the Kel'thuzad update.
More Ranged Assassin Guides
Outofmilk is an avid Heroes of the Storm player, and has been playing this game since the first wave of Alpha invites. He currently plays around the Grandmaster / high Master area and is now here to share his knowledge with you.
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