Li-Ming Build Guide “Unleash your power!”
Welcome to our guide for Li-Ming, a Ranged Assassin in Heroes of the Storm. Within these pages, you will find everything required to understand how best to play this hero, in both different map styles and team compositions.
Li-Ming's Overview
Li-Ming is an aggressive ranged damage dealer. She thrives in situations where she gets to make use of her Hero Trait, Critical Mass, to deal an outrageous amount of burst damage, but is otherwise easily dispatched when careless. Since the majority of her Abilities are skillshots, Li-Ming is one of the most difficult Heroes to master.
Li-Ming's Strengths and Weaknesses
- Very fragile, especially to melee Assassins
- Difficult to play due to ALL Abilities being skillshots
- Very limited team fight utility beyond raw damage
Li-Ming's Talent Build Cheatsheet
Teleport Build
RecommendedLi-Ming's Teleport Build provides superior damage. As key Talents, Calamity and Mirrorball allow you to deal unparalleled burst damage. Quickly killing Heroes in this manner triggers Critical Mass, allowing you to deal even more damage.
Artillery Build
BeginnerThis specialised artillery build provides superior ranged damage. Key Arcane Orb-related Talents allow you to threaten Heroes while safely remaining out of their range. This build is notably effective against team compositions that lack mobility, and on the Infernal Shrines Battleground.
Li-Ming's Synergies and Counters
Since Li-Ming depends highly on skillshots to deal her damage, she naturally works well with any Hero that can provide reliable crowd control against a kill target for her to follow up. Her frailty also makes her dependent on other Heroes to peel for her; Tanks tend to fulfill these two needs, though other Hero types can too.
Since Li-Ming relies chiefly on skillshots to deal damage, she does particularly poorly against Heroes that either have ways of quickly dodging her Abilities, or can summon undesirable targets to get in the way. Furthermore, her frailty and lack of self-peel makes her vulnerable to Stealthed or otherwise high-damage nimble Heroes that can quickly reach her.
Li-Ming's Maps
Li-Ming's safe and high ranged sustain poke damage makes her particularly strong on Maps where the Objective allows her to take potshots at opponents that must play aggressively against her and give up their position, or find themselves under constant fire. Otherwise, her versatility makes her a fine pick all-around.
Li-Ming's Tips and Tricks
- Magic Missiles should nearly always be cast on-Cooldown due to their low Cooldown and Mana cost.
- Do not hesitate to cast Arcane Orb even if you do not fully benefit from the range bonus; waiting for the perfect opportunity might cost you more overall DPS than a far hit.
- Aggressively using Teleport to secure kills is not a bad idea due to Critical Mass and the profusion of strong Talents that affect the Ability.
- Disintegrate deals less damage than your other Abilities, despite being a Heroic Ability, and should be used last in your rotation due to its long range and reliability.
- Consider picking Wave of Force if your opponent's team composition feature strong stationary channeled Abilities or tend to dive a specific target.
Li-Ming's Role in the Current Meta
Capable of exceptional area of effect ranged burst damage, Li-Ming fulfills a role that is very similar to other casters, such as Jaina and Kael'thas. Her "reset" mechanic ( Critical Mass) makes her a natural counter to the more vulnerable Heroes of the roster, such as Murky and The Lost Vikings. She is also naturally effective in team compositions featuring a lot of crowd control effects to lock Heroes in place, as such tools mitigate or outright eliminate the issues inherent to skillshots.
Li-Ming's versatility and outrageous damage output makes her a high-priority pick in most drafting situations, and generally match-dictating as a Hero, in the sense that team compositions do well to support her—and counter her, when possible. And although she can be countered by drafting a few highly aggressive melee Heroes, these picks may then be countered themselves by retaliating with other high-priority picks that had to be abdicated to respond to the Li-Ming pick, their own natural counters, or an abundance of crowd control. Li-Ming has been a highly contested Hero pick ever since she was introduced to the roster for this reason.
Changelog
- 27 Oct. 2020 (talents page): Talents and builds reviewed and updated.
- 30 Aug. 2020 (this page): Role in Current Meta section updated.
- 05 Apr. 2020 (talents page): Description updated for Disintegrate.
- 05 Apr. 2020 (abilities page): Description updated for Magic Missiles.
- 12 Dec. 2019 (this page): Added a note about current Anomaly.
- 16 Oct. 2019 (talents page): Talent discussion updated following Balance Update Patch v 2.48.2.
- 16 Oct. 2019 (this page): Guide updated following the 2.48.2 update.
- 11 Oct. 2019 (talents page): Talent builds and recommendations reviewed and updated.
- 11 Oct. 2019 (abilities page): Abilities section reviewed.
- 11 Oct. 2019 (this page): Guide updated.
- 14 Jan. 2018 (talents page): Updated Tier 5 Talent assessments. Updated Orb and Calamity builds.
- 08 May 2017 (this page): Guide updated for Genji patch and moved to new format.
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Oxygen is a veteran of the MOBA genre, which he has been playing for nearly 15 years. He has coached some of Heroes of the Storm's most prominent North American players and teams alike, including Team Liquid. As a Master player, he enjoys playing all Heroes and roles.
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