Valla Abilities and Strategy

• Hatred empowers Valla's Basic Attacks and increases her Movement Speed; try and attack something at least once every 5 seconds so that your stacks do not fall off.
• Hungering Arrow has a high Mana cost and will home unto undesirable targets, such as Minions and Summons; avoid using the Ability unless it is going to deal useful damage.
• Multishot is your main waveclearing tool. Its wide area of effect also makes it excellent for checking hidden areas, revealing Stealthed Heroes, and dismounting opponents.
• Vault can be used offensively, as a gap-closer, and defensively, to create space between yourself and opponents and dodge Abilities. Limit your offensive use of the Ability, as it leaves you vulnerable.
• Strafe's reliability goes up as opponents use up their crowd control Abilities; keep track of their Cooldowns, and remain on the move so as to minimise the chance you will be interrupted.
• Rain of Vengeance is better used as a follow-up or as a self-peeling tool than merely for dealing damage.
• With Fire At Will, in teamfights Gloom can be always used before using Multishot, as it will instantly restack most of the consumed Hatred.

The difficulty with using Hungering Arrow is that it will often home in on undesirable entities such as Minions, Summons, and Structures, if they stand between you and your intended target. The only reliable way of ensuring that Hungering Arrow will hit a specific enemy is to simply position yourself in such a way that there is nothing standing between you and your target. This can be achieved by flanking your target or quickly clearing nearby Minions, usually with Multishot. Given Hungering Arrow's long cooldown and extremely strong single-target damage potential—equivalent to approximately 3 Basic Attacks—it should only be used when you are certain that the Ability will successfully hit an important target and that its damage is going to be useful.

Multishot's large area of effect, solid damage, and powerful Talents make it a key Ability. It is typically used on-Cooldown during laning, both as a waveclearing and harassment tool, and during team fights, simply as a way of outputting significant area of effect damage. Try to hit as many enemies as possible with Multishot so as to maximise its efficiency. The Ability's long range and large area of effect also make it an excellent tool for dismounting and revealing Stealthed Heroes. The Frost Shot Talent turns Multishot into one of the most powerful and reliable movement reducing effect in the game, allowing you to kite and hinder escape attempts like no other Hero can.

Vault is extremely versatile; it complements Valla's kit perfectly by allowing her to quickly reposition to improve the accuracy of her Abilities and Basic Attack uptime. It can also be used defensively to create breathing room between herself and dangerous melee attackers, such as Greymane, Thrall, Sonya, or Zeratul, or to quickly avoid dangerous Abilities, such as Apocalypse, Hinterland Blast, Primal Grasp, or Hook. Avoid using Vault's cooldown offensively, as keen opponents will be quick to capitalise on this long window of vulnerability unless it helps you safely secure a kill. Remember that Vault improves your next Basic Attack's damage by a significant amount, which may make the difference between getting a kill or not.

Here we explain how this Heroic Ability works. If you are looking for more information about it, check the dedicated section in the Talent Build page.

Strafe is very powerful in terms of raw damage output, and has a relatively short cooldown when compared to other Heroic Abilities. Left uninterrupted, it can be a deciding factor in team fights, able to damage frail Heroes for nearly half of their total Health pool. This power comes at a cost: Strafe's relatively short range means that you must position yourself aggressively, at times jeopardising your own safety. Successful Strafe usage also hinges upon predicting, keeping track of, and avoiding reliable interrupts, such as Polymorph, Shadow Charge, and Hammer of Justice, which can completely neutralise the Ability.

Here we explain how this Heroic Ability works. If you are looking for more information about it, check the dedicated section in the Talent Build page.

Rain of Vengeance's power stems from its near-instantaneousness and combo potential. Following up strong area of effect crowd control Abilities can often secure kills or ease the application of other combo pieces. As a defensive tool, Rain of Vengeance can be used to Stun nearby Heroes in order to create some breathing room and deter them from approaching you, or to interrupt channeled Abilities. It should be noted that the shockwave-like aspect of the Ability means that enemies that are standing closer to Valla will be Stunned and damaged earlier than those standing further away. Vault can be used offensively as a gap-closer to get as close to your intended target as possible in order to prevent them from avoiding the Ability's effects.

Hatred is what allows Valla to be one of the highest sustain single-target damage dealing ranged Heroes. While being able to constantly deliver Basic Attacks is key to playing any Ranged Assassin, it is especially important to Valla given Hatred's stacking nature. Her fast baseline Attack Speed somewhat helps with this, however, stutter-stepping truly is the key to making the most out of Hatred, and Valla as a whole.