Free Hero Rundown will focus on one hero from the weekly set of free heroes in Heroes of the Storm. During the week, except for daily quests, you’ll see me playing this hero, hopefully kicking butt and taking names.
Free Hero of the Week: Raynor
Possible Talent Choices
Raynor is a ranged assassin character that specializes in dealing damage. He has a medium ranged aoe shot that deals damage in a line and an attack speed buff that also boosts nearby allies. As the tutorial character that new players start the game playing, he was the perfect choice for the first Free Hero Rundown.
Abilities
Like most heroes, Rayor has 3 basic abilities and a choice of 2 Heroic Abilities. His Q, Penetrating Round, is a skillshot that must be aimed and deals damage in a straight line, knocking back any enemies it hits. In the sample talent spec, it also gains a slow after the knockback, making it useful for crowd control. This attack deals high damage and can deal more damage with a wider area of effect through talents.
Raynor’s W, Inspire, gives him a 25% attack speed buff for 8 seconds. This also affects allied units like minions or other heroes in a small area around Raynor, but at half the bonus. This ability can be especially useful for pushing down enemy structures with a large wave of minions or if you have several auto attack heroes on your team.
Finally, Raynor’s E, Adrenaline Rush, is what sets him apart from other ranged assassins and can win him trades if used well. This ability is passive, meaning players don’t have to push anything to activate it. Instead, when Raynor reaches 30% of his health, this ability kicks in, healing him for quite a bit. Combined with his high damage, Adrenaline Rush makes it very hard to kill Raynor before he kills you in a 1v1 situation.
Heroic Abilities
Hyperion, which Raynor comes with unlocked at level 1, is just a good old fashioned aoe damage-fest. Raynor’s ship, the Hyperion, comes down and travels a short distance in a line, dealing damage to anything in its radius. The amount of damage is very high, but it does get split up over all the targets.
Raynor’s Raiders must be unlocked by reaching level 2 with Raynor. This ability also deals damage, but the key difference is that you can control the two Banshee’s that are summoned, using R to lock in a target. Use this if you’re interested in micromanaging Raynor’s damage for optimum effect instead of the damage blanket Hyperion provides.
Talents
The talents I selected focus on increasing Raynor’s single target damage making him more effective at killing annoying tanks or bursting down squishy targets. I also added the slow effect to his Penetrating Round which synergizes with the Executioner talent that deals more damage to disabled targets. Finally, I rounded it off with Bolt of the Storm, a small teleport that gives Raynor some much needed mobility.
Raynor can also take some talents that give him some more utility by increasing his Inspire or Adrenaline rush. He also has an off beat line of talents that buff your team’s mercenaries, but that line of talents is pretty situational and not very popular.
The basic strategy for this set up is to be able to 1v1 any enemy hero you might manage to pick off, making sure you have Adrenaline Rush up to help you win the trade. In team fights, you want to poke at the tanks from the back ranks. Once your team initiates with a stun or catches a damage dealer or healer out position, focus them down and use your knockback and slow to keep them from escaping.
Thanks for reading this week’s Free Hero Rundown. As always, drop me a line in game, AGRitterific, or at ritterific@agentsofgames.com with any questions or for a friend invite.
