Free Hero of the Week: Li Li
Free Hero Rundown will focus on one hero from the weekly set of free heroes. During the week, except for daily quests, you’ll see me playing this hero, hopefully kicking butt and taking names.
Possible Talent Choices
Supports are always in demand in MOBA games. They keep you alive in a fight. They lock down your enemies, making them easier to kill. Besides, it’s always nice to have a lane buddy, right?
This week, we’re going to look at not only one of the cheapest supports, but also one of the easiest to pick up and learn. Li Li is primarily a healer. Although you can talent her for some more damage, she just won’t be dealing the damage of an assassin.
Her biggest draw, especially for newer players, is that most of her abilities will auto target for you, allowing you to pay less attention to your targets and more attention to the map. Not only does she have some of the best heals in the game, she also has a blind utility, which just wrecks auto attack characters. Finally, her speed boost trait makes her surprisingly hard to kill.
Basic Abilities
Li Li’s Q is Healing Brew. This is her heal, which automatically targets the lowest health ally, prioritizing heroes, and heals them. While this is pretty straightforward, it’s probably her most valuable ability. Staying back and healing your lane partner is always helpful, and a clutch heal in a teamfight can make or break the fight.
Cloud Serpent is Li Li’s W, and her only targeted basic ability. This summons a flying serpent to the target allied hero that auto attacks nearby enemies. While each auto attack might not deal much damage, it can add up over time. The Cloud Serpent can also be buffed up significantly through talents, including getting healing from it’s damage dealt.
Her E is Blinding Wind. This ability does what it says, blinding and damaging the two closest enemy units. Like her Q, Blinding Wind prioritizes enemy heroes. While this isn’t a stun or a root, losing auto attacks can be just as devastating to most assassins that count on auto attacks for their damage (Illidan, I’m looking at you!).
Heroic Abilities
Li Li’s starting heroic ability is Jug of 1,000 Cups. Very similar to Malfurion’s Tranquility, this ability heals any allied units in an area around Li Li. It’s one of the best healing heroic abilities in the game, making this usually the heroic ability of choice. Learning the right time to use this ability is crucial. If you use it too early, you’ll lose some effectiveness. If you use it too late, your allies might die before they get healed. So, try to time using this ability after the enemy’s opening attack, but before their big damage comes out.
Her unlockable heroic ability is Water Dragon. This is her damage dealing heroic ability. It also has the benefit of slowing enemies hit by 70% which is quite a significant amount. While there are some games where the extra damage is the right choice, in most games, you will be better served with the healing.
Talents
My focus for Li Li’s talents are into her most important ability in my opinion, Healing Brew. Now, I did chose to increase the Cloud Serpent duration with her level 1 talent. This is because in the early game, the extra damage will have a larger impact than the extended range on Healing Brew. Otherwise, I chose to buff Healing Brew with the heal over time effect and the extra ally healed for more healing in teamfights.
I chose Jug of 1,000 Cups for her heroic. As I said before, her healing is just so much more valuable than her damage potential. To round her out, I took Healing Totem, Shrink Ray, and the shield ability which will give any allies near you a medium shield.
Li Li is most valuable to the team by protecting them from damage via her blind, Shrink Ray, and the shield. Then when your allies do take damage, she can heal them up. Like I said at the beginning, she is one of the easiest supports to learn, so if you’re just starting out, she is a solid choice. She is also only 2000 GP, making her an easy pick up.
Hopefully you’ll have fun healing your allies then running away at lightning speed with Li Li. You can find me doing it in game as AGRitterific. Also, let me know what you think of her on Twitter @AGRitterific.
