Free Hero of the Week: Valla
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
Valla is the quintessential ranged assassin. She has high damage, great auto attack damage, great ability damage, and great mobility. She’s also one of the easiest heroes to pick up and learn, which makes her a great choice for beginners.
Her trait rewards her for doing what she wants to be doing in the first place: attacking enemies. Hatred grants a buff every time Valla lands an auto attack, giving her +2% basic attack damage and +1% move speed. It stacks ten times meaning you can have quite a significant buff as long as you’re able to keep auto attacking enemies. Since it doesn’t require you to hit an enemy hero, you can build some stacks on minions and then poke at the enemy hero with increased power.
Basic Abilities
Hungering Arrow is Valla’s Q ability. It’s a damage dealing arrow that seeks out a target, then splits itself to strike a second time. The two smaller arrows only deal half damage, but the same target can be hit more than once if no other enemies are around. This is a great ability to poke at enemy heroes with. Pepper them with a few basic attacks then launch a Hungering Arrow at them, then get out of range before your opponent can hit you back. Because the arrow is seeking, you can artificially increase it’s range by moving backward as you shoot.
Valla’s W ability, Multishot, functions as both wave clear and burst damage. Valla fires in a cone area in front of her, dealing damage to anything in that area. When buffed with talents, this ability gains extra damage dealing grenades and even a slowing effect. Try to weave this ability into your attacks whenever possible, even if you only hit a single hero with it.
While Valla does get a good amount of movement from her trait, her real slipperiness comes from her E, Vault. While this ability doesn’t do any damage without talents, being able to reposition so quickly in a fight often means the difference between life and death. Be careful though. Diving in for a close kill can be dangerous because of this ability’s cooldown. Sure, you might snag that kill, but you then become easy pickings for the rest of the team.
Heroic Abilities
Valla’s starting heroic ability is Strafe. This deals several shots of light damage over 4 seconds, but it does prioritize enemy heroes. The number of shots and the effect radius are quite large and if the enemy team isn’t ready, Strafe can kill several people at a time. Valla can also use Vault while in Strafe mode to help her reposition if need be. The biggest drawback to this ability is that it is a channeled ability. If an enemy hero is waiting with a stun or silence, they can interrupt Valla’s channeling, stopping most of the damage and triggering the cooldown as well.
When facing enemy teams that have a large amount of crowd control, Valla can use Rain of Vengeance. This ability still deals damage in an area, but that area is a rectangle in front of Valla instead of a 360 degree spin. Valla launches two waves that deal heavy damage and stun as well, allowing even more damage to follow. This ability is fired at the target location and automatically launches both waves (with a pause between waves), so after launching Rain of Vengeance, Valla is free to use all of her abilities to kill anyone that gets caught by the first or second stun.
Talents
This is another ability centered talent selection. For Valla, that ability is Multishot. By picking up her Multishot talents, the ability gains increased range, grenades for extra damage, and a slow. All those buffs allow Multishot to function as burst damage and crowd control, and it only gets better the more people it hits.
For her other talents, I chose more damage over extra utility. Searing Attacks gives Valla’s auto attacks even more punch at the cost of mana. Executioner deals extra basic attack damage to disabled heroes, tying in well with Multishot’s slow. Finally, Bolt of the Storm is just too much extra mobility to pass up.
I chose Strafe for Valla’s heroic ability, but both abilities are situational. Rain of Vengeance does more damage, but is harder to land than Strafe. On the other hand, an uninterrupted Strafe will do an amazing amount of damage even without perfect placement. So, try to pick your heroic ability based on the game. Rain of Vengeance if the enemy team has a lot of stuns, or Strafe if you can get the full channel of the ability more often than not.
When all is said and done, Valla excels when she is able to constantly auto attack her target. In the early stages though, it is often necessary to use her mobility to damage the enemy hero without taking any in return. So strike shortly, but often, when in the laning phase, and then once team fights begin, try to stay behind the tank, auto attacking as much as possible.
Valla is an excellent hero to learn when you are just starting out and she is also only 2000 in-game gold, making her an affordable choice as well. She might have been overshadowed a bit by the burst casters lately, but her well rounded kit means she’ll always be a solid choice for damage.
Thanks for reading this week’s Free Hero Rundown. Feel free to leave me any comments on Twitter @AGRitterific.
