Tyrande Whisperwind, after her recent rework, is a newly refreshed Support Hero in the Nexus. She has made a big splash in professional play, showing up frequently at the 2018 HGC Finals tournament at BlizzCon. We had the opportunity to sit down with Dignitas Support player, Kenn "Zaelia" Rasmussen, to get his thoughts and insights on playing Tyrande.

Zaelia: "I mean, Tyrande - definitely one of my favorites. She has the impact that you want, both when it comes to being offensive and defensive. Just a lot of utility all around, she can be used in almost any setup, she’s good - she’s fun. Really loving the rework."

"I mean, I’m the biggest fan here I think. I love the fact that they brought back Shadowstalk, 'cause there’s a lot of interesting little things you can do with the stealth as well. And I think that they goddamn nailed it with her here. It’s actually crazy how good of a spot she’s in right now."





On Managing Tyrande’s Healing Options

Tyrande’s got a unique healing system, with two charges on her Q (Light of Elune) that refresh with your auto-attacks. When using her Q, you should also take into account your level 7 talent, which will often be Celestial Attunement, the Cleanse effect. Additionally, Elune’s Chosen at level 1 further bolsters your healing suite. How should you best employ the healing tools in your arsenal? And finally, how should you position to get your auto-attacks off - do you hit the enemy’s backline or frontline?

Zaelia: "Depending on whether or not you take the Cleanse at level 7, it's gonna change a little bit of the way you heal. But just in general, your main priorities will most likely be your Ranged Carry and your Tank. Imagine a Raynor, imagine a Garrosh. So most of your Qs are definitely going into Cleanses on your Tank - or just straight up heals - or on your Carry. That's like your main focus."

"Elune's Chosen. I basically always take it because it enables your Carry player to make plays. You can put the mark on him and then he gets constant heals all the time. He will win every trade. Make sure you've got some kind of synergy going with your Ranged player. Imagine a Raynor or a Hanzo, or Zeratul even. Imagine Kerrigan, Maiev, going in with the Mark, having basically infinite heals pumping the entire time, stuff like that. Huge powerspike, I would say. Just make sure you have it at the right time - it’s kind of a long cooldown, so you need to sync it up whenever your team hard engages."

"As for who to auto on, definitely just smacking the enemy Tank over and over or the Bruiser. Hopefully they have like a Blaze, or a Yrel, or a Diablo or something. Some matchups are better than others. You don’t really want to face too lethal Tanks or an Alarak, or something; you would much rather face a little bit of a slower draft. Yrel, Blaze, things like that you can actually just stand there and hit and get a lot of value."





How Many Owls is Tyrande Carrying Around Anyway?

Sentinel, or the "Owl" as it’s affectionately referred to, is a key component of Tyrande’s kit and a powerful vision tool. Scouting with Tyrande’s Owl can have a massive impact at every stage of the game by keeping you well informed as to what the enemy might be up to. Furthermore, its uses become more dynamic as you upgrade it with talents later in the talent tree. How should you go about using Sentinel when playing Tyrande? Let’s see what Zaelia has to say.

Zaelia: "Until you're 13, the only purpose of the Owl is maybe a little bit of damage, but more often than not, just basically used for scouting. The first Owl of the game has to come out at absolutely 0:00 on the clock, and you gotta shoot it down middle lane."

"Imagine you're shooting your Owl at 0:00 into the middle lane, you figure out the enemy team is going mid level 1, so you do the same. You kill the mid wave, boom it's over, and then you have the Owl back and that's when the enemy team is gonna rotate either top or bottom, so you need to have your Owl right after the minions die. You just keep up a constant wave of sensible uses, making sure you do it on the enemy's camps. If you go to do a hard camp, it's good to know if the enemies are doing theirs too - if they're not doing theirs, maybe they’re coming to invade your camp. So just every time the enemy team is about to move, or you make a move, make sure you shoot an Owl somewhere just to have the most information you can and not get caught off guard. Even when you have the Shrink Ray on 13, you still kinda just wanna throw out your Owls every time you make a move on the map. You start a boss, boom, shoot an Owl. You start a hard camp, boom, shoot an Owl. Only really in the teamfighting aspect is when the Owl use changes with 13 and 16."

"So when you get your 13, that’s when you can start coming online, doing things by yourself. 'Cause the slow is very significant: 40%. You can basically always land your stun following up, so you can kinda combo with yourself. Shrink Ray into the stun - very good combination. You're mostly looking to hit the frontline still. Things like this, very few people actually calibrate in the impact of the Owl, the Shrink Ray. So it's your best tool for punishing and finding kills on the map. Just try to hit the most impactful heroes, Maiev, Kerrigan, Nano boosted Jaina, things like that. Maybe Diablo standing there Lightning Breathing - boom Shrink Ray."





To Lunar Flare, or not to Lunar Flare - That is the Question.

Lunar Flare is a simple delayed stun. But using it effectively requires great discipline and a sound understanding of how your team composition works. Unassisted, Lunar Flare is difficult to land, but coordinating it with other, more reliable CC abilities from your allies can yield great results - you can burst targets down with Hunter’s Mark (Tyrande’s Trait) and secure clean kills. Zaelia talks us through the common use cases for Lunar Flare:

Zaelia: "General Stun usage would be to always look to follow your Tank. Your Muradin stun, your Garrosh flip into knock up - very simple, but very effective. Just the simple synergy between you and your Tank can mean the difference between getting easy kills or the enemy always getting away. Usually I go the level 4 quest, so it can be kinda good to just kinda throw it out there, try to stack a little bit, but you need to know that no fight is about to break out where you’re gonna need your stun. Definitely hold it for your synergies, it’s very hard to land raw."





Falling Stars and Stalking Shadows

Starfall and Shadowstalk are both powerful ultimates that have their own applications. Starfall provides some nice AoE damage and a slow (in addition to rapidly refreshing your Q cooldown), while Shadowstalk provides a global heal-over-time and stealth. But when do you want each option, and is there one that fills a niche that Tyrande needs more? Zaelia discusses his reasoning on Tyrande’s Heroic options.

Zaelia: "I’m a big fan of Shadowstalk, I think Tyrande is very exposed and can easily die without it; you have basically no mobility, all you have is your little heals on yourself - not very strong to actually save you from something deadly, and that’s where you need the extra little bit of “oomph” here on your survivability and that’s the Shadowstalk. So, I basically take Shadowstalk every single game, but Starfall can definitely win you games. Imagine you combine it with Maiev’s Warden’s Cage, Leoric's Entomb, ETC's Mosh Pit, things that actually lock down people, but other than that, Shadowstalk.





Tyrande’s Synergies, Weaknesses, and Favorable Battlegrounds

Tyrande is a generalist support, excelling in a wide variety of situations and having applications against many opposing team comps - you’ll rarely, if ever, go wrong picking Tyrande in the current metagame. However, she does have her own weaknesses, and it’s important to be aware of them so you can play around them.

Zaelia: "So, I think the most important thing when it comes to synergy from Supports is your Tank. You definitely look to have a Tank with a stun that’s very easy to follow, Garrosh throw into the stun, Diablo Q -> E into the stun, Muradin Storm Bolt, ETC slide. Strong CC so you can land your Lunar Flare every single time basically. Never underestimate the power of Elune’s Chosen level 1, so you can have a Kerrigan on your team, you can have a Maiev on the team, you can have a Raynor, anything kinda hypercarry that just wants to go in and get a lot of value. They’re very strong with Tyrande, just because of the sheer amount of heals you can put out in a very short amount of time at basically infinite range. I think the biggest synergies with Tyrande come from the Melee Assassin role and the Tank."

"I definitely think Tyrande has strong heals, but when it comes to a longer sustained fight where she cannot really get her auto-attacks in that well, I think she gets very outclassed by the likes of Whitemane and Malfurion, as they can both sustain not really depending on auto attacking. But other than that, she’s very squishy; she has again, no mobility, so being able to get on Tyrande might make it a very rough game for you. I’m thinking Maiev here, you can’t Cleanse the Tether, Maiev has a very good gap closer - it’s a very bad matchup for Tyrande."

"I think she has a place on every map, some maybe more than others: maybe Infernal Shrines comes to mind, where you basically always have something to auto attack, like the little minions. But I think in general her strongest tools are the Cleanse, the one-shot potential with the stun and Mark, and the vision. So maybe Dragon Shire, Sky Temple, where rotations are very important, there are a lot of bushes that you have to facecheck, or the enemy team has to facecheck and you can punish."





Zaelia’s Tyrande Build

Level 1: Elune’s Chosen - "Now she has Elune’s Chosen at level 1. That’s basically what I call infinite heals. You have infinite heals from level 1. As mentioned, very powerful on any Melee Assassin: Kerrigan, Maiev, even Zeratul, Illidan. Anybody going in and being in need of heals - it’s basically always good."

"You have an insane level 1 brawl. I mean you still have to look at what heroes you have, but if you have like a Maiev, a Malthael, or a Yrel or something that can just go in there and clear the wave and brawl, always put your Elune's Chosen on that one and it basically guarantees that you win that fight. I don’t really see a world where any other healer can match that. That’s kinda crazy."

Level 4: Lunar Blaze - "Level 4 - definitely some good choices here too. But in general, I like to always go the Stun here. It gives incredible range - 30% increased, and also it gives you a lot of extra damage on it. It increases your burst potential, and Tyrande - very strong burst hero in general with the Mark, and helps make sure you can always follow up on the stuns coming from your teammates with the extra range. This talent just makes everything Tyrande does better. So definitely looking to take this one every time."

Level 7: Celestial Attunement - "At level 7, we have an interesting choice to make. Do we need the Cleanse? Let’s look at the enemy lineup: do they have easy and telegraphed CC, anything you can Cleanse easily and quickly? You definitely always wanna go with the Cleanse. But, if the enemy doesn’t have that much CC, I’m thinking maybe Tyrael, Tracer, anything that can dive you without actually locking you down, definitely go with the spell armor here. Basically the only thing the Cleanse doesn’t work on is the root."

Level 10: Shadowstalk - "Tyrande has very strong heals, but it’s more single-target heals than anything. And I think taking Shadowstalk kinda rounds her out as an actual good, full Support. And every time I try to play Starfall, it just feels like something is missing. I definitely like my Tyrande with Shadowstalk every single time. The stealth is very cheeky too - small things like this, you can always make plays with and basically win the game."

Level 13: Harsh Moonlight - "The Shrink Ray on the Owl - incredibly powerful. The way you get your kills, or the way you get your surprise kills is almost always gonna be with the Owl. The enemies never expect an Owl flying in with a 4 second, 40% slow, followed up by your own stun or your team literally just running into them and killing them. So, it’s kinda like your little secret weapon unlocking here at 13."

Level 16: Empower - "I always like to combine the Shrink Ray with the Empower here, the Owl talent, reducing the cooldown, more Owls, more vision, more shrink rays - just good! Also, it adds a lot of damage - 7% of maximum health, and you’re mostly gonna be hitting tanks and bruisers anyway, so it just adds a lot of damage to your composition, a lot of burst. There is something to be said though for the Darnassian Archery. But generally, Empower buffing your absolute most powerful ability, your Owl, is always good."

Level 20: Shooting Star - "Level 20, I always like to go the Shooting Star - increasing your basic attack range. Your auto-attacks are essential to basically everything you do - your heals, your damage, everything. And it adds an additional stun."

"It was actually kind of funny, I had a moment the other day on my stream. The enemy team’s Monk was in a cocoon, I stacked my Shooting Star up to 7 stacks out of 8, and then I used my normal stun straight out of the cocoon, I hit something once, and I followed up perfectly on my own stun making it basically a 1.5 second double stun, doing like 1.5k damage, it was insane.”