Thrall is a durable Melee Assassin

Thrall is a somewhat difficult hero to fully grasp, but very flexible and rewarding

His strengths lie in his very high damage output, good self sustain and high-impact heroics. His main weaknesses are his lack of wave clear, his reliance on Windfury and his relatively low max health pool.

Don't hesitate on using your heroic when you think you can secure kills with it, because that perfect moment may never come.

Thrall is primarily and auto-attack hero

Thrall : Thrall Standard Build Rolling Thunder For 8 seconds after hitting an enemy with Chain Lightning, Thrall's next Basic Attack against them grants a stack of Frostwolf Resilience. If the target is an enemy Hero, then he also deals damage to them equal to 3% of their maximum Health and healing for the same amount. Passive: Increase the number of Chain Lightning bounces by 1. Feral Resilience Heroes damaged by Feral Spirit grant 3 stacks of Frostwolf Resilience and 2 stacks of Feral Resilience, granting 50 Physical Armor against the next incoming Hero Basic Attack. Stacks are consumed on the next cast of Feral Spirit. Ancestral Wrath Activate to consume 8 stack of Ancestral Wrath, damaging a target enemy Hero for 15% of their maximum Health over 3 seconds, and healing Thrall for 150% of the damage dealth. Gain 1 stack of Ancestral Wrath every time Frostwolf Resilience activates. Earthquake Summon a massive Earthquake that pulses every 2 seconds. Each pulse slows all enemies in the area by 50%, and deals 290 damage to enemy Heroes. Does 3 pulses. Frostwolf's Grace Frostwolf Resilience can be activated to instantly heal for 150% of its normal amount. Alpha Wolf For 3 seconds after a Hero is hit by Feral Spirit, Thrall's Basic Attacks against them deal an additional 3% of the target's maximum Health as damage. Passive: Increase the duration of Feral Spirit's Root to 1.5 seconds. Wind Rush Activate to immediately teleport to a target location and gain Windfury.

Echo of the Elements

Rolling Thunder

Crash Lightning

Feral Resilience

Frostwolf Pack

Mana Tide

Ancestral Wrath

Follow Through

Maelstrom Weapon

Frostwolf's Grace

Spirit Shield

Grace of Air

Tempest Fury

Table 1

Thunderstorm

Wind Rush

Earthen Shields

Nexus Blades

Worldbreaker

Thrall : Thrall Sustain Damage Build Echo of the Elements Quest: Kill Minions of Heroes within 1.5 seconds of hitting them with Chain Lightning. Reward: After killing 10 enemies, reduce the Mana cost of Chain Lightning from 40 to 25. Reward: After killing 20 enemies, gain a second charge of Chain Lightning. Mana Tide Frostwolf Resilience restores 15 Mana and reduces Basic Ability cooldowns by 0.5 seconds. Follow Through After using an ability, your next Basic Attack within 6 seconds deals 40% additional damage. Earthquake Summon a massive Earthquake that pulses every 2 seconds. Each pulse slows all enemies in the area by 50%, and deals 290 damage to enemy Heroes. Does 3 pulses. Frostwolf's Grace Frostwolf Resilience can be activated to instantly heal for 150% of its normal amount. Tempest Fury The final strike of Windfury hits 3 times for 75% normal damage. Wind Rush Activate to immediately teleport to a target location and gain Windfury.

My first in a series of guides I want to start writing. An often heard complaint in this community is that there's a lack of quality, up-to-date, in-depth guides on how to play some heroes. I'm going to try and give it a shot here, but I am really looking for feedback on formatting, topics I may have forgotten to cover, heroes you want to see me write on (note that I will restrict myself to heroes I am very comfortable with for now). These guides are written for HL play, from the perspective of a Master level player.- Introduction- Main Build- Playstyle- Pro Tips- Community Q&AFor a simple overview of Thrall, click here for the HeroesHearth Hero Page: https://heroeshearth.com/hero/thrall/ . In the past Thrall used to be the de-facto king of the solo lane. Through meta transitions, buffs and nerfs of various sorts and the introduction of new heroes, Thrall has slowly lost this strength in his kit. A rework in 2017 switched some of Thralls mid game power to the late game, where is he now a very threatening monster. Thrall excels in dealing very high burst damage, high enough to 100-0 any backliner in seconds and even burn through the bulkiest tanks with little effort.and in my personal opinion a strong hero to use on the Hero League ladder.Thrall is very sustainy over time as his trait procs repeatedly, but is prone to being locked down and deleted. One special mention goes to the Block talent, which can let Thrall go from a fair solo lane to losing pretty hard.is you trait. Every 5th time an ability deals damage, you gain a sizable chunk of health (±12% Max Health). Correctly generating stacks for your trait is how you become the survivable monster Thrall can be. Adept Thrall players constantly look for ways to generate maximum Resilience stacks with their abilities. Some examples include zoning your enemy into buildings or a minion wave to secure bounces for Chain Lightning, or using Feral Spirit or even Sundering in the direction of a minion wave. Thrall lives and dies by correctly using your trait to stay healthy in trades (and a major drawing point is your ability to very safely regenerate off environmental targets).is your main spell and fulfills several uses. It generates easy stacks for your trait, it's your best long range interrupt spell, but it is also your main tool to win several laning matchups. You can safely use Chain Lightning off cooldown on enemy heroes to constantly pressure their health pool while you are regenerating even at a safe distance. A very important final use of this spell is to dismount the enemy frontline. The lightning bounces to nearby targets and it allows you to dismount several enemies at safe range, severely reducing their threat radius and slowing down their rotations.is your crowd control. It is a fairly easy to hit short root which can be used for self peel when getting ganked, or to force the opponent to take an unfavorable trait. Remember that the Wolf now pierces, so you can aim it towards a minion wave for 7 free trait stacks. One important thing to remember is how you cast your Feral Spirit. Whilst the ability has decent range, you should use it primarily in short range so you can capitalize on it. A long range wolf gives you time to close the gap, but not to deal damage. Using your Mount or Windfury to get in short range first allows you to use the rooted time to deal damage (and kite in a body blocking position).is your most versatile and important cooldown. The cooldown is rather long at 12 seconds and correctly using it is very important. Windfury does several things for you: It gives you offensive mobility or a gap closer, it lets you disengage, but it is also your main damage tool. Windfury usage is in my opinion the thing that separates a good Thrall from a great Thrall. Always be on the look-out for things that can help you not cast Windfury for mobility, like your Chain Lightning for dismounts, flanking locations (e.g. brushes) and your mount (never underestimate how strong it can be to just run at your target, and only cast Windfury when you get dismounted). Ideally you use Windfury to amplify your damage and have the remaining duration ready to chase or disengage.is your playmaker heroic. If you can land a good Sundering on the enemy backline and knock one of them into your team, this heroic single-handedly wins teamfights. Besides that it is also a very powerful counter-engage. If the enemy team clumps up to focus down one of your targets, a well placed Sundering can easily hit 4 targets and buy your team valuable time to favorably re-engage. The issue with the spell is that it might be very hard to learn how to use it, because effective usage depends on many variables: your positioning, the positioning of your team, the positioning of enemy key targets, their relative distance to safety and the shape of the map. All these variables constantly change and opportunities for a good heroic are often sparse.is less likely to get those hard turns, but is a very powerful crowd control heroic in its own respect. Besides that, it provides numerous trait stacks for you to regenerate with. The ideal use of Earthquake is in a flank hitting 4/5 enemy team members with large slows, denying their mobility and disengage options. Because the best use of Earthquake puts you in the enemy team off a flank, it is okay to use Windfury to retreat, despite just having initiated a team fight. Your crowd control effectively isolates the enemy frontline and the only valid target for their team is you, so don't get killed when they turn on you. A proper earthquake can secure a team wipe, but it is okay to use it to secure kills in the late game. The slows are very powerful and isolated targets have no hopes of escaping if your team is anywhere close-by.For both of Thralls heroics it is important to remember that the hypervalue 5 man heroic hits might be cool and game changing, but the heroics are still very powerful when used correctly on just one or two targets.Besides that, always remember that. His abilities should always serve that purpose. Practice correct kiting and stutterstepping (and even body blocking, a more advanced skill with a somewhat brittle hero) to get maximum AA's on enemy heroes, because ultimately, that is where most of your relevant damage comes from.This is my personal main build for Thrall. This build is based off my own experience and preferences, but I have to give special mention to several talents.is the standard for a lot of players. It is a much stronger talent in the lane and also generates more stacks for Ancestor's Wrath and Frostwolf Resilience. My main consideration for usinginstead is that it gives you more leeway in the later stages of the game, where you want to maintain a safe range and a single greedy miss-step can throw the game. It also helps in trading into enemy laners through poke, because you'll find yourself in their range more often, and less prone to enemy ganks. Besides that, it helps opening up your level 4 slot without harming your mana sustain too much.is difficult to stack for you as a solo laner and mostly benefits you in the late game, where you are already a powerhouse.is fairly open, where all three talents have their use. I personally useas a standard because the way Thrall plays often finds you in a short 1v1 with enemy targets, where those extra block charges and stacks on your trait wildly swing those trades into your favor. It is also the safest talent. As you will soon learn when playing Thrall, in the late game your kit carries itself in teamfights. Your only job is getting in Auto Attacks and not dieing, so any talents that help you do that have extra priority for me. Usewhen the enemy team runs a very dense frontline where you want to get maximum value off your level 16. I personally refrain from usingbecause my mana management is fairly good and Thrall only has one spell you want to use off cooldown, but if mana is an issue for you, consider using this talent until you get more comfortable with the hero.I personally considerthe best talent without a doubt. The extra burst damage and more importantly self sustain gain so much value for you. It is fairly easy to start a teamfight with this ability active, and get a second cast during the teamfight. There are situations whereis a strong talent, especially when the enemy team runs a very low-health composition. It does require you to use your spells in a particular manner which may not be ideal, if you want to maximize damage.is probably the most fun talent, but the quest forces you to play aggressive to get stacks, offers less damage than either of the competing talents, and has the issue that the main benefit, extra move speed, is sort of relieved by the intrinsic Windfury speed and the plethora of CC options.has both heroics which both have their different strengths. I am personally comfortable using either of them in most situations, but I favor Sundering when the enemy composition features high value backliners, whereas Earthquake is the easier, safer choice. Please refer to the previous chapter for a more elaborate discussion of the heroics.is the best talent for me. It gives health, stacks for the level 7 talent and a panic button. Whilsthas the potential to proc several times over the course of a teamfight, it is difficult to get high value off due to the large amount of poke damage.requires you to use Tempest Fury, Wind Rush and/or use Windfury off cooldown to get sufficient value off, because else Frostwolf's grace just gets higher, more reliable numbers. The talent forces a bad playstyle's Alpha Wolf can get ridiculous amount of damage out. This is where Thralls build comes together. Your burst damage, even on enemy tanks, is now very high. Combined with the lv. 7 talent, Thrall hits up to 30% percentile damage over a few seconds (on top of the chunks of his AA) which is enormous.is another talent on this tier that can greatly improve your damage, but only if you have very little time to deal your damage, or the enemy team is really squishee. Seefor some figures.should only be used in very poke-based games (note that Crash Lightning is useful here) but in that case Thrall is not your ideal bruiser.features 2 strong options.gives you a second cooldown on your main ability, as well as a free gap closer (or escape). It's very strong when you have picked either heroic because of the sheer strength and flexibility of the repositioning. One of Thralls most powerful combo's is a medium range engage with Wind Rush, Feral Spirit and the insane damage output of double Windfury.gives your whole team basically three casts of Storm Shield. The extra sustain is very good, especially in choky maps or when the enemy gets a lot of value of AOE effects.is not a bad talent, especially with high damage AA's like Thralls, but Thrall has enough CC in his kit to not need the slow, and this talent just lacks in sheer utility compared to the rest of the options.is a pretty powerful talent and I probably don't give it enough credit, because a Woldbreaker flank on a backliner guarantees a kill in the late game which you can snowball to a win. But the talent is fairly unreliable and even if you get that value flank, chances are a regular Sundering would have sufficed.Over the duration of Alpha Wolf (3s), Thrall can get a maximum of 5 AA's on the target using Windfury. In the table, you can see that Tempest Fury adds a flat 405 bonus damage starting at the third AA. In green you see all the instances where Alpha Wolf deals more damage than the same number of AA's for Tempest Fury. As you can see, in nearly all instances Alpha Wolf damage is superior, with an exception of the 3/4 hit bracket on squishy heroes (depending on their max. health). To make the comparison fair, consider that Alpha Wolf is conditional on hitting the Feral Spirit and the damage increase limited to heroic targets, whereas Tempest Fury does not require Feral Spirit to land, and does deal improved damage to all targets. Tempest Fury synergizes with Wind Rush whereas Alpha Wolf does not benefit as much (theoretically you can fit a 6th AA in the 3s duration). Alpha Wolf deals true damage, unlike Tempest Fury, which can be reduced by physical armor. Example heroes chosen arbitrarily.EDIT: My build is more oriented towards safety and bursting. There is another popular build that focusses more on very high sustain damage output, better skirmishing and more poke damage.Ancestral Wrath And/Or Alpha Wolf can be substituted in. This build focusses around using Echo of Elements & Mana Tide to deal high amounts of poke damage and rapidly reset the cooldown on Windfury, allowing you to weave in and out of the battle more easily and giving you much higher damage stats overall.I would advise the first build as the safe, standard build that is safer, which is why I advise using it. However, this secondary build gets higher damage numbers over the course of the game and is especially better when the opposing team lacks a sustian healer or the CC to punish your weaving in and out of teamfights.When playing as Thrall, you are always looking to use your CC and burst damage to secure a fast kill. With the specified build Thrall has access to enough damage to 100-0 basically every hero in the game within 3 seconds, with exception for the most bulky of warriors.Whilst most melee assassins will prefer focussing their damage on vulnerable backline targets, Thrall has the percentile damage and brute force AA's to pretty comfortably hit frontliners into submission. Whilst you can still threaten the backline really hard, don't be afraid of blowing your rotation on an over-extended tank, because chances are you can just flat-out kill them.Thrall will typically be the offlaner. As mentioned previously, he does no longer excel in this role, but he is good enough at it to not be a burden to his team. In the laning phase, you are a so-called 'bully'. You want to use your Q on cooldown on the enemy hero, and occasionally force beneficial trades into them. Your trait allows you to regenerate health faster than most heroes in the game, and you have access to medium range poke. Over time, you should be running them out of health, forcing a back or a rotation from the enemy team. Your weakness is heroes with the Block talent, and heroes that can out-heal your damage in minion waves (this is why Sonya is a brutal matchup). Because you rely on bullying enemy heroes out and have fairly mediocre wave clear, some heroes are difficult matchups for you. Remember that the most important thing in a solo lane is to soak every bit of exp. It is alright to slowly lose the lane and lose a tower, but dieing because you overextend or want to depush is unacceptable.Thrall should spend most of his time watching the flanks, and trying to get a flank. Defensively, you have the lockdown and damage to trade favorably into any enemy flanker and with your team nearby nobody should be posing a threat to you. Offensively, you have your Feral Spirit for self-peel and Windfury to escape. Because you are safe offensively, and threatening defensively, Thrall is an excellent hero to keep off the side of the posturing teams. Ideally, you land one of your high impact heroics affecting at least some part of the enemy backline, causing chaos and mass disruption to their team. You have not yet hit your damage spike so it is best to focus on the control and isolation part of your kit at this point in the game. This does not mean you can't threaten damage, but be concious of the fact that Thrall is a teamplayer creating and seizing opportunities for the whole team, as opposed to a hero like Zeratul or Sonya who are looking for that burst opener. Thralls damage takes a bit more time, and his gapclosers are slower. Remember that brushes and vision are your friend in this stage of the game, because they make your job a lot easier.Thralls damage has spiked and you can now comfortably follow your teams engagement on the enemy tank. You should still be working the flanks, but at this point you can quite comfortably trade into most of the roster. With your damage spike, you can now look for picks really effectively, and you should be a bit more willing to seize an opportunity with your heroics (or blink). In the midgame, a single death timer may not be worth your heroic. In the late game, they definitely are. You have the tools to rapidly punish any overextension at this point and you should always be ready to pull the trigger. Lategame is Thralls playground, you are extremely impactful here both because of your insane damage, as well as your strong crowd control, but do also remember that you are still in the assassin category, and becoming too greedy can end the game for your opponent. Be an opportunistic player, but don't take unnecessary risks.Under construction: I want to use clips to show some combo's or engages here, but I can't record footage currently.One example would be on how to use W and E to deal damage, but also place yourself in a body-blocking position through correct stutterstepping.Here I will post answers to commonly asked questions.