I just feel like, Cleanse is one of those things where if it’s not obvious why it’s broken […] then you’re not ready to use Cleanse. Cleanse is one of the most powerful tools in the game that supports have access to, because it completely changes the flow of the game. The entire time you are playing the game you train yourself to follow up on CC and how to follow up on CC and what it means to follow up on CC. By having Cleanse you deny people the ability to follow up on CC and even better than that, you make them waste abilities attempting to follow up, if you have a timely Cleanse. - Dunktrain

My name is Toastie and I have played Heroes of the Storm since Sylvanas' release. I played at Rank 1 in beta, and hover between mid to high Masters in Hero League. I've dabbled into amateur play but never made the commitment required. This is an entry in my WIP "Healer Guide" series.

This series focusses on explaining the basics and intricacies of the healers in the game. These guides are applicable to all players regardless of ranks, but I will focus on how to best play the respective healers if you desire to climb in Hero League as a dedicated Support player. If you are looking for a pick-me-up guide, this content may not be right for you. Everything in this guide is based on my experience and understanding as well as what I have learned from others. Feel free to share your thoughts and criticism! I hope you enjoy the guides!

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Know your Cleanse

3. The Basics: How to prepare yourself?

4. Assessing "When to Cleanse"

5. Alternatives and Opportunity Cost

6. Cleanse Draft Priority

7. Examples (WIP)



Introduction

Cleanse is probably the single-most difficult and powerful active talent in this game. For heroes that have access to the talent it has a must-pick status. It is equally powerful as some heroics healers pick. The playmaking potential is enormous and a good Cleanse can be the difference between a team wipe and getting wiped. But Cleanse is difficult to use. It is a long cooldown that can be challenging to learn because you need to assess the situation and respond very quickly. Using it is one thing, using it well is a different beast altogether.

Many players disregard Cleanse, saying that they are not skilled enough to gain enough value from the ability to make it count. Some will point at win rate statistics where Cleanse rarely is the best talent on the tier. However, consensus around the top of the ladder and the professional scene is that Cleanse is the best talent over almost anything it competes with simply because it is so powerful. Because this Cleanse guide is part of my Healer Guide series (which aims to provide information on how to climb and carry with Supports) I will not accept difficulty as an excuse. If your goal is to improve and climb the ladder, mastering Cleanse is an essential part of your skillset. If you are not dedicated to the support class and just pick supports to fill, Cleanse (and subsequently this guide) are not essentially applicable to you. If you casually play healers, feel free to pick easier and more reliable talents because you will have more success with those.

In this guide I will try to explain the intricacies of Cleanse. This is difficult and there is a lot of content to cover, so bear with me. I don’t think an attempt of this scale has been made yet, so I am very open to your criticism and suggestions.

Know your Cleanse

Cleanse

Hard Cleanse

Soft Cleanse

Types of Cleanse available to Healers Hard Cleanse Soft Cleanse No Cleanse Uther (Hand of Protection, 7;

Divine Shield, 10) Auriel (Crystal Aegis, 10) Deckard Cain Brightwing (Cleanse, 7) Malfurion (Nature's Cure, 7) Alexstrasza Rehgar (Cleanse, 7) Lt. Morales (Physical Therapy & Vandanium Plating, 7) Stukov Kharazim (Cleansing Dash, 16) Ana (Purifying Darts & Smelling Salts, 13) Li Li (Let's Go, 7) Lucio (Synaesthesia Auditiva)

Here I will discuss some terminology with regards to Cleanse that you will frequently run into!Cleanse is an ability that provides UNSTOPPABLE to the target for 1 second. Effectively, this denies application from all negative status effects (see "Status Effects") and thereby allows your ally to have full control of their character despite enemy efforts to lock them down. The mechanical requirements of casting it are easy and simple (put pointer over target, click hotkey, tadam, pro cleanse) - the mental aspect is what makes it so difficult. As a healer you need to keep track of a lot of things to ensure your Cleanse is worth the cooldown.Another phrase used for the regular Cleanse. Heroes of the Storm basically knows three types of Cleanses and using 'hard cleanse' emphasizes the fact that we are talking about the literal Cleanse ability.Heroes of the Storm introduced the soft Cleanse last year. A soft Cleanse is an ability that removes a status effect from the target, but it does not prevent application of effects. Overall this makes the soft Cleanse much less powerful because there is no pre-cleanse effect and the removal of CC is limited to a few categories, usually.However, soft Cleanses have their own advantages. This comes in the form of lower cooldown, added effects like armor, or an AOE removal effect. Furthermore, some of these abilities can be self-cast which removes the status condition from your own hero. Hard Cleanse cannot be self-cast. Soft Cleanses have their own characteristics, but this guide focusses on the Hard Cleanse.

Status Effects

Cleanse can clear the following conditions: Fear, Displacement, Mindcontrol, Polymorph, Root, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Stun, Taunt.

Cleanse cannot clear the following conditions: Blind, Stopped/Stasis.

Pre-Cleanse

This is the art of hitting a Cleanse before the CC lands, effectively nullifying the enemy ability completely. This also prevents your teammate from having their movement stopped and from having ability casts interrupted. Most abilities in the game apply their effect when the ability hits, so an early Cleanse does not mean the target suffers from the CC application once Cleanse times out. (To illustrate, Dragon's Arrow from Hanzo can stun for 2 seconds. if the time of impact is T=1, and you Cleanse at T=0.25, providing Unstoppable for 1 second until T=1.25, your target hero will not be stunned fron T=1.25 to T=3 because you prevented the initial application of the stun - exceptions to this are abilities with continued application of short effects, like Stukov's Lurking Arm or ETC's Mosh Pit).

Aggressive Cleanse

Most of this guide will consider all the aspects of assessing whether a Cleanse needs to be cast and will use defensive examples, because those are easier to understand and appreciate. Once you gain experience, you can dabble into the aggressive Cleanse. This is a Cleanse that gives your frontliner a free engage without opposing CC being available to deny it. Cleansing an ETC's Powerslide allows him to get into the enemy frontline and even channel Mosh Pit without allowing the opposing team to interrupt. Similarly, for a hero like Malthael or Kerrigan, being able to dive in uninterrupted for the first second helps with their engage and sustain and may just be the difference between a successful or unsuccessful engage.

Aggressive Cleanses require good coordination and teamwork, and it requires you to watch your teammates as keenly as your opposition. It is taxing and very difficult to learn, but once you start mastering the aspects covered in this guide, you can start throwing in the aggressive Cleanse - this is where the real playmaking begins. I will probably cover this in more depth at a later point in time. Just know that the tactic is not done justice here.

The Basics: How to prepare yourself.

Step 1: Get a dedicated active ability slot for Cleanse so you can reflex-cast the ability.

First, I recommend getting yourself a dedicated active-slot for Cleanse. For me it is the ‘1’ key (I am a very creative man), but I use dedicated keys for specific abilities (e.g. Ice Block and Spell Shield go to ‘F’, Totems and Earth Ally and the likes to go ‘2’, spells I rarely use like MULE or Bribe go to ‘4’, etc). At first, this set-up might feel a little uneasy. What is important however is that you train yourself to learn what button does what thing. This muscle memory develops and you’ll learn to cast the correct active regardless of character. Furthermore, it prevents those panicked situations where you end up clicking every single button on your keyboard because your Storm Shield is on 4 for Brightwing, 3 for Rehgar, 2 for Kharazim. For Cleanse, too, if you don’t set your actives it can change even by talent selection (e.g. Brightwing Bribe or Rehgars Healing Totem). Some people even rebind Cleanse to Mouse Button 4/5 (The ones under your thumb), but I have personally rebound my Spray there (I mean… Asserting dominance is more important than carrying nubs after all).

The reason you want Cleanse to be on a dedicated slot is that you NEED to be able to Cleanse instantly when the ability is needed. Usually you can’t afford the .25 seconds of hesitation looking for the correct button because the target will typically be dead. Cleansing needs to become a reflex before you can consider yourself a near-master at the ability. To give an example, Stitches Hook is an extremely dangerous ability that can be cleansed consistently if you are very fast. There are two components to that Cleanse. The first one is anticipating the ability, the second is relying on your reflexes with muscle memory allows you to consistently cleanse Hooks out – poor Stitches.

Step 2: Learn about all the CC abilities in the game.

The second step requires more understanding of the game. It is to assess what Heroes and abilities are where in the scale of Cleanse-worthy. This means that you want to learn the CC-power of all base abilities and important talents in the game, or at the very least of the meta heroes. A lot of this comes with experience, though, so don’t worry about the learning curve. Learning this does two things for you.

Firstly, it helps you identify which support hero to play, and whether you can get away with Cleanse. Roughly 1/3rd of the supports in the game has access to Cleanse, but there’s a number of heroes against whom Cleanse is a pretty mandatory talent to have, because you put yourself at high risk if you don’t. Consider heroes like Chromie and her Temporal Loop, or Diablo who can hard-CC a single target for like 4 seconds. Even against non-stuns it can be a good talent to have. Stukov, Valeera or Malfurion for example, are heroes with very dangerous CC where Cleanse can be a lifesaver.

Secondly, pre-emptively thinking about what abilities you need to Cleanse makes it easier for you to assess whether you need to cast a Cleanse or not. For example, if the enemy team composition has fairly little CC outside of the frontliners, of whom one is in the solo lane, there’s very few cooldowns you need to track. If the only dangerous CC’s in the enemy composition are Muradin’s Stormbolt and Uthers Hammer of Justice it becomes very easy to completely deter the CC. Earlier, I discussed an example of Hook, which is a very nice ability to understand this concept. If Stitches is in the game, you know that his Hook is an ability you need to watch. Overall, it gives piece of mind and reduces taxation on your brain if you think about this in the downtime of the loading screen and early game, and it helps you make decisions and take action faster.

Step 3: Improve your game sense so you always know what heroes pose an immediate threat to your teammates in the case of an initiation.

After this, game sense and rotational understanding become important. Cleanse is a very expensive cooldown. The duration is 60 seconds and it’s in incredibly potent ability. At higher levels, people will constantly be baiting out Cleanse because it is so important. Some beginning Healers will throw down a Cleanse on cooldown at any and all CC abilities, but when a Muradin is using his W on a wave and your friendly tank on 100% HP happens to get clipped on the slow, you really don’t need to blow a Cleanse there. Use Cleanse only if the target of CC is in immediate and mortal danger.

This is where game sense becomes important. You need always be aware of who is where. If three heroes are missing, your teammate is near brushes and the enemy Muradin aggressively uses Dwarf Toss and Stormbolts, you find yourself in a situation where you must use Cleanse. Not doing so is greedy play and playing a high-risk low-reward game (Cleanse, despite its power, is worth significantly less than a life). You will not always get punished for it that makes it difficult to learn: which is why analyzing your Cleanse behavior in replays is important.

Most CC in this game is available to heroes in the following generalized order: Tanks, Bruisers, Supports, Assassins, Specialists. Try to keep track of who is showing and who is where so you always know the immediate threat your teammates are under. Realize that a lane rotation in this game takes only roughly 10-15 seconds. In theory, the enemy team can always be as 4 without losing any soak.

These three steps are the basics to Cleanse. They set you up for success and give you a good foundation to start with the real work: getting killer cleanses off in game.

Step 4: Analyze your usage of Cleanse in replays occasionally.

There is one last step that is important. Many people will tell you analyzing replays matters, and I am no different. Especially when learning to master an ability that is as time-sensitive and multi-faceted as Cleanse, it can help a lot to go back to a replay once in a while just looking at your decisionmaking around Cleanse. Do you cast too liberally? Did you miss a key Cleanse? Why? Did you hold off on casting a Cleanse in a situation that was actually very dangerous (this one is hardest to spot)? Training yourself to occasionally just check a replay is one of the fastest ways to learn about your habits. It gives you the unique opportunity to assess the situations without the pressure of time and information processing. All the cards are on the table. This analysis will help you get a better feel for Cleanse in the future.

There are three parts to a successful Cleanse: Recognizing the threats, understanding when to cast, and being ready with follow-up support. constant anticipation is the key to becoming good at this! Re-assess the situation constantly so you are always ready to take action when required.

Assessing "When To Cleanse"

There are a few items to check which determine whether you need to cast Cleanse or can hold off.

1. How much follow-up damage or CC is available to the enemy team at this moment?

2. How much damage can the target take?

3. What other defensive options are available to us?

4. Will Cleanse be enough to save the target?

5. Will my teammates call me their God?

How much follow-up damage or CC is available to the enemy team at this moment?

The first thing you need to know before you even consider whether you want to cast Cleanse is whether the enemy team has any follow-up present. This take map awareness and tracking of important cooldowns. You need to know the level of burst each individual enemy can dish out, how fast they can join the initiation and whether there’s more lockdown available. Duration in lockdown makes the threat exponentially bigger, because far more damage is coming in but your defensive tools have a one-time effect.

What also matters is the cooldowns that are up. An initation becomes a lot less threatening if the enemy Kael’thas just used his Flamestrike on a wave. It becomes significantly more threatening if Stormbolt, Ancient Spear, Gravity Lapse and Polymorph are all up and ready to go.

As a general rule of thumb, to quickly eliminate an ally it takes the enemy team having the same number of heroes or one more participating in the first 1.5 seconds of the skirmish. For example, when you are Valla/Brightwing/Johanna an aggressive Muradin/Greymane on Valla is not dangerous. You have enough defenses amongst the three of you to be safe. Muradin/Greymane/Uther becomes a bit more risky and it now depends on whether Uther will be in range to cast his E, allowing Greymane to get enough damage in. If there’s a 4rth hero present, you’ll be forced to Cleanse. Note that when I mean ‘participating’, I mean actively fighting. You can be posturing 5 vs 5, but still find yourself in a situation where 4 enemies initiate on your bruiser but only the support can aid them – this is a 2v4, effectively.

How much damage can the target take?

The flipside of the aggressive considerations in the previous point is how strong your defenses are. A Valla will get blown up considerably faster than Blaze. Their health pool, armor and self-healing abilities all matter for this equation. Through experience, you’ll get a rough feel for how resilient the target is. Especially at level 10 and 13 most heroes get a lot better at protecting themselves, so be aware of those points.

Also try to keep track of their cooldowns in this case. A Blaze with Bunker or an Yrel with Ardent Defender are nigh unkillable with just a tiny break in the hard CC to get their heroic of. This makes Cleanse almost always worth it just to be safe. A Greymane that can Darkflight to an enemy minion has a soft-escape tool to evade more damage. These are important considerations so try to monitor the defensive cooldowns!

What other defensive options are available to us?

In this case, there are two things to consider. Are there counter-momentum heroics available to you, or do you have allies with CC/peel nearby?

For counter-momentum heroics, the best examples are Mighty Gust and Sundering. These provide displacement and thereby deny the enemy team their follow-up on the target. Especially if the target is a hero with such an ability, they are likely to panic-trade their heroic for their lives. Note that this strongly affects your decision under point 4 as well.

As for the second aspect, you can also protect an ally with aggressive tools. Malfurion can cast Entangling Roots between the target and the enemy team, thereby stopping melee heroes from engaging on your ally. An ETC can Powerslide or Face Melt which stops an enemy engage in its tracks. Assess the threat level the enemy team proposes when you defensively use these basic cooldowns – in most situations, your team (tank, mostly) can protect the focus target without you needing to waste your big cooldown. If your Tank is the focus target, it’s better to be safe than sorry, just toss them a Cleanse.

Will Cleanse be enough to save the target?

Sometimes, even a Divine Shield Ancestral Healing Portal Mastery won’t be enough to save a target. Sometimes the enemy isolation is too strong or your teammate just messed up so hard that there’s no saving them. Don’t waste your Cleanse. It’s better to save your Cleanse to prevent worse, than to waste it for a target that’s obviously dead. This is not a frequent thing to occur and it’s pretty straightforward when it happens, but just be aware that as a healer you want to do anything you can to save people, but sometimes there’s no saving them.

Will my teammates call me their God?

I mean, after all, the Healer is the king of the game, letting the DPS slaves do the dirty work. If you miss a Cleanse, just type “sorry cooldown”. Always save the Cleanse for the fancy clears and cool plays. Highlights > Wins. Gotta trick that Performance Based Matchmaker (Plsdontdothis)!

Conclusion

These are a lot of individual things to think about and your decision needs to be very quick. The key is to be mentally aware of these four aspects, but rely on your reflexes to carry you through difficult situations. As you become more experienced your instincts take over from active thinking. Trust yourself, and start referring to these points when you analyse your replay.



Alternatives and Opportunity Cost

Cleanse is not available to all of our Healers, roughly 60% of them have no Cleanse or a weakened version of the ability. Sometimes, a Cleanse hero can be unavailable to pick due to bans or counterpicks on the opposing team. In that case, it is good to know some alternate options.

First are the disengage options. There is little Deckard can do when Varian Taunts your teammate, but your team can draft a disengage tool like Mighty Gust which can save the focus target in a similar fashion, by denying followup. Other tools that can do with is e.g. Sweeping Arm for Stukov, a defensive Horrify from Gul’dan or a Wailing Arrow from Sylvanas. These tools can stop the enemy team from focusing down your teammate after initating with CC. Note however that using a heroic defensively to deny an enemy engagement is typically a losing trade for your team. There is a significant opportunity cost attached to this. Furthermore, if you want to climb in HL, it’s best to keep your tools to yourself, instead of relying on teammates to react accordingly (teammates that will focus on the enemy and may tunnel vision and not notice). Lastly, as a healer you have the luxury of positioning more defensively, whereas a lot of the options to deny an initiate are available to assassins that need to position more up-front to deal their damage, and are thereby more susceptible focus targets themselves.

Secondly, some heroes can provide additional support to an ally in need. More Cleanse/CC-removal tools are being shifted towards heroes in other roles (e.g. Dispel Magic for Lunara, Into The Fray for Garrosh or even Stitches’ Helping Hand). Again, you do not want to rely on teammates to do the Cleansing job for you, but these heroes can provide relief.

Lastly, there’s always the option to draft additional defensive heroes. Zarya and Tassadar can grant shielding to an ally and Medivh can even deny all damage altogether. Whilst this is not the same raw saving potential Cleanse has, it can still get the job done – pulling a target through an initiation alive. Especially if your second support and the tank work together this can often be enough to make Cleanse less mandatory.

Cleanse is a large playmaker nonetheless and whilst you can stop the bleeding with some of the aforementioned bandages, never let the availability of those options be the sole reason to not go for Cleanse. As a healer, you will be more defensively oriented and experienced and thus far more reliable in your Cleanses. Beyond that, the opportunity cost is much lower. Blowing a good Cleanse isn’t “that” big a deal, but wasting Mighty Gust to achieve the same definitely hurts your Falstad’s threat level and playmaking.



Cleanse Draft Priority

I made a Tier List that categorizes the pick-priority of Cleanse against all heroes. This list can help you make an informed decision on whether you need to draft a Cleanse support or can get away without one.

Cleanse Tier List

I think the list is fairly self-explanatory. The higher the hero is on the list, the more priority you should put on Cleanse. This does not mean you are required to draft a Cleanse, but it is highly recommended. Different heroes have different tools to protect the team, and as discussed previously you have different options at your disposal - however, do not disregard the impactfulness of a good Cleanse.



In general, the earlier you pick your hero, the more priority should be on Cleanse. The only soft-Cleanse you can prioritize is Malfurion, who can sufficient anti-dive tools and a good Cleanse replacement. If you disregard the potential need for Cleanse and pick a non-Cleanse healer too early, the opposing team can punish your draft. An example is Chromie, whose Temporal Loop heroic puts immense pressure on your team anytime you skirmish or disengage. Other threats are CC-chain compositions to which you no longer have an answer.



Examples

1. Assessing CC threats in the opposing team compositions



Earlier I spoke about mentally preparing for all the threats in a team. Here, we see five sample drafts from a series that was recently played. I will discuss the first three, you can think about the other two for yourself. I'l mostly just be naming the abilities the Cleanse supports need to be careful with. The abilities that can make the plays and where Cleanse gets most value from. This mental preparation can be done in the loading screen and at the beginning of the game.



1. Yrel / Hanzo / Muradin / Jaina / Kharazim vs. Dehaka / Rehgar / Thrall / Johanna / Fenix

Both teams have access to Cleanse, so we can assess both Drafts.

The left team needs to beware of Dehaka Q/R, Thrall W/R, Johanna W/R and Fenix' heroic combo's.

The right team needs to beware of Yrel's W/E, Hanzo R, Muradin Q, Jaina's trait.



2. Muradin / Fenix / Tracer / Malfurion / Dehaka vs. Kharazim / Chromie / Falstad / Johanna / Yrel

The right team has access to Cleanse, so we assess the left draft.

The right team needs to beware of Muradin Q, Fenix heroic combo's, Malurion's E/R, Dehaka's Q/R.

Furthermore, earlier in the guide I called Chromie a hero that Cleanse is required against. Here, we see a draft for the left team that resolves the Chromie issue without resorting to Cleanse. Tracer and Fenix can use Recall and Warp respectively to dodge Loop. Malfurion has Ice Block and Dehaka has Burrow. Muradin is the only viable Loop target.



3. Johanna / Yrel / Greymane / Rehgar / Chromie vs. Jaina / Dehaka / Malfurion / Muradin / Hanzo

The left team has access to Cleanse, so we assess the right draft.

The left team needs to beware of Jaina's trait, Dehaka Q/E, Malfurion E/R. Muradin Q and Hanzo's R.

Furthermore, you see that Chromie can viably go Loop here. Jaina and Hanzo will not be able to survive for most of the game and Malfurion doesn't have tools to protect them. As we can see, Chromie was picked late and effectively pressures the opposing draft.

2. Cleanse or Not?

Sadly, my current machine can't record video properly :-( -> This is coming soontm.

I will continue working comments into this guide, making edits and adding eye-candy. However, my current machine is basically a toaster so I'm limited to mostly text for now. Nonetheless I hope this guide helps you out with how to cast a good Cleanse and become a more confident and powerful healer :-D!