About me:

I am a high level Masters player in Heroes of the Storm who really joined this game in beta when Sylvanas was introduced. I absolutely adore this game with all my heart and have been an active community member since god knows how long. I prefer playing heroes which are fairly self-reliant (wave clear + self healing + high impact abilities; this is what I find is best for "carrying") but have some fun pocket picks.



To improve my English writing, because I enjoy the research and analytical side of the game, and because I find there's a severe lack of quality hero guides for this game, I have decided to start writing some myself. Therefor, I am actively looking for as much feedback as possible on anything you can think of. Presentation, formatting, writing style, illustrations, etc.



Besides that, feel free to ask any questions and give suggestions for heroes you want me to cover (note that I will only write guides for heroes I am comfortable with in Masters HL, I am willing to branch out, but for now I'll stick to my roots. I want to speak with authority and understanding when I write a guide, because I want to go for quality. I mostly play bruisers and supports but frequently branch out into tank or hypercarry assassins - basically, I need to get myself another hobby....).



I currently have no access to my Heroes machine to include edited screenshots, gifs and perhaps video content, but plan on doing so in the future.



Thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoy my work!



Toastie

Index

- Summary

- Introduction

- Main Builds

- Talent Discussion

- Playstyle

- Map Discussion

- Community Q&A

Life Tap

Fel Flame

Drain Life

Corruption

Horrify

Rain of Destruction

Gul'dan : Fel Flame Build Pursuit of Flame Quest: Hit 30 enemy Heroes with Fel Flame. Reward: Fel Flame's radius is increased by 10%. Consume Soul Instantly kill an enemy Minion and heal for 380 (+4% per level) Health. Hunger for Power Increases Ability Power by 15% but reduces healing received from allies by 25%. Horrify After a short delay, deal 263 (125 + 4% per level) damage and fear enemy Heroes in the area for 2 seconds. Healthstone Activate to heal for 25% of your maximum Health. Rampant Hellfire Fel Flame's damage is increased by 10% for 5 seconds when hitting an enemy Hero. This can stack up to 5 times. Haunt Increases the duration of Horrify by 1 second, and while Feared, enemies lose 20 Armor, causing them to take 20% increased damage.

Gul'dan : Corruption Build Echoed Corruption Quest: Hit 40 enemy Heroes with Corruption. Reward: After the third strike, Corruption strikes 3 times in the opposite direction. Consume Soul Instantly kill an enemy Minion and heal for 380 (+4% per level) Health. Hunger for Power Increases Ability Power by 15% but reduces healing received from allies by 25%. Horrify After a short delay, deal 263 (125 + 4% per level) damage and fear enemy Heroes in the area for 2 seconds. Healthstone Activate to heal for 25% of your maximum Health. Ruinous Affliction Corruption deals an additional 82 (+4% per level) damage on impact. If the enemy is hit by all three strikes, the third strike deals 243 (+4% per level) damage. Haunt Increases the duration of Horrify by 1 second, and while Feared, enemies lose 20 Armor, causing them to take 20% increased damage.

Fel Flame Corruption Sustain damage Frontloaded Requires a lot of heals Gul'dan can do most of his own sustianing Easier to play Need to land key spells Positioning can be more defensive Requires aggressive posturing

Community Q&A

Gul'dan is a sustained damage ranged assassin. The following characteristics will briefly be discussed, after which a more in-depth analysis of the hero is given (see Index)Gul'dan has only one CC ability in Horrify, but it is very impactful and potentially game changing.Gul'dan is one of the fastest wave clearing heroes in the game (±4 seconds before lv. 7, 2 seconds after), and with the proper support or play, has effectively no mana constraints in doing it. This lets him be very powerful in the 4 man!Gul'dan has plenty of healing in his kit to sustain himself, and the range to deal damage without putting himself at much risk. He only needs a tank to start pressuring because he lacks defensive capabilities.Gul'dan has a fairly large hitbox and no mobility tools (until potentially level 20) which makes him a vulnerable target to being dived on.Gul'dan to me has a medium difficulty. His abilities are fairly straightforward, but especially E and R take some practice to maximize value. Positioning is the most important and difficult part of his kit, and mastering those aspects allows you to unleash Gul'dans full potential! Besides that, Gul'dan is a good hero to ladder with due to his wave clear and relative independence on teammates (assuming they follow basic strategy....)Horrify is one of the most impactful heroics in the game when used well, and with the Corruption build after level 16 even that spell can literally win a teamfight when hitting well. You lack burst damage, but make up for that with insane sustained damage potential.When drafted on the correct maps (see 'Map Discussion') Gul'dan is a very flexible hero for a ranged assassin. I have given him the maximum score here (which is perhaps a bit high), but he doesn't require much from teammates due to the self sustain in his talent tree. All you need is a tank with good peeling, and the map to be decent for you.Gul'dan is a sustained damage range mage. His main drawing points are the great utility he brings to a team composition and his self-sufficiency. Gul'dan is one of the best waveclearing heroes in the game, being able to efficiently clear a whole minion wave in 3 seconds. Besides that, Gul'dan scales very well over the course of the game, having impactful and strong talents at every tier.Gul'dans self sufficiency and potential high impact makes him a strong hero to use in solo queue. He is strong in the macro game, can keep his own health up, has a very high aoe damage output on a low cooldown, and two high-impact spells in Corruption and Horrify that allow him to single-handedly change the tide of any battle. There is an interesting minigame going on at all times which is his mana managements. There is always a tight rope to walk between keeping your health and mana up, and dealing enough damage. An experienced Gul'dan can distance himself from the novice by being very efficient in their management of these two healthbars, and talents help you to be a lategame powerhouse that never really has to back for resources.Gul'dans most exploitable weakness is his lack of mobility tools until level 20. Whilst he has a pretty high healthpool for a ranged assassin, he will rarely be on full health due to his heals being expensive cooldowns (meaning you won't use them for a 10% selfheal) and the fact that he trades health for damage. Positioning is key, because a Gul'dan out of position is a dead Gul'dan. Besides that, early game Gul'dan relies on a healer to help him stay effective, because the mana costs of his abilities are relatively high compared to the mana he's gaining (your mana is returned as a percentage of max mana, which scales, whilst your ability costs stay the same). Whilst Gul'dan is a strong hero early game, his real powerspikes are level 10, where he gets access to a very powerful control heroic, and level 16, where both of his build paths reach their apex.is Gul'dans trait. It is your mana management tool, so using it correctly is very important. This is the first hurdle an aspiring Gul'dan player has to breech. In Heroes of the Storm, few heroes have to consider their mana expenditure as closely as Gul'dan, and you are constantly deciding between safety and more damage once a teamfight starts going. You can blow through your mana pool (and health pool) very fast, so using your spells effectively is a skill to practice and learn. To master this, it won't hurt to occasionally X2 through a replay of yourself and see if you still agree with those decisions in hindsight.is your main damage spell. Get familiar with its range and radius, because the spell's effective area is bigger than it might seem. Fel Flame is your main wave clear and poke tool. It allows you to siege towers out of range and it barely outranges most ranged damage dealers' AA range, allowing you to deal safe poke damage to them. Be weary of its mana cost, because 75 mana per cast is very high for an ability like this.is your main self sustain spell. Getting as much value out of this spell as possible is very important for your lane sustain. You can for example hit your Fel Flame on all but one melee minion in a wave, and drain life said minion for the health boost. Additionally, this spell is yout best dive prevention, giving you very high healing on an enemy hero for its duration, buying time for your team to bail you out. Lastly, you can use Drain Life as a finisher, because casting QW has a bit more DPS on a kill target (though the damage falls off when Q comes off cooldown). Be careful when using this spell in big teamfights, because you also 'root' yourself, making you an easy target for skillshots.is your major nuke. Whilst it deals no upfront damage, a correctly angled Corruption can chunk though healthbars like nobody's business. Learn how to use this spell, and you can turn teamfights on a dime. Corruption can be as powerful as some heroics if you land a good one, so definitely worth practicing.is your heavy duty tool. It's an obscenely powerful and versatile heroic that can do so many things for you. It can secure picks by forcing an enemy hero to walk into your team, it can be a full 5 man stun, it can be a counter initiate, or your only self-peel. Horrify is a very impactful heroic, but that means you have to use it responsibly. Don't throw it out arbitrarily because this spell gives you so much control over a teamfight. Wasting it makes you more vulnerable and takes a big chunk from your strength away.is an awful heroic for several reasons. It roots you, making you an easy target. It deals unreliable and unimpressive damage, and prevents you from casting your spells, which are targeted and deal more damage. Rain of Destruction cannot compete with Horrify in any way and I strongly recommend picking it once, and just once, to see how mediocre it really is.Gul'dan has access to two distinct builds, which play fairly similar but change what your focus is on. One build focusses on Fel Flame, the other focusses on Corruption.Interesting for Gul'dan is that he has access to two different builds that retain a fairly similar playstyle, but really change where your focus is on. I will first explain both main builds, then discuss their differences and applications, and lastly discuss some optional talents. I will not go through every talent in the tree, to keep the guide somewhat contained in size, but if you wish specific elaboration on a talent, feel free to post a comment and I will gladly edit it into the Q&A.Firstly, the Fel Flame build is strictly oriented towards dealing a lot of poke damage over a long time to the enemy frontline. When fully stacked on the level 16 talent, you fire off a mini-nuke very 1.5 seconds. This build will burn through the opposing frontline and guarantee you'll win most drawn out skirmishes and posturing dances. Very few heroes can match the sheer poke damage output of a level 16 Gul'dan, even Li Ming and Chromie cannot keep up.Because you'll be sticking around to cast spells for a long time, it's important that you have some form of sustain healer backing you up. Malfurion and Auriel, to give two examples, can provide you with the health (mana) you need, whereas other healers like Rehgar might struggle to keep up after a prolonged fight. Because of this exact reason, you are free to switch between Improved Life Tap and Consume Soul on level 4. The first one really pays off in long teamfights and frees up your support more, whereas Consume Soul is stronger defensively (it can function as a bursty self-heal) and greatly improves your early game self-sufficiency.An important thing to note is that the Fel Flame quest reward lets you very comfortably poke ranged damage dealers if you pull back after the cast, because you outrange them by a fair bit now.The second build is the Corruption build. Whilst Fel Flame deals a lot more damage over time, Corruption has a strong powerspike off the level 1 quest talent, as well as the level 16 spike both builds have. The Corruption build has the potential in late game to put a huge DOT an any health bar. It's a difficult spell to maximize the use of, but a fully specced E can close out teamfights single handedly. Besides that, it is a very powerful zoning tool, capable of locking an entry path down for almost 3 seconds.This build is more bursty than the Fel Flame build and as such, has a lower requirement for mana (and health). This allows you to play Guldan with heroes like Lucio, Uther or Rehgar as solo supports, because you won't be needing a dedicated sustain healer all the time. With this build you will typically position a bit more aggressively because you are looking for that key spell to land and decide a teamfight before it has started. An interesting part of Gul'dans lategame is that Horrify really punishes an enemy hero running at you alone, because you can Horrify them into your team, but running away is also dangerous because you risk taking multiple Corruption ticks. Forcing your opponents to move perpendicular to you can allow you to zone people into really awkward spots (though this is a very advanced technique). The risk with the Horrify Build is that you commit a lot of your talents and power in a high cooldown ability. You can't afford to fail a Corruption cast, nor can you afford to hold the ability too often. You have to play opportunistically to gain good value from this build.Let me re-emphasize that both builds are very strong in their own respect, and you play most of the game more-or-less the same way, it is only when the level 16 talents come in that these builds wildly deviate.As opposed to my Thrall guide, I'm trying out only talking about the popular talents to cut down on the amount of text.Both these level 4 talents are viable and strong in their own respect. I personally prefer Consume Soul, because it protects you more in the laning phase and is a strong self-heal in the late game. Note that Hunger For Power (lv 7 AP buff) also improves all of your self-healing, which Consume Soul really benefits from. Because this talent allows you to do most of your own healing, it really opens up how freely you can draft Gul'dan. Though it might seem weird to put a hero who chips at his own health in the same team as Rehgar or Uther, Gul'dan (especially with this talent) can heal himself enough for that handicap to have limited effect.The advantages of Improved Life Tap is that it is easier to use and in the late game probably gets more value, because it is not reliant on minion waves. The main disadvantage is that it isn't very impactful in the early game (where you will often be near minions anyways, and the 10% bonus is off a smaller mana pool) and sort of requires a sustain support. This talent is more powerful in the Q build, where you're be tapping comparatively more than with the E build.This level 7 talent reduces the cooldown of your E, allowing for faster stacking and more casts of your high impact ability. This is not a bad talent by any means, but it somewhat makes you play like a Q build, while you're playing an E build. Getting value from this talent makes your positioning a bit awkward sometimes, whereas a flat increase in damage and self-healing is probably more reliable and powerful. For the E build, you are only looking to land the value E anyways, so reducing the cooldown isn't as valuable as landing that one dominating E with even more oomph. Again, this talent is very pickable (and probably good when you are learning or getting used to the E cast) but in my personal opinion, the sheer utility from Hunger for Power, coupled with not messing with your positioning, is a bit more powerful.lol.Fel Armor can be a decent talent, but has to be valued correctly. In Heroes, roughly 50-60% of the damage dealt is spell damage (this is a guesstimation) so if you are reducing 40% of the a bit more than half the damage, it's effectively around a 20% damage reduction, or 25% more effective health. Note however that this is conditional, and that the effect of spell armor changes with compositions, and gains strength in longer teamfights where healing is more frequent than the Healthstone cooldown.Healthstone returns roughly 30% health (Hunger for Power) and comes in the form of a burst heal. This, to me, is a very big drawing point, because as you will experience, Gul'dan occasionally find himself in a situation where he is trying to self-heal fast enough to not die to a dive. Having a strong burst heal is very useful in this situation, whereas your Q armor is unreliable and less effective in that time span. Besides that, Healthstone can help out in a pinch just to enable some more ability casts, whereas Fel Armor loses all effectiveness when you get low on health and mana.Both of Gul'dans level 20 talents are extremely impactful.Haunt is a gamechanger in the late game. Most post-20 fights snowball to a Core kill, and landing an upgraded Horrify can literally cause a full team wipe before the duration runs out. The armor reduction and the buffed duration both are very valuable and this can easily secure the game. The issue however is that you need to have faith in your Horrify usage, because without strong Horrifies, you aren't getting value out of this talent.For players unexperienced on the hero or trying to learn how aggressively they can press forwards, Demonic Circle is definitely the better talent. It's also more useful when you feel like you cannot fully rely on your tank or support to protect you sufficiently. Lastly, if the opposition has dangerous Bolt of the Storm users, the value of this talent goes up quite significantly, because it is your only escape.One important thing to note when going Demonic Circle is to be smart with it. Don't set-and-forget it at your altar. Ideally, the circle is right behind the teamfight and you cast the spell as you get into trouble, not when your health is very low. In the late game, you need to participate in teamfights and cannot afford to blink yourself wildly out of position to contribute.You'll have noticed that I put no value on Drain Life talents. This is not because those talents are bad (some of them are actually pretty good), but because of how awkward Drain Life is in a teamfight. It is a very projected self root and should be used with a lot of caution. Therefor, it is not a good ability to spend talents on. The base ability is already fairly good, and the risk is not worth the reward in this case. Besides that, it lacks the real powerspike the other builds have.Gul'dan is a sustained damage dealer, whose damage comes in AOE, but without mobility tools and with his only CC being his very strong heroic. This means Gul'dan always needs to be protected, and needs a frontline that can create space for him. You are looking to constantly put pressure on the enemy frontline and healer by throwing wave after wave of damage at them. Guldan in some sense can be like a safer Lunara, just chipping away at health bars and being able to crush some supports with it.But there is always an edge to balance on when you are a ranged damage dealer constantly getting close-by to poke. Gul'dan has no mobility tools so a quick engage from the enemy side can rapidly put you in a lot of danger. You are walking on a fine line of risk and reward, which is based mostly on your positioning. The best way to understand and learn this aspect of the hero is to watch your own replays and identify where you made mistakes. Notice that most mistakes in HL go unpunished, so be critical of your own play.With Gul'dan, correctly anticipating the moves of your tank is important. When your tank initiates, you are almost guaranteed to get a ton of damage in, because a target will instinctively move away from you. If you rapidly EQW them, you're putting a very large amount of pressure on their health bars. Especially with displacement tanks like Johanna, very obvious AOE damage zones are created for you to bring the pain.Lastly, understand that Gul'dan is also a good hero at sieging. You can fairly safely damage structures and enemies behind them, and in a push you'll receive plenty of minions and health globes to sustain with. Your wave clear helps further this advantage because you will usually be pushing with minions. Sieging structures with 4 people is a good way to force the opposing team to answer, allowing you to deal massive amounts of damage and get those quest stacks!Gul'dan does two things in this phase of the game.Firstly, he controls the lanes. Gul'dan can easily carry the 4 man rotation in the wave clear department, giving your team a rotational lead (or be your solo in a pinch, but this is a bad idea because Gul'dan isn't particularly safe, nor can he stack his quests). His wave clear is very fast and the vision advantage this gives your team is very powerful. For a more in-depth look at the power and uses of vision, I will refer you to Moonprayer's guide TempoStorm.com which is one of my favorite guides on an underapprecciated piece of understanding in this game.Besides wave clear, early game is the best time to get your stacks going. Especially for the Corruption build, it is important to start stacking early, because you want to hit that power spike as soon as possible. Make sure to always follow your tank because their presence is what keeps you from being slaughtered.Beyond these two main pointers, you should just focus on not getting killed. Gul'dan doesn't really have a lot of kill pressure in the early game because his burst damage is fairly low for a mage, and he brings no crowd control. Just focus on creating pressure through macro play and if you get to 10 even with your opponents, you're in a fine spot. Gul'dan is a bit like Nazeebo in that his late game is monstrous - except Gul'dan is more flexible and impactful in the laning phase.At this point, you want to continue doing what you have been doing, but the game slowly moves towards a more objective focussed game. Gul'dan is strong at nearly all objectives in the game (also see the chapter 'Maps') because he has very strong, relatively safe poke damage in his arsenal, as well as the possibility to throw down a Horrify and secure a kill. This is the phase of the game where you start adjusting your play to focus on dealing as much spread damage as possible to pressure out the opposition. You can afford to occasionally mount up and shove in a lane (you clear lanes in 2 seconds now), but remember that you are a very vulnerable target on your own, and not particularly strong at pressing into a teamfight if your allies get caught 4v5. Gul'dan deals his damage over time and keeping up said pressure is the key to forcing mistakes, or forcing the opposition to back off. This is also the phase where you should be finishing your quest stacks. If you are nowhere near completion, ask your team to help you stack it up by grouping a bit more, because you really want those quests completed at level 16.This is where you start to shine. Both your builds have hit their powerspike and this means your damage is now really ramping up.For the Q build, you've now hit Rampant Hellfire, which you want to have on 5 stacks as often as possible (see table below for DPS comparison). Note that your positioning is still more important than those stacks. Your Q has a 1.5s cooldown and easily hits 2 targets, so you can let it drop pretty comfortably and stack it up again. With those stacks completed, you'll see your Q deal absolutely insane amounts of damage per wave, comfortably keeping up with heroes like Greymane and Valla. What you lack for in burst and dive, you make up for by dealing your damage safely and in AOE. You will soon notice that you are absolutely tearing through health bars like no tomorrow and you will soon become the focal point for the opposing team - position accordingly!For the E build, this is where you can start dominating enemy heroes. If you land 3 E's, they are basically out of the teamfight. Good understanding of the E spell and your positioning is really important now, because you have one long cooldown that has the potential to make or break a teamfight. You can still poke with Q, but given the lower range and lower damage, the risk-reward balance is skewed against you compared to the Q build. It is okay to hit less 'value' Q's in favor of having the correct angle on your E spell.In the late game, you must stay alive. You can no longer afford to die, and the enemy is just getting more and more tools to stomp your sorry ass into the ground. At this point in the game you deal enough damage to be considered a hypercarry and you will be a high priority target for the opposing team. Horrify is your only defensive mechanism and correct usage can depend the outcome of a game. Play conservatively and don't take unneccessary risks - Gul'dan has no fail safes.This chart gives the DPS of Gul'dans Fel Flame with the Q build at level 16. For comparison there are Greymane and Valla (both with no AA talents, except the 2nd Human Greymane, where he has a procced Executioner). This gives you an idea of how insanely high your damage output is. Note also that Gul'dans damage is in AOE, has more range, and is more frontloaded.Concluding remark: With Gul'dan, time is your friend (both in scaling as in sustained damage) and positioning should always be your main focus. The longer you live, the more punishment you deal.Gul'dan is very powerful on maps where the objective can take a long time to complete. This gives him ample time to deal his damage. Besides that, Gul'dan is an AOE monster, which helps on specific maps. A disadvantage with Gul'dan is that he wants to be in a 4 man or a deathball to maximize his safety and his AOE damage output, which is a restriction on some maps.I am keeping these fairly short, because most are self-explanatory. If you want elaboration on a specific map, feel free to ask!Braxis Holdout - The objective takes a very long time, you are mostly 4v4 in a lane, and your AOE on the Zerg waves as well as your offensive siege pressure are very high.Haunted Mines - Gul'dan is naturally strong in 4v4s and does a good job sieging or clearing the sapper camps with some help. Even when grabbing the odd Skull camp, Gul'dan is a suitable hero.Infernal Shrines - Probably your best map. The objective takes a long time, is near minion waves and really favors poke and aoe damage for the clearing. Lastly, the many narrow pathways are strong for your Horrify and Corruption!Tomb of the Spider Queen - Perhaps 'the other' best map. Wave clear is stupidly strong on this map, and the winning 4 man rotation gives control over the objective area. You are strong at both aspects!Cursed Hollow, Dragon Shire, Garden of Terror, Sky Temple, Towers of Doom - these 5 maps are all fairly similar in that there are some 4 man strategies, and wave clear is decently important, but 4v4's are not frequent enough, nor are you going to get a huge advantage with fast clear. Gul'dan is a solid hero for these maps, but nothing exceptional.Battlefield of Eternity - Gul'dans trait makes it difficult to stay high on mana and your spells will quickly see you out of mana. Besides that, it's fairly easy to get strong flanks on you on this map due to the vision mechanics which makes it difficult for you to stay safe and be impactful.Blackheart's Bay - Whilst Gul'dan is good in the double top lane, he is a relatively low health, no escape hero that can easily get ganked or ran down by heroes he is competing with. His bottom lane is solid if you can force a 4v4 there, but he does next to nothing for the objective phase and in a fairly spread out map, Gul'dan is often in unsafe positions. Note that your W kills chests fast though.Warhead Junction - This map is also very spread out and it is impossible to properly rotate on it due to the distance between the lanes. This means you will often be sitting at your gate waiting for a wave, or be in dangerous, flankable positions. The win condition on this map is typically the boss, where you aren't anything special either. Gul'dans reliance on a team around him really holds him back on a map like this.