Heroes of the Storm Illidan Counters

Heroes of the Storm Illidan Counters by Rezrov

I’ve noticed in Hero League that many players don’t know how to properly deal with an Illidan Carry, so here are some quick tips for shutting the popular team-comp down.

Know Illidan’s Strength

First, it’s important to understand Illidan’s strengths. They are:

• Illi’s auto attacks heal him.
• Illi’s auto attacks reduce his cooldowns by 1 second per attack (and his default attack speed is 1.67/s <– very fast)
• Illidan has no resource. Health and cooldowns are all he has to worry about
• Illidan is highly mobile. Sweeping Strike and Dive both grant mobility and make him hard to pin down.
• Illidan has strong map presence. With The Hunt you should assume that if he can see you, he can The Hunt you. Metamorphosis also has decent range (not really map presence, but strong teamfight presence).
• Illi can evade auto attacks with Evasion, +50% of ability damage at lvl 13. Evasion makes all AAs miss Illi for 2 seconds, and has a short cooldown because of his trait.
• Metamorphosis does AoE damage (don’t stand in it), gives him HP per heroes hit (don’t stand in it), and +20% attack speed.
• He can chase forever.

Know Illidan’s Weaknesses

• He has low HP
• His trait/staying alive revolves around attack speed and hitting auto attacks
• Evasion pre-13 (or without Sixth Sense) doesn’t evade ability damage (and at 13 it’s only 50%, not 100% like AAs)
• He’s frequently out of position. This isn’t true of all Illidans, but considering his hyper-aggressive playstyle, he’ll often wade quite deep into your team.

SO! Based on all this shtuff, here are some more specific tactics.

Counters

• Attack speed slows
• Hard CC (polymorph, stuns, or even roots so he can’t get in AA range)
• Vulnerability (anything that increases his damage taken)
• Slows help your squishies kite.
• Ability damage is usually better than AA damage (I find Falstad can do some substantial damage to Illi)
• Blinds/blocks are always good against him.

Specific Counters (not at all exhaustive)

• Shrink Ray. If you’re Li Li, Malf, Tass, Uther, or Tyr, you will chooseShrink Ray, or you will make everyone cry.
• Muradin should choose Reverberation at lvl 1.
• BW should choose Critterize at lvl 16, and Rewind at 20.
• Li Li should choose Lingering Blind at lvl 4 (Lingering Blind+Shrink Ray makes Li Li laugh in the face of The Betrayer).

Tactical Tips

• Don’t kite away from your team, but within it.
• Don’t stand in Metamorphosis AoE.
• Don’t spec towards auto-attack if you can help it (you usually can).
• Don’t waste attacks when his Evasion is up.
• Try and separate him from his healers.

Parting Words

The problem with any “carry”-style comp is that if the carry gets shutdown, the comp implodes. Use this to your advantage. I hope these tips leave you A LITTLE MORE PREPARED!

P.S. Li Li with Lingering Blind is my favourite hero for dealing with Illi. Her blinds, Shrink Ray, and strong healing make dealing with Illidan pretty easy.

EDIT

Things I’ve forgotten that others reminded me of:

• Malfurion can rek Illi with Twilight Dream.
• Imposing Presence is useful against Illi (but only if you’re actually going to be one of his targets).
• Re-emphasizing that you should kite within your team. Running away from your heals, tank, and DPS is not the right thing to do.
• Re-emphasizing the importance of hard CC (stuns).