Heroes of the Storm Lucio Beginner’s Guide

Heroes of the Storm Lucio Beginner’s Guide by camclemons

Now this isn’t a guide on how to play him or what talents to choose, but an informative guide on what you should know before you start playing.

Aura

When you first enter a game mode with Lúcio, you might notice several different icons on your display. A series of three icons shows a number with a plus sign on the left, and a double chevron on the right. The number between the icons tells you how many allies are affected by your aura (not including Lúcio himself). The plus sign just shows you’re in healing aura, and the chevrons are for speed.

Wall Ride

To the left of that is a meter showing Lúcio’s Wall Ride duration. Lúcio’s trait, Wall Ride, grants him 20% movement speed when riding on a wall which decays over time once you leave the wall. The retention of this buff after you leave the wall allows you to switch to a different wall or just tap it to refresh it without losing your movement speed bonus. This also helps with certain talents such as Off the Wall (level 4) or Hard Style (level 13):

Off the Wall: If Soundwave is cast while having Wall Ride’s speed bonus, the cooldown is reduced by 3 seconds.

Hard Style: Gain 25 Armor while Wall Ride’s Movement Speed bonus is active, reducing damage taken by 25%.

What this means is that you don’t actually have to be on the wall to benefit from those talents, you just have to have used Wall Ride recently. Also, despite the Wall Ride animation showing Lúcio hovering above the ground, he is effectively standing next to a wall that he is riding on. You still get hit by mines and traps.

You should also be aware of your aura radius during Wall Ride. When you’re clinging to a wall, half of your effective aura is inside the wall. If you spend a lot of time Wall Riding, this can give added value to Boombox, which creates a disjointed aura. This may or may not be preferable over the talents that increase the radius as half of that increase will continue to be cut off by the wall.

Reverse Amp and Aura Radius

Next, I’d like to address his secondary Heroic, Reverse Amp. This ability has the same radius as an untalented aura. However, if you take a talent that either permanently or temporarily increases your aura radius, Reverse Amp will remain the same size. This also applies to the Boombox talent at the same tier; Reverse Amp will not be duplicated at the Boombox.

Crossfading

Now there are a couple of talents that focus around your Crossfade ability, namely Beat Mixing (13) and Encore (20).

Beat Mixing: After switching Crossfade tracks, if the next song plays for at least 1.5 seconds, Lucio gains a 104 point shield (at level 1) that lasts indefinitely. Switching tracks again removes the shield.

Encore: Swapping Crossfade tracks while Amp It Up is active will set Amp It Up back to its max duration. Can only happen once per cast.

If you so happen to use these talents, be advised that the cooldown for Crossfade is only 0.5 seconds. If you are in one stance and you lose your shield from Beat Mixing, you are able to rapidly Crossfade twice to reset your shield. There is no limit to how many shields you can generate, so you can have the shield every 2 seconds if you keep cycling your aura. To give an example, I was able to solo a Knight camp by Crossfading every time my shield dropped and using Amp It Up every time it was available. I don’t think he should be soloing camps, but I wanted to test a scenario where he was able to continuously generate shields.

Likewise, Encore refreshes the duration of Amp It Up once, but you don’t have to remain in the second stance. You can immediately switch back to the first stance in order to have an effective double-length heal or speed boost with only 0.5 seconds of downtime on the aura.

Amp It Up Value

Your Amp It Up (E) boosts the effect of your active aura for 3 seconds (4 if you take Reverse Amp). You can use Crossfade while Amp It Up is active. You might want a small speed boost engage or disengage and then switch to healing to get a small burst heal.

Attack Range and Speed

Lúcio has the advantage of having a visible attack range indicator in the form of his aura (baseline radius). This should make it much easier for you to gauge your distance when kiting.

At 16, he can pick up Up the Frequency:

Up the Frequency: Amp It Up’s mana cost is reduced to 80 and dealing Basic Attack damage to enemy Heroes also reduces the cooldown of Amp It Up by 0.35 seconds.

Lúcio attacks 4 times per burst, and his attack speed is 0.8. That means he reduces his Amp It Up cooldown by 1.40 seconds every burst.

Heliotropics Synergy

Soundwave is a knockback with a 7 second cooldown. His level 16 talent Heliotropics blinds enemies hit with Soundwave for 2.5 seconds. You can combo this with his level 4 talents Chase the Bass (increases its arc and range) to blind more enemies and Off the Wall (cooldown reduced by 3 seconds during Wall Ride) for more frequent blinds.

Party Mix

Party Mix (level 7 quest) requires you play a Crossfade track to your team for 8 minutes. This can seem like a long time, but party members stack. 1 team member will take 8 minutes, 2 will take 4, 3 will take 2:40, etc.

Boombox

Boombox gives you vision in the same radius as your aura. It has a 20 second cooldown and lasts for 20 seconds, which gives it a secondary use of being a ward. This means you always know how long the ward will last by the cooldown on your ability.

Conclusion

I’ve played quite a few games with Lucio so far, but this isn’t a guide on his playstyle or what talents to choose. It’s just some information that I thought would be helpful for anyone picking up Lucio for the first time.

If you have any questions about anything you might be confused about, feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to find out. Now get out there, you’re gonna do great!