Brightwing is a high mobility support hero, from the Warcraft universe. With her ability, to teleport to any member of her team anywhere on the map and good crowd control she makes for really entertaining gameplay and you can be a big playmaker on your team if you play this little dragon right.

Trait - Soothing Mist: Brightwings trait is her only heal up to level 7, where she get her shielding ability. It is important to position yourself right, so that you can get the passive pulsing heal to benefit your team as much as possible.

Q - Arcane Flare: This is Brightwings damage ability, which gives her great waveclear and makes her able to solo soak a lane.

W - Polymorph: A great crowd control ability, that turn your target into a sheep and makes them unable to use their abilitys. This should be used on high damage melee heroes, who try to engage on your backline, or on enemies trying to gank you in lane, to give you time to escape.

E - Pixie Dust: The ability to block Auto Attacks is a great tool, to keep your melee assasins in the thick of things, or to make your tank even more tanky. But this ability is also a great way to help allies to escape with the speed boost.

R - Blink Heal: At lvl 10 you finally get a reliable heal, to keep your teammates healthy in combat, but watch out for your own positioning when you blink to a target, always keep a charge of Blink Heal, to get back to your backline.

Level 1: At the beginning of the game we pick Hyper Shift 9/10 times. Brightwing's big force is global mobility and this talent makes her able, to use one of the strongest abilities in her kit more often - Furthermore, this talent will synergize with our level 7 talent later in the game. If you have a comp with 2 very good solo laners, then you can go for Bribe to push the lanes even more in your teams favor.

Level 4: What we pick here depends on the enemy team comp. If the enemy team got a very melee heavy comp like Illidan, Muradin, Sonya, Kharazim, and Kael'thas, then we will go for Unstable Anomaly, to counter the engage potential from the comp and put counter pressure on the team with the explosion damage.

But if the enemy team is more ranged damage based or have a Nova or Zeratul, then we pick Peekaboo! to reveal the stealth heroes and to keep vision of the enemy team in teamfights.

Level 7: In most cases we want Phase Shield, but if the enemy team has a lot of crowd control, then we can pick up cleanse instead. This scenario is not very likely thought, as Brightwing is most often an Illidan counterpick and Illidan does not bring any crowd control.

Level 10: Here we go for Blink Heal, to have a on demand heal, and to add to our mobility even more. Do however remember, to always save a charge of this to get back to your backline and out of danger.

Level 13: This tier depends on the enemy team comp again. If the enemy rely on ability damage from heroes like Kael'thas or Li-Ming, then we pick Shield Dust to prevent some of the incomming damage. If the team rely on Auto Attack damage and hard engage on a target, then we pick Ice Block to stay safe.

Level 16: This tier is about personal preference. The choice is between Greater Polymorph and Critterize. Greater Polymorph is great, if you want to zone out a target to kill another target and Critterize is good if you want to collapse on a single target and take them out fast. If you have a Tyrande on your team, then Critterize becomes a bit redundant.

Level 20: This tier is again about personal preference, whether you want to be offensive with your Polymorphs and pick Rewind to get double Polymorph, or if you want to take a more defensive position and pick up Storm Shield.

In the early game(Pre-level 10) Brightwing does not have a lot of healing, so you want to stay in lane and help clear waves and potentially set up a gank with the slow from your Polymorph, if an enemy hero get too greedy. You want to stay in lane and soak experience even when the map objective is announced, to give your team the level lead. When the fight over the map objective begins you should teleport(Z) to one of your backline heroes and try to medigate damage on your frontline with your Pixie Dust(E), while trying to Polymorph the enemy assasins.

In the mid game(level 10-16) Brightwing goes more into the typical support role, as she now has a reliable heal and can begin to look for Polymorphs against the enemy support in team fights, as she now has more healing to deal with the enemy assasins and have an escape if they turn on you, when you go in a little deeper to get to their support.

In the late game(level 16-30) Brightwing can begin to get very agressive an dictate the pace of the teamfights, as we have upgraded our Polymorph to either phase out a target for even longer, or make the target vulnerable and very likely to fall.

Remember to position yourself close to your allies, so they are hit be your trait as much as possible, without bringing yourself in danger.

So to recap:

- Brightwing have great waveclear, so help in the lanes.

- Stay in lane as long as possible when a map objective spawn, before you have to teleport into combat.

- Aim your Polymorph at assasins in the early game and supports in the mid- to late game.

- Position yourself to get the most out of your trait.

Brightwing is more of a utility hero, than a raw burst healing hero. Because of that she play very well with a Tyrande or Tassadar on your team, who can weight out the little lack of burst healing. The real force of Brightwing is to counter strong melee assasins and bruisers, who want to get to your backline. Polymorph is one of the strongest crowd control abilities against melee heroes in the game and takes away their momentum when they want to engage.

So to recap:

- You want either Tyrande or Tassadar on your team with your Brightwing

- Brightwing counters strong melee heroes like Illidan, Sonya, Thrall and Butcher

- Brightwing is a soft counter to stealth heroes like Nova and Zeratul with her level 7 talent Peekaboo!

Brightwing might be a soft counter to Nova and Zeratul, but she is also very vulnerable to ganks from them. Brightwing will usually be soaking alone in a lane when a map objective pops up and at that point she can be ganked by a Nova or Zeratul. Other than that, then you can pick a double warrior comp and rely on ranged asassins to do the damage in teamfights. This means, that Brightwing either has to use her polymorph on one of the tanks, who wants to take as much damage and cc as possible anyway, or she would have to go deep into your team to land her polymorph on the healer and so put herself in danger.

It's not very often that I get to play Brightwing anymore, but I think she is a fun hero and one of the support characters that let me have the biggest impact in my games. I like to imagine the face of an Illidan looking at the mage on my team, charging in and then get polymorphed and blown up.

As for skins I like the black tinted Master skin, thought the dark blue/black classic skin is okay too.

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