The Banshee Queen, the leader of the forsaken, one of the most beloved characters from the Blizzard universes. Dear child has many titles and Sylvanas is no exception. With her latest rework she is very viable again and her fun play style and excellent abilities make sure for an enjoyable experience.

Q - Withering Fire: This is a useful ability for either clearing waves, bursting enemies, safely solo mercenary camps and just in general works as reliable Auto Attacks that can be fired rapidly in a short amount of time. Do remember that this ability always hit the nearest non-friendly target, so position well in team fights to get the most out of the shots.

soloing mercenary camps with Sylvanas has it's own section later in the guide.

W - Shadow Dagger: This is useful to disable waves and take them out quickly. After level 4 this also becomes a good team fighting ability when the cooldown is reduced every time it spreads to another enemy. This ability is also great for poking lightly at you opponent in lane as you can cast the ability on the enemy minions and it will spread to the enemy hero as well.

E - Haunting Wave: This is mostly an escape ability, cast it in a direction and press E again to teleport to the spirits. Remember that this ability can be used both as an escape and a gap closer, especially if you spec into Windrunner at level 13 which refills all your Q-shot charges upon teleporting to your Spirit wave.

Trait - Black Arrows: Her trait is really what gives Sylvanas her place in the meta right now. Being able to shut down structures and escort map objectives with heavy siege damage is her force.

R - Wailing Arrow: A great engage in teamfights, or a long range pick off ability for enemies trying to escape. Furthermore a good interrupt ability for Mosh Pit or Jug.

Level 1: Most of the time Overflowing Quiver is the prefered choice, simply to clear waves and mercenaries faster, but Mercenary Queen is also strong on maps like Sky Temple with the giants in bot lane, or on Towers of Doom with the Sappers.

Don't be fooled by the Paralysis picks in competitive play, if you want to get enough value out of that, then you have to make sure that all your teammates are on the same page and your team needs to win the majority of the map objectives.

Level 4: Here is where we choose our playstyle for the game. We can either pick up Withering Barrage and go aggressive with the single target burst and then later pick up Windrunner to follow up on that, or we can pick Lost Soul and play a more backline style Sylvans who chips at the healthbars of the enemies and put on split pressure.

Level 7: Barbed Shot is pretty much the only choice in every situation, it gives almost instant wave clear and merc control and it benefits on map objectives as well.

Level 10: The Heroic ability is not even a choice really, you either pick Wailing Arrow which is a great engagement tool, or you pick an ability that will stun yourself while using it on an enemy. Wailing Arrow is the way to go.

Level 13: If you picked Withering Barrage at 4, then you should take Windrunner here for the extra burst, it is the reset of your Withering Fire charges that makes the talent really strong and of cause the double E for escapes. But if you are worried about your safety, then you should pick either Will of the Forsaken or Spell shield. Will of the Forsaken is great to dodge the likes of Kerrigan combos and Artanis Prisms, or engages from Anub, while Spell Shield should be seen as more of a sustain tool in lane.

Level 16: On this tier we pick according to the enemy team comp, do we want to blow a single guy up? or do we want more sustain damage throughout the fights. Cold Embrace is a great talent against warriors to take them down fast, but Remorseless combined with the Windrunner talent at 13 increases your burst potential even more.

Level 20: Bolt of the Storm is the talent to pick here, it is our get out of prison card whether we go in for the burst damage or stay back risking getting jumped by the bruiser from the other team.

Haunting wave is a great escape tool to have in the hero's base kit, it can be used to escape over obstacles when you are getting chased, or when you want to take shortcuts around the maps for example to cap 2-3 fast merc camps in succession.

A good tip in general is to run in the opposite direction from where you casted your E to bait enemies to follow you and then reactivate your E to teleport to your spirit wave and put some distance between you and your pursuiters.

Sylvanas is by far one of the best heroes to take mercenary camps through the whole game, her trait makes the creatures unable to attack and she can slowly dps them down. Remember that her Q always hits the nearest target so position yourself close to one of the creatures, while Auto Attacking the others.

Furthermore, remember that her trait does not have an effect on Bosses or map objectives so be wary of that. You may need abit of help with knight camps in the very early stage of the game to not waste too much time, but as your autos scale throughout the game she becomes a mercenary monster.

Alright, so you can play your Sylvanas in 2 different ways. The first one is to play her like a mage where you pick up Lost Soul at level 4 and one of the defensive talents at level 13 and then try to deal as much split damage as possible during teamfights, while your main goal is to maintain lane and merc control on the map and escort the map objectives to the enemy structures.

The other and more aggressive style is to pick up Withering Barrage at level 4 and Windrunner at level 13 and try to burst down the enemy backline in teamfights, while constantly being on the move with Haunting waves to reposition yourself and refill your Q charges. You still want to maintain merc control and escort map objectives, but you are not afraid to dive in with your team, as your burst damage can turn the fight in your favor. Be sure to have your Haunting wave out and flying so that you are ready to escape if things get too hairy for you relatively low health pool.

Sylvanas is just kind of a filler in most comps, so she fits in anywhere if you have a Warrior, Support and assassin already. She does however excel on maps where the objective can be escorted to do high siege damage like Punishers on Infernal Shrines, Immortals on Battlefield of Eternity and so on.

Sylvanas do have the potential to do a lot of damage in teamfights but she is not as deadly as an assassin, so remember that if your team has a specialist already, then you will be better off picking a high damage assassin, as you will not be able to get value from the kit of Sylvanas if you can't get the upper hand in teamfights.

Playing against Sylvanas is like playing against any of the mages or other squishy assassins, she is very vulnerable to stuns and can be bursted down pretty easily if she is out of position. As for her strong laning phase, don't stand close to your own minion wave as her W will spread to you as well. Try to poke her down and force her to tap well and look out for an opportunity to jump in and kill her if she walk to far forward. Another tip is to pressure her to use her E and then stun her out so that she doesn't get to teleport away.

I simply adore Sylvanas, coming from World of Warcraft to Heroes of the storm I started out as a Valla main, but from the day Sylvanas was available I was hooked instantly. Her unique trait, being able to win my lane every time, taking merc camps left, right and center.

She is the hero I have had the most wins with in hero league and I really feel like I can have an impact on the game controlling the pace, making a winning game more smooth or initiating the comeback.

As for skins I had fun playing around with the Sugar Plum skins in the holyday time, but I always fall back to my superhero like Ranger General skin with the green tint.

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