Hey guys, I’m Mene, and I play ranged assassin for Team Dignitas. This is my DIG University Kael’thas guide. The build I’m going to talk with you about is the Q Build, the one I use almost every game. With the Q (Flamestrike) Build, the damage you do in a teamfight is pretty crazy. It’s very hard to dodge a Flamestrike when you are doing a teamfight 5v5, so you will have a lot of value from the double targets and it will take about 8% of their maximum health along with the damage of the Flamestrike. With the 16 talent you have double Flamestrike, so you can literally explode someone and they will not have seen it coming. Kael’thas is a very good hero, but he is hard to play. You have follow-up after your tank’s initiation, you have very good damage in teamfights, and you have good wave clear, but you are very squishy. If you get dived by an enemy tank or bruiser, you are probably dead or will need help. So, first we will talk about the talent build, and then we will talk about the Kael’thas playstyle.

So at Level 1, the three talents are good but in different situations. Convection is a good talent, but you need to be sure the enemy team doesn’t have a dive comp, so you can stack safely. And if possible, try to be on a rotation map or a 2-lane map like Braxis Holdout, because it’s way easier to stack if there are 4 enemies in the lane than if you are on Cursed Hollow fighting a 1v1.

The second talent is Fel Infusion. I use this one sometimes when I feel like I cannot go Convection because they have a dive comp and when I don’t need a shield or mana, because it gives you a 4% increase to ability power which is a lot of damage to have in early game and it gives you a heal in teamfights. It’s not a big heal, but it’s quite decent.

The third talent is Mana Addict. This is a talent you can take and it’s never bad. You will have a bigger mana pool and you will have a shield after collecting 20 globes.

At Level 4, always take Nether Wind. It increases the range of your stun by 30% and gives you mana. I don’t think the mana is important, but the range makes your position safer. With this talent you can initiate, as you don’t have to be out of position to stun and it can help your tank to connect if he’s too far from the target.

My Level 7 talent is Burned Flesh. With this talent in a team fight you can have a lot of value because people don’t necessarily see the effect of your Flamestrike. And if sometimes you hit two people, you will get the damage of the Flamestrike plus 8% of their maximum health and it will be enormous damage on them. This talent is the most valuable for me, because I think on every map you have to contest objectives, so you fight and you will at least hit 2 people with your Flamestrike.

At Level 10, Phoenix is obviously the best talent. With Phoenix, you can either block the back line and zone them, or you can just use at as a combination with, for example, Starfall from Tyrande. Phoenix only has a one minute cooldown, so don’t hesitate to use it if you think you can get a kill with it.

At Level 13 I take Pyromaniac. With this talent, you can have a lot of reduced cooldowns in teamfights. You can just double Living Bomb the enemy, and you can spam your Flamestrike after that. With Pyromaniac you can even do camps super easily. You can just Flamestrike, bomb, bomb, and then you can just Flamestrike again. If you have the Level 16 talent with the double Flamestrike, you can do the camp in under 10 seconds. The most valuable action with it is to double Living Bomb in a team fight to have a bigger cooldown reduction. If they have a 3-melee minimum, I think it’s better to use one bomb, and use a big Q with the trait to try to hit every melee you can.

At Level 16 I take Fury of the Sunwell. It makes you have another Flamestrike proc when you use it. So in teamfights, you will use Flamestrike, people will probably dodge it because they will see it, but after that they will not think about how there is a second explosion, and as they are running away they will take a lot of damage.

So at Level 20, I take Flamethrower. So this talent is the biggest spike for Kael’thas. You are super safe and you can just throw Flamestrike all the time and nobody can hit you. And if you hit 2 targets or more, the cooldown is reduced by 4 seconds. If you can bomb a tank and spam your Q to hit 2 targets, you are like a machine gun with your Q build. You can just stay super safe and explode the enemy team. As soon as you are 20, you don’t necessarily need to follow up anymore because most of the enemy team will try to snipe your back line if you try to follow up on a stun because they will cleanse and counter-engage on you. But with this talent, just stay in the back line and they cannot reach you at all and you can just Flamestrike all the time.

EARLY GAME

So in the early game with Kael’thas, you want to check if you are the only one with waveclear on the team or if you can always follow the stun tank and look for kills. Try to always be behind your tank to be in range for the stun because before Level 4 you don’t have the additional range on Gravity Lapse. You have two different ways to clear the wave: you can either use your trait (D) on Flamestrike and put Living Bomb on the wizard minions, or you can just use trait to double Living Bomb the wizard, and just Flamestrike in the middle of the wave. The first way to clear is better if you want to be sure to hit every minion in the wave. With the second way of clearing, you save more mana, because you use your Living Bomb with trait, so it’s a free bomb, and you can just Flamestrike after that on the wave. Before Level 7, try to look for kills in rotations or try to gank. They don’t have Cleanse, so you can abuse the fact that you have a stun to pressure the enemy and to kill them. In teamfights before Level 7, try to abuse the fact that they have no Cleanse and try to always follow up on the stuns of your tank. With this you will get a kill 99% of the time. This is why Kael’thas is very good with stun tanks.

MID-GAME

After Level 7, the enemy team will have a Cleanse most of the time. So you have to be sure that you bait the Cleanse so they don’t have it then commit hard on the follow-up stun to not get counter-engaged on by them. At Level 10 when you have Phoenix, you can sometimes look for a flank to try and one-shot someone from the enemy backline, but don’t try it too much because you’ll be out of position and they will see you. Then you may not get the kill and then will probably die. When you hit 16 with the double Flamestrike and the enemy team has two melee heroes, try to focus on killing them as you will have double Q value on them, and with the Living Bomb damage, if they are not backing, they will take a lot of damage.

LATE GAME

When you hit 20, with the Flamethrower talent, you will have insane range on your Flamestrike and a cooldown reduction for it if you hit two heroes. So, try to position yourself safely and try to get value from Flamestrike. You can try to stun sometimes and follow up, but don’t risk it, because if you get counter-engaged late game, it can cost you the entire game.

Thanks for reading my DIG University guide on Kael’thas. Hope you learned something! It’s because of Kael’thas that I fell in love with all the mages, so you should try him out. If you want to see a great Kael’thas game from me, watch the last game against Misfits in the Lower Bracket Final at IEM Katowice 2017.