Tyrande Whisperwind, high priestess of Elune, is probably the healer in Heroes of the Storm that has seen the most changes to herself. Tyrande is an utility oriented healer that provides the team with vision, sets up kills with her stuns and slows, and provides moderate sustained healing.

I’ve always had great success with her, every season I’ve managed to stay around 60% winrate with 100+ games played on her in storm league. Last season I even *proudly* got to call myself the best Tyrande in the world, as I found my name in that sweet number 1 spot.I hope you will learn to love her as much as I do, and that this guide will help you improve on her!

She has seen many changes and slight buffs and nerfs during her stay in the Nexus. We’re going to jump into her current talents and place in the Meta and how to optimally play her.

Talents

Tier 1

Ranger: Sentinel pierces the first hero hit. Its width is increased by 25% and deals up to 250% more damage based on the distance it has traveled.

Does a surprising amount of damage after the last buff this talent has gotten. It's never been so close to the ‘old’ owl build. I’d say this talent is good if you’re playing on maps where you can get value from the pierce. Maps like towers of doom and cursed hollow where you can interrupt an enemy capturing an objective for example. Both maps are also big enough to do a good amount of damage if the owl gets to travel far, plus scouting is important on both of these maps.

Lunar Blaze: Increase the range of Lunar Flare by 30%.
Quest: Hitting a hero with Lunar Flare increases its damage by 5% up to 100%.

Always the most solid choice on this talent tier. Range increase makes it so that you are safer yourself to throw out your stuns and have an easier time to follow up on your tank when he engages. You can also interrupt a channeled ability that you don’t want to get caught in, for example Stukov’s Lurking Arm.

Trueshot Aura: Passive: Increase basic attack damage by 15%
Active: Reset the cooldown of Hunter’s Mark and increase the bonus of True Shot Aura to 25% and apply this to nearby allies.

A good choice on maps where you get to brawl a lot. If you have some hard hitters on the team like greymane and a more aa oriented solo laner, for example a Sonya, you can empower them even more with this talent.

On Battlefield of Eternity it’s a huge early game upgrade for your team's race potential, being able to reset the trait and boost the auto attack damage of your team, so there I would actually always take it. Since good race is also a good defense against the immortal, you will get value from it either way.

Tier 4:

Everlasting Light: If Light of Elune’s second charge is cast on a different target as the initial cast, it heals for 80% more.

Actually a decent pick these days. I’d say it’s a good choice if you feel that you don’t have the space to auto attack for a great amount. This way you can shoot out an owl or hit a stun, stay in the back and heal two different targets for a fair amount.

Mark of Mending: Tyrande’s basic attacks heal her for 2,5% of her maximum health. Basic attacks against the target of Hunter’s Mark heal the attacker for 2% of their maximum health.

Not really pickable in my opinion as it doesn’t provide enough healing for your team. Maybe if you have a triple bruiser setup and the enemy team tries to only kill you it could be okay to pick it. But you probably still get more healing/self healing through Everlasting Light.

Elune's Chosen: Activate on an allied hero to make Tyrande's auto attacks heal the target for 175% of the damage dealt. Lasts for 8 seconds.

A very good choice to heal a bit more single target burst damage. Put it on your tank to survive the initial engage of the enemy team or on any target that gets dove. I would say this is the usual pick on this tier.

Tier 7:

Moonlit Arrows: Basic attacks decrease the cooldown of Light of Elune by an additional 0,75 seconds.

Best talent on the tier. The cooldown reduction is great as you get both charges of Light of Elune back at the same time.

Kaldorei Resistance: Light of Elune grants the target 10 Spell Armor for 2 seconds. Stacks 2 times.

Not a great choice since the spell armor doesn’t last very long. This makes it only pickable if you’re going to have to prevent a large amount of burst spell damage, like a Pyroblast. Slapping 20 spell armor on someone can be helpful then, but otherwise I think this talent is still quite weak.

Huntress Fury: Increase the cast range of Hunter’s Mark by 25%. Tyrande’s basic attacks to the target will splash to nearby enemy heroes.

This talent isn’t picked very often to my surprise. I really like it with Elune’s Chosen to max out the healing it does, as the splash will add up to the healing the target receives off of auto attacks.
It’s also fine to pick if you notice that you don’t really need the CDR on your Q. The splash will naturally do work on the cdr of it anyway and it provides a bit more damage to your team.

Tier 10:

Shadowstalk: Grants all allied heroes stealth for 10 seconds and heal them for 380 over 10 seconds. Remaining stationary for 1.5 seconds grants invisibility.

If you’re not too confident on Tyrande or don’t have a lot of space to actively auto attack, an extra healing button doesn’t hurt. This is the safest choice for a heroic ability.

Starfall: Deal 92 damage per second and slow enemies by 20% in an area. Lasts 6 seconds.

Personally, my favorite of the two. It sets up more for your team with the slows. If you can drop this in a rotation zone or another clutch, you can slow everyone and get a great engage. You can also drop it as you are retreating to slow your pursuers down. I’d say this is a good talent if the enemies really want to dive with multiple melees. I actually take it every time I see a melee assassin on the enemy team. As it also deals damage, it will give you a cooldown reduction on your Q’s as well so make sure to spam those in a teamfight!

Tier 13:

Quickening Blessing: Tyrande gains 5% movement speed. Light of Elune increases the target's movement speed by 20% for 3 seconds.

This talent is underwhelming compared to the other choices. If you want to give up the utility and you’re being chased a lot then perhaps this is the pick, but otherwise I’d say this talent is not great.

Harsh Moonlight: Sentinel slows heroes hit by 35% and reduces their damage by 35% for 4 seconds.

A very strong talent since damage reduction can be so valuable into certain picks. Zul'jin goes TAZDINGO, here take a bird to the face, 35% less damage. Makes it a bit easier to survive in fights, plus providing your team with even more utility through slows is great.

Ranger’s Mark: Basic attacks reduce the cooldown of Hunter’s Mark by 1 second. Basic attacks against the marked target reduce the cooldown of Lunar Flare by 3 seconds.

Again, a great choice on Battlefield of Eternity, given that you don’t need the slow to catch targets or your team is suffering heavy damage. This talent takes some practice to figure out how it works, but once you get the hang of it you probably don’t want to take any other 13 talents anymore. It makes it not so necessary to hold your stun for your tank to follow up as you can get the cooldown back in no-time with this talent, but I think in order to pick this talent and get the full value out of it you have to be able to hit stuns on your own. If you are going to hold your stun anyway, you might as well pick another talent on this tier since you won’t get the full value out of it then.

Tier 16:

Celestial Attunement: Light of Elune removes Stuns, Silences and Slows from the target.

This is the only thing close to a ‘cleanse’ that Tyrande can provide and if it removes any form of CC mentioned above from your team, I suggest picking it. You can cleanse someone with every Q which is pretty darn good.

Empower: Reduce the cooldown of Sentinel by 3 seconds. Heroes hit take bonus damage equal to 7% of their maximum health.

Have you gone for owl build and don’t need the cleanse, aka they have roots only, then commit for the owl build. Commit for the big damage!

Darnassian Archery: Basic attacks against enemy heroes grant a stacking attack damage increase by 10% for each stack. Lasts 4 seconds and is lost when Tyrande doesn’t attack a hero within 4 seconds.

Still if you don’t need the cleanse, which is unlikely there is always something to cleanse, then you can take this talent. This will add up to Elune’s Chosens healing so at this point you have quite some single target healing once you have a few stacks and put the active on a teammate. I tend to pick it if I have enough room to auto attack and if the map lends itself for it. With this I mean maps where you tend to brawl for a longer time like Hanamura Temple or Volskaya Foundry. You need to get around 20 stacks for it to actually start hurting, but once you get it going it really can get you extra kills. Personally I like to take this with the movement speed talent at 13, so you have extra chase potential.

Tier 20:

Eyes of the Huntress: Shadowstalk reveals all enemy heroes for 10 seconds and heals for 50% more.

Great to pick on maps where you need vision on objectives spread across the map, or where your team tends to split up in the late game. Examples are Towers of Doom or Alterac Pass.
The reveal is also very useful if the enemy team has impactful stealth heroes like Zeratul or Valeera.

Celestial Wrath: Increase the slow of Starfall to 40% and cause it to apply Hunter’s Mark to enemies in the area.

Always a good option if you see that enemies don’t care to play around Starfall, this way you can punish them for that. Really good to set up more in chokes or make it easier to get kills with the marks in a setup like Mosh Pit (from ETC) or Warden's Cage (from Maiev).

Shooting Star: Increase your auto attack range by 1. Every 8th auto attack launches a Lunar Flare at a random enemy location.

This is great for setting up double stuns on your own and sometimes the random stun happens to interrupt something useful! Increasing your auto attack range makes it easier for Tyrande to stay safe in the late game fights and provide her team with healing. In my opinion this is just the best talent on the tier. Getting the opportunity to double stun someone is huge and can almost guarantee a kill.

Iceblade Arrows: Increase your attack speed by 20%. Basic attacks against enemy heroes reduce their damage by 8% for 2 seconds, this effect can stack up to 5 times.

Least valuable talent on the tier in my opinion, perhaps take it into melee heavy hitters like Greymane. The attack speed isn’t significant enough to do work on your cooldowns so I wouldn’t recommend taking it over the other storm talents.

Playstyle

Tyrande often provides more utility for her team than she does healing. There are definitely ways to maximize your healing that not everyone is aware of and people can always improve. Choosing what kind of healing you need to do is important.

For that, you need to look at the enemy damage dealers: do they have sustained or burst damage?
Overall Tyrande is not a big burst healer, but can provide a good amount with Elune’s Chosen.
Do they have poison based/sustained damage, then you might want to talent into Everlasting Light instead on level 4. Then you probably also want to pick up Shadowstalk to provide some more healing for your team.

Burst and dive assassins have a harder time jumping in when you pick Starfall. Drop the zone when they engage so they are slowed and prepare for a counter engage.

You want to try to always stay with your tank as that is your main setup. It is your job to be ready to follow up on the engage the tank makes. Ping the cooldown of your Lunar Flare, so that the tank knows when you are ready to follow up and he can look for an engage.

Counters and Synergies

Because Tyrande’s CC abilities are skillshots, the heroes that go in and out like Zeratul and Tracer are very hard for her to deal with. Tanks that are hard for her to step up to are Varian, ETC and Anub’arak. These are tanks that can punish overstepping easily, since you want to be able to auto attack often and the tank is the easiest to hit.

These are also the tanks she synergizes a lot with since they have great CC that Tyrande can follow up on. Muradin is also an option for that matter and is a tank that doesn’t need a lot of healing, so she can focus on healing the damage dealers of the team. As Tyrande isn’t really a heal bot, you want to pick heroes with her that can to a certain extent be self-reliant or have some sort of escape if they are in trouble, but can really benefit from the setup she gives her team. Think of hard hitters that can chase targets down like Greymane or Raynor. They benefit from Tyrande's trait Hunter’s Mark which removes 25 armor and the slow she can provide after level 13 to help chase targets down or proc an Executioner's talent.

So there we go, my in depth Tyrande guide for you all! Try to test the limits in the beginning. Once you know what she is capable of and when you can/can’t step up you can start pulling the trigger on trickier talents and make them work. Since she is so dependent on her auto attacks I would say that is the main key to playing her!