I Deliver You onto the Void: A Zeratul Guide for Heroes of the Storm

Zeratul is one of the more unique characters in Heroes of the Storm: an invisible assassin who specializes in ganking enemy heroes, but also provides good wave-clear and crowd-control abilities. You can be a pain in the lane, or make sure that your team stays ahead in exp. You have some of the best poke in the entire game, and one thing is for sure - your enemies will have to beware of you, if they don't want the game to snowball in your favor.

There are 2 ways to play and build your Zeratul:

Cleave-build (Q-build): This is the poke-and-run style build, where you go in and deal as much damage as possible in a small window of time. In the late game though, your poke will turn into pure slaughter if you catch an enemy alone, or if you get the chance to capitalize and go all-in on an enemy team during a Mosh Pit.

Vorpal-build: This is the "sticky-build". You are able to stay on to an enemy for along time, where they have no chance to out-run you. This build excels at 1v1 skirmishes, when you can surprise an enemy trying to rotate between lanes on their own, and they won't be able to run back to their structures, before you have taken them down in a combo of empowered Auto Attacks and slows.

Trait - Permanent Cloak: Our trait makes us invisible when we are out of combat, and enables us to ambush enemy heroes. But have in mind, that you are not completely invisible. You still show a slight shimmer of pixels, indicating where you currently are.

Q - Cleave: A good range area-attack around your character, this will be your main damage source in the "Cleave-build", and a great tool in your "Vorpal-build". Besides good Hero-damage, it also provides excellent wave-clear and makes short work of mercenary camps, especially after level 16.

 

W - Singularity Spike: This is one of the tools that will make you able to stay on to your target. Singularity Spike is your opening ability in the "Vorpal-build", and a filler or ranged finisher in the "Cleave-build".

 

E - Blink: As the name of the ability says, Blink makes Zeratul able to teleport a pretty good distance instantly. We use this as either an escape or as a gap-closer to catch up with our target. This ability is greatly empowered at level 13, when we get the ability to return back to the point where we used blink in the first place.

 

R - Shadow Assault: This is basically a very strong gap-closer ability, it's not picked very often because the alternative is one of the strongest ultimates in the game. But it is really fun to play around with in Quick match. Shadow Assault gets greatly empowered at level 20, when you can talent into getting lifesteal on the ability. By then, you can basically 1v1 any hero. This ability is better for the "Cleave-build", since the "Vorpal-build" already has a weaker version of this ability in Vorpal Blade.

 

R - Void Prison: This ability is by far one of the strongest ultimates in the entire game. The impact a well-placed Void Prison can have on a teamfight is simply immense. It should be used in one of two ways. It should either be used to zone out enemies so that the rest of their team is vulnerable in a teamfight, or it should be used as part of a combo into the likes of Maw, Mosh Pit, Ring of Frost and so on.

 

Level 1: If you go for the "Cleave-build", you want to start picking up talents that powers up your "Q", so we pick Greater Cleave.

If you go for the "Vorpal-build", you mostly want to pick Regeneration Master for the extra health regen in long chases or 1v1's and in general to regen your health while rotating between ganks so that you don't have to go back to base to heal or tap the well very often.

Level 4: For the "Cleave-build", we pick Gathering Power. This is where the journey of the "Cleave-build" begins. Every time you are present near a kill of an enemy hero, you will gain a stack of Gathering Power, increasing your abilities' damage by 2% up to 30%. That is a hard hitting Cleave, if you manage to get all 15 stacks. But you need to be very careful because you will lose all your stacks if you die.

This is also the tier where the "Vorpal-build" picks up its namesake Vorpal Blade. This is one of the great assets in your kit to stick on to your target. Simply press the ability when your gank target has gotten out of your reach, and you will teleport to the last target you attacked.

Level 7: The "Cleave-build" will pick up Void Slash, which increases our initial burst by a lot and should help us to kill some of the sturdier enemies as our Gathering Power stacks increases.

The "Vorpal-build" will pick up Follow Through, which will make our Auto Attacks more powerful every time we stick to an enemy and cycle through abilities. Remember that Follow Through also triggers after using movement abilities, like Blink and Vorpal Blade.

Level 10:  Both playstyles should pick up Void Prison in any form of ranked playmode, not because Shadow Assault is bad at all but Void Prison is just that much stronger and has an incredible impact on teamfights.

Level 13: At this tier, both playstyles pick up Wormhole. This ability is simply too good to pass up on. It gives us a ton of mobility, makes our poke safer, makes us able to outplay our enemy, and makes us able to go in for a kill when the enemy think they have escaped our initial burst. Great examples of using this ability would be diving towers, blinking over a wall to land a Cleave on your enemies for poke in a teamfight and give an instant escape, or it could be blinking over an enemy wall to take out a hero who went to tap the well. (There will be a picture explanation of Wormhole, after the talent section in this guide)

Level 16: This is also a tier where both playstyles pick the same talent. Rendering Cleave is just the best option for both styles, as it deals a great amount of extra damage as a bleed. With this talent, a single Cleave will be able, to reduce all minions in a wave to 10% hp, and they will die to the bleed in the time it takes you to mount back up, and look for your next target.

Level 20: Again, in this tier both playstyles pick the same talent. Rewind is a nice and strong ability, that resets the cooldowns on our main abilities which should make us able to secure a kill on any hero in the game with 2 full cycles of abilities. Rewind is also a true nuclear weapon. If you get to use a double-combo of your abilities on a full enemy team in a Mosh Pit, you'll most likely kill all the assassins and squishy specialists, and take a big chunk of health off warriors.

 

Wormhole is an awesome ability, but most people who pick up Zeratul, are often confused by how the ability works. In the pictures below, I have tried to show step-by-step how the talent works and included a video clip at full speed to show how fast it can be.

When we pick up Wormhole at level 13 and use our "E"(Blink), a yellow bar will show above your abilities. This bar indicates the time you have left to re-activate your "E" to return to the position where you used blink in the first place.

So, if we look at the first picture, we see an ideal scenario where Wormhole can be used. The Arthas is at low health, and we know that we can take him out in one hit.

In the second picture, we use blink, to get on top of our target, and take him out with our "Q"(Cleave). If we look at the left site of the picture, we can see a little red circle. This circle indicates where we blinked from, and where we will return to when we re-activate the ability.

In the third picture, we activate our blink again and get teleported back to our original position.

Cleave-build: In the beginning of the game you can either go and help a teammate win his lane by using your Cleave for good wave-clear, or you can sit in an offensive brush in a lane where you have a teammate with a stun or root, and try to get an early pick, and deny EXP for the enemy team.

At level 4, you want to start roaming the map and ganking the squishy solo laners on the enemy team to stack up your Gathering Power. You will be roaming the map for most of the mid-game and pick up talents to help you along the way. Remember to come around for map objectives, and gain more Gathering Power stacks by placing some good Void Prisons in teamfights, getting some kills on the enemy heroes.

At level 13, you can start to go for the cheesier kills like blinking over enemy walls and taking down enemies who are going to tap the well. But make sure that you can kill them within 1-2 seconds, so that you have time to use your Wormhole talent to get out of the enemy base before you get killed by tower shots.

At level 16, you should be close to maxing out your Gathering Power stacks and you can now help push in the lanes, as you can take them out with a single cleave, then mount up and push the next lane, waiting for an opportunity to get a gank or for the next map objective to activate. Remember, that most other heroes have a lot of damage potential now and can take you out if you are not careful.

In the late-game, you have your Rewind and you can try to go for ganks again, as you will most likely be able to kill any hero with the damage you can burst out now. Should a gank begin to look like it's going to end badly for you, then remember that you can Blink then Rewind and Blink again, but make sure that your Wormhole-timer has run out before blinking the second time or you will teleport directly into the arms of your enemy.

Mainly in the late-game, you want to jump in and out of teamfights dealing as much damage as possible, while always blinking out of the action when it starts to get dangerous. While waiting for your Blink cooldown to come back up, you can lurk around behind the enemy backline to pick off heroes going back to tap the well.

 

Vorpal-build: In the early-gane we roam between the lanes to try and get picks, while gathering as many health globes as possible. Zeratul is really effective at helping an ally hero who is laning against Zagara. You can clear her creep with Cleave and you can go in and put some pressure on her so that she cannot dominate the lane.

At level 4, we can start to look for enemy heroes who are trying to rotate between lanes on their own. We have picked up our Vorpal Blade ability, and should be able to deal a lot of damage to an enemy before they can get back to safety behind their gate. This is the scenario throughout most of the early- to mid-game while we still go in and poke in the teamfights.

Our level 7 Talent helps us to deal more damage to the enemies we are chasing. The empowered Auto Attacks give a nice boost to our burst damage.

At level 10, we should engage more in the teamfights and lock down enemies with some well placed Void Prisons and try to clean up the remaining enemies as they try to disengage from the fight.

At level 13, you can start to go for the cheesier kills like blinking over enemy walls and taking down enemies who are going to tap the well. But make sure that you can kill them within 1-2 seconds, so that you have time to use your Wormhole talent to get out of the enemy base before you get killed by tower shots.

At level 16, we pick up a lot of Area Damage and should stay in teamfights for a longer time to dish out some real damage. We have great tools to get to the enemy backline and chunk them down before we teleport back out safely and wait for our cooldowns to get back up.

At level 20, we are just a pain. We can chase down any hero and stick to them while dealing massive damage. Last but not least, we now have access to our double-combo of abilities, which can do some real damage in team fights.

All in all, Zeratul is a force to be dealt with. You should experience that your team is winning its lanes, because the enemy team is aware of your gank potential. If they are not, then we just gank them, and we'll win the lane anyway.  

 

Zeratul is great against mages (Jaina, Kael'thas, Li-Ming), as they have a very low health pool and few good escapes. Another hero that Zeratul is very good against is Medic (Lt. Morales), who is basically dead if she goes too far away from her gate. In general, Zeratul thrives in games with squishy glass cannon heroes, like most ranged assassins and specialists. 

 

Zeratul is a beast without a doubt, but there are heroes in the game who can counter his playstyle. The most effective way to make the life of a Zeratul a nightmare is to pick a support who can reveal an area like Tassadar, Brightwing, Kharazim, Rehgar, or Uther. Their ability will cancel Zeratul's Trait if he is near the area where the ability is activated. This completely takes away the momentum from the Zeratul, and he can be an easy kill if he had been bold with his flanking position.

Other than that, Zeratul is very vulnerable to stuns, especially if he has blinked in to deal his damage and gets stunned before he can wormhole out again. This will most likely secure a kill on Zeratul.

Some other soft counters to Zeratul would be Lunara and Nazeebo, as his trait breaks when he takes damage, including damage over time like poison. Also, Abathur mines will slow Zeratul's rotations and break his trait.  

 

Zeratul is my favorite hero, and he is my go-to when I just want to relax and have fun. He fits my calculated and careful playstyle, while I can still go in and dish out a lot of damage when the opportunity comes. I usually play the "Cleave-build", as I love the little game within the game, stacking up Gathering Power and making sure that I don't lose my stacks.

When I play Zeratul, I'm usually rockin' the 2nd tint on the Zerg Hunter skin, though I also like the 2nd tint on the Master skin.