Heroes of the Storm Alarak

[Farbas 5]

I suggest to indicate that Extended lightning will be difficult to complete against team comps featuring abathur, or mostly ranged hero that won't tend to group up a lot.
I also suggest to label Sustaining Power as situational, in the case where your team has no healer and few tanks, and features mostly ranged assassins, as it can be the case in modes like Quick Match.

[Trensicourt 5]

About Alarak, what key bindings or key changes, such as Quick cast, would you all suggest to use? I'm having trouble setting up for Alarak, especially in messy team fights.

[Valhalen 1,485]

8 hours ago, Trensicourt said:

About Alarak, what key bindings or key changes, such as Quick cast, would you all suggest to use? I'm having trouble setting up for Alarak, especially in messy team fights.

Alarak requires very precision, since his skillshots can be hard to hit. For that reason, I run with the "On Release" option on Discord Strike, Telekinesis and Counter-Strike in order to see the aiming reticule better and calculate where it will hit. For Telekinesis, which is an ability hard to maneuver, the "On Release" option is specially useful, allowing you to drag the cursor around and see how the effect will apply; I recommend playing around with this option in the Try Mode first, so you get used to it. And you can always cancel any ability on either "Off" and "On Release" it by right-clicking anywhere, in case you decide to not cast said abilities.

Edited July 19, 2017 by Valhalen

[Morcalivan 86]

The lightning quest is also easy to complete when facing a melee solo laner. Since they will generally be in the mix of minions you can target. So if the team fights are too ranged based or too spread out, this might be your way to get the quest advanced a little further. It may only be temporary though as they catch on. You can also use it when laying siege. As enemy heroes try to come out to push you away they open up to some easy center damage.

Edit: Specifically, use the walls and towers. Once your minions are closing to siege, position yourself so that your circle line lets you hit all three, so that when they come out to engage, you can just ping them for your quest. Easy.  If you are fighting in the open and they are staying in the back row of minions because they know about Alarak, then you can always bump them forward, or bump minions backwards.

Capture points are also very nice for grabbing lightning and discord quests. There's always someone getting swarmed. :p

Edited January 26, 2018 by Morcalivan
clarification

[SacriJuts 2]

Hi, I found a typo I believe in the Alarak guide in the Chaos Reign build, the level 7 talent being Applied Force while the description of the build talks about Hindered Motion :)

[positiv2 955]

30 minutes ago, SacriJuts said:

Hi, I found a typo I believe in the Alarak guide in the Chaos Reign build, the level 7 talent being Applied Force while the description of the build talks about Hindered Motion :)

The sentence before Hindered Motion says that Applied Force can be exchanged. This means that Hindered Motion is an alternative choice to Applied Force at level 7 and due to its nature deserves to be described in the build description. 

[Guest Lurker 2.0]

His guide has been updated to reflect the Meta but the descriptions for his builds has not been updated to reflect the adjusted talent choices and include reasons for talents not chosen for the suggested builds.

[Morcalivan 86]

The W talents for cooldown and range make it a pretty good crowd control hero. Saves teammates and doom enemies.

[Mizolo 1]

I have a different build for Alarak.

https://www.icy-veins.com/heroes/talent-calculator/alarak#51.0!2122332

This is considered by me to be the 'Q and Sadism' build, and by my friends as the 'One Shot God' or 'Amon' build.

The way this build is MEANT to be played turns Alarak into more of a ranged pull-melee assassin rather than a melee one, because you pull them in, discord strike them, slash once or twice, then run away as they run and cower in fear at how much raw damage you just did to them.

Set Q to on to immediately cast in the direction your cursor is facing, leave W and E alone, and put your Counter-Strike on immediate, or 'on', and the deadly charge you can leave be as well.

This build also relies heavily on the E ability as well in order to heal yourself to above 80% health to enable the lvl 1 talent.

Be aware, this build is also HEAVILY skill based, and you should practice in single-player or AI modes to get the hang of it before going into a PvP match.

Once you get around 180% or more sadism, you can reliably 1v2 the enemy team ... it gets pretty insane how much damage, and fear you can cause the enemy team with just your basic abilities.

 

The W at level 1 allows it to have relatively the same cooldown as discord strike, making it MUCH easier to constantly, and consistently, deal discord strikes.

The Chaos Reigns talent at level 4 is what's going to make this build what it is, and turn you into a damage machine-beast nastier than Amon himself. You must be relatively skilled to hit the 3-in-one strike, but once you do, your team has an IMMEDIATE advantage in virtually EVERY fight. Not only does this talent increase your Q damage ... IT STACKS WITH SADISM!!! ... so you think you're getting 220 extra damage out of this? ... NO ... YOU are getting AT LEAST 440 extra damage, this is an absolutely HUGE bonus. This talent is much easier to get, and GREAT, when on epi-center, objective-based maps like; Cursed Hollow, Volskaya Factory, Garden Terror, Alterac Pass, etc, where the enemy team is bunched up. Use this so you can silence them all and deal god-levels of damage. I kid you not, it is better to get this quest done and die because of it, causing your team to lose a fight and/or objective with only 1 or 2 kills, than to WIN a team-fight on that objective. That, however, is ONLY for team-fights below level 10-12, die later in the game, and it will be more of a detriment.

The Hindered Motion talent at level 7 makes it literally impossible for someone to escape your W pull-to-Q strike if you know what you're doing, because the push/pull stuns for a second and while it's pushing you start up your Discord Strike and it hits before they can slide out or teleport away.

Counter-Strike at level 10 is literally the best thing ... and it ALSO ... stacks with sadism. It's also great if there's a li-li, or a li-ming behind the main-line and you run up, counter-strike, and kill them. It's also great against charging or un-avoidable stuns like butcher's charge, and ESPECIALLY Xul's root ability. I can't tell you how many times I've made a Xul run back to his nexus because he attempted to root me, I Counter-Strike just before it ends, deal nearly 1,000 damage just from the counter-strike, pull him and discord strike him for nearly another 1,000 damage, and as my Hindered Motion talent does it's work and me or my team finish him off.

The Rite of Rak'Shir talent at level 13 is actually a VERY simple to use talent, you simply mark a target, and EVERY TIME you discord strike them, that adds 3% to your sadism ... every time you kill the target ... add another 5% sadism. Every time a target dies, the cooldown is reduced to 10 seconds. This is the talent where you start to gain virtually UN-LIMITED POWER, because guess what? ... THERE IS NO SADISM CEILING OR LIMIT TO RITE OF RAK'SHIR GAIN, ONLY DEFAULT SADISM KILLS. Your highest point where sadism actually STOPS working, and STOPS giving you bonuses, is around 500-600% ... and most of the time you will be dominating so hard that you'll end the game SUPER quick, and only have around 212%, the most I've ever gotten is 313%, and I was 1v4'ing the entire enemy team CONSTANTLY at level 20+.

The Mocking Strikes talent at level 16 virtually doubles your DPS or damage you can do in a fight in general. Simply slash only once or twice after W pull-to-Q'ing them, as your slow still makes it count. Congrats, you just reduced all of your basic cooldowns by 6 seconds, virtually restoring your Discord Strike ability because during the time you took to slash, 2 seconds went by, and now you just do it again to the same person, or a different one, literally sentencing anyone who DARES stay to fight you instead of running away to certain DEATH.

Deadly Charge at level 20 makes it so that you can kill virtually anyone in a 1v1 situation without so much as a blink of an eye. Simply W pull-to-Q, electrocute to heal what one or 2 attacks they just did to you, slash them once or not at all, then charge Deadly Charge as they run away, and execute them. For higher health heroes, just W-pull-to-Q them again and they'll die. Oh, and I forgot, THIS ALSO STACKS WITH SADISM!

 

As you can see, this build relies somewhat heavily that you have a good front-line, a decent healer to maintain that front-line, and just 1 or 2 other assassins for more damage. You, a healer, a tank, a bruiser, and a ranged assassin or even melee assassin will work GREATLY with you.

I would suggest for comps:
ETC, Arthas, or Blaze as your tank, because CC will DEFINITELY help you W-pull-to-Q people
A decent healer of almost anyone. Morales could work, but beware that they may switch to them instead of you if you pull someone in.
A bruiser, preferably Artanis , as he can get your camps without going below 70% health, and because he's tanky as hell if he builds himself right, and can lane if he wishes.
Ranged Assassins are preferable, especially Raynor (Even though that's ironic since Alarak despises Terrans/Humans), but anyone with good ranged DPS will work. They can also help you fight off a ganker or someone who dived to get to you

Be mindful that you lose ALL of your sadism, back to 100%, when you die, but upon getting mocking strikes and Deadly Charge, people have to either fight you and suffer IMMENSE damage, or, as Alarak says:

"Run away or DIE, I care LITTLE which you choose." - Highlord Alarak

Edited July 3, 2020 by Mizolo