Abathur Talents

Level	Choices
1	✓ ? ✘︎ ✘︎
4	✓ ? ?
7	? ? ✓
10	✓ ?
13	? ✓ ✘︎
16	? ✓ ✘︎ ✘︎
20	? ✘︎ ✓ ?

Pressurized Glands provides Spike Burst with a reasonable power increase during the early game, and has good synergy with Soma Transference and Envenomed Spikes at Levels 13 and 16 respectively. Pressurized Glands also helps improve your waveclear. It is the recommended option for this tier, since it greatly enhances his Symbiote.

Envenomed Nest dramatically increases the damage of Toxic Nest, but deals this extra damage over time. Consider taking this if you are planning on taking the other Toxic nest talents at levels 4 and 7. This Talent can also be useful in Quick Match games when the enemy team lacks a healer or self-sustain options.

Reinforced Carapace increases Carapace's shield amount. Carapace's healing effect ends if the shield is destroyed. This Talent adds a very small boost to shield strength; for this reason we recommend Pressurized Glands instead.

Survival Instincts is an underwhelming Talent, as it will only be impactful when paired with other Locust Strain focused Talents. However, all these Talents that improve your split-push cannot be compared to Teamfight Talents, which are much better during the game.

Adrenal Overload significantly increases the damage potential of Heroes who depend on Basic Attacks for damage, self-sustain, or to trigger other effects. Heroes that do not rely on Basic Attacks benefit much less from this Talent; its usefulness depends on team composition.

Needlespine allows Abathur to deal more damage with Symbiote by increasing Stab's range and damage. This talent is very impactful, but if you have a good Hero reliant on Basic Attacks, Adrenal Overload will be a better option. Otherwise, Needlespine will have great value.

Prolific Dispersal dramatically increases the number of Toxic Nests Abathur can deploy simultaneously. Prolific Dispersal has strong synergy with Vile Nest at level 7, even in the absence of Envenomed Nest from level 1. Consider this talent in maps where you can easily disrupt enemy rotations, such as Dragon Shire, Towers of doom or Infernal Shrines.

Vile Nest can be extremely annoying for the enemy team. This talent can help your team secure objectives and kills by reducing the effectiveness of enemy rotations and ganks. Vile Nest has great synergy with Prolific Dispersal.

Networked Carapace is predominantly a PvE Talent focused on pushing empty lanes by keeping large numbers of Minions and Mercenaries healthy. It applies untalented shields to allied Heroes who are nearby the Symbiote host. Carapace's heal effect is not applied to Minions or Mercenaries, but it is applied to all Heroes that are shielded by Networked Carapace. This Talent is good against teams with low waveclear, as it makes it much harder for them to deal with waves or Evolve Monstrosity.

Calldown: MULE should almost always be taken on Sky Temple, because it gets insane value due to the way the main objective plays out there. It is a situational pick on other maps. Calldown: Mule is usually a very strong choice. It allows you to apply pressure and push lanes during all stages of the game while repairing your own Structures.

In this section we discuss when and why to pick a given Heroic Ability. If you want to read how they work in detail and/or you are looking for some tips on how to use them, check them out on the Abilities and Strategy page.

Ultimate Evolution is a fantastic and versatile Heroic ability. It should usually be used on high damage Heroes, as these clones will benefit the most from the extra Ability Power and Basic Attack damage. Ideally, the cloned Hero will also have a gap closer to ensure that you are able to close in on enemies and deal meaningful damage during the 20 second window. Cloning Tanks will yield less damage, but can be useful if your team requires more crowd control.

Evolve Monstrosity is a strong pushing and sieging tool, but you must sacrifice a lot of team fight presence in order to take it. It is unrealistic to assume that you will be able to get the monstrosity into an ideal position. Sometimes having Symbiote on a hero will be better than using Ultimate Evolution in a fight. At those games, we recommend picking Evolve Monstrosity instead, as it will push the offlane while you are supporting your team in the best possible way.

Spatial Efficiency can put out a lot of damage when paired with Needlespine. This can be useful when you find yourself primarily using Symbiote to imbue a ranged Basic Attacker with Adrenal Overload, or would otherwise get decreased value out of Spike Burst Talents.

Soma Transference can heal the host for a significant amount of Health, especially if Symbiote is on a melee Hero who will be within range of multiple enemy Heroes. Pressurized Glands synergises very well with this Talent. Soma Transference is less effective on ranged allies.

Bombard Strain increases the distance that Locusts can travel before expiring; it also the number of Basic Attacks that they can deliver during this time. When this talent is paired with Locust Brood, you can threaten enemy Keeps with waves of Locusts. However, it will mostly be better to get a Talent that will improve your impact in fights, like Spatial Efficiency or Soma Transference.

Envenomed Spikes provides a significant Slow over a large area, especially when combined with Pressurized Glands at Level 1. It allows melee Heroes to stick to targets much more easily than they would otherwise be able to. One advantage this has over Adrenaline Boost is that its effect cannot be removed by damaging your Symbiote host. The other important difference is that Envenomed Spikes can affect multiple enemies.

Adrenaline Boost is essentially the opposite of Envenomed Spikes, speeding up a single ally, rather than slowing down multiple enemies. Slowing enemies allows your entire team to reposition, as opposed to giving a single ally increased Movement Speed. However, Adrenaline Boost can help your team run down kills that would otherwise escape. The main drawback to Adrenaline Boost is that its effect is removed when Carapace shield is destroyed. Despite those flaws, this Talent is very impactful when Symbiote is on a hypercarry, or on a very mobile hero, such as Zeratul, Tracer, Genji or Greymane.

Volatile Mutation deals damage to enemies very near Abathur's Heroic entities. This talent may have some conflicts with Ultimate Evolution, where you will often clone a ranged Hero and may only be within range for Volatile Mutation very briefly. Volatile Mutation is overshadowed by Envenomed Spikes and Adrenaline Boost, since those will be much more effective and reliable in fights than Volatile Mutation.

Locust Brood can be used in combination with Deep Tunnel to instantly create pressure at any location. Locust Brood is required in any kind of Locust oriented build, as it is the only Talent capable of producing Locusts in bursts. Still, like other Locust Strain Talents, they do not add anything to Abathur's impact in teamfights, and are not recommended.

Evolutionary Link makes it harder for the enemy team to kill Ultimate Evolution's target. Because the shield is based on the target's maximum Health, this can be situationally useful if your composition's preferred clone is a melee assassin. We recommend going for this Talent when you are not going for a Symbiote build, but still picked Ultimate Evolution. However, it can still be picked with Symbiote build, as long as you have Genji, Maiev, or Qhira to clone.

Evolution Complete is a great Level 20 talent to take in games where Evolve Monstrosity has been selected. However, Evolve Monstrosity is really underwhelming when compared to Ultimate Evolution.

Hivemind increases Symbiote's effectiveness by 50% when considering Symbiote Abilities directly. However, Hivemind doubles Symbiote's effectiveness when considering Talents like Soma Transference and Envenomed Spikes, as these Talents work per Hero hit, rather than per Ability cast. This provides you with greatly increased team fight presence. Regardless of what other Talents you take, you will almost always get good value out of Hivemind in team fights.

Locust Nest pushes a full Locust build to the limit, helping to generate as many Locusts as possible. It will double the number of passively generated Locusts, and allows you to simultaneously spawn Locusts in different lanes. This Talent is only recommended when you have several Talents already invested into Locusts, as other options at this tier will get more value otherwise.