Blaze Build Guide “Need a light?”
Welcome to our guide for Blaze, a Tank in Heroes of the Storm. Within these pages, you will find everything required to understand how best to play this hero, in both different map styles and team compositions.
Blaze's Overview
Blaze is a heavy Tank with great waveclear, powerful crowd-control, and high survivability thanks to his large Health pool and dependable self-sustain. Due to Jet Propulsion having a long delay, Blaze is not good against high-mobility Heroes (for example Tracer) and ideally requires other Heroes to start the engage for him.
Blaze's Strengths and Weaknesses
- Outstanding ability to disrupt opponents' plans through plentiful crowd control and Bunker Drop
- Hard to kill due to large Health pool and on-demand access to Armor
- Respectable area of effect damage potential and waveclear for a Tank
- Reliance on multiple skillshots that can be avoided
- Fairly immobile, thus prone to be kited
- Limited burst and single-target damage output
Blaze's Talent Build Cheatsheet
Basic Attacks Build
RecommendedBlaze's Basic Attacks Build primarily empowers your waveclear while also increasing your survivability, utility, and damage. As a consequence, we recommend this Build when playing Blaze as Offlaner.
In particular, Incinerator Gauntlets at Level 4 makes it easier to clear Minions and Mercenaries while laning and Adrenaline Stimpack at Level 1 further empowers its value against Mercenaries while also boosting your damage against enemy Heroes.
Oil Spill Build
SituationalBlaze's Oil Spill Build primarily empowers your engage while also increasing your survivability, utility, and damage. As a consequence, we recommend this Build when playing Blaze as Tank.
In particular, the Slow increase provided by Oil Dispersal at Level 4 makes it easier to use Oil Spill as a setup for Jet Propulsion.
ARAM Build
ARAMBlaze's ARAM Build primarily empowers your engage while also increasing your survivability, utility, and damage. As a consequence, we recommend this Build when playing Blaze as Tank.
In particular, the Slow increase provided by Oil Dispersal at Level 4 makes it easier to use Oil Spill as a setup for Jet Propulsion.
Blaze's Synergies and Counters
Blaze's well-rounded Ability set allows him to work in most team compositions and with most other Heroes, granted he is also picked for his anti-melee role. Oil Spill's Slowing effect is particularly useful for improving the uptime of Assassins, whereas most Heroes with skillshots will find Jet Propulsion a great way of setting up for accurate hits.
Since Blaze relies on skillshots to deal damage and on the rather slow charge up of Jet Propulsion to initiate, he tends to struggle offensively against highly mobile Heroes. Furthermore, his large Health pool and limited mobility makes him particularly vulnerable to percentage-based damage.
Blaze's Maps
Thanks to his great waveclear and good self-sustain, Blaze excels on Maps where it is possible to double-soak and does well on most Maps.
Blaze can get a lot of value from his Abilities on Maps that feature static Objectives that force opponents to fight within a specific area or in enclosed spaces (such as Infernal Shrines).
On the contrary, Blaze does not excel at dueling, therefore he does not do well on Maps where there is a Capture Point to contest in the early game (so Braxis Holdout).
Blaze's Tips and Tricks
- Flame Stream fires two parallel projectiles. Hit with both to deal more damage.
- An Ignited Oil Spill will Ignite any other Oil Spills that overlap with it.
- Jet Propulsion has a long delay, so it should be used after Oil Spill.
- Avoid staying too long in Bunker Drop if unnecessary. Press the R key or right-click near it to exit.
- Combustion prevents you from casting other Abilities while it is being channeled.
- The cooldown of Pyromania is reduced when hitting enemy Heroes with Flame Stream.
Blaze's Role in the Current Meta
Blaze is a niche Tank that excels at disrupting aggressive melee Heroes and a solid Offlaner that excels at double-soaking. Sometimes Bunker Drop is the main reason why Blaze is being picked because it can be used to counter many Heroic Abilities (for example Temporal Loop by Chromie) when used on yourself or even on your teammates.
Changelog
- 17 Oct. 2024 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 17 Oct. 2024 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 17 Oct. 2024 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 14 Jul. 2024 (talents page): Guide reviewed.
- 14 Jul. 2024 (abilities page): Guide reviewed.
- 14 Jul. 2024 (this page): Guide reviewed.
- 22 Sep. 2023 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Bug Fixes.
- 22 Sep. 2023 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Bug Fixes.
- 20 Sep. 2023 (talents page): ARAM Build added.
- 20 Sep. 2023 (this page): ARAM Build added.
- 07 Jul. 2022 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 07 Jul. 2022 (this page): Builds updated.
- 30 Jan. 2022 (talents page): Builds and Talent Descriptions updated.
- 30 Jan. 2022 (this page): Builds updated.
- 22 Jul. 2021 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 22 Jul. 2021 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 22 Jul. 2021 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 16 Jun. 2021 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 16 Jun. 2021 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 16 Jun. 2021 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 01 Mar. 2021 (abilities page): Minor fixes.
- 25 Feb. 2021 (talents page): New layout.
- 20 Jan. 2021 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 20 Jan. 2021 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 20 Jan. 2021 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 18 Oct. 2020 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 18 Oct. 2020 (this page): Builds updated.
- 24 Sep. 2020 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 24 Sep. 2020 (abilities page): Minor fixes.
- 24 Sep. 2020 (this page): Builds updated.
- 30 Aug. 2020 (this page): Role in Current Meta section updated.
- 20 Jul. 2020 (talents page): Talents and recommendations reviewed and updated.
- 15 Dec. 2019 (this page): Added a note about current Anomaly.
- 04 Jul. 2019 (this page): Guide reviewed and updated.
- 03 Jul. 2019 (talents page): Guide reviewed and updated.
- 23 May 2019 (talents page): Updated Talent discussions and recommendations following patch v2.45.1 changes.
- 03 Dec. 2018 (talents page): Updated Talent discussions and recommendations following patch v2.40.1 changes.
- 13 Mar. 2018 (talents page): Recommended build updated to better reflect metagame state.
- 09 Feb. 2018 (talents page): Recommended Talents updated to better reflect metagame state.
- 28 Jan. 2018 (talents page): Updated for patch 2.29.9.
- 09 Jan. 2018 (this page): Guide created.
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Elitesparkle is a multiple times Master player in Europe who plays Heroes of the Storm since its release. He is an active member of the community who likes to teach new and veteran players all he knows about his favorite game.
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