Jaina Talents

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

Winter's Reach is a situational Talent. It extends Frostbolt to a much greater range than Cone of Cold and Blizzard, being very impractical in the majority of games. However, it is a good option against compositions with several high range Heroes, such as Junkrat or Hanzo, because it permits Jaina to apply pressure on those.

Although Lingering Chill turns Frostbite into one of the longest Slow effect, it fits rather poorly with Jaina's bursty approach to solving problems. However, it is great to improve your stacking speed in Frostbite, being a good option on Maps without many Regeneration Globes to pick.

Fingers of Frost provides Jaina with more damage and Mana. This is the standard Talent for all builds. Still, there are Maps where you will not be able to easily stack it, like in Battlefield of Eternity, where Lingering Chill can be a good choice instead.

Frost Shards improves the reliability of Frostbolt by making it more difficult to block. It is particularly useful for hitting enemies that are hiding behind Minions, Structures, or Summons. It also helps with dealing with Mercenary Camps; just make sure to line up your Frostbolts properly.

Arcane Intellect seems to be not necessary if you already have Fingers of Frost, but it guarantees that you will very often have the 10% extra Spell Power from it. For this reason, this Talent is a good choice with and without Fingers of Frost.

Frost Armor has niche use against nimble melee Assassins. Although the Armor provided by the Talent is passable, being able to Chill any attacker allows you to retaliate with full force, through Frostbite, without having to initially hit with an Ability. The Slow effect makes Frostbolt and Blizzard much easier to land, on top of greatly improving Cone of Cold's damage. This becomes particularly useful when using the Numbing Blast Talent.

Ice Lance provides most single-target damage potential at this tier. This is particularly true when coupled with Frost Shards. Ice Lance also allows you to chase and kite enemy Heroes more effectively through reapplying Chill.

Ice Floes provides Cone of Cold with a very respectable cooldown reduction. This is a great Talent when Icy Veins and Numbing Blast are picked, because you can apply a 1-second Root each second in the best case scenario. It is excellent against Melee compositions.

Icefury Wand is the most versatile choice, as it increases Jaina's single-target damage, waveclear, and readiness to follow up her Tank.

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.

Ring of Frost is an Ability that is generally used as part of a combo, or as a means of punishing team compositions with 3 or more melee or otherwise immobile Heroes. Numbing Blast can help with setting up your own Ring of Frost hits.

Summon Water Elemental is Jaina's versatile go-to Talent, as it does not require any kind of setup or specific team composition to make use of, unlike Ring of Frost.

Storm Front turns Blizzard into one of the most reliable follow-up Abilities. The range increase allows you to play unusually defensively for a caster whilst retaining the capacity to fully use your most powerful Ability. Further, the area of effect increase is enough to ensure two full hits when targeting opponents right in the center of Blizzard's reticle. This synergises well with Snowstorm.

Ice Barrier is the defensive alternative to Icy Veins, and is typically picked as a means of surviving against melee Assassins. However, since Jaina already has an Ice Block, and due to how overpowered Icy Veins is, we do not recommend this Talent. If you are struggling against Melee Assassins, it might be better to pick Numbing Blast with Ice Floes instead.

Icy Veins is a fantastic activatable Talent that allows you to have a "second wind" after using your Basic Abilities. Besides a hefty 50% Mana cost reduction, Icy Veins also reduces the cooldowns of your Basic Abilities to 1.33 seconds, 5 seconds, and 3.33 seconds for Frostbolt, Blizzard, and Cone of Cold respectively. Icy Veins works particularly well with Ice Lance.

Snowstorm is an underwhelming Talent. For it to be actually effective, all 3 waves should hit a target, which is very unlikely. In most situations the other 2 options at this Level will be much better choices.

Although Northern Exposure provides a reasonably powerful Armor reduction effect, Numbing Blast is generally more effective at indirectly improving Jaina's damage output. The main issue with Northern Exposure is that its effect do not affect Cone of Cold's own damage, making it less powerful than it may seem.

Although Numbing Blast provides no upfront damage, its Root effect will generally result into much more burst than the alternative Talents by allowing you to unconditionally hit with at least two Blizzard waves, on top of allowing your allies to follow up. It is worth noting that Numbing Blast is Jaina's only source of hard crowd control besides Ring of Frost. Numbing Blast also has some defensive utility to it, but it will actually out-damage Northern Exposure in most situations, simply because of its utility, particularly against melee Heroes.

Cold Snap's additional central effect takes an excessive 6 seconds to trigger after first casting Ring of Frost, making it generally very unrealistic to rely upon. The cooldown reduction aspect is interesting, but is ultimately winmore.

Wintermute provides an impressive potential short term damage increase of 50%, though in practice it is often a bit less, especially if the Water Elemental is killed. If you feel like your survivability has not been an issue throughout a given match, Wintermute will certainly pay off, especially with Icy Veins; both cooldowns should always be timed, especially considering they are exactly the same length.

Ice Blink has both defensive and offensive utility for Jaina, and is reminiscent of a short-ranged Bolt of the Storm which can be used to apply Frostbite. Ice Blink is especially useful when being heavily pressured by melee Assassins or otherwise dived repeatedly, but may also be used to combo with Numbing Blast for a reliable Root effect to burst down Heroes who are out of position.

Deep Chill can be debilitating to melee-heavy team compositions, but must compete with more powerful Talents.