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Mei Build Guide “A-Mei-Zing!”
Welcome to our guide for Mei, 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.
Mei's Overview
Mei is a Tank who relies on various types of crowd control to mess up the enemy plans and some peculiar forms of self-sustain to survive longer during team fights.
Mei's Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
High survivability- Decent damage output
- Versatile crowd control
- Good mobility
Weaknesses
Not able to peel from high mobility Heroes (like Tracer)- Weak to Knockbacks and Roots
Mei's Talent Build Cheatsheet
Icing Build
Recommended
Mei's Icing Build is focused on improving your damage to enemy Heroes and increasing the crowd control you can provide during team fights, at the cost of some survivability.
The cooldown reduction provided by 
Cold Front at Level 4
is great for using Black Ice at Level 16 more often
and to have Icing up when 
Blizzard is up
thanks to the cooldown reduction given by Flurry at Level 13.
Cryo-Freeze Build
Situational
Mei's Cryo-Freeze Build is designed to increase her survivability and sustain damage via Basic Attacks.
The additional survivability comes from 
Crystallize
at Level 4, a defensive Talent that makes it harder
for the enemy team to break the Shield provided by Cryo-Freeze.
The damage increase is primarily provided by 
Heat Transfer at Level 1,
combined with the Passive effect from Cooling Servos at Level 13.
With these Talents, you can pressure the enemy frontline.
Snow Blind Build
Situational
Mei's Snow Blind Build is quite good to counter enemy Heroes who primarily deal damage via Basic Attacks and also lack mobility (notably The Butcher and Zul'jin).
Blind them twice in a row thanks to 
Fresh Powder at Level 16
and then again thanks to Heavy Pack at Level 1 giving cooldown reduction.
In addition to that, Skating Away at Level 7
grants Physical Armor, which also counters Basic Attacks.
ARAM Build
ARAMMei's ARAM Build is focused on improving your damage to enemy Heroes and increasing the crowd control you can provide during team fights, at the cost of some survivability.
The cooldown reduction provided by Cold Front at Level 4
is great for using Black Ice at Level 16 more often
and to have Icing up when Blizzard is up
thanks to the cooldown reduction given by Flurry at Level 13.
Mei's Synergies and Counters
Mei synergizes with
Considering that her Basic Abilities are not that reliable
when trying to engage enemy Heroes,
Mei prefers having allied Heroes who can initiate for her (for example Maiev),
so that she can follow-up with Blizzard.
Similarly, Mei benefits from Heroes that can help her
to keep enemy Heroes within Blizzard
by creating impassable terrain (like Tassadar with 
Force Wall)
or by Knocking back enemy Heroes nearby
(such as Maiev with 
Umbral Bind).
As she provides a lot of crowd control, Mei performs better with Heroes that can follow-up her Abilities with burst damage (for example Jaina).
Mei's high Slow uptime is good for
allied Heroes who get increased damage from it (such as 
Ace In The Hole
at Level 1 on Raynor) as the condition for triggering
their increased damage will easily be met.
Mei is countered by
Mei suffers while facing Heroes who have access to any kind of mobility because she will have a hard time trying to engage and her peeling tools will not accomplish anything (for example Tracer).
Roots (such as 
Entangling Roots by Malfurion)
and Knockbacks (like 
Face Melt by E.T.C.)
can stop her while trying to engage with Icing.
While she does not gets completely shut down by them,
Mei also does not like effects that reduce healing (for example
Biotic Grenade by Ana), deal
percent-based damage (such as 
Cursed Bullet
at Level 10 by Greymane), or deal bonus damage to Shields
(like 
EMP Grenade at Level 13 by Lt. Morales).
The same is true for Heroes who can poke her team
from a long distance (such as Li-Ming).
Last but not the least, you can combine crowd control
and burst damage to kill Mei before she can even use
Cryo-Freeze defensively.
Mei's Maps
Mei is good on Maps that have narrow passages where she can get more value from her Abilities (for example Cursed Hollow), especially if there is a Boss to contest because her Abilities are great for that.
Mei has good waveclear, making her a good pick on Maps where macro is important. Keep in mind, though, that she will not be able to help you capture Mercenary Camps quickly.
While she can fight just fine in open space, Mei loses a lot of value when enemy Heroes are not forced into a choke point (Hanamura Temple comes to mind).
Mei's Tips and Tricks
- The moderate Slow provided by
Snow Blind can be used to slightly increase the chance that 
Blizzard will connect and that 
Icing will hit enemy Heroes from a good angle. - The high but decaying Slow provided by Icing must be used to drastically increase the chance that the Stun at the end of Blizzard will trigger.
Avalanche can split the enemy team by pushing some enemy Heroes away, even behind impassable terrain.- After you aggressively get behind an enemy Hero by using Icing, you can push them towards your team with Avalanche.
- If you catch 3 enemy Heroes with Avalanche, you can follow the snowball with Icing to be in range for casting Blizzard as a follow-up to the prolonged Stun.
Ice Wall can be used to split the enemy team by putting in Time Stop some Heroes and fighting the others.- A well-timed Blizzard—exactly 0.5 seconds after your Heroic Ability connects—will always Stun enemy Heroes affected by Ice Wall.
- You can use Ice Wall behind enemy Heroes to block their retreat or in front of them to stop their engage.
Mei's Role in the Current Meta
Mei is a Tank that excels at punishing enemy Heroes who lack mobility to play around her Slows.
She has access to powerful Heroic Abilities that, when having a Mage
in team, can be used to make scary combos.
That said, 
Avalanche and 
Ice Wall
are already strong on their own, both for engaging
and for peeling. With a bit of creativity, you can make
powerful tricks with them.
Changelog
- 20 Sep. 2023 (talents page): ARAM Build added.
- 20 Sep. 2023 (this page): ARAM Build added.
- 04 Sep. 2022 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 04 Sep. 2022 (this page): Builds updated.
- 01 Dec. 2021 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 01 Dec. 2021 (this page): Builds updated.
- 13 Aug. 2021 (this page): Maps updated.
- 17 May 2021 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Patch.
- 17 May 2021 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Patch.
- 17 May 2021 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Patch.
- 24 Mar. 2021 (abilities page): Descriptions improved.
- 24 Mar. 2021 (this page): Synergies and Counters updated.
- 10 Mar. 2021 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 10 Mar. 2021 (this page): Builds updated.
- 06 Mar. 2021 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 06 Mar. 2021 (this page): Builds updated.
- 16 Feb. 2021 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 16 Feb. 2021 (this page): Builds updated.
- 15 Feb. 2021 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 15 Feb. 2021 (this page): Builds updated.
- 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.
- 16 Jan. 2021 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 16 Jan. 2021 (this page): Builds updated.
- 05 Oct. 2020 (abilities page): Ability Descriptions modified to better explain how to use Abilities effectively.
- 21 Aug. 2020 (talents page): Talent Build page updated.
- Balance Update revision.
- Minor fixes.
- New layout.
- 21 Aug. 2020 (abilities page): Abilities and Strategy page updated.
- Balance Update revision.
- Minor fixes.
- New layout.
- 21 Aug. 2020 (this page): Introduction page updated.
- Balance Update revision.
- Minor fixes.
- New layout.
- 03 Aug. 2020 (talents page): Talent Descriptions updated.
- 03 Aug. 2020 (this page): Talent Descriptions updated.
- 16 Jul. 2020 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 16 Jul. 2020 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 16 Jul. 2020 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 10 Jul. 2020 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 10 Jul. 2020 (this page): Builds updated.
- 24 Jun. 2020 (talents page): Guide updated.
- 24 Jun. 2020 (abilities page): Guide updated.
- 24 Jun. 2020 (this page): Guide updated.
- 20 Jun. 2020 (talents page): Guide created.
- 20 Jun. 2020 (abilities page): Guide created.
- 20 Jun. 2020 (this page): Guide created.
- 20 Jan. 2020 (talents page): Descriptions changed according to the latest Balance Update.
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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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