Raynor Abilities and Strategy
Welcome to our Abilities page for Raynor. Here, we give you an overview of every ability in Raynor's kit. For each of them, we explain what it does, how to best use it, and how it works in combination with Raynor's other abilities. We also give you strategy tips to play Raynor efficiently.
Raynor's Tips and Tricks
- Movement is crucial when playing Raynor, since he lacks any gap-closing abilities. Thus, make sure to constantly keep stutter stepping in between each Basic Attack even while fighting Minions in lane.
- You can manually reassign a new target to your Banshee by hovering your cursor over the desired target and pressing R again.
Penetrating Round can be used to Knockback enemies away from you. Sometimes it can also be used to knock enemies towards your teammates.
Inspire also works on Minions and Mercenaries. Use it during pushes to take down enemy Structures more quickly.
- With
Exterminator,
Inspire should be used every time you move closer to a wave or friendly mercenaries, because it will not expire.
Penetrating Round
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- Mana: 60
- Cooldown: 9 seconds
Deal 205 (+4% per level) damage, knock back, and Slow enemies in a line by 20% for 2 seconds. Enemies close to Raynor are knocked back further.
Penetrating Round fulfills a variety of purposes. This
enables Raynor to use it both defensively and offensively. If used defensively, this Ability is
capable of knocking enemy initiators back from Raynor,
which allows him to reposition himself. If used offensively, Penetrating Round acts as a solid form of
waveclear capable of damaging an entire Minion Wave as
they walk in a file towards you.
Even though Penetrating Rounds deals high damage, against specific Heroes it is good to
be conservative about using it in fights. Not using it until Blaze
starts using Jet Propulsion or until Yrel leaps
with
Avenging Wrath is a great choice, since canceling those Abilities with a
knockback effect will greatly reduce the effectiveness of those Heroes.
Inspire
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- Mana: 50
- Cooldown: 12 seconds
Raynor and all nearby allied Minions and Mercenaries gain 30% Attack Speed and 10% Movement Speed for 4 seconds.
Casting Inspire resets Raynor's Basic Attack cooldown.
Inspire is an impactful Ability, as it buffs not
only Raynor's Attack
Speed but also that of Minions and Mercenaries.
This causes it to be particularly useful during pushes towards enemy Structures.
Do not be conservative with this Ability; it greatly
increases your damage output and mobility. In fights, we recommend you to keep using it
when it is available, right after you hit a Basic Attack, to abuse the reset mechanic.
Adrenaline Rush
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- Mana: 75
- Cooldown: 45 seconds
Heal Raynor for 25% of his maximum Health over 1 second. Raynor's Basic Attacks lower the cooldown of this by 0.5 seconds, doubled against Heroes.
Adrenaline Rush is Raynor's main source of self-sustain.
Similarly to other healing Abilities, it can be manually activated
and then restores a significant amount of his Health.
Note that it cannot be activated if Raynor already has full Health,
which may be a problem against burst damage.
Adrenaline Rush can help you to stay in lane, which allows you to keep soaking Experience. However, keep in mind that Adrenaline Rush's cooldown is quite high. Thus, make sure to keep attacking enemies in order to lower the cooldown slowly but surely.
During fights, it is better to keep Adrenaline Rush for when you are getting
dived or focused, since the
Armor from Fight or Flight
will mitigate a great part of the damage.
Hyperion
In this section we discuss how this Heroic Ability works and give some tips on how to use it. If you are looking for a detailed explanation on when and why you should pick it, check out the dedicated section in the Talent Build page.
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- Heroic
- Mana: 100
- Cooldown: 100 seconds
Order the Hyperion to make a strafing run for 12 seconds, hitting up to 4 enemies for 66 (+4% per level) damage every second. Every 4 seconds, it can fire its Yamato Cannon at a Structure, dealing 794 (+4% per level) damage.
Although it moves very slowly, Hyperion can be an
impactful Heroic Ability,
as it damages several enemies in a very large area. The Hyperion should be used
when pushing or when fighting over static Objectives,
such as the Guardians on Infernal Shrines
or the Temples on Sky Temple. This forces the enemy team to either fight
within its area of effect and thus take heavy damage from its lasers, or to give
up an Objective. Either way it becomes a win-win situation. This strength,
however, also becomes its weakness when fighting in open space, which simply
allows the enemy to walk away from it and re-engage from another position.
Raynor's Raider
In this section we discuss how this Heroic Ability works and give some tips on how to use it. If you are looking for a detailed explanation on when and why you should pick it, check out the dedicated section in the Talent Build page.
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- Cooldown: 45 seconds
Summon a Banshee that assists Raynor. The Banshee deals 84 (+4% per level) damage per second and regenerates 75 (+4% per level) Health per second if it hasn't taken damage in the last 4 seconds. Can reactivate to retarget or move the Banshee.
The Banshee respawns automatically after 45 seconds.
While Hyperion focuses more on pushing and damaging
multiple enemies at the same time,
Raynor's Raider increases
Raynor's damage against single targets. The sustain damage provided by the
Banshee can cause his enemies to retreat, which then allows Raynor to either
focus on a new target or chase down his original one. The Banshee's superior
Movement Speed outpaces most Heroes, which makes them very effective pursuers.
There are a couple of things to keep in mind when using Raynor's Raider.
- The Banshee should almost always be used on priority targets to take them down as quickly as possible.
- The Banshee moves faster than most Heroes which makes it a formidable chaser.
- Hovering over a different Hero with your mouse and pressing R causes the Banshee to attack the desired target. This procedure also allows you to manually re-assign a different target.
- When Raynor dies, the Banshee disappears as well.
Give 'Em Some Pepper
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- Passive
Every 4th Basic Attack splashes in a small area and deals 125% more damage to the main target.
Give 'Em Some Pepper is Raynor's passive Trait,
which greatly increases both his damage during team fights
and waveclear. Make sure to spend as much
time using Basic Attacks as possible in order to trigger its bonus damage. Bear in mind that
the bonus damage also applies to non-Heroic targets (such as Structures, Minions, or Mercenaries),
which turns Raynor into a decent pusher.
Changelog
- 22 Apr. 2020: Added deeper description into Raynor's Abilities.
- 04 Jul. 2019: Revised and updated Raynor's Abilities.
More Ranged Assassin Guides
Derenash has been playing Heroes of the Storm since 2015 and has achieved Grandmaster in multiple seasons, peaking at Top 1 in Season 3 and 4 of 2018. He participated in the HGC Copa America in 2018 where his team had a strong victory. He is passionate about teaching others about the game, and streams often on Twitch in Portuguese, and you can find him in Wind Striders' Discord as well where he is happy to answer any questions in English or Portuguese.
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