by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

If you have seen me playing on the Heroes Powerhour you know that I’m typically using a tank or support. My all time favorite character in this game is Zagara though. I absolutely love the Zerg and the way that she plays in this game is right up my alley. For a quick overview of the basics head over to the Zagara hero page.

Zagara’s activate-able trait is Creep Tumor which generates creep when you use it. Zagara and her summons move 20% faster on creep and have an increase in health regeneration. The creep is simply amazing for many reasons but one of the main ones is that it last for 4 minutes and gives you vision of an area. Using creep on main objective points can tip your team off as to where the enemy is. The creep has three main uses: fighting on it for a movement and regeneration advantage, vision on key objective points, and setting it down behind you for an escape path. Her Q ability is Baneling Barrage. With this one she will shoot a skill shot that creates 4 banelings that do decent splash damage. Use this to safely harass buildings and enemies during team fights. It can also be used later as a wave clear. Her W is Hunter Killer and its a very strong harass tool. This will create a hydralisk that will chase down the enemy for 8 seconds and do high amounts of damage. Using Hunter Killer during team fights can make it hard for the enemy to focus and cause someone to have to leave the fight earlier than expected. Her E is Infested Drop and this ability is an amazing lane pushing tool. She will drop a bug bomb in a small radius that does damage on impact then creates 2 roachlings. The reason this is my favorite push tool is because it has a good safe distance and those roachlings can really soak up the tower ammo. Her two heroic abilities are Devouring Maw and Nydus Network. Devouring Maw summons a maw from the earth that eats anyone in its radius and traps them for 4 seconds while doing a small amount of damage over time. Nydus Network allows you to create up to 4 Nydus tunnels that you can use to quickly travel between each other.

The Build

Level 1

Reconstitution – This ability is probably the best choice of a bad bunch. It’s offered regeneration is helpful for you and your minions. This talent helps you stay in lane because it regenerates light harass from the enemy and allows you to shine with your minions and auto attacks.

Level 4

Envenomed Spines – Here is an interesting fact: Zagara’s auto attacks are amazingly fast and do decent damage for having that fast of attack speed. So knowing that fact you might understand why increasing the range of your auto attacks while giving them a poison is a good idea. Some people like envenom due to the stronger dot and if that’s your play style you may consider it.

Level 7

Rapid Incubation – No other choice at this level. Taking anything but Rapid Incubation is silly. This great activate talent will give Zagara 25% of her health and mana back over the course of a 3 second channel with only a 45 second cooldown!!! This is much better than using a healing well in every manner. This will allow Zagara to stay in lane forever and do what she does best which is harass.

Level 10

Devouring Maw – Devouring Maw is always the choice and you can’t convince me otherwise. A well placed maw can ruin the enemy team. In tight areas, when you call it out, you can use the maw to eat 2 or 3 of the enemies while isolating others close to your team for easy kills. This heroic’s ability damage is pretty low but, if your team is ready, the extra damage might help you get a kill. Practice timing and communication with this heroic and watch as Zagara swings the team fight in your favor. Nydus Network does have niche uses when you can hide them well around key objective points or mercenary camps but good players will kill them and force a replace. It’s not that Nydus Network is bad but Devouring Maw is way too good to pass up in my opinion.

Level 13

Grooved Spines – Once you have hit level 13 you have probably discovered the power of Hunter Killer. Now take that power and increase it’s range by 35% and its damage by 20%. For me this one is a no brainer because the increased damage and range allows you to use Hunter Killer to effectively force healers out of the fight or get kills. I will sometimes take Spell Shield if I find myself getting constantly focused by stealth characters like Nova or Zeratul.

Level 16

Brood Expansion – Hunter Killer is a really good ability. Having two charges of Hunter Killer affording Zagara the ability to drop two Hunter Killers on one target gives you insane burst kill potential on most targets. I will sometimes take Stoneskin when I’m being focused with a lot of burst by the other team.

Level 20

Bolt of the Storm – Zagara has no escape tools and really needs this. Remember all heroes have stats and abilities that allow them to kill other heroes. Buffing your damage is all good and well but it does you no good if you’re dying a lot. Keep that in mind and read the situation happening in team fights to decide if you need damage or survivability. Regardless though always take Bolt of the Storm here because sometimes teleporting to your creep escape path will save you from that dreaded 1 minute death timer.

Strategy

Zagara while being very squishy is the ultimate lane bully when you play her safe. You can often push most heroes out of their spot and force them to use their hearthstone with ease. Just take advantage of your minions insane power and regenerative abilities. Chasing kills is not the early game objective because good players will force you into bad spots to do it. What you need to focus on is harassing the enemy out of lane so they can’t take advantage of experience soaking. Once they are forced to retreat Zagara can get some solid siege damage with roachlings and banelings. The best thing you can do is auto attack so make sure to use it as much as possible in combination with Hunter Killer. Also its worth pointing out that you can clear minion waves by standing above or below them and using Baneling Barrage so it hits the lone mage minion in the middle. The splash damage will hit the whole wave allowing for quick clears. You have to be careful when using this tactic because, it will not only eat up your mana which you need for harass, it will also put you out of a safe position.

Once you hit level 10 team fights will start happening a lot more. The goal in team fights is to stay in the back lines while getting hunter killer on a high priority target or the enemy healer. Using creep tumors behind Zagara will give her escape paths in case a team fight starts to go south. In the big engages try your best to communicate with your team members as to when/who will be getting hit with Devouring Maw. Your team will have four seconds to take advantage of this amazing disable so they have to make it count. Also being in position to pounce on the targets coming out of the Maw will often result in a favorable engage. You can also use Maw to disable great channel heroics such as Ravenous Spirit, Mosh Pit, and Triple Tap.

Zagara is a good sieger and an amazing harasser. I think people often make the mistake of talenting her into siege damage which is a bad idea because she has trouble getting away from surprise ganks. This makes overextending for siege damage a bad idea. She is also already good at doing siege damage so making it stronger takes away from her true potential. This build allows you to take great advantage of her two strongest/safest harass tools: her auto attacks and Hunter Killer. I hope you try it out and find out what I did: Zagara is one bad brood mutha! Thank you for reading and check back for more guides from me in the future.