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Li Li Build: Snakes on a Panda

by - 8 years ago

Li Li is the adventurer who found her love for exploring through reading her Uncle Chen’s journals. Li Li has found a lot of success in the current meta because the popular double warrior team composition is vulnerable to the blinds and constant sustain Li Li provides. Li Li doesn’t have many buttons to press, has amazing sustain, and can be a tough hero to kill when played even marginally safe. It’s those reasons why Li Li is considered one of the easier heroes to play. If you want to read up on some of the basics on LiLi, such as her stats, head over to the BlizzPro hero page which can be found here.

Basic Abilities

Fast Feet -(Passive Trait) This is a pretty basic trait that makes Li Li very hard to catch and kill.  It gives you extra speed when you need it most.

Healing Brew – (Q) A rapid heal that can’t target who it heals. It will always heal the lowest health ally prioritizing heroes within its range. One of the good thing about this heal is that it will spam if you hold down Q which can be useful in team fights. This can come out very rapidly so if it’s abused it can becomce a total mana hog.

Cloud Serpent – The whole build will be centered around this ability. The use of cloud serpent is fairly easy, you just need to make sure its on the ally closest to the action to maximize all the buffs it gets from the talent choices of this build.

Blinding Wind – A nice ability that does decent damage and causes a blind to the two  nearest enemies prioritizing heroes. This ability is just something you want to throw out during team fights hoping to hit the warriors and auto attacks to diminish their damage while causing a bit of your own.

Heroic Abilities

Jug of a 1,000 cups – This is like a much more rapid version of Healing brew that has a very large radius and healing potential.  The only weakness of this ultimate is that hard CC such as a stun or poly morph will stop Li Li from being able to use Jug of 1,000 cups leaving her open to counter picks and/or enemies holding their stuns until Jug is activated. This ultimate is still worth taking in most cases because of its massive healing potential/

Water Dragon – A very strong damaging ultimate with a massive slow. There are spots to take this because Li Li has surprising damage potential with certain builds but it doesn’t really fit into the serpent build as you will need Jug of 1,000 cups to keep your team alive during big engages.

The Build

Level 1

Timeless Creature – Since the whole point of this build is based around the Cloud Serpent we start by increasing it’s duration by 50% because the longer it’s out the greater the benefit.

Level 4

Mending Serpent – This is kind of the backbone of this build because the constant healing it can provide in conjunction with the other talent choices is actually very strong. Having the option to constantly put on a passive buff that both heals your allies and damages your enemies is pretty amazing. It creates pressure and sustain in a way that the enemy cannot stop which is always a welcome thing.

Level 7

Lightning Serpent – The splash attack means more damage thrown around by the serpent which is already healing allies and lasting longer at this point. You take this ability because as stated previous there is no way for the enemy to get rid of Cloud Serpent they just have to deal with it, This is why every buff has a snowballing effect of what Li Li is able to bring to a team fight.

Level 10

Jug of 1,000 Cups – see heroic abilities section.

Level 13

Shrink Ray – This is just a strong extra button for Li Li because her damage mitigation and sustain is already so good, This allows her to shut down someone diving on the team or trying to escape a failed engage. Make sure you alert your teammates as to who this will be used on primarily so they know to watch out for it and capitalize. Its always great on bruisers such as Sonya or Arthas and can also be great on high mobility assassins who get too close to the action such as Valla or Falstad.

Level 16

Serpent Sidekick – This will give Li Li a serpent with all the buffs the one she gives to her ally. This means double the damage and healing  provided an enemy is close enough to both cloud serpent’s range. This can really up the output of serpent and that’s why it’s the talent pick at 16.

Level 20

Kung Fu Hustle – A wonderful passive that really helps Li Li throw her abilities around in the late game. If for some reason you find that you are not being targeted or you’re always the last one targeted you could skip this and go with Storm Shield to provide more power to your teams front liners.

The Strategy

Early game you will be able to out sustain most heroes in lane and kite them around if they are easily led into traps and ganks. Just make sure that you’re blinding the enemes, using your auto attacks, casting cloud serpent, and not leaving yourself in situations that put you at risk for massive burst damage. Watch out for comps that are running a roam and stun game early as Li Li has very few options once shes in a lock down situation created by pairs of heroes such as Tyrande and Butcher or Arthas and Kael’thas.

In mid and late game you just want to be with your team supporting them with your abilities. Serpents are best used on the hero who initiates then placed on heroes who are being focused or still in the thick of things. Remember sometimes a blind is better than a heal especially in cases like stopping a Raynor from blowing up your tanks. Once level 13 hits take note of which enemies chose Giant Killer and try to prioritize them as targets for blinding wind when possible. Try to hold Jug of 1,000 cups until it can save someone from death while being in a position that you wont be immediately stunned out of it. Just stick with the bulk of your team to maximize your effectiveness.

Li-Li is a fun and effective hero to play within most team compositions and she has the benefit of a small learning curve. Players newer to the support role or the game in general looking to have a massive effect on each matches outcome should consider playing Li Li while they familiarize themselves with the match-ups, the maps, and the game in general. That being said Li Li is still, as are all heroes, one that get’s better the more you practice with them. I hope you were able to learn something from this guide and check back next week for another build right here at BlizzPro.


posted in Heroes of the Storm Tags: ,
JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


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