The composition consisted of Zarya, Brightwing, Muradin, Valla, and Gul’Dan. I’d like to start by saying despite Zarya hovering around a 60% win rate in Hero League she is sitting at a 38% win rate in pro play. Pros are not sold on her yet.
Here is a link to the match in case you want to check it out.
Innate Hero Synergy
Even though this composition is not full of synergies like last week’s, there are some synergies:
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Zarya is great when paired with another tank. It gives her the ability to focus on damage dealing and helps her generate energy by having an ally to shield that is always taking damage.
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Gul’Dan, Valla, and Muradin all compliment Brightwing nicely because they have self-sustain. This makes it much easier for Brightwing to solo heal.
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This team has great peel and zoning. Zarya can peel with expulsion zone, Gul’Dan can peel with Horrify, and Muradin can zone with Avatar, Storm Bolt, and Thunderclap. All while Valla strafes enemies for massive damage.
Overall I would give this team a B on innate hero synergy. There are much better picks to synergize with the early heroes, but this comp was picked based on power picks and the map they were playing and less on innate hero synergy.
Picking According to the Map
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he map this match was played on was Cursed Hollow. Let’s take a look at how their composition synergized with the map:
- Brightwing is great because of Phase Shift. It is a large map so globals are always a plus. Also, her passive healing that requires no mana is fantastic on a map with long drawn out objective fights.
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Zarya with Expulsion Zone is a smart pick because if you place it well you can keep the enemy team from capturing the tribute for the duration of the heroic. There are also a ton of choke points to block off as well. Well timed shields can protect allies from poke that generally comes out on this map.
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Innate sustain is great on this map so having Muradin is definitely a plus. Third Wind at level one makes it so that he never has to go back unless he runs out of mana.
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Valla with Tempered Discipline is great at self-sustaining. Also a Multishot build with Strafe is great for poking the enemy team and for zoning them from the tribute
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Last we have Gul’Dan. He has great poke with Corruption and can reduce the cooldown of his poke allowing him to spam because of Bound by Shadow. One of the best parts about Gul’Dan is his sustain. He has health sustain with Drain Life and Healthstone and mana sustain with Life Tap. This is one of Gul’Dan’s best maps because of the combination of poke and sustain.
Overall Fnatic picked extremely well for the map and made great use of their picks. I would give Fnatic an A for prioritizing map synergy.
Playing the Composition
Here are some basic tips and insights for playing the composition:
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This composition is meant to be a peeling and poking team composition.
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Muradin is great for initiation, but he also can kite back to his backline to crowd control enemy divers.
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When Gul’Dan and Valla are your backline it is best to keep them alive because they have incredibly high damage potential.
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This comp is great a wearing down the enemy and out sustaining them.
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Team fights will generally be avoided unless the enemy team is poked to low health first.
- Keeping the DPS alive is critical because there are only two and if one dies the damage potential shrinks drastically.
Win Conditions
This team really only has one win condition:
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This composition’s win condition, on this map, is to out sustain the other team.
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This team pokes well as mentioned above.
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The goal of this comp should be to wear down the enemy team until they can no longer contest the tribute and grab it without much resistance.
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This team doesn’t have the best pick potential due to the heroic choices they made so like with all poke compositions, getting a lead is critical.
- This team comp has no real way to come back outside of curses so it is critical to get every tribute available.
- This is a difficult team to win with because the only real win condition is sieging and cursing the enemy team.
You have been warned, don’t fall behind on this comp.
