by David “h0ns” Honsberger – coL.HotS
Abathur is a very in depth Hero that has come to be one of my favorites because of the numerous ways he can be played. I prefer to play him as a lane soaker / split push style in most games but this requires a ton of teamwork to pull off properly. I will explain my favorite way to play him and why it is the best choice in most games.
| Level 1: Envenomed Nest | |
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Envenomed Nest is typically my choice when doing a mine and split push style. This makes your mines do 75% more damage over 3 seconds. This actually puts a lot of pressure around the map when the enemy team is rotating around. Not only does it dismount people but it actually does a ton of damage since its buff. |
| Level 4: Prolific Dispersal | ||
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Prolific Dispersal reduces the cooldown of toxic nest by 2 seconds and adds 2 more charges making it have 5. This is to put maximum vision and control around the map and of course add more mines to make enemy rotations slower. The cooldown reduction is also a great side benefit. |
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| Level 7: Vile Nest | ||
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Toxic Nest is what makes Abathur truly annoying for the enemy team. The 50% slow for 4 seconds on enemies hit by mines allows you to really control the movement of the enemy team as well as getting information on where most of the enemy team is. This talent is really devastating on maps like Cursed Hollow and Tomb of the Spider Queen. The only map that I do not choose this talent is on Sky Temple where most of the time Mule is needed. |
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| Level 10: Ultimate Evolution | ||
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Ultimate Evolution is my choice for a heroic because it can be effective when used on many different heroes. This allows Abathur to put extra power in your teams teamfight capability. This heroic used on most ranged damage can boost teamfight power by a lot. This skill was also stealth buffed last patch with a 20 second cooldown reduction. |
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| Level 13: Bombard Strain | ||
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Bombard strain makes your locusts have a ranged attack. This is the beginning of the Abathur split push machine. |
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| Level 16: Locust Brood | ||
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Locust Brood drops 3 locusts instantly at the location of Abathur. This can be used to apply split push pressure at key times during games to punish people for not cleaning it up. |
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| Level 20: Hivemind | ||
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Hivemind gives Abathur the ultimate teamfighting hat. This places a hat on two members of your team instead of just one and because of the recent change it will break but when someone comes in range it will rehat the closest person. |
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Early game the focus should be to place mines around the map in small chokes where most people rotate through. Doing this will allow your team to setup quicker than the enemy team for most objectives because the enemy will not be able to walk through mines without getting dismounted. The mines will also put a decent amount of poke damage onto the enemies. Once you hit level 7 with Toxic Nest, this idea becomes even more devastating. Your main job in the early game is to place mines around, hat your team when needed in a lane, or to soak xp in the lane by body soaking/ symbioting minions.
Once you have Ultimate Evolution, the idea is to split soak lanes with your body and symbiote lanes that are not getting soak by your team. At the same time you should still be trying to place as many mines around the smaller chokes to keep the map vision, map control, and pressure. When the time comes for a teamfight or when your team wants to engage you will want to use Ultimate Evolution. Most of the time this gets used on a ranged damage like Valla, Zeratul, or someone that is high priority.
The late game is where you are the most active. You want to be using your dig to move around the map where you can be away from the enemy team to apply locust pressure. This is where you can use Locust Brood and your massive bombardment of ranged locusts to apply crazy split push. Once you hit 20 and acquire Hivemind, you want to be wary of the times to use your clone. The double symbiote can be extremely powerful in a teamfight so you either want to use Ultimate Evolution to put out as much damage as possible quickly and die or wait to clone a bit during the fight after you have put some damage poke with the double symbiote.
Abathur has a weaker early game but when paired right with a solid team comp he can be a force to deal with while being quite a safe hero.