Power Herald

February 2023

Currently, Herald utilizes a “hit and run” playstyle, as it lacks the sustain to facetank in team fights and can’t win most duels, but offers high mobility and strong burst damage.

Build fundamentals

You will have to constantly jump in and out of fights, using Riposting Shadows, Phase Traversal, and Deathstrike. While dropping your burst mostly on priority targets like supports.

Due to your high mobility, you can easily get to a side node after a fight is won and cap it or assist your sidenoder.

Energy management

This is a very important aspect of herald gameplay, as lack of energy usually results in death or retreat. Good energy management will mostly come through practice, however, there are a few basic rules you can follow:

• Double-tap every Glint skill except Facet of Light and Facet of Darkness
• Your 2 mobility skills on Legendary Assassin Stance have a very high cost. Due to this, make sure you have enough energy for a stunbreak (Riposting Shadows) before committing to a fight. The same goes for Jade Winds, which costs a whopping 50 energy.

Damage

Your main combo goes as follows:

1. Precast Enchanted Daggers
2. Phase Traversal on target (follow up with Deathstrike if they’re too far away)
3. Chilling Isolation Facet of Nature True Nature
4. Swap to Legendary Dragon Stance
5. Shackling Wave Elemental Blast Burst of Strength
6. Swap to staff, as you’ve used most of your offensive resources by this point.

At this point, you must read the fight and decide what to do. You can either use Surge of the Mists to evade/interrupt a revive, kite away, or continue harassing your opponents with auto-attacks until your next weapon and legend swaps are off cooldown and you can use your burst combo again.

Self-sustain and damage mitigation

• To deal with heavy condition pressure, use Riposting Shadows into legend swap or Renewing Wave.
• Infuse Light and Warding Rift can be used to reverse/mitigate enemy damage.
• Enchanted Daggers is very strong, free damage and sustain for a tiny energy cost. Use it off cooldown.
• Chaotic Release is a very versatile skill: you can use it to knock enemies off points, give superspeed to yourself and allies as well as help finish off downed enemies.
• Gaze of Darkness is just as versatile: it stunbreaks you, reveals nearby stealthed enemies and blinds them.

Alternatives:

Herald has a number of alternatives it can switch between to adjust to the match up or for preference. Some of these include taking Unsuspecting Strikes instead of Battle Scarred and Thrill of Combat instead of Notoriety. You can also swap sigils to Sigil of Purging and Sigil of Energy on sword and Sigil of Cleansing and Sigil of Escape on staff if you need more condition cleanse.