Uther Lightbringer, our favorite paladin, was blessed with an overdue talent rework when the Sylvanas patch hit the live realms. Is it still time for retribution? Let us find out!

Before diving right into the patch notes as we usually do, I would like to share a few lines I wrote about Uther’s design back in November. It will tie in with the rest of the review.



Though competitive Uther players had seriously refined their playstyle, my opinion of the hero had not really changed right before the patch. The rare times I did find myself playing him, I found the experience playing Finger Twister with his talent-based abilities (Protective Shield, Cleanse or Clairvoyance, Shrink Ray, Sprint or Rewind*, Storm Shield) to really contrast with his seemingly simple ability set.

Now, onto the changes.



As early as Warcraft II, Paladins have served at the forefront of Alliance combat. Adorned in heavy plate and wielding two-handed hammers often larger than their foes, they enhanced their attacks with the Light to smite all that is evil and protect the innocent. Warcraft III and World of Warcraft both heavily promoted this theme as well.

Range decreases are an uncommon patch sight, though the decision makes sense from thematic standpoint. As a melee support hero, Uther must go in the thick of it. His design needs to be able to support this philosophy, and as we will find out, many of his changes do.

The Reach talent still lets you specialize, should you want that extra range… though you probably will not. It should be noted that the talent’s old tooltip used to claim a “range increase of 2”. No one could really tell what that meant, and a percentage is just that much more indicative of what the talent really does



Protect the Weak used to heavily reduce the mana cost and cooldown of Holy Light when it was used on minions and mercenaries. As a potent healing ability, Holy Light made little sense to use on expandable minions, even with this talent. It was like feeding caviar to lemmings inbound for a cliff! With a pick rate of less than 0.5%, it is hardly a surprise that the talent was removed.


And now we’re talking. This talent does everything you want, as a designer. It is strong and thematically sound. It demands specific positioning and gives you a nice incentive to use otherwise underwhelming basic attacks. Just awesome. At level 13, it increases Holy Light’s healing by 200. There is a nice synergy with Benediction as well, which we will cover later.



Holy Shock’s old form did not include the cooldown reduction, making it little more than an overcosted 300 damage single target ability for the insular. The idea is good, as is the buff, but Holy Light is just too strong of a healing ability to be used offensively for such a small return.



This in right line with Uther’s talent rework, as discussed earlier. The range reduction promotes front-line play. The Boundless Conviction talent will probably not see much play. However, it doesn’t increase Holy Radiance’s usability by a significant-enough margin to be justified



I would have liked Dense Weightstone if it provided a ridiculous damage increase to Hammer of Justice - something along the lines of 200%. It would have given Uther an extremely interesting niche of early damage burst, especially when combined with Fist of Justice, at the cost of the sustainability provided by Conjurer’s Pursuit, or the defensiveness of Block. A measly 40% increase to HoJ’s damage did not, however, make this talent remotely worth considering. The desire to rework it was not there either, as it is gone.

Rebuke was interesting, as was Tyrael’s old Cast Aside. It changed the ability’s functionality, adding a short knockback to its usual effects. In application, it was very hard to use. Hammer of Justice’s purpose is typically to hold a target in place as it is attacked by your teammates. Rebuke made this difficult, to the point of being known as the very best example of a “newb trap” talent. And so it went.



Another incentive to use basic attacks, and right from level 1. The talent is interesting, but competes with Conjurer’s Pursuit and Block, both of which are less situational. It is in a strange spot, balance-wise. If it were to be buffed a bit to better compete, it could lead to an unhealthy amount of stuns when combined with Divine Storm and Benediction or Hardened Focus. As such, they cannot realistically further improve it.



The abundance of ranged, stronger slowing effects make this single-targeted, talent-locked pick underwhelming at best, on top of having to compete with Cleanse and Clairvoyance, two great choices. It feels undertuned when compared to similar talents.



Bonus secret patch note: Divine Shield’s base cooldown was also reduced, down to 70 seconds from 90 seconds.

Pre-patch, Divine Storm was the go-to heroic ability choice. Divine Shield did see some very niche play against things like Tyrael, Falsad and Nova, but its lengthy cooldown made it underwhelming otherwise. The massive base cooldown reduction and the resurgence of burst compositions instilled new life to the ability. The loss of the ability to self-cast divine shield is not significant, as important burst damage is typically targeted at one specific player.



What is going on with the patch notes for heroic abilities? This wording is strange, because it implies that the “damage radius” of Divine Hurricane was not reduced (only the stun) when it was in fact. It should simply read “Bonus to radius decreased from 100% to 50%”. Anyway, what to make of this? Divine Hurricane’s old radius was so big that it offered very little counter play potential. It was just too good, especially when combined with the old Eternal Devotion trait.



Eternal Devotion used to allow Uther to keep on playing for 10 seconds after dying. This trait was problematic from a balance perspective because, typically, killing a player is supposed to be the end-all form of utility. Allowing Uther players to use their abilities after dying created an undesirable and counter-intuitive dichotomy: do we kill him and allow him to perfectly position himself for team-wide Divine Storm hits, or do we ignore him and get hit by Divine Storm anyway? Dying needs to feel like a punishment. Eternal Devotion made it a blessing.

As for the trait’s new form? It’s still related to dying and becoming a ghost. They just will not let that idea go. Yes, it is strongly thematically tied to World of Warcraft. And now it heals - and significantly at that - instead of hitting things, as if Uther were protecting his teammates in death. The healing is significant but not unsurmountable. It certainly won’t make you think twice before killing the Paladin…



…however, this might. If you were one of the people (read: everyone) who disliked Resurgence of the Storm, this is as close as it gets to a throwback. And is this new talent popular? You bet, with a current 70% pick rate in master league. At least, it has a counter: winning the fight, and then killing Uther again.



Burning Rage can offer a respectable amount of area damage given enough uptime. Due to the nature of support heroes, Uther had a limited amount of uptime outside of Eternal Devotion’s duration, making the talent underwhelming. Holy Fire deals about 20% less damage than Burning Rage, and no longer functions while in “ghost form.” That is pretty atrocious, even if it is available 6 levels earlier.



This is the highlight of this entire rework. Sprint was by far the most popular talent choice for Uther at level 13, and rightly so. Combined with Divine Storm, it could be used to gap-close to get those near-perfect hits or escape safely after using the heroic ability while in a precarious position. It certainly did not belong on a Paladin, and I am under the impression that these generic talent-based abilities are being slowly phased out. Which is good!



We have talked about it quite a bit, but Block is a solid talent so long as there are basic attack-reliant heroes on your opponent’s side. It also fits right into Uther’s thematic design of that front-line kind of support.



Here yet another attempt at promoting a front-line position for Uther by making his self-healing more efficient. This makes him the first support to sport the talent, which is usually reserved to warriors. The same can be said about the Imposing Presence talent. Still, do not be fooled: Uther lacks the raw health pool of actual warriors to be able to truly tank.



Benediction acts as a mini-Rewind for a single ability. Rewind was bumped up to level 20 (and flat-out removed from Uther) for obvious reasons, but this rehash feels a lot fairer than its big brother. In a vacuum, it can provide a significant amount of burst healing or a second stun in a pinch. And it helps with mana conservation to boot. I like it!



Hammer of the Lightbringer was underpicked for obvious reasons: the mana sustainability it provides is unreliable in heavy combat. Uther typically does not spend that much mana during the laning phase either, unless we are looking at one of those ephemeral 3v3 situations, during which it is difficult to reliably land attacks. A much larger gain per hit with a cooldown would perform much more reliably.

Conclusion

Uther’s rework has successfully tackled some of the problematic aspects of his design (Eternal Devotion, Sprint, Divine Storm) without smothering the hero. His competitive popularity is as high as ever, which is great. From a thematic standpoint, he also stands closer to what the Paladin is supposed to represent. Some of his new talent designs really show how deep and interesting the talent system can be, especially stuff like Blessed Champion and Benediction. Nonetheless, the commitment to these seems to be partial only. Uther’s choices remain crowded with generic picks, and the potency of his talent-based abilities crush the competition at almost every talent tier.