My son, the day you were born the very forest of Lordaeron whispered the name…

Arthas, the Lich King himself is part of the warriors available to play as in Heroes of the Storm.

During the events of WarCraft 3 he was the son of Terenas Menethil II, and successor to the throne. He was Uther’s apprentice and alongside him and Jaina Proudmoore, fought against the scourge to try and save his kingdom, Lordaeron. Ultimately, Arthas became so obsessed trying to save his people, that he went looking for Frostmourne, a cursed rune blade. He took it to try and save his people, but the sword took his soul instead. Now a servant of the Lich King, he brought demise to the very Kingdom he tried to save. After a battle with Illidan, he took the Helm of Domination, sat on the frozen throne, and the rest is history. We all know him for his appearances in WarCraft, but how does one of the most iconic Blizzard character translates into this game as a playable hero?

Well, as it turns out, Arthas plays exactly as a Death Knight would. He is a very strong warrior, with a lot of sustain, damage and crowd control abilities. Furthermore, since he is the Leader of the scourge he will have no doubts in summoning them to help him in his battles. He will even use the power of Sindragosa to obliterate heroes and structures alike. He is a great initiator, but doesn’t have any escape, therefore positioning well will be one of the things to master with this hero. Thanks to his good burst damage and crowd control abilities, he is great at ganking and roaming the map.

Overview

Let’s first take a look at Arthas' kit and see what he can do.

Trait: Frostmourne Hungers

Frostmourne Hungers is a great ability. It makes you have a good burst damage and it also gives you mana when you hit with it. A lot of talents improve upon it, making a build based around this skill something viable. Some tips would be: If you have frostmourne hunger available, there is not an enemy hero close that you can kill, and you are full of mana, wait to use it until you don’t have all your mana. If you don’t have full mana though, use frostmourne hunger as soon as it is available. Mastering this will increase your sustain. Again, these two tips are for when there is no engagement close to happening, where the burst of frostmourne hungers could be valuable.

(Q) Death Coil

50 Mana
Cooldown: 9 seconds

Deals (80 + 14 per level) damage, and heals for 104 (+22).

Death coil is in general a good ability. It heals you while also having the possibility to hit the enemy, which admittedly, is something that you should mostly never use, however, it needed to stay true to its Warcraft roots. While some talents will increase its damage, those aren’t as useful as the ones that increase his healing.

(W) Howling Blast

70 Mana
Skillshot
Cooldown: 12 seconds

Root enemies within the target area for 1.5 seconds and deals damage.

Howling Blast is a long range, AoE skill shot. There is a little animation where the ice will travel to the target location, making it a non-instant ability and thus, possible to dodge. This ability brings a reliable freeze, and used right will spell doom to the enemy heroes.

(E) Frozen Tempest

15 Mana per second.
Cooldown: 1 second.

Deals damage per second to nearby enemies. Slow enemies' Move Speed by 6% per second, stacking up to 30%.

Frozen Tempest works as an AoE Aura that both deals damage and slows enemy heroes. Furthermore the slows increases over time, making it difficult for heroes to run away from arthas.

As this ability is a constant AoE slow, it also procs talents like executioner very frequently, making it a very good talent choice on some heroes.

(R) Army of the Dead

100 Mana
Heroic Ability
Cooldown: 100 seconds

Army of the Death used to be the go-to Heroic for Arthas. Much as Death Coil, even though you can deal damage with it, it’s main use will be to use it to heal yourself rapidly making up for the fact that your health pool isn’t as big as that of other warriors. It should be noted that the ghouls can be killed by the enemy team though, and are specially vulnerable to AoE abilities, so take care of your little ghouls.

(R)Sindragosa

100 Mana
Heroic Ability
Cooldown: 80 seconds

The mighty Sindragosa serves Arthas in death. This is a great ability to initiate fights since it freezes enemy heroes, and slows them afterwards. Furthermore, it freezes minions and structures in its path too, making them unable to attack, which makes it an invaluable tool when pressuring the enemy’s base.

Talent Analysis

Now that we have talked about each of the abilities, lets make an analysis of the talents to try to see which ones are good, and which ones aren't.

Level 1

The first tier of talents features two of the generic talents you’d expect to be in every warrior tier, block and Regeneration Master. Block can be a good choice to increase the tankiness of Arthas against strong auto attack heroes, but regeneration master isn’t very useful on him. He already has great sustain, and farming for a little of extra health regen doesn’t seem like a great choice because of the utility of the other talents.

The other two talents are exclusive to Arthas. The first one, Eternal Hunger, increases the mana given by his trait, which is a nice thing, since more mana equals more healing thanks to Death Coil. The other talent, Frozen Presence, reduces the cooldown of howling blast from 12 to 9 seconds, this can be a good talent to take against high mobility heroes, or maybe if you frequently miss your skill shots, however more tankiness or more mana are difficult things to leave aside.

Level 4

If you take a look at the second tier of talents, you can clearly see that something is missing. There are only three talents available at this tier, and frankly, the options aren’t even that good to start with. The reason why there are so few talents here is because of the removal of Envenom, a powerful talent that dealt a lot of damage, but which wasn’t really suited for a warrior, and made his ganking ability and damage early game overly excessive. The talent was removed, but nothing was given on this tier to compensate, therefore we’re left with some lackuster options.

Superiority reduces the damage taken from no hero sources, at first, it appears that you will only receive 50% less damage when facing creep waves and taking marcamps, not something particularly useful considering Arthas is already pretty good at wave clearing, and blocking and soloing mercenary camps; however this talents brings an interesting situation:Reducing the damage from non-hero sources also means that you will receive less damage from summons. Yes, since summons aren’t technically heroes, you receive 50% less damage from them, this also applies to other things such as Gazlowe’s turrets. This ends up being an interesting talent, however since you have to pick this talent before the heroics become available, it becomes a guessing game. Will the enemy pick Gargantuan or Ravenous Spirit? Who knows! Its an interesting talent choice, but it is circumstantial to the enemy team composition, and if they decide to go through the “summons” route.

Destruction increase the bonus damage of Frostmourne Hungers by 50%. A straightforward talent, that increases Arthas burst damage.

Finally, we have Frozen Wastes, which reduces the mana cost of Frozen Tempest from 15 to a 12 theoretical mana per second.

Why theoretical? Well, Frozen Tempest consumes certain amount of mana per second right? But you also regenerate mana per second. At lvl 1 Arthas regenerates 3 mana per second, meaning that the real cost of Frozen Tempest will be 12 mana. At level 20 he regenerates 4.86 mana per second, meaning that the true cost of the skill will be 10.14 if you skipped this talent, or 7.14 if you took it. A cool little fact that may be useful when deciding how much time you want to have the skill active.

One of the things Blizzard could do is to make this tier better is to add another talent. A custom version of Amplified Healing would work well in my opinion. I say a custom version because with the standard one, Arthas could heal himself for too much between his self heals and the supports, but a modified version of the talent, exclusive to Arthas that only affects the healing receiving from other heroes, would do wonders to increase his “Burst heal” and enable him to solo tank more effectively once again. Another good option would be to have a talent that lets Frostmourne Hungers interrupt channeled abilities, which would come as a great way to make Arthas a more well-rounded hero.

Level 7

The third talent tier sadly doesn’t get much better, bringing another set of lackuster options.
First we have Rune Tap, a passive ability which is the favored talent on this tier since its inception. It makes you regenerate 3% of your max health every third basic attack, and even though it has been nerfed multiple times, it will forever remain as the most picked option as long as the rest of the talents there remind being so bad. It should be noted that Frostmourne Hungers counts as a basic attack, so it procs this passive too.

Then we have Obliterate, which enables Frostmourne Hungers to deal 50% of its damage to the close enemies. I don’t find a good reason to pick this talent. Ever. If the enemy heroes almost never are close enough to be affected by this talents, and as we said before, Arthas is already good with dealing with enemy minions and mercenary camps, therefore this is not needed. Maybe if it added splash damage to your regular attacks instead of your Trait, or if hitting close enemies gave you extra mana this talent could be more useful.

Frost Strike makes Frostmourne Hungers able to slow the target by 40% for 1.5 seconds, which is a considerable amount. This is the second most picked talent on this tier, however I can’t see a situation where it is really worth to take it. Let me explain.

While there is no such thing as too much stuns, there may very well be too much slows. While the slow is instant, the situations where you’d actually use it are fairly limited, or simply non existent. If you are close enough to an enemy to hit them with Frostmourne Hungers and apply the talent, that means you are close enough to them to have already applied your first slow with Frozen Tempest, and while it may not give an instan 40% reduction, it slows your enemy just enough so it cannot escape from you, and that slows add up until 30% movement speed reduction, which will last until you decide to turn off your ability or you run out of mana. And then again, if you are close enough to the enemy to slow it with thistalent, couldn’t you have frozen it anyway with Howling Blast? While in theory a good talent, it really doesn’t make sense to have it with the Arthas set of abilities.

Last, we have Death Touch, which buff the offensive capabilities of Death Coil. Some may argue that this talent could be interesting on Tomb of the Spider queen, but in reality who uses Death Coil to attack minions anyway?

Level 10

And here, we have the Heroic tier. First, we have Army of the Death, where you can summon 5 fearsome ghouls that deal negligible damage, but can sacrifice themselves to heal you. Once upon a time, this used to be the undoubtedly best heroic to take, since it healed you so much and so fast that you could practically stand in the middle of the enemy team just doing your stuff without needing to worry about dying, ever. While this Heroic definitely needed some tuning down, in my opinion it was victim of an over nerf. First of all, the healing is much weaker, basically, at level 10 every ghoul heals just 42 healthpoints more than Death Coil. Every ghoul has a 2 second cooldown until you can sacrifice another one, meaning that you cannot burst the self heals, so if the enemy focused you, you will easily die. Not only that, by the ghouls have less health than they used to, and can be easily killed by AoE abilities, and there is a delay between the time when you cast the ability, and the time you can start to heal yourself, meaning that you cannot use it on “oh shit” situations, which is a good thing, however when you take the fact that Arthas doesn’t have as a big health pool as warriors like Diablo, and the current state of the ghouls, you find that all of that in conjuction is what makes Arthas unable to be a great tank by himself, which is a bad thing.

And since you aren’t that good of a tank anymore, you might as well not even take Army of the Dead in the First place.

Sindragosa slows enemy heroes, and freezes minions and structures alike. In this time, structures won’t be able to attack, making it a great skill when you are pushing into the enemy base. Given its big AoE crowd control nature, it is easy to combo it with other heroics, such as Metamorphosis, Mosh Pit or Rain of Vengeance.

Overall, I don’t favour any over the other in all situations, the choice depending on both teams composition.

As a little note, one tip I can give you is that if have both Death Coil and a ghoul available, if you press ALT+Q (To self cast Death coil) and R to sacrifice a ghoul, you will instantly receive the health of the two abilities together, whereas if you press R first and then Death Coil, there will be a delay between the heals, which could be all the difference between staying alive and being bursted down.

Level 13

This next tier of talents is the first one that really gives you choices, because every one of the talents are viable on certain situations. First you have Spell Shield, which reduces the ability damage received, a solid choice. Then you have Relentless which helps you against heavy cc team comps. Trail of frost is interesting, because it gives more AoE to an ability with a pretty big AoE already, overall I’d say this is the weaker of all of them, but maybe if you find yourself missing your skillshots this could be a good choice. Last we have Biting Cold, which increases the damage of Frozen tempest by 50% the reason to take this talent is again, if you aren’t going to be the main tank, you might as well not focus on resistance talents and focus on your CC and damage more.

Level 16

The level 16 talent tier also brings interesting choices. First we have Frostmourne Feeds, which makes Frostmourne Hunger apply to two attacks instead of one which means both more damage, and more mana. Then we have Immortal Coil, which increases the self healing of Death Coil and makes it always heal you, even when you use it on the enemies, a good choice if you want more sustain. Then we have the Embrace Death talent which makes Death Coil deal more damage the more health you are missing... What? if I’m missing health, why would I use Death coil on an enemy instead of myself? I know I said that if you aren’t going to be the tank, you could not take the tanking talents and take the damage dealing ones, but ultimately, an alive Hero is more useful than a death one, and the damage increase is not enough to make it worth it.
Last we have Stone Skin, which is an awesome talent that helps you live longer.

Level 20

Then we have the Storm Talents, that super awesome level 20 talent tier that is supposed to make the battle field tremble, so lets see what talents Arthas has at its disposal:

Legion of Northrend is an ok upgrade to Army of the Death, creates 3 more Ghouls, they heal an additional 2% and last 5 seconds longer, not much to say about this one. Then we have Absolute zero this upgrade to Sindragosa is actually pretty nice, it now roots Heroes on its patch, which is doubled by the way, and slows them afterwards for a greater amount, and the increased range is totally ludicrous. This is a good choice. Hardened Shield is one of those talents shared across different warriors, and it is overall very solid. It gives a 75% damage reduction for 4 seconds, making you last much longer when focused, depending on the situation you could pop this up with stone skin for an incredible burst of survivability, or use them separately for less, but a more sustained one.

Then we have Rewind, which doesn’t really make any sense. A double Death Coil isn’t something to be amazed at. A double Howling Blast would be kinda redundant, unless you are bad and miss your skillshots of course. You can’t really rewind Frozen Tempest, nor would it make much sense, and this talent doesn’t work on Heroics. The only thing that would be nice is if Rewind worked with Frostmourne Hungers, the sole thought of an unexpecting assassin receiving four consecutive hits dealing 150% basic damage each with an improved trait makes me smile, however, that isn’t possible right now and that makes me sad.

II. Builds

The Main Tank Build

-Block
-Frozen Wastes
-Rune Tap
-Army of the Dead
-Spell Shield
-Stone Skin
-Hardened Shield

Although as we said before, having Arthas being the main tank may not optimal at the highest level of skill, he is still a somewhat sturdy warrior. Thanks to the different defensive talents he has, his great sustain and the help of a Support, he can serve as a tank on most situations. Whenever on Hero League you are the only warrior, this is the recommended build.

The premise of the guide is very simple, basically, you are going to increase your damage absorption and damage mitigation through the talents, instead of focusing on damage or sustain.

Block is an obvious choice for the first talent tier. Then as your role is going to be a full tank, I would choose Frozen Wastes. The reason I don’t recommend superiority is because it’s not reliable to choose it expecting your opponent to pick a summon Heroic, and just reducing the damage from abilities like Gazlowe’s Turrets is not really worth it. Frozen Wastes makes you able to more easily spam your aura, and since you are going to be in the heart of the battle chances are that you’ll hit more than one hero with it which means more damage dealt. Another point in favour of upgrading Frozen Tempest is that since it slows enemy heroes, it will proc Executioner every second, so by organizing with your teammates, you could create an almost permanent 40% extra damage boost. To put it short, in this situation it’s better to upgrade an ability which slows and damages every second instead of one you can only use once every twelve seconds.

Rune tap is the way to go on the next talent tier for this build. Arthas attacks once every second, so taking this talent basically gives Arthas a passive 3% of his max health every 3 seconds while in battle, and the speed will increase slightly when you use your trait.

Since you are going to be a tank, the obvious choice for the Heroic is Army of the Death. If everyone focused on you you may not be able to heal yourself fast enough just yet, but with good positioning, and the help of your team mates, this will hardly ever happen.

Then you take Spell Shield for obvious reasons, although taking Relentless is a good choice if the enemy team composition is heavy on crowd control. Stone Skin and Hardened Shield are pretty obvious choices too for a tanky build. The really cool thing about them is that they synergize very well not only with each other, but with Army of the Death as well. As I said before, the Ghouls don’t heal you enough anymore to stop you from dying if the enemy decides to focus you, but with Stone Skin and Hardened Shields Arthas can once again become the unstoppable tank he was in the Alpha of the game.

Standard Build

-Block
-Destruction
-Rune Tap
-Army of the Dead
-Biting Cold
-Frostmourne Feeds
-Hardened Shield

This is the most used build across all levels of skill, that doesn’t mean the other build, or any build for that matter, is worse than this one though, as I believe most builds have their place on the game and are better on certain situations.

You could say its an hybrid between damage and utility. You have Block, then Destruction, Rune Tap and Army of the Dead, which are all defensive talents save Destruction, which will give you nice burst damage with your trait. Biting Cold is the most chosen talent on this tier, this is a good-against-all sort of talent, and we have already explained some of the virtues of upgrading your aura, however this is also a great example of why if you just blindly follow a guide you see on the internet you could have a bad time. Biting Cold is great, however if the enemy has too much stuns, you should pick Relentless, and if the enemy has too much AoE abilities you should take Spell Shield instead. Think about the game, and make decisions accordingly, after all these are guides, not a set of rules.

Frostmourne Feeds is a great choice that synergizes well with Destruction, making you deal 300% of your basic attack damage in around a second and a half. If you hit an enemy with an auto attack just before using the trait, you are hitting 400% of your basic attack damage in two seconds, which is amazing. Last, Hardened Shield is a solid choice even if you are not going to be the main tank, that’s because even if you are not tanking, you need to be on the frontline, and so, you will be more susceptible to attacks from the enemy specially since Arthas doesn’t have any escape. Hardened Shield will make you survive on those situations where the enemy shifts its focus on to you, that is why it’s not a wonder for me that it is the most picked talent on this tier.

Sindragosa Build

-Block
-Destruction
-Rune Tap
-Sindragosa
-Biting Cold
-Frostmourne Feeds
-Absolute Zero

I think Sindragosa is undervalued at a high skill level, while being overvalued at a low one. It is a solid choice on certain situations, and because of its long range AoE nature is a great initiator. Overall across all league Sindragosa is picked more or less 50% of the times, while having around 50% of win rate, which further proves that it is a viable choice, specially when you are not playing as the main tank.

You could say that this is almost the same as the standard build, and well it honestly is. The only differences are that you take Sindragosa instead of Army of the Death and Absolute Zero instead of Hardened Shield. The reason for this lack of changes is because you still need to get in the middle of the battle after you initiate with Sindragosa, and those are the best talents to take on those situations when you are not the main tank. The lack of root at the early levels is not a problem since you have Howling Blast, and with Absolute Zero at level 20 you can freeze a whole lane, making it impossible for enemy heroes to have a chance to escape.

About a Frostmourne Hungers build:
One could argue that a build based solely on Frostmourne talents on the early game would be pretty good, but I don’t find most of those talents particularly useful. Taking the increased mana received one is nice, but in reality you don’t really need that amount of mana as long as you manage well your cooldowns, the talent that gives it a slow is redundant, and the one that makes it deal splash damage is not good enough. However, I’m open to the possibility of this build being good on certain cases, and I invite you to share them on the comments down below.

Gameplay and Tips

Arthas is in fact a very straightforward hero, he doesn't have big combos or tricky abilities, but you still have to play it well to get the most of it.

The Early Game

Arthas is pretty strong on the early game, having one of the biggest basic attack damage values of any warrior, which is augmented even more by Frozen Tempest. Frozen Tempest hits once every second, the same attack speed of the basic attacks of Arthas, this makes it so that you could simply add them up to get to the real damage per second he does. At level 10 that’s 194 DPS just counting the aura and your basic attacks, which is a pretty big number for a warrior, this is reflected through the early game. Thanks to his damage and alongside the great amount of sustain he has, he is considered a good laner, although because of his melee nature he might find trouble holding the line against ranged heroes. But the main strength of Arthas in the early game doesn’t come from laning. Since he deals a lot of damage for a warrior, has a pretty strong burst and he has a reliable root, he is one of the top gankers too. Successfully ambushing heroes early game can make a big difference in the long run. Good heroes who work well with Arthas are those that can either combo their abilities with his, successfully trapping them or initiate and disrupt. Perfect examples of this are melee assassins like Kerrigan and Illidan, so consider to pick Arthas the next time you are playing ranked with them. The best way of dealing high burst damage as Arthas is to hide, then use Howling Blast on an enemy hero, pop up Frozen Tempest, hit him with an auto attack first and immediately use Frostmourne Hungers, this maximizes the damage dealt on the first 1.5 seconds, add to that the damage of the other hero that is also roaming or is close in the lane, and not killing the enemy hero would actually be the hard thing to do. Deciding whether to lane or to roam will largely depend on your Team composition and the map you are playing on.

The great sustained damage and survivability also help Arthas to be good at taking mercenary camps, even in the early game. While soloing camps may not be always optional, it is something he can do, although I would recommend having another hero with him, like Illidan again, to take them out faster. Thanks that both of those heroes are pretty good at taking camps, you could even steal the ones on the enemy side before they even notice you are there.

Managing your cooldowns since the early game is crucial. You won’t want to have Frozen Tempest active all the time to save some mana, because even with its low cost having it always active will quickly drain it. Because of this you will want to use Frostmourne Hungers as soon as it becomes available as long as a fight is not going to start soon, in which case you might want to save it to burst an enemy down. Doing this will make sure you almost never run out of mana, and because of Death Coil more mana means more health, so if you do it well you’ll rarely need to come back to the Hall of Storms.

Because Arthas is such a good early game hero you will want to exploit that on maps where early advantages give you a bigger lead. Maps like Haunted Mines are excellent for him since he brings a high early game damage which is very useful first fight in the mines, good wave clearing and of course his sustain. He is also good at maps like Sky Temple, where the first two fights at the temples are relatively long, which gives more time to Arthas to make use of his self heals. But without a doubt one of the best maps for him is Tomb of the Spider Queen, the extended laning phase and the dark and plentiful corridors give Arthas the opportunity to excel at everything on other maps he is just good at.

The Mid-game

On the mid game when objectives take central stage and big fights start to happen, Arthas takes a very important role on this fights. In general, I like to call warriors ‘Disruptors’, since that’s basically what they do whether they are tanking or not. Mastering Howling Blast is crucial to fulfill this role, since this ability gives you the chance to really fight on your own terms. You can freeze enemy heroes on the position that you want them to be, leaving them vulnerable or far from the fight for a few moments. Maybe an enemy Illidan is about to jump on a friendly hero? You can freeze him and not only that will save your ally, but rooting an opponent automatically puts an invisible sign over them saying “focus me”, which is a nice way to lead and organize your team if you are playing solo.

In general, on team fights you will want to use Howling Blast and Frostmourne Hungers on targets than can easily be bursted down, such as Assassins and Supports. Since you are a Warrior, part of your job is actually to stop the enemy warrior to disrupt your team, so don’t get to carried away trying to get to their Assassins if that means you’ll leave your team vulnerable to a combo or cc of the enemy Warrior.

Positioning is also very important. First of all, you should be at the front of your team, and find a way to get close to the enemies and decide who are you going to focus to slow, freeze and use your trait on, however you must be careful to not get too far into the enemy team because not only you don’t have any escape and it would be easy to focus you, but if you get too far in, it would be easier for the enemy to get to the squishy heroes in the back line. Arthas is also pretty good at body blocking, partially because of his slow, so if you catch a hero with howling blast in a battle, and for some reason he didn’t die, it is your job to chase and body block it to get the takedown. His attack range is pretty useful at that.

Yes, most warriors have in fact a varying attack range, with Arthas having one of the longest with a range of 2. This means that you will be able to hit close enemies through other objects like Zombie Walls and the enemy gates and it is of great use when you are chasing an enemy because you can hit him without getting behind.


Mercenaries are a type of objective, so from the midgame and onwards you should give them the importance they deserve. Either alone or with the help of another hero, you will be able to capture them pretty fast and without a scratch, enabling the rest of the team to capture other or to focus on another thing entirely.

In general, on the mid game a good Arthas will roam between the lanes trying to pick heroes off in a pure bruiser fashion. Look for Heroes that overextend or are far from their team. However remember that you don’t have an escape so be careful, don’t the hunter become the hunted.

The Late Game Phase

Past the mid game, and if you followed one of the builds showcased here, you will never have the necessity to go back to your base unless you die, and you will gain a lot of tackiness if you spec for it, or a massive disruption ability which will enable you to start a fight whenever you want it to. As we previously mentioned, Arthas deals a lot of damage for a warrior, and this holds true in the late game. At level 20 Frostmourne Hungers deals 436 damage without upgrades, and 545 with upgrades, if you took the talent that enables you to use it twice in succession, we’re talking about around a thousand damage in around 1 second. Most assassins can’t even dream on dealing this kind of burst damage. The enemy doesn’t expect it, take advantage of it.

Keep in mind you are a warrior though, and not an assassin. When big fights happen your role is to protect your team while trying to fight in your terms. Don’t try to get that kill if that means leaving your teammates vulnerable.

As a general overview throught the game, I’d say the role of Arthas changes depending on the stage of it. On the early, he is a great ganker. On the mid game he becomes more of a disruptor, he is not able to fully tank alone in my opinion because he can’t withstand a high amount of burst damage, so his work is to try to make fights happen on his team’s terms. On the late game, he becomes a pretty good tank now that he has access to talents that help him survive the enemy’s burst, or even a greater disruptor if you spec to it with Sindragosa and the double trait talent.

Final Thoughts

We have covered every major aspect of the hero now and analyzed his strengths and weaknesses. One thing that may still not be clear, is when is it worth it to pick Arthas. Well, if we are talking about Quick Match, you can pick Arthas every time, he is a well rounded hero and is good on every map. On Hero League and Team League, things get much more interesting though. The first thing that must be said in favour of picking Arthas over other heroes is your skill with him. If you like Arthas and you are good with him, even if there is another hero that is considered better than him, if you don’t like him or don’t play well with him, and you want to play Arthas, go ahead and play him, you will do better with him than with a supposedly better hero.

When you are drafting, I would say Arthas is in general a pretty good pick without major downsides. As we previously mentioned, melee assassins like Kerrigan and Illidan complement Arthas kit very well. Kerrigan in particular would give your team an extraordinarily strong early game, especially on maps like Tomb of the Spider Queen or Garden of Terror where it is easy to set up an ambush. You could then round up the team with heroes like Tassadar, who can shield you when the enemy is bursting you down which will give enough time for your self healing abilities to kick in, which is something you’ll appreciate as you’ll be the only warrior. While having Tassadar is enough for you, the rest of the team could use a healer like Reghar. Finally, a ranged DPS is the best choice to finish the line up, I think Valla would be the best choice.

There is a lot of room to experiment with team composition, for example, since we mentioned that Arthas can proc Executioner all the time thanks to his aura, heroes that can take that talent, such as Valla, Sgt Hammer or Raynor could end up being an interesting choice. Heroes that aren’t particularly good with Arthas are those that have some kind of overlap. Thrall is a good example of this, he is melee, has a long range root, and can restore both mana and health. Yeah, his burst with Windfury could be very powerful, the other two melee assassins that we previously mentioned bring more overall utility in the game. Jaina is another hero that overlaps with Arthas, even though their roles are pretty different, the slows Jaina brings make most of the virtues of Frozen Tempest redundant, and even though the slows stack, as we previously discussed, do you really need that many slows? Do you really get much more from them? I believe a better composition would make use of heroes like Valla and Tychus which bring high damage and no overlap.

Not everything is awesome with Arthas though, as I must say that on the highest level of play he is quite a niche pick. In most situations, he is skipped for other heroes, that either can tank better, specially on the early game, or are thought to be better suited for the meta. However, most of the time the player base overestimate those kind of things. Sometimes the viability of a Hero on pro games is highly dependant on very specific factors; furthermore, pro games are different because they allow for bans and more than a best of one, which has a lot of implications on the strategies the teams use. Don’t get fooled, while Arthas may not be player much at the professional level, and may have been hit by nerfs on the previous patches, he is still one of the best rounder warriors, and as we have exposed, his abilities and play style bring up a lot of different opportunities for your team to create cool strategies and synergies.

Overall, Arthas is a very powerful hero with very defined weaknesses and strengths. On the weaknesses side, he suffers from a lack of competitive talent choices on the early game, alongside the fact that he lacks a way to interrupt channeled skills or some form of “hard CC”, something that most other warriors have. And he also suffers from a bad Master Skin too. While I don’t think that they should give Arthas a root or a silence, I do believe a talent rework is needed in a way. But on the other side, even with all of its flaws, he remains a very well rounded hero which will almost never get anyone to complain on Hero League. He may not be objectively the best warrior on the pro-scene, but I actually believe he is one of the best for the average player since he is easy to understand, play, and he makes it easy to rally your team towards a specific enemy. Arthas is a true warrior that balances survivability and damage, while disrupting the enemy positioning, he is not hard to play making him an excellent choice for new players who are looking to expand their warrior rooster, and its just good enough for advanced players to use his skill set to take strategy a step further. So the next time you visit the Nexus, give him a try, who knows, maybe you’ll find that the scourge isn’t that bad after all, and remember:

There must always be a Lich King.