HOTS guide collections - Page 7

-OVERVIEW-

Maiev's one of my favorite heroes to be added to HotS in recent months. Having a viable melee assassin for the 4-man feels very nice as they're some of my favorite heroes. Maiev is a hero with a kit based around flashy 1v9s and playmaking. She excels at punishing out-of-position opponents and carrying teamfights with her wardens cage, multi-tethers and Q resets. She also has decent wave and camp clear and is difficult for the enemy to pick off due to her high mobility and juke potential so there's always something proactive you can do without needing a real team to follow-up on her.
-DRAFT-
Maiev is so strong she can really be picked anywhere right now and still do well. But she excells vs targets with low mobility as they're easy to dive, tether and kill. To really carry a teamfight she's paired well with some kind of aoe damage or ult like malf or diablo or a support such as rehgar to give her the survivability to kill the enemy team by herself with Q resets. She's countered by some tanks like jo quite effectively as blinds are really annoying for her to deal with but not insurmountable. Maiev doesn't really have any bad maps but I'd say her best one was Tomb of the Spider Queen.

-TALENTS-

1) Naisha's Memento
It's a lot of extra damage, synergises with your 16 and is fairly easy to recharge when you want to be proccing it anyway. The other options are a hard-to-stack quest and a talent that doesn't do as much. Since this build revolves around doing a lot of damage with auto attacks this talent does the job beautifully.
4) Blade Dance
The PVE clear and guaranteed extra damage especially once you get your 16 is too good to give up in comparison to the risk/reward of Pin Down. The best Maiev players don't take Pin Down so neither should we.
7) Elune's Wrath
More damage if you hit at least 2 people. Generally it will get more value than Bonds of Corruption but the armor reduction is strong and sometimes works if you can always get the pull on tether.
10) Warden's Cage or Containment Disc
Warden's Cage will be the pick 90% of the time but sometimes containment disc works when there's a crucial hero to isolate out of the team fight and cage just doesn't look like it will get value - e.g vs a heavily mobile enemy team or perhaps an aba comp.
13) Bladed Armor
Just way easier to guarantee then the others. You should be able to keep up permanent armor in a team fight meaning your 16 is constantly online. The other talents are just less reliable.
16) Armored Assault
This synergises beautifully with your 13, 1 and 4 and adds a heap more damage. The other talents are less reliable and worse damage.
[b] 20) Shadow Orb: Huntress
This is the talent with the most synergy with auto attacks and physical damage, it also helps you kite and chase and get value on tethers and even on top of all of that it's the easiest to recharge.

-GAMEPLAY-
Macro
Maiev's camp and wave-clear is very good. She can clear fast past 4 and clear camps fairly easily as well. She's very safe in lane so can sometimes push quite far out.
Micro
The most important thing on Maiev as with all melee assassin's is not letting yourself get insta-burst. As you will often be engaging non-laterally you want to look ahead of time and see what you need to pay special attention to dodge with your trait and also make sure your team are in position. It's also cruicial in team fights to hit the Q reset. If your Q doesn't reset your damage is drastically reduced so make sure to practice the Q hitbox as it's quite different from other skillshots in the game.

-CONCLUSION-
Maiev is a great hero to pick up for people who like divey melee assassins. She also has a lot of carry potential so is a great choice for hero league once you get good at her. Focus on keeping your deaths low as a sign you're doing well on her and understanding your limits. Enjoy.