Maiev has been a long-anticipated hero in the Nexus. She played a big part in the events of Warcraft III and made a return with the release of the Demon Hunters in Legion. The leader and founder of the Watchers, Maiev was tasked with guarding Illidan after his capture. When he escaped, she spent years doing everything in her power to hunt him down and ultimately succeeded at the end of the Burning Crusade. But, as Illidan told her while dying, “You have won... Maiev. But the huntress...is nothing without the hunt. You...are nothing...without me.”

Luckily, Maiev has plenty of enemies to hunt in the Nexus. As one of the strongest release heroes, her win rate sat at 65% before receiving nerfs after only three days. Although she’s cooled down a bit since, she’s still one of the most potent heroes in the game with a very strong base kit.

Maiev offers a decent amount of CC with Umbral Bind and her heroics, and she relies on their use to keep enemies close. She thrives in the center of combat. Her abilities deal heavy AoE damage, and she can take a good amount of punishment due to her armor talents. She was intended to be a sort of an anti-mobility hero, an answer to the mobility creep in Heroes of the Storm, but there's no shortage of mobility for herself. Maiev’s only real weaknesses are her complete absence of sustain and poke damage.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Abilities

One of Maiev’s primary goals in any fight with any build should be to hit as many heroes as possible with Fan of Knives for resets. The damage output is immense, even without talents for it. She combos well with any hero that has AoE lockdown like Malfurion or ETC by unleashing a barrage of knives on multiple enemies caught in CC. Using Fan of Knives locks Maiev out of her auto attack window for a small cast animation, so if possible, try to weave it in between attacks.

Umbral Bind is what most of Maiev’s play will revolve around. Good use of Umbral Bind will deal additional damage with pulls and control enemy positioning and movement. It’s very strong for chasing down fleeing enemies and pulling them back towards your teammates or forcing your opponents into bad positions. There are two things to note about Umbral Bind. The first is that it resets her auto attack, so you can deal extra burst damage by activating it during another auto attack (like Arthas's trait). Secondly, it deals the damage before applying the tether and can break a hero out of stealth to bind them. You can hit a gate with Umbral Bind activated to attach a tether to someone behind the gate to pull them out into your waiting team. If a target is close to their fountain you can even pull someone behind them.

Spirit of Vengeance is easily comparable to Haunting Wave. Haunting Wave travels farther and does damage in a narrow cone, but Spirit of Vengeance travels faster and then returns to Maiev’s cast location. This gives Maiev the options of using it for damage or engaging/disengaging. The damage isn’t insignificant, but it's unlikely to hit at range and even less likely on the return pass unless fighting in a choke. Since she’s got plenty of health and talents that give armor, it’s better used as an engagement tool. She can survive quite well without the escape, especially with her trait. The best use of Spirit is to combine it with Umbral Bind to teleport away from the bound targets to guarantee a pull in any direction you want.

Maiev’s heroic abilities are unique for an assassin since neither deal damage. Containment Disc is a skillshot version of Anub’arak’s cocoon and just takes an enemy hero completely out of the fight for 4 seconds. It’s good for setting up for a kill on a single valuable target or locking a support out of a fight while you kill their allies. Unfortunately, the rather slow projectile mixed with skillshot accuracy tend to make landing this ability on the back line a difficult task.

Warden’s Cage sets up a ring around Maiev that enemies cannot escape from unless they resign to being knocked back towards the center first. The 1.5 second summoning time is too slow to use it to capture moving targets unless you are ahead of them, so it can be tough to start a fight with this unless you hard engage with Spirit of Vengeance or your enemies start the fight. If a hero tries to enter from outside the cage, they will be knocked in, and for Maiev, the more the merrier—it's Fan of Knives resets for days.



Vault of the Wardens is an incredibly powerful trait, and the fact that it is on an 8 second cooldown is still a bit unbelievable. Vault can be used to completely mitigate many heroics if you can get the timing down, and shrewd use of her trait will make Maiev take significantly less damage. This ability does not work as a personal Cleanse. It also doesn't remove any negative effects on her besides slows, so abilities like Azmodan’s laser or any damage over time effect will stay on Maiev but won’t deal damage for the duration of the Vault.

Talents

It's hard to say with such a powerful hero what the best build is after one week. Before the nerfs, the AA build had the upper hand, but now Umbral Bind build can do more damage. However, the Bind build suffers from having to pull off a specific combo instead of freely spamming your abilities. Builds that focus on Fan of Knives work best against heroes like The Lost Vikings or all melee comps that tend to cluster.

Maiev has a lot of great talents, but it's clear that at least one option per tier is far inferior to the others, which often makes choosing talents fairly one-dimensional. However, the ability to synergize different tiers effectively can sometimes make up for the relative weakness of a talent.

Naisha's Memento Activate to make primary Basic Attacks bounce between nearby enemies up to 2 times. Lasts 8 seconds. Recharge Naisha's Memento by hitting at least 2 Heroes with a single Fan of Knives.

Blade Dance Using Fan of Knives deals 54 Physical Damage to enemies around Maiev.

Bonds of Corruption Enemy Heroes pulled by Umbral Bind have their Physical Armor reduced by 25 for 3 seconds.

Warden's Cage Summon 8 Warden Avatars as a cage around Maiev. After 1.5 seconds, enemy Heroes that come in contact with an Avatar consume it and are knocked to the center of the cage. Warden Avatars last 7 seconds.

Shadow Armor Blink grants 25 Armor for 2.5 seconds. Maiev's Basic Attacks against enemy Heroes refresh this duration.

Armored Assault While Maiev has more than 15 Armor of any kind, all Physical Damage dealt is increased by 25%.

Shadow Orb: Huntress Activate to increased Movement Speed and Attack Speed by 40% for 5 seconds. Recharge Shadow Orb by dealing Physical Damage to enemy Heroes 10 times.

Bonds of Justice Quest: Each tether applied to a secondary target of Umbral Bind permanently increases Umbral Bind's pull damage by 15. Reward: After applying 5 tethers to secondary targets, increase Umbral Bind's pull damage by 75. Reward: After applying 10 tethers to secondary targets, increase Umbral Bind's cleave damage by 30%.

Blade Dance Using Fan of Knives deals 54 Physical Damage to enemies around Maiev.

Bonds of Corruption Enemy Heroes pulled by Umbral Bind have their Physical Armor reduced by 25 for 3 seconds.

Warden's Cage Summon 8 Warden Avatars as a cage around Maiev. After 1.5 seconds, enemy Heroes that come in contact with an Avatar consume it and are knocked to the center of the cage. Warden Avatars last 7 seconds.

Bladed Armor Each enemy Hero hit by Fan of Knives grants 5 Armor for 5 seconds, up to 20 Armor.

Cruel Chain Umbral Bind grants 25% Movement Speed for 2.5 seconds. In addition, each time Maiev deals damage to tethered targets, Umbral Bind's pull damage to all targets is increased by 40% up to 200%.

Shadow Orb: Huntress Activate to increased Movement Speed and Attack Speed by 40% for 5 seconds. Recharge Shadow Orb by dealing Physical Damage to enemy Heroes 10 times.

Naisha's Memento Activate to make primary Basic Attacks bounce between nearby enemies up to 2 times. Lasts 8 seconds. Recharge Naisha's Memento by hitting at least 2 Heroes with a single Fan of Knives.

Blade Dance Using Fan of Knives deals 54 Physical Damage to enemies around Maiev.

Elune's Wrath Hitting at least 2 Heroes with a single Fan of Knives causes the next Fan of Knives to drop a star on targets that deals 77 damage when it impacts.

Warden's Cage Summon 8 Warden Avatars as a cage around Maiev. After 1.5 seconds, enemy Heroes that come in contact with an Avatar consume it and are knocked to the center of the cage. Warden Avatars last 7 seconds.

Bladed Armor Each enemy Hero hit by Fan of Knives grants 5 Armor for 5 seconds, up to 20 Armor.

Armored Assault While Maiev has more than 15 Armor of any kind, all Physical Damage dealt is increased by 25%.

Shadow Orb: Huntress Activate to increased Movement Speed and Attack Speed by 40% for 5 seconds. Recharge Shadow Orb by dealing Physical Damage to enemy Heroes 10 times.

At level 1, Bonds of Justice is the choice for Umbral Bind builds, while Naisha’s Memento is for auto attack or Fan builds. Pursuit of Vengeance just doesn’t do enough to compete with the damage output of the other two talents. Bonds of Justice can be stacked forever, and when combined with the level 16 talent Cruel Chain, Umbral Bind becomes Maiev’s primary damage output. You can start stacking the quest very early on even if you are in a solo lane by just using a minion as the target to apply the tether to the enemy hero as the secondary target. Naisha’s Memento is a large DPS increase when there are multiple heroes around, but it works best if you are in range of only two enemy heroes since it can bounce back to the original target for double damage.

At level 4, Blade Dance is far superior to the other talents in every way unless you are using a full Fan of Knives build and using Fan at a long range. Pin Down only stacks to 30%, not the 45% bonus damage it can be interpreted as. With the nerf already to Fan’s base damage, Blade Dance does more damage without needing to finish a quest while Pin Down requires 4 Fans to hit 3 targets before coming close to Blade Dance’s damage. The only disadvantage of Blade Dance is that it only hits close targets, but Maiev is melee character, so that isn’t really a problem.

Blade Dance is also physical damage. Its damage is increased by Bonds of Corruption at level 7 and Armored Assault at 16, and it helps reset Shadow Orb: Huntress at 20. Blade Dance's range is 4m, or about half of the total range of Fan of Knives. The screenshots below show the max range of Fan and the area that Blade Dance hits. Also note that because I had the level 13 talent Bladed Armor and Fan deals its damage before Blade Dance, it will always deal a bonus 25% damage from Armored Assault if you hit a hero with the Fan, even if it's the first cast.




On average, it takes around 1.3 casts of Blade Dance (not counting Armored Assault or Bonds of Corruption) to equal the damage of Sudden Vengeance, depending on the enemy's max health. Luckily, the cooldown of Fan is 4 seconds versus the 10 seconds of Spirit of Vengeance. This isn’t counting potential resets on Fan or the fact that you waste Spirit for damage and lose the mobility and opportunity to use it as an engagement tool.

Level 7 is an easy choice: pick Elune’s Wrath if you are Fan of Knives build or going to get Shadow Orb: Shadow Strike at 20. Alternatively, pick Bonds of Corruption if you are going an auto attack or Umbral Bind build. Elune’s Wrath gives a visual glow around her Q when it is active, and the knives take somewhere between .25 and .5 seconds to fall. Don’t pick Ruthless Spirit. It doesn’t even get the bonus damage until the target after another has been hit, and again, you're wasting your mobility on damage.

Level 13 is mostly up to your playstyle and preference. It’s worth noting that Bladed Armor stacks and rolls over with itself. Since it lasts 5 seconds, as long as you keep hitting heroes with it, you can keep stacking the armor up even if you only hit a single hero. Chain Gang, while giving the most armor, is too conditional to rely on.

Level 16 is where each build gets a massive damage increase. Cruel Chain makes an Umbral Bind combo her highest burst damage possible (outside of hitting 4 heroes with constant Fan resets). Auto attack and Fan builds both get a ridiculous 25% extra physical damage that is almost always active since her level 13 talents all give armor. Unfortunately, Vengeful Knives continues the theme of one talent on each tier being much worse than the others.

Maiev's storm talents are unique. Instead of upgrading her heroics, she picks from several active abilities that rely on conditions to recharge them instead of having a traditional cooldown. Most of the time you’ll want Huntress. Vengeance is cool and gives a lot of extra mobility, but Maiev doesn’t really need that much. Shadow Strike is great for nuking down a single target, but if you already have the armor reduction from Bonds of Corruption, it’s not as much of a damage gain as Huntress would be unless you are relying on casters on your team to do most of the damage.

Huntress is a 40% movement speed and attack speed steroid for 5 seconds that resets after dealing physical damage 10 times. What counts as physical damage? All auto attacks, all bounces from Naisha’s Memento, and Blade Dance. That’s a lot of opportunities to reset Huntress.

Metagame Analysis

Maiev will most likely see quite a bit of play time—if she's not banned, that is. Her base kit provides a lot of options with coordinated teams to take control of a fight and force bad positioning out of opponents. Ironically enough, she seems to pair well with mobile heroes like Genji and ETC even though she was meant to stop them. Ganks with them can almost guarantee a kill if the enemy hero isn't perfectly prepared for it.

In her current state, Maiev both counters most of the top assassins and outperforms them as well in the PvP aspect. Until she sees another nerf, it's unlikely that she will make it past the first ban phase. If she does, it's tough to say how the other team will try to counter her since nothing has stopped her dominance so far.

Pro/Streamer Opinions