15,000 gold or $9.99 ($4.99 with sale)
Lunara arrived in Heroes of the Storm this week, and I boosted her up to level 5 in one night alone — she’s that fun to play. As an assassin she’s capable of tons of damage (I’m usually top Hero Damage in unranked play), and has a unique movement gimmick to go along with it.
You see, Lunara can’t use a mount, and she doesn’t have a boost (at least not until an optional one at level 20). Instead, she moves slightly faster than the average hero, and gallops along at a consistent pace. It’s incredibly fun in terms of escaping and chasing down foes, and the bounding animation is amazingly ridiculous.
She also has a straight-forward set of moves. Her Q is a slightly delayed explosion, her W can be detonated after hitting an enemy with an auto-attack for an extra slow, and her E calls out a Wisp, which can be controlled for scouting. Her kit is fast and furious, and you’ll be doing lots of constant clicking with slow cooldowns and poison, damage over time auto-attacks. Positioning is everything with Lunara, because while she can do a ton of damage overall, she’s very squishy, and only has one proper escape outside of her raw speed.
When it comes to Heroics, I favor her second choice (Leaping Strike), which is a two-charge attack that causes her to leap in the air over her opponent (rendering her unstoppable) for a quick damage spike. This is an escape of sorts, but it can also put you in harm’s way if you leap incorrectly (watch the above video at 3:38 for an example). Her other Heroic is a tad less interesting, as it merely damages enemies in a straight line, and doesn’t mesh with her mobile playstyle. As for her abilities, I tend to take a few specific ones every time, which increases her utility a bit.
At the first level mark I pick up the skill that grants you vision for enemies during the auto-attack poison duration, which, when coupled with her Wisp, helps out your team quite a bit (especially if you’re playing cloaked heroes). Speaking of the Wisp, I always take the skill that makes it cost zero mana and grants it a shorter cooldown period. That way, I can constantly use it to scout out camps or objectives — it took me a bit, but I got in the habit of using it every time it was up, and micro-managing it around the board using the mini-map.
It’s really hard to tell if a character is balanced when it hasn’t even been out a week yet, but Lunara is very fun to play, and my favorite new character since Kharazim. It’s important to note though that she works better with planned out team compositions, as she has almost no wave-clearing ability or utility. She is a pure single-target damage dealer, which may limit her effectiveness on a global meta scale. And really, that suits my playstyle just fine.
