Greetings fellow Geeks. This week we’ll take a look at the character that has probably been in the meta the longest. This is mostly because she probably has the biggest viable selection of builds in the Game. We’re of course talking about Valla, the Demon Huntress from Sanctuary.
To understand what makes her so strong, you first have to familiarize yourself with her kit.
Vallas Passive, Hatred, lays down the basis for an amazing ranged assassin. Her basic Attacks grant a stack of Hatred, up to 10. Each Hatred stack increases Basic Attack damage by 2% and Movement Speed by 1%. This allows her to unfold her deadliness over the course of an engagement, slowly turning into a highly mobile killing machine.
Abilities
Q: Hungering Arrow – Fire an arrow that deals 366 (81 + 15 per level) damage to the first target hit, then seeks up to 2 additional enemies dealing 183 (40.5 + 7.5 per level) damage. Can hit an enemy multiple times.
W: Multishot – Deal 360 (75 + 15 per level) damage to enemies within the target area.
E: Vault – Dash to the target area.
R1: Strafe – Rapidly attack nearby visible enemies for 150 (21.75 + 6.75 per level) damage per hit, prioritizing heroes over minions. Valla is able to move and use Vault while strafing. Lasts for 4 seconds. Strafe is a channeled ability and can be interrupted with stuns and silences.
R2: Rain of Vengeance – Launch 2 waves of Shadow Beasts that deal 560 (123 + 23 per level) damage to enemies within the target area, stunning for 0.5 seconds per wave.
The demon huntress’ abilities send us a clear message: She’s here to kill stuff. Need to dispatch a single, isolated target? Shoot out a Hungering arrow. Gotta clear a wave or poke at the enemy deathball (enemies bunching up early after they achieved an advantage), just Multishot them. Got caught out or need to reposition to get that last Auto-Attack or Hungering Arrow in? Utilize your vault. Her heroic choices really make Valla peek in her damage, giving the demon huntress the ability to obliterate an entire team with a well placed Strafe or lock them all down with a Rain of Vengeance. Her weaknesses show after she expended her vault. She has quite low health and generally doesn’t do that well if you start hitting her.
I already mentioned Valla has versatile builds. Instead of a step-to-step guide, I’ll go into the Synergies that make them work and explain how to augment those strengths. As always, I will provide full builds at the end of the article. Something to note is that the distinguishing features between these builds are mostly the early talents, with the later tiers mostly being used to boost your survivability.
Enhance your abilities to their full potential
First off we’ll talk about a build centered around Hungering Arrow. The talent Repeating Arrow (The cooldown for Hungering Arrow is reset when Vault is used [Lvl 7]), even though it is technically a talent for vault, provides you with a huge damage-spike against single targets. If you combine this with Puncturing Arrow (Hungering Arrow range increased by 25% and the number of times it can bounce to 3 [Lvl 4]) and Siphoning Arrow (50% of the damage dealt by Hungering Arrow is returned as Health to Valla [Lvl 1]), you see yourself equipped with a huge nuke that also allows you to trade really effectively. I recommend picking this up if you see yourself pitted against dive-champions like Illidan, Butcher or ETC that will spend most of their time in you backline on their own.
NOTE: If you’d like to pull this into the gimmicky territory, pick up Tumble (Gain a second charge of Vault) at Level 16 for 3 Hungering arrows. Really fun, but unbelievably taxing on Mana.
If you have to deal damage against clumped-up enemies instead, you should combine Composite Arrows (Increases the range of Multishot by 20%.[Lvl 1]) and Arsenal (Multishot also fires 3 grenades, which deal 35 damage.[Lvl 4]). This doesn’t only turn your Multishot into a massive wave-clear, but also helps you poke at Deathballs on Maps like Infernal Shrines or Haunted Mines.[Picture:
Stack up with Vallas passive
For a full right-click build, you have a few choices. Rancor (Each Hatred stack increases Attack Speed by 1.5% [Lvl 1]) and Manticore (Every 3rd Basic Attack against the same target deals 50% additional damage [Lvl 4]) basically feel like they’ve been designed to be used with each other. Augment that already powerful duo with some generic talents like Giant Killer or Searing Attacks and see your enemies melt before your very eyes. If you’d like to add a survivability-option instead, consider picking up Vampiric Assault (Basic Attacks heal for 15% of the damage dealt to the primary target [Lvl 4]) or Hot Pursuit (When at 10 stacks of Hatred, the Movement Speed bonus increases to 20% total [Lvl 7]). Tempered by Discipline (Gain up to 10 stacks of Discipline after Hatred stacks are maxed. Basic Attacks heal for 3% of damage dealt to the primary target per Discipline stack) should be picked up in either case. This build really comes to full force at Level 20, when you can Pick up Nexus Fury (), that not only increases your Attack range, but also helps you get your stacks up even quicker, which makes it the ideal talent for Valla.
The beauty of Vallas talent tree is that all three of these builds can be wildly mixed as you see fit. You can always go for a Multishot build, but pick up Repeating Arrow for some additional Single Target Damage, or pick up Frost Shot (Multishot also slows by 40% for 2 seconds [Lvl 13]) to give you more time to get in your Auto Attacks.
Builds
DISCLAIMER: Adjusting builds according to who you are facing in a game is the mark of high skill. These are simply recommendations, not definite builds you should always use.
Note: Both Heroics are viable for every build since they’re really situational. If you can get away with it, I recommend picking up Strafe. I recommend the ones that fit best into the scenarios described up top.
Hungering Arrow:
Level 1: Siphoning Arrow
Level 4: Puncturing Arrow
Level 7: Repeating Vault
Heroic: Rain of Vengeance
Level 13: Tempered by Discipline
Level 16: Blood for Blood
Level 20: Nexus Frenzy
Multishot:
Level 1: Composite Arrows
Level 4: Arsenal
Level 7: Searing Attacks
Heroic: Strafe
Level 13: Frost Shot
Level 16: Blood for Blood
Level 20: Nexus Frenzy
Auto Attacks
Level 1: Rancor
Level 4: Manticore
Level 7: Searing Attacks
Heroic: Strafe
Level 13: Tempered by Discipline
Level 16: Blood for Blood
Level 20: Nexus Frenzy