Poor Abathur!

one day i will understand how to play him

Step 1, Put the mines on the pathways
Step 2, Stare at the minimap while your push builds
Step 3, Press Q to help your teammates
Step 4, Hate your teammates

Step 5: repeat Step 4 Ad Infinitem

This is the same pain I feel when I play him against a Rag.

Indeed. Several minutes of work put into winding up the machine of fort destruction, all gone with one press of R. :<
*insert something demotivational about a metaphor for life*

Abathur is my favorite Zerg.

Granted, I never play Heros of the Storm, but I do enjoy Starcraft.

Abathur! Super surprised to see art of it :>

I always wanted to play him, but my friends told me no. Then they stopped playing entirely. I will never experience Slapathur. D:

I feel lucky that I started learning Abathur waaaaaay back in the tech alpha, when everyone was new and bad at this game. Learning him from scratch now has got to be an insanely intimidating experience.

I've won plenty of games with him on my team. You just need to know what you are doing and so does everyone else. In other words, the stars need to align.

Yeah, my Abathur's level 20, and he's one of my highest winrate heroes. I think that means I might be actually insane. >_>
It's amazing what a difference there is when a team understands how to play with him.

just have to know what you are capable of when he overshadows you.

I think Abathur is definitely fun, but I tend to find that he is often not all that useful. While it is my own issue, I tend to find that having a Abathur on your team means that you're down a tank/damage and it's hard to feel the impact he has on the game. While Ragnarok destroys all his work now, I thought the Lost Vikings were far more favourable to me as a specialist because of their exp yield. And much more fun and rewarding to play imo.

Then again, if you are level 20 with Abathur, you must be good with him. So perhaps you can clear up my misunderstanding with him, as I definitely don't feel the impact of his presence or even aware of it. :)

SORRY IN ADVANCE FOR WALL OF TEXT. >_>

Abathur's effect is definitely much harder to measure than other traditional heroes. In a good game you won't feel like he's there doing anything very much, but he's topping all the scoreboards, so obviously he's doing something - Keeping your lanes pressured, creating an exp advantage, giving vision on the enemy's jungle activities, threatening or taking down structures while nobody's looking, swinging small engagements in your team's favor with symbiote, swinging large engagements in your favor with crazy-powerful, relatively low cooldown clones...And if he's feeling safe (and cheeky), taking control points, blackheart coins or terror seeds, or even nukes. All with just a fraction of the travel time associated with a regular hero.

Even if he doesn't destroy that fort he's been pushing, someone on the enemy team had to take the time to cross the map to deal with it, giving you an advantage elsewhere. Even if you didn't win that fight over the raven tribute, Abathur kept your levels even or pushed you ahead (provided you safely poked the tribute to delay it, and didn't feed too hard). He's making enemy assassins run around the map trying to find him. His mines are revealing vulnerable stragglers that make for easy gank targets, getting in their heads, making them afraid every time they step on one, sometimes even causing them to abandon whatever sneaky activity they were trying to do. Abathur's dealing with a pushed lane and MULEing furiously, freeing up your team to play the rest of the map instead...But while he's doing that, he's still with you.

In most (but not all) situations I'd rather have Abathur than TLV, assuming they are both played at a similar skill level. Their exp yield should be similar, granted vikings can push a little bit harder against the right team, but in many teamfight situations they feel "meh" at best, and a liability at worst (Kael's Living bomb, giving more maneuverability options to enemy heroes like Kerrigan or Illidan, benefiting enemy skills that like more targets like Rag's sulf smash heal, creating nearly free kills for Li-ming to reset off of, stealing auto-targeted heals from Lili, etc). Teams of random people are also generally worse at implementing the strategies that TLV enables (rapid 4-man rotating).


That said, Abathur struggles against lightning-fast engagements and dive comps. Symbiote's best value comes from dealing poke damage over time, the clone is so much more valuable when a teamfight lasts for its full duration (but not much longer), and his push gets more effective the longer you can draw out the posture-and-poke phase of a fight. He also suffers when a team doesn't know how to play with him, for example, by poking safely for as long as possible instead of diving hard immediately.

Sorry for the wordiness!

TL;DR: A mediocre-to-average Abathur does less for your team than if they had played almost any other hero, but a high-level Abathur will easily carry his own weight and more. He makes your team shine brighter, but if you have a bad team (or just get out-drafted) he can't "carry" or salvage the game through his skill alone. What he does do in that situation is he buys your team more time and extra chances to figure out how to get it together and pull off a win.

No problem!

Well that's certainly interesting to say really. So in essence, what it seems like you are saying - if I am correct in understanding you. Is that Abathur is a map control hero? Seems like his mines would be useful but I find the problem with Abathur is that heroes with high mobility like Dehaka, Falstead or even Brightwing on lanes can negate a Abathur. It definitely does seem like Abathur is a lot more useful, but then again, I almost played every game I have ever played on BOT matches purely because they're more fun and I don't have to deal with toxicity while enjoying the game. And I get to try out heroes without being punished too much.

I didn't think he would give much or a significant amount of Exp boost, but then again it makes sense when he can switch from any 2/3 lanes and a teamfight to soak up that extra bit of experience for your team. I just tend to find that Abathur is a really map specific hero a lot like TLV. But that is the interesting thing, is that his impact is not any ONE factor, it's multiple factors like lane-pushing, game presence and map control rather than anyone specific role.

You're perfectly right about TLV. They are a very specific and imho the hardest heroes to play in the game. They are god awful at Battlefields of Eternity, or any other two-lane map where Teamfight is the main focus. They thrive on the large 3 lane maps such as the Temples of Anubis, Garden terror and Warhead junction as each one of them can pick up a nuke. But I do agree, not only are they bait for feeding the enemy team, specially Kael'Thas, but also for heroes like Medivh who can use a polybomb on them and that could throw the game entirely. While they can be used for teamfighting, it is god awful. So I far prefer using 'Play again' and summoning all three for a strong push. The 'minion bribary' is the perfect talent for the three of them, and empowering mercaneries to push lanes gives your team an enormous exp advantage and pushing presence. That's why I don't tend to find TLV as vulnerable, I never have them three in a teamfight unless it is a push for the core. But that's the pro's and cons of it really, TLV are very rarely played in competitive games and even when they are, they are only specific to a couple of maps at best. So heroes like Abathur are most likely far better in majority of cases where symbiote can empower a vallha for example for that attack speed.
I just love them, but at the same time, I hate them. Specially vs a chromie, li-ming, kael'thas whom all can easily one shot TLV.

I also thought that Abathur struggles with a strong team-fight composition as they can easily push and put far more pressure onto your lanes that you can theirs. I think some heroes who can use sight-seeing abiltiies or scout drones would be a severe weakness as well. So it seems like Abathur has specific weaknesses as well, but it mainly seems that even dive comps are a big weakness, seems like heroes with a global presence or travelling ability is the biggest weakness. As they can hard push a lane then attend a fight for example.

Thanks for the wordy response. It definitely makes a lot more sense when someone who is experienced with Abathur takes the time to explain him to me. I'll have to wait for the day I see a high-level Abathur! I think his interactions are subtle, but over the duration of a longer game they are definitely felt in the end.

Awesome!
He's my favorite champion. I understand this piece all too well XD

I knew I knew who that was. :D
"Supply depos insufficient. Overlords superior."

Despite the fact that I like the swarm, I love the Protoss more and and I also love fire, so this pleases me. X3

As an Abathur main I can relate to this