Anduin is the priest Heroes of the Storm always needed

For the Alliance

[Update: You can find the Spotlight embedded below.]

The last time Heroes of the Storm added a character (all the way back into January), it didn’t really resonate with me. It wasn’t the boon the game needed after it was put on notice last December, which was especially surprising given that Imperius was a long-requested hero.

Anduin, on the other hand, is a complete 180. He’s relevant (love him or hate him) given his important storyline in the latest World of Warcraft expansion, he brings beloved old school WoW priest mechanics into the spotlight, and his visuals are flashy and functional.

I can get used to playing as him.

At first glance I thought Anduin would sidle up too closely to Uther, but you need to spend some quality time with him to see how different he really is. As a former holy/discipline priest main in World of Warcraft I appreciate the nuances in his kit, mostly proliferated through his many talent builds.

Anduin’s base kit involves flash heal (classic priest), which runs on a four-second cooldown and a .75 second cast: the Q key is going to be putting in work. His W is divine star, a (fantastically animated and vibrant) bolt that damages enemies in a line, then heals allies (including Anduin) as it returns: it’s rad. Chastise, his E, is a line skillshot root and his trait leap of faith is a command rescue that makes an ally invulnerable and pulls them to you. That’s a passive unstoppable/cleanse every 70 seconds, baseline. It pretty much makes him playable day one, at the very least. His two heroics (a channeled shield and heal, or a stunning/damaging light bomb) aren’t too shabby either.

Where Anduin shines is through the depth of his talents, which make him a more complex healer to micromanage. At level one he can heal or imbue his flash heals with auto-attacks, or go for “bold strategy,” which grants him both abilities while hamstringing his flash heal with an extra second cooldown. As time goes on you can choose to further enhance your auto-attack build or upgrade all three basic abilities, all of which drastically alter the way you approach each skirmish.

One of my personal favorite builds is to take “enchant boots – lion’s speed” (nice WoW reference, guys and gals), which gives Anduin a 5% passive speed boost that triples to 15% if his passive is off-cooldown. At level 20 you can opt to take another passive charge, ensuring that you pretty much always have that boost, allowing you to zip around fights and position your skillshots with ease. Another great build is what I call “Tankduin.” By taking a talent that always heals Anduin when healing a teammate, then lightwell (an area-of-effect heal that can’t be targeted, and only goes away after 10 heals or a recast), which greatly increases your survivability

I’ve tanked many enemies with lightwell alone, which lasts a long while if you’re the only target. Inner focus is micro-heaven: it’s an active 20-second cooldown ability that resets your flash heal cooldown, which reduces its own cooldown by 10 seconds if you hit an enemy with your W wave. This basically creates a see-saw effect where you’re resetting your flash heal constantly while juggling three actives. The team really nailed Anduin’s relentless indomitably from a thematic standpoint and made him fun to play: bravo.

As someone who fondly recalls the roaring crowds during the HGC finals (twice) and the lively eSports events throughout the rest of the year, it’s absolutely wild to see Anduin arrive without Kevin “Cloaken” Johnson’s cheery voice accompanying a Spotlight video. There’s a lot we don’t know, but from where a lot of us are sitting, Blizzard pulled out of Heroes far too early. There’s still plenty of life in the game itself even if the overlords that be aren’t willing to invest in it.