Rehgar: A guide for average or new players

Rehgar is a hero in Heroes of the Storm that supports his team through healing, waveclear, slows, and decent damage. In this guide, I’d like to break down a newer build that we’re seeing for him and give some tips for playing him effectively. Let’s go!

Rehgar’s Base Kit

(Q) Chain Heal: This ability is Rehgar’s primary way of healing his team. Once you press Q on the hero in need of help, a burst of healing energy travels from Rehgar to the target. Once that target has been healed, the burst of energy travels to two more allies who have less than 100% of their health.

• Chain Heal prioritizes heroes. What this means is that, even if there are low-health minions nearby, the heal will bounce to allied heroes before bouncing to a minion. You can utilize this by healing a minion so that the heal travels to a hero that is too far away for you to target.

(W) Lightning Shield: While not technically a shield, this ability is still incredibly impactful. When cast, two balls of lightning begin orbiting around the target ally. These balls of lightning deal damage in the area around the target as they rotate.

• Lightning Shield is Rehgar’s main source of waveclear and a substantial source of his damage. By casting this on yourself (alt+W) or an ally, you can clear a wave of minions relatively fast. In combat, you should prioritize throwing this on your tank player to increase their damage since they should be closer to the enemy team than you.
• This talent allows Rehgar to be a decent camp-taker in a pinch. In the early game, you can take the Giant camps with relative ease as long as you’re dodging the camp’s attacks. I recommend having someone help you take camps early faster so you aren’t away from your team for too long. Once you’re in the mid-game, you can take camps a bit easier by yourself, though usually this should be your solo laner’s job.
• If you have a melee assassin on your team that is very aggressive (like Illidan, Genji, Thrall, or Maiev), they can also be good Lighting Shield targets.

(E) Earthbind Totem: Though it’s a relatively simple ability, Earthbind Totem can be very annoying to play against. This totem, when placed, slows enemies in an area around it for 35% of their movement speed.

• Drop this totem when your team is winning a team fight and the enemy begins retreating. They won’t be able to retreat fast enough due to the slowdown, and you give your team a good chance to pick up a kill or two.
• If you find yourself or an ally being chased, throwing this totem down is usually enough to deter an enemy from continuing their chase, since they now move way slower than their target.

(Trait) Ghost Wolf: When Z is pressed, you instantly shapeshift into a wolf with the movement speed of a normal mount. While in wolf form, you can auto-attack an enemy to lunge forward and bite them for increased damage before shifting back to your usual form.

• The real power in this ability is that you mount instantly where every other hero has to channel their mount for 1 second. This extra second is crazy useful because it allows you to chase, escape, or just get moving towards an objective a little faster than your opponents.
• Taking damage doesn’t break you out of your wolf form. This is an advantage over almost every other hero in the game because they get knocked off their mounts if they take any damage. This means you can ride through minion waves or a team fight without being dismounted.

The Heroic Abilities

 

Ancestral Healing: When cast on a target, this heals for a very large burst of health after a 1-second delay.

• Ancestral is the biggest burst heal in the game right now except for maybe a Lifebinder from a full-health Alextrasza on a low-health tank.
• Landing Ancestral is an art; you have to know exactly when to cast it and whom to cast it on for maximum effect. You kind of have to predict where damage is going to happen to make up for the 1-second channel time.
• You sometimes end up casting Ancestral on your tank while he absorbs a massive amount of damage so that he gets fully healed after tanking so much. This usually means that the enemy blew a lot of abilities to secure a kill and you used only one ability to undo the damage they caused.
• When your team only has one main damage dealer, it’s usually wise to save the Ancestral for them. Without them, your team will typically have a hard time finishing a fight.
• Never use Ancestral outside of combat. If your teammate is not in immediate danger, they can be healed by your Q, health globes, fountains, or by hearthing.

Bloodlust: When cast, all your nearby allies gain a lot of attack speed, movement speed, and they heal for a portion of the damage they deal.

• While this is not a bad Heroic by any means, it doesn’t really compare to Ancestral. You’ll almost always get more healing out of Ancestral, and you’ll keep a teammate in a crucial fight more reliably with Ancestral.
• If you do go Bloodlust, try to use it right when a fight starts to get maximum value. Like Ancestral, timing is everything.
• I advise people to play around with Bloodlust if they would like to; it’s a fun ability! But Ancestral should be your main focus because it requires some practice to use well, and it’s an insane amount of healing.

The Build Guide

Rehgar has a couple of builds, but in this guide, I’m going to go over the one that has been working well for me lately. It’s shown up a lot recently in professional HGC play and has served me well in my personal games.

(Level 1) Electric Charge: This talent increases the radius of your Lightning Shield, which allows for easier camp-taking, better waveclear, and makes sure that you consistently hit more enemies with it.

• This can be subbed out for Wolf Run on larger maps like Warhead Junction or Cursed Hollow for extra movement speed.

(Level 4) Stormcaller: This talent offers mana each time your Lightning Shield hits an enemy. If you hit an enemy for the full 5-second duration of Lightning Shield, you actually get more mana back than you spent casting the ability.

(Level 7) Cleanse: Cleanse grants an ally the Unstoppable status for 1 second. With this one ability, you can completely negate the effects of any root, stun, slow, and most negative effects in the game. You have to time it well, but it is very worth it to learn how to use it properly.

• If you are new and want a little bit less of a challenge, Blood and Thunder is alright to take here.

(Level 10) Ancestral Healing: We’ve gone over this above, so I’ll just say Ancestral is the only real choice until Bloodlust gets buffed or Ancestral gets nerfed into the ground.

(Level 13) Earth Shield: This talent makes Lightning Shield give an actual shield that’s worth 12% of the target’s max health. I like this ability because it gives you the capacity to provide healing or shielding on your Q, W, and R buttons–three ways to potentially save someone’s life. Additionally, this talent combos with Ancestral to make a low-health ally borderline unkillable.

• Cast Ancestral -> Cast W while Ancestral is on it’s 1-second delay -> Ancestral lands. This means that your opponents have to burst through the extra shield in one second in order to kill the target before Ancestral heals them to a much higher health.

(Level 16) Earthgrasp Totem: Earthgrasp Totem essentially turns your E ability into a 1-second root, which is enough sometimes to secure a kill or to save someone from being dived on.

• I sometimes choose Hunger of the Wolf for the %-based damage if the enemy team has some sturdy tanks like Stitches, Yrel, or Arthas.
• Rising Storm is very nice if your team already has a good amount of slows or roots. This tier is kind of up to personal choice and the situation at hand.

(Level 20) Storm Shield: This is another shield ability that supplies nearby allied heroes with a shield equal to 20% of their max health. This gives you four abilities (Q, W, R, Storm Shield) that give your allies health or shielding.

• Rewind is taken in pro play a lot and is very useful if you want the added challenge.

Conclusion

Thank you guys for reading this build guide. If you find it insightful or even just interesting, please be sure to share! As always, you can message me on Twitter regarding my writing or any questions you may have about supports or general news in Heroes of the Storm or Hearthstone. I’ll see you all in the Nexus!