One specific one advice for Wave of Force I'd like to point out is if you're facing butcher, cast WoF JUST before getting stunned. It will knock the Butcher back and you'll be far enough where he can't follow up and you can Teleport away.
I love going Teleport build - nothing is more satisfying than killing the whole enemy team by teleporting from one enemy to the next in a quick succession.
As a li-ming main i agree with all 4 tips, i learned awhile ago most of there and also wave of force can be used with teleport to creat quite some distance if faced with divers
I think Disintegrate is a common mistake you might be making on Li-Ming. Wave of Force improves your survivability by offerring a self-peel, and is instant burst damage. It also is not a channel so you can instantly move from WoF getting you a reset into your next spell rotation, while Disintegrate requires you to cancel the channel, which gives the enemy extra time to escape the range of your subsequent spell rotation.
The fact that Wave of Force is inescapable burst damage is reason enough for it to be Li-Ming best ability. You don't know how good it feels to delete an enemy team with consecutive waves of force until you tried. So with all the extra utility it provides, there's really no good reason to dismiss it.
Also do remember disintegrate is a great counter to Anu'barak's cocoon. As soon as you see a teammate being locked down, used your ult to quickly remove the cocoon
I feel like the arcane orb thing is pretty intuitive for clearing. The minions line up in a ‘u’ or ‘n’ formation and unless you got larger orbs, it fits in perfectly.
It has its place in lower leagues where you may find yourself defending and trying to burn down a boss / objective solo. Other than that, it's a death trap.
i like archon aswell say you burn all your mana casting abilities, no problem just turn archon on and deal dmg while you regen mana :D just remember to use 1 to snap out of it instead of canceling R and also you can have 2 heroics that way but nothing beats absolute overkill of having 2 disintegrates xD
I always try to hit minions in a way that hits most of them. I'm glad you said something about armor talent it's really nice when soloing against a Sylv, But that's very interesting that some of these mistakes are happening so far up in rank.
You should mention that disintegrate is the best cocoon breaking ability in the game at it has 8 damage ticks/second which basically destroys cocoon almost instantly.
Pretty good video. One thing I would have liked added is just a quick tip on where to position your cursor when firing the Q, as closer it gets to you, the more the missiles intersect.
I'm not sure how true this is, but I think it's better to throw the Orb out first since it's slower. Throwing out Missiles first gives them a que to move laterally and then your Orb will likely miss too. Seeing how they move to the Orb can be beneficial to hitting Missiles.
I like to pick Wave ult with Calamity build because with it you can push enemy right into your Q and W, then finish combo with E. Takes some practice to get used to timings and push distance, but extremly useful against people that are good at dodging your skillshots or just hyper-mobile It also can be used as "Oh shit" button if enemy dives on you
One of my favorite builds with her was the reset build with WoF. Was in a 30 or so minute match that was pretty well a stalemate. They were going for boss and our Tass spotted em. Came in after they killed it, used WoF and proceeded to wipe their team (as they were kind of low on health due to boss and an oom healer), capped boss then won. Was a very long match with a quick ending.
Great video, but you should show the combo with Calamity and Wave of Force that POLIK did at a recent pro match. Basically it was Q+W into an open space next to the enemy hero (i think it was Hanzo), and then push him with Wave of Force (I think it had the lvl 20 upgrade) into the spells, and finish him with Calamity teleport damage
It was against Psalm from Tempo Storm, and actually he didn't finish him with Calamity, he used Q, W, E (to get closer and confirm the hit with R), then Repulsion. It was amazing.
That's the combo I've been trying to learn recently, I pulled it off once by accident kinda while spamming shit. Been trying to make it consistent though.
I like to make Mirrorball on Q build anyways because imo it's easier to proc Seekers with it than with Fireflies (even with the increased speed), you're usually not going to be able to weave in an auto attack between every single Q cast nonstop, and because you spend the whole game up to 16 being used to missiles at normal speed, and it's a little bit jarring having to readjust to the new speed on the fly.
Power Hungry is my favorite talent, however we should keep in mind that it doesn't do much for us on prolonged team fights or map objectives that happen away from lanes, like on Cursed Hollow, Volskaya, BoE, Infernal Shrines. If Force Armor isn't needed, then Astral Presence becomes the better choice on these situations.
Yup. Against tanky, high sustain teams, I think Astral Presence + Triumvirate is better. Then again, hopefully you didn't draft Ming against that type of comp and is better suited for QM.
I think on all of those maps except maybe BOE you will be able to get the globe and get value even during a prolonged team fight. Ming has the range to dip into the wave and still be in the fight. So I don't think there is ever much merit to astral. My 2
Even considering some (not all) of those objective points are close to lanes, you'd have to assume that there's actually a minion wave there for you to farm, and that you can leave your team in a 4v5 to go farm it. Sure that can be possible, but I don't think you should count on it.
Against opponents who know how to dodge, Ming can do the one-two combo. Use q to zone the opponent or juke their dodge, and throw w at the direction they dodge.
No love for teleport shield? I normally find that the shield, fueled by cooldown resets (with dominance) makes for a very sustained Li Ming, surprising enemies by not dying and keeping the hurt coming. Does anyone else like the shield?
it’s good, but it’s at a talent tier that provides one of the hugest power spikes in the game. Mirrorball is incredibly powerful. Doing 60% more damage with a 2 second cool down is great. Also with CC you can hit all of them and do 1500 damage on JUST your Q.
Astral presence is a good option on Battlefield of Eternity. You're out there forever with no globes. It's enough mana regen to never run out of Q's, so Q-build + astral is solid.
There is about a thing why people use disintegrate even if they are low health, because always you can fail or they can dodge the orb or the arcane missiles, but disintegrate is more precise and you can still move so fast while channeling this, is better to ensure the kill, even even silver guys know this
Your vids really help to understand some talents on characters that don’t look that great on paper but excel in practice if used the right way. Every tip helps climb the ladder. Great videos, keep up the good work!
Ming is fortunate enough to have almost all her talents be viable. Aether Walk could use some love but its usefulness waned after lack of PvE dmg on Calamity
i belive that a orb build is alot better than a misiles build since it is dificult to hit all misiles, and you can easily and from a rely safe distance poke the enemy team with orbs
1:37 (AP v PH) - PH is superior. Very much so. In theory. In reality ppl take PH and end up quickly running oom in teamfights or lack sustain in drawn-out poke exchanges. PH requires some mana conservation and a bit of planning ahead. Hence, especially for ppl who do not main Ming, AP is usually a safer bet and a quality of life improvement. However, if you can utilize PH efficiently, kudos, your Ming has just become that much more scary (as if she had not been intimidating enough before). Btw, before diamond correct use of PH is a good "litmus test" to see if a player mains Ming without looking at the profile =)
Also I like using WoF as a displacement against heroes like Sylvanas or Malfurion. It's a good counter against other heroics if you don't have a Diablo or Morales on your team, or some other hero that can interrupt.
Great video! I think the next video you should do is bullying a lane with Zagara. You can hit all 7 minions with your banelings if you sit on top of the wizard minion and roll them out.
the only thing you said I disagreed about it. the starting talanet. the 100% Increes in mana regain while under 25% max mana is a god saver. Because you can always be fire off spells unlike the one that only gives you more mana if you grab an orb. Which by the way. means you have to push the foe out of lane. and that almost never happens. And if a Dinamic team fight. the one you said not to get is far better for longer lasting constent fire from li-ming.
I would have included the long range nuke build with using seeker, glass cannon and mirrorba. I see 90% of li ming players going for a full orb build and it makes me sad each time... basically a long range poke with little kill potential
Orb builds work amazingly well against a non-dive, slow movement comp. Anything with multiple enemy front liners, while you have multiple front liners to hold the line, and you just keep shelling them with insane range 2 second cd orbs. Full orb build, max range 16 orbs deal insane amounts of damage on a very very short cd.
However, you will find yourself OOM constantly spamming orbs at a heavy frontline. I go magic miss build to poke tanks down because of you land all of them, you will mark them for bonus damage from your orb and basic attacks “cannoneer” all while spending far less mana. If you practice the Q build, you will have more kill pressure and be in the fight longer than an orb build Ming, every time...
Even if you are a very good ming player, going Q build against great opponents (around mid masters and up), you will start to notice that enemies will dodge your a significant percentage of your Q missiles, even if you predict correctly. On top of that relying on the short auto attack range that ming has and having to go for cannoneer over puts her at a lot higher risk of getting nuked. In the vast majority of cases the reason why anyone should go for anything other than the standard calamity burst build (which offers more guaranteed burst than Q build) is that you're being forced to be a backline steady dps because of miscommunication in draft. W definitely gets the job done the safest and with right map knowledge&positioning is quite potent even nuking the backline heroes. Which build you go on BoE is really debatable, as it completely revolves around your and enemy team composition, but the Q build is definitely viable in the right circumstances at that particular map. Source: Your friendly Grand master Li-Ming main.
You forgot the 5th most common mistake low MMR Li-Mings make very often: they take orb build. And glass cannon. I actually wanted you to list that among the mistakes because Glass Cannon is clearly not as beneficial as Illusionist and people simply don't realize it.
5:30 i use disintegrate last why? because it is instant and all other abilities need travel time so it makes sense to go W then Q then while they are flying towards the target use R and after R i use E even if needed usually if target has lots of health disintegrate won`t be overkill and if you get a kill it will refresh ccd so why not use it also you can retarget it to other enemy if you get a kill mid R
I would argue that BoE DPS build is better with Aether Walker at 1 over Power Hungry. Globes are scarce on that map, and getting more stacks for Cannoneer for free every 3 seconds means that Li-Ming can pump out more sustained damage without spending more mana. Actually Aether Walker is my favourite lvl1 talent because it means I’m much more evasive and resultantly more survivable. Not getting the mana I’d like, but I think I’m pretty much matching the spell power buff (because of Cannoneer) more consistently than 20 seconds every time I happen to catch a globe. But I also like AA Assassins, so maybe I shouldn’t play a burst mage. =P
Nice explanation. Its sad knowing there are alot of players who don't plan/think on their mana consumptions. They think they are trying to do their best by throwing all abilities as they can. And they endup getting oom real quick and even right before the objective event. It's bad and sad.
You know what? I am not more a beginer but i disliked a lit Li ming and KT because of my gameplay was bad (and i knew it). It was really necessary for me to learn about it and understand my mistakes. So ... thanks a lot NotParadox! Very usefull video!
I see what youre saying about wasting mana when using your ult on kills however alot of kills will happen in team fights and using your ult can still be beneficial even using the mana. Using the ult to get a kill and reset can also damage other players while the main one your trying to kill because its likely that player is trying to back out and the others are slow to react or notice or think they can get a kill so when they player starts to back and leaves the others vuln your ult is not only doing damage to that main ton but the others aswell. The more damage done to all of them the more kills you'll get and the further to progress to winning. So as I see your point about wasting mana, it wouldn't be a waste if all those resets are also hitting other enemies and not just one.
i respectfully disagree astral presence main usefullness is when you are in large team fights, instead of sitting around being useless or being forced to return to base to replenish mana you stay relevant able to throw out spells the entire fight. However you should only ever pick this talent if you are not facing heavy burst damage mages from the other team. otherwise just get your spell shield.
I play LiMing very often (lvl98) so really know her. I have to say You know what You ae talking about. I mostly agree ( with a bit diffeent opinion with few details) but it's a mater of a playstyle or personal preference. For instance I almost never pick Power Hungry. It would help a lot but i find Force amor just superior in almost all cases. Always only 50% offense from magic. In situations that almost always meant death, we become an aggressor with the victim, we laugh at the Tracer ULT, we laugh at the Pyroblasts flying over us, we will survive the improved Ring of Frost, we suvive Chomie's full Timetrap and just shoot her 2 seconds later etc. I have found one more thing woth mentioning. Tie16 talents - when You compare Mirrorball and Fireflies You do it just as most other players completly forgeting about projectile speed increase. Yes, dps is almost the same on paper but when you start using Fireflies You are way more accurate. You just hit more often for full dmg. Just imagine: starting from lvl 16 Ming has a ranged tool to make above 1k damage, fast, easy and accurate, costs almost no mana, and just imagine- at 2s cooldown... This one talent has a hudge impact. All LiMing players know what happens when high lvl Greymane jumps on us from bushes. With Fireflies , if You do it right, you will tear him to pieces, before he does it to you.
Power hungry is good but not always effective, all builds are effective depending on what you plan on doing. Astral Presence if excellent when you play snipe LM, using all the orb talents to increase damage and distance it becomes insanely devastating, and the talent that's ratehr early I think lvl 4 or 7 for the orb, the orb CD resets to 2 secs if it goes 75% base distance, astral presence at this point is what you NEED because if you are good you can dash out astral orb very often in team fights, deal a TON of damage (in teamfights you don't get orbs to increase your damage for 20 seconds) and keeping distace while your orb deals critical hit damage. Those tips are great but not very good when someone opts to play astral orb. the mana talent is good for mirror missile.
1. Astral Presence is not meant for your playstyle. it is my go to talent most of the time. The thing with him is that you do not use him for fights, you use him in damage, poke builds where the sheer damage output is more important than your burst. If you play Li Ming as a poker with W, you should take it as it effectively allows you to have infinite mana and you should constantly stay at this 25-30% mana range before the fights. 2. Hitting melee minions are fine. It often depends on your positioning. It is more important to quickly destroy minion waves rather than to be most efficient with your mana and damage. This is because if you force minions to die alone, you are denying enemy team experience and saving yourself time. Li Ming is not a split pusher, you are here just to clear one or two minion waves. Thus, you should focus on speed at which you clear. While it is right call to hit backline at max range, more often than not you will engage enemy minions from the melee side. It is preferable then to launch your W at the middle of melee minions to bring them low. Then your orb resets, you will kill ranged minions. In this way you are way more efficient in time and end up clearing waves faster. 3. Using Disintegrate is fine. Li Ming should focus on doing as much damage per second as possible. In a fight, it is practically a misplay to have ability ready. You should spam them as soon as they are ready. This includes your Disintegrate. If you connect Q+W, you most of the time should follow with Disintegrate as your damage is oppressive on anyone, but tanks. You are likely to bring person low if it is not a tank or a bruiser and this alone is worth cooldowns. You should prioritize dealing as much damage as possible, because resets benefit you the most when you had used up your ultimate early.
1. meaning you will never have any use for your trait for the rest of the game due to never having any mana to cast any spells 2. there is a reason hitting minion waves from the side is what every ming player under the sun does, prehaps that reason could be because it is the most time and mana efficient way of doing it? 3. it's not worth it ever if all you are doing is randomly throwing out spells that hits nobody, saving your spells to actually hit people is more important by a lot ming is a hero designed to poke and then snowball a fight after getting anyone low enough to kill, not dps saying damage on frontline is not important just shows how bad you are really
1. Astral Presence generate way more mana than the other talent. With this build you have to know how to manage your own mana reserves. Keeping your mana low, but not too low. 2. Hitting minions from the side is not time efficient. It is just mana efficient. You see, you have to dps them anyways yourself. All minions give you xp and you simply cannot take the backline and leave front doing nothing. So, if you approach minions frontally, you launch your orb at max distance which is enough to more or less kill them. Then you go to the side and launch another W. This way you do not waste cooldown time on your abilities and your damage output is higher. 3. Here you dropped the ball heavily. I said the complete opposite of that, maybe you should pay more attention to actual text. Poking involves actually hitting the enemy. If you cannot poke, you just suck at this playstyle and you should avoid it until you become good enough for it.
1. you are never able to take advantage of your trait by never having mana to cast an ability more than once every 4 seconds 2. hitting 7 minions is more than hitting 3 minions, it's not difficult math 3. as you mentioned, if you have cooldowns up you are a bad player, meaning the more time you use to aim the worse you are, your words not mine
1. As I had said before, if you are good at proccing your trait and keeping your mana reserve for a team fight, it is not an issue. To go OOM is pretty hard when you have that talent and this 25% mana reserve, lets say 10% is quite a lot. Her full combo costs her 140 mana. Her basic combo costs 60 mana. At level 10 when this becomes important, you are hovering at around 100 reserve mana. This in turn allows you to cast your combo when it refreshes. If you are caught off guard, you have to choose between another use of your ultimate or basic abilities. If you are not, you will hit above that 25% mana treshold which is enough for a short fight. In a longer fight, you will hover between OOM, but with this trait, you will be regenerating mana at very fast rate. Globe talent on the other hand at lvl 10 gives you just 40 mana more. While on the other hand, taking Astral Presence reduces the time at which you have to regenerate your mana from 29 seconds to 14 seconds. Astral Presence even without spamming is more of the "I'm never going OOM" type of ability where globes are very dependent on them actually being constantly fed to you. Globe talent is better for lanning and short fights while Astral Presence is better for extended fights and more active mana use. With my playstyle, I do not rely on dishing my damage during teamfight, I do a lot of damage prior the fight, often I just burn my ultimate if my W connects on a squishy target. It is not an attempt to kill him, it is just a way I do my poking. 2. The issue with that is that you are spending time to go behind those minions. You are not thinking about wasted damage. If you would hit frontline which always survives your W at max range, you will be able to nuke backline with another one when you will get into position. If you would spend that time traveling, you will loose like up to 4 seconds where you could be recarhing your spells which equals to 50% lower dps or even more. This becomes more important when you have big minion wave which is very hard if not impossible to deal with one W. I often just use my ultimate on minions just to get rid of them faster after initial rotation, I then cast another rotation and ulti minion wave from the side for maximum efficiency. 3. You are not listening nor have any clue what I'm saying. Neither your statement holds any water when analyzed. You either know very little about Li Ming or worse. You cannot spam abilities with Li Ming which in turn makes your whole point pointless. She goes OOM extremely rapidly if you do not have cooldowns up. It is also ironic that at point number 2 you are arguing for saving cooldowns rather than spending them. Your point is self contradictory.
you must have never played ming by making these claims, any ming that has played her for more than 5 games will agree that you are just talking out of your ass
I would love you forever, brah, if you would number your tips in one of the corners. I’m sick of being scared to skip the useless tips (for me) to get the the new tips (more-of-than-not). Edit. Added “s” to corner.
I rather use the teleportation build with wave of force. Very benificial to team. Ofcourse you lose damage here and there but. A low hp enemy team doesnt survive it.
great video! So what are your thoughts on me taking every talent for the reset build, but at 13 i go cannoneer because of the amount of single target dmg you can do to a target.
Question! What's your take on having the lvl 1 teleport talent - the blink damage later on? I find its quite good for repositioning quickly and avoiding damage.
Power hungry is really useless in the BoE build... half of the game (at least) played around immortals without any regen globes. That is exactly(or can be) the place where u wanna go for presence so that u can do high amount of dmg for an infinity, since astreal gives u just enough mana regen to infinitely spam Q so that u can get object or be in tf more longer (so it is not for reset, but for longer presence on the battlefield). Also force armor is more useful. Since again, u dont get globes so that power hungry quite useless, on the other hand, your full build is on Q. It makes much more sense then to give the ability some extra. (ofc it is rather useful against high ability dmg) There is no such thing as "only choice" talents, no matter how often pros play them. Not in this case at least.
nice video. 10:47 I just dont agree to that, BoE is awful map for power hungry because you spend so much time off lane. Basically this is the only situation where I would go for Astral Presence, with the Q build and AP on lvl 1 you can use your buffed Q on cd no matter what.
And why would you want to take it? I use her blink only as an escape tool, Li Ming becomes VERY vulnerable if she wastes it, especially if she uses it to blink into the enemy team. I'd rather have the extra damage from the distance that the Orb travels, or even the 3 magic missiles hitting the same target.
Well, you're not supposed to blink into the enemy unless they are about to die. I like orb build in aram and for fun, but calamity is her best build to get resets.
Am i mistaken in thinking you get an assist (and reset) just being near an enemy death. I didn't know you needed to damage them to get the assist (/reset).
That's what i thought, but this gent (who is clearly way more experienced than I) kept talking about how he would make sure to damage folks to ensure resets
I realized that you don't have quick cast on most of your abilities (not only this one but also some other heroes I managed to observe). Do you have a specific reason for that?
i got 1 question how do i play ranked when i love playing lots of specs like murky,gazlowe and other specs. I also do play tanks and not many assassins and i also dont like playing healers at all so idk how to fix this i love murky so much. i would love to get high rank as murky lol
I recommend playing assassins and healers that can still acti like specialists. Start with Ragnaros and Jaina, they both can push as hard as a specialist but be a bit more beneficial in team fights and objectives. As for healers, try rehgar, he can push waves very quickly and do camps.
im curious is there any situation where murky is a good choice ive found that if you go march of the murlocs vs a dive comp you can slow down the dive and get lots of easy kills in team fights.
Frontline minions do only 6 damage, while backline minions do 100 = that MUST be a mistake, like, there's NO WAY such a huge discrepancy in those numbers, something must be wrong
Check it. It's true. Melee minions do next to none damage. If you want to get a strong push you can basically ignore them when clearing as long as you get rid of the ranged ones.
What drive me crazy with newcomer li ming ... try to teleport enemy while not taking calamity...... those orb build with glass cannon is the worst. like please buddy, do you have memory span of goldfish? you didnt take calamity on lvl 7... remember that right?
I'm not answering that bait question, but my argument about the video being too long for such basic tips is still valid. There's absolutely no reason why it should be this long.
Actually there is a perfectly valid and good reason for it being this long: it takes time to explain and demonstrate stuff. Again this might be simple or basic to you, but he is covering many different things, and that takes time. He wasn't being repetitive or redundant in my opinion, and he made a lot of good points, delving beyond what I would call basics or simple tips, so I don't agree with your criticism.