Whitemane - Main Builds

https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/bwxj3z/what_is_the_secret_to_whitemane/eq1g10x/

Quote posted below:

Level 105+ Whitemane here.

Whitemane's actually probably the single strongest healer in the game right now if we were talking sheer numbers, but you're basically having to force the stars to align just to make her function at all.

Whitemane's talents follow three design paths. Talents that make her easier to play. Talents that are niche at best, and talents that make her harder to play but stronger. Embrace the difficulty and build into it, and she ends up becoming this absurd burst nuker/healer hybrid.

For a basic talent build, go Clemency, High Inquisitor, Fanatical Power, Ult Depending, Harsh Discipline, Radiance, Purge the Wicked. The point of this build is to embrace her role as a burst nuker WITHOUT sacrificing healing. Your job is to set marks (via Aegis or pre-healing), and combo something, anything down with FP during the early phases of a fight. Once you get comfortable doing this, you'll notice your targets start to die and enemy healers having to panic heal them because with FP and Purge, you have enough damage to straight up kill most ranged assassins singlehandedly in a few seconds, which means YOU ARE ANCESTRALING EVERYONE YOU MARKED. Caps for emphasis because dear god does it deserve it.

Your general combat flow is akin to a burst mage with a single target focus. You've got a surprising amount in common with Kel'thuzad when it comes down to it. Pick out a target, cave their skull in, wait in the wings and do setup before you do so.

Never forget, you are one of the only characters in the game who can heal other players with your auto attacks. If you're waiting to set up the combo, or simply in a situation where you can't reposition, get to staff whacking people. It's not a lot, but you attack faster than many characters and can thus deal out some lucio style AoE heals.

For ults, Aegis is for setting marks and for armor. Aegis is not for the heal. The heal is nice, it's alright, it's not gonna do nearly as much as having that armor on would have done. Reckoning is to counter dive and isolation comps. If the enemy has to engage into reckoning as a group, be it killing a garrosh thrown target or diving your raynor, you were already doing an ancestral with your combo before, and now it simply has no comparison.

You have infinite mana, you simply have a limited amount available to you at one time. Get used to deliberate stack cycling. 1 stack of Q purged via clemency or inquisition is a net GAIN of 20 mana in exchange for a cooldown. If you're topping people up or simply in a scenario where you're not expecting a fight in the next 10 seconds, do this repeatedly to pad your mana pool and keep people topped off.

Whitemane is an excellent duelist vs characters who can't shut her down. After your initial burst, you want to duel someone who can't reliably take you out of action and be able to turret them with AA's and spells so you can keep the heals flowing.

Whitemane is often derided as being ineffective (she's not), or people falsely claim she's easy (lol no) but underperforming (again, no). The trick to playing whitemane is to build into her actives, accept that you have the tools to play extremely aggressive, and understand that like Artanis, you don't have the tools to get out of a fight. Play into it. Take the actives. Play aggro. Stack cycle. Land spell combos. Eventually, you'll reach the point where you can straight up win fights most characters have no business winning. Most TEAMS have no business winning.

You have the highest potential healing output in the game. You have the highest burst of any healer in the game. You can straight up delete people from the game. And to do any of it, you need to truly practice her.