Heroes Of The Storm: Li-Ming, Rebellious Wizard
Wizard warfare
I've not checked in with Heroes of the Storm [official site] in a while so the appearance of a spotlight video for upcoming hero, Li-Ming seems like a good excuse. She's just been added to the test realm so she should be added to the regular HotS roster soon. We know she was being set up as a glass cannon (fragile but capable of inflicting massive burst damage) but let's see how that's been translated into skills.
Ah right, so full glass cannon then. Li-Ming has all these burst damage spells that rely on correct positioning to a) get the most out of them and b) not get punched to death while using them.
Here's the video but I'll run through them below as well:
Trait: Critical Mass
Her trait is the thing which could really make her monstrous. What it does is it resets her cooldowns every time she's part of a kill on an enemy player. It's a real risk/reward traith though. I can see it encouraging players to overdive in search of a kill. When that pays off you might end up being able to snowball a pickoff into a teamwipe. When it doesn't you might end up rushing in and feeding kills instead.
Q: Magic Missiles
This ability sends out 3 missiles to a target location. They damage the first enemy they hit but there's some finesse involved when you look at the pathing. The location you target ends up being the focal point of the three different missile trajectories. You can use them to target one particular area/enemy (especially if your target has been stunned or held in place) or, with a bit of practice, you could send the three missiles in entirely different directions by making the focal point a lot closer to you. Here's a gif because it explains what I mean a lot more easily:
W: Arcane Orb
This one's a slow-moving orb which gathers damaging ability the further it travels. So it rewards Li-Ming players for good positioning or for being decent at predicting enemy movement. It looks pretty easy to dodge if you don't work out how to deploy it sensibly so, again, teammates with stuns or other forms of crowd control will be rather helpful. There's a splash damage element to it so landing it during teamfights will boost your damage output on multiple enemies.
E: Teleport
This one is to help with positioning. Teleport allows you to instantly teleport a short distance. It's like a blink in Dota 2 or a flash in League of Legends that's on a short cooldown. As you can probably guess, it's good for both escaping and closing distance when you're chasing. In relation to the rest of her kit you'd also want to use it to reposition in order to deal max damage while staying out of the firing line.
Heroic Ability: Disintegrate
This one's a damaging beam. It turns Li-Ming into a laser turret and damages everyone caught in the beam. You'll probably recognise it from Diablo 3. Alternatively just think of it as damage-only variant on Phoenix's Sun Ray ability from Dota 2 or something akin to Vel'Koz's ultimate in League of Legends.
Heroic Ability: Wave of Force
This does less damage than Disintegrate but it lets you use the knockback to reposition enemies which can be more useful. It also doesn't require you to rotate on the spot while channelling which Disintegrate does.
As I say, Li-Ming is currently available to try out on the Public Test Realm while the development team keep an eye on her and make tweaks. There are also a bunch more alterations as part of the same test patch which you can look at here. I'm interested in the replay protocol being made open source and there's also a mysterious creature which I assume is foreshadowing for an event or character.