Level 16: When you reach this level there’s really only one sensible choice as far as I’m concerned and that’s Double Bombs. Singularity Spike is already a great skill and Double Bombs allows you to cast two of them in rapid succession, with the second one being free of any mana cost. What more could you want? Double Bombs is definitely more effective if you pick other skills that improve your Singularity Spike, but it’s still incredibly useful even if you don’t. At this level all your spells deal a considerable amount of damage, so having more of them to throw at your enemies is certainly something you’ll want to look into.

Executioner, Void Slash and even Berserk might seem like a better fit than Double Bombs for the purposes of the Silent Strike build, but the damage you can do if you hit with both spikes is overall better than what you can get with the other skills. Plus, Singularity Spike is your only ranged skill, so having the option to cast it more often is very useful, especially since now you can damage and slow two targets instead of just one. We’ve focused enough on our melee damage until this point, which is why picking a skill that improves our range damage becomes pretty helpful at this point just to balance things out a bit. Stoneskin is not even worth mentioning to be honest because it doesn’t help Zeratul at all.

Level 20: The last skill is a no-brainer given that the Silent Strike build goes for Shadow Assault at level 10 instead of Void Prison. Shadow Assault already makes you pretty scary whether you combine it with other skills or not, so improving it with Nerazim Fury is very wise needless to say. And we’re not talking about some small improvements either because Nerazim Fury increases the duration of Shadow Assault by 50% and also grants you 30% lifesteal. Zeratul doesn’t really benefit from skills that heal him for the most part, but the 30% lifesteal is a nice bonus at this point since you’ll be dishing out huge amounts of damage and thus the healing you can get is pretty decent.

In any case, don’t rely on the lifesteal too much and don’t rush into battle with low health thinking that you can heal yourself in no time because you’re still a glass cannon regardless of your kit. Instead, only jump into battle if you plan on killing someone and make sure you don’t commit too much if you can’t handle the heat. Generally speaking, at level 20 you can go one-on-one with pretty much every hero if you play with this build, but heroes with good crowd control and healing spells might still pose a problem because they’re not easy to kill in just a matter of seconds. Against most assassins and warriors, however, you shouldn’t have too many issues provided that you know when to attack. As for the other skills at this level, Bolt of the Storm grants you an extra Blink while Fury of the Storm makes your basic attacks bounce to nearby targets for 50% damage. These two skills are not necessarily terrible, but Zeratul will be much better off with Nerazim Fury and the nice bonuses it provides.

And there you have it. Naturally, you can change things around a bit to better suit your playstyle, but using Silent Strike in its current form is already able to transform Zeratul into the lean mean killing machine he is meant to be. As a reminder, Zeratul is considered to be a “hard” hero to play, so don’t expect to win just because you’re using this build or any others because the most important thing is your own skill and that of your team mates. Having said that, make sure you take Zeratul out for a spin and tell me how this building is working out for you. This is the best I could come up with for now, but if you have any suggestions on how to improve Silent Strike I’m all ears.

Heroes of the Storm is currently in the Closed Beta phase and requires a key to access. In case you don’t already have one, you can check out our second Heroes of the Storm Beta keys giveaway (with more to come) and try your luck at winning one from us.

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