Yagorath Guide
because this chimp is strong right now and i feel like we are in for a repeat of io where all the fun stuff gets gutted soon so play her while you can
by anon the most bestest plaier in the gaem :)
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I'll try to futureproof this guide, but https://paladins.fandom.com/wiki/Yagorath#Changelog should cover the near future (just have some common sense and you'll be fine)
Upon proofreading it, I've only come to realise the scope of my typing speed and / or autism; so I'll just throw it into a bin so I don't clog up the thread with an unironic 20+ posts. Plus now, I get to do formatting shit and an auto-contents table, which looks nice I guess.
Here's some smooth music to listen to while you read; because I'm considerate of the Anon sat in a dark, silent room reading this.
https://youtu.be/UwGtKExkgTs!
Contents
Intro and Scenarios to play Yag
So. You've decided to play the dreaded Werm.
- Based
- Redpilled
Truly, an obnoxious champion, but one that harkens back to days of yore, back when counterpicking at the selection screen was a thing, because each champion could do a few things well as oppose to basically every champion doing roughly everything mediocrely (minus fun memeloadouts on top). To me, Yag feels like an old champion introduced to the new engine, where everyone else has been nerfed down; and not an outright strong champion. There's more than enough ways to deal with a Yag - and almost none of them are the braindead 'general' builds that dominate most champions meta loadouts.
So yes, before you even play Yagorath, we're presented with the first conundrum - the Champion select screen. Yago specifically has hardcounters which make her life a living nightmare, and as strong as she is right now - if you play into a Tyra, a Cassie or a Skye, you're throwing unless you know what you're doing (>and< they don't). All these champions have easy %-based damage, which for Yag's high healthpool and immobility, are easy death sentences for you if they focus you. While there are many softcounters to Yag's static downside; those three are the most dangerous.
Naturally, this means that, not only is the worm a semi-common pick for ban phase for her strength, but also that you'll have to wait until the final picks to grab her to fully utilise her - provided the other team didn't pull the prisoners dilemma and take her first (at which point, go for one of the 3 mentioned and just shut her down all match as vengeance). I'd really like to point out and emphasise in particular that this phase is her hardest counter. If you don't have a single anti-werm champion (be it soft or hard counter - be it inherently anti-worm or wormocidally specced), the onus is entirely on you as you get wormed all match. About 1 in 3 champions have an answer to the worm, as I'll explain below; so if you get greedy, don't blame the worm - the same way a Drogoz playing into a team with no hitscan will have a substantially easier time to shred enemies, the worm takes a lacking teamcomp and turns it into a teamcomp with an exploding christmas bauble shoved up it's ass.
If you're playing casual, {shrug} just pick and pray I guess.
Basic Gameplay
Right, so now you've successfully navigated the Champion select screen.
'How actually play Werm' you ask? Yag can functionally fill one of two tank roles - she can play the point, or be a fat flanker - she struggles however to be a dedicated offtank - so with Yag, it's an either / or scenario of playing with the team or not.
You'll either be the focal point to which your team plays around, or deep in their backlines on your own. An easy way to think of Yag is that she excels at locking down an area (probably the best in the game) but struggles to make space. The area you choose to lock down can either be the point itself, or the backline which your enemy plans on retreating into - not the region the enemy itself is occupying however. She has no (safe) sustained forward pressure aside from her initial bowl-on-through, she takes too long to reposition to save any supports that are getting flankspanked and her strenuous roll forme attack cooldowns prevent her from being an effective harasser akin to what you'd expect from an offtank.
As a result, most of the time, you'll be playing the point as a maintank (since most games only have 1 tank - You, or the second tank is another Offtank / Fat Flank unable to hold point as well as you can as Yag), however a knowledgeable Yag with a dedicated maintank holding the point is a unorthodox force to be reckoned with.
Gameplay. Yag functionally has two forms - henceforth Roll and Turret. Roll is her default navigation, is [slightly] faster than a horse, while Turret is completely immobile. Turret has the largest hitbox in the game bar none (larger than Willo even!) while Roll has the second largest hitbox in the game bar none (including the usual Paladins 'extra space'), so expect to receive almost all incoming flak - you aren't going to be strafing to avoid any damage on this champ, and your healthpool reflects that. The only ability these two forms share is the conversion - technically 2 abilities (Roll > Turret; Turret > Roll), each on a separate 5s cd, but functionally identical with a functionally identical cd. If LoRez knew what they were doing, they'd do something like Andro's dash, where you can repeat as much as you want for a given period while you use it, before a far more punishing cooldown once you're set - but as is, you'll just have a bit of jank if you're trying to jump and deploy onto the payload (see tips for that). Don't worry about this cooldown at all, 5s is nothing for Yag, so if you want to reposition a few meters behind some cover during a teamfight, the only thing lost will be some sustain.
Rolling Forme breakdown
Yag's Roll is her default forme, and the one I'll go through first - however it is far from her focus. An easy noob mistake to make is to think her gameplay is split between the two formes (the mobile harasser, the static turret) - it's not - she's only got 3 (2) cards dedicated to this forme, her attacks are dogshit here and it's a deathwish if you fuck around in this forme like you're a fat Raum. This forme is soley for repositioning.
Her Acceleration (or bowl) is 5s long - in which 1 second conditionally takes her up to top speed, for 2 seconds of max speed, then 2 seconds of slowdown back to default rolling speed. 500 damage each time you contact (can't juggle, you need to stop touching them to attack again), decent knockback. If you're moving when you start it, it'll accelerate you up - however if you've just switched from turret and are stationary, you'll be held in place for 1s until setting off at top speed immediately - not sure if it's a bug, but it works well to her balance to punish her like that, so should be left in.
The common mistake here is to use it as an initiation tool - to break through and make space for yourself or to disrupt like a dedicated running-Raum forme. It's not - it's your GTFO move, and is what you should use if you're getting overwhelmed (unlike your teammates can slowly move back, you need to stay until the last moment before making like a druggie and speeding off quickly). Like other tanks, it's important to know when to pull back, but with Yag, doubly so, since (on top of how easy it is to get greedy with your sustain) you've got to pre-emptively spend about 3 seconds in advance before you can escape (1s to shift form + 2s to reach escape velocity), with a 20s cooldown until you can next GTFO (compared to, most, whose windup is less than a second, and less than 10s cd - and can walk away).
An interesting facet of this ability is that it immediately accelerates you in the direction you are aiming, not the direction you're travelling - allowing for 180' turns while rolling. Mostly useless, but keep it in mind if you've got a faggot flanker tailing you, since you can also immediately cancel your bowl into Turret - for a burst of 500 (Accelerate Hit) + 360 (Spray) + 132 (DoT) + 170 (Quill) + 50 (Quill expl.) = 1212dps burst (plus any sustain thereafter, including the +10% buff from landing both Acid and Quill) for any retard tailing you alone. Many other tanks have similar burst to this in equally conditional scenarios, so you shouldn't be too impressed - just keep it in mind.
The other ability in this form is the rolling acid, which is functionally useless. Just use it for extra damage in combination with Acceleration while GTFO'ing, otherwise the slow is essentially useless here and the 5 pools of acid is pitiful damage. As is, while rolling (not even accelerating), the only champions that can chase you are (I'm pretty sure) a speed-specced Maeve/Evie running/soaring, running Raum and a Vatu teleporting to you multiple times - all of which (bar possibly the Maeve, see softcounters) are heavily out of position if they're outspeeding your escape to chase you, a Tank, over the supports that will be vulnerable while you're emergency repositioning.
And if Acid polls on roll weren't useless already, you also have an out of place scuffed SONAR for some reason. It's too short range to effectively scan for enemies (only 150m, when you'd expect it to be something like 300m on a much longer cd, like 25s+), too short term to juggle the cooldown for (requiring Roll, but only lasting 5s at 1 pulse per second) for and too meaningless to even bother using most of the time (it's just a pulse reveal, and your acid's DoT already does a good job corner peeking if anything takes damage from it).
I guess use it if you're spearheading an initial push for your allies to see who shows up at the front line. That, or if you're sat behind a wall, and you can sense a teamfight, use it and it might show you who's showing up immediately (since the effect lingers while you're in turret forme too). Don't play for it if flanking, as it's pretty trivial information, and puts you way too close to the enemy to get said info of where they are.
You'll honestly forget you even have this ability.
The only other thing about this forme, is that Acceleration is an obvious Master Riding 4 on-demand from spawn, but just keep in mind that if you use it this way, you won't have it if initial push crumbles. It's up to you to weigh up the value of early positioning vs escape card (ie, does the rest of my team have more than 3 brain cells between them?). Oh, and it gets stuck on doors and map clutter a lot, and locks your ability to jump, so ideally use it on longer stretches, even if they are a little farther.
Positioning
While here, I'll touch on Yag's positioning before going into Turret forme. Yag's positioning is surprisingly simple - find cover, and hide behind it. Be it a wall, be it a corner, be it a tree or a box; Yag catches stray fire like bait catches (You)'s, and any way to mitigate this goes a long way in her survivability (and in slowing the enemys combined ult charge). Even while flanking, keep this tenant in mind. While Yag can be shielded, the simple truth is that she's unironically too tall, and can still catch bullets above every default shield in the game bar Atlas's barrier.
I'll give an example, and you can extrapolate what I mean from it - on Jaguar Falls, mid-push phase, the MainTank Yag will be sat behind either the wall on the 2nd turn the payload must take, or the first set of tall rocks on the straight just after it; to deny the enemy's ability to push into your team at all, repelling any flanker opportunity near the main group, and to cancel out the thin sightline looking towards the falls with quills.
The fat flank flanking Yag will instead move all the way around to wait behind the second bridge (in the enemy courtyard), so as the enemy slowly tries to find space to retreat into as they move back on the straight, they'll be staring down the werm - thus stuck between a rock and a hard place. Neither Yag is waiting in the main lane in the open without reason, and both are instead darting to-and from cover.
Yag might be able to take a lot of punishment, but don't forget, a wall can take infinite punishment.
Turret Forme breakdown
Now for the bread and butter of Yag - the turret forme.
First of all, I'll tell you about Yag's hidden passive. From here on out, when referring to Yags health in this forme, I'll do so with 'ehp' over 'hp', since it's misleading to not factor in this passive. Ever wonder why she's hard to kill in turret form? That's because she's got an unmentioned 35% damage reduction in this forme, raising her 6000 health to an effective 8100 health. That's tankier than a specced Inara (at 6580ehp). Note that this is a flat passive, and is not affected by scaling reductions from other abilities - so Haven 3 on a Turret forme Yag is a passive DR of 51% (raising Yag to 9060ehp). Pretty beefy - but don't forget that you've got a hitbox so big that it can catch every pellet of Bucks shottie from 40m away and you've got the longest and most telegraphed disengage of all the tanks (which also strips you of that passive, essentially dropping 35%ehp to try to escape).
While acid is technically her primary fire, her quills are what you'll be using most of the time as her conventional primary fire, simply due to their range, lower downtime, obvious hitboxes and more focused damage; so I'll cover them here first. Very basic, 170 direct piercing damage, followed by a 50 AoE damage explosion wherever they land. While I can't say accurately, I believe they auto-explode at 300m (in testing, sit on the 250m sign, turn around and aim at the Ying, they'll blow just before), however the only take from this is that you won't be sniping across Lumber Yard with them. Best used aiming at the feet of an enemy, which is where you'll be aiming for acid pools, so a possible 220 damage attack if you can get both attacks to connect (which isn't that hard). The cooldown feels more like an auto-reload than it does an actual cooldown, so use the fuckers liberally as if they really were your primary fire.
Another silent aspect of Yag that the game doesn't tell you (at least, not clearly, outside of a single fucking card implying it, and a tiny indicator that I literally only noticed appears when testing), is that if you hit an enemy which is also afflicted by your acid; you apply a global 10% increased damage debuff to the target for 3s. This means when you use both at once, you can use it to help your team burn down a champion, which for your role, is usually the enemy Tank. This also boosts this attack to 187dmg / 55AoE / 242total after the first attack on-target.
Acid is her primary fire, at 360dps + a 132 DoT for every second an enemy is stood in a pool; both classified as AoE damage. With no clear projectile, it's hard to actually aim where you want your pools to go, but with time you should be able to roughly get them where you want them. On a flat surface, you've got roughly a 75m radius you can sling these things to be able to make a pool, increasing with elevation to ~100m on a ledge.
Note, that you can ONLY have 6 pools of acid on the field at the time, and any more after that will delete the one shot longest ago. While I can't tell if Roll pools and Turret pools share this 6 pool limit (ie, can you actually have 12 pools for a short while?), functionally speaking you shouldn't just be spraying and praying. A good Yag is going spray one pool for every possible way an enemy can approach; as the DoT itself (like all other DoT's) reveals enemies. Not only that, but the pools slow for 15%, making pushes notably harder. It's not quite Inara's Warders field for shutting down pushes, but you've got 6 of the fuckers, use them accordingly to choke up the chokes.
Then, once the enemy is in your sightlines, feel free to focus them with your combined spray and quills.
Yag's key ability, and the one you'll be juggling the CD the most of is Harden. The 15s cooldown is her longest one, but gives an instant +25% DR and complete immunity to all stuns for 4s, before popping. Let it cook all the way and it'll pop for 1100, cancel early and it'll only pop for 300, scaling upward. This is on top of your passive - totaling to a 69% DR from all sources while hunkered down.
The way you should be using this ability is to tank through extreme burst damage. If you use it at low health it'll serve less use, so try to use it for the initial part of a teamfight - though that's up to your own gamesense to determine when a teamfight is about to kick off or not. Just Hardening then accelerating away serves almost no purpose; it's a bad habit, so avoid it. Hardening is for surviving so you can do more damage, Acceleration is for surviving so you can escape - it's usually an either / or choice, not a bootleg combo.
I never found it much of an issue, but don't get greedy with it - both leaving it to cook or cancelling early for less damage. One offers more sustain in the form of longer DR, the other offers it in the form of Yag's attack-sustain. Both are roughly equal, so just do what comes naturally.
While there isn't much to write here, I can't stress that mastering this ability is how you can seem essentially unkillable. It's hard to waste, but very easy to misuse, if you get what I mean. Juggle and pay attention to this cd in particular for how aggressive you want to be.
Her Ultimate is the part that really separates a good Yag from a bad one (since, as is, she's so strong >in the right conditions<, it's hard to differentiate). A pull, leading into an execution death (a unique property only shared by Moji's Ult and dying to an environmental hazard / pit) temporarily switching your old health bar for a new temporary 3,500 one - which for now only means that champions cannot be resurrected - currently, only really fucking over Terminus (but possibly another down the line if another resurrection becomes a thing).
At shortest, it lasts 3s to complete fully at point-blank range, and 9s at 170m. While it may be fun to theoretically fuck with a sniper, it's got a huge audio cue, making every player on the enemy team immediately know that Werm has pressed the suicide button. Seriously - it's not hard for even a group of solo players to burn through your 4725 effective Ult health (even the 6075ehp if you spec for it) in under 3s, especially once Caut 3 is in play and you're on your own in terms of healing. Fuck it up and that ult health bar gets burnt through and you'll be stunned for 3 seconds, which is the 'suicide button' aspect of the Ult. Like Furia's, but you can't move. Resilience does shorten this punish, but see items for why that's pretty shit.
So when do you use it then? Never in a teamfight, that's for sure - it'll lead into an easy stagger before you get a kill in that scenario. You either use if just before a teamfight to specifically pick off a main tank that made a mistake of poking a bit too early (forcing the enemy to either engage in sub-optimal conditions, without being able to pick off your supports first), or in the interlude between fights to force out a staggered respawn. This is used the same way in both Yags playstyles - as a maintank, you'll be safe to chew on your meal behind cover; while as a flanker, you'll be pulling from a usually longer distance, thus acting as a guaranteed distraction to break up their front line and let your team wipe them.
The dark ultrasecret guaranteed mid-fight value Ult technique is one I will not share with you here. Just use it whenever you have it but don't aim it at anyone. It's a very bootleg Strix-tier flashbang distraction that most of the enemy team will break their focus to check on. If you deliberately waste it and aim it at the sky, you'll get the mid-fight distraction, with none of the drawbacks of having to fix yourself and set yourself up for a stun. Plus, you get a 35% refund, so fuck it, amirite? And yes, I have saved supports being dived by telegraphing the Ult before, it does work as a very poignant distraction.
Items
Onto itemisation. Yag is stupidly simple when it comes to itemisation, in part because you basically have a maxed out loadout from the getgo that you just add to.
Yag starts with the equivalent of Master Riding 4, Nimble 9, Deft Hands 3 (given there's no real downtime, and 'ammo' recovery is automatic and fast), while you essentially have Resilience 5 for everything aside from the things you actually care about (the rest covered by Hardening). For context, while it says all CC is converted to stun, the reality is that the only CC you should care about is Tyra's Cripple Flask, the rest mentioned below in the 'Counters' section. Literally nothing else will bother you too much - even Makoa's hook and Pip / Khan / Moji's ults have no effect on you (and %age based ults don't account for the Turret Damage reduction, so you can safely survive Koga's and Zhin's with their '100+%' talents). The only exception is silences, which will force you out of hardening and presenting an inconvenience, which even then is easy to mitigate (see cards).
Onto actual itemisation:
- Caut is the obvious first pick. You shouldn't need this explaining why Caut, but Yag's spewing gameplay applies a fuck ton of it, and the first damage tick from her puddles also apply it, essentially allowing her to double-dip Caut for a 1.8s debuff per shot instead of a 1.5s debuff (1.5s on shot, 0.3s when the shot creates a puddle and applies it again).
- After, or while you max out Caut, Yag's next favorite item is Life Rip, for one reason - the puddles life rip too. This contributes to Yag's extreme sustain, with Life Rip 1/2/3 giving (12hps x 135%DR) 16.2/32.4/48.6 ehps - per person stood in each a puddle (at max, 243ehps if you've got the full enemy team stood in a puddle). Multiple puddles afflicting one person don't stack (now that WOULD be busted). Oho~ but Yag's primary fire isn't the puddle - that's a secondary factor of the spit - like Caut, you're getting a double dip, as for whoever gets hit by Yag's AoE-type spit ALSO gets Liferipped for 40.5/81/135 ehps. Focusing on one person for spit+puddle liferip, and you're getting 56.7/113.4/170.1 ehps for single-target focused fire (
on everything that isn't a Drogoz, but fuck you if that's what you were thinking about), with a whopping 850.5ehps if you're spitting on an entire puddle-bound enemy team at Life Rip 3 - the draw being that if you're firing on all of the enemy, they're likely doing the same to you, at a much greater overall damage (with their Caut, lowering your hps) - Your main priority is just getting Caut and Life Rip to 3 as soon as possible; in whichever order you deem necessary. Branching into Caut early will net you more teamfight wins and more overall credits with Elimination kills, Branching into Life Rip early gives you a bolstered earlygame (especially while the enemy is getting their Caut up)
- From there, you've honestly not got that many choices (as in actual choices). The usual Haven / Blast Shield choice is usually what you'll want, but Regen 3 and a good pocket / main healer will take you further if you just pick it up on the cheap. Yag doesn't care about shields, since puddles just splash under them, so Wrecker is kinda useless, but Dozer can clean up for your team especially well into especially deployable-based teams as a QoL team-friendly pick. Chronos exists, but most of Yags extreme cooldowns can be juggled quite easily, it's main use will be shortening down your Acceleration / GTFO card with a side benefit of a barely noticeable Quill / Harden timer reduction. Take Morale Boost if you're running a memedeck and just want to bully a single backline with constant instakills. Illuminate is useless to you, because you're either too much of a repellent to invisible things (Skye, Sha Lin etc), or you've got your wermSONAR and you're hunting a backline Strix / Seris as a fat flank. Resilience, as previously mentioned, is basically useless because you've got a bootleg version of it innately. Veteran and K2H are 'ok', but are completely outclassed by Life Rip / Rejuvenate.
Talents
Yag has two talents. It might say she has three, but she only has two usable ones.
I honestly don't know what they were trying with Sight Begets Strength, but it's just completely useless. It plays to her weakest forme, in a position she shouldn't really even be with her team in that forme (as she should either be leading ahead with it, or deep flanking with it). Even if it was a permanent shield, 625 (max stacked shields for everyone) is pretty weak and the movement speed is outclassed by Corrosive Acid's buff in every way. I think it was supposed to be intended for TDM usage (everyone sticks together, smaller map so pulses mean more etc), but even then, Yag struggles in that mode from a conceptual level, like Terminus and Inara; so a shitty talent won't do anything to save her from that. That, and Corrosive Acid is still better for TDM. They really ought to rework this ability, because as is, it's unusable. Something like doubling her Turret forme cooldowns while making her Roll cooldowns greatly reduced so she can use them as default attacks would go a lot further in terms of giving her a 'Roll-based' offtanky playstyle.
Corrosive Acid is Yag's 'damage' talent, and the one I would peg as the stronger of her two main talents, but the less flexible. If you're in a stack that can coordinate heals, or you're working with something like Furia Solar Blessing or Seris/Damba double healer (ie way more fucking healing than you'll ever need), take this talent if you can.
In short, this talent increases direct acid damage by 116%, acid DoT by 125% and basically gives your entire team a constant 20% movement speed boost while around you.
This talent seems decent, if a little mediocre on the surface, but in fact has a few interesting facets that aren't immediately obvious. The first of which, being, that this ability affects your primary fire (the acid), which is in turn what Life Rip works off of. Yeah, remember that fucker? Pool ehps goes to 21.6/43.2/64.8 and Spit ehps goes to 54/108/162 - going from total 56.7/113.4/170.1 ehps without Caustic Acid to 75.6/151.2/226.8 ehps per single target with Caustic Acid. Oh, but because things can't just be simple - we've also got to account for that debuff your quills apply after the first shot on-target (remember that? I almost didn't). A real fucking headache, but in simple terms (because I'm not fucking typing any more), it plays with how Paladongs calculates decimals to increase the healing from the spit, so you're actually working with 89.1/178.2/267.3 ehps in Life Rip against a target you're focusing on. Almost double the healing.
Meaning you aren't actually losing all that much long-term sustain in the wider scope of things, only the initial push really objectively benefits from Unnatural Persistence's higher ehps, leveling out to roughly equal in the latergame (since Yag usually hits multiple targets). That - and killing the enemy faster means you'll be taking less damage. Basic maths.
Secondly, as you escape with your GTFO card, it will usually come with your team following shortly behind. That 20% Movement speed boost makes your entire team much more ready to aggress from wherever they decide to hunker down. I'm also certain that it applies to Horseback, so essentially everybody gets a slight (not too noticeable) Master Riding 1.5 buff on part of the first push of each round and returning from team wipes if they tail you - though I will admit that this may be placebo and I've got no friends no guinea pigs to test it on.
Finally, this talent adds a bonus spreading acid pool to Harden. 25m radius, does as much as a normal pool at 40dps, but does not Life Rip - just bonus damage. The pool stays for the full 4s the Hardening would last, regardless of if you pop early or not. It makes Hardening a little bit more oppressive, but it's nothing to write home about.
Unnatural Persistence is Yag's bread and butter talent, and the one you know and hate her for. At 351ehps, Yag's inherent self-sustain on a point is stronger than a personal Grover (108ehps, 216ehps w/ continual Blossoms, 256ehps w/ Talent+Blossoms), a Jenos pocket healing her (243ehps) and nearly as much as a personal perma-Grohk totem (405ehps, ignoring downtime). Added to her synergy with Life Rip, and any support on her team still being able to lend a hand, and a Yag with this talent can be a real brainacher until you get Caut 3. That's 70.2ehps at Caut 3, for reference.
While strong on the surface, this talent only really makes up for a lacking team comp. Think of it this way - in most team comps, if you're running a Jenos (or Skye) as the only healer, then the Terminus is going to have a difficult time keeping himself topped off (a tank which attracts a similar amount of damage - but with a way to actually mitigate it, unlike Yag - and heal some himself with Syphon+Cards, unlike Yag). Yags talent only covers for this (extraordinarily common) scenario, by essentially pocketing herself and ensuring that she gets enough healing to function without a healer - and at the cost of losing out on Corrosive Acid. As broken as all of Yag's self sustain + a pocket Solar Blessing Furia + Pocket Damba + Unnatural Persistence sounds on paper; the brass tacks is that it's just overkill, and will be equally superfluous once the Caut 3 stage of the match is reached.
The secondary draw of this talent is that it incentivizes Yag to sit on the point. The (almost always) exposed point. Sure, maps like Bazaar exist, but for 9/10 matches, you'll be sacrificing your diverse selection of safe 'lock-downable' positioning behind a nice wall, to instead sit directly in the firing line, with no way to mitigate damage (only reduce it) - attracting even more damage than usual. And with that increased sustain, you're now even more of an ult battery than you were before (especially inviting ults like Corvus or Drogoz, which hardcounter as much as Tyra / Cassie / Skye if given the appropriate charge rate). I would advise, from my experience, you treat this talent more like a useful passive, as oppose to a talent you ought to play to maximize the effectiveness of - where you get a nice boost while locking down the payload behind cover, or treating the point as a place to heal in the downtime between major teamfights.
While you can't go 'wrong' with this talent, many a shitter Yag can usually do 'better'.
Cards
Since there's so much to cover on this one and with how personal-taste each loadout is, I won't give a direct loadout for you to steal mirror, and instead just generally tier what you're working with, with small explanations.
Also 1/1/3/5/5 is the alpha chode power move, and any loadout with a 4 in it signals to everyone on your team that you drink soylent. Go big or go home, faggot.
Strong / Yag's Best Current Cards
End of An Era - Increase Hardening DR by 20% (to 100%) but reduce duration by 10% (to 50%)
This is easily Yag's best card, and I won't take any other answers. The positive can boost Yag's DR while hunkering down to 203% DR (12,000ehp - for all intents and purposes, invulnerability on-demand), and the 'downside' is unnoticeable if used timely, while essentially guaranteeing all Hardening pops will go for the full 1,100dmg. All of a sudden, you start reliably tanking Dredge, Corvus and Skye Ults, and more importantly, occasionally surviving Tyra flasks; while giving your healers room to burst out-heal damage even at Caut 3. The downside is increasing Yag's skill ceiling by about half an inch, while making her damnsite harder to fucking deal with.
Because you were also wondering, Yag's maximum solo DR is 247% (This Card + while Hardening + Turret passive + Haven/Blast Shield 3) - raising her effective health to a fucking chunky 14,760ehp at full. I don't know how high that could be made with external sources (Torv / Furia shielding etc), but the point's still made.
Raze and Burn - Heal for 50 (to 250) after hitting a quill
Pretty much another way to get nearly as much self-sustain as Unnatural Presence (without the sit-on-point limitation), but relies on Quill cd's. If your quills are off cd, (which they rarely are, and can be built for with cards/Chronos) the sustain ends - but regardless, this is a great 'general' card.
Ancient Wounds - Generate 2% (to 10%) acid after hitting an enemy with Quills
Futile Efforts - Reduce Quills by 0.05s (to 0.25s) each time you hit with Spray
Both play into each other niceley for essentially Infinammo - which as a turret, is something quite convenient for both improving damage and sustain. Better on Caustic Acid than Unnatural Presence.
Situational / Viable / Specific loadouts
Deadly Predator - Increase spray ammo by 8% (to 40%)
Last Efforts - Increase duration of the Quill vuln from acid pools by 0.4s (to 2s)
Dreadful Compact - Reduce Hardening cd by 0.3s (to 1.5s) each time you hit a quill
Spreading Domain - Heal for 100 (to 500) if Hardening completes
Just nice passives for any situation. Spreading Domain synergises well with End of an Era, though it's too small of a heal to really focus on.
Towering Presence
Just boosts reliability of the Ult, but more a QoL crutch than something you can use to reliably ult in mid-fights. I wouldn't ever go more than 3 on this one.
Weak / Do no Use
Collateral Damage - 10% (to 50%) Lifesteal with Caustic Spray for 3s after swapping to Turret
Triumphant Return - Reduce acid consumption by 90% for 0.4 (to 2s) after swapping to Turret
Deadly Pursuit - Increased movement by 20% (to 100%) after swapping to Roll
The Great Worm - Gain a 80hp (to 400hp) shield for 2s after swapping to Roll
All of these are too short, and rely on you swapping between forms like a schizo, for shitty benefits which barely last a heartbeat. While The Great Worm might seem more useful than the others in terms of using it for escapes, the shield is way too small to bother with.
Extermination - Reduce CC by 5% (to 25%)
You're already immune to basically everything.
Violent Birth - Reduce Acceleration cd by 0.8s (to 4s) after activating Hardening
The two abilities have little overlap, and 4s off a 15s cd is just done better by Chronos 3 if you really care that much.
Out of Time - Reduce Hardening DR by 50%, but retain said DR for 0.5s (to 2.5s) after it ends
Oooo, a controversial one. They'll hate me because I told the truth, but this card is SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT and a shitter trap through and through.
It works counter to how Hardening is used (to sustain through high-burst damage) to nerf Hardening from +125% DR (actual 170% DR w/ Passive) to 113% (actual 155% DR w/ Passive) - which is pitiful compared to the base 135% you have to begin with. The 'buff' is fucking tiny for how long Harding is off cd otherwise, and if you need the DR to sustain non-burst damage, it's because you should've fallen back 5 seconds ago and you're being overwhelmed. While you can stack it with End of an Era 5 to essentially 'make back' the DR you lose by slotting this card in, the buff length itself is still dogshit (170% for 4s so you can fire during 2s of it), and comes at the direct expense of any other, better, card (including the ones which allow for far more long-term sustain). Do not use.
Hardcounters and Softcounters
Hardcounters
All of these can shut down a Yag by themselves. While a team coordinating with them makes them fuck you over harder, just them focusing you can greatly increase the difficulty of a match.
Tyra Burn Monster / general Fire Flask
Skye Debilitate
Cassie Big Game
While these should be self-explanatory, Yag's critical weakness is %age based damage. All three of these can apply this at range, and all 3 have more than enough ways to safely poke without needing to get within spew range. While Turret forme damage reduction applies AFTER the health %age has been calculated, it's still huge chunks of your health pool being shredded in very short amounts of time.
Tyra is Yag's typical hardcounter; so expect any game with her in it to be a nightmare to play into if she has the braincells to focus you instead of chasing a backline Evie. 9% (post-damage reduction) every 0.6s in the rarer AoE damage type (totalling to 99% with Burn Monster, and 74% without), on a thrown projectile with a far larger radius that it has any right being (even before Yag was a thing), an innate Caut 2 to fuck over earlygame (before Caut 3) and to top it off a cripple so you can't accelerate away. It's a braindead hardcounter, but just one you've gotta work with. You 'can' very loosely survive if you've got a mainhealer pocketing you, AND you hunker down for it AND can avoid some of it with your trusty hide-behind-some-map-object positioning. But if you get flasked, realisitically you're either dead or easy pickings.
Skye can safely and silently flank any wall you're finding cover in, while Debilitating Poison Bolts have essentially infinite range and an easy target; for 28% of your health deleted every 4 seconds. If you notice the indicator on the first round of bolts, you should immediately start planning your escape, because with the rest of the flak you usually receive as Werm, your life is essentially on a 12s hardclock (provided you were at 100% to begin with). I personally recommend to immediately fall back to your next cover, pop SONAR (if it helps, it helps) while VGSing "Enemies behind us", and pray one of the other 4 chimps on the team fuck her off for you (as you have no way to do so yourself)
Cassie, while lacking the ability to flank or outright shut down Yag, is a champion that is particularly troubling while she shuts you down, as there's no way to avoid her while she plays Big Game. Disengage has no effect on you (which in this case, is a curse), meaning that all her shots thereafter are essentially guaranteed to land thereafter. At 14% every 0.75s (70% over 4s for a 12s cd, 7s cd with cd reduction cards), not only is she equally able to apply this at a range you have no answer for, but this damage is almost always during a teamfight when Cassie is working with her team in a deathball - resulting in you taking this on top of being focused and no indicator to roll / harden, for for a truly silent hardcounter; leading to teamfights where you can easily kiss 70% of your health goodbye with no real counterplay. Furthermore, while Tyra and Skye are semi-high priority in Pick/Ban phase (dependent on your rank/platform), Cassie is a rarer pick in general, and is almost always free for the taking if you aren't the last to steal Yag.
Skye and Cassie are somewhat 'safer' to play into during the pick/ban phase, if only because their other 'average / general' builds and playstyles mean that many a retard will ignore their hardcounter talent over the more common Impulse (Cassie) and almost equally common Preparation (Skye) - then wonder why the Yag isn't dying. Tyra however, is a no-go. Do not play Yag into Tyra, and consider yourself unlucky if the enemy takes Tyra after you.
Bomb King Chain Reaction
Bomb King is a blessing only in that he's pretty rare, and Chain Reaction isn't his usual go-to talent (over Royal Subjects), for the average tard. Like Willo, he usually needs his team to really get a line on you (moreso since his projectles have an arc to them), but given the space to do so, a BK can quite cleanly mop up Yag all by himself.
Grumpy Bombs force out a Hardening else a 2s stun, Poppy Bombs allow him to reposition and attack from any sightline you aren't actively locking down and his Ult (like Skye's) forces out another Hardening else a 1,850dmg chunk is going to be eaten from your health bar. But this isn't what you fear - no, Chain Reaction increases each consecutive bomb's damage if stacked. You, as a stationary target, are still going to eat all that said damage, even if they fall off of you. In total, that leads to 6,652 damage if you get a full 6stack detonated on you (60 for sticks, then 850, 1105, 1360, 1615, 1870, 2125 - then each value reduced by DR). Instakill.
Not even Blast Shields can save you from this, requiring Blast Shields 2 to even survive the raw burst at 100% (and with BK still able to throw a Grumpy before to confirm), and Blast Shields 3 to somewhat have a chance to survive. If you see stickies, get ready to harden or GTFO (and even if you try to escape, he can immediately detonate on reaction to your Turret->Roll Acceleration windup to make you eat the full damage of what he's thrown for you). Other than that, I'd advise not Hardening for every Grumpy Bomb - sometimes the stun is just easier on you than what he's trying to bait out the Hardening for. Good luck with this one.
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Stronger than a Softcounter, but not quite a hardcounter
All of these can completely shut down a Yag themselves, but require a tiny amount of teamwork, a semi-common pre-made card build or deft gamesense to cover for said of teamwork - which for most games is (as you already know) rare.
Caut 3
Caut 3 is Caut 3, it's absolutely necessary for every match and the only thing keeping most of the game balance together. While basically everybody should be taking Caut 3, the less people who do, the more ease the Yag has in surviving. Yag has no way to mitigate Caut 3 or bolster it's health; only reduce damage - which on top of Yag's sustain being reliant on active / passive / non-burst healing, means a team with x5 Caut 3's should have a much easier time cleaning up a Yag during a coordinated teamfight (with no downtime for the Yag to recover it's health). While Yag excels in the earlygame with only Caut 1's or supports taking Chronos 1 for first push; a 10-man Caut 3 lategame is when the Yag has to get its shit together and the wheat of Yag players is separated from the chaff. But as we all know, 'some' (many) (most) players didn't get this memo, because maaaaaan I'm playing Andro maaaan, I need muh Deft Hands wtf bros why won't the Yag die?????????????!?!?!?? i was carrying this match brospehs ur all shit bg fukk u all
Torv
While the werm generally cleans up most Tanks with ease, as a softcounter to most; Torv is not only one that Yag struggles with (owing to Torv's own self-sustaining shield) but can very easily flip the table and shut down a Yag. Torv in of himself (as of this patch) has been relegated purely to offtanking, meaning you'll only really see him in tandem with a second tank, however his ability to pump out silences, combined with enough of a healthpool that he can constantly engage you, means that not only can he reliably shut you down if you try to escape, but he is one of the few champions in the game that can also force you out of Hardening - which at critical times (when Ults are flying) can mean you'll eat far more damage than you'd like. Furthermore, if he times correctly, he can allow you to revert to roll when things get hairy, then silence you mid-Acceleration animation, forcing you to roll slowly like a bitch cuckhold virgin walker (if you even survive it). If you've got no other tanks on your team to stop him harassing you, you'll have a difficult time operating if he chooses to fuck with your abilities. That, and his slow projectiles with high uptime and low reload time means that he's very efficient at keeping Caut applied to you for his team to play into.
Currently, Torv is the least played tank in the game, so count your lucky stars in that regard; but if you find yourself locking horns with one, exercise caution. While you can't counterplay him fucking over your Hardens (Nullify has a shorter cd than Hardening, so he can use it reactively), if you need to escape, you can bait the Nullify before you intend on Accelerating off (and is one of the only times you should use the two abilities together)
Willo Dead Zone / Easy Blastflowers
Willo starting off with Caut 4 (100% reduction to healing), combined with Yag being unable to leave the Deadzone is an obvious pain in the ass. By default you only get 10s of breathing room between Dead Zones, but if the Willo specs for it, that can be as low as 3-4s from the start of the match (Sparkle 5, Twilight 5, Chronos 1; then whatever from Just Believe), which shuts you down almost entirely. You can roll out or just focus the Willo's extremely large hitbox to mitigate this, since, unlike the hardcounters, Dead Zone deals no significant damage; however if the Willo plays conservatively, you've got little to no answer to her outside of just trying to focus her during teamfights. That, and her Blastflower talent is especially good at shredding tanks - moreso you, a giant, stationary hitbox. Since she only has to land any AoE damage to start the scaling (2m radius), she can poke you around your cover in a way you cannot physically land a shot on her, while at full Blastflower stack, she'll pump out 550 damage per shot (0.75s), which again, can very quickly burn through a healthbar that she's also prevented you from recovering any of.
Like Torv, and again, to Yag's benefit, Willo is the second least played DPS in the game after Sha Lin. Notice a trend here? Understand why people complain about her yet, and why I say the select screen is her hardest counter?
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Softcounters
All of these can't completely shut down a Yag, but can still play in a way that a Yag has a much harder time being wermy. When coordinated with a team, can shut down a Yag.
Furia Exterminate
Damba's Wekono's Wrath
Pests. While they offer no particular kill potential, the amount of stuns they can pump out in means that you'll have to juggle your Harden to deal with them. They might catch you off cd every now and again, but most of the time they don't really present much of a threat. Even Furia's currently-deemed-OP Exterminate, only does 518dps to you for 4s, which you'll be hunkered down and mitigating most of. (The 2nd/3rd one she throws out is the issue one, but even then, after the stun you should break even with your sustain).
If there's two of them? Well, now you're dealing with a fucking problem. Good luck faggot, and try to keep your positioning mixed up between teamfights so they can't get used to where to throw their stuns.
Dredge
Drogoz Fusillade
Kinessa
Strix
All of these can outdamage Yag's sustain by themselves, to a notable extent. If the enemy team knows what they're doing, they just need to play around these DPS's to completely shut you down.
Dredge can cornerbounce to do this without ever entering your sightlines; and Kraken is a third of your health that you'll just have to eat like a good faggot if Hardening isn't at hand.
Kinessa, Strix and Drogoz can all snipe off your health; which considering your XL headbox on top, means you'll be chewing on easy 1332dmg/1.25s or 1554dmg/1.3s snipes or a constant stream of 786dmg/0.85s missiles respectively. All of which can completely out-range you, and all have ways to slightly flank to the point they at least have a sightline on you. Drogoz also has the added annoyance of Dragon Fist being a guaranteed dislodge / death, while Kinessa can 3 shot you with absolute ease with her Ult up.
All 4 of these champions will force you to reposition if they ever get a line on you. If you don't (or your team doesn't fuck them off for you), you'll have to play extremely conservatively or die a lot when taking forward positions, taking a lot of the strength away from Yag.
Inara
Atlas
Lian Precision
Maeve Street Justice
While the former choices have all been nuisances outside of teamfights, these 4 are the ones you ought to watch out for when the shit does hits the fan each game.
Inara and Atlas both have the ability to completely wallcuck you for most of a fight, with Inara able to completely shut down your escapes on top. While you are tall enough to just peek over Inara's walls, you'll lose almost all of your immediate sightline; while Atlas completely shuts down any damage you try to deal, cutting you off from your team (and Temporal Divides able to do that before even initiating). Setback has no effect on you in Turret forme, so don't sweat that - but if you try to escape, he can pull you back. Take Dozer if playing into Inara in hopes you can shred the walls down and compound your inherent cucking of her deployable, while with Atlas, there's nothing much you can do. Both also get softcountered by your ease of Caut application and ability to delete them via Ult; so it's a Yin/Yan of both countering each other in different ways.
Lian is like the above 4, in that she can just flat out-damage you by herself at 600dmg/0.45s shots; however the falloff renders her only really able to do this when her team makes the appropriate room her her to do so. Once again, if she gets a line on you, stick around for as long as you're comfortable, but GTFO soon-ish.
Maeve's Execution is in True damage, meaning that she completely ignores your Damage Resistance - allowing her to fuck you up the macrosecond you dip below 2100hp; which, with how much you'll regularly dip below that as you take chunks burst damage and build it back up with your sustain, makes her a nasty presence to deal with. That, and her extreme mobility makes her an annoying target that can quite literally jump over your head and ignore your acid pools. The draw here is that she really doesn't do all that well in teamfights,, meaning her inherent frailty will usually keep her away from wherever you're positioned (if not, rarely poking you from distance, since she has no falloff). It's satisfying as fuck to Ult one of the little shits though.
Corvus
Ult is %age based, with the only draw being that it's an Ult, not an ability like Yag's hardcounters. Reasonable that he'll have one up every 2-3 teamfights, since it charges off it's own damage too. Almost functionally identical to Tyra's Flask (Heavy slow, unavoidable %age), but with only 67% of your health deleted with every use for the Corvus.
While Lex and Vora both share an execution below a threshold, both have a long windups; so they're not as much something you need to worry about as long as you keep your sustain up. Moji would make for a great counter here like Corvus, but alas as of typing, her Ult is nothing more than a 4s stun because Yag's passive CC immunity.
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That's 16 toons out of a cast of cast of (currently) 49.
Or 1 in 3 chimps.
If you think Yag is OP, statistically speaking you should have one of these on your team - it's not the Yags fucking fault if you don't. Yes, Yag's hardest counters are some of the lesser picked heroes in the game, yes you might have to pick a niche talent you usually wouldn't go for, and no that doesn't mean Yag needs gutting - it means you need to shut the fuck up, counterpick, buy Caut and git gud.
I'll reiterate what I said much earlier on: If you don't have a single anti-werm champion, the onus is entirely on you as you get wormed all match End of Guide.
Tips & Tricks
Tips
- If you're trying to jump onto the payload, just roll in front of it while it's moving, and jump - the payload will travel under you in that time. Or, just deploy in front of the payload - you'll get pushed the same anyhow.
- It should go without saying that if you can find a friendly Furia, Solar Blessing is fucking busted when deployed on a Yag.
- Bind Acceleration/Quills to your Primary fire button Acid to your Secondary fire, Forme swap to your usual mobility key and Harden to your usual Ability 1. It just feels more natural, trust me.
- It should go without saying, but Yag excels if given the high ground. Places like the rooves above Lumber Mill point and the raised sections at the middle and end of Ice Mines push are a Yag's best friend.
- If you didn't twig yet, Vora's Scythe is just one of Yag's claws. I dunno, I just thought that was cool. Fuck you, don't judge me.
- If you were wondering (as you naturally were), the (current patch) maxiumum reasonable ehps for Yag, given Raze & Burn 5, Unnatural Persistence, Life Rip 3 vs 5 enemies and a Solar Blessing Furia + Rejuvenate 3 is 338 + 351 + 1350 + 4,657.5 = 6,697ehps (4,961 actual hps, or 2.3 Skye Time Bombs every second). At Caut 3, that only goes down to a mere 1,339ehps. I'm sure Yag can reach the highest ehps in the game if you were you go for a memecomp like Yag / Furia / Seris / Damba / Ying; but hopefully this point will further elucidate how little Unnatural Presence really is in the grander scheme of Yag's sustain capabilities.
{Muffled sounds of Heavy screaming 'I AM BULLETPROOV!'}