Dear Bigg,

What's your best advice on dealing with Hanzo? It seems he can poke from miles away, and when he is under pressure, just leap over the nearest terrain and run away. Shutting him down seems incredibly difficult, especially when his damage is so high...

-Caranthir

Hanzo has a few big weaknesses. One is that he struggles to deal with very mobile heroes such as Tracer, Genji, Zeratul, or even Medivh Portals. If you can get on top of him, it is fairly easy to blow him up. Killing a Hanzo usually comes in 2 parts: 

The first is forcing him to use Natural Agility as whis will push him out of the fight for a few seconds. Natural Agility has a 25 second cooldown, meaning it can be used much less frequently than other movement abilities. Once you force out Natural Agility, you should engage on Hanzo as soon as you have your movement abilites again. He will be unable to jump out this time, making him an easy kill. Instead of forcing out Natural Agility and engaging when it is off cooldown, you can also attempt to cancel his jump while he is in mid-air. This is often difficult to pull off but it is usually easy to predict when he is about to jump. Any stun, root, Polymorph or displacement will cancel his Trait. He will still receive his full cooldown on the jump but will not have made it over the wall if done correctly. One of the best tools for this is Malfurion's Entangling Roots. If Malfurion places his Entangling Roots against the wall which Hanzo would like to jump, he will get rooted if he attempts to jump over it.

Secondly, Hanzo struggles against enemies that can "get up in his face". To list a few from each role, with the exception of Specialist. As far as tanks go, Diablo and Muradin are your best choices, given their good mobility and stuns. For assassins, Genji, Tracer and Zeratul are very strong but anyone that can Follow Hanzo over the wall can be effective as well. For Supports, Malfurion is your best bet with his Entangling Roots, but Heroes with instant crowd control such as Uther or Brightwing can cancel his jump with well timed stun or Polymorph. If you are still struggling to deal with Hanzo, I urge you to play a few games as him. It is easier to understand a Heroes strengths and weaknesses after you have played them yourself.

Max "Bigg" Hoskin is ranked #5 Grandmaster in Heroes of the Storm. He spends all his free time playing the game, and produces our Mind of a Master series. Have a Heroes of the Storm question you'd like Bigg to answer? Drop us a line on Twitter, Facebook or the comments section of our Tier List and Bigg will make every effort to answer it!