The Complete Yagorath Guide

Role

Yagorath is mostly used as an off-tank. Off-laning has a lot of carry potential. You get to spam
reveals and you can capitalize on them by diving those revealed targets. You learn more about
Yag and general game-sense by off-tanking than you do just by sitting on point, shooting and
Hardening all game. I advise beginners to not use point Yag as a crutch; learn how to offtank.

But she can be effective on point in some situations, since she has favorable matchups against
other point tanks. If your offlane can survive on its own without your help. If the enemy team
doesn’t have too much damage coming in on point, or specific counters. Champs like Dredge,
Tyra, Willo, etc. can punish a Yag that’s hunkering on point and not moving much.

Talent choice is Sights Begets Strength for off-tank (her highest pickrate talent in high ranks).
Unnatural Persistence sometimes for point tank.

Planted Form

Primary Fire:
● The weapon animation is confusing or not entirely accurate. Her weapon is an arcing
projectile like Maeve’s knives or Dredge’s grenades. This means, the further out you go,
the higher you need to aim.
○ You can test this out in the shooting range and try to shoot the Viktor bots from as
far away as possible heck for the 36 damage ticks of her primary weapon; 42
with Corrosive; if the ticks are 33 damage, that means it’s just the pools)
● Don’t underestimate its range. The range of this weapon is 105 units (Ash’s is 80 units
in comparison). Most people underestimate the range because they aim too low.
● An acid pool deals 132 dps (33 x 0.25s) and slows enemies by 15%. These effects don't
stack if pools overlap. Each pool lasts 4 seconds; you can have 6 at once.
○ Acid Pools do not apply Cauterize, but they do apply lifesteal effects (though the
healing from that is very low).
○ Use Acid Pools to zone out different areas. You should mostly be using your
spray on enemies that are in range of you whenever possible. But during little bits
of downtime, you should be spraying acid pools over important areas of the map:
doorways, stairs, the enemy's offlane, maybe 1 on point if you can reach it.

Piercing Quills
● They pierce through enemies and through shields. Hence why they’re called Piercing.
● They deal 25-50 AOE damage after explosion, but this is trivial.
Piercing Quills are faster projectiles than her Primary Fire. Primary Fire, you have to lead your
shots; whereas Quills you shoot where they are. This sometimes is a conflict on how you
should aim. At close-ish range, you can hit both primary and quills easily. At mid-range, you’ll
need to aim upward, which means you hit primary but not quills. But past 105 units, primary fire
is unavailable so you solely hit them directly for quills.

Harden
● The damage from Harden is 1 single attack that happens after the ability expires or is
cancelled - the damage doesn’t happen during the ability.
● The damage is 300 to 1100 depending on how long the ability is use. End of an Era
(card) still enables you to get the full 1100, but even sooner.
● The damage from this ability is 25 units AOE, and can hit enemies above.

Form Swap
● This ability has 2 separate cooldowns. A 5 second cooldown for Planted-to-Travel and
another 5s cooldown for Travel-to-Planted. It may feel shorter than 5 seconds to you
because you’re cycling between those 2 cooldowns.

Travel Form

Trail of Acid
● These are the same type of acid pools that your primary fire in Planted Form deploys.
● You can deploy acid pools by pressing primary fire while in travel form (once every 8
seconds). Many newer Yag players forget they can do this. If there are enemies in your
general area, use this ability.
● Using your Trail of Acid while you Accelerate helps spread them out.

Primal Vision (Reveal)

● It has 5 pulses. But you only need to press the ability once (not for each pulse).
● Pressing this ability a second time cancels it, which is counterintuitive; don’t do this.
● Swapping forms does NOT cancel this ability. You can use reveal, immediately swap to
Planted form and still reveal enemies if you want to.
● Tip for newer Yag players. Don’t overthink it or hold onto the ability for too long. As long
as there are teammates and enemies nearby, just use it off cooldown as much as you
can,.
● If enemies are regrouping/respawning, I’d wait until the whole enemy team is out before
you reveal. Unless there’s 1 lone enemy out of position that you think can be killed
before they retreat to spawn and you want to alert your team of that.
Accelerate

As a general habit, you usually want to save this as an escape. This means using your normal
movement to engage (using cover and flank routes to avoid taking damage) so that you can
have Accelerate ready for an escape. so general habit, you want to use this as an escape.
Check what your Accelerate cooldown is at before you dive (i.e. if you have 6 seconds left on
Accelerate, but it’ll take you 3 seconds to get there, and then you’ll Plant and/or Harden for the
other 3 seconds and have it up). But if your Accel is at 10-11 seconds, then that may be too
long of a wait, unless you’re using Violent Birth card.

There are exceptions. There are situations when it is worth using Accelerate offensively.
● If you’re chasing an enemy, who you’re 100% sure is isolation from their team and other
enemies aren’t protecting them (check with your reveal)
● If you’re virtually guaranteed to get a kill (i.e. a very low HP enemy or one without their
important cooldowns). In this case, trading a cooldown for a kill is worth it; and a 95%
chance of you getting a kill outweighs a 50% chance of you dying.

If the enemy has no CC, you can probably accelerate into a whole group of enemies if it helps
you get to your destination faster. But if they do have CC, you cannot risk that; you’ll get
stunned and focused by enemies. In that case, you’ll need to take paths where less or no
enemies can see you, even if it means it takes a little bit longer.

Devour
● Use it at close range. Almost never use it at mid-long range. The longer the range you
use it, the slower it takes and the more time the enemy team has to burn through you.
● Ult when only 1 enemy has line of sight on you. If 3+ enemies can see you, you're dead.
But it depends on distance too. You probably could Ult in front of 3 people if its literally
point blank.
● It's a skillshot like Khan Ult. Shields can block it. Highly mobile enemies may be harder
to hit.
● Devour is used to punish enemies who are isolated from their team or who make the
mistake of getting too close to you. (Sometimes you can go into flank routes and use
your Ult to kill the enemy flank)
● Devour can pull an enemy off of point during overtime.
 Items

The 2 starting items.

1. Cauterize: to solo-kill enemies just as other tanks do. She can apply Caut well, since
her weapon range is longer than many people think it is. I start this item first.
2. Chronos: because she has 6+ cooldowns; most notably are Acceleration and Primal
Vision (especially for Sights Begets Strength).

Haven is the 3rd or 4th item. It has higher scaling than Veteran, and Haven applies to your 2nd
health pool in your Ultimate, whereas Veteran does not. While Haven has diminishing returns, it
still offers more effective HP than Veteran in the vast majority of situations.

Doing the math on the most extreme example of diminished returns. Yag with Harden + End of an Era 3. 80% DR (Haven 3, when it was 6%) makes 6000 HP become 30000 eHP. 77% DR (new Haven 3) makes
6000 HP become 26,086 eHP. 5% DR makes 6720 HP (with Veteran 3) become 26,880 eHP. I’m not the best at math, correct me if I’m wrong. So in this 1 instance, Veteran offers slightly more eHP. But
otherwise, Haven offers more eHP in Planted mode when not Hardening, in Ultimate and in Travel form. TLDR: Haven is better.

Resilience. If you need it, you can buy it earlier on. But it’s not always necessary. Yag can’t
be knocked back while in travel form and Harden can negate stuns. But some abilities like
cripples and Maldamba stuns are problematic.

Veteran: Good 4th item if you don’t need Resilience. While you could 2nd buy it first round with
Caut, I doubt it’s worth delaying your Chronos purchase for that.

Situational items
● Illuminate - Helps against Saati. Possibly Strix/Shalin in some situations, but those are
typically easy matchups for Yagorath.
● Morale Boost - Okay if you need nothing else, but you usually need defense items.
● Rejuvenate - Yag has no way to cleanse Caut, so this helps if your support is healing
you enough to justify it. But the scaling of this item is low so idk.

Avoid:
● Bulldozer/Wrecker (her weapon dps is too low).
● Life Rip (dps is low and she has lifesteal cards anyway).
● Kill to Heal (300 hp is nothing on her massive health pool).
● Guardian (the amount of bonus shielding you get is negligible).
 Loadout
Yagorath hasn’t been tested extensively competitively, and it’s not like she has 3-4 cards that
are leagues better than the rest, so right now, she has a lot of loadout flexibility.

End of an Era is a staple card at 2-3. Using it at 4-5 is a drawback because you may want a
longer Harden. But you usually cancel it early anyway, so you may as well take the extra DR.

Healing cards: Yagorath has no way of cleansing Caut, so healing cards don’t benefit her as
much as a champ like Ash with a shield. Last Efforts is very good for a 1-2 point filler. Raze
and Burn gives more healing over time than Collateral Damage since quills have a longer
uptime than just 3 seconds.

Ammo cards: Ancient Wounds has, by far, the highest potential ammo generation. Triumphant
Return is better than Deadly Predator if you’re planting for less than 4.4 seconds, but loses
value if you’re planting for longer periods of time.

Violent Birth: This can be very useful. Since Harden is often used to stall while you wait for
Accelerate to come back up, this card fits her playstyle perfectly.

Futile Efforts: Your quills have a limited fire rate, so this card won’t make them shoot out any
faster; but it can reduce the 3 second lockout after all of your quills are used. The numbers on
this card are so small that it’s hard to measure the benefits of it, but in theory, if this results in
you having an extra quill for a 1v1, that’s like an extra ~200 damage. Viable as a 1-point filler
but beyond that is redundant.

Dreadful Compact: The scaling on this card is great. But this benefits from a less-mobile
playstyle more than a mobile playstyle. And it’s easier to repeatedly pump quills into a tank 1v1
than DPS’s. I’d run this card at a higher value for main tank Yag. As off-tank Yag, this could be
an optional 1-2 pointer.

Towering Presence: I’ve seen good players use it and it seems good; I haven’t tested it much
personally, so I don’t know which amount of it to use that lets you survive HP benchmarks. You
get DR from Planted and Haven while Ulting, so an extra 200 HP is more like an extra 300-350.

Cards to avoid: Spreading Domain. The Great Worm. Out of Time. Deadly Pursuit (bugged,
not working). Extermination (Resilience is way better and dirt cheap, just buy that).

Here are example loadouts. Note, these may change, as I’m still figuring them out myself:
 Playstyle
Yagorath can be an aggressive off-tank like Ash, Raum and Ruckus. She is typically better at
diving than protecting her own backline, but you still should make protecting your backline a
priority when your team needs it.

See what your team needs before you dive enemies. Keep in mind that your team may not
always be willing to play as aggressively as you want to. If your team is struggling against the
enemy flank/off-tank, play safe and peel for them before you start diving things. Yagorath is
great at making space, but see what space your team actually needs. Your team might need
your space in your backline rather than the enemy's backline.

If you aren't able to make aggressive plays yet, you can stay behind corners and zone out areas
with acid pools and get some value that way until you have the opportunity to dive an enemy.

Use corners to your advantage. For example, if a payload is near a corner, you can stay behind
the corner and contest the payload without being in the enemy backline DPS’s line of sight.

Planting
Knowing where/when to plant is one of the most complex parts of Yagorath. Planting in bad
places causes unnecessary deaths. When you review vods, pause each time you plant and
ask: Am I safe here? Do I have enemies to shoot here? Could I have Planted in a better spot?

As a general rule, you want to plant in the LoS of exactly 1 enemy. Maybe 2 in some situations.
Use corners and cover to try to find these sightlines.

You never want to plant in the face of 3 enemies by yourself. Possible exception if you have
teammates backing you up. If your team wants to make an aggressive play with you, you can go
into a group of enemies with your Harden and Ult to demand so much of the enemy resources
that if they kill you, your team has ample time to kill their time. But this is an exception - not the
rule.

Beginner Tips
Newer Yag players reading this may be overwhelmed by all the info. I suggest focusing on just
a few things at time. Start with these 4 basic habits
1. Practice her an off-tank (playing her on point every time is a crutch)
2. Use your travel form abilities. Spam your reveals and acid trails as much as you can.
3. Save your Accelerate as an escape (most of the time)
4. Most importantly: Do not Plant in line of sight of 3 or more enemies (most of the time)

Once you build these 4 habits, then do VOD reviews for the more advanced stuff.
 Drafting/Matchups
Yagorath isn’t map dependent for the most part; you pick her moreso based on the
compositions.

Synergies: It helps if you have at least 1 DPS that can make aggressive plays with you.
Regarding the support, she works well with a lot of them. In my experience, I find that the best
method is to have a support that can enable the entire team and help your DPS win their
matchups against enemy DPS; this makes Yagorath’s job much easier. I feel like this approach
is superior to the “just hard-pocket Yag all the time approach”; getting hard-pocketed doesn’t
matter if your DPS lose their matchups. (Note: Solar Blessing’s scaling got cut in half; it’s not
good with Yag anymore).

In Bronze-Diamond, you could get away with picking her in almost any situation because
opponents don’t know how to counter her, but against better opponents you generally want to
pick her when there’s not too many counters on the enemy team.

Generally, hypermobility is good against Yagorath (i.e. Evie, Vatu, Drogoz, etc) because you can
immediately avoid her when she plants and she’s stuck in that position for a few seconds.
Conversely her better matchups are against low mobility champs, though the lower mobility DPS
tend to have higher damage to make up for it, so you need to position safely.

Cripples like Grover and Vora are good into Yag. (though the Sha matchup favors Yag because
of his low mobility, low HP and mediocre sustained damage).

Executes like Maeve’s Street Justice, Vora Ult, Lex Ult, maybe Drogoz Ult

Tyra (esp with Burn Monster) is one of the easier ways to counter Yag, at least in terms of skill
floor. If your team comp can push Tyra and the enemy team doesn’t have much backline
protection, sure; otherwise, I’d rather not draft Yag into Tyra.

This part of the guide will be edited over time; matchups can vary based on balance and meta,
but here’s a post about DPS matchups (or at least my opinion)
https://www.reddit.com/r/PaladinsAcademy/comments/q3o2iv/yagoraths_dps_matchups/

For the most part, Yagorath has favorable matchups against most tanks. Hence, Yag may have
a tougher time against triple DPS comps. Ruckus and Raum may be the best tanks against her;
since they can headshot her, or use their mobility to avoid her and dive her team mates

There’s a lot more to cover about Yag. If you have any questions, go on our discord
(https://discord.gg/GCzQhS5f2K) or https://www.reddit.com/r/PaladinsAcademy/

-Dinns