Alexstrasza

Title
 Role
 Franchise

**Alexstrasza**, The Life Binder, is a Healer Hero from the Warcraft franchise. Alexstrasza, the queen of dragons, was empowered by the titans to be the guardian of all life on Azeroth. She has aided mortals time and again, even at great personal cost. Now, she soars across the Nexus, protecting life wherever she finds it.

Alexstrasza is a durable Ranged Healer who shares her Health with allies and can transform into a mighty dragon.

## Background

 This section concerns content exclusive to the *Warcraft* universe.

Alexstrasza the Life-Binder, former Leader and Aspect of the red dragonflight One of the five Dragon Aspects and Aspect of Life, is the guardian of all life in the world of Azeroth. She was one of five great dragons chosen by the titans to be empowered with a portion of the Pantheon's power and rule over her flight while they watched over Azeroth and its inhabitants. The titans also appointed her queen of all dragons.

Though not content to just sit back and watch, she has most recently assisted the mortal races of the world against the threat of Deathwing and his dragonflight. Sacrificing much of her power to see Deathwing destroyed, Alexstrasza now resides atop the draconic holy site of Wyrmrest Temple, having passed her guardian duties onto the creatures she once protected.

## Gameplay

The Life-Binder is a versatile ranged Healer who manipulates life energy to heal her allies. When her life - or those of her allies - is threatened, she can transform into a mighty dragon.

### Strengths

* Burst Healing
* Sustained Healing
* Point Control

### Weaknesses

* Dive
* Backline Harrasment

## Abilities

*See **Data page** for a table of scaled values at key levels.*

D
Dragonqueen
 Cooldown: 150 seconds
After 1.25 seconds, transform into a dragon and gain 500 Health. While Dragonqueen is active, Alexstrasza's Basic Abilities are empowered, her Basic Attacks deal 143 damage and heal allied Heroes for 43 in an arc in front of her, and the duration of incoming Slows, Roots, and Stuns is reduced by 50%. Lasts 15 seconds.

**Type:** Transformation, Status effect / Physical Damage / Healing**Scaling:** 4.00%**Affects:** Self / Enemies / Allied Heroes**Targeting:** No target**Properties:** Attack Modifier, Channeled cast (stationary), CC-reduction, Splash, Stasis**Cast time:** 1.25 (ch) + 0.5 seconds**Attack damage:** 143**Attack speed:** 0.8**Attack range:** 9.0**Splash arc:** 50 degrees

* Interrupting *Dragonqueen* during its cast puts it on a 10-second cooldown.
* *Dragonqueen* grants Alexstrasza a different set of Basic Abilities, which have independent cooldowns and are unaffected by Alexstrasza's Talents that interact with her base form Basic Abilities.
* When the Ability is successfully cast, and upon ending and transformation back to base form, Alexstrasza enters Stasis for 0.5 seconds. In addition to usual effects of Stasis, Alexstrasza is removed from the ground plane (disjoints certain projectiles), has no collision, cannot regenerate Health, Mana, Energy or Shields and cannot be seen on the minimap or revealed.
* Both current and maximum Health are increased upon successful transformation. When the Ability expires, only maximum Health is reduced back to normal.
* *Dragonqueen's* cooldown starts when the Ability is successfully cast.

Q
Gift of Life
 Cooldown: 7 seconds
Sacrifice 15% of Alexstrasza's current Health, healing an ally for 150% of that amount.

Passive: Alextraza's Health regeneration is increased by 150%

**Dragonqueen: Breath of Life**
Cooldown greatly reduced and does not cost Health.

**Type:** Healing / Self-damage**Scaling:** -**Affects:** Allied Heroes / Self**Targeting:** Unit target**Cast time:** Instant**Range:** 7.0**Bonus Health regeneration:** 5.3047 per second

* Passive Health regeneration bonus also affects Alexstrasza in her dragon form.
* Passive bonus directly increases Alexstrasza's base Health regeneration, meaning that calculations using the given percentage should be made multiplicatively with any modifiers affecting her Health regeneration.

Q
Breath of Life
 Cooldown: 3 seconds
Heal an Ally for 20% of Alexstrasza's current Health.

**Type:** Healing**Scaling:** -**Affects:** Allied Heroes**Targeting:** Unit target**Cast time:** Instant**Range:** 10.5

W
Abundance
75 Mana Cooldown: 14 seconds
Plant a seed of healing that blooms after 3 seconds, healing nearby allied Heroes for 20% of their maximum Health.

**Dragonqueen: Preservation**
Heal area and amount greatly increased.

**Type:** Healing**Scaling:** -**Affects:** Allied Heroes, Self**Targeting:** Point target**Properties:** Area of Effect, Clamping**Cast time:** 0.125 + 0 seconds**Range:** 11.5**Area of Effect:** Circle**Radius:** 3.0

* Target area is visible to enemies.

W
Preservation
 Cooldown: 16 seconds
Plant a seed of healing that blooms after 3 seconds, healing nearby allied Heroes for 30% of their maximum Health.

**Type:** Healing**Scaling:** -**Affects:** Allied Heroes, Self**Targeting:** Point target**Properties:** Area of Effect, Clamping**Cast time:** 0.125 + 0 seconds**Range:** 11.5**Area of Effect:** Circle**Radius:** 4.0

* Target area is visible to enemies.

E
Flame Buffet
50 Mana Cooldown: 2 seconds
Launch a fireball, Burning enemies hit for 75 damage over 5.5 seconds. Hitting enemies that are already Burning deals 125 bonus damage upon impact, Slows them by 40% decaying over 2 seconds, and refunds the Mana cost.

**Dragonqueen: Wing Buffet**
Damage and Knockback enemies in an arc.

**Type:** Spell Damage, Crowd control**Scaling:** 4.00%**Affects:** Enemies**Targeting:** Point target**Properties:** Clamping, Damage over Time, Piercing Skillshot, Slow**Cast time:** 0.125 + 0 seconds**Range:** 12**Hitbox:** 1.35 x 2.6**Missile speed:** 24**Tickrate:** 1.0 per second (x5)**Damage per tick:** 12

E
Wing Buffet
 Cooldown: 4 seconds
Deal 162 damage to enemies in an area, knocking them back and Slowing them by 50% for 3 seconds.

**Type:** Spell Damage, Crowd control**Scaling:** 4.00%**Affects:** Enemies**Targeting:** Point target**Properties:** Area of Effect, Clamping, Knockback**Cast time:** 0.25 + 0 seconds**Range:** 3.0**Area of Effect:** Circle**Radius:** 7.8 (maximum)**Arc:** 50 degrees**Knockback duration:** 0.3125 seconds**Knockback speed:** 16.5

* The area starts at 3 radius and grows to its maximum radius over 0.3125 seconds.

R
Life-Binder
50 Mana Cooldown: 50 seconds
Bind Alexstrasa's life force with an allied Hero. Both she and her target are healed for 480 over 2 seconds. Afterward, the Hero with a lower percentage of health is set to the same Health percentage as the other Hero.

**Type:** Healing**Scaling:** 4.00% (over time)/ - (end)**Affects:** Allied Heroes, Self**Targeting:** Unit target**Properties:** Delayed Heal**Cast time:** 0 + 0.1875 seconds**Range:** 6.0**Tickrate:** 4.0 per second (x8)**Heal per tick:** 60

* Life-Binder immediately ends, going on full cooldown, if either of the two linked Heroes dies, becomes Time Stopped, enters a Vehicle or hostile Stasis or otherwise becomes untargetable by friendly Abilities.
* The heal resolves normally if the target ally enters a friendly Stasis effect, like *Ice-Block* or *Bunker*. However, the Ability still ends if Alexstrasza herself enters Stasis through means other than her *Dragonqueen* transformation.

R
Cleansing Flame
100 Mana Cooldown: 100 seconds
After 1.25 seconds, take to the sky and drop fireballs at the position of your mouse cursor every 1.2 seconds for 6 seconds. Each fireball restores 300 Health to nearby allied Heroes, and deals 135 damage to nearby enemies. 2 seconds after dropping all fireballs, Alexstrasza lands at the position of your mouse cursor.

**Type:** Spell Damage / Healing / Status effect**Scaling:** 4.00%**Affects:** Enemies / Allied Heroes / Self**Targeting:** No target**Properties:** Area of Effect, Channeled cast (stationary), Stasis**Cast time:**
- Base form: 1.25 (ch) + 0 seconds
- Dragonqueen: Instant**Range:** 20 (retarget)**Area of Effect:** Circle**Radius:** 3.0

* Interrupting *Cleansing Flame* during its cast period puts it on a 10-second cooldown.
* *Cleansing Flame*'s cooldown starts when the Ability is successfully cast.
* For the duration of the Ability, Alexstrasza is put in Stasis. In addition to the usual effects of Stasis, Alexstrasza is removed from the ground plane (disjoints certain projectiles), has no collision, cannot regenerate Health, Mana, Energy or Shields and cannot be seen on the minimap or revealed.
* *Dragonqueen*'s duration is paused during *Cleansing Flame* but its cooldowns are not.
* Casting this Ability using the Command Queue system (Shift + R by default) lets her immediately travel globally at the start of the Ability (begins centered at the position of the mouse cursor when the Ability is actually cast no matter where on the Battleground that is) but then locks her to within the circle around that location for the duration of the Ability.

## Talents

1

Live and Let Live
While Alexstrasza is above 75% Health, Gift of Life's cooldown recharges 125% faster.

Circle of Life
❢ Quest: Collect Regeneration Globes.

❢ Reward: After collecting 10 Regeneration Globes, Abundance heals for an additional 5% of maximum Health.

❢ Reward: After collecting 15 Regeneration Globes, Abundance's healing burst creates a Regeneration Globe.

**Type:** Bonus Healing**Scaling:** -**Affects:** Ability

* Healing bonus affects the base value, causing it to stack multiplicatively with healing modifiers.

Flames of Fury
Reduce the Mana cost of Flame Buffet from 50 to 40.

❢ Quest: Hit 20 Burning Heroes with Flame Buffet.

❢ Reward: Hitting a Burning Hero with Flame Buffet reduces Dragonqueen's cooldown by 5 seconds.

4

Surge of Vitality
Abundance's healing burst grants allied Heroes 30% Movement Speed for 3 seconds.

**Type:** Status effect**Affects:** Allied Heroes, Self**Properties:** Movement Speed

Heat Exhaustion
Increase Flame Buffet's initial Slow from 40% to 50% and cause it to no longer decay.

Exuberance
While above 75% Health, gain 15% Movement Speed.

**Type:** Status effect**Affects:** Self**Properties:** Movement Speed

7

Lifeblossom
While Alexstrasza is above 75% Health, Gift of Life creates a Lifeblossom at the target's location. Alexstrasza can collect the Lifeblossom to make her next Gift of Life cost no Health.

Passive: Reduces the cost of Gift of Life to 10% of Alexstrasza's current Health.

**Pick up range:** 2.25

* Lifeblossom remains on the ground for 7 seconds.

Verdant Flourish
Alexstrasza receives 40% more healing from Abundance and 100% more healing from Regeneration Globes.

**Type:** Healing dealt modifier**Affects:** Ability

* Stacks additively with other modifiers affecting healing dealt and multiplicatively with modifiers affecting healing received.

Fire Within
Hitting a Burning Hero with Flame Buffet heals Alexstrasza for 10% of her maximum Health.

**Type:** Healing**Scaling:** -**Affects:** Self

10

Life-Binder
Cooldown: 50 seconds
Bind Alexstrasa's life force with an allied Hero. Both she and her target are healed for 480 over 2 seconds. Afterward, the Hero with a lower percentage of health is set to the same Health percentage as the other Hero.

Cleansing Flame
Cooldown: 100 seconds
After 1.25 seconds, take to the sky and drop 5 fireballs over 6 seconds at the position of the mouse cursor. Fireballs deal 135 damage to enemies and heal allied Heroes for 300 Health.

2 seconds after dropping all fireballs, Alexstrasza lands at the position of the mouse cursor.

13

Dragon Scales
Gain 50 Armor while Stunned, Silenced, or Rooted, and for 2 seconds afterward. Can only trigger once every 10 seconds.

**Type:** Defensive damage modifier**Affects:** Self**Properties:** Armor

* Does not stack with other positive Armor effects. Other defensive damage modifiers may stack.

Pacify
Cooldown: 60 seconds
**Active:**  Activate to Slow and reduce an enemy Hero's damage by 50% for 3 seconds.

Healing a Stunned, Silenced, or Rooted ally reduces Pacify's cooldown by 30 seconds.

**Type:** Crowd control, Offensive damage modifier**Affects:** Enemy Heroes**Targeting:** Unit target**Properties:** Slow**Cast time:** Instant**Range:** 7.0

* Damage reduction stacks additively with other offensive damage modifiers affecting the target Hero's damage output.

Life Unbound
Cooldown: 90 seconds
**Active:**  Activate to heal an allied Hero for 15% of their maximum Health and deal 200 damage to nearby enemies.

Healing a Stunned, Rooted, or Silenced ally reduces Life Unbound's cooldown by 30 seconds.

Cannot be used on Alexstrasza.

**Type:** Healing / Spell Damage**Scaling:** - / 4.00%**Affects:** Allied Heroes / Enemies**Targeting:** Unit target**Properties:** Splash**Cast time:** Instant**Range:** 9.0**Area of Effect:** Circle**Radius:** 3.5

16

Tough Love
Gift of Life grants its target 10 Armor for 2.5 seconds, increased to 30 while Alexstrasza is above 75% Health.

**Type:** Defensive damage modifier**Affects:** Allied Heroes**Properties:** Armor

* Does not stack with other positive Armor effects. Other defensive damage modifiers may stack.

Overprotective
Heroes healed by Abundance gain a Shield for 6 seconds equal to 70% of the amount healed.

**Type:** Shield**Scaling:** -**Affects:** Allied Heroes, Self

* Shield amount is calculated from final amount healed after all modifications. Healing over a target's maximum Health does not count toward this amount.

Draconic Discipline
Increase Dragonqueen's duration by 6 seconds, and Basic Attack healing by 50%

20

Ritual of Life
Life-Binder activates 3 times over 6 seconds.

* Additional activations occur with 2 second intervals.
* Targets continue to receive the healing-over-time effect for the whole duration and at the same rate.

On Ruby Wings
Healing or damaging Heroes 8 or more times with Cleansing Flame activates Dragonqueen for 15 seconds upon landing.

* Alextrasza lands in the Dragon form upon triggering this talent.
* If Alextrasza triggers this talent having used *Cleansing Flame* in Dragon form, the duration of *Dragonqueen* is prolonged by 15 seconds.

Ancient Flame
While Dragonqueen is active, Alexstrasza's Basic Attacks apply Flame Buffet.

**Type:** Spell Damage**Scaling:** 4.00%**Affects:** Enemies**Properties:** Attack Modifier

* The *Flame Buffet* applied by this talent interacts with all talents affecting *Flame Buffet*.

Blessing of the Red
Cooldown: 40 seconds
**Active:**  Activate to grant an allied Hero 500 bonus maximum Health until they die.

Cannot be used on Alexstrasza, or on a Hero who already has Blessing of the Red.

**Type:** Bonus Health**Scaling:** -**Affects:** Allied Heroes**Targeting:** Unit target**Cast time:** Instant**Range:** 10

## Builds and guides

**Icy Veins Alexstrasza Guide**

**Alexstrasza Community Build Guides @ HeroesFire**

**Alexstrasza Community Build Guides @ Heroes Hearth**

## Development

With the reveal of Ragnaros on BlizzCon 2016, the developers knew early on that Alexstrasza would the next new big BlizzCon 2017 Hero. With the experience of the intense development cycle of Ragnaros, they decided to start in January 2017 with working on her.

Concept art for Alexstrasza began with her elf form: As being the Queen of Dragons, the Developers wanted to make her humanoid form regal and decorated her with ornamentations and jewelry. The aesthetic of her big horns was also included into her armor. Her in-game ears were left out hid under her hair. File size played a part in the decision to hide her ears. Silhouette from game view played another reason: Simple readable shapes are very important and the silhouette of her horns are much more distinct aspect of Alexstaza's model and patently specific to Alexstraza herself.

For Alexstrasza's massive dragon form they wanted her to make as big as possible in-game. They didn't want a small drake, they wanted a full grown dragon. But *Heroes of the Storm* game director Alan Dabiri couldn't make her that big and powerful in the game. *"We want her to be this bad-ass dragon that transforms on the battlefield," Dabiri told Compete in an interview at Blizzcon. "She should be huge and completely cover half the battlefield. Well, that kind of just broke the game. So, how can we make her as big as we can make her, while still being manageable and still being readable?"* In the context of World of Warcraft's story, Alexstrasza's super-powered dragon form is a non-playable entity who serves as a godlike savior with one of the biggest health bars in the game.

This encapsulates a common problem for the Heroes of the Storm design team. The game features characters of varying power levels and sizes. "We have heroes that are everything from Murky the Murloc, to Kerrigan or even Alexstrasza, who's literally this godlike creature," Dabiri said. "According to Dabiri, no fans have complained about the suspension of disbelief required to play Heroes of the Storm—yet, anyway. "I think people get that it'’s in the nature of the game itself, our universe," he said. "It's in our own space. We can actually describe things differently, where these heroes have different power levels."

They used Azmodan to establish her scale a bit, because he's supposed to be of the size of a three-store building in the Diablo universe - in the Nexus however, he is at a functional size. Uther's model size is used for baseline comparisons for all heroes, so they used his model to make her the proper size for the game. With large heroes, it's weird to make them spin and turn instantly, so the animators developed a new *turning technique* to add extra frames for Alexstrasza. Additionally, she will follow your mouse cursor with her body and turn her head and tail in the direction you are going.

With her size, there were lot of things that she could interfere with. So body blocking and hiding smaller Heroes like Chromie and Murky behind her big body or wings became another issue. The art and design team spent a long time trying to make sure that she was this imposing force and felt really big and mighty, but didn't break the game.

For the Gameplay, the Developers needed to emphasize and to convey that she's a dragon and the aspect of life. They wanted to convey that properly by letting Alexstrasza interact with life and health in interesting ways. Her ability *Abundance* was inspired by the storm dragons primarly found in Cataclysm (the dragon mobs in Vortex Pinnacle, for example). *Flame Buffet* was inspired by Blackwing Lair dragon abilities. Her ultimate *Life Binder* was inspired by her Hearthstone card. The core concept behind her second Heroic Ability, *Cleansing Flame*, was originally meant to be for Probius. Probius was originally meant to have a Mothership heroic ability raining damage down on the battlefield. They didn't like it, given his builder-oriented gameplay. So they moved it to Alexstrasza instead.

Alexstrasza finally made her debut with Hanzo, during the Dragons of the Nexus event which was announced during BlizzCon 2017.

## Trivia

* Alexstrasza made her debut in *Day of the Dragon* (February 2001).
	+ Her game debut was seven years later, in *World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King* (November 2008).
* Alexstrasza is by voiced Barbara Goodson in Wrath of the Lich King to early Cataclysm, and by Wendee Lee as of late Cataclysm.
* Alexstrasza is the second dragon hero, with Chromie being the first, and the third being Deathwing.

## Gallery

### General

* Alexstrasza's artwork
* Alexstrasza home screen
* Alexstrasza menu
* Dragons of the Nexus Background
* Dragons of the Nexus
* Concept Art
* Concept Art
* Dark Queen Alexstrasza

### Abilities

* D: Dragonqueen
* Q: Gift of Life
* W: Abundance
* E: Flame Buffet
* R1: Life-Binder
* R2: Cleansing Flame

## References

1. ↑ ♥ Blizzcon 2017 Developer Interview w/ The Alexstrasza & Hanzo Designers - Heroes of the Storm HotS
2. ↑ [1]Andrew Kinabrew on Alexstraza comes out tomorrow, but how will she hear all the festivities...
3. ↑ Alexstrasza's True Dragon Form “Broke The Game,” Says Heroes Of The Storm Director
4. ↑ Heroes Of The Storm Devs On The Fate Of Hanamura And Balance Changes
5. ↑ BlizzCon 2017: Heroes of the Storm: Deep Dive
6. ↑ Andrea Toyias: Sr. Casting & VO Director, Blizzard - Twitter post

## External links

* Alexstrasza - Heroes of the Storm
* Alexstrasza - Wowpedia
* Alexstrasza Balance Changelog - Heroes Patch Notes
* Alexstrasza Sound Files - Sounds of the storm

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