Messiah Guide

## Messiah Overview

(Updated to v15.6)

Messiah is the only hero in multiplayer games with the potential to reach his 2500 score by the 10th minute on Hellwalker games. Messiah can erase ground units and structures from existence with his enslaved units, especially Shredder Lords. His greatest weakness is having to deal with air enemies with very high HP. For example, against the leviathan or behemoth, he is extremely ineffective.

Messiah's greatest damage source, by far, is from his enslaved units such as Shredder Lords, blue/purple Ultralisks and Ravagers.

Messiah has slowing abilities in the form of 'Desecrate'. He is a very good kiting hero that can control hordes of strong enemies.

Ever since the introduction of Shredder Lords, Messiah's playstyle has been drastically simplified, because no other units are worth enslaving from mid-game onwards. Therefore, from mid-game onwards, it is no longer necessary to heavily micro other enslaved units such as Ultralisks, because Shredder Lords are relatively simpler to micro and to keep alive.

Shredder Lords also do not benefit from the Inspire Aura and Allied Formations Aura buffs, meaning that they can function independently of Messiah's positioning, further simplifying Messiah's mid-game strategy onwards.

## Messiah's Perks for OS and HW

The best perks for Messiah should really not be surprising at all:

1. Onslaught
2. Leadership
3. Absorption
4. Compartmentalization

For quick entry of Perks at the beginning of the match, type (without quotes) "-perk olec".

Onslaught adds +20% damage to auto-attack, Ordo Drakonis and Obliterate damage and nuke damage. Its additional benefit will be the +20% to movement speed. A huge proportion of Messiah's total damage will come from his enslaved units. Therefore, having the movement speed to follow his fast Ultralisks and Ravagers allows him to provide them with Inspire and Allied Formation Auras, further boosting their damage. As such Onslaught is an extremely important perk for Messiah.

Leadership boosts the damage of enslaved units by about 50% and that of dark templars damage by 20%, which is Messiah's primary and secondary sources of damage respectively. Coupled with Allied Formations talent and Inspire talent, Messiah with Leadership + Enslaves deal tremendous damage.

Absorption allows much more frequent usage of all of his abilities. To keep reducing the cooldown of rally, Messiah needs Templar's Verdict mastery and should always spam his other abilities such as Obliterate. Given that Messiah is relieved of energy problems only after his ELITE status, for the major part of the game, Messiah requires a lot of energy. Therefore Absorption perk allows him to skip Energy mastery entirely.

Compartment perk allows Messiah to skip using a mastery point for Lightweight Equipment mastery and therefore pick another mastery.

## Messiah's Mastery Order for OS

For non-speedrun multiplayer games, Messiah must achieve the most effective Enslave playstyle as early as possible. For Oldschool, Messiah completely skips Forbidden Palace mastery.

1. Level 0 = Enslave + Free Lightweight Equipment
2. Level 10 = Spearhead
3. Level 20 = Shadow Stalker
4. Level 30 = Ordo Drakonis
5. Level 40 = Crusade
6. 2K Streak = Oblationist Oath
7. Level 50 = Nuke or Templar's Verdict
8. Level 60 = Templar's Verdict or Nuke

## Messiah's Mastery Order for HW

For non-speedrun multiplayer games, Messiah must achieve the most effective Enslave playstyle as early as possible:

1. Level 0 = Enslave
2. Level 10 = Forbidden Palace + Free Lightweight Equipment
3. Level 20 = Shadow Stalker
4. Level 30 = Ordo Drakonis
5. 2K Streak = Spearhead
6. Level 40 = Crusade
7. Level 50 = Oblationist Oath
8. Level 60 = Nuke / Templar's Verdict

## Messiah's Enslave Playstyle Requirements

Assuming Messiah picks Absorption perk (which he always should), to fully unlock Enslave + Rally's full potential, Messiah needs:

1. Enslave
2. Lightweight Equipment for reduced cooldowns for all abilities
3. Ordo Drakonis for the reduced Obliterate Cooldown
4. Templar's Verdict to reduce the cooldown of an ability when you use any ability
5. Spearhead for additional charges of Obliterate
6. Crusade for increased movement speed, an extra blink charge, and a better Desecrate ability which slows enemies even more while also lasting longer
7. Shadow Stalker to blink and closely follow the enslaved units

Given that you need to keep your Enslaves alive, you need those 7 masteries above as early as possible. This should occur by level 50 for Oldschool and Level 60 for Hellwalker.

Templar's Verdict is the point in the game where Messiah should continuously spam his abilities to better heal his enslaves and to keep pumping dark templars all over the map. Given that that auto-attack damage is not a priority for Messiah, we can skip Weapons Research until late game. Weapons Research increases auto-attack damage by only 30. It is a nice addition to have towards the late game only, after level 50. Just for the sake of information, the Dark Energies talent increases his auto-attack damage by a whopping 45.

## Comments on Messiah's other masteries

### Forbidden Palace should not be picked on Oldschool

Many beginner and intermediate players tend to pick Forbidden Palace on Oldschool.

Forbidden Palace has been heavily nerfed compared to its previous version. The further an Oldschool game progresses, the more obsolete Forbidden Palace becomes since the fight is very rarely within the base once the team starts to push into enemy bases.

1. The current advantage to Forbidden Palace mastery is that it will accelerate your 2500 score since your two permanent desecrates will damage enemies.
2. It might also accelerate Messiah's killstreak slightly on Oldschool.
3. The elite Urun will also damage enemy flyers. However, it deals far less damage than Aquila's mothership, and, unlike the mothership, does not deal splash damage, meaning it struggles against hordes of weak flyers needlessly when a simple Obliterate can destroy clusters of mutalisks.

The end result of Forbidden Palace is only a slightly early 2500 score.

Therefore, it is recommended to never pick Forbidden Palace for Oldschool games.