Gul'dan

Gul'dan, Darkness Incarnate, is a Ranged Assassin Hero from the Warcraft franchise. Abandoning the ways of Shamanism, Gul'dan entered a pact with the demon lord Kil'jaeden and betrayed his people in exchange for limitless power. With the Orcish Horde under his master's thrall, both Draenor and Azeroth nearly fell into his grasp.

Gul'dan is a sustained damage Mage who uses his Health as fuel but can steal life from his enemies.

Background
was an  from  who became the first orcish  as well as the de facto founder of the. Abandoning the ways of shamanism and betraying both his people and his mentor to the demon lord for personal power, Gul'dan was directly responsible for the orcs' fall to demonic enslavement as well as for the Horde's invasion of. Tutored by the lord of the, he became the founder and master of the as well as the original creator of the necromantic terrors known as. Gul'dan often referred to himself as "Darkness Incarnate" and the "Destroyer of Dreams", and he is considered to be one of the most powerful warlocks to have ever existed.

Gameplay
Gul'dan is a Ranged Assassin who is capable of dealing large amounts of close proximity AoE damage. Gul'dan does not regenerate Mana. Instead, he possesses the ability to replenish Mana using Life Tap at the cost of his own Health. This, paired with his ability to sap the health from his opponents to replenish his own allows Gul'dan to stay on the battlefield for longer, as opposed to other "mage" Heroes that constantly need to visit healing wells or hearth to the Hall of Storms to restore mana.

Strengths

 * Incredible sustain by means of Life Tap and Drain Life
 * Fel Flame provides good waveclear
 * High AoE damage output

Weaknesses

 * Health and Mana pools require constant monitoring due to their unique co-dependent relationship
 * Incredibly vulnerable to crowd control
 * Requires great positioning during skirmishes and teamfights

Abilities

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

Trivia

 * Gul'dan first appeared in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (December 1995).
 * His book appearence was seven years later, in (December 2002).
 * Gul'dan is voiced by Paul Eiding in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, and by Troy Baker in Heroes of the Storm, World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, and World of Warcraft: Legion.
 * In the Warcraft movie, Gul'dan is portrayed by Daniel Wu. Codes to unlock Gul'dan in Heroes of the Storm were included in select physical editions of the movie on Blu-ray and DVD.
 * Gul'dan's model in Heroes of the Storm was based on his WarCraft II sprite merged with aspects of his Warlords of Draenor appearance. His colour scheme matches his sprite while his body shape and face are more like how he appears currently. His quotes make it clear that he's the one from the original world, but he also references some of new Gul'dan's lines (there's something of a running joke with him trying to get people to drink demon blood). Finally, the spikes on his back are made of bone like Draenor's Gul'dan due to the corruption, whereas in the original game they were part of his robes.
 * Gul'dan was confirmed to be in the works at BlizzCon 2015.
 * The design process behind Gul'dan's abilities was explained by Kent-Erik Hagman: "And we worked out, well, we don't want any more summoners in the game because Azmodan and Zagara have added enough health bars to the game, we don't want that UI clutter. So how can we get the warlock fantasy without doing summons? We knew we wanted to do Life Tap, it's basically our version of a trait or hero power is Life Tap. It's so perfect for warlock, it speaks to the mentality of "Give me power now, I'll deal with the consequences later." You know? That's so warlock fantasy. So we built around Life Tap, which lead to this whole queue which started out really complicated like "Oh, if you keep casting it, it gets stronger, it costs more mana," it was really complicated and after playing it for a while, and the toolset was like two paragraphs long, we thought "Wait, what if you just made it a really low cool down and a really high mana cost?" So we did that and it was like "Wow, it's the exact same gameplay with a fifth of the rules!" And from there it was like, well okay, if you're gonna have a low cooldown, spammable thing, obviously it's going to be insanely bursty, so you can kind of keep doing it all the time. And that's where he became the sustained damage mage. Just off of that interaction right there, the trait and the queue … the Drain Life, that's very warlocky, fed right into the trait as well."
 * Legion Gul'dan resembles the version of the character featured in Warlords of Draenor and Legion.
 * First War Gul'dan resembles Gul'dan as he appears in the Warcraft movie.
 * One of Gul'dan's gag quotes references the book Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
 * Unusually for Gul'dan, this version of the character lacks a staff, while portrayals of his movie, alternate, and even main universe versions have all included a staff at some point; often topped with a skull.