Valeera

Valeera Sanguinar, the Shadow of the Uncrowned, is a Melee Assassin Hero from the Warcraft universe. For a time, the gladiator Valeera Sanguinar served dutifully as one of Varian Wrynn's personal bodyguards. Now, her shadowy skills find her a natural fit within the secretive rogue order, the Uncrowned, in their fight against the Legion. She is a tricky assassin who can gain access to different Abilities while stealthed, and builds combo points to eviscerate her opponents.

Valeera is a stealthed Assassin who specializes in shutting down her opponents.

Background
After her parents were killed by bandits, survived her rough childhood and the  by stealing. She was eventually caught, but didn't go down without a fight, and her fighting prowess attracted the notice of the orc gladiator manager, Rehgar Earthfury. He handpicked and trained Valeera for his gladiator team, along with and, until Bloodeye was killed by the mate of a fighter he slew. Rehgar quickly replaced Bloodeye with an amnesiac human he found, who would later be called Lo'Gosh — actually the missing king of Stormwind, Varian Wrynn. Fighting together as a team of three, Valeera formed a great friendship with Broll (who treated her like a surrogate child) and Varian. The trio eventually broke away from their lives as gladiators, restored Varian's memory and throne, and rid Stormwind of the influence of the Black Dragon broodmother, Onyxia. As a result of this, Valeera became Varian's bodyguard and adviser and swore loyalty solely to Varian and his son,, and while she is proud of her blood elven heritage, she associates herself with neither the Alliance nor the Horde.

After participating in the Battle for the Undercity and helping in the defeat of Cho'Gall, Valeera seemingly vanished with no one knowing her whereabouts. In truth, she joined, a rogue organization that secretly deals with unknown threats. With the defeat of the Burning Legion and Anduin's coronation, she returned to Stormwind as Anduin's secret spy and adviser.

Gameplay
Valeera is a Melee Assassin who uses Stealth and a unique Combo Point system to shut down her high priority targets. Combo Points are generated every time Valeera strikes an enemy Hero with one of her Basic Abilities, which can then be spent on a powerful finishing move called Eviscerate. Unlike other Stealth based Heroes, Valeera is able to activate  Vanish at will, allowing her to regularly shift back and forth between the shadows to trick and deceive her opponents. When Stealthed, Valeera has access to a whole new set of abilities commonly referred to as "openers", as these abilities are used to break Valeera from stealth and be the opening sequence to her unrelenting ability combo.

Each one of Valeera's three openers providers her with a different bonus; Ambush can be used for instantaneous pure damage, Cheap Shot for hard crowd control in the form of a stun, and Garrote for damage over time and a crippling Silence. It is important for players to recognize which opener will best suit Valeera's needs at that exact moment. Valeera is countered by Heroes who are able to easily break her from Stealth, as this will prevent her from being able to cast any of her opener abilities.

Strengths

 * Anti-Assassin, can take down high priority targets deep within the backline
 * Exceptional at roaming and ganking
 * Diverse kit with lots of utility

Weaknesses

 * Poor waveclear and PvE
 * Most utility is lost upon being knocked out of Stealth

Abilities

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

Trivia

 * When Valeera was designed, the developers decided to make her different from Heroes like Zeratul by really capturing one of the World of Warcraft Rogue fantasies of locking down an enemy Hero. When Valeera was in development, the Valla/Greymane hyper carry meta was in full force, so they thought that this would also be a welcome addition to the game that would shake up the meta. If Valeera is good at locking down only one enemy, and a team's composition relied on having one major damage dealer, she'd be great at it. They wanted to make her good at reducing a carry without also making her too strong in setting up kills.
 * Valeera made her first appearances in World of Warcraft: The Comic (November 2007) and the pre-expansion event for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (November 2008).
 * Valeera is voiced by Tara Platt.
 * The third tint of Valeera's default palette gives a piece of clothing on her arms and legs.
 * Many of Valeera's quotes reference her emotes from Hearthstone, and in one quote she makes a joke about unable to perform "miracles" after a particular nerf (a reference the "Miracle Rogue" deck).
 * Her special dialogue with Rexxar, where she asks why he always "aims for the face", is a reference to the "Face Hunter" deck.