Hanzo

Is this a Hanzo draft?

Hanzo is the right pick when the enemy front line cannot reach your back line in four seconds and your own team can hold a position long enough for you to snipe from it. Pair him with one lock-down tank (Tigreal, Khufra, Atlas) and one peel support (Estes, Angela, Diggie). What he wants from the enemy is a stationary back line: Layla, Lesley, Wanwan dependent on standing still, immobile mages like Cyclops or Pharsa. What he wants from your draft is a permission slip to stand somewhere safe.

He is the wrong pick into stealth, wall-crossing, or single-target deletion drafts. Helcurt smoke-walks through your warded jungle and finds the body before you finish the dive. Natalia waits in the bush you forgot to check. Fanny can stack-jump over the wall you parked behind. Ling drops onto your body from a piece of terrain you did not know counted as a wall. Lancelot ult or Saber ult deletes a stationary Hanzo in one rotation. If two of those names are on the enemy team and the bans are not yours, take a real assassin instead.

The disqualifying test: by the time your front line walks up to a Lord pit fight, can you point at a wall, bush, or pixel of terrain and say "the body sits here, it cannot be reached without a flicker"? If the answer is "I will figure it out", you do not have a Hanzo plan. You have a wish.

The trick that makes Hanzo work

Every other assassin in the game answers the question "where do I jump from". Hanzo answers "where do I stand still". His ultimate sends a Demon Pneuma form forward and leaves his physical body behind, and the entire hero hangs on the body never being touched. Stack of Demon Blood is the resource. Demon Pneuma is the weapon. The body is the load-bearing structure that holds both up.

Sealed form (no ult active) is for farming and zoning. Demon Feast is the true-damage minion eat that pays for itself in Demon Blood and clear speed. Soul Reap is the long skillshot that pokes a wave from across the river and chains hits if it lands. Demon Pneuma form (ult active) flips both: Demon Thorn becomes a knock-up lunge that unlocks every five basics, Devastator becomes a basic-attack dash you ride into the back line. The two skill bars do completely different jobs, and treating Demon Pneuma like a melee assassin who has to commit a body wastes the entire reason to pick him. The body never goes in. Only the ghost.

This is also why Hanzo has zero mana and runs on Demon Blood instead. He is not balanced around resource scarcity. He is balanced around physical vulnerability. The cost of the ult is not mana, it is the three seconds of stun and eight seconds of crippled movement you eat if Demon Pneuma dies before you recall it.

The first six minutes

The early game is about getting two clears done before anyone else thinks to contest you, then translating Demon Pneuma into one map-shaping play before minute six.

1. First level take Demon Feast for the true-damage clear. It one-shots the buff at every level and pays you Demon Blood you will need for the level four ult. Save Retribution for the second buff or a contested crab, not the first wave.
2. Buff-to-buff to crab to second buff, then back to crab again. Demon Pneuma comes online at level four, and the first ult should be a gank, not a clear. Walk up to a side lane that is pushed past river, send the ghost from inside your own jungle through the wall, knock the laner up with Demon Thorn, and recall the ult before your body is ever in line of sight.
3. Never engage with the body if you have not already practiced the recall. The recall option (returning Demon Pneuma to body, or body to Demon Pneuma) is on the same button as the ult cast, and players new to Hanzo flicker themselves into the kill zone by spamming the wrong recast. Burn one neutral camp clear in practice mode pressing the recall mid-cast before you take him into ranked.

The two-item spike that flips Hanzo on

The window is Magic Boots plus Demon Hunter Sword, usually finished between minute seven and minute nine. Before this spike Demon Pneuma is a scout that pokes for kill setup. After it, Demon Pneuma is a kill condition.

Magic Boots is mandatory and not a preference. Hanzo has zero mana, so the standard mana-regen value of the boots is wasted, but the cooldown reduction shaves the ult into a window that lets you take back-to-back engagements instead of one fight every other rotation. Demon Hunter Sword is what makes the basic-attack-driven Devastator dash actually delete a marksman: 8% of current HP per basic on top of the attack speed, plus the per-hit HP regen that keeps the body alive if the fight comes to it. Two items, the entire identity of the hero changes.

Anyone telling you to skip DHS for Blade of Despair first is selling raw attack power for a hero whose damage profile is multi-hit, not single-shot. The ratio you actually want is "how much damage do I do across one ult duration", and DHS triples that number against any hero with more than 4000 HP.

Where to put the body

The reflex when you press ult is to stand on the lip of the fight and throw Demon Pneuma forward. The reflex is wrong. Distance to the fight is measured in crowd control, not meters. A body four screens away from a Khufra is closer than a body one screen away from a Saber.

1. The body sits behind a wall the enemy cannot cross in four seconds. Four seconds is roughly one ult cycle. If the wall takes them longer than that to round, you finish your work and recall before they touch you. If it is shorter, you picked the wrong wall.
2. Never face Demon Pneuma toward your body. The escape route runs the other direction. Demon Pneuma should be the wedge between the enemy and your body, not the lure pointing them at it.
3. The first kill target is whoever can find you. Not the squishiest. Not the closest. The one whose kit reaches your hiding spot. Natalia eats the first ult cycle. Ling eats the first ult cycle. Fanny eats the first ult cycle. The marksman lives one extra fight.

The exception is the support you are paired with. With Tigreal, Khufra, or Atlas locking the front, you can stand a step inside the fight perimeter because the lock-down buys you the four seconds. With Rafaela or Estes alone, the body sits two walls back. With Diggie, you can stand wherever you want because the silence and CC immunity covers the body.

Itemization: three locked, three conversations

The first three slots are not negotiable: Magic Boots, Demon Hunter Sword, and Corrosion Scythe for the stacking attack speed buff that turns Devastator into an actual machine gun and the per-basic slow that holds enemies inside the dash radius. Slots four through six are where the game gets played.

• Slot four: anti-heal or anti-armor. Sea Halberd the moment the enemy has Estes, Yu Zhong, Esmeralda, Uranus, Phoveus, or any sustain comp where targets refuse to die in one rotation. The 60% healing reduction passive is the single biggest swing in those games. Against double tank without sustain, Malefic Roar buys back the penetration you need to actually pierce stacked Antique Cuirass.
• Slot five: throughput or threat. Golden Staff when fights consistently last past one ult cycle, since the Endless Strike attack speed bursts are exactly the sustain DPS Demon Pneuma scales with. If you are already running Corrosion Scythe, note that Golden Staff stacks fine with it (the conflict is between Corrosion Scythe's Impulse and Feather of Heaven, not Golden Staff). Blade of Despair here only when the fight ends in your first burst window.
• Slot six: body insurance. Winter Crown is the correct pick when the body keeps getting found, because the active makes you untargetable while the ult is still mid-cast and your team can rotate to peel. Immortality is the lazier alternative for players who keep mistiming the Winter Crown active. Skip Wind of Nature entirely. Its damage immunity duration is halved on non-marksmen, and a one-second window is not worth a slot.

The boots question does not have a question. Hanzo has zero mana, the cooldown reduction is what unlocks back-to-back ults, and any other boot puts you on a slower tempo than your power spike supports.

Mistakes that lose Hanzo games

Ulting from inside the fight rather than from cover. The body sits where you cast the ult. If you press it standing in the river next to your tank, your body is now in melee range of every CC the enemy has. The first stun kills both. Cast Demon Pneuma from inside your own jungle, behind a wall the enemy front line is not already touching, and let the ghost cover the rest of the distance.

Recalling Demon Pneuma early to chase a kill on your body. The recall option ends the ult, restores you to body, and feels safe. It also leaves your team with no Hanzo damage for the next sixteen-plus seconds while you walk to the fight you abandoned. The correct recall is when Demon Pneuma is about to die, not when you got greedy and want to dunk a low-HP target with a basic attack.

Standing in a bush the enemy has warded. Bushes are not invisible. Diggie egg, control wards, Selena trap arrows, Helcurt sonic radar, and any minimap awareness from a competent jungler all see through them. Body in a bush is body in line of sight. Body behind a wall is body out of reach. The two are not the same hiding spot.

Forcing the first fight before Demon Hunter Sword. Pre-DHS Demon Pneuma is a poke kit that gets one knock-up and a slow off. It cannot kill anything with more than 4000 HP without help, and committing the ult into a fight you cannot finish wastes the entire cooldown. Wait the extra ninety seconds, finish the spike, then engage.

Tunneling on creeps after the 2.1.47 Energy buff (patch notes). That buff added Energy regeneration whenever Demon Pneuma basic-attacks a hero, the Turtle, or the Lord. The hero is now built around hitting bodies, not minions, to extend his ult duration. Sitting on the back line of a fight farming the wave wave with Demon Pneuma instead of pressing it onto the enemy carry actively shortens your own ult and gives the enemy team a free reset.

Key tips