Paladins – Ultimate Beginner’s Guide for Io Users

Understanding Io’s Skills

The first step to playing any champion in Paladins is understanding their kit and what their purpose is. Io is primarily a support class first and a DPS class second, so understanding how to make the most of that is crucial to winning a game.

Io’s kit is as follows:

• Light bow – A bow that deals 400 obrażeń na strzał. This is a projectile weapon, it does not instantly reach it’s target, so aiming at a long distance may take a little bit of effort.
• Lunar leap – Leap backwards in the air. Prone to accidents–don’t do this near ledges or cliffs. This is a great getaway tool, but only if your positioning is good. It’s on a cooldown, so don’t miss!
• Guardian spirit – This is one of Io’s most important support tools. Using this ability summons Luna to fight for you. I’ll describe it in more detail later because it’s uses are varied.
• Moonlight – Simple healing beam. Unlike Jenos’s Astral Mark, you can’t use it through walls, and it’s effect ends immediately once you stop using it. Moonlight uses a separate ammo pool which regenerates when you are not using it, indicated by a crescent-shaped meter next to your crosshair. If your moonlight meter enters the bright white area at the bottom, you cannot use it again until it refills above that point.

Most of Io’s abilities are very easy to pick up. Using Moonlight is not very different from any other active healing ability, so this isn’t something you should struggle too much with.

What makes Io challenging are three things: having a decent team, understanding how to use Luna effectively, and trying not to die too often.

Pierwszy, never overextend away from your team. Podobnie, your team should never try to stray too far away from you unless the enemy team is already getting curbstomped. Io is extremely vulnerable on her own and struggles to take on more than one enemy at a time. It’s not uncommon to pour through an entire clip of 10 arrows just to take down one damage/flank champion with the light bow, and you only have 2200 health to work with. This is where mindful positioning and having Lunar Leap ready are important.

Drugi, how you use Guardian Spirit can depend on a variety of factors. How well is the enemy team doing? Is your team grouped up around the objective, or all over the place? Do you need extra help taking down a stubborn tank? We’ll cover the different things you should do in each situation later, because the optimal ways to use Luna is a slightly complicated subject.

Trzeci, sometimes you just can’t play Io effectively at all. If the enemy team is overpowering yours because your team is not working together, that is when Io is at her absolute weakest. This scenario can become common in solo queue games, where often times your teammates will rush into fights alone to be met with gunfire from 3 Do 5 other champions at once. Dying as Io can suck for everyone else on your team too as they will lose a valuable resource, especially if they are relying on Luna + Life Link to stay alive (Ponownie, Więcej o tym później).

The talent you want to pick depends on both your playstyle and your team’s playstyle.

If your team is very cooperative and helpful, using Life Link is your best choice. It will allow anyone standing next to Luna, including yourself, to be healed at a rate of about 300 HP per second. You can usually convince a good team to stick to the objective and place Luna around them to help stun contestants and heal allies standing around the point. Healing from Luna also passes through walls, so if placed next to a corner, allies can peek that corner to fire back at incoming enemies without losing healing.

Lunas with Life-Link on them will emit a green healing circle which indicates the area allies can stand in to receive the healing effect. If you overextend outside of this boundary, you won’t be healed.

If Luna is too vulnerable, you can move her around a corner near a chokepoint. This will be useful in providing decent healing to allies defending the objective, but Luna will be unable to attack and stun incoming enemies if they are not close enough.

Keep in mind that Luna dies with you. If you are dead, your teammates cannot get passive healing from Luna. Using the Life Link talent also slightly lowers the rate at which your Moonlight gives back HP to allies.

If your team is more spread out and likes to go for kills, this might be a better option depending on how you play. It provides 15% defense to any allies you are currently healing, similar to the Haven item. Luna’s passive healing will probably not be very useful if your team isn’t playing near Luna, so using her only to help stun difficult opponents and leaving all of the healing to your Moonlight is a more effective strategy here.

This is the aggressive-plays talent. If you really really hate dying, and you’re a try-hard playing for kills, this is what you want to use. Place Luna somewhere safe on the map, and you will be teleported in her place once your health drops below 200.

Oczywiście, players who are good at support and want to play their role well will use this to fall back behind grouped-up allies and continue providing healing using Moonlight. A good healer can be one of the most effective members of a team, and Io isn’t a great DPS champion by herself.

Don’t use Sacrifice only to wuss out of combat whenever you run directly behind enemy lines, this will just encourage bad positioning and won’t make you a good player.

Play close to your team and use this as a tool to help them, not just yourself.

How to use Luna (Guardian Spirit)

One of the most common uses for Luna is to defend a control point or payload. If you’re pushing the cart, Luna can actually follow the cart for you! Just place her directly on top of or in front of the cart, and she will ride along it’s path. This is helpful if you don’t want to constantly redeploy her, but it will make Luna a more visible target.

https://youtu.be/WH40S7If46A

She can also help you and your allies take down foes faster, but you must be there to highlight targets for her.

Luna will try to attack anyone who comes near. What you want her to do is to bite your targets, if she does this your opponents will be stunned for a second and become more vulnerable.

While Luna is active, she will try to bite any enemy that you shoot with your light bow. If your target isn’t moving around too fast, and they are within Luna’s line of sight, she will stun them as long as the attack isn’t on cooldown. This stun attack passes through shields, and it’s extremely useful in helping your team finish off tanks.

Any opponent marked for attack with your light bow will have Luna’s HUD icon placed over their head:

Try to target tanks or difficult damage champions when defending an objective using Luna. Got an enemy Fernando opening fire on your team with his stupid shield? Stun him! Got a bomb king blowing you up over and over? STUN HIM!! Immobilizing your enemies is a great way to help you and your allies take them down faster and capture the objective. Luna is a very important offensive and defensive tool, so don’t forget to stun, oszołomić, oszołomić!

Luna won’t charge after your target if the attack isn’t ready. You can tell if it’s ready or not by looking at the Luna icon next to your health meter. After a stun attack has been performed, the meter will refill on it’s own.

With the Life Link talent, Luna can heal teammates defending the objective, as well as yourself. Think of it like the Dispenser from TF2.

Placed around chokepoints, Luna can help guard objectives without putting herself in too much danger. If you’re struggling to heal all of your teammates at once and Luna is low on health while you’re defending, this is a good strategy to use.

Having Io as a Teammate

If there is an Io on your team, and they are using Life Link, politely ask them to move Luna near the objective and help you capture it. Get your other allies to help too. Ask your Io to target the most difficult opponents first with her Luna, especially ones using shields.

Buy Rejuvenate.

This will make her job a lot easier when trying to protect you.

Dealing with an Enemy Io

When an Io on the other team places their Luna on the objective, things can become difficult. A good Io player will be trying to stun your most dangerous attackers and hold your team back.

To kill Luna more easily, buy Bulldozer from the item shop.

Pamiętać: when Io dies, Luna dies. If the enemy Io is extremely vulnerable, attack her first. Luna will fall shortly afterward, and the enemy will be without a healer until she respawns (assuming they don’t have other support champions available).