Guide
The main point of this build is to abuse, and I mean ABUSE, Earthen Guard. During Earthen Guard, you will gain a whopping 45% damage reduction, 50% bonus healing, and CC immunity as frosting on the cake when using the Mother's Grace talent (Without Mother's grace, you gain 35% damage reduction and 30% bonus healing during Earthen Guard). A lesser known interaction between Earthen Guard and the Stone Bulwark card, is that Stone Bulwark's healing DOES benefit from the increased healing from Earthen Guard. This makes it heal for 210 HP when you have Stone Bulwark V (WIth Mother's Grace, without the Mother's Grace talent it heals for 182) per second instead of the 140 it says on the card. Geomancer is there to reduce the cooldown of Earthen Guard further. Insurmountable is there because 6 ammo feels a lot better than 5, Steadfast is there to make you more durable (both with and without Earthen Guard), and Standing Stones is more or less filler. I personally like the shorter cooldown on Warder's Field, but you can swap it out for whatever you feel like. Lodestone and Rolling Stones are the good filler cards I'd reccommend. Lodestone because it eliminates the issue of not having any ammo to shoot at an enemy you just trapped with Warder's field, and Rolling Stones for reduced cooldown when you get an elimination.
Some general tips for Inara I'll just be dumping here:
- Your walls serve two purposes: Isolating the enemy Frontline(s) from their backline by placing the wall inbetween the Frontline and their backline, or just to block damage.
- Your walls created by Impasse AND your Warder's Field can both be destroyed prematurely by pressing the assigned button again. This is very useful is you place a wall that accidentally locks out a teammate, or when the enemy you trapped in your Warder's Field dies and nobody else is going to walk into it soon. By destroying them prematurely, their cooldown starst sooner, and you can have them more readily available.
- Your weapon (Stone Spear) is quite accurate up to longer ranges. If you get the opportunity to, poke enemies off their mounts as much as you can. A good example is Serpent beach, where you can stay on point and dismount enemies coming back from spawn. To put it simply, don't be afraid to spam down long sightlines from point after a won teamfight. You might dismount enemies, which will make it much harder for them to get back to the point in time.
- Your ultimate, Seismic Crash, locks you in position (meaning you can't move from the position you were at when you casted the ultimate) and makes you CC immune. Gravity, knockbacks, and stuns, will not affect Inara for the duration. With good timing, this can prevent you from being thrown off the map or into an enviromental hazard.
- Something a lot of players forget is that Seismic Crash does pierce shields. So if a Fernando (for example) is holding shield upon point, you can ult them, and it will stun them.
- Do NOT shoot at shields unless you have no choice. You are far from good at breaking shields, due to your rather sluggish fire rate, and relatively low damage per burst. Leave breaking shields to heroes such as Trya, Betty La Bomba, Vivian, Willo, etc. Instead, poke at their backline if they are exposed, or walk through the shield if possible (You can do this for heroes such as Nyx, Barik, Makoa and Ash).
