Why Hanabi Will Shake Up the MPL Philippines Competition
No one expects the backdoor play
This article was written by Chise Alcantara.
Hanabi, the Scarlet Flower, has made her debut in the Mobile Legends live servers. Along with the copious amount of HanabiXHayabusa ship fan art floating around, there have also been polarizing opinions whether she’ll be a meta-defining hero. Regardless if you’re a Hanabi fan or hater, you have to admit she’s bound to disrupt the Mobile Legends Live competitions meta severely.
Her champion design is actually very straightforward and fits this early-farming meta very well. Her first skill and second allows her to clear waves very efficiently due to their natural AOE effects. As Hanabi, you can quickly push your lane to the opponents turret and farm the side neutral monsters (hopefully including the buff monsters) to get the level advantage over your opposing laners.
Seems too good to be true right? Well, the reason why we particularly mentioned that she should probably farm the buff monsters since she runs out of mana VERY quickly. It’s also very difficult to farm buff camps without Retribution, which is a shame to get because Hanabi greatly benefits from the attack speed steroid given by Inspire. Before you say, “TAkinG InspIrE iN HiGH ElO LuL” you have to realize that Hanabi does insane damage in late game team fights with her AOE auto attacks. She can melt heroes AND turrets if she’s left alone, which is the main reason that she can really be a force to be reckoned with particularly in premade rank and competitions but not necessarily in solo games.
Hanabi requires A LOT of baby-sitting since she’s very immobile and only has two defensive skills that are both situational in their effectiveness. Sure, her passive seems pretty overpowered and does sync very well with her first skill’s innate lifesteal but once any hero with a gap-closer touches your soft markswoman behind, you know that no amount of lifesteal will save you.
That said, if you do get to late game and have enough tanks and/or supports to shield you from damage, you’ll be an unstoppable turret-wrecking machine. Your first skill is a very unique ability as it actually bounces off of turrets and into defending champions. Imagine turret-hugging and a Hanabi is wrecking your team and your structures by auto-attacking any of your teammates.
That’s why Hanabi excels so much when grouped with coordinated teams that will play to her strengths. But, the downside is that pros don’t exactly have much time to practice and test her before competing, which will definitely show off their inexperience with the hero. You best expect that Hanabi will definitely be a dark horse in the early Mobile Legends Professional League Philippines qualifier season because no one really knows how well she’ll play into the current meta and the playstyle of the teams. Let’s just hope she won’t get the Moskov treatment if she actually stomps the competition early on because she’s actually an interesting champion that pushes for precise playstyles and team coordination, which is somewhat lacking within the ML community.
