IO GUIDE (outdated, bad)

Patch 2.4

I created an awesome build for Io, which prompted me into creating this guide for her! That way, when the meta eventually catches up with my build (if it ever does), I can say that I came up with the build... even though other people could also have come up with it by themselves.

Currently, Io is out of meta. Jenos and furia are dominating the healer meta, and I used to think Io was outclassed, but not anymore! Io is underrated, and for good reason-- most people don't know how to use her effectively.

Cons for using Io:

• No damage amplification for allies

• Requires line of sight with allies in order to heal with moonlight
• Limited healing range with moonlight
• Io is unable to shoot while healing with moonlight
• Io's ultimate collides too easily with terrain
• Damage Grohk is a strong counter pick to Io because of Luna being an easy target.
• Unfavored in the current meta. People would rather have Jenos or Furia.

Pros for using Io:

• Opponents are pressured into buying bulldozer

• Luna can capture objectives for the team

• Movement speed buff for ally being healed by moonlight

• Damage resistance buff for ally being healed by moonlight
• Io's ultimate can knock opponents off of the map
• Io's ultimate can be used to push opponents off of the objective
• Io's ultimate can push Ash out of her ultimate's invulnerability zone.
• Io doesn't need chronos (similar to Seris)
• Io has some vertical mobility, which helps for high ground control
• Io has an easy to land stun once every 15 seconds in the form of Luna. It somewhat pressures resilience buys.
• Io got buffed, and now can continue healing while out of line of sight. (big buff, helped a lot)

Detailed information:
• Io's moonlight heals 1000 hp per second for up to 6 seconds before running out of charge.
• Moonlight depletes at a rate of 16.667% per second.
• Without any loadout cards for it, Io's moonlight recharges at a rate of 12.5% per second, which means it takes her 8 seconds to fully recharge her moonlight.• Io recharges 750 heals worth of moonlight per second without loadout cards.
• Io's weapon does 400 damage per shot at a rate of one shot every 0.6 seconds, which gives her 666.667 dps.• Io does not suffer from jump inaccuracy. (she can jump and shoot without random aim)
• Io's weapon doesn't have damage falloff-- her damage does not decrease with long range.
• Io has a projectile weapon-- she shoots arrows, and they take time to travel.
• Io doesn't have projectile drop-- her arrows fly in a straight line.
• Luna (Io's wolf) has 4500 hp
• Luna can capture objectices and can even be placed on top of the cart. (it's easy to do if Io jumps on top of the cart and then deploys/redeploys Luna)
• Io's shots will mark an enemy to be stunned by luna.
• Luna is able to stun an enemy marked by Io once every 15 seconds.
• Luna's stun lasts for one second.
• Luna can stun enemies through shields"
• Luna can heal from out of combat-- meaning you can save your moonlight and let Luna heal herself.
• Io cannot shoot though Luna-- Luna blocks Io's arrows.
• Io's ultimate goes through shields.
• Io's ultimate makes Io invulnerable and cc immune during cast (similar to Lian's ultimate)
• Io's ultimate stuns opponents-- they can't shoot while being dragged by her ult.
• Opponents being dragged by Io's ult can still be damaged by other sources-- Io can ult people and shoot at them while they're stunned and being pushed back.
• Io's leap doesn't go on cooldown until she's landed.• Io has 2200 base hp (+50hp for each point of her hp card in her loadout)• Moonlight Garden (loadout card that restores 2% moonlight whenever Io's lightbow hits an enemy) restores moonlight even when Io shoots an enemy shield or deployable (easy and safe targets for Io!)
• Sacrifice restores 50% of Io's hp
•

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Public service announcement: DO NOT DEPLOY LUNA DURING SET-UP PHASE! It's very tempting. I myself like to throw around abilities while waiting for the game/round to start, but for Io, it's very important that you don't deploy Luna. Reasons: In order for Luna to join the team at mid, you must redeploy her if you've already deployed her. This puts your redeploy on cooldown, but more importantly, it makes Luna get to mid slower since she's doing her travel animation instead of just appearing.

General Tips:
• Aim high with ult, so that it doesn't crash into the floor. The ult is huge, and it pretty much grabs anybody who was slightly close to it.
• If you're low and want heals, just redeploy Luna onto you, and cast moonlight on her. The loadout card will heal you. You can also out of combat heal.
• Lead your shots since they're projectiles-- aim at where the opponent will be by the time the arrow arrives to them.
• Shielded damage doesn't contribute to ultimate gain... help yourself and your team get more ult charge by getting wrecker.

• As a healer, your priority is to stay alive, and heal the team.
• Every bit of damage helps, so don't forget to shoot at enemies when you can (just don't go too aggressive)

• Use Luna as a bodyshield vs flanks (redeploy her to you)
• Be careful not to leap off the map
• Generally, you want to heal your dps first, but if your tank is going to die without the heals in that moment, then you heal the tank.
• The top left of the screen shows teammate hp. You might have a teammate out of field of view in need of heals, and you can check by looking at the top left of your screen... I think it's a setting though, and you need to enable it. It's on by default. Idk what it's called.
• After a victorious midfight, your job as a support is to capture the point, while the rest of your team pushes forward and zones/dismounts. However, as Io, you can have Luna capture while you join the rest of your team.
• The cart pushes Luna. You can put Luna in front of the payload, and you won't have to constantly redeploy her. Keep in mind though to redeploy luna whenever the payload has a turn.
• Luna can also be placed on top of the cart. Jump on top of the cart, and then deploy Luna. You won't have to redoploy Luna whenever the cart has a turn.
• The Payload heals allied players 50 health every second..... not sure if it heals Luna or not. There's no healing icon, but you can watch your healthbar, and watch as your health goes up in intervals of 50. This healing is affected by rejuvenate and cauterize.
• Your ult can swing fights, so don't just save it for knocking people off the map/objective. It's important that you know that you're able to shoot/damage players while they're being pushed/stunned by your ultimate.

BUILDS

Build Section

Notes

The two most important loadout cards for Io are: Spirit Arrows, Restored Faith
Simply put: Spirit Arrows makes it so that redeploy is always up, and Restored Faith is your way of healing.

They both work off of io's moonlight healing, so it's good to know that io heals at a rate of once every 0.15 seconds, or 6.667 heals per second.

Restored faith heals at a rate of 66.6667 health point per second per point. I prefer having 3 points of it.
1=66.667
2=133.333
3=200
4=266.667
5=333.333

Even though Spirit Arrows is a must-include, you don't need that many points into it. My personal preference is 2 points, 1 is fine, and 3 is pushing it a little. 4 or 5 is excessive. Idk how to put a table into here, so I'll improvise one. Edit: I tried a table using spaces to line stuff up, but the spaces disappeared once I posted my guide, so I'm just gonna use dashes for my table... hopefully it's not too ugly.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Points put into spirit arrows -----| - 0-| -----1------| -----2----- |------3----- | -----4------ | -----5----- |
Redeploy Cooldown (seconds)---| -8 -| 4.8192771| 3.4482759 | 2.6845638 | 2.1978022 | 1.8604651 |
Cooldown reduction of redeploy | 0%| 39.759% --| 56.8966% | 66.4430%- | 72.5275% -| 76.7442% |

The cooldown in seconds is if the Io was healing the whole time. I used the formula 8/(1+2/3*x). x is the level of spirit arrows. 8 is the base cooldown of 8 seconds. 1 is the 1 second every second. 2/3 times x is the 2/3 of a second every second for each point of spirit arrows. oh and 2/3 is from (0.1 seconds it says on the card divided by the 0.15 seconds it takes for moonlight to heal)

The tricky part with Io builds is how much healing recharge is good to have. Keep in mind, she has 12.5% per second already in her kit without any loadout cards. Theoretically, the bow shots giving 2% moonlight is the best card because Io fires once every 0.6 seconds. The issue is that sometimes there are no enemies for you to shoot at, and the card encourages Io to put herself into danger. With the other two moonlight regen cards, I've found that protector actually gives Luna a function, so it's my preference. redeploy basically has no cooldown because of swift arrows, so you can just redeploy Luna to you whenever you need more moonlight.
Sanctum of Faith is the most reliable, but the least impactful. I've seen a bunch of builds where it's very little healing recharge.

Swift Arrows... I'm honestly not sure if I overrate this card or not. This card has a lot of value to me. It's comparable to Mal'Damba's speed card, and Torvald's speed card. I feel bad (guilty, shameful, remorseful) if I don't use this card. It's as if I am depriving my teammates of their movespeed buff. It's not like io has much better cards to be using.

TALENTS:
Goddess' Blessing:
• Keep in mind diminishing returns. An Inara using earthen guard with mother's grace talent will not have 75% damage resistance. She will have 59% damage resistance. search up diminishing returns if you don't know what they are. It only comes into play when bonus go above 30%, and there are multiple bonuses. It's less diminishing when the bonus is barely over 30%. For example, ruckus with 15% dr on top of 25% dr becomes 36.667% dr instead of 40%, which is basically the same. There's a calculator you can find by typing in diminishing returns paladins.
• It's nice for helping one ally survive a bomb king ult. It kind of sucks that in order for an ally to benefit from damage resistance, they need to get shot at, which means that they're cauterized. It's alright though, it does something. And I use it with 40% movespeed, so it helps allies survive from situations where no other support could have saved them.
• Luna receives the damage resistance bonus when Io is healing her.
Life Link:
• I think it's outclassed by damage resistance.
• It's a good talent if the Io doesn't know how to use her moonlight.
• It's the talent which I see being used most often.
• More self-healing for io
• Ruined by cauterize
• Allows Io to heal out of line of sight
• Allows Io to heal from safety
• 300 healing per second
• Io's only form of area of effect healing
• Helps Io deal with flanks.
• In my opinion, Io's worst talent.
Sacrifice:
• Allows for deep Io flanks
• Make sure you have Luna initial deploy cooldown lowered so that she can be summoned quicker after sacrifice, and so that you have her alive more often.
• Sacrifice restores 50% hp to luna.
• Use this if you're a 2nd support on your team and focusing more on damage.
• sometimes the healing is reduced by caut or something. I think it's a bug.

Notes

Speed up allies, give them damage resistance, and get your moonlight back quickly. Please use the Goddess' Blessing talent with this build.

This build is the entire reason I created this guide. The idea behind the build:
5 points into Swift Arrows because more is better.
5 points into Protectors because you're not always able to shoot at enemies (you might have low health, or they may not be any enemies around for you to shoot.)
3 points into restored faith for self heals
1 point into Spirit Arrows... 2 would be nice, but 1 is what the loadout uses because the 5 5 and 3 cards are essential.
1 point into sanctum of Faith as kind of a throw away. Maybe 1 point of Moonlight garden is better? It's impact may not be so noticeable, but at least it is doing something.... actually lemme go calc it's impact. it gives the Io an additional 60 recharged every second when not using moonlight. idk. every other card at one point kind of sucks so it doesn't really matter. The calculation btw is 1%/16.6667%*1000. 1% is 1% moonlight restored. 16.6667% is moonlight drained in a second. 1000 is hp healed in a second of using moonlight.

With this build, and luna nearby, io regenrates at nearly double her default speed. Instead of 12.5% moonlight per second, io regens 23.5% moonlight-- almost 25%... 4.255 seconds to regen moonlight back to full. When I was starting off on Io, I thought that so much moonlight regen would be excessive, but after playing with it, I've found it is not excessive. "You can never have too much healing" is the recurring thought I seemed to have.
Other options:

• -1 Protectors, +2 crescent, remove sanctum of faith.
• -1 protectors, +1 spirit arrows

• Remove Sanctum of faith, add a low gravity card

Notes

Luna deploy range allows you to place Luna on the point from a safe distance. 3 points is enough.
I prefer Luna cooldown over Luna health. Luna has 4500 health already, so adding 200 health per each point of the card doesn't seem substantial enough for me. The other cards are just good ones.

Notes

Io is weak in 1v1s, so pick her if you want to go easy or if you're wanting to flex hard on your opponent.
Restored Faith works in 1v1 because Io can heal Luna to heal herself. The point can be adjusted a bit if the Io want more self heal or wants to reset the leap at a higher health amount

Notes

Io's items are situational to who she is up against.

Notes

blue ones help you survive, nimble helps you reposition/escape, red items help your team get kills.

Notes

master riding helps you get luna to midpoint at the start of a round, bulldoze vs deployable, illuminate vs skye.

Notes

Deft hands for damage (barely any), kill to heal for self heal (it's ok as a 4th item if no other item is helpful to the situation), chronos for luna spam, morale boost for ult spam.

Notes

life rip is often outclassed by kill to heal. it's considered bad because cauterize 3 turns 30% life steal into 3% life steal, and cauterize 3 is an item that everybody does/should get.
Veteran, although it can be great, is unnecessary and awful on Io since she's able to receive self-healing while healing allies or Luna with moonlight if she's using the loadout card to heal herself.

Notes

If you have a support on your team who is a dedicated healer, you should consider buying rejuvenate. Otherwise, don't even consider it. Damage grohk, khan, damage pip, or something like a stun damba are not worth picking up rejuvinate for in most situations.

Notes

good for leaving luna on point

Notes

damage io isn't viable, but it sure is fun! Build doesn't matter, but I just went for max hp and max self sustain. you could go for bulky luna or something and it'd be fine.

important matchups

Champion Section

Notes

Damage Grohk can fire his shock pulse at Io's Luna. It'll bounce around to nearby allies of Luna for a total of 1350 (9*150) damage spread out among the Io's team. Also because Luna is still the Grohk is able to hit all his shots and get his shock pulse back after precisely 1 second. The Io needs to be aware of the damage Grohk, and use Luna more defensively.

Notes

Io is able to push the ash out of her invulnerability zone. Resilience won't even save ash from Io's ultimate from pushing her away. If the ash is ulting on top of the Io, the Io has the potential to time her ultimate in order to be cc immune and damage immune as the ash lands, which allows the Io to not take damage as well as dodge the ash stun. However, if the Io is too early, she stuns the Ash, and the Ash's ultimate does not get consumed. Ash keeps her ult, Io loses hers. If the Io ults too late, she gets stunned, takes 600 damage, and is very likely to die.

Notes

theandykat in game
theandykat#1188 on discord. There's no comment feature on the guides, but I wanna hear from people. I can even play with people.

BUILDS Build Section
important matchups Champion Section

Io Build Guide

Free Agent - NA

Swift Arrows

Moonlight

Level 5

Protectors

Guardian Spirit

Level 5

Restored Faith

Moonlight

Level 3

Spirit Arrows

Moonlight

Level 1

Sanctum of Faith

Moonlight

Level 1

Goddess' Blessing

Moonlight

Level 1

Broken Deity

Guardian Spirit

Level 3

Lunar Connection

Guardian Spirit

Level 4

Spirit Arrows

Moonlight

Level 2

Restored Faith

Moonlight

Level 3

Protectors

Guardian Spirit

Level 3

Life Link

Guardian Spirit

Level 3

Celestial Body

Armor

Level 5

Full Moon

Lunar Leap

Level 5

Crescent

Lunar Leap

Level 2

Restored Faith

Moonlight

Level 2

Spirit Arrows

Moonlight

Level 1

Sacrifice

Guardian Spirit

Level 1

Haven

Armor

Level 3

Nimble

Armor

Level 3

Wrecker

Weapon

Level 3

Level 3

Guardian

Armor

Level 3

Resilience

Armor

Level 3

Master Riding

Armor

Level 1

Bulldozer

Weapon

Level 1

Illuminate