Heart of the Swarm Campaign- Kerrigan Abilities: Mend (Level 20)

Mend is the simplest of Kerrigan’s level 20 abilities, and the one that is going to be useful to the widest array of strategies.  Emanating out from Kerrigan to the same extent as Wild Mutation- roughly a range of 4-5- Mend heals Kerrigan of 150 health and any allied units in its area of another 50 health- and then over the next 15 seconds all the affected units heal further- Kerrigan another 75 health and the healed allies by an additional 25 health.  With an energy cost of 50 and a cooldown time of only 8 seconds, this makes it possible to essentially stack Mend on top of itself until Kerrigan runs out of energy.

Perhaps the best use of this ability is with melee-range Kerrigan- zerg melee units tend to be either light and squishy, and thus in constant need of healing, or big and tanky and thus bolstered to outrageous levels by heal-over-time effects.  This collusion of units that all benefit extensively from regular/constant healing perfectly fits the profile of the Mend ability and is an excellent use of Kerrigan’s energy to keep her and your field forces active on a more constant basis.  This also is an excellent ability for a ranged Kerrigan who works with a team of roaches and hydralisks, as you have again a combination of hardened (roaches) and frail (hydralisks) units, particularly given that your hydralisks will draw lots of hatred from enemy fliers unless you have an aerial screen of scourges (unavailable in the campaign), mutalisks, and anti-air locusts (not the most efficient mobile assault force).  Combining it with the roach evolution that produces roachlings from enemy units goes a long way to keeping your ranged attackers alive without having to spend resources on melee-range units.

Micromanagers will actually find Mend less useful than Wild Mutation, as it’s a completely reactive ability, not actually enhancing your ability to kill off enemy units in any way.  The fact that it’s centered on Kerrigan specifically is also a bit of a hindrance for micromanagers, who will often have Kerrigan set up to act at a range and thus away from their front-line units, who are the ones that will usually need healing most.  For everyone else, though, this is probably Kerrigan’s best fourth-tier ability choice.  It can even be used just to keep Kerrigan active as a solo harasser force- while it’s more effective when she has other units to heal, the raw amount of healing to Kerrigan herself is nothing to sneeze at.  Combining it with cliff-hopping units such as raptors and Kerrigan’s Leaping Strike can still give you a fairly nice easily-replenished harassment force that bypasses most terrain issues, not something generally expected or anticipated from the Zerg.