Heroes of the Storm players

Just FYI: I have 2 games left to get in to fulfill the last Nexus quest, so if anyone wants to run a couple Unranked or TL, please don't hesitate to flag me down if you see me online. If we have to do QM, I'll do them, but I kind of detest that format at the moment. At least in a draft, we can have some control over the team comp and know that players are at least slightly paying attention, which is far from the case in QM. Thanks.

I like the game, but the queue time is killing me (Asia server).

I've heard that complaint. I interviewed one of the main guys in Australia a while back and he said they actually hit the Asian servers to get competitive games, but the queue times are still atrocious.

Just thought I'd highlight a couple games from last night:

I'm still running on the Stimpack from 2.0 and have rolled a couple more in loot chests, so having Uther pretty close to 10 led me to believe that one more game would get'er done. However, Stonecutter was in a game and then immediately logged off and my other usual playing partner wasn't online, so I gritted my teeth and jumped into QM to be sure I could play who I wanted. I ended up in a team with some pretty low level players, including a Murky and Valla. We were on Tomb of the Spider Queen and the opposing team had Lunara, Uther, Nazeebo, and Nova, which meant massive gank possibilities, but less waveclear than you'd typically like. Valla died in seconds and I knew we were in for a rough ride. However, several times in the first couple minutes, I also noticed Murky hearthing. I finally got frustrated and said: "Murky, stop hearthing. You don't need to." He replied: "Sorry. It's my first time playing him and I'm used to hearthing when I get low." Valla immediately replied: "It's OK. It's my first day, too."

Here was a great opportunity to get annoyed; not just because we'd have to carry someone playing the game for the first time ever, but also because someone had gone into a game with other people with precisely zero experience on a hero. I don't know about anyone else, but I always play a few AI games with a new hero so that I don't burden my team with my ignorance of what I can do. But at that point, negative reactions do nothing but make it worse, so all I said was: "OK. No worries. Just don't worry AS MUCH about dying with Murky. You're only worth .25 of a hero and you're back in 8 seconds, no matter when you die." We kept playing. We were behind, but we just kept soldiering on. I tried to educate as much as I could in calm moments between fights, explaining about grouping in the late game, taking mercs, trying to prevent turn-ins at the nests, and so on. In short, I became the cheerleader for our group, praising people as much as possible and explaining what went wrong. I got picked a couple times by Lunara and Nova because I was stopping to explain, but escaped a couple other times because Uther's durability on the Q build is stupidly good. Plus, I finished Silver Light in the first few minutes of the game, which meant I could Q like a machine gun and never came close to running out of mana. Since they were focusing me so hard, I ended up taking Beacon at 16, too.

We caught up after some good teamwork to help the Webweavers clear some structures and then actually took the lead and got 20 before our opponents. We'd cleared their bottom and mid keeps and they'd cleared our mid. We'd lost one member in defending their last Webweavers, but he was on a short clock so we grouped up in mid to resist a push and started pushing back. Lunara tried Leaping Strike and was Well Met! and disintegrated. Nova had appeared to try to complete the pick and got wiped away. Nazeebo tried to step in and slow down our march and died. At that point, all I said was: "CORE." Soon the only person left on their side was Uther who couldn't stop us from closing it out.

Meanwhile, my friend, Mike, had signed on and we tried Team League but the wait was too long so we went to Unranked, which I don't play that often. My not playing it often meant that I'd forgotten that they removed any kind of level restriction on it. I kept insisting to Mike that I wanted to play draft, if only because we'd have some way to shore up a weak team comp and know what we were getting into before the loading screen said that we lost. We were on BoE and the level 18 player was somehow the banner. (WTF?) Before I could type: "Sylv...", he'd already banned Lucio. Sigh... They responded with Malf and then promptly took Sylvanus, played by their highest-level player, with the first pick. The rest of their draft followed with nothing but DPS and Arthas (who provides a ton of damage on his own), so I tried to counter with Brightwing, hoping that her constant healing would give us some sustain in the skirmishes in the middle and let us up catch up on the Immortal when they'd lost a couple people in the fight. Of course, after we lost the first Immortal, the "GG" chorus started up. The scathing retort was hovering in my fingers, but all I said was: "Just keep playing." Our Gul'dan player was really raw and kept trying to solo the enemy and dying repeatedly. The two other members of the team kept up a fairly steady barrage of abuse toward him, a as a result. I put in: "The more time you spend typing, the less time you're actually playing." but it didn't slow it down very much.

I'd taken Bribe at level one, since the Shaman camps are so important on this map, especially against players who may not know their timing. It turned out to be a good thing, because although the Sylvanus player had 500+ levels, he sure liked to get out of position and die. Our least experienced player (18!) on Stitches(!) Gorged her at least three times and would immediately drop back behind a tower and let her get ripped by the rest of us and the structures. That left us pushing their structures almost as hard with mercs as they did with Immortals. In the end, we lost the first three Immortals, but kept our keeps intact. We won a good fight in the center on he fourth and took our first, post-20, which meant it had serious power. With them down 2 people, we escorted it down bot lane, destroyed a keep and then proceeded to the core. We had about 20 seconds to finish and couldn't muster enough firepower to do it before they started respawning. We got the core to the fabled 1% before four of us died, leaving Mike on Kael'thas, hiding in the vent on the edge of their zone, waiting. As soon as they moved down bot lane, he stepped in, dropped a Flamestrike to take out some of the shields and then two rapid Living Bombs to get the rest of it There was, of course, not a single mention of "GG" in the process. Mike was like: "Oh, yeah. This is so much better than QM. ."

What's the moral of the story? Don't waste time typing unless you're saying something positive. Otherwise, just keep playing.

True. I've never, ever, seen that yelling at a player in chat helps improve their play.

Helpful suggestions are by far the way to go.

And I haven't seen queue issues lately - if anything, unranked draft (which is mainly what I do) has been much faster than a month or so ago.

Oh - I got the Legendary Brightwing Announcer Pack on my last (rare) loot chest. Go me!

engelstein wrote: And I haven't seen queue issues lately - if anything, unranked draft (which is mainly what I do) has been much faster than a month or so ago.

There are none for Unranked. TL was 400 seconds for a 2-man last night, though.

engelstein wrote: Oh - I got the Legendary Brightwing Announcer Pack on my last (rare) loot chest. Go me!

Woo hoo! Nice. The two chests from Uther got me Sonya and a ton of duplicate shards, but nothing else really amazing. The starter pack is in the game now, too. It's not a bad deal for $5 and the chests are titled toward providing common and rare heroes, so a way to fill in some roster holes, perhaps.

Hahahah! See why I like QM?

Sorry I had no idea you were on last night, I'd have stuck around for another game.

The only time I've ever yelled is at Naz players who don't know that W drops the zombie wall. I usually don't get mad but one guy caused me three deaths by blocking me with the fucking wall.

I totally sympathize. It's happened to me a lot, too. I've occasionally opened games with a Naz on my team by saying: "You know that hitting W again drops the wall, right?" Sometimes worse are the big box heroes who don't seem to understand that they're keeping you from escaping when you're low and they're trying to barge into the fight. I'm trying to dodge skillshots and I need to dodge my own teammates...

Mike and I are trying to finish TL placements to get the Raptor mount, so we've been playing that mode recently. We had a couple good games last night. We were on Sky Temple and he went with Chromie, since she's amazing on that map. It has so many chokeholds that are ideal for Time Trap to set up Sand Blast and Dragon's Eye or for those even without the traps, in addition to people clustering on the temples when they're active. During the draft, I suggested that we needed at least one global, since it's one of the largest maps in the game. Someone said: "Like Brightwing?" I said: "Yeah, BW would be fine." Everyone else pre-selected anything but a Support, so I was like: "Guess I'll BW...." Brightwing is a really entertaining character, since most of her lines contrast her sing-song, Care Bear-like voice entirely: "You sure are good at murder!" "Ooooo! Entrails!" "Let's make their insides, their outsides!" "This will only hurt until you're dead!" She's also a really powerful healer IF your team is conscious of the fact that you have almost no burst healing whatsoever. In other words, if they want to dive, they're often going to die. Thankfully, we had a decent poke comp.

I went with this build: www.heroesfire.com/hots/talent-calculator/brightwing#scE4 The new versions of Bribe are really good, as Murky demonstrated to everyone a few months back. I'd be able to build up stacks very quickly with all of the close-quarter fights around the temples and, even though Sky Temple doesn't have as many merc camps as others, the mercs can often be even more effective, since most people will end up fighting over the top temple while the siege giants are crushing the bottom lane and they'll have no way to get back there before serious damage is done. At one point, I'd Bribed both giant camps and their knights in the course of a few minutes. I went with Manic Pixie because our team wasn't as adept at positioning, but that's usually my least taken talent on that tier. They didn't have a ton of CC, so Cleanse wasn't going to be as useful, so I went with the sustain talent. Blink Heal just isn't what it used to be and Wind does give a bit more sustain, in addition to being able to make killer plays (like, say, in the boss pit.) I went with Shield Dust because they had a fair amount of ability damage and I went with Critterize because we were in control of the game by that point and I wanted ganks to make even more lopsided fights. Storm Shield is still my default.

They had a Leoric who loved getting out of position and trying to trap people in Entomb. He'd often do it without the assistance of their Zarya or their Varian (they had a huge front line, plus Li Ming and Malfurion.) We got close to double-digit kills on him, as I could keep people barely alive inside Entomb (or Wind the enemy away as they tried to get the kill) and then Poly Leoric who would disintegrate. He tried it again in the late game and their whole team dove in. I just popped Storm Shield and Chromie ruinated them with an Eye and a couple Blasts. That was a 4-man kill and we took both temples to burn down the core.

Our next game was on the even bigger map: Warhead Junction. We had an experienced Zeratul and Zul'jin, which meant we could win a lot of fights. Someone had already picked up Malfurion, so I decided to be the front line and grabbed Tyrael, while Mike took Abathur. They had Sonya, Li Ming, Zagara, and Uther (can't remember the last one) so they had a fair amount of damage themselves but not much front line. However, our team wasn't great at rotating (I got left alone on the bottom lane for the first 5 or 6 minutes of the game) and their team kinda was. We got ganked repeatedly and lost at least three or four nukes, but they almost never launched them. I guess they were saving up for a big explosion while they burned the forts by hand. Consequently, our damage started to wear them down and we ended up recapturing most of the nukes we'd lost. Eventually, we broke through the bottom keep and won a teamfight in the process and just cruised into the core. Our Zeratul won MVP and had top kills, but the Zul'jin ended up with top siege and hero damage, while Mike had top XP.

I went with kind of a mixed build: www.heroesfire.com/hots/talent-calculator/tyrael#hEOn On Tier 1, there's really only one choice. Regen Master isn't bad on Junction, since globes are plentiful, but I just don't like the talent, especially when I can often shield a lot of the damage and have Malf with quick heals hanging around. I don't take death talents (except Uther's Redemption because it's OP), as I usually don't plan on dying (which is why Tyrael's trait still sucks.) Like I said, I ended up alone on bot for a long time, so Tier 2 was kind of an adaptation to circumstances. Vigorous Strikes is actually decent on him, since his attack speed is pretty high for a tank. I normally like Recip or Grace on tier 3 but, again, circumstances. I was popping the shield a lot, so I figured I'd take Zealotry. Plus, it would help sustain during later nuke fights. Jeebus, I miss Imposing Will. Sanct is almost always the auto-pick, but I've seen some good pro use of Judgment in recent times and we did have a great ganking comp if someone can be frozen and isolated for a couple seconds, so I went with it. I think it only worked once, as my team didn't often respond to the enemy with the frozen face saying "Hit me!". The only pick to really go with Judgment is Burning Rage, for obvious reasons. Plus, they'd gotten the jump on us with a couple merc captures and Rage makes it so that Tyrael can reasonably beat back camps on his own without too much pain. There are no other talents at 16 other than Holy Ground. Pinning someone between Ground and your burning self while Zul'jin machine guns them down? Excuse me. I'm drooling. Angel of Justice just makes Judgment stupidly fun (30 second CD!) but in a game that we weren't already handily winning, I'd take Shield.

I was soloing against Zagara, which is pretty easy for Tyrael, since most of her damage comes from abilities. Plus Smite is an easy answer to her Creep. But Sonya started rotating down and that's a bit much for me to handle, but I was holding on with the Hat and occasionally asking my teammates for a rotation (not easy on a map as big as Junction.) My lane pressure and two nukes on the bottom fort eventually led that to be the lane we rolled down to get the keep and pushed right through to get the core. Man, I love Tyrael. He doesn't seem like a solid tank for a lot of people, but he's just so useful if you know how to play him.

My lone Quick Match game last night was an interesting one. I wanted to finish a Diablo quest and, despite Xul being one of my favorites, I haven't played him that much, recently. So I loaded up the scarecrow and hopped in. I ended up as the most experienced player in my group that was pretty raw. We were on Shrines and had Raynor, Hammer, Sylvanas, and Nova. The opposition had KT, Illidan, Probius, Samuro, and Zagara. So no front line or healer in sight for either side, but they had TONS more DPS than we did, which meant shrine fights were going to be bad no matter what else happened. I asked Raynor to back up Hammer on top and then asked Nova to roam between mid and bot to find targets. Nova moved to the midpoint between mid and bot and Hammer enthusiastically agreed, but Raynor ignored me and went straight to bot and stayed there for the first few minutes. I figured he had the chat turned off.

So I decided to rotate with Sylvanus and keep both lanes pushed in as much as possible while Hammer soloed top. The first shrine came up and we, as expected, had no chance. I tried to slow down Samuro and Illidan as much as possible with Cursed Strikes and timed my Shade as late as possible to frustrate their kills (does anyone take any other Bone Armor except Shade these days?), but we had a dive Sylvanus who was constantly at 10% health and I barely noticed Nova (I remember a single Triple Tap that killed KT when he was at about a quarter health. I don't remember anything else for the whole game.) However, I did get them to engage the Punisher behind the wall and we stayed in the XP race with three specialists, although we were behind on structures for most of the game.

I took this build: www.heroesfire.com/hots/talent-calculator/xul#oUGR

Shade is Shade. I have taken Backlash but being a melee specialist means that Backlash is usually the prelude to death, while Shade actually does what Bone Armor is supposed to do (i.e. keep you alive), especially in a game with Illidan and Samuro. They're why I took Jailors, too, since increasing the amount of damage they take when they get caught is a sure way to turn a 5v5 into a 5v4... or, in our case, a 4v5 back into an even fight. I SO wanted to take Weaken. Either of those guys at 1/4 attack speed is a target dummy. But I was effectively the front liner in our group, so I went with Rathma's. It made me less useful in shrine fights, but it always makes me a monster in lane and is a quick heal if I step away from the shrine for a couple seconds.

I like Mages more than Nova (that's true for Heroes, in general, as well...) but, again, we needed damage at the shrine fights. I passed on Corpse Explosion at 13 because we already had enough damage in the lanes and Decrepify might let us make a couple escapes (it did.) I passed on Mastery for the same reason: our damage in lane was good enough and we needed to take out someone to make fights more even. Also, Amp Damage pairs decently with Jailors. I really don't like Xul's 20s, in general. Call was the best choice for this situation, I think, not least because Poison Nova was being used as a zoning tool in a lot of cases. I was also casting Scythe constantly to try to clear Zagara's nodes, which were everywhere.

The game went into the 20s. I think we finished at 21 to their 23. We lost the first four or five Punishers, a couple of them by two or three guardians. I later discovered that Raynor did have chat turned on, since I asked him directly to take a shaman camp with me and he did. Nova, Sylv, and Raynor all died 10 or more times. We finished with 24 kills to their 47. But we held the line at our keeps for a long time, finally losing bot late in the game, and Hammer took Orbital BFG, which eventually ground away their mid keep and did massive damage to them when they kept coming back to the mid lane to deal with the catapults. The whole time I just kept pointing out where to go and people followed along. We finally won a shrine fight, getting a 3 for 1 (I was the 1, having moved into position to maximize the poison) and they immediately moved to take a merc camp... I was like: "NO! Ride that Punisher right through bot keep and take the CORE. You have 30 seconds." I revived, got across the board, and helped them finish and we won a game we probably shouldn't have. I don't think their Zagara really maximized her sieging ability (Samuro spent more time pushing lanes than she did) and our team was really good about neutering the Punishers. I think I got over 300K XP for the game.

This is some of the best stuff on the site, Jackwraith. Thanks so much. I don't really "get" MOBAs, but I love reading these session reports.

Thanks! Much appreciated. I just do them because I sometimes like to map out my decision making on games after the fact and see where I was right or wrong. One of the choices that probably could have been better in that game was my 20 pick. I probably should have taken Bone Spear, since it's useful on objectives where everyone clusters up, like on Shrines, and it's only a 10 second CD. I just don't often make it to 20 on my Xul games and Spear has always struck me as a bit of an afterthought. Some heroes have devastatingly powerful 20s (Uther's Redemption, for example) and others, like Xul, just don't. Interestingly, he's like that for most of his talent tree. Most heroes spike hard at 16; a few do so at 13. But Xul doesn't really have a power spike. He just kinda keeps trundling along.

Let me know if any of the lingo is confusing. Each of the maps has a different objective and different geography, unlike League of Legends and DotA2, so there's a different set of references for each one. Infernal Shrines, for example, is a three lane map (top, mid, bot) with three shrines that activate randomly. When the shrine is up, skeletal guardians appear around it. The first team to kill 40 guardians gets a Punisher (gigantic muscular guy from Diablo that has one of three (arcane, ice, fire) environmental effects and who targets heroes) to walk down the nearest lane with them until it's dead. The reason I asked Raynor to backup Hammer on top is because that's where the solo laner usually goes, if you have one, because the distance between top and mid is slightly greater than that between mid and bot. So a specialist like Xul (or Sylvanus or Zagara) can do the rotation between mid and bot and keep both lanes pretty much clear of minions, while someone handles top alone because it takes longer to get to mid. Hammer can do stupid damage if she's allowed to sit in siege mode, so I was hoping Raynor could keep the divers (Illidan and Samuro) off of her while she disintegrated most things in range and we handled the other two lanes, with Nova hopefully coming in to back us up if multiple enemies arrived.

Jackwraith wrote: Hammer took Orbital BFG, which eventually ground away their mid keep and did massive damage to them when they kept coming back to the mid lane to deal with the catapults.

Nothing against JW, but this is the number one way to spot a noob Hammer.

Orbital BFG is SUCH a bad talent, but it does the cute around the map thing so people thing it's worthwhile.

1) BFG at 10 alone is bad. Napalm is so, so, so, so much better as an ult. It's an amazing team fight weapon. BFG does 500 damage in a line, it's slow, and the line isn't THAT wide. Napalm does 164 + 50 per second for 4 seconds and you can fire it every 6 seconds.

2) Taking BFG at 10 more or less locks you into Orbital at 20, which locks you out of Nexus Frenzy, which gives your basic attack +20% range and +20% speed. It's almost impossible to overstate how good this is. The range bonus will keep you safe in every team fight, and the attack speed bump is obvious.

Even if you don't end up taking Nexus Frenzy, the upgrade to napalm at 20 bumps the damage by 50% and the range by 75%

3) Yes, orbital BFG will wipe out keeps, but if you're having a good game you should have keeps down with hammer before you hit 20, and if you don't, you're probably behind, and you're likely behind because you don't have napalm in team fights.

4) Orbital BFG does zero net damage to the core until level 24. Before then, the core's natural shield regeneration is greater than the damage the gun does on its own.

Orbital BFG is the ultimate "win more" talent that will actively hurt you from levels 10-19 when you're saddled with regular BFG.

Oh, I know. I thought I had put in that my head kind of sagged when I first saw the big bullet come out, but I forgot to include it. As I said, all of them were somewhat noobs but some of the choices turned out to be OK. Triple Tap is a questionable pick on Shrines because the prospect of killing someone with Orbital is so much greater when everyone clusters in the pits, but TT isn't horrible if you're able to erase relatively low health guys (KT, Probius, Samuro, Illidan) who will often be low health by virtue of their playstyle. There's no question that Napalm is the superior heroic, if only for its ridiculously low CD and its ability to zone on maps like Shrines (and all the rest.) But BFG ended up doing an insane amount of damage- as in, top siege AND hero damage for a noob Hammer amount of damage -that it turned out OK.

At some point, I didn't really care about the game result. I just wanted these guys to "get gud" at what they were doing. Once again, I was doing as much cheerleading as playing, trying to coach people into understanding how to rotate and a lot of other basic things.

Went 3-1 in Quick Match last night. We decided to just jump in some games because I wanted to break out Chen again (who is kinda awful in this meta) and Mike wanted to do some Alarak (who is great (if you're good with him!), but can be isolated in the draft.) We won on Haunted Mines. The opposing team had both Illidan and Varian, so I went with one of the usual Chen builds: www.heroesfire.com/hots/talent-calculator/chen#seP8

Elusive Brawler is almost always the default pick, as you'd hope to be drinking before getting nailed by anything too huge in terms of abilities and Brawler will keep your health up for all of those pesky AAs. With Illidan and Varian, that rises above "pesky" to, "critical"; as in your medical state if you don't find a way out. I love the Keg Toss quest, but Ring of Fire was better for pushing lanes, killing skull dudes in the mines, and DPS in the close quarter mine fights. Likewise, I love Balance, but I've found that it's just not as useful as Bolder Flavor, especially against burst damage, which is what they had. Plus, it's one less thing to manage. Most people love SEF. I'm a Barrel Boy, especially in the mines where you can corner gank targets or peel an entire enemy team. 13 is kind of "whatever you like" tier, so I usually stick (ahem) with Honey. Again, close quarter fights means lots of people soaked in Brew which means I'd like to breathe more often. Even favoring the Keg, I still like Recipe in the late game, when healing can go to others. And, honestly, Chen's top tier is overall pretty meh.

I hadn't played Chen in a while, so my performance was pretty subpar, but we won most of the mercenary fights and kept up a steady stream of pressure sufficient to take their bot keep pretty early However, we couldn't close the damn deal and we let them catch up from 18 to 20. Then we pushed the core down to 3%, where it sat for another whole level and a mine sequence, while Mike and I tried to convince our team that we just had to wait for a good moment, rather than worry about golem strength. Our Murky finally took out the regrwon shields and Mike ran in to get the rest of it while I barreled the enemy away. Argh.

Mike switched to Zagara and we ended up on BoE against a team with KT, Li Ming, Artanis, and Genji, with Uther backing them up. We also had Uther, plus Cassia and Anub'arak. So as soon as we appeared at the Nexus, I just said: "If we try to race them, we die. But if they engage us, we can eat them alive." They, of course, constantly tried to engage us, so Anub and I went to work while Zagara crushed both lanes and kept the map covered in Creep, so we knew where they were at any time that they weren't trying to engage us. Which was pretty much all the time. We won the first Immortal and really never looked back. I took Grounding Brew for the first time I can remember at 1 and then Enough to Share at 16. We won before we got to 20, as their Li Ming really liked diving in and getting eaten by beetles of both kinds and then Anub and I would just pick out KT at that back and they had no one to effectively peel, despite their Artanis being able to land the big swaps a time or two (I love that ability. It is, by far, the best response the dev team has ever made to a player suggestion. Artanis is so fun now.)

We switched to Dehaka (I hadn't played him since the recent patch where he's going to be first ban/first pick in the Mid-season Brawl, as Enhanced Agility went from complete trash to "WTF were they thinking?") and Azmodan. We lost on Sky Temple, where I couldn't land Drag at all, and when won on Infernal Shrines where Mike got a couple hilarious 1v1 kills against KT. Maybe I'll drop some more detail on those later.