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[Heroes of the Storm] Closed Beta is NOW! Beta Buy-in! $39.99. See OP for details!
Lucascraft
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Beta Buy-in! Get the founder's pack and buy your way into the beta for only $39.99. Details in the link below!
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/17635805/get-started-in-heroes-of-the-storm-now-with-the-founder’s-pack-1-20-2015
Official Definition:
Heroes of the Storm™ is a raucous online team brawler starring your favorite Blizzard characters. Build and customize heroes from across every Blizzard universe to suit your play style. Team up with your friends and engage in fast-paced mayhem across varied battlegrounds that impact strategy and change the way you play the game.
Alternate Definition:
Heroes is a MOBA-lite Team Brawler game in which you play as many characters from different Blizzard universes in 5v5 objective based team combat. The emphasis is on "objective based." There are currently 5 maps with more to come. Each features a unique map objective that is typically the key to victory. The team that manages to win the objectives is usually the team that wins. Heroes shares many gameplay elements in the MOBA genre with popular games like DotA2 and League of Legends, but it also drops a lot of the common trappings of the genre and has simplified down to a core game of action and fun.
Heroes, in a nutshell, is a game in which two teams are trying to destroy the Core of the opposing team. The Core is similar to the Ancient in DotA or the Nexus in League. Each team has a base with Forts, Towers, Gates, Healing Wells, and Walls to help them defend their core.
At regular intervals waves of NPC Minions spawn in each base and march down pre-defined lanes to attack the enemy. It is the job of the players to help attack down these lanes and destroy the enemy team's base and ultimately their Core. To help with this, each of the maps has a special map objective that gives a big bonus of some sort to the team that completes the objective. Generally each objective will be completed 3-5 times per match before the core is destroyed.
Just like the waves of NPC Minions who spawn and march towards each other in battle, so too do the player characters respawn when they die and continue to fight. The amount of time it takes to respawn is directly related to how long the game has been running. In a new game that is only minutes old, a player will respawn almost immediately. In games over 15 minutes in length the spawn timers will reach a full 60 seconds.
Core: The first team to destroy their opponent's Core wins the map. The Core has a recharging shield which is worth about 15% of the total health of the Core. This shield regenerates very quickly when the Core is out of combat for 8 seconds. The Core's health itself also regenerates, but at a very slow rate. The Core also shoots a lightning blast at targets within its attack range. It follows the same targeting rules as Forts and Towers (see below).
Tower: The first line of defense in each base. Towers have limited ammo which regenerates over time. Towers prioritize minions and summoned units and will ignore player characters as long as there is a minion or summoned unit within range. Unlike other MOBAs, the Towers in Heroes will not target a player character if that character attacks an enemy hero while within range.
Forts: Each lane has two Forts, which are located behind Walls and Towers. These Forts have a lot of HP and attack with ammo just like Towers do. However, destroying a Fort yields a bit XP payout and when the inner Fort is destroyed in a lane, special Catapult units will spawn for the team that destroyed the Fort.
Healing Wells: If you have played Warcraft 3 then you are probably familiar with the Healing Wells, as they operate almost identically to the Moon Wells of the Night Elves. They are on a timer, and restore Health and Mana when you click them. The Health and Mana provided by these Wells is not instant. The restoration happens over time.
Spawn Point: Each team spawns behind their Core in the safety of their base. There is a magical shield barrier that prevents the enemy team from entering the spawn location, and this shield stops all spells and attacks. Spawn Points also have instant-mounting while you are inside, and you regenerate Health and Mana at a very fast rate while standing in the spawn.
Minions spawn down the lane like merry lemmings just waiting to die to a tower or hero. They are...
1. Soldiers: Dudes with swords, they lead the minion waves. Tend to have higher-than-average HP and a weak melee attack.
2. Archers: Dudes with, get this, bows. They're in the back of the wave, boasting lower HP but a decent ranged attack.
3. Mages: Wizards that coast in the middle of the pack. They deal ranged damage, but the more important thing is that they drop a green orb on death that will give you and nearby teammates a little bit of HP and mana back. There's only one per minion wave, so try to get that orb!
4. Catapults: Beefy siege units that assault bases with a long-range attack. They only spawn when the enemy's final fort in that lane has fallen, giving you incentive to keep that damn fort alive. They can easily outrange towers/forts/cores, meaning they will slowly whittle down a base unless stopped.
Each map also contains a scattering of Mercenary Camps in the "jungle" area between the lanes. These Merc Camps are neutral NPCs that can be defeated by players and hired to fight for the team that captures them. To capture a Mercenary Camp, the players must defeat them in combat (or bribe them) and then stand within a capture circle for a few seconds to gain control of the camp. It is possible for the enemy team to steal the camps if they push you out of the circle or kill you before you can claim it.
1. Siege Camps: These camps contain two giant siege monsters which hurl large rocks at their enemies. They have long range and can out-range towers and forts, which make them very advantageous for lane pushing. These are the easiest camps to defeat and can be solo'd by most heroes by level 10.
2. Bruiser Camps: Formerly known as the "Knight Camps," these are squads of 5 soldiers (4 melee and 1 spellcaster) who have a moderate amount of HP and damage. These camps are more difficult to take and typically require 1-2 people to capture.
3. Boss Camps: These camps generally require 3+ heroes to kill, depending on team levels and what heroes are present. These are high HP / high Damage monsters that can do devastating amounts of damage in a lane. They ignore minions and other mercenaries and will only target enemy structures. They cast a Pound skill that can be avoided by moving out of the telegraphed green smash circle. They also cast a targeted root spell on occasion against enemy heroes. This can also be moved out of, but the window of opportunity is much smaller in dodging the root, and if you aren't on your toes it will catch you.
4. Map-Specific Creeps: From pirates on Blackheart Bay to the plant monsters in the Garden of Terror, these mercs will NOT join your side, but instead drop objective-relevant items that help you win the game like skulls, coins, and so on. Difficulty and rewards vary by map.
So what else? There is no item shop. No in-game gold. No items to be bought. No shoes or rods of whatever. "Blasphemy!" you might say, but Heroes is feeling pretty heretical. Instead of items, you get talents roughly every 3-4 levels. These are anywhere from 2-5 choices that change how your character functions. It might be "killing minions gives you more damage" or "your auto-attacks now slow enemies." At level 10 you unlock your Heroic Ability (aka your ult), and even that has choices! Every character has two heroic abilities, so pick the one most suited for the current game.
If you have played other MOBAs and are accustomed to buying boots, this game doesn't have them. Instead it has Mounts (default Z key). Attacking or taking damage dismounts you, and re-mounting does have a brief cooldown. Not all characters can mount up, but instead have mobility skills that in most cases let them get to an area REALLY FAST but has a much longer cooldown.
There are 4 Hero archetypes
Warriors are typically high hitpoint, low(er) damage heroes. Their job is to initiate fights, disrupt the enemy team, and create opportunities for other characters to get kills. Almost every Warrior comes equipped with a Stun or Knockback, or some other type of control spell.
Examples: Muradin, Tyrael, Anub'arak
Assassins are characters whose main purpose is to do damage. This archetype includes both melee and ranged characters. Generally speaking, these characters have high damage/low hitpoints.
Examples: Kerrigan, Tychus, Jaina
Supports are characters who specialize in helping their team. Many are healers, although not all support characters are healers. These classes provide many benefits to their teams, such as things like shields, speed buffs, invisibility, map-vision, haste, and attack power. These characters typically also carry a lot of utility and have skills which include things like stuns, roots, and other types of control.
Examples: Rehgar, Li Li, Brightwing
Specialists are a mixed bag. Generally, these characters specialize in siege damage and lane pushing, although that is not a hard and fast rule. Each Specialist is very unique and the learning curve and skill required to play these characters is generally much higher than that of the other archetypes.
Examples: Murky, Zagara, Azmodan
Unlike similar games, Heroes has a variety of maps with different layouts and objectives. Certain things remain the same (each lane has two towns then your core), but don't get complacent.
Two Lanes
Haunted Mines features two layers: the top layer is your typically lanes and bases, and the bottom layer contains the mines. Every so often the mines populate with a boss golem and lesser minions. Killing these award skulls, and once they're all dead both teams summon a golem. The more skulls you get, the bigger your golem will be. The general strategy here puts less emphasis on the golem in the early game, as you instead grab merc camps. Because the golems spawn where they last died, getting skulls becomes more and more of a priority as the game drags on.
Three Lanes
Blackheart Bay is a map that features pirates because it's 2014 and pirates are still a thing. The important thing is the pirate in the center of the map: killing mercs or randomly spawning chests will net you coins that you can pay Mr. Pirate to fire off cannons at the enemy town. The cost rises with each firing, making it a bit easier for the losing team to make a comeback. Carrying coins is risky because a player drops all of their coins when dead, so turn that shit in. Also, the pirates will start firing on your core if there are no other buildings left, so don't ignore the coins. This map is a bit weird since the objective is basically "on", so you have to constantly be watching the enemy. You can keep tabs on how many coins the enemy is carrying by hitting tab. You are typically safe if they need like 5+ coins for a turn-in and there aren't a lot of mercs/chests for them to bum off of.
Three Lanes
Dragonshire has two shrines: a northern and southern one. The game will eventually yell at you to go grab them, at which point they will become active. By standing on one, a bar will fill to your team until you control it. Unsurprisingly, enemy players would rather you not do this, and can cancel you out by standing on the shrine alongside you. The bar, however, will keep filling so long as one side has more team members present, so the best option is to typically bringing two players to each shrine. Once you take over each shrine, a player clicks the dragon statue in the center, and so long as they aren't interrupted they will transform into a Ren-Faire Godzilla that can put the hurt on towns. The dragon has two skills: breath fire that does AoE damage on the ground for a duration, and boot an enemy far away. Use the former to wreck minions and burn down buildings while the latter will get players off your back. Attack towns. Attacks towns. ATTACK TOWNS. Only go for players if your intervention WILL save or kill someone. The dragon dies fairly quickly and at best will automatically die after a minute, so you need to get that damage in.
You also don't have to kill yourself to get the dragon. If your push is strong and you can hold at least one shrine, then let the enemy keep throwing themselves against you. At some point enough enemy heroes will be dead and you can grab Mr. Dragon unopposed. I've seen too many games where people feel like they have to get the dragon RIGHT FUCKING NOW and their impulsiveness puts the group in really bad teamfights.
Three Lanes
Cursed Hollow features perhaps one of the most important objectives on the map. The upside is that it's one of the most lenient objectives in terms of not condemning you all for one botched teamfight. Basically you have a little bird skull placed in a random spot in the jungle. If you channel without being hit for a few seconds, then you get the skull. Get three and the enemy team will be cursed: their lane minions are reduced to 1 HP and their towers will not fire. As you can see, this is really devastating because even lanes without heroes will naturally push and chip away at your towns. It's very important that your team shows up to contest these skulls, and you should basically be frantically pinging the spot where the skull is incoming. HOWEVER, if you have a really strong push going and the enemy team has 0-1 skulls (and you also have 0-1), then don't be afraid to commit to the push. If they send away someone to grab the skull, then they're going to be outnumbered when defending your push which can allow you to wipe them and win off that.
Three Lanes
Garden of Terror is kinda like Haunted Mines and Dragonshire had a baby. Every so often, night will fall on the garden, reducing everyone's vision radius and spawning a bunch of plant monsters. Damaging (not just killing) these will cause seeds to drop, and once your team has 100 seeds a player can go to base and transform into a giant plant monster. You can't dilly dally, because the monster has about a minute before it wilts and can no longer be used by a player. So if nobody is grabbing that thing, then get inside it ASAP. Besides being really good at trashing buildings, they can shut down towers by spawning a destructible flower pot next to them and turn unwitting enemy players into weaker plant zombies.
Three Lanes
Sky Temple has three temples, and every so often two will become active and the first team to go up to their activation point will turn them on for their side. These basically fire mercilessly at enemy towns, dealing tons of damage until they burn out and go dormant for a bit. The twist is that while you hold the temple, you will have to fend off waves of special creeps until the temple runs out of juice. This can lead you to be vulnerable to the enemy team, so watch out. Honestly the strategy is GET TEMPLES because they are overtuned right now and this map easily has the shortest games.
As you play games in Heroes, you will level up two different things: your Player Level and a Hero Level. Experience you earn from playing game is applied to both accounts. Blizzard recently added "Stimpacks" to the game store. These Stimpacks are a limited time boost which grant extra Gold and XP while they are active. During holidays and special events Blizzard sometimes gives a bonus XP boost, which does stack with the Stimpacks. Also, there's a cap on experience gained from bot matches: roughly 2.25 Million experience a day.
Player Level is just an account rank. You get various features and goodies unlocked as you play. These are as follows:
- Levels 2 and 4: 1,000 Gold each
- Level 6: Daily Quests
- Levels 8: 2,000 Gold
- Level 10: 2,000 Gold
- Level 12 and 15: Each unlocks an additional slot in the free hero rotation
- Level 30: Unlocks Ranked Mode, but only if you own ten heroes. Free rotation heroes don't count, because fuck you.
- Level 40: This will purportedly unlock Team League Mode, but the mode isn't in yet.
Daily Quests are small tasks the game gives you each day, and upon completion you get 200-800 gold (depending on the quest) for your effort (as an aside, you also get 30 gold for each win, and 20 for each loss). There are currently 4 categories of Daily Quests (Play 2 games with a specific franchise hero, Play 3 games as a specific role, Win 3 games, and Play 8 games in any mode).
Hero Level is a series of unlocks for specific heroes. Each hero has their own level, and playing games with them will increase their level (alongside your player level). Here are hero unlocks:
- Level 2: Unlocks your second Heroic Ability
- Level 3: Unlocks Advanced Talents
- Level 4: Unlocks Expert Talents
- Level 5: 500 Gold
- Level 6: Hero Portrait; Mount Tint #1
- Level 7: Hero Tint #1
- Level 8: Hero Tint #2
- Level 9: Hero Master Portrait; Mount Tint #2
- Level 10: Allows purchase of Master Skin (10,000 gold)
HOW DO I GET IN BETA?
You can buy the Founder's Pack for forty bucks if you have more money than patience, but beta invites are still being sent out. The pack is not necessarily a ripoff, but it's weighed down with expensive skins and other cosmetics that make it a questionable purchase to say the least. You get a whopping three (four with the gold) heroes for $40 which is...pretty expensive.
What are some good newbie heroes?
Raynor, Uther, ETC, and Nazeebo are cool dudes. Don't pick Abathur; you will most likely not know what the fuck is going on. In fact, Specialist is a role you probably want to steer clear off for the first few games (except aforementioned Nazeebo). The game also has its own difficulty ratings assigned to each hero (easy, hard, etc) and while I can't say for sure it's probably a decent way to tell which heroes are friendlier to new players than others.
What is the fastest way to get gold?
There is none. However, the least slow way is to do your daily quest (the game saves up to three quests so you can miss a day or two) and then play with friends on heroes you have not gotten to level five with yet. Start with heroes you don't own yet, and then switch to owned heroes if you manage to get all seven free rotation heroes to level 5 within a week. That right there is about 4300 gold a week for the next month or so, not counting gold from account levels and games played. Once you hit 40 and have all heroes to level five you are basically shit outta luck and have to rely on about 250 gold a day. HAVE FUN!
When is the next patch?
There is no rhyme or reason for patches besides to never expect one soon. Just to give you an idea, they announced four heroes in early November, and only two of them have been released so far. Think "glacial."
Cinematic Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ecv0bT9DEoNewest Hero: The Lost Vikings, Triple Trouble
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLUKSUNLENITechnical Alpha Walkthrough (outdated, but might still be a decent primer for new players)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB_6GRNS7dg Sterica on
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Join in-game chat channel "heroes of the wang". (Minus the quotes).
I added myself to the battletag list earlier this week!
I don't think it's looking good for hitting 40 prior to beta. Rank 28 so it seems super close, unless I can power through a bunch of games one night.
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Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
July 2014 - August 2014
"We are richer for having lost them."
That team xp buff seems pretty crucial and I haven't gotten to group up properly in a few days. I hope to get more of you guys on my friends list as well!
Hopefully beta will bring us some new bundles too.
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/forum/topic/15699092783
My guess is that it's related to aligning to the latest "if it exists, tax it - our citizens are endless money" move by the EU to apply the VAT to all broadcasting and electronic services, without cutting into Blizzard's profit margin. So chances are it's going to be around a 20% hike.
Also obligatory fuck nova post
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
I'd personally like to see the $10 skins drop a peg down to like $7.50 to more closely match the actual price of a 975RP skin in League.
Currently painting: Slowly [flickr]
Currently painting: Slowly [flickr]
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
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I thought Blizzard nailed Hearthstone pricing, but so far with HotS they are way way off.
They decloak while mounting. I have to make the choice to decloak myself to gain mobility as Zeratul all the time. It forces you to do things like jump in to bushes to mount up. It's probably not as far as you'd like it to be, but as a Zeratul main, I can tell you it's absolutely part of the game play and something you need to play around.
Sorry Steam sale games have me hard. I have dailies I'm forfeiting. And all for the price of a couple of heroes.
Something about every hero is created by a team of 10 experts who work on them for several months each needing to be paid I think.
Like Valve doesn't put as much work in to their hero models? In fact, I would dare say more, since Valve has to rig the models for outside modelers to attach things to, so they have to do an entire extra stage of production to split a model up in to component parts and mark all the bones and joints correctly for third party usage.
If Blizzard's art pipeline is that inefficient, that's the real problem.
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These sort of sales strategies bother me because I tend to be a whale if I like a game a whole lot. I've never had an issue being a whale in Dota, or League, or Hearthstone, because I felt like I was getting great value over time for my dollar....but the HotS prices really make me look at them sideways. It may very well be I'll buy one or two main heroes, and that's it (like I have Zeratul now).
they have gone on record as saying that is exactly why the real money prices are the way they are. i mean they could be lying about it, but i think that is unlikely.
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Grouping up to kick some ass, however, holds appeal. If there's a spot in a group, I'm down for some PA teamwork!
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Well the reason prices are what they are is that they did the math on the predicted number of sales as a function of cost, and decided that this price would earn the most revenue. Obviously the reason they want revenue is to support continued development.
That is the official PA channel, we have people there pretty much all the time. Can you add that to the OP, @Lucascraft
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Are they basing that on only the limited amount of people currently in the alpha buying stuff or something? It's just a plain silly argument.
the quote (as i recall) was from an interview where someone asked them about gold pricing and pricing in general. the answer being is that they felt due to all the associated costs and then the end quality that everything should command the prices that they do. i could be incorrectly remembering what they said as i don't have it in front of me.
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Well, a lot of popular MOBAs do offer a deal like that (DOTA2 $0 for all heroes. Smite $30 for all heroes. LOL $40 for 40 heroes at launch, though they havent kept up with newer packages, but on the flipside, it's like $15 or 20 for those 40 heroes now) . As I see it, I think $60 for every character on closed beta launch day is a reasonable price. It's still a premium, but you're getting a decent amount of content for the price of a whole video game. More than that is just gouging.
It's also worth noting that DOTA2 has almost hit 1 million concurrent players at one time, and just rains cash on Valve at all times. Doing the right thing by your customers is, in this case, absurdly profitable. HOTS will never fail because it's a Blizzard game, but they should take note that several other MOBAs have had to be strangled in their cribs. Frankly, if I were them, I'd start too good to pass up, and then rely on pushing revenue up later. LOL is a good example, really. The first 40 champs were $1 apiece, and now even with sales/bundles, costs of newer heroes are several times higher (but still <$10). And look at where Riot is now.
Yeah. I've dropped $300ish? on League, but that's because they aren't actively trying to gouge me. If you give me a fun, cool looking hero for cheap or free, and then come back asking for a premium price for a skin with all knew modeling, voice acting, particle effects, etc. well, I'm willing to pay it. But, as an example, Abathur's $10 skins don't even bother to change the icon he puts over people's heads. That's just outright sloppy. I'd be mad if I dropped in-game gold on a skin like that without knowing ahead of time, let alone actual money. You don't look at your character while playing him guys. Get with the program.
they have already indicated that they are going to refine some of the existing skins (specifically abathur's so that the locusts/mines/hats have something to show you even have a custom skin on). probably not unreasonable to think the other skins will get similar treatment. whether they would end up on the level of infested tychus' "legendary" skin is unclear, but they did say they want more things along those lines.
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My favorite tough on that Rhegar skin is that his ghost wolf has antlers.
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Added it directly below the battle tag list.
It's great that they gave Christmas Jaina a snowman elemental. But they forgot to give master skin Jaina an improved look for hers.
I suggest using one of the elementals from Nagrand near the Throne of the Elements.
This is what Master Jaina should be using --