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[Heroes of the Storm] Lt. Morales (Medic) Coming Soon! Plus Vulture Mount!
Lucascraft
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Latest Major Patch Notes
Newest Hero: Rexxar, Champion of the Horde
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SDdVEFgczM
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 7 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.
Resources:
Official Site - Here you will find lots of basic material regarding the battlegrounds, heroes, news, and official events such as eSports events.
Heroes Nexus - A site dedicated to news, patch notes, and has a talent calculator and tons of images of hero skins and skin tints
Heroes Fire - A site with tons of good hero stats and a very good talent calculator. This is what most of us use when linking talent builds on the forum.
HotsLogs - A replay and ranking site. Uses player-uploaded replays to calculate MMR ratings. Note: Not entirely accurate, but still a decent source of info.
What is Eternal Conflict?
Eternal Conflict is an ongoing "expansion event" that will run for an undetermined amount of time. It is a celebration of the Diablo universe in Heroes of the Storm, and over the course of the event Blizzard will be releasing new Diablo Heroes, Maps, Mounts, and Skins.
Eternal Conflict Phase 1:
- New Hero: The Butcher
- Master Butcher Skin
- Iron Butcher Skin
- New Hero: Leoric
- Master Leoric Skin
- Vrykul Leoric Skin
- Archangel Diablo Skin & Themed Abilities
- Novazon Nova Skin & Themed Abilities
- Tyrael’s Charger Mount
- Butcher's Battle Beast
- New Map: Battlefield of Eternity
Eternal Conflict Phase 2:
- New Hero: Kharazim the Monk
- Master Kharazim Skin
- Jade Dragon Kharazim Skin
- Treasure Goblin Mount
- Valla-Themed Mount
- New Map: Infernal Shrines
- Malthael's Charger Mount (see cross promotional list below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv0UF3ge4xg
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:
- Level2: 1,000 Gold
- Level 4: 1,000 Gold
- Level 6: Unlocks Daily Quests
- Levels 8: 2,000 Gold
- Level 10: A Seven-Day Stim Pack (+100% XP and Gold from games); 2,000 Gold
- Level 12: Unlocks an additional slot in the free hero rotation
- Level 15: Unlocks an additional slot in the free hero rotation
- Level 20: 2,000 Gold
- Level 25: Disables Hero Talent-Gating; 2,000 Gold
- Level 30: Unlocked Ranked Mode; 2,000 Gold
- Level 35: 2,000 Gold
- Level 40: Unlocks Team League; 2,000 Gold
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; 750 Gold
- Level 10: Allows purchase of Master Skin (10,000 gold)
- Level 15: 1,000 Gold
- Level 20: 2,000 Gold
Tutorial Videos - EXTREMELY Useful for new players
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PyO78ry89s&index=1&list=PLlWC1VLv7fbCLexoZvW6aK2Yp37T-RswQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz0VtOQyWGM&index=2&list=PLlWC1VLv7fbCLexoZvW6aK2Yp37T-RswQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxqpwEM1G5Q&index=3&list=PLlWC1VLv7fbCLexoZvW6aK2Yp37T-RswQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0oU0c5YaSA&index=4&list=PLlWC1VLv7fbCLexoZvW6aK2Yp37T-RswQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBm_05Es55Q&index=5&list=PLlWC1VLv7fbCLexoZvW6aK2Yp37T-RswQLucascraft on
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Posts
What are some good newbie heroes?
Assassin: Raynor, Warrior: ETC, Support: Li Li, and Specialist: Nazeebo. Avoid Abathur, Murky, and the Lost Vikings as they have very atypical designs that are best played when you have more experience with the game.
What's the best way to get experience?
Quick Match. Practice has an experience penalty, and cooperative games are (on average) shorter than Quick Match games. This means you spend more time in queues when doing co-op whereas QM you are in the game earning XP (it's time-based for xp earned per game). There's also the 50,000 xp win bonus you get from QM that you can't from co-op. Hero and Team League are probably worse xp because you have to spend time picking heroes. The only reason to play co-op is because you just can't win in QM for a daily.
What is the fastest way to get gold?
There is none. First, do the tutorials. They don't net you a ton of gold, but it's a decent amount and worth spending ~30-45 minutes to get. From there, 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 or nine 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 or 9 within a week. That right there is about 5000 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 nine you can then do dailies (about 250 gold a day) and grind heroes to 15 and 20 for more gold, but the latter is a significantly longer process than getting a hero to level five or nine.
Do not buy stimpacks. They are not worth the money unless you can play around 10+ games a day for a month straight. The seven-day stimpacks are even worse.
Also, each week a hero is on sale for 50% off real-world money prices, so that's another option if you're willing to lay down hard cash on the game.
When is the next patch?
No idea. They tend to do monthly patches until they trip up and go two months without anything. You will generally know a patch is coming because they will advertise a livestream heavily hinting at a patch the week prior.
How does the new hero pricing model work?
All new heroes are released at a starting cost of 15k. This price will be in place for 2 weeks. After 2 weeks, the price drops to 10k. Beyond that, there is no set rule or guideline for when a hero will further drop in price. Blizzard has occasionally gone through and updated hero pricing on multiple heroes at once, (i.e. when they made Li Li a 2k hero and Arthas a 7k hero), but there's no hard rule for when older heroes get price drops.
New Player Laning Tips!
--In Heroes, "laning" just means soaking XP. Laning also includes gathering the green Health Orbs for certain specs that take Regen Master or Conjurer's Pursuit. Laning also means trying to get the enemy towers to drain their ammo as fast as possible. Some heroes actually have a talent called "Demolitionist" which actively drains ammo. Other heroes can spawn extra units, which absorb extra shots, and contribute to draining towers faster.
--The most important thing while "laning" is just to remain close enough to the minion kills to soak XP. You do not need to last hit, and in fact you do not need to do any damage at all. All you need is proximity.
--During the opening minutes of the game (usually leading up till the first objective) is the laning phase. The laning phase in Heroes is quite short, and depending on the map, sometimes players never go back to full laning after the first objective spawn. This point is very map dependent. I'll cover general map laning guidelines lower in my post.
--In the early stages of the game, the XP gained through minion kills outweighs the XP gained from player kills. It is a waste of time and effort to "first blood" an enemey just for an XP payout. That's not to say there isn't benefit to killing them. Making them respawn and run back certainly is helpful since it reduces their own XP gains and puts them at a disadvantage for defending gates and towers. But don't over extend, and don't make level 1 hero murder a priority, because it's better to just chill and soak XP from minions.
--One last comment on laning before I dive into map specific details. Do not blow your entire mana-bar or get super beat up during the early-game laning phase. You will need that health and mana for the first objective on every map. If you show up to an objective with 2/3 health and 1/3 mana, you are hurting your team before the fight even starts. And there will be a fight.
Ok. Map Specifics.
Cursed Hollow
--First Objective spawns in a random range of time between the 2:15 minute mark and 2:45. There's a 30 second spawn window for the first Tribute.
--Laning phase on this map typically resets for the first 3 tributes. Even if one team doesn't earn all 3 tributes, by the time the 3rd tribute occurs, you want to start breaking out of lanes, capturing mercs, and playing more "globally" than lane-centric.
--If you're playing with a coordinated team, the best lane distribution is 1-3-1. The reason for this is because the tribute spawns are randomized, and putting 3 in middle lane gives you the best reaction time to wherever the tribute spawns. If you're in a pug, generally people go the 2-1-2, which is actually quite terrible because it puts 2 dudes way out of position on the first tribute spawn.
--A "good practice" on this map is to try to cap a merc camp right before a tribute spawns. Usually not the first tribute, since players are weak at that point and will get torn up by the mercs. But on the 2nd or 3rd tribute, you can put some pressure on a lane by snagging a camp just before the tribute spawns. That will force a decision by the enemy team. Do they send all 5 to the tribute, or do they hold one back to defend? Either way, it's a win for you. If they send all 5 to the tribute, you get free damage on a wall. If they hold one back, you have an easier team fight.
Dragon Knight
--First objective is set, I believe at the 2 minute mark, but it might be 2:30. I can't remember exactly off the top of my head.
--Lane distribution you want 2-1-2 generally. I've seen some very successful plays where a team will go 3-1-1 when the shrines open, so they can secure one shrine and hopefully get a kill.
--Don't feel rushed to immediately get the DK. The power of the DK scales with the duration of the game. The longer the game runs, the more powerful the DK gets. If you snag a DK at the 4 minute mark, It will be super weak. Sometimes it's better to intentionally stalemate until the 6-7 mark so that the first DK is more powerful.
--I've also seen organized teams go 4-1-0 when the shrines activate, or 0-1-4. This allows them to completely consume a shrine and wipe the entire enemy force defending it. Then the 4 move to the opposite side and do the same thing.
--Generally speaking, you want a ranged character or someone with a ton of staying power in the middle lane. Your goal in middle is simply to soak XP, grab the shrine if your team activates, and prevent an enemy capture if they activate.
--One other strategy that is effective on this map for coordinated teams is a "middle wipe." Send several people to mid, kill their solo middle laner, and force the enemy team to redistribute, which weakens their position overall.
--Lastly, a well timed giant camp can help you secure a DK capture. At around the 5-6 minute mark, if a couple people break off and grab their friendly-side giants on bottom, that extra pressure on the lane will force the enemy to react and weaken their position on the shrines.
Blackheart's Bay
--Lane setup should be 1-3-1, or 1-2-2. You want your team by the chests. On this map, top lane is the least significant lane for the first 10 minutes of the game. All you need is 1 person up there soaking XP. Everyone else should concern themselves with coins.
--Due to the nature of the coin placement, and scattered coin camps around the map, this map is the least lane-centric of them all. You will find yourself barely in lane at all. You should be doing three things on this map at all times. 1) Defending captain against enemy turn ins. A great way to get coins is to steal them from the enemy. 2) Capturing coin camps. 3) Capturing mercenaries (which also give coins). The lanes will handle themselves on this map.
--A common rookie mistake is to focus too much on laning on this map. Despite its relative size, this map is very combat heavy. Lots of action centers around the captain and you need to try to maintain vision on captain. Vision is extremely important on this map. It's always important, in general, but to a greater degree on this map. Heroes such as Tyrande, Tassadar, Zagara, and anyone else with Clairvoyance are of huge benefit on this map. You NEED to know where your enemy is, how many coins they have, and when they are attempting a turn in.
Haunted Mines
--For pickup games, 3-2 or 2-3 is preferred. In a team game, you want 4-1 or 1-4. Generally you want to put your 4 or your 3 on the lane in which the golem will spawn.
--You can look at your base and see which lane your golem will take. He exists as a pile of bones at the base of your core at the start of the match. Top of the core is top lane, bottom of the core is bottom. Simple. Plan accordingly.
--This map is the most "snowballish" map of them all. Even after the most recent patch, where they nerfed the relative strength of the first golem spawns, and closed the gap between golems of various sizes, the golem is still amazingly potent map objective.
--Assuming you win the mines and your golem is stronger than your opponent's, you want 3 pushing with golem and 2 defending. Or 4 pushing, 1 defending, depending on the number of skulls collected.
--Grabbing knights right after a golem spawns is also a good practice. They will put extra pressure on a lane and force your opponent to split defend. I'm fairly certain that the knights will always path to the lane opposite of your golem.
Garden of Terror
--Lane like normal til the first night cycle, which happens pretty fast. It's at like 1:30 that the warning is given and 2:00 that the seedlings spawn.
--Generally 1-3-1 is best player distribution, for the same reason as on Cursed Hollow. This gives you the best mobility. You can move to top seeds or bottom seeds much easier with 3 in the middle. Your outside lanes will just soak XP.
--Merc camps despawn when the plant terror is activated. However, the mercs don't despawn if they are actively engaged in combat. One of the best practices on this map (and other maps too) is to engage a merc camp or two right as your team is spawning a terror. That way you can split push multiple lanes.
--Teams should move to support their plant terror for maximum objective pushing. However, it's also a common practice to leave 1 player in another lane to continue to soak and split push. If if you can get a merc camp plus a strong laning character like Zagara in a lane opposite your plant terror, you can do some really great damage to the enemy.
Sky Temple
--The first temple activations are ALWAYS the top and middle points. Always.
--The second temple activation is always the bottom.
--Additional temple activations after the first two are random
--Starting lane configuration should be 2-2-1 or 1-3-1
--After the first activation has run it's full duration, you should grab some camps and then reconfigure your lane distribution.
--Second phase lane distribution should be 1-1-3 in anticipation of the bottom temple
--If possible, try to secure a top lane bruiser camp right before the bottom temple activation. This bruiser camp will almost certainly go uncontested while the teams fight over bottom temple.
Spider Queen
--Middle lane is most important since it puts your players in range of both turn-in points
--Top lane is least important at the start of the match since there are no mercenary camps up there (except boss, which won't come into play until later)
--A good setup is 1-3-1 or 1-2-2.
--Just like on other maps, grabbing a merc camp right before a turn-in is highly advisable. For the first turn-in, when players are still relatively weak, the bottom giant camp is the best choice. Throw some extra giants in with your webspinners and make a strong push on bottom.
--The spider minions in each wave drop gems. During laning phase, your goal is to collect gems while denying your opponent their gems. Characters with area denial spells, such as Tassadar, Jaina, and Sgt Hammer are good for this. Also, tanks with strong knockback abilities such as ETC and Diablo are great on this map, as they can really help with denying enemy gem collection.
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.
Tomb of the Spider Queen
Three Lanes
Instead of normal lane minions, Tomb has these metallic spiders sprinkled in that drop gems upon death for you to collect. There are two areas where you can deposit these gems, and upon depositing 50 gems for your team (doesn't matter into which area you deposit) you spawn a boss spider in each lane that will cast devastating shadow waves and spawn lesser spiders to eat up tower ammo. This map is fairly cramped with lots of vents blocking vision, so heroes that have good vision like Zagara or Tassadar are useful. Also, the spiders spawned by gems will travel down a lane until they encounter enemies units, so the further you push the closer they'll start to forts or keeps.
Battlefield of Eternity
Two Lanes
This map features two immortals fighting for each team. By beating the enemy immortal, your immortal will push the strongest of your opponent's lanes. Depending on how much HP they had when they won the fight, they will gain a shield that enables them to attack buildings at ranged until the shield is depleted. This map also features variants on standard mercs: replacing bruisers are two hellhounds and a fallen shaman that, while weaker, the hounds can be resurrected by the shaman, and three Khazra that, while having no splash damage and less HP than Siege Giants, deal more damage to buildings and attack faster.
Cross Promotion!
Play other Blizzard games? Then you can reap the rewards of bonus goodies! Note: items in italics are limited time offers, and items that are struck out were limited time offers that have expired.
World of Warcraft
WoW Character Level 100: Wolf Mounts (hots)
HotS Account Level 20: Grave Golem Pet (wow)
Diablo 3
Own Diablo 3: Unlock Diablo (hots; expires Sept. 8th)
Seasonal Character 70 (Season 4): Malthael's Phantom Mount (hots)
HotS Account Level 12: Pennant and Player Border (D3)
Preorder Reaper of Souls: Unlock Valla (hots)
Starcraft 2
Preorder Legacy of the Void (any version): Unlock Artanis (hots)
Buy Legacy of the Void Collector's Edition: Void Seeker Mount (hots)
Hearthstone
Win 100 Games: Hearthstone Card Mount (hots)
HotS Account Level 12: HotS Themed Card Back (HS)
Battletag List
Type "/join heroes of the wang" in game to join our PA chat channel. Great for finding games!
And here's a fun flow-chart showing how to play--
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/19818499/heroes-of-the-storm-ptr-patch-notes-august-10-2015-8-10-2015
I'm also super happy to see a small Sonya buff... because I love her and want her to be a beast.
Gamertag - Khraul
PSN - Razide6
If there is a good enough indicator of destination and HEY, CATCH A RIIIIIIDE you can get 80% of pubbies to come along.
I played with Hammer on PTR just now in the shop... The seige cooldown makes her much much more interesting, I think. I don't know what the 'correct' answer would be, but it seems like she can do crazy things with seige cloak when she gets caught now because she can Z to run, then seige to cloak. Might not really be viable, I dunno. But maybe I'll buy her some time soon and find out... Does the talent that protects her from stuns not protect against imposing presence at all?
Switch: 6589-6405-3399
I want the bolded part as a thing, even if I have to yell it myself every time.
Twitch Wed-Sun, 2-5pm CST
Also, if fighting nova you take frost armour at 7. It vastly reduces her auto attack damage on you, which is a big part of the burst she has. It also instantly chills her so she can't get away and takes extra damage from all your abilities.
Nova really shouldn't be that scary to you as Jaina. You have three skill shots to pull her out of stealth, and two fantastic defensive talents to negate her damage that don't cost you much to take.
They just need to give you some reason to want to attack Chen in a brawl.
I'm loving the monk so far; he pretty much seems like my dream support in so many ways.
Can't wait to kick his tires when the patch goes live.
Today I'm stuck at work regretting not playing him last night. As soon as I get home tonight I'm dropping the cash. Since it transfers to live it isn't a big deal.
Plus, it's really cool that they're running a map rotation of 1 to get Infernal Shrines going. The thing I don't understand is why Infernal Shrines is not releasing with the patch... why hold back the content?
Battle.net: Fireflash#1425
Steam Friend code: 45386507
Edit: Ah, it's a phoenix. They didn't show off starfall tho.
Someone posted a couple of shots of her new stuff.... It's all "Sunfire-mode"... the Phoenix model that replaces the owl is kinda fun.
Also, Demonic Tyrael got a little bit of an overhaul....
Gamertag - Khraul
PSN - Razide6
Here is the old version:
Demonic Tyrael looks awesome tho.
T1: Transcendence - Every 3rd Basic Attack heals the lowest nearby allied hero.
T2: Protective Shield (although all of the picks here seem worthwhile in different scenarios).
T3: Echo of Heaven - The extra healing here is solid; I also think that Way of the Hundred Fists is fantastic, even in a healing / support-focused build, because the damage it can output is just that good.
T4: Both ultimates are great, but Divine Palm stands out for good reason; its like Ancestral Healing, except it doesn't matter that your target died.
T5: Fists of Fury - An extra second of Deadly Reach means an extra 4 auto-attacks, which is another application of your trait, aside from the damage. Quicksilver is also great.
T6: Blazing Fists - Basic Attacks reduce the cooldown of your Deadly Reach by 1 second each. So ... enjoy your 2-3 second CD on Deadly Reach, which is constant damage and smart-healing. Its worth noting that I think all of the talents at this tier are solid, though.
T7: Storm Shield - I think all of the talents here are worthwhile (I've been saying that a lot about Kharazim, and that's a really good thing), but Storm Shield stands out in terms of solo support utility.
and
I just bought lili because $2 is about what I'm fine investing right now and she's on sale, but if I really like support/healing right now, who should I look to trying out next? idk if any of them are considered weak or OP so I figured I'd ask.
I need to make sure I try out the other roles asap but for right now I really dig healing and staying alive and out of the way.
edit: also why did they keep the NE facepaint stuff on BE tyrande. the new ability graphics are really nice though.
I got valla by preordering D3
I have a card mount by playing x amt of games of HS
there's also a WoW mount earned by doing something/buying something in WoW
WoW thing will have to wait but I'm not concerned with mounts or skins yet for obvious reasons. I'm certain I will be though
(also I'm lying I bought lili's epic skin because it looks cool and is on sale and I'm pathetic)
thanks FJ
you'll get a code or something I'm sure
the starcraft CE preorder is only available on amazon, etc as far as I know at the moment
Li Li, Malfurion, Reghar and Uther are all solid. Stay away from Brightwing in her current state (she got nerfed hard in the last patch; Blizzard knows it, and they're in the process of attempting to fix her, but its going to be a while until she's back to anywhere close to what she was). Tassadar and Tyrande are also strange picks, because they just barely qualify as "supports", and are also in the process of being worked over. They have tons of utility, don't get me wrong -- they just can't heal their way out of a paper bag, and suffer pretty badly as solo supports. Kharazim isn't live yet, but he's shaping up to be tremendous, in my opinion. I'd definitely keep my eye on him, although you may pass him up at first because heroes are always over-priced when they first release, and you may not be interested in dropping any substantial amount of cash at this point.
Li Li is very good for new players: her single-target heals are rapid and they auto-target allies with the lowest health. So healing effectively can essentially be boiled down to just being in the right place at the right time. She can also Blind enemies, which is already very powerful and looks to be getting even more effective in the upcoming patch, where it seems as though Blizzard is trying to improve the effectiveness of its right-click heroes. A good Blind against Kharazim, in particular, could be incredibly debilitating to the opposing team.
Malfurion is similarly easy to pick up. His heals restore health over time, so he doesn't have the burst-heal potential of Li Li (or Uther, or Reghar) but he comes with a lot of utility, like Scouting Drones, an AoE root, an AoE healing ultimate that (unlike Li Li's Jug of a Thousand Cups) cannot be interrupted with stuns, and essentially free-to-cast Moonfire, which is tremendous as a damage poke.
Reghar's undergone a bit of a rework, and people who are better at him than I am will tell you that he's been hit pretty hard. From where I'm standing, I still feel that he's top-tier. His Ancestral Healing ultimate is a single-target heal with a low, low, 70-second cooldown that may as well be considered a full-restore. The trick to playing him effectively, though, is learning how to time it appropriately. My issue with Reghar has always been that I wait until the last possible moment to pop his ult, and because of the brief delay before it goes off, the person I'm trying to heal often dies. So be aware of that - there's definitely a skill in learning when and how to effectively utilize his ultimate. He also has a Chain Heal, and can instantly mount into his Ghost Wolf form for added mobility.
Uther's got burst-healing out the ass. And stuns. A good Uther is an absolute fucking nightmare to play against, because he has everything he needs to ruin your day. Having said that, he's a little tricky to play, because he very, very commonly picks up abilities that require you to hit additional buttons. That can be intimidating to newer players, as can the fact that he's melee instead of ranged. He can act as a front line in a pinch, with access to some very defensive talents, some of which are otherwise exclusive to Warriors.
Free this week are Falstad, Raynor (Assassins), Muradin, Sonya (Warriors), Sylvanas, Abathur (Specialists) and Brightwing (Support).
Falstad is pretty squishy but he's a lot of fun... Zoom around the map with his Z key and shoot lightning at people.
Raynor doesn't perform quite as well as other assassins, but he's pretty easy to pick up (long range autoattack and only 3 buttons)
Muradin is a pretty safe bet if you want to try a warrior. Lots of health regen and an Ult that makes you super tough.
Sonya is actually a mislabelled assassin but she's fairly beefy. Good to practice her skillshot and she hits pretty hard.
Sylvanas has a higher skillcap but her skillset is pretty cool... don't take her Possession ult or you'll be shunned forever.
Abathur is REALLY cool, but very unintuitive. If you want to try him read some guides first (ie Heroesfire.com)
Brightwing is a little unintuitive in her abilities and she's a little weak from her recent nerf, but she's still a really cool support with kind of a different skillset. Polymorph is your friend.
One of the nice things in HOTS compared to some other Mobas is that with minimal skill you can at least pick up a hero and get some juice out of them... the difficulty ratings are more an indication that if you are more skilled with that hero you can get a lot more out of them... exceptions to this would be Murky/Abathur and TLV who have very odd mechanics that aren't super intuitive and have a bit more learning curve if you want to contribute with them.
There aren't really any heroes in the game that will single-handedly decide a match just by their presence alone and even the "weaker" heroes are still absolutely viable in QM. By playing well you can easily offset any deficit brought on by your hero pick.
Also, yes everyone I'm bored at work and will probably reply to every post in this thread... ;-)
Gamertag - Khraul
PSN - Razide6
1 hour till quittin time here
Isn't Sylvanas with Unstable Poison like, the most broken shit ever in that scenario? I mean, anyone who can blow up minions is going to be crazy here.
Even Johanna with Knight Takes Pawn.
And that Punisher is brutal!
Yeah, minion clear is great here. Leoric, Kael, etc.
They do spawn in waves so you can't get 30 in one blow, however.
Gonna try a full DPS build.
Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking when I first read the description of that talent. Being able to potentially reveal Zera with your Q is great, and then you can just Q after him when he blinks away. Khara stands to be an absolute counter to Zera in a number of ways, and may be part of the reason we haven't seen any major nerfs thrown his way just yet.
@milk ducks Apparently Azmo's Rain O' Grunts is crazy on the new objective.
Gamertag - Khraul
PSN - Razide6