by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

Every game has its own set of core concepts that players are just expected to know and abide by. Players who are unaware of these unwritten rules are often mocked and labeled as noobs. With over a decade of history under its belt, World of Warcraft certainly has its share of these cliched tips that have been handed down from one generation of players to another. From progression raiders, to veterans of mythic dungeons, to decorated champions of PVP, there are things that have become so ingrained in players that they have become ubiquitous to the game. Given how many people have played WoW and the cross-over appeal of most Blizzard games, there is a large percentage of the Heroes player base that comes from a WoW background. With that in mind, let’s look at frequently cited World of Warcraft advice and see how that can be applied to Heroes of the Storm.

Ready Check

Whether you run dungeon finder, LFR, or guild raids you are probably familiar with the concept of the Ready Check. For those who aren’t, a Ready Check is a tool that allows the party leader to confirm that everyone in the group is ready before the group initiates the next encounter. If players are AFK or otherwise indicate that they are not ready the group doesn’t start the fight.

While Heroes doesn’t have a Ready Check function and the fights are much more spontaneous than WoW Boss fights, there are still things we can do to simulate a Ready Check. The first is a simple headcount. If the bottom temple is getting ready to spawn on Sky Temple and one of your teammates is dead and another is in the top lane you essentially have two people AFK. Unless the other team is equally shorthanded you probably shouldn’t be looking to start a team fight when only three players on your team are “ready”.

Another way is to use the ALT + Left Click feature to inform your team of things like whether or not your Heroic is available, how much Health or Mana you have, or what your progress is towards a Quest Talent. Communicating this type of information can help your teammates know whether or not you are ready for a fight and help lead to better decision-making.

Along a similar line, you can also use the ping system. If you see your teammate positioning in a way that indicates he is about to engage the enemy a well time ping can either encourage or discourage him from going in. If you like the engage and are ready to back him up then ping on the target you want to focus on to encourage him to go in. If you don’t like the fight and want to try to dissuade him from engaging then drop a couple of retreat pings.

While tips like these don’t always work, letting your teammates know whether or not you are ready like this does lead to better engages and better overall communication.

Know the fights

In the old days of raiding, before LFR turned even the most casual players into raiders, players were expected, and in many cases even required, to know the Boss fights before ever stepping foot in a raid. Players would watch videos, read strategy guides, and sometimes even run simulators

to prepare in advance for the fights they would encounter. Now players are much more likely to just wing it and assume that they will figure out the fight as it goes along. A lot of Heroes players seem to approach fights with the same mentality, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s true, the fights in Heroes aren’t scripted in the same way that Boss fights in WoW are, but there are ways to figure out in advance how a fight is likely to go.

^{Flow Chart courtesy of Reddit user RVD3}

The easiest way is to look at their team comp and ask yourself a few questions. What type of fight are they looking for? Do they have an aggressive dive comp or are they more poke oriented? Do they have a comp that is going to try to blow up one Hero fast or are they built for longer team fights with something like double Support? Are they unbalanced with either melee or ranged? Is their comp dependant on one particular Hero? What key Abilities or Heroics do you need to watch out for? Any dangerous combos? You want to ask similar questions about your own team comps. Knowing what to expect from both teams will help you plan ahead for how team fights are likely to go down.

Be sure to use the information you pick up as the game goes on to further refine your expectations. You may have gone into the game thinking their Valla was the real threat only to find out that their Sonja player is the one giving your team all the trouble. Maybe you notice that their Greymane had really bad positioning and loves to engage before the tank so he becomes your new primary kill target. Maybe they have a Specialist who doesn’t show up for Objectives because they are tunnel-visioned on pushing.

This type of understand and preplanning will help you perform better in team fights as opposed to just winging it.

You can’t DPS when You’re Dead

Believe it or not, there used to be a time in World of Warcraft when DPS players could actually pull single target aggro from a tank. Raise your hand if you remember being told by your raid leader to wait for three sunders. Raise your other hand if you ever started attacking early. Shout out to all my old school DPS players with one hand in the air – I see you!

Overeager hunters players looking to rock the DPS meters were often told,”You can’t DPS when you’re dead”. This same logic can be applied to Heroes. We have all played with that player who dies 10+ times and uses the fact that he has top Hero Damage to justify it. Pretend for a second that it isn’t possible to put up high damage numbers just by repeatedly charging into the enemy team and face rolling your keyboard. Even if their high DPS is a true sign of skill, how much more damage could they have done if they didn’t spend six minutes out of a 20-minute game dead? This is the part that players often fail to take into consideration when they are patting themselves on the back for putting up good numbers.

HOTSLogs has an interesting stat called Time Dead, which you can find by drilling down on a game in your Match History tab. I think a lot of people could benefit from being more aware of this number. It is easy to discount the impact of dying, but once you can see how much time you actually spend dead it is much harder to justify.

Take a look at this example from an Infernal Shrines game that lasted 22:57. I highlighted the outliers on each team when it comes to Time Dead. The Malthael player caught some heat for his many deaths. He justified it by pointing out the fact that he was leading or nearly leading in Hero Damage most of the game. While his damage was solid, the reality is that he spent over 25% of the game not contributing at all because he was dead and waiting to respawn. This amount of excessive time spent dead can be the difference between winning and losing a close game or it can turn what should be a close game into a blowout. Don’t just look at your total deaths in the TAB screen. Also check out HOTSLogs from time to time to see how much actual game time you are missing while waiting to respawn. Even just four or five deaths can still end up being close to five minutes in Time Dead if they happen in the late game.

Check back Monday for more examples of applying WoW advice to Heroes.