So I've been playing Hero League for a while now, but always only within the first 10 placement matches. However, during the last season, my rank dropped really low so as soon as I was done with my placement matches, I kept playing Hero League, despite the long wait times, despite the toxicity and forced hero selections. And I kept losing. I kept losing because of bad hero picks and bad team compositions, very rarely do I lose due to poor matchups with players too far below or above my rank. As you can imagine, one can only take so many losses.
At the same time, HGC (Heroes Global Championship) was going on so I watched a ton of games to see if I could draft better heroes and ban heroes properly. Which got me like this:
Me, watching team drafts in HGC
So after a few weeks of contemplating before sleep and discussions with my friend, I've come with some basic guidelines on how to start drafting if you wanna have some sort of success in Hero League. Also I hope people I have played with read this so that we can achieve victory better (because usually when I lose I only know why after the game is already over) as Heroes of the Storm is a team game.
This is the screen you'll see when you start Hero League
The heroes (or more specifically classes) you need in any draft and I mean ANY DRAFT is:
- 1 Main Warrior
- 1 Main Support
- 1 Sustained Damage
Exactly in that order as well,
The reason for this is you need a Main Warrior first and foremost because warriors allow you to do basically anything you need to do in game.
Main Warriors allow you to:
- Engage or Disengage
- Create a hindrance to enemies so your damage dealers can actually deal damage
- Lockdown or interrupt enemies for counterplay
- Protect the rest of your team like supports and assassins
The problem here is that not all Heroes in the Warrior category are actually Main Warriors. So here is where it gets tricky, because I could either give you a list of heroes to memorize as Main Warriors or I could explain to you what makes a Warrior a Main Warrior.
Main Warriors must be able to:
- Take a large amount of damage meaning Large Health Pools
- Mitigate damage, ie, reducing damage or absorbing damage
- Crowd control (CC), ie, displace, stun, slow, trap or root a large number of units at one time
- and finally, Move around quickly or cover some distance quickly
From these main aspects, you can kind of have an idea of what heroes belong in the Main Warrior category. Some of the most popular Main Warriors are Muradin and ETC. Please note that Main Warriors must be able to do these things with their basic abilities, so if a Warrior Hero only completes these criterias after a Heroic Ability, that hero is not a Main Tank (until he gets his Heroics).
As for the Warriors that don't fit the criterias, they would most probably fit the Bruiser category. To elaborate, Bruisers trade off one or more of those aspects for more damage. Bruisers are important as well but should only be considered after you've planned those first 3 classes. They don't really fit a single role as some Bruisers can Solo Lane, some can act as a Side Support.
The next is a Main Support, and just like Warriors, some supports are not considered as Main Supports but rather they are split into Main Supports and Side Supports. Uther and Malfurion are the most popular Main Supports.
Main Supports must be able to:
- Heal a significant amount of health and not provide temporary health
- Provide some form of CC
Side Supports trade off some of these aspects by adding more CC, or damage.
And finally the string that ties all this together, the Sustained Damage Assassin. There are many types of Assassins but the Assassin with the damage type you need the most is Sustained Damage. Sustained Damage usually refers to Assassins that mostly rely on Auto Attacks for damage. Because Auto Attacks don't require any sort of resource to dish out, they are the most reliable in the hands of a good player and they can consistently deal damage no matter how long the team fight drags on. Hence the name, Sustained Damage. Raynor and Valla are good examples of Sustained Damage and the most important thing to know when using a Sustained Damage Hero is positioning (so you can deal damage safely) and stutter stepping (so you can deal damage while positioning). The easiest way to discern a Sustained Damage Assassin is the hero must be Ranged and they have High Attack Damage/ Attack Speed.
The other Assassins would either fall into the Burst Damage category (most mages are in this category), the Bruiser category (most melee assassins fall in this category) or the Backline category (assassins that can pressure the enemy backline).
If you want to learn just the basics quickly you can stop here, but I have a few more categories to go over and how they all come together to form a viable team composition.
Bruisers are heroes that have abilities similar to Main Warriors but they are not as disruptive as Main Tanks, most Bruisers have CC that affect only one hero and if they do, it is often displacements, slows and traps but not stuns or roots. However, the trade-off to this is that, they can deal more damage than Main Warriors and have ways to self-sustain through teamfights. Bruisers exist because they help take the pressure off of Main Tanks by tanking some of the damage themselves and then retreating to the backline whilst healing back up until they are needed again. Opponents cannot simply ignore them as they can do a sizeable amount of damage and they can tank some damage while regenerating health as well as the fight goes on. The main difference a Main Warrior has with Bruisers are that Main Warriors have a huge presence on the battlefield and are very disruptive whereas Bruisers can only disrupt one or two enemies.
Side Supports are Heroes that are able to slowly regenerate health over time or provide a significant amount of damage mitigation while simultaneously providing CC and damage to the team. Being Side Supports, they help to keep the team healthy through long fights or take the brunt of an attack,
getting rid of burst damage.
And finally, we have Specialists.
Specialists are the hardest class to explain, but to put it simply, they fulfill some of the requirements of two or more classes. The difference Specialists have with Multi-Class Heroes are that while Multi-Class Heroes are similar at the start of a game to Specialists, Multi-Class must ultimately commit to one role at the end of the game whereas Specialists continue to fill the role of different classes until the end. Therefore, Specialists are best to pick if you have a very odd requirements to fill in your composition. Another attribute unique to most Specialists are their ability to pressure and push lanes really well. In fact, when left unchecked, they can destroy forts before Level 4.
One last thing I want to address is the role needed in Professional Games, the Solo Laner. I left this for last because unlike tournament games, most casual players don't play as pro players do. In tournament games, most games start off with 4 heroes pushing down a lane and 1 hero (the Solo Laner) pushing down another lane. The 4 heroes then proceed to rotate from one lane to the other while the Solo Laner stays on the last lane. The reason this is not common in casual games is because it requires a lot cooperation from all players to rotate at the same time and such. This arrangement acts as a sort of stalemate between teams as the 4 heroes can devastate a lane if the opposing team commits some heroes to take down the Solo Laner, which is a hero that has enough self-sustain to survive a gank from the opposing team. This stalemate goes away when huge rotations occur due to objectives and ganks which is when the teams try to create advantage in any game.
A Solo Laner is a hero with:
- Good waveclear
- Some form of self-sustain
Ok now you know what different classes of heroes provide to a team and the base composition required in any team. Now let's see how they fit in a team.
Starting with the 3 required hero classes:
- Main Warrior
- Main Support
- Sustained Damage
You can add a mage class to this composition, giving you more burst damage, in which case a hero with more lockdown would make this composition more effective, so adding another Warrior or Bruiser to the composition wouldn't hurt. Now you have a composition that has a lot of damage and quite a healthy frontline.
Or you could add a second support class to your team, making the whole team more survivable, meaning a team with 2 Assassins could work. Or you could play it safe and go for a Bruiser to ease some pressure from your Main Warrior.
Although this is the simplest way to introduce drafting to you, in Heroes of the Storm, there are more things to consider as well when drafting like map objectives and wave clear but it's something you'll learn overtime but at least you'll have a guideline to start with while at the same time considering those other aspects.
Good Luck!!
And as always, have fun playing HotS =D (Let's hope you don't almost burn out like I did because of Hero League)
INDEX
DPS - Damage per second or refers to a hero that supplies the damage to a team
Physical Damage - Damage dealt by auto attacks
Spell Damage - Damage dealt by spells (can also be called Ability Damage)
Percent Damage - Damage dealt equal to a percent of health
Burst - A large amount of damage dealt in a short amount of time to quickly take down a target
Self-Sustain - The ability to regenerate health by yourself
CC (Crowd Control) - The ability to displace, slow, trap, stun or root enemies
Displacement - Moving enemies against their will, during movement the affected is considered stunned
Slow - Having reduced movement speed
Stunned - Preventing movement and action to the affected
Root - Preventing movement or abilities related to movement but allowing action
Time Stop/ Stasis - Prevents movement and action but prevents damage to the affected
Trapped - Creating impassable terrain limiting movement
Silence - Prevents usage of spells and abilities by the affected for the duration
Damage Mitigation - The ability to reduce damage taken
Shields - Gains temporary health that is consumed first when taking damage, shown as white in health bar
Physical Armor - Reduces Physical Damage
Spell Armor - Reduce Spell or Ability Damage
Armor - Reduces all sources of damage except percent damage
Damage Reduction - Reduces all damage sources
Protected - Prevents all damage sources
Unstoppable - Prevents all CC except stasis
Invulnerable - Prevents all damage and CC
Gank - Using a numbers advantage to overwhelm and take the enemy by surprise
Lockdown - Keeping a target in place by means of chaining CC one after the other
Rotation - Moving across the map to engage objectives, lanes or targets
Wave Clear - The ability to clear minions quickly and effectively
Soaking - To stay in lane to gather EXP for the team, optimally for maximum soak, all lanes must have 1 hero to soaking experience
Numbers Advantage - Removing a member of the team to gain advantage
Snowball - Getting stronger with each hero takedown
Escape - The ability to retreat effectively from an unfavourable situation
Backline Harass - The ability to dive past the frontline to take out weak targets in the backline
Dive - To charge into the enemy
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