Heroes of the Storm

[Dave]

It takes me a few games to get used to playing actual people from days of vs AI. Usually do a bunch of stupid things early game.

Li Li
E.T.C.
Nova
Tassadar
Thrall
Azmodan (12)
The Butcher (15)

Nova AND Butcher next week... will be interesting! (at least they added Tassadar to use his D)

[Alan]

I like Rehgar because I feel like he has the best ability to keep my teammates alive when they should really die because they made a bad decision. For QM I feel like that's the most useful ability for a healer to have. When your Jaina decides she's going to tank, you can hit ancestral, chain heal her +/- shield/cleanse, have the ancestral proc, so that she can get all her spells off, drop someone, and then belatedly realize she shouldn't have overextended, allow her to walk all the way back behind the tank, and be able to go back and burst down someone else down after her cooldowns come back instead of being dead before any of that happened as she actually deserves. In the meantime your chain heal probably also healed your tank and yourself, and is available again in 6-8 seconds depending on your talents. Rehgar is also so mobile in combat (and has a larger health pool than all the supports other than Uther) that you can make more positioning mistakes (or be more aggressive with positioning) than other healers.

With Lili you can't target your heal, and your ulti can be interrupted
Malf is HoT, so you might heal someone and have them die before your heal actually finishes
Uther has burst heal but on a pretty long cooldown, and he has other roles that you need to be fulfilling in order to be an effective Uther
Rehgar pretty much does one thing very well, so if you do nothing but hit your chain and ancestral heals you're still going to be pretty effective. Everything else you do is just gravy. If you did 6k hero damage and didn't catch anyone in your slow totem, but you hit your heals, there's still a good chance you won that game.

[Alan]

I foresee lots of dead Novas this week.

[Dave]

Played 2 AI games with Butcher this morning, not really digging the gameplay so far. Queued with my xp buff not as Nova (played when I died as Butcher haha) and (so far) much prefer stealth ganking as Zeratul. Triple Tap is just lame, and I feel ashamed everytime I kill someone with it hehe

[Jonathan]

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/19819246

Monk details. Also, new hero with a pet.

[Dave]

Interesting.. not the skills I would have imagined or liked, but glad they have dash at least!

Radiant Dash (Q) - quickly teleport to a friendly or enemy Hero. (seems to have multiple charges)
Breath of Heaven (W) - heals Kharazim and other nearby heroes. (seems to boost their movement speed as well, but could be a specific talent)
Deadly Reach (E) - extends his attack range and deals bonus damage on attacks.
Seven-Sided Strike (R1) - becomes untargetable and lands 7 attacks on nearby enemies. (likely prioritizes Heroes)
Divine Palm (R2) - puts an allied hero in Stasis (invulnerable) and greatly heals them if their HP is depleted during that.

[Jonathan]

The variable trait is weird. Self-sustain Thrall-style, straight up damage, or mana buff.

He's potentially blinkier than Zeratul or Illidan, but no CC for a support.

[Dave]

Well, I'll be spending 15k on him unless the skin they have is so sexy and awesome I just have to tell Blizzard to TAKE MY CASH!

Done leveling this week's heroes. Butcher grew a bit on me. The double Furnace Blast after an E is super satisfiting, but doesn't happen very often, and I usually die after. I think I am most annoyed by the clapping he does when he mounts. It should be something much cooler like smashing his weapons into the ground and assembling his mount real fast from parts.

Glad Nova is 5. Surprisingly the AI is pretty good at spotting cloaked noobs like me and knocking me out of stealth. I've found none of the Q W E skills too "fun" to use as Nova but have liked Precision Strike much more than Triple Tap, as far as team fights go. Sometimes I use it as soon as I spawn in base and then ride over. Solo wave clearing is so painful with her, and solo ganks just don't have the same fun component as with Zeratul.

[Jonathan]

I've been trying to get better at controlled retreats as a warrior, zoning the enemies away from my squishies. At least twice last night, I tried to peel an enemy off my retreating squishy using Overpower, and wound up getting body-blocked and focused down. I think I probably need to raise my threshold of 'close enough to engage' to 'body-blocking my squishy' or something?

[Jonathan]

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/151 ... m-8-8-2014

Some comps will never pop up randomly on QM. Huh.

[Jonathan]

Did some co-op as Butcher. Fun! I'm not good at timing the charges. I kept diving into the enemy as they retreated and dying.

[Alan]

I've been trying to get better at controlled retreats as a warrior, zoning the enemies away from my squishies. At least twice last night, I tried to peel an enemy off my retreating squishy using Overpower, and wound up getting body-blocked and focused down. I think I probably need to raise my threshold of 'close enough to engage' to 'body-blocking my squishy' or something?

I think it only works if your squishies are actually retreating in a controlled manner rather than just all-out fleeing. If they're fleeing (and not applying any damage or CC as they fall back) then if you intervene in most cases it'll end either with you dying in place of them or both of you dying. I've found that in general if a teammate is fleeing, that unless my presence leads to numerical superiority then it's better for me not to intervene, bc most QM teammates who are low on health will not turn around to add their damage to yours. So if you joining leads to a 2 on 2, it quickly leads reverts back to a 2 on 1, either due to your teammate dying or just continuing to run away. You get pretty heavily punished for each death, so unless you're sure you're going to survive when you jump in it's better to just let your teammate die so that it's 5 vs 4 instead of 5 vs 3. Unless you know that jumping in will let your teammate survive, and it's more important for them to be alive rather than you. Or if you have enough souls and will be coming back in 5 seconds.

If the whole team is just falling back to a more advantageous position, then if you peel for the squishies then that's a different story.

[Alan]

"It" meaning engaging. I think that in most retreats if you have the health for it it's better to body block as you also retreat rather than diving in.

[Alan]

And teammates who blame you for their deaths, or for not saving them from dying, are invariably bad players who deserved what happened to them and are just not good enough at the game to recognize it.

[Jonathan]

Hehehe.

Sounds legit.

Apparently I need to ping when tributes come up near me, because last game of Cursed Hollow I played two tributes spawned near me and zero of my teammates came down to contest!

[Jonathan]

On Release is super nice for skill shots, but I've missed a fair few targeted abilities since I changed to On Release because I think I successfully targeted but the game disagrees. I let go of the key like it's a skillshot. I'm trying to mash the key for longer but muscle memory fights me.

[Dave]

Was curious how many heores I had left to raise to level 5, and it turns out 4 - Murky, Abathur, Vikings, and Leoric. While finding that list, decided to rank them in terms of how much I enjoy playing them:

Warrior
Johanna, Tyreal, Sonya, Anub'rack, Arthas, Muradin, Diablo, Stitches, ETC, Chen

Assasin
Zeratul Valla Jaina Kael'thas Falstad Illidan Butcher Kerrigan Thrall Tychus Nova Raynor

Support
Rehgar Tyrande Uther Malf Brightwing Lili Tassadar

Specialist
Sylvanas Azmodan Zagara Gazlowe Sgt. Hammer Nazeebo

I just hate when we are in a 5v5 and no one has an AoE skill to use! I predicting they will let players mark other players with a Skull or something to focus fire like they added in WoW a few expansions in.

[Alan]

I have a lot fewer heroes that I've tried.

Warriors
Sonya, Muradin, Diablo

Assassins
Zeratul, Jaina, Tychus, Kael'Thas, Valla, Illidan, Raynor

Supports
Rehgar, Tyrande, Tassadar, Uther, Lili

Specialists
Sylvanas, Zagara

Though the last time I played Zagara I enjoyed her a lot more than the first 2 times. I'll give her a few more spins. And I feel like I do need to learn Uther, since he is such a strong hero.

And Sonya isn't that strong but I just like playing her

[Alan]

Butcher is funnn

[Jonathan]

There's a number of heroes I couldn't tolerate long enough to play all the way to 5.

Warrior
Diablo, Anub'arak, ETC, Muradin, Arthas, Sonya
Couldn't stand: Tyrael
Assasin
Falstad, Valla, Butcher, Raynor, Illidan, Kerrigan, Thrall
Couldn't stand: Nova, Jaina, Zeratul
Support
Malfurion, Uther, Lili, Tyrande
Couldn't stand: Tassadar
Specialist
Azmodan (really uncertain about build, tbh), Zagara, Nazeebo, Sgt. Hammer (would like more if she gets un-nerfed), Gazlowe

I don't own any assassins at all. I'll probably get Falstad eventually, maybe. I don't think I'll get any of the others.

I solo queue as support and die a lot. Warrior is definitely my preferred role, then specialist. I definitely need an Azmodan build with more sustain for solo queue, which is part of why I bought Zagara (because she works pretty OK with Reconstitution/Rapid Incubation). I like Azmodan better though; he's way siegier.