Heroes of the Storm

[Dave]

Rexxar week!

Actually pretty fun to have a pet to command around. Can take out camps ez! If they ever release a dwarf Hunter skin I may have to buy this hero!

[Alan]

Sonya is a lot of fun these days. I had a game on her recently where I outdamaged KT, Thrall, and Nova by about 20k. Her AA build is really strong.

[Alan]

I'm really loving the Tyrande Shadowstalk change. Especially with the lvl 20 upgrade that gives +40% movement speed to your whole team for 8 seconds, which is absurd. It gives a pretty big advantage in an even fight, and when you're snowballing it just seems completely broken.

The new Searing Arrows + lvl 13 attack speed buff for Hunter's Mark also gives her pretty decent burst damage. She has quite a few viable builds now.

I've been going:
1: Ranger's Mark
4: Searing Arrows or Healing Ward
7: Lunar Flare or Battle Momentum
10: Shadowstalk
13: Huntress's Fury, Sprint, or Overflowing Light (though Shrink Ray is obviously also viable)
16: Trueshot Aura
20: Hunter's Swiftness, Nexus Frenzy, or Rewind

I haven't really gone Owl build since the new changes, but Owl builds are the top winrate builds on Hotslogs so I guess that's something. It just feels like you give up too much by taking Owl talents at 1, 4, and 16.

Funny how Starfall seems so underwhelming these days, when it used to be the default option for her.

[Alan]

Sonya is ridiculous right now.

The build:
1: War Paint
4: Focused Attack
7: Ferocious Healing
10: Wrath of the Berserker
13: Mystical Spear
16: Nerves of Steel (though I hear No Escape is good too)
20: Ignore Pain

She has great sustain, she's one of those heroes that does best if you keep attacking when she's low on health. If you try to run without using her AAs or Whirlwind to heal herself then she can go down pretty quickly until she gets her defensive talents at 16 and 20. Generally you want to save WW for either chasing, retreating, or in a situation where you can hit multiple heroes and/or minions to give yourself a ton of healing. Otherwise you do more damage and self-heal with AA/slam (provided you took War Paint). She's especially strong on sustained objective maps (Infernal Shrines, Battlefield of Eternity, Sky Temple), since she has so many ways to heal herself and doesn't have mana. Actually she's strong on PvE maps and teamfight oriented maps. Pretty much every map. She can lane, has good waveclear, is strong 1v1, in teamfight, doing merc camps, basically everything.

I think that unless she gets nerfed before Blizzcon she's going to be first pick/ban throughout the tournament.

[Alan]

I bought Illidan because he seems fun to play. He is fun to play but right now feels a lot like a weaker version of Sonya.

[Alan]

After 5 games of Illidan, I think he's probably been my favorite hero to play so far, which is shocking to me.

[Dave]

Yea, Illy is pretty fun. No mana and you know exactly why you died! haha

[Jonathan]

I notice I get matched with noticeably less experienced players in QM, so I'm focusing on playing QM so my QM Games Played isn't gating me from teams with good players.

I also stopped uploading my games to Hotslogs. The in-game statistics are sufficient, and the Hotslogs MMR is definitely a trailing predictor of the Blizzard MMR.

Slowly I'm coming around to the idea that Diablo's sustain is building big damage on his W & R. Nobody can poke you down when they're dead.

[Dave]

Played a few AI games with Artanis, not really liking him so far. Much prefer Arthas / Tyreal as a general purpose warrior... we'll see!

[Jonathan]

Yeah, I don't think I care about Artanis. Power underwhelming.

[Jonathan]

I am super happy that there's a hard counter to Leoric in the game now. Hopefully that will mean fewer games I have to play against him! But it doesn't mean I want to play Artanis. He just doesn't look fun.

So, Tyrande is my only hero >5 that I don't own. Not sure if I'm going to buy her; I haven't played her in months. I might get The Butcher, maybe. I have 10k and it's burning a hole in my e-wallet. If I bought him, then Arthas is probably my second choice. I am really racking my brain for another ranged character I would like to have. I really like Falstad and Valla because they have escapes. I like Raynor and Zagara and Hammer because they have range. Are there any more ranged damage with escapes/range?

[Jonathan]

Oh, Sylvanas is just too damn squishy.

[Alan]

From what I'm hearing/reading, Artanis is going to be more of an Illidan kind of hero, where he can be very strong if in the right comp. I could see myself enjoying him. Maybe.

For ranged assassins with range/mobility I think you've pretty much hit them all. Though Tychus kind of has an escape and is very simple to kite with.

[Jonathan]

Yeah, I keep checking Tychus out.

I find I am substantially more effective at kills with Diablo than other warriors because orb walking while body blocking is just mechanically easier on him due to his huge hit box and slow attack speed.

I feel like Tychus is the opposite of good at that but I don't know what that means. Basically, I never know where to position.

In other news, the more I think about it, the more I think the whole support class needs to be looked at. I feel like I never get supports in QM, and I definitely avoid playing them now.

[Alan]

Yeah I just don't find supports to be much fun to play anymore, outside of the semi-supports like Tyrande and Tassadar. I think it's one of the main reasons I've been sticking to QM instead of playing HL; since in every HL game there's a fair chance that you'll have a team where nobody is able or willing to play support, and if you want a chance at winning you have to be support. Playing a class you don't really want to play in order to win makes it feel grindy. The same goes for tank, actually, though in the current meta you can go with two bruisers and do pretty well, so it's less of an issue.

I kind of wish they would rework all the other supports (meaning not Tyrande and Tassadar) to make the game less heal-dependent, to be honest.

Uther is ok due to his stun, but just not as much fun for me as assassins or bruisers.

[Jonathan]

Yeah, not so much an effectiveness issue. Just a good times issue. I like Malf's root and Bwing's global range, but I don't QM with them.

Hotslogs Diamond talent stats on Tychus show that while Overkill build is the most popular, by far, the following talents are higher win rate:

Regeneration Master
Vampiric Assault
Rapid Fire
Ult depends
Stim Pack
Lock and Load
Nexus Frenzy

I tried Dash, Focused Attack, Rapid Fire, Problem Solver and hated it, so I wrote off AA. That Hotslogs build, though, looks dope as fuck.

[Jonathan]

Eventually they'll implement "Looking for healer" one way or another, and then TL can be a thing!

[Alan]

It would be great if the game could move in a direction where the class of the hero mattered less than synergies with other heroes.

Right now it seems like it's still pretty much a requirement to have a teamcomp that has the following elements:
at least one warrior
at least one support
fill the rest with assassins and specialists, other warriors, or semi-supports

I would like to see more viable no warrior comps, or no support comps. In the NA Road to Blizzcon finals one of the teams (Murlock Geniuses or Cognitive, don't remember) ran a no-tank Illidan comp, using something like Abathur, Brightwing, Tassadar, and a ranged damage dealer and had some success with it.

I guess it's just that in solo-Q it's not feasible to expect that 5 people who aren't coordinated in some way would be able to put together a draft that takes advantage of these synergies, and it's just easiest if you can pick at least hero from each category to make up a team.

Edit: https://goo.gl/t7LFeT

[Alan]

Ideally each hero would have enough build variety that you could build each hero in a way to work with other heroes. Like with Tyrande, you can build her in a variety of ways to fill a variety of roles depending on the rest of your comp. But that's probably asking too much.

[Jonathan]

Or Na'Vi with: - Abathur - Uther - Butcher - Kerrigan - Falstad winning the EU championship. Lamb+ Gust OP!

I blame QM for excluding these comps. I don't think there's anything particularly combo dependent that only works with voice coordination in that comp.