Heroes of the Storm

I'm in and playing. Thank god all Blizzard games are playable on my 4 years old laptop.

Decided to take a break from my level 10 grind on Kerrigan to do dailies. Man... Rengar is a beast. A ton of healing, minor cc, and with gwolf form he can stay extremely mobile. Taking feral heart at level 4 he's rarely oom and it scales very well into late game. I've played games with a heavier support/war comp and still performs well. It does require tight positioning though which seems to hit or miss depending on teammates...

Zaphid_sl said:

It just appeared in my launcher on EU, does that mean I'm in ?

No email

Click to expand...

Yeah it is pretty common. Generally the email will appear a few days later.

I'll be interested to hear what you think Zap since you have more experience in the overall genre than I had going into the game

elidib_sl said:

The other great thing about this game, both playing and spectating, is that it strips away the first 20 minutes just farming mobs, and gets you right to the action much, much quicker, and puts much more emphasis on pushing, capturing checkpoints/objectives, and funnels your team into team battles with their team, instead of mindlessly farming killshots while playing tag with the other person farming killshots in your lane.

Makes it 1000 times more fun to play and watch.

I think the only negative thing I didn't like about this game, and the main reason I cannot continue playing it, was how the movement and controls were so sluggish and bulky. Coming from a couple hundred hours of diablo 3 where the movement and response is SO much tighter and smooth, I just feel like I'm mired in molasses the entire time playing HOTS. I just wish they had used a more diablo3-like engine instead of a starcraft2/warcraft engine.

Does anyone else have that same feeling?

Click to expand...

I actually enjoy laning phases in other MOBAs. I like watching two players going against each other.

Draegan_sl said:

I actually enjoy laning phases in other MOBAs. I like watching two players going against each other.

Click to expand...

Yeah but people who don't play Mobas don't like laning. That's kind of the point

an accordion_sl said:

Yeah but people who don't play Mobas don't like laning. That's kind of the point

Click to expand...

So what you're saying is that this game is a MOBA for people who don't play MOBAs?

Vitality_sl said:

So what you're saying is that this game is a MOBA for people who don't play MOBAs?

Click to expand...

Kind of like Hearthstone was CCG for people who wouldn't touch a CCG before.

Some thoughts: It has the Blizzard polish already, but some things annoyed me - you can play your second or third game and not unlock anything, which is pretty terrible in a game that has levels for fucking everything and is obviously pushing angle to keep people playing. Arbitrary trait locking is silly, gimping you just because you are playing a new hero in a competitive game is just plain bad. Thanks to their model, working to unlock a hero seems like enough work as it is, grinding games on him to unlock him completely is overdoing it, but at least they let you focus on that one hero with the way queue works. I like the unlockable cosmetics though.

The gameplay is obviously very smooth and it runs better than Dota 2 on my toaster laptop, as in, actually playable in teamfights, so that gives it a big edge. I can't say much about the flow of the games or what the fuck am I supposed to be doing, but despite all the feature trimming, they still kept some of the more arcane stuff, like the way experience works (You need at least 1 hero around to gain it for your team, right ?) It's also weird how you can land most AoE spells to hit multiple buildings. Last, they don't explain much about individual map mechanics, beyond the few blurbs you can see on the loading screen, but that might be buried a bit deeper in the tutorial which I mostly skipped. Is level scaling universal or individual for every hero ? I also feel like some abilities aren't really noticeable, like the Valla trait.

I guess it will end up being the "fuck it's 11pm, too late for a proper game" distraction, which is a slot currently occupied by Hearthstone/D3 for me.

Vitality_sl said:

So what you're saying is that this game is a MOBA for people who don't play MOBAs?

Click to expand...

That's why I'm gonna give it a shot. I have no interest in making my B.A. in LOL, which seems necessary to play it.

Do you still have to go through the fucking tutorial when you start new or can you skip it now?

The maps is a fair argument but I think they expect most everyone to play a few games of coop/practice to get a feel for the maps before going into versus. But for brevity's sake:

Cursed Hallow: Traditional 3 lane map. "Tributes" spawn. Collect 3 tributes to gain the Raven Lord's curse which reduces creeps to 1HP and makes it so towers don't fire.
Dragonshire: Tradional 3 lane map. You have to take command of the north and south shrines then you can collect the dragon knight at the mid lane. Transforms the user into the dragon knight which does bonus damage to structures, gains a frontal cone AOE flame breath and the ability to knock enemies away.
Blackheart's Bay: 3 lane map with 2 lanes clustered at the top, 1 at the bottom. Collect coins and turn-in to Blackheart at the middle. Every so often he'll spawn chests at mid-north and mid-south that release 5 coins when destroyed. Mercs and neutral camps on this map also drop 2 coins. Killing an enemy makes them drop all their coins. Once the coin threshold is reached Blackheart will fire cannonballs down on the enemy team's structures.
Haunted Mines: 2 lane map. The haunted mines will open up and kill the neutrals to drop skulls. The more skulls you obtain the more powerful your summoned golem will be.
Garden of Terror: Traditional 3 lane map. Night will fall and your vision will be reduced. When this occurs neutrals spawn between mid-north and mid-south regions. Kill these neutrals to release seeds. Once you obtain 100 seeds your terror will spawn in base. Someone can take control of him to become the garden terror which has an AOE polymorph, AOE damage ability and sprint. Once all the neutrals are cleared day will resume.

I also don't see how the current XP method is arcane. If not it would just be a consistant XP flow the entire game. The beauty of the XP system is it really punishes teams who fail to gank and leave a lane of XP open. Many times an enemy team can get 3 or so kills early on but they paid for it by leaving XP open in the lanes. So just because they secured kills doesn't mean they're actually ahead in any way. Generally they'll be behind. The most common way to play 3 lane maps is to 1-1-1 and have 2 roaming gankers. Obviously depending on your comp.

Teron D'Amun_sl said:

Do you still have to go through the fucking tutorial when you start new or can you skip it now?

Click to expand...

Since the last patch you select your familiarity. I don't know *exactly* what it does (I selected the highest level) but I didn't have to do the practice -> co-op shit. It let me play versus from the get-go. So I don't know if each level locks you out.

Mist_sl said:

I just got in somehow. I wish this was transferable.

Click to expand...

Lemme use your account and shit.

Tenks_sl said:

Since the last patch you select your familiarity. I don't know *exactly* what it does (I selected the highest level) but I didn't have to do the practice -> co-op shit. It let me play versus from the get-go. So I don't know if each level locks you out.

Click to expand...

I selected the veteran option and still had to the basic movement and ability usage tutorial, which also introduces the background of the game, but the rest can be skipped. Nothing too obnoxious.

Zaphid_sl said:

I selected the veteran option and still had to the basic movement and ability usage tutorial, which also introduces the background of the game, but the rest can be skipped. Nothing too obnoxious.

Click to expand...

If you quit at the start it lets you skip even that I think. I clicked "I'm new" because I was on autopilot, and immediately quit the game. When I rebooted it it just went to the main menu.

Something is missing in hots. I think its the feeling of individual play. In addition the lack of items has really led to linear gameplay. Enemy team has a lot of DMG? Can't itemize to counter it.

Its not a bad game... Its just.. I dunno.. Missing something. Games don't feel that satisfying and losing doesn't feel that awful either. Its like they took league/hon/dota and sedated it. Its still a moba, but just feels unemotional. My friends and I were trying to figure out exactly what was wrong, but couldn't come up with one thing. Its a lot of little things that took the personal skill/satisfaction out of it. Champ kills don't even feel rewarding. We started a game with a triple kill and noticed no real benefit. Also not liking takedowns instead of kDa.

In addition, since individual play is outpaced so much by team play, I feel streamers will have a hard time picking up viewers. Team play will probably be enjoyable to watch, but individual not so much.


Love the heros and the multiple maps. I'm sure blizzard will continue to tinker it... They did a great job with hearthstone and opening up the TCG genre. But I'm not sure they are there with hots yet. Right now i feel the same way about HOTS as I did D3; at least hots is still alpha.

That's what we were talking about a bunch of pages ago, many months ago. A lot of players here, who don't like or have no experience with DOTA/LOL really enjoy it because their lack of MOBA skills (due to being new) doesn't really show up in the game because it is masked by team play. Also, players aren't asked to do a lot in terms of traditional MOBA skills. So instead they develop HOTS skills and excel in the game that way.

Draegan_sl said:

That's what we were talking about a bunch of pages ago, many months ago. A lot of players here, who don't like or have no experience with DOTA/LOL really enjoy it because their lack of MOBA skills (due to being new) doesn't really show up in the game because it is masked by team play. Also, players aren't asked to do a lot in terms of traditional MOBA skills. So instead they develop HOTS kills and excel in the game that way.

Click to expand...

I think its deeper than just moba players vs non Moba players. Our group has both and both groups felt the same way. There just isn't enough individual impact toake your contribution feel meaningful. It's feels like original AV when 40 horde and 40 alliance just crashed into eiach other over and over again.