Getting Graves (for people that hate MOBAs)

[braeldiil]

This is a post for people (like me) who have to have every pet, but don't like MOBAs. Heroes may be a shining star in the MOBA firmament, but since I don't like the style it was never going to work for me. But I'm compelled to catch all the pets, so I dove in anyway. Here's my advice for anyone in the same situation.

First, remember your goals. First is to get as much experience as possible. And since we're not psychopaths, our second goal is not to screw up the fun of the other players any more than necessary. You don't care about getting good at the game, or making gold, or any of that. Just get the pet and get out.

It's also important to realize you're going to be bad at the game. You won't be pulling off the neat skill shots and combos that people will be using on you. So don't try them, and you won't get frustrated. Our motto is simple, simple, simple.

Just as important is how experience is awarded. Win or lose, you get a base chunk based on how many levels your team gained in that match. There's also a bonus for winning. But here's an important note - all the bonus xp (stimpacks, xp holidays, etc) is based only off the base xp from leveling in match. The win bonus is always 50k. This means that under a stimpack a level 25 loss is worth a lot more than a level 20 win.

To start, do the practice stuff and play a few AI games to get the hang of things. It's low pressure so you can figure out the basics, but you don't want to try and grind here. I'd stay to level 5, when you should have a small pile of gold, then move to quick matches. Here's the key - buy LiLi. Yes, the annoying kid from Pandaria. And she's still pretty annoying. But she's the best character to grind with, for a couple of reasons.

First, LiLi has only one targeted ability (baseline), and it's minor if you heal. Her main heal, burst damage, and ults are all self-targeting. That's probably bad for the pros, but it's exactly what we want. Secondly, she's healing support. So you're going to drag the game out just by playing, which means more sweet xp. Finally, you never need to worry about what to do - you stay near the biggest pack of your teammates and button-mash. You can't run off on your own and do anything, so stick to someone like glue.

For build, I'd take the following:
Conjurer's pursuit - tons of extra mana later in the game
Healing Ward - it's targeted, but also an extra healing cooldown, which is quite useful
The Good Stuff - straight extra healing
Jug of 1000 cups - massive healing cooldown, can run around while casting it
Hindering Winds - the slows will help you escape or keep someone from escaping your teammates
Two for One - your basic heal hits two players, but has a longer cooldown. That's two wins for us
Jug of a 1,000,00 cups - straight doubles your Ult

Remember, you have little damage potential. Your job is to stay close to the fighters, but never lead the way. Early on, hit a fountain or hearth ('B') whenever you run low on mana, then run back to the largest group. Spam your heal as much as you can. Use your big cooldowns (Jug and healing Ward) early in a fight to keep everyone topped off, rather than try to pull them up once they get low. Cast wind whenever you can - it'll take care of itself.

One other important thing: At level 10 you get a free stimpack. This lasts 1 week, and doubles all your base xp. You really, really want to do 10-20 under the stimpack. So make sure you've got time to play a fair amount (~15 hours) in the next week before you hit level 10. It took me 45 matches (22-23 record) to go from level 5 to level 20, with the stimpack available for all of level 10-20.

[hulkgor]

You can get Graves by just playing vs AI as far as i can tell, so that's an easy\fast way to do it, just make sure you play with someone on your battlenet for the extra xp, and go at it.

(if you hate mobas, just play vs bots and it will be fast and painless, without any grief).

[braeldiil]

You can get Graves by just playing vs AI as far as i can tell, so that's an easy\fast way to do it, just make sure you play with someone on your battlenet for the extra xp, and go at it.

(if you hate mobas, just play vs bots and it will be fast and painless, without any grief).

I saw very little grief in the quick matches I played. I thought it might be an issue, but it really wasn't. If you want to make sure to miss all of it, just turn off chat. Anyone who knows enough to help you win will be pinging anyway.

Past that, the AI games tend to be faster, which means fewer levels, which means less xp and more matches. You'll never get those sweet matches where everyone farts around and you hit level 25+ against the AI.