Tips for new players from a five year veteran of HotS.

[plz delete account]

Hello!
Today I'm going to be going over some tips I have for new players of Heroes of the Storm in several categories, such as Economy, EXP, Learning to Play a New Hero, among others. If you are a veteran, feel free to discuss what I've gone over, or even share things I might have missed. New or returning players, read through and then if we missed something you feel should be covered, feel free to ask here!

Please be civil here. Old ( meaning previously accurate, but no longer) or inaccurate information should be striked through, but not removed. Mods: If you see violations of this rule, feel free to enforce, but I'm not going to ask you read through the thread a billion times a day looking for such thread rule violations.)

Without further ado, we will start with learning to play a new hero.

First off; the best way to learn is hands on. Drop into Try Me mode with the hero (accessed by finding the hero in your collections > heroes tab) and play around with the hero. Get a feel for what each ability does, how well the hero can clear lanes of minions, and a overall basic feel for how the auto attacks, basic attacks, and Ultimates work and what they do.

Then, you can either purchase the hero outright with gold/gems or use the hero when it gets slotted into the weekly free heroes selection, and then proceed to learn how the hero is affected by a full 5v5 environment (Elite AI recommended for this) with human team mates. This'll take about 5-10 matches depending on the difficulty, before jumping into Quick Match.

Definitely play some quick matches with the hero before jumping into Unranked or Storm League play so you have a basic idea of how real people will try to play with, counter, or outright play around your hero's kit. Learning positioning is key. You don't want to be in the front lines as Tyrande, and Johanna is useless hanging around your team's back line.

Gaining Experience.


In Heroes of the Storm, experience is accumulated team-wide. You will gain the same amount of experience in one lane regardless of whether there are no team mates there, or you have your entire team there. However, the most efficient way to gain EXP in-game is to have a minimum of one hero in each lane, so something like 1-3-1 or 2-2-1 in a three lane map, or 1-4, 2-3 in a two lane map. Collecting exp nodes from minions will provide good EXP over time, and you can get loads of exp from taking down enemy structures or heroes.

When the match finishes, you will be awarded EXP to your hero based on how much EXP your team earned overall. Longer matches tend to provide more EXP then shorter ones for this reason.

As stated, your hero will be awarded EXP based on how much EXP your team earned overall.
The overall breakdown will look something like this:

Team EXP earned*modifier that changes depending on the mode of play you engaged in = X
Bonus if you won the match = X/2
Playing with a friend bonus = X/4 (really, it's X/2 because you also get a bonus from being in a party with one person)
etc etc. Quick Match provides more exp then Versus AI, Unranked more then Quick Match, etc etc.

Economy

You earn gold for completing a match.
10 or 15 in Versus AI,
20 or 30 in QM, and so on.

In addition, you have Daily Quests. Complete your quests for the day to earn gold bonuses. Often several hundred gold. It's usually better to complete these quests in Versus AI or Quick Match simply because the level of competition you see from the enemy team is a lot lower, and you won't be punished by having a team comp designed to make your picked hero completely useless.

"Heroes can be purchased with gold, but things such as shards only drop from lootboxes?"
This is incorrect. You can purchase shards at no expense to your wallet using gold. 2,000 gold for 100 shards, or 10,000 for 500. Even with this being the case, it often is cheaper to purchase skins/portraits/banners/etc with shards, and heroes with gold, then it is to constantly buy lootboxes in the hopes you'll get lucky simply from mathematical probability.

[Clatratus]

or even share things I might have missed.

If you have actually played this game for five years, you can't honestly believe that there MIGHT be things you missed in this post. In case you do believe that, here are some things you missed: laning/soaking, camps, pushing, map awareness, hero roles, communication, when to engage, objectives (a hots unique feature), dealing with toxicity, and a lot more. All of these are CRUCIAL for new players and the only things you included were: experience (barely), gold acquisition, and try mode.

I'd recommend going to youtube/reddit for tips/guides. I would give specific examples but I know that is against one of the mmo-champ rules. If a mod says it's fine though, I'd be more than happy to post a few reddit guides and youtubers to check out.

[plz delete account]

If you have actually played this game for five years, you can't honestly believe that there MIGHT be things you missed in this post. In case you do believe that, here are some things you missed: laning/soaking, camps, pushing, map awareness, hero roles, communication, when to engage, objectives (a hots unique feature), dealing with toxicity, and a lot more. All of these are CRUCIAL for new players and the only things you included were: experience (barely), gold acquisition, and try mode.

I'd recommend going to youtube/reddit for tips/guides. I would give specific examples but I know that is against one of the mmo-champ rules. If a mod says it's fine though, I'd be more than happy to post a few reddit guides and youtubers to check out.

Laning is covered in EXP section. and gold in economy. Also I covered progression. Did you just completely skim?
OBJs and mercs should be covered though.

[Donald Hellscream]

The timing of merc captures is very important, if possible one should delay capturing until an objective is close to popping up or a couple of heroes on the enemy team is down for the count, the reason for this is that if an objective is active and a mercenaries are pushing down a lane, people will on most cases split off to deal with it, in a team fight this is crucial as it can quickly give your team the upper hand. Likewise if a number of heroes on the enemy team are dead, it leaves an opportunity for the mercenaries to push down a lane unhindered, provided you can tie down eventual stragglers so that they don't retreat to fight off the merc wave.

I am by no means a pro but I do have around 2300 matches under my belt so I'd like to think I have a somewhat solid grasp on how to play HotS.

[Clatratus]

Laning is covered in EXP section. and gold in economy. Also I covered progression. Did you just completely skim?
OBJs and mercs should be covered though.

You gave a minimalist explanation for how laning works in the experience section which is why I included that in the list of things you missed. It seems like you might have skimmed my message because I actually gave you credit for gold. As for progression, if you are referring to moving from try mode-> qm -> SL/unranked, then sure you covered that as well.

Collecting exp nodes from minions will provide good EXP over time, and you can get loads of exp from taking down enemy structures or heroes.

You explained how to get experience but went no further. The following things could have been included: freezing/winning a lane, globes, denying xp, incorporating the health fountain (I'll admit this one could have been optional since this is something you learn over time), and split soaking.

[plz delete account]

Mercenaries and Objectives are important in Heroes of the Storm.


While it's *very* unlikely you'll ever have a game where you do 100% of your team's, or even 100% of your game's curse damage in Cursed Vale, Objectives are map specific unique, meaning each map has a very different objective, each with its own benefits and drawbacks compared to objectives in other maps.
Haunted Mines has you collecting 100 skulls to make your golem more powerful, Braxis Holdout has you controlling points called Beacons for a similiar effect as Mines, but with waves of Zerg instead, Warhead Junction occasionally lets you grab Warheads, best used for destroying structures, but a good player can use them effectively in team fights for area denial. in Blackheart's Bay, your team collects gold coins from camping, destroying treasure chests, and killing players that have saved up their gold coins. It's often best to take a mercenary camp *just* before an objective spawns, sometimes forcing the opposing team to split to deal with OBJ and with the merc, which is very advantageous in team fights.

There are different forms of Mercenary camps.
Siege, Sapper, Groups, and Bosses.
Sappers are only present on Towers, and deal direct damage to your enemies forts or core.
Siege push down a lane, hurling rocks or spears at structures and minions in that lane.
Groups such as Knights push lanes much like a hero or a minion might.
Bosses are powerful, single merc units that can create powerful pushes and are *very* useful in team fights. You often need a minimum of 3 players to take a Boss merc camp.

[Twoddle]

It would be helpful to explain to people with no experience of mobas at all, what experience is and what the point of experience is. What it does in the game and also the fact that it carries over into levelling up each hero outside the match and what the point of that is.

I had to learn all this from square one, it is not explained very well anywhere.