Heroes of the Storm II: Thread. Augmented. Logical Decision

[Icewraith]

Next Starcraft heroes in HotS will be a pack of zerglings that can attack before the game starts and a barracks unit that mainly lands in front of gates and blocks pathing.

[Spore]

Next Starcraft heroes in HotS will be a pack of zerglings that can attack before the game starts and a barracks unit that mainly lands in front of gates and blocks pathing.

Uhm, I have seen people request a Terran Adjutant as a parallel specialist to Abathur before.

[Gandariel]

What I really want is a Hellbat hero.

Voice of the SC1 Firebat, abilities of the SC2 Hellion/Hellbat, including transformation, line/cone attack and drive-by attacking. How sick would that be?

[ChaosOS]

PTR patch notes for anyone who hasn't seen them: http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/...-2017-3-6-2017

Try mode impressions
Probius feels very vulnerable and limited in scope, yes if he can set up he does a lot of work but his range and fragility will be strong limiting factors.

Arthas: Pretty good, not terribly changed. Notably his level 1 talent for his trait caps out at +40 mana gained but can stack an unlimited amount of bonus damage (4 per hero hit).

Anub'arak: Pretty similar, survivability numbers changes are the significant part and it's hard to get a feel of those in try mode

Gazlowe: Changes are pretty good, I'm excited for the E talent at level 13 that gives you additional stun deterrence (Drops a bomb at your feet whenever you're cc'd)

Cho'gall: The big changes are here. Feels significantly stronger with a better designed talent tree, I'd be ready for trouble when this guy arrives, especially since the Cho'gall sharing quest is back.

[Gandariel]

Apparently they've decided to clearly decide which Warriors are tanks and which are bruisers:
Now the PTR description of each hero clearly mentions which one they are.

Overall it's good. Nobody wants solo tank Sonya.

However, this kind of limits the scope of heroes.

For example, Anub has never been a tank in my mind.

He can trade super well and provide critical stuns, but he *needs* to have the ability to just E and disappear from the battlefield.

If he is the solo tank, he can't just do that because he has a responsibility to protect his team.
"Trade well, disrupt, then flee when low on resources" is much different than "protect my backline and peel for them"

In short, I like anub as a bruiser, but they decided he is a tank, so they nerfed his damage.

Also, this classification is rather weird for heroes that can legitimately be tank or bruiser depending on talents: Diablo, for example.

Lastly, Stitches needs a bit of a rework if they want him to really tank. Baseline slow on Slam would be good.

[Icewraith]

So I got the mount last week, and decided to do the Brawl thing before my Stimpack ran out. Previously I was playing with my wife vs. bots, so I was expecting to get rolled.

So my first brawl, I end up playing Nova (never used the other two options before), who I haven't used in forever, and never against humans. But I think I ended up holding my own and we won.

Second brawl... only one I know is Kael'thas, who is also super squishy. I ended up being rather nasty the first half of the game and then the enemy Samuro figured me out and ganked me beautifully a couple times, and then I mostly figured him out, and we ended up winning.

Third brawl... all Murky. I have never actually used Murky in Heroes. I HAVE however, used him in world quests in WoW where he has mostly the same abilities. I "died" very few times, but one of the times it had been so long that I don't know if my egg was found or despawned or I had forgotten about it, but I DIED died, which was a bit embarrassing. I think I still did pretty well overall, because I mostly stayed alive and racked up a ton of "kills", and we won... but in none of the cases do I really have a good idea of how well I did, because there wasn't a normal score screen at the end of the match.

2 second slime level 20 talent seems super, super-strong against a team of Murky though. 2 slimes usually kills Murky, and if my slimes are going off 2x faster than yours, you lose (or are moderately inconvenienced, since it's all Murky). I also got the slowing basic attack so they couldn't run away from me. I thought the kill minions with pufferfish to get mercenaries would end up being powerful but it's really hard to get minion kills with pufferfish when you're one of five Murkys. I suspect the "hit heroes to get damage bonus" for ...slime? probably helped a lot. Pufferfish in an all-Murky fight seems like less of a damage tool or waveclear and more of an area-denial thing.

A couple of the other guys grabbed infinite-channel murlocs and were really important in attacking the core, but I don't know how well that would have worked out if we hadn't had the rest of the team still running around killing Murkys.

I don't know if I was comparatively good or just got lucky with good teammates. Kind of frustrating. But that went better than I thought it would, so maybe I'll get back to playing more Heroes.

[Spore]

I have managed to suffer through enough quests to finally amass 10k gold. My current options:

- Lunara 7k (I'd play her like a bouncy Falstad, AA with caution)
- Morales (sounds like a no brainer)
- Auriel (but also 50% off atm)
- Dehaka (he is supposed to be strong atm)
- Zul'Jin (I REALLY love his background and auto attack heroes but usually go too ham on them)
- Valeera (she's everywhere but I suck at combo heroes)
- Chromie (a kind of guilty pleasure thing. I like long range, I like mages but I can see how having her in QM can be detrimental)

[Gandariel]

...

Lunara is very different from Falstad (source: I'm a great Falstad and a horrible Lunara)

Falstad is more forgiving, more spell focused, his E is amazing, and he has global pressure.

Lunara lives and dies by her auto attacks proccing, and is always half a meter away from being caught and deleted. Also she is always late to teamfights.
(Of course her damage is insane, in exchange)

Anyways:

Lunara: meh for me.
Morales: equally meh.
Auriel: best support ever. No, really. She's so freaking fun to play. I love spamming abilities and I'm REWARDED for it.
She's capable of such clutch saves, it's so rewarding to play
Dehaka: reeeally fun and good. They really nailed his design as "collect, adapt, and evolve". Three health bars, sneaky sneaky survival abilities, ganks. His W damage is surprisingly strong, and a good Dehaka is able to stand in the middle of your team forever and letting that stack up. Adaptation => E just before dying or Ancestral hEaling =>E makes you *very* hard to kill, and you can keep proccing your W and being generally annoying.
Zuljin is basically Lunara, so same feelings about him.
Not a huge fan of Valeera, but I haven't really given her a fair chance, so I'll hold judgement.
Chromie is indeed a guilty pleasure, but she's sorta viable in some maps (Towers). However, if you play her in QM and your team doesn't have a decent frontline, you're gonna die a lot. Also Valeera and Zeratul are not your friends.

Lastly, is the gold thing even a grind anymore? I've got so much gold, I don't even do brawls anymore.
(I don't really have much time to play, and the other modes are more interesting to me)

[Spore]

Okay, so quick runner up. Bought Auriel for money, disappointed. Bought Li-Ming for gold, disappointed. Played Chen as a pick me up, ruined by an Icy Veins build. Played Jaina again, roflstomped the enemy with 23 to 4 kills, with 3/11/0 on Jaina. Coulda had more kills than assists but I feel Jaina is pretty safe bursting down people from 100% to 30% and leaving the rest for Tyrande, any AA hero or just the tank/bruiser.

[GolemsVoice]

I really like Morales, but Auriel is cool as well. Recently bought Li Ming, and I must say I'm having more fun with her than I thought I would, given how bad I am at glass cannons.

Also bought Lucio, and so far I can't really decide if I like him or not. I'm sure his trait is fun if you can use it, but I can't, and so it feels really wasted on me. With his heal he's a bit like Brightwing, but without the additional support of two other protective abilities. I'm kinda in a strange palce with him.

[Keltest]

Ok. This hots 2.0 nonsense adds a lot of stuff from Overwatch that I don't think it needed, like loot boxes and sprays. But I can still pay directly for whatever stuff I want, so I'm at least not actively offended by the new system like I am with overwatch's.

[Gandariel]

And I have something like 150K stacked gold, so I'll get access to some cash-only stuff I didn't have before :D

[Spore]

So Cassia was teasered and I hyped just because they used the Diablo 2 Act I music. Does her backstory mean the Amazon is the canonical vanquisher of Diablo in D2? Because Aiden/the Warrior was the one on Diablo 1.

[Keltest]

So Cassia was teasered and I hyped just because they used the Diablo 2 Act I music. Does her backstory mean the Amazon is the canonical vanquisher of Diablo in D2? Because Aiden/the Warrior was the one on Diablo 1.

Canonically one of every class was involved in D2. Xul was the necromancer, Cassia was the Amazon, the Sorceress was named but I cant remember what it was (she mentored Li-Ming), and the Barbarian is the male barb from D3.

[Gandariel]

Hype rising for Heroes 2.0... Genji plus new OW map look pretty sick!

[Keltest]

Hype rising for Heroes 2.0... Genji plus new OW map look pretty sick!

I don't care for either of them. Genji is super toxic, like Illidan only 10 times worse, and Hanamura's map mechanics need work.

[Spore]

I don't care for either of them. Genji is super toxic, like Illidan only 10 times worse, and Hanamura's map mechanics need work.

Wow i dont like Genji too but is it that weird? What I have seen his kit is following and killing weak targets. But he does almost no damage needs both a great team AND a good Genji to get passable results. Granted having both leads to two camps feeling Genji is bith UP and OP.

[Gandariel]

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/heroes20/megabundles/

Apparently, it's a great time to pick up this game. Twenty free heroes, on top of all the other free stuff!

Seriously, if anyone reading is even slightly interested, Heroes 2.0 is a really great starting point.

To me it's just a matter of numbers: I am missing several-to-half from each Bundle, I'll just count the gold value and pick the best.
I think I may end up with the Support&specialist bundle, since I don't own many supports, and I only played Aba and TLV on free rotation.

[Arcane_Snowman]

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/heroes20/megabundles/

Apparently, it's a great time to pick up this game. Twenty free heroes, on top of all the other free stuff!

Seriously, if anyone reading is even slightly interested, Heroes 2.0 is a really great starting point.

To me it's just a matter of numbers: I am missing several-to-half from each Bundle, I'll just count the gold value and pick the best.
I think I may end up with the Support&specialist bundle, since I don't own many supports, and I only played Aba and TLV on free rotation.

Wow that's awesome!

I'm probably gonna end up getting the Tank/Bruiser Bundle: there's 11 character for me to acquire there, a number of which I'm quite keen on getting, and although I could get 2 more from the Assassin Bundle, I really don't play most of those characters so the added value would be lost on me.

[Gandariel]

I'm actually doing something similar.

My best "value" would be the Flex Bundle, but since that includes several heroes I don't really like (Morales being one :P ) I'm probably taking the Tanks bundle too. Slightly less cash value, but I'll get some heroes I always kinda wanted.

There's also another teaser for the next hero.

Not really much of a tease, just three claw marks and some brimstone. Deathwing?

[Spore]

Not really much of a tease, just three claw marks and some brimstone. Deathwing?

Where do you see brimstone?

[Gandariel]

https://twitter.com/BlizzHeroes/stat...98378902429701

On the bottom

[Spore]

This look like sparks not brimstone.

[Spore]

Friendly reminder: Open your loot boxes FIRST then check which Megabundle you'll take. You might get heroes in those packs that change which bundle is best for you.

[Gandariel]

But if you open loot boxes first your bundle will be worth less...

You don't get anything from heroes you already have, right?

[GolemsVoice]

You get shards depending on the rarity of the duplicate. I think it's 1/4 of the worth.

[ChaosOS]

It's not quite 1/4, common duplicates are worth 5, rare 40, epic 100, and legendary 400.

[Togath]

So I don't usually play MOBAs much, but the Overwatch promotion has convinced me to play the 20 matches needed, at least... anyone interested in adding a newbie as a friend and helping them do a few matches over the event period? My battletag is; Meowstical#1303.
Currently I have the "flexible" pack heroes, Jaina, and the weekly free ones(though so far, I've only played Jaina, because tutorial, and Diablo, because my intro loot box had his kaiju skin).

Are there any set lanes heroes tend to lean toward like in LoL? Or can anyone work anywhere?

[ChaosOS]

Regarding laning, it's very map-based. Different maps have different strategies. The general thing you should know is 3 lane maps tend to go 1-3-1 while 2 lane maps go 1-4, there are exceptions though. What makes a good solo laner in League of Legends tends to make a good one in Heroes; Escapes, sustain, duel, clear are all important aspects of a solo laner. Notably due to no gold and shared experience, solo laning is not about whoever "scales the hardest", just about the actual in lane mechanics. Regardless, laning tends to only last about 2 minutes in HOTS (Most objectives spawn at 1:50), which means laning power isn't a huge consideration.

[Togath]

Admittedly, I last played LoL back in 2014, so I'm slightly rusty.
I think I remember most of the basics though(and given I did a tiny bit of ranked, I didn't suck too bad).
Admittedly, I do keep forgetting mounts exist in HotS.
Since I might as well ask(since he's the only hero I've put in the time to figure out at all yet); what lanes does Diablo tend to prefer? I've been doing mid on 3 lane maps so far(and am I right that his fire nova and "toss behind" him attacks are the main ones I should focus on? The fact that his charge seems to knock enemies away feels like it makes it more useful for skipping thin walls or finishing off nearly dead heroes than to pursue fleeing people).