Heroes of the Storm - It's like if Blizzard made Smash Bros. but not! - Games

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/73vK3qO.png[/IMG] [B][U]What the heck is a HotS?[/U][/B] Blizzard smelt money and wanted in on the aRTS craze, and with Blizzard being Blizzard people are no doubt going to play whatever they make so they went and made this game called Heroes of the Storm. HotS is an aRTS like Dota 2 and LoL but, unlike most other games that try to break into the scene, HotS actually has some things it does distinctly differently than those two juggernauts making it stand out a little more. Well, a little more than it being another game from Blizzard. [B][U]I play Dota 2/LoL. Why should I care?[/U][/B] That is an excellent question. Do you really like Blizzard franchises? Ever wanted to play as your favorite World of Warcraft character? Maybe you thought Tassadar was a baller in Starcraft (he was) and you wanna play as him. That is kinda the main draw if you're a long time fan of Blizzard in general. They really capture the characters and make some pretty fun heroes out of them. The other part is that HotS plays much different than other aRTS' thanks to stuff like multiple maps, shared global experience, and some other crap I'll talk about. Matches are much, much shorter than your average aRTS. Average matches in Dota 2 and LoL can range from 35-45+ min, HotS clocks in at around 20. You start with all three of your abilities except for your ultimate. Each hero has a choice between two ultimates. Each hero also has a unique Combat Trait which ranged from a minor activatable ability to a special passive. Experience is shared globally among teammates. There is no gold and last hitting isn't an worry. Because there is no gold, there are no items and instead a talent system used to enhance abilities. Most talents are unique to each hero with a few generic ones shared around. Everyone has a mount to move around quicker. There are multiple maps, each with unique objectives to help you win. All maps have tall grass to hide in. There are no wards, but some maps have observer pads you can capture for vision. There is no jungle per se. Mercenaries are scattered around the map and you can defeat them to have them help push lanes and towers. Each lane has a healing fountain you can get a free heal over time from every 100 seconds, but it can also be destroyed. For hardened Dota 2 and LoL veterans, some of this might feel like it makes the game shallow (it does), but it's basically all about making the game play faster, making teamfights that feel quicker, and making games take less time. [B][U]Who can I play as?[/U][/B] There are 58 heroes from the three Blizzard franchises available to play now and it's not hard to think about how much that number can grow. Each hero has a role assigned to them, either Warrior, Assassin, Support or Specialist. They're all pretty self-explanatory, except Specialist is kind of a grab bag role. Assassins also tend to vary from gankers to hard carries. [T]http://i.imgur.com/BLnmW9z.jpg[/T] [B]Warcraft[/B] Anub'Arak - Warrior Chen - Warrior Li Li - Support Rehgar - Support Brightwing - Support Muradin - Warrior Arthas - Warrior Illidan - Assassin Gazlowe - Specialist Malfurion - Support E.T.C. (Epic Tauren Chieftain) - Warrior Falstad - Assassin Stitches - Warrior Uther - Support Murky - Specialist Jania - Assassin Thrall - Assassin Kael'Thas - Assassin Rexxar - Warrior Cho'Gal - Warrior Medivh - Specialist Chromie - Assassin Lunara - Assassin Greymane - Assassin [B]Starcraft[/B] Kerrigan - Assassin Zagara - Specialist Tychus - Assassin Tassadar - Support Raynor - Assassin Abathur - Specialist Nova - Assassin Sgt. Hammer - Specialist Zeratul - Assassin Lt. Morales - Support Artanis - Warrior Dehaka - Warrior [B]Diablo[/B] Azmodan - Specialist Tyrael - Warrior Valla (Demon Hunter) - Assassin Nazeebo (Witch Doctor) - Specialist Diablo - Warrior Sonya (Barbarian) - Warrior Johanna (Crusader) - Warrior The Butcher - Assassin Leoric - Warrior Kharazim (Monk) - Support Xul (Nercomancer) - Specialist Li-Ming (Wizard) - Assassin [B]Blizzard[/B] Lost Vikings - Specialist Tracer - Assassin [B][U]Battlegrounds[/U][/B] HotS has various maps to play on unlike every other aRTS. Each map has a varying amount of lanes and a unique mechanic which you need to compete for if you wanna win. This makes HotS much more objective-based. If you do the objective, you're probably going to win the game. [B]Blackheart Bay[/B] - An three lane map with two, large transitional areas in the middle. Players compete for coins which they turn in at the middle of the map. You collect coins from chests that spawn periodically and mercenary camps. Once they do, a pirate ship fires its cannons at the enemies structures. Or yours. [B]Dragon Shine[/B] - A three lane map, and if I were to take a random guess the first map Blizzard made for HotS. Fight over two shines on the opposite ends of the map. Once you control both of them, a hero can summon the Dragon Knight who will absolutely wreck buildings for you. [B]Haunted Mines[/B] - A two lane map with a jungle area in the middle. There is also a second "level" called the mines where the objective takes place. Each team has a golem they summon using skulls collected from ghouls in the mine. Once all the skulls have been collected by either team, each golem is summoned and it's strength depends on how many skulls you've collected. Universally hated by everyone. [B]Cursed Hollow[/B] - A three lane map. Tributes will spawn every so often around the map which each team must collect. When a team collects three tributes, the enemies towers will be disabled and their minions will spawn with only one health. [B]Garden of Terror[/B] - A three lane map. Has a day/night cycle. Every nightfall you need to go into the jungle areas and kill shamblers for seeds. Once a team collects 100 seeds, they can summon a giant plant monster that is very good at destroying buildings. Also turns people into tiny plants. [B]Sky Temple[/B] - A three lane map. Probably has the least amount of mercenaries but the most powerful objective. Three capture points are scattered around the map and occasionally activate one to two at a time. Whichever team controls the point gets a powerful laser cannons that will rapidly fire at your enemies buildings. [B]Tomb of the Spider Queen[/B] - A three lane map with almost no jungle area. Minions will spawn as normal but ranged minions are replaced with small spiders who drop gems. Collect enough gems and you can summon powerful siege spiders into each lane to help push. It's like a not-shit Haunted Mines. [B]Battlefield of Eternity[/B] - A two lane map with almost no jungle and a massive center arena where two guardians will fight to the death. Whichever team drains the health of the enemy's guardian first will get a powerful guardian to lane. Similar to Haunted Mines, except instead of skulls and a separate map, combat takes place in the center of the map and its a fight over doing damage. [B]Infernal Shrines[/B] - A large three lane map, similar to Tomb of the Spider Queen. Periodically one of three shrines can be activated, spawning hordes of easy to kill minions. First team to kill 40 minions summons a shrine-specific guardian which proceeds to pummel through the lane. Guardians on this map do actively target heroes and missing out on a guardian can quickly turn the game. [B]Tower of Doom[/B] - Something, something, map description. [B][U]Other Stuff[/U][/B] [B]Account Progress[/B] [T]http://i.imgur.com/jgI9eAx.png[/T] Yes, your account has a level. It has certain rewards and minor progression attached to it, but once you hit level 6 to unlock daily quests you'll pretty much be fine. Level 2 - 1000 Gold Level 4 - 1000 Gold Level 6 - Daily Quests Level 8 - 2000 Gold Level 10 - 2000 Gold, 7 day Stimpack Level 12 - Extra free hero rotation slot Level 15 - Extra free hero rotation slot Level 20 - 2000 Gold Level 25 - 2000 Gold, unlock all talents for heroes Level 30 - 2000 Gold, Hero League access Level 35 - 2000 Gold Level 40 - 2000 Gold, Team League access Once you're account level 30 you can play ranked (Hero League). [B]Hero Progress[/B] [T]http://i.imgur.com/QnHZFwJ.png[/T] Heroes have levels attached to them too! Just what everyone wanted. Heroes are a little more complicated in that their second ultimate and "advanced" talents are initially gated and you need to level up the hero to unlock them. In the grand scheme of things, this is a minor annoyance. A hero will have all of their abilities and talents unlocked by level 4, which can be done in two to three games. After that, bonus gold and stuff like account portraits and color variations are all minor. When you hit level 10 with a hero you'll unlock the ability to buy a Master skin for them for 10,000 gold, which is a special skin to show how awesome you are with that hero (or just how much grinding you had to do). Level 2 - Second Heroic Ability Level 3 - Advanced Talents Level 4 - Expert Talents Level 5 - 500 Gold Level 6 - Hero Portrait, Mount Variation Level 7 - Skin Variation Level 8 - Skin Variation Level 9 - Master Portrait, Mount Variation Level 10 - Master Skin access Level 15 - 1250 Gold Level 20 - 2500 Gold [B]Gold[/B] [T]http://i.imgur.com/bZ2gMk7.png[/T] Gold is HotS' "soft" currency. You use it to unlock new heroes and Master skins for characters, which become available for 10,000 gold once a hero hits level 10. Besides just playing the game, you can earn gold in a few different ways. Winning a game will net you 30 gold, losing will get you 20. Leveling your account will earn you some bonus gold, up to 5000 once you're account level 10. Getting a hero to level 5 will earn you 500 bonus gold. Daily quests can earn you anywhere from 200 to 800 gold by completing them. Heroes cost anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000 gold. This is not an indication of power. There have been times were some 10k heroes have been total trash and some 2k heroes have been really good. [B]Daily Quests[/B] [T]http://i.imgur.com/8tEXsQs.png[/T] Like Hearthstone, HotS has daily quests to help you earn gold. You get one a day and you can have up to three at a time. They're easy stuff, like win three games or play three games as a specific role or play heroes from a certain franchise. They help with the gold grind, although sometimes you can get really screwed and get some crappy 200 gold dailies a few times in a row. Unlike Hearthstone, you can't reroll your daily. [B][U]How can I play?[/U][/B] HotS is fully released to the public now. [B][U]Links[/U][/B] [url=http://www.heroesfire.com/]HeroesFire[/url] - The Fire network has been known to host some of the worst guides Dota, LoL, or any other game it covers has seen, but its HotS branch isn't that bad with some guides even written by pro players. [url=https://www.hotslogs.com/]HotS Logs[/url] - A replay logging website for HotS, also calculates MMR using the TrueSkill system. Has a downloadable client to make uploading replays easy and automatic. [url=http://www.hero.gg/]Hero.gg[/url] - Another replay logging website, looks nicer than HotS Logs, "uses a formula similar to TrueSkill" to calulate MMR. Also has an automatic uploader. [url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wbat6p1s6p3fCi6kJTDB087CWkNJezCSm_bxt5FiBaw/edit]Facepunch Battle.net ID Compendium[/url] - Easily find your Facepunch friends and play with them.

Blizzard announced Jaina and Thrall from Warcraft are going to be the next heroes out. Erik, Baleog, and Olaf from The Lost Vikings are going to make their way into the game eventually too. [B]E:[/B] And closed beta testing starts Jan 13th.

I'd love to try it but no luck in getting access into it.

YAY THRALL If anyone has an alpha key, please consider donating to the cause. Been wanting to try this game for forever.

I really really don't get why you thought putting your personal complaints into the OP was a good idea, it's really not the place for that.

Got an invite to the beta. It's not that bad, but haven't really played it that much yet.

[QUOTE=Linkuya;46447116]YAY THRALL If anyone has an alpha key, please consider donating to the cause. Been wanting to try this game for forever.[/QUOTE] After Hearthstone I don't think Blizzard does alpha/beta keys any more, they just add the game to your account when you get invited. I think the only way to get in to this, or future blizzard games, is to opt in to beta testing for it and hope they send you an invite.

My gripes with this game, that weren't mentioned in the OP: -There is little to do while the objectives aren't up. I watched the final match at Blizzcon and all of the games felt like a stalemate until the objective appeared, at which point one of the two teams steamrolled the other. -The objectives are too similar. Every map except Dragon Shine has basically the same objective: "Scramble to collect X to do Y then go back to laning". Curse Hollow's objective is dull as fuck also. -Towers are a joke. If you have anyone with the talent that drains their ammo in your team it makes them stupid easy to take down. Towers should pose a huge threat and not be limited by ammo, specially in this game because the maps are so small. -The jungle is also a joke. All it does is give you super minions. That's it. It really doesn't help to make the laning phase any less dull. -There's no out-of-game customization. I know Blizzard already tried that and it failed horribly, but that's because they made Rune clones. Runes are the bad way to do customization. Masteries are the good way to do it, yet nothing like them is implemented into the game. -No warding. I know wards in such small maps would probably break some things but not having any sort of vision makes pushes hard to stop. If the enemy team gets to your nexus you might as well concede, because defending from a backdoor in this game is impossible.

[QUOTE=Manibogi;46447334]My gripes with this game, that weren't mentioned in the OP: -There is little to do while the objectives aren't up. I watched the final match at Blizzcon and all of the games felt like a stalemate until the objective appeared, at which point one of the two teams steamrolled the other. -The objectives are too similar. Every map except Dragon Shine has basically the same objective: "Scramble to collect X to do Y then go back to laning". Curse Hollow's objective is dull as fuck also. -Towers are a joke. If you have anyone with the talent that drains their ammo in your team it makes them stupid easy to take down. Towers should pose a huge threat and not be limited by ammo, specially in this game because the maps are so small. -The jungle is also a joke. All it does is give you super minions. That's it. It really doesn't help to make the laning phase any less dull. -There's no out-of-game customization. I know Blizzard already tried that and it failed horribly, but that's because they made Rune clones. Runes are the bad way to do customization. Masteries are the good way to do it, yet nothing like them is implemented into the game. -No warding. I know wards in such small maps would probably break some things but not having any sort of vision makes pushes hard to stop. If the enemy team gets to your nexus you might as well concede, because defending from a backdoor in this game is impossible.[/QUOTE] -Jungle, gank, or set up for an objective depending on the map. Also the same could be said about professional LoL games a lot of the time. "They're just farming until baron is up." -I mostly agree with this one. -As someone that only watches this game it's hard for me to say much on this one without knowing what they give up to have that talent. Maybe it makes them fight worse so you need to force fights against people like that, dunno. From what I've seen towers last a decent amount of time and generally only go down when one team gets a lot of kills or when something like Dragon Knight comes up. I almost never see someone just running into it until it runs out of ammo and then taking it, that seems inefficient. -It can be a pretty sizable advantage depending on the camp. It's a good way to make teams choose between objectives and losing a chunk of their base, especially if your team isn't strong enough to contest objectives head on. -Personally I like no out-of-game customization but really no point about arguing this one, it's all preference. -Some maps, or perhaps all of them I dunno, have a capture point that grants vision over the area around it. Seems similar to LoL where sometimes you have little vision skirmishes.

Do you get a mail once you're in the alpha? Cause I just realised I actually got into it, since the app appeared on my Blizz launcher.

I already made a thread for this a while [url=http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1388798]ago[/url].

Got into the alpha a few days ago. Pretty fun but I dislike the progression system, especially where you have to play several games with a hero to unlock all their abilities/talents.

I like the game. As dumb as it sounds, I don't like Dota or LoL because there over complicated. I like it simple

[QUOTE=Manibogi;46447334]My gripes with this game, that weren't mentioned in the OP: -There is little to do while the objectives aren't up. I watched the final match at Blizzcon and all of the games felt like a stalemate until the objective appeared, at which point one of the two teams steamrolled the other. -The objectives are too similar. Every map except Dragon Shine has basically the same objective: "Scramble to collect X to do Y then go back to laning". Curse Hollow's objective is dull as fuck also. -Towers are a joke. If you have anyone with the talent that drains their ammo in your team it makes them stupid easy to take down. Towers should pose a huge threat and not be limited by ammo, specially in this game because the maps are so small. -The jungle is also a joke. All it does is give you super minions. That's it. It really doesn't help to make the laning phase any less dull. -There's no out-of-game customization. I know Blizzard already tried that and it failed horribly, but that's because they made Rune clones. Runes are the bad way to do customization. Masteries are the good way to do it, yet nothing like them is implemented into the game. -No warding. I know wards in such small maps would probably break some things but not having any sort of vision makes pushes hard to stop. If the enemy team gets to your nexus you might as well concede, because defending from a backdoor in this game is impossible.[/QUOTE] - Get mercs. Cap watch towers. Control the map through ganking. Push a lane with your team to force some action. If you're standing around doing nothing then you're not being efficient with your time. - Kinda agree, but there is a pretty big difference for how Garden of Terror and Haunted Mines operates. You can do a lot more harassing and less dedicated fights on Garden, but Haunted Mines is way more "all in" kind of farming once the objective comes up. And I like Cursed Hollow. - Kind of agree with this. They shouldn't have ammo. I don't think it would slow pushes down that much if they didn't. - I don't really have a problem with the jungle. - Fuck that. - I think the game would benefit from some kind of fortification like Dota without making the game longer. Even if you did the same thing as Dota, with a cooldown of five minutes. [QUOTE=uber.;46447881]Do you get a mail once you're in the alpha? Cause I just realised I actually got into it, since the app appeared on my Blizz launcher.[/QUOTE] I never got an email about it, I just checked the Battle.net client. Some people have said they got an email a week late after they checked the client, so just keep checking the client.

[QUOTE=Linkuya;46447116]YAY THRALL If anyone has an alpha key, please consider donating to the cause. Been wanting to try this game for forever.[/QUOTE] I will ofcourse throw you one if i get one!

[img]http://i.imgur.com/Dipte8P.png[/img] I guess I'm playing 8 games today.

6? Three games as Nova/Raynor, 3 as any warrior :o

I keep forgetting Raynor is an Assassin. I feel like they need another category for carries.

Had to play two Warcraft hero games. [t]http://i.imgur.com/RGcnGd1.jpg[/t] Tyrande is p fun.

The only way to get into the game is by random? I really wanna try it :c

[QUOTE=Bucketboy;46464720]The only way to get into the game is by random? I really wanna try it :c[/QUOTE] It's really fucking boring.

If you're in the alpha, post your Battle.net ID's. I need more people to play with. Brass#1929

Has Mannoroth been confirmed yet? I wanna play as Pit Lord before he is released in Dota 2.

Zeratul is in the free rotation. Yay. /s

Time to play Tassadar and ruin their day

Nothing like losing a game because your team lets Nova pick everyone off one by one every teamfight for the last half of the match.

Nice, we finally have a thread [video=youtube;IoGYf4F_Te8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoGYf4F_Te8&feature=youtu.be[/video]

[video=youtube;ehImE3FpDb8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehImE3FpDb8[/video] Patch notes as well: [url]http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/16467431/heroes-technical-alpha-patch-notes-december-2-2014-12-2-2014[/url]

Got to love the comment section on that video. 3 types of people, ones that mention Crystal Maiden, ones that mention how Crystal Maiden used Jaina's model in WC3, and then there are the ones that don't give a shit and just want to play.

lmao Nova got nerfed so hard. Tass got pretty nerfed too. :/ And Jania is 10,000 coins, 15,000 for release...