Another week, another awesome MOBA guide from TMC’s Nystrik. This video introduces Blizzard’s quirky new MOBA, Heroes of the Storm, including what makes it unique, the different maps, and a run-down of the gameplay.
Heroes of the Storm takes all the cool things we love from Blizzard’s games and mixes them together in MOBA form, making for a very nostalgic experience. It’s quite rewarding to wreck maps with characters you already love and have a feel for, like Kerrigan, Jaina, or Sylvanas. However, it’s not just DOTA with a new coat of paint. There are a couple of differences that make HotS fundamentally different from other MOBAs.
First of all, HotS doesn’t have a standard competitive map. There are a range of battlegrounds based around different Blizzard games. In unranked play you pick a hero first, then get sent to a random map. Once you get there, you’ll find that towers and minions are generally not your high-value targets. Each map has its own primary objectives, and there are different ones for each map. For example, in the Garden of Terror map, flower mobs spawn which must be killed to collect seeds, and once you have 100 seeds you can grow a giant garden flower that is a lane-pushing machine.
Once you hit level 30 and own at least 10 heroes (the daily quests are a great way to get gold to buy new ones), you qualify for the ranked queue, which works a little differently. After queuing up, you get to see the battleground you’ll be fighting over. From there, you are allowed to pick your heroes according to their strengths and weaknesses on that specific map, or to counterpick the enemy team. Each battleground has its own meta, so strategies become more important and varied – rather than ranked play being dominated by heroes that have the most overall power, you have to base your choices around the strategies that you or the opposing team is trying to put together on the map you rolled.
There are no items to build. Instead, there is a talent tree that you get points for as you level up. There are different build paths for every hero that make their basic abilities do different things like extra damage to minions, or slow enemy heroes. So there’s a certain amount of flexibility that gives an advantage to players who can use it to adapt to the flow of the match they’re in. Leveling up outside of matches unlocks abilities for selecting in-match.
There’s a definite gameplay emphasis on teamwork. In League of Legends, you can solo, and maybe even carry the entire team, but in HotS the team levels together; staying in a lane by yourself hurts you and your team. Working with your team is also encouraged by the objectives. It’s hard to break out of the solo queue pushing mentality, but you can’t win on your own! So move with your team, listen to pings, and be a team player. A bad plan executed perfectly is better than a good plan executed poorly.
The next video in this series will cover the old reliable of MOBAs, League of Legends. Be sure to catch Nystrik’s Tuesday stream on TheMittani TV right after Newbie Tuesday at 01:00 UTC (8pm EST, 5pm PST), and her Sunday stream at 20:00 UTC (3pm EST, 12pm PST).
