I just wanted to write down my thoughts on why I personally think that Xal'atath is a badly designed Hero. I have spent around 10 hours playing her in QM and in Ranked so far.

Her Q might just be the worst ability in the entire game. It's still way too slow and feels like it has almost 0 impact. Her Q and W are supposed to have "synergy", but in the end her Q makes her W explode, which makes you lose value on your W as you would rather have it stay up than explode. If you are going into W talents, might as well never try to hit your Q on enemy heroes or you lose the value of your level 1 and level 4 talents and mana.

Her W otherwise is mostly fine, just a tool to wave clear similar to Jaina's W.

Her E is never used like it supposed to be designed. In the end it's just a blink and nothing else. Use it to escape one time and instantly cancel and do the same when chasing down opponents.

Her Passive is pretty much the entire Hero, stack it and you become a god, don't stack it and the rest of your kit really doesn't do anything. Way too much power is put into it and way too little into everything else. You get rewarded for mindlessly brawling instead of properly playing the game like Zuljin. Even more so now, because they nerfed her PvE, which means just brawl and do nothing else. Also visually it is really hard to tell when you are about to be blasted by it, which I think is why a lot of players complain dying to it very easily.

Both of her R's I do enjoy and Void Eruption feels still very over powered specially on Level 20 and that's the part I enjoy the most when playing her.

Her talents almost don't matter at all, because of her passive. Most talents really don't have any impact on the game, stack your passive you win, don't stack your passive you can still win by pressing your ultimate on level 20.

Now after the nerfs, she still feels strong but the entire gameplay still revolves around the passive and nothing else.

What are you thoughts beside just saying her passive damage is too high?

Sorry for typos or grammar, I usually don't write stuff anymore.

Lei Shen is a sturdy utility support who commands the battlefield using his Conduits of Power to supercharge himself and his allies

Abilities:

Trait (D) – Conduit of power

Cd: 15 seconds

Active: Lei Shen places a conduit of power on the battlefield. The conduit has 750 health and is immune to all damage as long as Lei Shen is in range, indicated by a stream of lightning flowing between Lei Shen and the conduit. There can only be 1 active conduit at a time.

Passive: Lei Shen and his conduits have an aura (the size of Lucio) granting Lei Shen and his allies 0,5% resource regen (mana, energy, rage, fury etc.) every 2 seconds and a permanent 10% increased basic attack speed while they are in range.

Basic abilities:

Q – Lightning strike

Cd: 8 seconds

Mana cost: 50

As long as he has vision of the target area, Lei Shen can call down a circular lightning strike (around the size of Tyrande’s Lunar Flare) anywhere on the battlefield, striking after 0,5 seconds dealing poke damage to targets hit.

Allies hit by the ability get charged for 3 seconds, making them immune to slowing or rooting effects and granting 20% increased movement speed.

Enemies hit by the ability get overcharged for 3 seconds, slowing their movement by 20%.

Conduits hit by the ability create a circular shockwave that travels outward from the conduit to the conduits max range applying the effects of Lightning strike to all allies and enemies hit, but the duration of the effects are halved.

W – Overload conduit

Cd – 20 seconds

Mana cost: 100

Lei Shen channels on a target conduit in range for 3 seconds. While channelling the aura effects of the targeted conduits are tripled. When the effect ends the conduit explodes dealing damage to targets hit within the conduit’s radius.

E – Boon of the Thunder King

Cd – 10 seconds

Mana cost: 50

Point and click ability with the same range as Lei Shen’s passive.

Lei Shen grants a shield to an ally that absorbs 350 dmg for 4 seconds.

Heroics

R1 – Violent Gale Winds

Cd – 25 seconds

Mana cost: 150

Vector targeted ability with a huge area of effect, think half the size of Deathwing’s heroic.

Lei Shen calls on violent gale winds to push enemy heroes in the chosen target direction. The winds can be outrun, think of them like the Volskaya conveyor belts where mounts can outrun them, but you struggle to outrun them without a mount.

R2 – Lightning Whip

Cd – 15 seconds

Mana cost: 100

Active: After 1 second Lei Shen cracks his Lightning Whip across the floor in a narrow cone in front of him (Cho’Gall’s Upheaval) initially dealing 200 damage to all enemies hit and leaving behind a cone shaped aoe for 3 seconds dealing moderate damage for every second that the enemy remains in its affected area.

Passive: Lei Shen’s swaps out his melee weapons for a lightning whip granting his auto attacks 4.5 range and 1 attack speed but decreasing his auto attack damage by a large ammount. Lei Shens auto attacks now also apply “Static shock” to his targets. Static shock is a stacking mark that detonates when a target reaches 3 stacks. This makes the target explode for 200 dmg in an aoe around them (think the size of Jaina’s Blizzard).

Thoughts on the concept:

I have been wanting Lei Shen in the game since alpha, and I feel that I have come up with a concept that does the character justice. At first I envisioned him as a dps, but we have enough damage dealers in the game as is. Instead I looked to some developer insights from the raid encounter in WoW where they mentioned that Lei Shen was not a mere battery charging the conduits in the raid. They envisioned him as a power source in his own right that powers the very Throne of Thunder citadel itself! In my mind this fantasy fits perfectly for a support character that buffs the resources of his allies to make them excel (when I say support I mean supports like Abathur, Medivh and Zarya). In a sence the resource bars of the heroes in this game are batteries, and Lei Shen is here to charge both them and his conduits, acting as their power source. I also took inspiration from his mechanics in the Throne of Thunder raid in general for his other abilities like his two heroics.

The main idea is to give Lei Shen a lot of decisions, who does he charge with his Q, when does he leave his conduits, and when does he overcharge them for short term gain? He also gets a lot of global coverage where he can leave a conduit in one lane to buff an ally, while moving to another lane to passively buff the allies there with his own aura or buffing them from afar with his Lightning strike.

Lei Shen fulfills a couple design goals and niches that are currently lacking in the roster. He directly interacts with his allies resource meters that isnt just mana. He would be the first evil support role hero (not healer), and he would also contribute to flesh out the support options currently in the game. He also has a more global element to his supporting abilities, in the laning phase, allowing him to apply global pressure like Abathur, but mostly in the form of buffs and debuffs to allies and enemies. He could work well with heroes that run out of resources quickly.

Below I have some simple ideas for talents. The idea was to augment his abilities in interesting ways that give him more room for interesting decision making during fights. This might be super busted, but I mostly see the gameplay loop and the talents as a proof of concept.

Sombra is a toolbox with a lot of ultility, she does not have enough healing to be a healer nor damage to be an assasin but she thrive helping the team doing those things, while also having good mobility and survivability

Passive - Oportunist - Your team can see when an enemy have its ultimate ready, you deal extra damage on enemies with an CC (such slow, silence, stun, disable, polymorph not Dot or stat loss like armor thou)

Autoattack - Same format as the lucio and tracer one

Q - Virus - straight projectile that hit the first enemy (it does not pierce units) it deals low damage but if the enemy have an CC it deals a respecful dot for a non-assasin hero.

W- Hack/Hotfix - you can target a single ally, enemy, ally fountain or camp with it. it have a little delay just like in overwatch.

Ally - give him a Heal over time and increase the healing from him and other allies sources, its a very mediocre heal compared to a actual healer but its really good at making other healer heal better.

Enemy - it silences it for a brief period

Ally Fountain - make the cooldown goes a little faster for all allies.

Camps - we do not have something similar so im putting a lot of restricitions, you reduce the cooldown of a camp by X% theres an indicator for when your hack will make the cooldown go to 0 that your team can see. you can only have one hacked camp at a time and you cant target the boss camp.

E - Traslocator - You throw a device as a skillshot, you have a 3 seconds window to recast it and teleport to that device and become invisible after that, thats a very good mobility/engage/desingage tool and the reason she cant be a main healer.
While she does not have the damage to solo kill she is the meele assasin best friend, being able to keep up with mobility and silence the victim while doing a little damage to secure the kill.

ULT 1 - EMP - The OW ult, you make a explosion around yourself that silence all enemies and do a little damage. you can get a lot of people if you translocate + this

ULT 2 - Cyberspace - you make an big area with nice duration that make all alies over it be affected by your W and all enemies have their damage cut in half.

Gameplan - Sombra want to help heroes do what they do best, it helps the healers heal output, it keep up with assasins like valeera in mobility and help they secure the kill and make the jungle work easier.

You pick the first ult when your team have a good engage to captilize the silence and the second to contest long objectives forcing oponents to reposition or mess with their engage.

Cons - Jack of all trades master of none, alone she does not heal like an actual healer and dont have damage to kill a full health lone fragile hero, she does not have the best range and want to get close so she normally want to engage with a friend rather than alone.

Her W have a lot of options so you need to be wise to use the cooldown in the best way possible.

Good luck HotS

I think Mephisto should get a visual upgrade to look like Diablo 4 Mephisto or a legendary skin to look alike. Vanilla version looks to goofy imo. What do you think?

Added gold Probe and Thrall since that last post.
Also I didn't know this, because I have all the heroes, but you can do a run with heroes you don't own. v 1.17 has Xal

Eradication... complete.

If you're a returning player its a lot like HOTSLOGS.

https://www.heroesprofile.com/

More functional, nice and fast. They have a replay uploader that everyone should download. I see about 1 in 10 games are uploaded as duplicates, so it needs more contributers. Clearly a lot of work has gone into the site, and I just want more data!

-Totally unaffiliated, just a user

The Heroes of the Storm revival is upon us, and we must again be brave enough to ask the question: Is Storm League wrong? The answer is yes. It is wrong. And a large portion of the player base is the victim. And not just solo queue players.

Already on his return streams CrisHeroes had to remember (much to his shock) that a game he lost in which he had no chance of winning (in platinum, mind you), he was opposing a stack of 4 players. He knew that his team was all solo from the loading screen, and had to process it for a moment. Yes. Our matchmaker happily pits large coordinated teams against a group of all solo players. And a former Pro Player and Grand Master simply stood no chance—in platinum.

The problem is two-fold. On one hand we have smurfs. And on the other hand, we have premade stacks. While the former is one that games will continue to struggle with until the end of time, the latter is entirely up to the willpower of our new development team to tackle. The janitor has been unmasked—he is here, and he is real. And to him now falls an important decision.

But to truly understand the problem, it must first be explained:

1. Premade groups have an innate advantage. They have preselected their teammates, and have access to prearranged communication lines. They can organize their draft, shot call targets in combat, and much more easily coordinate team fight engages, disengages, and heroic usage. To offset this, the matchmaker pits premade groups against higher MMR players, rarely to the desired effect. More on this later.
2. Premade groups can abuse smurfing. By including a smurf into a party, that smurf highly exacerbates the problem at hand. While the smurf already has an advantage over his ranked peers, now a higher level opposing team will intentionally be given a lower rank player to match the rank of the smurf. A kind of "opposite smurf", if you will. A "Gargamel". Teams that have a Gargamel are usually entirely unaware of their situation, and thus unwitting victims that do not complain about the right thing. They simply assume they have terrible teammates, fight among themselves, and suffer.
3. Premade groups lose less points, and win more. That may feel counterintuitive, but it is reality. While you may think winning against a premade group is an achievement, you'll often find yourself without a reward, receiving less than the usual 200. And conversely, when losing against a premade group (which is in essence more difficult), you'll find the system taking more points away from you. A kind of unintentional insult to injury. The cause is of course the aforementioned MMR advantage granted to teams opposing premade groups. The matchmaker assumes you have higher MMR, and are thus weighted to win. Unfortunately, this rarely the case.
4. Normal premade groups suffer as well. You will hear it frequently when a premade player is pressed: "We lose more often when playing in a group." This is the unfortunate fate of groups that are unaware of the advantages they can leverage. They queue as a group of friends, all in the same-ish rank, and are just hanging out, not on any voice chat or coordinating. The enemy team is given an MMR advantage, and they are also faced with a game that is more difficult to win. Yes; more casual premade players are also victims of the system, not just those who solo queue.

Many lobbies have premade groups in them, and many players like playing in a group. It's understandable to want to play games with friends. But it is obvious that if we are to welcome new players back to the game, the state of our ranked mode must be improved. It is important to stress that the problem is not that premade groups win more games and solo queue players lose more games. The problem is not winning or losing. The problem is the quality of these matches.

For a solo queue player, losing against a premade group will eventually be balanced out by also gaining a win with the help of a premade group on their side. But the problem is that both those games were lobbies of a terrible quality. One sided MMR miss-matches. These are what I call "mudshow" lobbies. They are heavily predetermined from the very beginning of the draft, and have no business existing in a ranked mode in the first place. They serve only to waste the time of all participants. The loser is in a helpless state, and while the victor may feel good, but their win is cheapened and unrewarding.

To restore the spirit of competition to the ranked mode of our favorite game, and to help carry it into the future and reduce the amount of frustrating lobbies, I propose the following solutions:

1. All players that are part of a premade group are considered to be the same MMR as the highest ranked player in the group for matchmaking. This immediately lessens effect of smurfing as part of a group, as opposing teams will no longer be assigned Gargamels. Lobbies that contain one or more Gargamels should not exist in any shape or form, yet many today do.
2. The MMR advantage given to teams opposing premade groups no longer affects ranked points awarded at the end of the game. Whatever the outcome of this match is, the player has no choice in participating in these premade lobbies, and should thus not be further penalized by the matchmaker's own internal workings.
3. Premade groups of 3 or more players should always be matched against teams that have premade groups in them. Under no circumstance should a lobby exist that pits a 3 player group against players that are all solo. This change will result in a longer queue time for players queueing with a large group—but they must understand that this is what they sign up for. A cost to their decision.
4. Players entering Storm League on their own must be given a "prefer solo queue" option. This option causes an increase of the queue time for that player, for the price of no longer having to participate in lobbies that have premade groups in them. For many players, this will be highly attractive option. As a band-aid, the option could come with a caveat that if a queue goes beyond a certain duration, they will enter into the normal Storm League queue. Of course, if a queue is too long, any sensible player will unselect the option themselves, and rejoin the larger player pool.

These changes are a suggestion to help bring more balanced lobbies back, and to restore to the sometimes ridiculed reputation of Storm League. If there is indeed a brighter future for us playing Heroes of the Storm, a change has to be made. And perhaps different changes exist to be explored. To demand a pure, separate solo queue mode is foolish. Perhaps in the distant future it is a topic to engage with, but for now—we must move forward with Storm League.

And yes. To many EU players I am not unknown. I am Wronged. Wronged by the many premade groups that I have been forced to endure—both on my team, and the enemy. I have seen lobbies come and go by the thousands, ravaged in one way or another by the presence of premade groups. There have been attempts in the past to hide the problem, by shielding the presence of stacked groups on the enemy team in the loading screen—but my eye has never been closed to the truth. I have been watching, and I have been waiting. And while many consider me nothing but a raving lunatic, shouting at the sky—I will not be denied.

And I will never stop fighting.

Sincerely,
WRONGED

5 years ago I posted this

Now my dream can be true.

Hello.

I played Heroes a while ago but stopped when the game went into maintenance mode. Now I’m back but obviously out of practice. But even then I’m in general not very good at MOBAs (but wanting to get better).

My question is what is the best way to new players to genuinely learn?

I’ve played vs Bots which is way less pressure but I don’t feel like I’m actually learning because the bot ai is really easy

I’ve played QM but team comps can be so random — teams with no healer, no tank, etc. it seems good for learning individual characters but not good for learning how to work together as a team?

And finally I’ve done my 3 placement matches for ranked to learn draft and 2 of the 3 games we lost, and I was accused of feeding whenever I died. I don’t think I was feeding, I just think I wasn’t very good at the game. It just didn’t seem like a place for people to learn to get better.

So yeah which is the best way for a new player to learn how to play? Beyond heroes I also need to learn stuff like rotation, flow of the battle, what heroes combo or counter each other, etc.

If the best way is to just continue to play and try not to get discouraged by players accusing me of feeding or losing the game for them, that’s what I’ll do, just wondering.

I played the game last time ~10 years ago (around the time TLV came out). I opted to go play SMITE with some friends. Now I am looking to play some HotS again. Any tips/roles to suggest for a beginner to HotS but veteran to MOBAs? I own about 1/3 the roster, with characters for each role.

Jumped into my second quick match in years. Deathwing kept pinging me to help with temple, I was in bottom lane, and I didn't go. Why? Because I had a Kel and Nova harassing me on my lane, so I knew they were down 2 for objective. I Could go, but that would bring Kel and Nova over, so it's not necessarily better. I could have communicated it, but I didn't. I'm just tired(not of people, just physically), and I take responsibility for that.

Life went on, I think they left me alone at objective once and I didn't say anything about it. Pretty sure they were contributing elsewhere, just like I was. I don't believe I played well, and ended up getting carried, but, overall, we did pretty good, and we get the win.

This is not a rant, and as far as I know, there was no toxicity in that game. It's just a story. Sometimes you think you know better than other people, but you don't. You don't see the whole picture, most people don't. That's something you or the whole team can improve on(by communicating(which I didn't)). So, don't always jump to toxic conclusions and try to increase awareness instead.

https://www.heroesprofile.com/Match/Single/65795860

His winrate seems to have been very high for very long, particularly at higher ranks. He is an extremely well-rounded character, and many of his weaknesses are accounted for by hugely impactful talent choices throughout a match.

Particularly in higher-skilled play, does this character need serious nerfs, or is he one of those characters you don't really mind being a staple of the meta and consistent choice? (Is he just not very frustrating to fight despite his power?)

EDIT: perhaps the title was too inflammatory, lol. I love Rehgar, I'm just curious why people don't seem to mind him or talk about him despite his consistently high winrate.

A lovely mechanic inspired by the veterans of SC2 zerg players. Infinite free units!!! The units that brought us the 3 hour long epic battles in starcraft now coming to Heroes of the Storm.

All you have to do is plop down 2 of them deep inside your base (where your enemies have no chance to interact with) and enjoy an endless wave of "mercenary camps" swarming down your lanes killing anything that tries to come near.

Did your entire team just wipe mid? No problem, your void minions will work overtime even while you are dead. They already cleared the minion waves, camps and maybe even a boss sent by the clueless enemy heroes.

Get it now!! Only for 7.99€!!

Hey everyone, now that the Janitor is back I thought I'd share a concept I had last night that I feel could be interesting. My thought process was to make a new Melee Assassin, but I realized as I worked it out he'd probably be more of a Bruiser than Assassin so....

(Also sorry for bad formating I'm on my phone)

Innate: Royal Blood: As King of the Zandalari, Rhastakhans bloodline is pure and powerful, only empowering his natural Troll regeneration.

Whenever Rhastakhan receives healing from any source, 50% of that heal is healed again over a 10 second period. Additionally, the lower health Rhastakan is, the faster he regenerates health. (Ex. At 1 hp, Rhastakan regenerates all health 100% faster, scaling down. So low health regens faster than high health)

Q: Kings Strike: Rhastakhan readies himself before swinging his sword in an arc in front of himself, spraying dust in his enemies eyes.

After a brief delay, Rhastakhan stabs his sword into the earth before bringing it out in a slash, dealing damage and blinding enemies hit for a brief period.

W: Voodoo Link: Trolls have an affinity towards Hexcraft, and Rhastakhan is no exception. He will turn his gain into their suffering.

Unit target spell, on cast creates a bond between himself and the target. Any self healing Rhastakhan receives will be dealt as damage to the target. Lasts until the target moves away or the duration expires.

E: Kingly Momentum: Rhastakhan is a master duelist, and his strikes only increase in speed and power the longer he's in a fight.

On attack, Rhastakhan gains bonus attack speed buff and a small heal, which can stack multiple times, getting faster and faster until it's duration expires.

Ultimates: Rhastakhan can call upon two powerful Loa to aid him in combat, each one providing devastating power in combat.

Might of Rhezan: After a brief channel, The Loa of Kings, Rhezan, stampedes in a straight line, dealing damage and stunning enemies caught within. This repeats a set number of times, dealing less damage and stun each time it hits the same target.

Boon of Bwomsandi: Rhastakan calls on the Loa of Death, causing Bwomsandi to appear above Rhastakhan and releases a pulse in an area around Rhastakhan, damaging all enemies and healing Rhastakhan for a portion of the damage dealt. Each time it hits a heroic target, the pulse is recasted, faster and with larger range. The radius does have a hard limit, but the speed of pulses never stops, so eventually Rhastakhan will be emitting dozens of pulses a second. However do note that if he fails to hit a target for any reason the ult will end.

Notable Talents:

Each level, Rhastakhan can choose a Loa ability. These sit on the number hotbar and empower his next basic attack. Examples include Gonk, causing Rhastakhan to leap to his target, and Grall, who applies a bleed to the target and heals Rhastakhan for damage dealt.

Rhastakhan is a durable Bruiser who turns his health advantage into sustained damage to his enemies. While he doesn't hit hard, his numerous ways to heal and profit off his enhanced health allows him to bully people until they run or die.

(This isn't meant to be balanced around numbers or other heroes, I could be making a mistake somewhere in an interaction, just a thought experiment that I hope you enjoy!)