Heroes of the Storm How to Watch Replays

Heroes of the Storm How to Watch Replays by Ahli

It’s possible to watch replays. It works without any kind of program or file manipulation, so you will definetly stay on the safe side.

How does it work?

Starting a replay works in a way that you throw a parameter with a replay link towards the game and the game decides to load the replay file.

• First, you need a way to deliver the parameter. To do that, create a shortcut of the “HeroesSwitcher.exe”. It is located in the “Support” folder of Heroes’ installation directory. It does not matter where you place the new shortcut.
• Now you require a full path to one of your replay files. You can find your own replays at:C:UsersABCnameDEFDocumentsHeroes of the StormAccounts123numbers45698-Hero-1-123moreNumbers456ReplaysUnsavedMultiplayer

So, just navigate to a replay and copy paste its path.

• Open the properties window of your shortcut. There you will add the parameter to the “target” line. At first, you will only have the path to “HeroesSwitcher.exe” in the target line. It looks like this: “C:GamesHeroes of the StormSupportHeroesSwitcher.exe”

Now you need to add the following to the end of the path (with a leading space): -run “#” Replace # with the path including the file name. So, you are adding: Space, Minus, r, u, n, Space, “, path to the replay including the file name, ”

Now, in the target path you should have something like this:

“C:GamesHeroes of the StormSupportHeroesSwitcher.exe” -run “C:UsersABCnameDEFDocumentsHeroes of the StormAccounts123numbers45698-Hero-1-123moreNumbers456ReplaysUnsavedMultiplayerBlackheart’s Bay.StormReplay”

• Start Heroes and log into battle.net.
• “Alt + Tab” out of the game to return to your desktop. Then start your shortcut and return to the game. It should start loading the specified replay file.

Right now, watching replays is extremly buggy. Since Blizzard didn’t add a replay menu into the battle.net UI, it is most likely that the replay feature will receive a complete overhaul. That’s why I would suggest that you don’t report bugs you encounter until Blizzard adds a replay-starting UI into the game.

The hotkeys are similar to the ones in SC2. So Ctrl+W hides the bottom UI area. Y or Shift+Y (or is it Z?) zooms in/out. In addition to that, it is possible to view the selected talens of the other players.

Screenshot

Mac Replays

Here is a guide for watching Heroes Replays if you play on a Mac!

Your replay files are located in the following directory: ~/Library/Application Support/Blizzard/Heroes of the Storm/Accounts/random number/98-Hero-1-randomnumber/Replays/Unsaved/Multiplayer/

Your tool for watching replays is called HeroesSwitcher and is installed in a special folder within your Heroes directory – its can be found in the following directory: /Applications/Heroes of the Storm/Support/HeroesSwitcher.app/Contents/MacOS/

So say I have a replay in the replay folder called “Dragon Shire.StormReplay”

I can watch this replay by using the following steps note it helps to keep a text file open with the directories listed so you can copy and paste as needed

1. Open Battle.net, sign in, Launch Heroes
2. Command-Tab out of Heroes back to the Finder
3. Open Terminal.app
4. enter this command (without the quotes) to change directory to where HeroesSwitcher executable exists “cd /Applications/Heroes of the Storm/Support/HeroesSwitcher.app/Contents/MacOS/”
5. now enter this command to run a replay (i’m using the file ‘Dragon Shire.StormReplay’ as an example) – ” ./HeroesSwitcher –run ~/Library/Application Support/Blizzard/Heroes of the Storm/Accounts/random number/98-Hero-1-randomnumber/Replays/Unsaved/Multiplayer/Dragon Shire.StormReplay

This should now switch you back to Heroes and automatically load the replay you gave it.

Note: There can be replays saved that were from a previous patch of Heroes. So if you have recently patched your replays from the previous patches will not be viewable. It will give you an error that a different version of Heroes is Required.

Note: The path to your replays involves some folders that are just numbers or strings of text and numbers. You need to find the correct numbers by looking into the directories first and copying their full paths into a text file. For example my replay directory is under /Accounts/ random 8 digit number/ 98-Hero-1-random 6 digit number/ etc…