Heroes of the Storm Spider Queen Tips

Heroes of the Storm Tomb of the Spider Queen Tips by BlueNoseReindeer

Hi there, I’m CarlTheLlama, from the soon-to-be best ESL team, Beyond Reason. I’m currently above 4k MMR (in the top couple hundred accounts).

I wrote a guide for maps awhile back, and with Spider Queen being released since then, I figured it would be good to add a few tips for that map. Keep in mind this is not “the way” to approach a map: the best players learn the rules, then learn how to break them; these guidelines can help, but you still need to use your own judgement to know when they are wrong.

Tomb of the Spider Queen:

• Much like Blackhearts, hoarding gems can lead to more efficiency with them late game, with some key differences. (1) Webweavers divide their push across all lanes, which can get you all of the enemy team’s taps on (potentially) a single turn in, and that’s a big deal for giving you mid and late game power. (2) Gems are far more loseable than coins, if you die with them more than half the time you don’t get any back, since kills don’t return gems like they do coins. (3) There are two turn in points, making it generally easier to turn in so that you don’t have to lose gems. (4) Unlike cannonballs, webweavers scale with game time, so while saving gems for a late game turn in does technically give you more efficiency, percentage wise it’s not as rewarding as hoarding on Blackhearts (assuming you push down forts yourself so that cannons push the keeps).

So to put it all together- hoarding on Spider Queen is generally weaker than Blackhearts, and it’s only situationally effective there.

• The best way I’ve seen so far to capitalize on webweavers is to get close to a turn in (maybe be 5 gems short) then wait until you get a kill to get the last turn in, and then get a merc camp before weavers spawn to overwhelm a lane.
• You can’t “sneak” gems the same way you can coins, rather you “farm” them in lanes, so having good lane control is more important than jungling. Along these lines, with all the lanes close together, it’s a good map for ganking. I like to put a tri-lane mid, with someone with CC bot. Diablo is good in this position because he will get pushed in, but he doesn’t use his CCs to clear, so he’s ready when you gank for him. The reason you favor bot over top in this fashion is because fatties are bot, and make for an easy pick-up after the gank.
• Webweavers slowly time out, like a Garden Terror’s W, so if you see one at low health on the opposite side of the map, it’s not worth your time to go finish it off.

AND THE MOST IMPORTANT SOLOQ TIP OF ALL! If you know the right thing to do, and everyone else on your team is doing something different, go with them and do their thing. Sometimes you can bring them around, and when that is and isn’t doable is something I’ll address another time. For the most part you should go with the flow, even when you hate it. Having a single bad plan is better than having two good ones.