Heroes of the Storm Newbie Tip: Don’t Die

Heroes of the Storm Newbie Tip: Don’t Die by FluffyBunny1878

Most newbie tutorials can be summed up quite simply in two words:

Don’t die

It cannot be expressed enough, but this is the primary thing you should be learning how to do early is how NOT to die, while stil doing all the things you want to do.

Let’s walk through “not dying” in just three possible areas:

Positioning

Positioning is about where you place your hero. When positioning, you’re asking questions like the following:

• Can I hit the enemy with my basic attacks?
• Can I hit the enemy with my skill shots?
• Could the enemy stun me where I stand?
• Can then enemy hit me with any combo special moves?
• Am I getting hit by any towers or slow effects?
• Can I use my body to prevent an enemy from retreating?
• Can I use my body to prevent the enemy from killing one of my teamates?
• Can I stay in a healing ward circle and still deal damage?
• Can I hit more of the enemies in my AOE spell from this position?

Knowing where and how to position your hero for maximum effectiveness is one of the fundamentals of the game. Every hero, can and should practice it.

Good positioning, however, requires a strong knowledge of where the enemy team is or might be. This leads to the second key area:

Map Awareness

Map Awareness is really all about looking at the minimap. The minimap is a super vital clue in understanding what you and your team should be doing. Here some example things to think about:

• The enemy just abandoned the lane I’m on, and I dont’ see them on the minimap, what could they be doing?
  • Are you overextended and they’re looking to trap/kill you?
  • Are they grabbing mercs/boss?
  • Are they rotating to push another lane/kill one of your teamates?
  • Did they jsut run out of mana and need to refresh
• I don’t see the enemy team on any lane
  • Are they trying to get boss?
  • Have they set up a trap?
• Two of the enemy team are pushing a lane, but I can’t see the rest. These two seem exposed and I’d like to gank them.
  • Has the enemy set a trap?
  • Are there easy hiding spots near the lane?

Map vision is a suprisingly important piece of the game. Often times during the game, when you don’t see the enemy team, you should think what you would do in their shoes. Most likely this is what they are doing (e.g. getting boss).

If you can have and keep vision (e.g. Zagara’s creep), it can lead to a greater dominance of the game, as you can effectively see and negate what the enemy team want sto do. When you’re starting off, after mastering positioning, you should make sure you’re frequently watching the minimap and know what is happening around you.

Understanding that the enemy is out of position and your team is prime for a quick Keep snipe can be the difference between a quick decisive victory and a long failure.

Map Awareness is also what leads your team to understand how to handle Map Objectives.

Map Objectives / Pressing Advantages

Map Objectives are devices in each battlefield that make it unique and cause team conflicts. Each map has unique objectives and timing that you need to be aware of to understand the flow of a game. This takes more time and playthrough to understand than simple map awareness.

Additionally, during the course of the game you’ll find your team in a position of superiority (e.g. you’ve just killed two heroes and your team is relatively health). In these scenarios you need to capitalize on your advantage and force the other team to respond from a position of weakness.

As a new player, you should be asking yourself a few questions:

• Do I need to help the team carry out any objective?
• Is my team already loosing the objective? (usually this means you should go lane for XP or grab merc camps)
• Did we hit a major ability wall before the enemy, such that we can force a favorable team fight? (e.g. level 10)
• We just killed three of the enemy team, what is the most valuable thing we can do right now to press teh advantage? (hint, it’s not laning)