Heroes of the Storm Quick Match Tier List

General Discussion
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https://imgur. com/gallery/g3yLPiw

This tier list is roughly ordered, and I’ll give a brief reasoning for why I put things where they are.

S-Tier:

Valla - This hero is the dominant force in most QM matches. Most Vallas (even the bad ones) contribute at the very least top tier damage if not endless amounts of picks. Combine that with even a little bit of decent peel and healing and Valla just kind of wins games as her own win-con. Unlike Ranked where you can easily counterpick an early show Valla (which is still top tier there), Valla in QM is uncounterable unless you QUEUE as something that single-handedly counters Valla (which there isn’t much of, Johanna and Zera being the only innately good ones I can think of off the top of my head) and that gives her top spot in my book.

Orphea - This character is a menace, I never see a poorly performing one in QM. Very similar to why Valla is good, but replace oppressive range and stutter stepping with built-in better stutter stepping and really good self-healing.

Zeratul - IN QM, Zeratul just kinda shreds through opponents without a care in the world. Only things that shut him down are hard CC, but a good Zeratul can just adapt and either soak with good waveclear or just wait a little longer to engage.

Dehaka - Global Brusier that has one of the strongest CC tools in the game. Unlike some other Brusiers, Dehaka isn’t classified as a Tank with in-game matchmaking, so on top of having really good recovery and global presence, Dehaka outshines almost every bruiser in CC. Basically the only thing that works against Dehaka is good coordination which… doesn’t in QM.

Hogger - Great overall damage, great mobility, good burst, good CC. Hogger should be nerfed tbh.

Leoric - Assuming you don’t have one of those Leorics who just throw themselves 1v5, Leo in QM should just be destroying any enemy without forced mobility, as well as getting great soak off their Q. Wraith Walk is a free escape assuming you have a brain, and Entomb is a psuedo-Mosh Pit on a character far superior to E.T.C.

For the other tiers, I’m just gonna point out some highlights.

Li-Ming isn’t in S-tier because unlike the other squishy S-Tiers, Li-Ming doesn’t have the sustain or mobility to fully carry on her own. With a decent team though, particularly an aggressive tank, Li-Ming can put in amazing work

I think Mei is underrated, espicially in QM. Mei can do crazy CC chains similar to Anub’arak, but also has damage, self-healing (which is VERY important in QM), and has the option to kite.

Azmo and Zag are both very much overrated, kind of a fat sitting duck a majority of games. If you want just a ton of siege damage and summons, play Naz instead, who’s significantly better at double soaking, teamfighting in general, and often more survivable.

E.T.C has good peel, great heroics, but the numbers on his kit just aren’t really there? Generalists are generally pretty good in QM (Raynor, Blaze, Rehgar, and Valla all notably are generalists) but his tuning is just kind of poor. Even for Wombo Combos, I’d rather have the reliability of a good Diablo or even an Uther tank over E.T.C.

Solo Queue Kharazims are notoriously awful, but grouped Kharazims are almost always good. While I was tempted to either put him in D-Tier or “Skill Dependant” tier, Kharazim has one good niche, and that’s hyper-enabling dive. Unlike characters like Tyrael and Abathur who have usability outside of their enabling, Kharazim really doesn’t. He’s got Tyrande Syndrome, where has to be constantly attacking things as a healer, but at the same time he’s locked into melee and doesn’t have CC, which means if he isn’t enabling Dive, he’s a bad melee assassin at best.

If I were forced to tier “Niche” and “Skill-Dependant” characters, It’d prolly go something like this:

A: Samuro, Lost Vikings (assuming player knows how to split soak), Zarya
A-: Sgt. Hammer, Kharazim, Maiev, Kel’Thuzad
C: Lt. Morales, Cho’Gall
D: Genji, Kerrigan

If you have any particular questions or complaints, lemme know. This is a QM based tier list and it’s pretty much solely based on my personal experience.

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I gotta be honest never seen a consistantly good hogger in QM, personally I’d put him in B, more often then not they just kinda die…A lot…

This one I just plainly don’t agree with, I ask you, have you once seen a Nazeebo that hasn’t killed his teamates with a botched zombie wall atleast once? I’ve seen a good 2 Nazeebos that have been able to hold their own in teamfights and don’t just A-move top lane, which Zagara does better at, Azmodon on the other hand is a lot different then Zagara, he can be played like a splitpusher and sometimes go into that at the wrong times, but he can also go into a teamfight centric build, a lot of Azmodon’s I see judge whether to go siege or tf pretty well, and Azmodon I would definitely argue is capable of outscaling Nazeebo pretty fast when it comes to teamfight capabilities.

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Good topic, and important. I cordially disagree with the placements of a number of heroes – most notably Abathur, The Butcher, Nova, and Valeera, whose value in QM is considerably different than in other formats.

Valla is indeed a filthy, filthy hero. I dislike players who pick Valla, on first principles. It’s freaking QM: play something a bit challenging, for Christ’s sake! I’m not saying that there isn’t skill involved with Valla, but her skill floor is way too low for the consistency with which she can safely post absolutely disgusting numbers – especially in a format with no draft and frequent Abathur.

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actually valeraa is a good noob stomper in qm, i got her on the enemy team 90% of the times i go butcher, she destroys all of my teammates and also me with blinds, stuns and she has many scapes enough to avoid getting killed most of the times, the valera must be very very new to suck with her

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Tier lists in an uncompetitive mode are a rather pointless as its all anecdotal opinion based evidence.

Also, S tier for whom? The guy who wants to win 70%+ of his games or the average pleb whose objective is to get above 50% winrate?

Generally speaking, for above average IQ players hero stregth priorities are: soaking and ability to generate exp leads >>> ability to get kills, preferably without help > siege and structure damage > self sustain >>>> anything else.

Valla is not S tier for these reasons as she has below average clear and lacks CC to kill heroes 1v1. She also lacks self sustain until 13, so there are much better QM hard carries out there, Valla if anything is better in ranked where tank and healer protection is substantially more common. Jaina can soak much better than valla and will easily 1v1 valla at any stage of the game, as an example. Jaina can burst out and get kills vs assassins much, much easier while being generally safer.

Dehaka is the other extreme, can get exp leads and self sustain but has woeful kill potential by himself and little structure damage. By contrast, Ragnaros with E build can 1v1 most assassins, after 16 he can insta kill just about any squishy without any reliance on the team. So good player with Rag can get 70% winrate but an average pleb might end up being more useful on dehaka to help him get to 51%, all depends how good the player is compared to the rest of the team.

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Yeah tier lists are always a bit silly for me because they’re personal. Like, Morales, Hammer, and Kharazim are some of my better heroes.

Kharazim is generally pretty flexible in his builds and can fit into many comps with an asterisk. Like he can struggle in some comps where he is the only front line, but many of those it’s more so because of how the other players don’t step up to share the load and spread healing more evenly so he isn’t the sole focus target, than automatically being bad.

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It’s the same reason Leo or Valla are up, sure you are going to get the average idiot diving 1v3 and dying, but a good Hogger will just destroy any uncoordinated team.

The reason I put Naz higher is that he’s MUCH faster at split soaking and spiders are really scary for a lot of the common squishy characters you see in QM. Azmodan’s abilities do nothing against mobile characters, and it takes him a bit (maybe even a heroic if you want to stack as quickly as possible) to get to decent numbers. Meanwhile, Zagara I think I lowballed a bit for sure, probably would put them a bit higher, but Naz, for all of the crappy afk siege ones, has almost the best split soak in the game.

Abathur and Butcher both require team coordination. If you are playing in a group in QM with either (or both!) of these characters, or are in a rare lobby where people are actually cooperating and not either afk or raging, then yeah, these characters can be crazy. But without that essential part, these characters are simply outclassed by others (I’m saying this as someone who’s played a LOT of QM Abathur/Vikings.)

While that’s true, I feel these two are vastly outclassed by a good Samuro/Zeratul. Sure you could roam around and get a good pick or two here and there as Nova or Valeera, and that’s great, but Zeratul can do the same while also getting pretty darn good soak and having crazy late game potential, while Samuro can actually do camps (something that is often sorely lacking in QM)

While this is true, the fact that she has so much mobility on top of her above average range means even someone who only knows basic stutter stepping can avoid a vast majority of compromising situations.

Yes, but Jaina’s sustain damage is pretty damn garbo especially compared to Valla. Sure, burst is great (and you’ll note I actually put Jaina up pretty high in the tier list, higher than most of the other mages), but the biggest threats in QM are Brusiers, which will almost always survive said burst combos, and mobile characters like Valla who will just kinda dodge/out-range them.

Any character with a 1.5 second stun doesn’t really have woeful kill potential, espicially in a mode where people are constantly over-extending.

Maybe I’m just a bad Rag lol but 95% of the time the most useful Rags I see basically just get value out of Lava Wave and sometimes their trait and otherwise just kinda don’t really do anything useful.

It’s important to note that this tier list isn’t exactly a “play this hero or you suck” it’s more a pattern recognition thing.

Morales, Hammer, Kharazim all excel when your team HAS coordination and when the enemy team DOESN’T have coordination respectively. QM is a mode where the general consensus is that there is usually 0 coordination on either team, but if you are even partied with one or two other players suddenly that balance shifts pretty dramatically.

Kharazim is the Tyrael of Healers. Sure, he technically gets the job done, but it’s in a vastly different fashion then normal healers/tanks do so. With good Kharas, the name of the game is actually get in, explode a squishy, get out with a little healing and a move speed buff, not “Keep someone alive with a bunch of healing and armor and shielding and what-not”

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If you’re looking at Kharazim through that narrow lens, you don’t really understand his flexibility. He CAN be that version, but he can also be the one that hangs back and jumps in, he can also be the one who is a front line. He can have some insane healing, and his level 20 has shielding, and lots of damage mititgation from his block totem. Or he can get sight for stealth.

That’s the thing, if I’m healing really well with Morales, it doesn’t really matter if my team coordinates well in a fair amount of games. We will just win most team fights and objectives. A good Hammer will be able to adjust to different comps and play more conservatively. In some games, they’ll still lose badly, but if you’re still winning 60+% of your games, coordination is a bonus, not a requirement.

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60% winrate quick match Valeera checking in.

She is solid. You don’t want to see garrosh, zarya, medivh, lunara, or uther on the other team but aside from that she does well as long as you understand your limits with the hero.

She’s really good at bullying butcher, varian, and artanis due to absurd blind uptime (over 50%). Her siege is good enough that you should be able to somewhat pick up the slack if your team is neglecting lanes.

Also, cloak of shadows is niche. Very overpicked. Smoke bomb allowing you to be more aggressive gets more value in most games

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