Help me! I’m stuck in gold 2 and cant get out. My teams aren’t good enough to support (i put up 2x as much healing and we still lose) and my main azmodan is permabanned. I’m only winning games as tanks but this is not why i played hots. I love the diversity of gameplay and enjoy supporting just as much as dmg/tanking. When i was on my win streak I could play any role but now that i’m on the losing streak to take me to 50% i can only power through with tanks. Ideas/advice?
Eh one trick good dps carry. In higher plat you must fill
Look for positioning mistakes your enemies make (there will be plenty of them every game in gold rank), and the moment you spot someone out of position you Butcher them. EZ
Support is not a carry role. You depend too much on your teammates. Look at the GM leaderboard, 95% of them are assassin and tank mains for a reason.
There is just no way you will ever reliably ‘carry’ by playing very low impact heroes like Morales, Uther, Ana and so on, who depend on your team to punish overextenders, take objectives, camps, clear lanes etc.
Playing support is awesome; When your teammates are competent. But you don’t want to be in a situation where you play support who has 2x more damage than your ranged assassin, 3x more healing than the enemy support, and still lose because your team keep making the wrong decisions.
You say you have higher winrate with tank. Just prepick tank in the hero selection and most people wont mind at all.
Climbed out of HL from gold several seasons ago to master on my tanked mmr main account. Now am doing it again for TL since I was demoted a few leagues because I skipped a season.
Assuming you know what you’re doing, this was what worked for me:
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Don’t support unless it’s absolutely necessary. If the comp is wonky weak due to husbando/waifu picks, get another squishy carry that’s hard to kill (or Muradin if tank is needed) to even it out and not the standard fill. Not perfect, but better than a slow and painful loss.
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Pre-pick a carry you are highly competent with and/or communicate with your team about it early to avoid botched drafts. A carry can include dps, spec or warrior depending on the map, what your teammates and enemies pick. At lower ranks, you can completely roll over the enemy team simply by wave clear if the other team lacks it.
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If a teammate is looking too much at teammate profiles during draft, steer the conversation to refocus on the draft process. Ask what he/she is going to pick. The more focused that person is rambling on profile specifics, the less that person is focused on draft. I believe I have a 90%+ loss rate whenever I hear a teammate awestruck by my hero levels or something. Their focus is so bad, I advise them on picks and we still end up with 2 off tanks or some other wonky tonk comp for some reason.
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Keep a hawk eye out for an enemy Cho’Gall pick. If you see a first pick Auriel or Ana, that’s a red flag. Support plus Tank and/or dps already picked? Cho’Gall cancer might be next. Are they banning Tychus or Malthael? Uh oh! If in doubt, ban it if you’re team is not nearly equipped to fight it.
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Proper drafting and banning is essential. Too many variables to list, but if you’re not banning, you can always give a firm suggestion. Focus on what your team may want to do, considering enemy picks/bans, and ban for it.
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Suggest talent picks that would definitely help change the tide of the game. So many times, don’t know why but I just assume low rank players know their hero and know what’s best for what the team needs… but they just don’t. You can’t be vague and just say ‘x’ build because they won’t know what that is. Even when you do give a specific suggestion, around half the time they just pick what they want anyway, which is something unfortunate but what else can you do other than say you are a girl.
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Make effective use of pings if you suck at typing on the fly or voice chat is out of the question.
Despite what I read here, I managed to climb to plat with Stukov. In my opinion, he is the only support that can actually carry due to cc, displacement and damage output. Maybe you try him out.
good advices i follow them i have the same trouble like shadowmere to finally get out of Gold and reach plat5 so far i was Support Main too.
I feel like my impact is in most of the games to low. Do u have an advice how many heroes i shoulda main?
i Played many heroes on different roles but idk how to focus.
when i playing many heroes im flexible but not rlly strong on the certain hero. when i focus on 1hero each role im less flexibl but atleast strong with them.
Is it like 1hero with each role or more like many heroes like 7-8 each role? sry for bad english im from germany i hope u understood my written.
The mostly mentioned number here is that you should be proficient / competent with at least 3 heroes per major role (damage, warrior, support). More of course always helps.
From personal experience, pure healers (heal bots) and main tanks with low damage are not a good choice, because you can’t make a strong enough impact on your own, should you find yourself in such a situation. I therefore suggest against Morales, Ana, Johanna,…
Stukov can do merc camps faster than the other supports (just saying if you’re desperate and for some reason you need to do them). He’s really good
If you are a support main, you can still rank up in solo queue if you are exceptional at your role and can effectively communicate (pings/voice/text) with your team to out-play the enemy… but it is still harder to accomplish because you have to pray that your carries can carry and your tank and lead a team fight.
It is a good idea to master at least 2 heroes per role, other than your main support role, in case somebody takes or bans your pick. The more you master, the better.
The heroes you master should have a major impact in lower leagues, because most players down there do know know what to do against a good hero.
Examples:
Assassin
- Tracer - Hyper carry who can obliterate the entire enemy with help from at least one other good damage dealer (usually a mage). She can hold her own late game, assuming your team isn’t getting snowballed.
- Genji - Similar to Tracer.
- Kel-Thuzard - He can single-handedly win games if he can do his magic kills.
- Raynor - Solid and consistent auto damage, but weak against the dive.
- Kerrigan - Super overpowered right now, but still weak to her old counters of hard cc and slows. She will likely get nerfed in a few days by who knows how much.
- Chromie - So annoying if done right. I wanna dive that gnome just thinking about it.
- Jaina - Good for when your enemy has that sausage-fest front line.
- Alarak - Lots of cc skill shots. If you like cucking your teammates most of the game, this dude is probably for you.
Specialists:
- Abathur - Very good map control with a decent 4-man team.
- Azmodan - Good split push with long range objective interruption.
- Sylvanas - Also very good map control. Can slice through camps like butter by level 13.
- Nazeebo - Very useful for zoning and objectives.
Warriors:
- Cho-Gall - With a good healer, dps and second tank, this is virtually a free win if the enemy team was caught off guard during draft.
- Whatever warrior you enjoy playing, but more cc is generally better. Having an escape is a plus.
- Generally try not to pick an off-tank/solo before the main tank due to the other team countering it.
- Pick for the map and/or enemy counter whenever possible.
- If you pick a second warrior, you better make sure you have heavy duty damage on your team or pray your enemy is doing another wonky comp.
In the end, the aim is for balanced comps whenever possible. But if it’s not balanced, sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and sacrifice a healer or tank position for more damage if things go really bad in draft (this is what masters and grandmasters tend to do more often if the damage is not good or they just don’t trust certain teammates to get the job done).
Two words: Carry and Fill.
You forgot to mention that you need to ban both Cho and Gall or else it won’t work /s
If that’s not a bug, I don’t know what is.
For numbers I am using the talent calculators on heroesfire which I assume are correct.
Stukov has 2 options to damage mercs. He can either Auto Attack single targets or use his Lurking Arm to damage all targets at once.
Spine Launcher basically destroys his auto attack damage so that is not factored in. Like wise Low Blow only works on heroes so cannot be factored in against mercs. Flailing Swipe is his only heroic that can damage non heroes, and it does pathetic damage so is not factored in.
This basically leaves his auto attack. At level 20 this does 549.89 damage per hit, but only attacks every 1.5 seconds. This results in an auto attack DPS of 368.43.
His Lurking Arm deals 136 @4% per level damage per second but only deals 50% to non heroes. At level 20 this does ~148.5 (not factoring in rounding) damage per second.
This means that his lurking arm is more effective than his auto attack when hitting at least 3 mercs.
Now what supports can compete with this? Tassadar is an obvious choice however he is not a healing support and hence will not be used for this comparison.
What about Alexstrasza? At level 20 she has 153.80 auto attacks DPS. However she can use Flame Buffet to hit at least 1 merc repeatedly since it self refunds its mana cost. Flame Buffet deals 125 @4% per level damage with an additional non stacking 75 @4% damage over 5.5 seconds. Flame Buffet can be cast every 2 seconds. At level 20 this is about 195 DPS to each target hit by Flame Buffet.
Both Flame Buffet and auto attack can be used at the same time. This brings her merc camp damage to 348.8 DPS to a single target with an additional 195 DPS to however many extra mercs she can hit with Flame Buffet.
Comparing to Stukov…
Stukov can take solo merc camps slightly faster than Alexstrasza as he deals 368.43 DPS while she does 348.8 DPS. With dual merc camps such as giant siege camps Alexstrasza takes them faster as she does 543.8 DPS to Stukovs 368.43. Since flame buffet has better scaling than Lurking Arm and does not sacrifice her auto attack this trend continues with 3 camps and even 4 camps where Stukov can use his Lurking Arm despite her usually only hitting 3 mercs with Flame Buffet .
Then there is Rehgar… At level 20 that is 329.20 DPS from his auto attacks alone. His lightning shield then does an extra ~140 DPS to all the mercs with 100% up time. He then gets an extra 75% damage for an attack every time he transforms. However at this stage there is no need for me to continue as he clearly does a lot more damage than Stukov and likely even Alex due to his huge auto attack.
Then there is Kharazim. For him I will play stupid and give him a standard Insight build with permanent Deadly Reach just auto attacking. This means no Iron Fists bonus damage and no Way of the Hundred Fists. At level 20 that is 505.64 DPS single target. Again better than Stukov for 1, 2 and probably even 3 merc camps.
As such the answer is no, Stukov does not do merc camps faster than the other supports. He is at the higher end as far as support damage goes, but still nowhere near the king. That title likely belongs to Rehgar.
I’ll tell you how I went from Silver 4 to Plat 5.
I play QM. If I am getting consistently fair games (like 3-4 games in a row)=, where both teams are back and forth and good plays for all players, then, and only then, do I venture into Hero League.
Then, and only then, do you know that your individual efforts will be the deciding factor in whether you win or lose the game.
From Silver 4 to Plat 5. It has taken me many seasons…and only a few games to do so. The days that you can actually be productive in HL is pitiful, so I mainly just play QM until I get those rare golden days of even games.
Sorry I dont have a better answer than that, but it tilts me wayyy too hard to give my best, only to know that Ive been put on the team of lesser skilled players.
People should focus on mastering one Hero in one role, before thinking about mastering eight Heroes across four roles.
Too many people waste time bouncing between a dozen different Heroes and never learn anything.
The correct way to master anything is to focus.
I say at least 2 because your “main” can be banned or picked. Don’t forget the occasional teammate who sees your prepick and yoinks your preference away from you.
But I understand where you’re coming from. Rather have one “master” level hero than a “platinum” for everything else.

I say at least 2 because your “main” can be banned or picked.
I agree it’s necessary to have a few backups. Though if you pick your main correctly, you can usually get it in 70-90% of games.
On the other hand if you main Azmodan…

Support is not a carry role. You depend too much on your teammates. Look at the GM leaderboard, 95% of them are assassin and tank mains for a reason.
Everyone depends on teammates. It’s a team game. Those who say supports aren’t a carry role, generally just aren’t good with them.

Look at the GM leaderboard, 95% of them are assassin and tank mains for a reason.

Playing support is awesome; When your teammates are competent.
These two statements are at odds with each other. GMs are playing at a level where you can reliably expect your teammates to be good, so you would expect then that supports would be doing okay.
Your stats are WAAAAY over exaggerated. Even looking at the first page, assassins are more represented, which makes sense because you generally have more room for 2 assassins in a team, but you still see a fair amount of representation from the other classes. Assassins still skew more, but not to the degree you believe it is.
The truth is that the support role is required in most games because they by far have the biggest impact. So, knowing that if you require a support, and you’re the best at it at least comparatively to your teammates, it makes no sense to not pick it if you are good at it.

There is just no way you will ever reliably ‘carry’ by playing very low impact heroes like Morales, Uther, Ana and so on, who depend on your team to punish overextenders, take objectives, camps, clear lanes etc.
And yet, the season I got reseeded back to platinum after a long break, I basically climbed back to masters by picking Ana who had my highest win rate by far. EVERY hero has an impact. You just have to find the heroes that suit you the most.
If you win as tanks, you play tanks. You have your answer, you just want an alternative when Gold League either requires a good tank to make sure even the potatos know to go in, or you play someone that you can play in Diamond with and do well.