I’ve been contested on this point a few times, both in game and on forum, but I am of the persuasion that trading a hero kill for your death is never worth it. There’s always something you can be doing that’s better for your team.
I’ve heard trading while you’re down in xp is a good thing, but I don’t really believe that. You’re still on death timer while the enemy still usually has the advantage.
However, what do you guys think?
Obviously it depends, if you manage to take down a hero that has high impact at the cost of your own. It’s worth it.
It depends on the situation and the setup.
The general rule of worth when down in level comes from the fact that they get an experience penalty for your death, because they are up a level, while you get an experience bonus because you are down a level. The shorter death timer for you is just a bonus.
Whenever you add the word never in your argument, you’re almost always going to be wrong.
When you’re down in levels it makes sense in terms of numbers XP wise. You get more experience for kills and their death timers will be longer than yours. Obviously, it’s better if you don’t die, but if you can make the trade, it’s going to favor you.
It really just depends on the heroes that were lost. If you can take out a healer, then that’s great because they will probably lose the sustain war. Though if the healer is off on his own to get 1v1’d, that’s already a huge problem lol. Killing a Leoric 1v1, is probably not that great. If you kill a guy who is holding 40 gems on spider, that’s probably worth it.
Trading when you are behind is always good. The more you trade, the better.
When you are behind you get much more exp from kills (and those late game actually have a big impact) than the enemy, so if you kill 2-3 of them and lose 2-3, you got way more comeback exp than them. Your death times are also lower.
The other good situation for a 1 v 1 is when you kill what makes the enemy comp good and you just lose a hero that doesn’t have much impact.
One example is getting the enemy DPS when they have a double support comp. If you get their DPS, you won, they have almost no damage to keep fighting.
Another situation, you got their healer and you lost one of your DPS/bruiser. They have no healer to sustain the fight, while you still do, so you got the advantage.
Usually dive heroes are okay to die in order to get an important kill, because all their job is to basically dive and get the kill.
if the enemy is someone with a quest that’s lost on death, then i’d say yeah probably
if you’re a hero with a quest that’s lost on death, maybe not
Murky says ‘hi.’
But even in other cases, I can see doing so if I’m behind - I have 10% health and engage, stun, secure a kill on the enemy’s full health healer and die doing so. That’s worth it to me.
Other than that, though, an actual 1:1 is only worth it if you legitimately believe you’re less valuable to your team than that player is to theirs. Otherwise it’s a wash at best, and if you’re the better player it’s a loss for your team.
As others mentioned, when you are behind, trading is always worth it.
If you are low health due to various circumstances and you are about to die anyway, taking someone with you is better than retreating.
Doing it to stop a high impact quest: i.e KT q quest.
Taking out the healer is worth it unless you are also a healer. This applies to tanks in healerless QM games, although trading for the tank is generally less worth it.
Denying the enemy an objective in 1v1 situations. I.e if you retreat, the enemy might solo take an objective, whereas a trade would result in a stalemate the other 8 players will have to solve.
Pro tip: it is never worth sacrificing yourself as Alarack.
You grant your team more exp for the kill than the enemy team gets from your death when you are behind on exp, and your death timer is a bit shorter than that of your enemy.
Furthermore, even if you aren’t behind on exp, killing enemy team’s support, or main damage dealer, before a team fight can put your team in at an advantage. But that’s mostly if you yourself aren’t the main damage dealer from your team.
But most of all, it’s always worth sacrificing yourself to reset enemy quests like Convection, Untouchable, Alarak Sadism, or Butcher Meats (before he has 200).
Fully stacked Alarak is probably worth sacrificing even 2 heroes for, if it’s past level 16 he will likely never gain those stacks back and he is a completely gimped hero until the end game.
I have played matches where 5 heroic abilities collapse on me as Alarak and Counter Strike is already on cd. It is painful but it is a valid strategy.
Fully stacked Tracer (with Untouchable) is easily a win if you trade 1v1.
Sometimes it is, though obviously it’s better if you don’t trade and just come out clearly ahead.
Still there are plenty of scenarios where trading deaths can still mean that you come out ahead.
Say there’s a composition built around a hard carry hero like Valla or Gul’dan - you can bet your marbles it would be worth trading for them.
Then there’s heroes like Alarak and Diablo who get stacks and lose them on death - definitely a worthwhile trade since they lose way more by dying than you, so you’d come out ahead.
Then there are heroes who have talents that can increase their death timers, Gul’dan’s Dark Bargin and Malthael’s no one can stop death for example where if they die, they stay dead a lot longer than other heroes - so trading again, means that you come out ahead.
Then there are situations where you end up making a play and you trade 1 for 1 but also do enough damage to force the enemy team to give up an objective. You again, come out ahead here.
Then there are heroes like Leoric, Diablo, Uther, Malthael, and Kel’thuzad who have abilities that allow them to cheat the death timer entirely so while they may have traded 1v1, their team comes out ahead because they resurrect right away while the other enemy hero has to wait for their death timer.
Finally there are rare situations where dying on a hero can mean winning a team fight or the game. Tyrael, Junkrat, ETC, or Uther have abilities that activate on death that can help you win the trade after death.
Each Hero has different amount of impact and under different amoun of time.
Like, if you’re Jaina (especially not Q build for example) you dish out your abilities/combo and… wait seconds to do any meaningful again. On the other hand we have Jimmoty, who can … do this.
So if you killed Raynor as Jaina, it was worth it probably.
There are also carries and key-Heroes for certain comps to work, so killing them is good even if you [the not key-Hero] die.
We also have Uther, who becomes one of the best Healers once he’s dead, so… getting a kill, dying and providing more heals than if you would be alive is worth it.
And there are also the case when your team is behind, meaning that your team’s death timers are lower than the enemies’, so if you trade 1 for 1, that’s good for your team, because it’s worse for the enemy.
That’s not really true, and even it were it wouldn’t matter for this question. The question was if a 1v1 can be worth it, not if it’s strictly the best possible play (which it rarely is). Even if there were better plays, a 1v1 trade can still have an overall beneficial outcome, thus making it ‘worth it’ to have made that trade.
Whether a 1v1 is worth it depends entirely on the situation though. Random trades don’t mean much by themselves, but there’s plenty of factors outside of ‘1 Dead Hero’ that affect the impact of such a trade.
Random examples things that might make a 1v1 trade (not) worthwhile:
Denying quest stacks that are lost or gained on deaths. Trading 1v1 while your side has Alarak is a net positive for example. (Doubly so if he has pure malice).
-Gems.
-Taking out key Heroes. Remove the solo DPS in double supp comps so they can’t kill you. Take out a solo Warrior to deny the enemy team their frontline. Kill a healer so they have no sustain to fight (or press their advantage after a fight).
-Denying soak. If you’re ganking 2v1 and trade 1v1 to take out the enemy solo laner, you’re still making a profit by causing the enemy to miss soak.
You might still be behind, but the idea is that after the trade you’re less behind than you used to be. You get more xp for kills from behind, so trading helps you close the xp gap. Also shorter death timers could give you a rotational advantage if you can rejoin the fight before your fallen enemy can.
Ah, release reworked Raynor… those were some exciting (and terrifying) times.
In a vacuum, no. But if your team is behind, and you have absolute faith they will come out ahead, then yes.
That said, in a game where I have visibly under preforming teammates, I will ask them to take an enemy with them before they die… The reason being, in a situation with a poor team, you stand to do better with fewer enemies on the other side vs having more “allies” on yours.
READ. THE. SITUATION.
Never trade if you’re gonna lose stacks over it; chances are forcing a retreat or just taking the soft L without a death will reward you more.
But did you sacrifice your Raynor to put down Butcher? Probably a good chance you made out the winner in that, overall. Did you die with a teammate to shut down Alarak? Again probably worth it.
Did you eat dust as Untouchable Tracer or the sameish talent on Greymane, and you punished a Thrall who’s taken the persistent stacks? Mmm… you’re losing more than just a respawn timer.
It’s important too to know who’s commanding map presence on a team. So you nailed Stitches: fantastic if you don’t die, but having died to Stitches you may now just leave your team without a valuable resource, over which the loss of their tank seems insignificant. But I’ve done many a dive where I’ll push a key player into death or retreat, and that spins the whole teamfight. High octane output like Li Ming, Butcher and Alarak who are relying on momentum and uptime, these can be worth a big dive. But steady dealers like Raynor, Valla? Maybe you don’t gain as much by dying to them as they might benefit from that more than you do. Or against death-mechanic picks-- Tyrael, Murky and Leoric pretty much-- you might be playing right into their hands if you blow resources and lane presence shutting down something that didn’t need shutting down. The best gauge is empirical; if they lose something (stacks) that you don’t, you’re better off. If death doesn’t just mean time to respawn, or respawn timers mean something different to them, killing them can be a terrible idea when it costs you (Uther dives come to mind).
As far as being behind, again, read it. If you trade into someone who’s gaining a stack off you while ahead, you could just be compounding a bad issue.
At worst, never be afraid to retreat… above all else dying is a non-contribution in most cases. You will have to pick specific scenarios and even then, I generally reserve a death march for my tank play. On picks like ETC and Johanna and Garrosh, where you can truly invade an enemy line, you can do a lot by forcing a fight away from an enemy position. But if you’re playing a damage dealer, or a healer, losing you can set your team back quite a bit.
In the end, it’s a soft ‘no’-- there will always be the potential for better. Your trade-off play should be a measure of pressure or a result of limited options.
Early game, a 1 for 1 is always worth it. The XP gap will be closed very fast anyways.
Late game, a good 1-for-1 trade feels very contextual.
YES, IF… IF you are taking out an invaluable enemy and while you are just a bit above “trash” for your team 
Well, i hate to tell you, but… your opinion is wrong!
Mostly because there are plenty of characters that are punished “extra” by dying.
Butcher, Alarak, anyone with a “resets on death quest” are worth 1 for 1, provided they have not finished it and you don’t have any such quest. I’ve suicided into an enemy team to chase and finish off high sadism Alarak players even when we were ahead. Getting Sadism from 150ish to 90 is very much worth it!
There are also heroes like Murky and to a lesser degree The Lost Vikings, where dying (losing one viking) for an enemy hero is obviously a good trade. But I imagine you were excluding them as special cases.