Lets learn how to play fighting games (hots guide)

General Discussion
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When you really get down to it, fighting games and Mobas have alot in common. Many of the stratiges used by pro players can apply here for the most part. Ill me using examples from smash brothers for the most part sense thats what I play but what I say here will apply to virtually any fighting game.

There are 3 main phases in most fighting games; The neutral, Advantage, and Disadvantage. Understanding these 3 phases is paramount to the strategy involved in these games.

Advantage and Disadvantage

These are pretty self explanatory. Disadvantage is when you are essentially getting rekt and Advantage is where you are doing the recking. The person in advantage will generally be in control their opponent and will have many options at their disposal while being in disadvantage means the opposite is happening.
Heres an easy example. You’ve got a Kaelthas who has already used all his cooldowns and you’ve got a Tracer who’s hitting him.
In this extreme scenario, Tracer essentially nothing to worry about. KT is unable to fight back and Tracer is at her most powerful when shes got a helpless target to chase. Tracer can choose to beat down KT or run away to do something else. She can use her bomb or not use her bomb and any number of dashes.
KT on the other hand can really only try to survive until a cooldown becomes available or attempt to run to safety.
Tracer is in the advantage state while KT is in disadvantage.

The neutral

Also known as footsies, The neutral is where it gets alot more complicated. The neutral is when both parties are in neither advantage or disadvantage. While in this state, both parties are seeking ways to gain the advantage through starting a combo with a stray hit or by sneaking in enough damage that any fight would be in your favor.
Now fighting games and mobas are mechanically very different from each other. For one, in fighting games, every attack essentially has baked in CC meaning a single hit can lead to a death while in a moba, a single stray auto attack will often not lead to anything. Theres also more then 2 players (most of the time) and getting a kill is not how you win a game. A vast majority of a moba game will be played in the neutral (in a macro sense) where players try to get a good engage or just do alot of poke damage so understanding how the neutral generally plays out is important.
In fighting games every fighter has an invisible area around them that if entered, you will be in range of something dangerous. In hots, these hypothetical danger circles exist aswel and your goal in fights should be to abuse your danger zone while minimizing your opponents as much as possible. These circles can shrink and grow and become more or less dangerous due to many different factors.
For example, heres Hanzo at one of the curse hallow tributes.
https://gyazo.com/681b2d78c78025b3f8a36953d23d2b5a
red represents his auto attack range
blue is his storm bow (Q) range
green is where scatter arrow (W) can hit with all 5 arrows
These are his hypothetical danger circles are. If you are only standing in the blue circle to the right of the tribute you will only with in range of a Q and wont take much damage however if you are in any of those places where circles (and the green zones) overlap then you are in danger of taking alot of damage and being put in to disadvantage state.
Where all this information is most important is when CC and tanks are involved.
https://gyazo.com/48c23d8a7e19181d64db52897bd51994
This is the range of Blessed shield. Johanna’s 1.5 second stun. If this hits you its very likely that the rest of Johanna’s team will move their danger zones on to you and will kill you. When tanks or any other form of easy crowd control is involved you need to visualize the range of those abilites at all times. Its hard and sometimes even impossible to visualize every heroes danger circle at once. When this happens you will need to prioritize just a few of the most important ones and just rely on your team and good positioning to deal with the others.
Another important thing to understand when trying to visualize these areas is mobility. There is alot of mobility that you cant reasonably react to. For these, the range of these danger circles is not just the range of their big damage but the range of that damage plus their mobility. Take Genji for example. His shurikens want melee range to get the most damage but thats not where you should be focusing on. Sense his dash is fairly instant, you want the range of his dash to be what you are thinking about.

In the beginning this clip I (whitemane) am focused only on the range of KTZs chain and Blaze’s dash so I am careful to stay out of those circles. Then, nova gets hit by both the chain and Blaze’s dash.
Now that both these abilites are on cooldown I am in advantage sens I can out heal any damage that red team could have delt to me so I aggressively run forward In order to get my healing done.
As long as KTZ’s chain is on cooldown I am fairly safe so I keep attacking.
Now for some mistakes. Im on a bit of a power trip here after saving nova from a KTZ combo + all the other stuff that happened before so I stay forward even when Blaze’s stun comes off cooldown. Fortunately, that was aimed at diablo. I hear KTZ land chains on Diablo so I start trying to juke them but they never come because he was CC’d by diablo. After that all 4 enemies are put back in to disadvantage so we chase them.
I see Blaze get CC’d again and I run up to do as much damage as I can but forget about KTZ again and die. ops.
Had I stayed back or standed above Diablo and D.va there I would have had a chance to avoid KTZ again and we could have continued our 4v5 but alas. : P

Heres how neutral is played out in smash if anyone is interested.
For reference on some of the words used in the vid.
A whiff is a missed attack
A punish is an attempt to put someone in disadvantage
Spacing (or spaced) is essentially playing around the danger circles previously mentioned

Well there ya go! I plan on making an extremely in depth whitemane guide at some point but idk if i have the “street cred” or writing skills to do so effectively so this is kind of a test pilot.
Do I suck at making guides? (probably) but i hope i helped at least someone.

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Not at all! I do not play fighting games, so it was interesting to see how the concept of neutral there translates to MOBAs. As someone who enjoys playing tanks and solo laners, this was sort of understood without being explicitly described like this. I like it a lot.

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Please do not insult fightning games comparing them to mobas

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I’d totally agree that there are a lot of things that translate between different genres of games.

I wish more people would understand that idea of a threat zone. That it’s not just the tank’s job to peel, but that enemy movement can be shaped by the positioning of an assassin with dps, or a support with CC.

That it’s OK to miss abilities, as long as you’re positioned in a safe manner so you can wait out the cooldown without being punished, and that you can gain an advantage when your opponent blows cooldowns in a poor position. That’s part of the tank’s job, to absorb cooldowns in a safer manner than the assassin could.
But if the tank is dying and an assassin or healer is at full health, it’s not unreasonable for them to take a hit in the tank’s stead, not unlike switching out characters in other fighting games, when one has a large chunk of red bar that can heal back.
They don’t seem to know a dang thing about conditioning or reads.
This kind of stuff is also why you should always be moving, just stutter step always.

Unfortunately it can be very frustrating with randoms.
Some of them are too aggressive and drag you into unsafe areas.
Some of them are too cowardly, and abandon positioning, leaving you open when you shouldn’t be.
I would LOVE to play team Smash Bros, but if I did it would certainly be with friends who’s styles I know. Unfortunately it’s very difficult to get people to play Heroes, especially now.

Also there’s a lot more options in fighting games, and barring certain fighting games, a single hit doesn’t lead to a death/loss.
And that’s why I’m always going on about how damage should be reduced and cooldowns should be reduced also.
Allowing the players to make more decisions more often raises the skill ceiling and makes the game more interactable.
Ultimates being super flashy on a long cooldown is only a thing for spectators, or a way to make bad players feel like they can do something sometimes, it isn’t really good design as a whole.
In fighting games they may have supers, but usually the meter is built up through actions taken by the player, and often there are other ways to spend it so more decisions need to be made over it. And Smash usually just has it disabled.

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It is actually good!

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I feel like conditioning and reads to be almost a lost art when it comes to mobas. I rarely see people mix things up instead of always going for what looks like the best option every time. Especially with movement and escaping.

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A descreet ad of other games, nice

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er, is that really all you got out of this? :s

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Great post. Thanks for the read.

I think an important factor to consider is that fighter games are 1v1. It’s just you vs the enemy and any unpredictability you can muster is beneficial.

Mobas on the other hand are a 5v5. You need to strike that balance of being unpredictable to the enemy, but predictable for your allies so that you can combo off each other.

There are meta heroes with meta builds, but i love choosing rarely chosen characters. Even common characters with uncommon talent picks can throw people off.

A good example is Leo. He is a common hero and most players have lots of experience fighting him. People know his ranges and what his neutral zones are and position themselves accordingly.

And then i pick the increased slow at level 4 instead of kneel peasants. With such a low pick rate, people don’t expect to be slowed that much. As a result i can’t count the number of times ive secured kills based on this surprise.

I firmly believe if you want to be good you need to play most characters. The “i can’t tank” excuse is not good enough. By playing other heroes you learn their neutral zones and the duration of their cooldowns. Through this knowledge, you become even better with your “main”.

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I like to play alot of unpopular heroes. My main is whitemane and my second is valeera but i also like to whip out a deathwing, probe, or rexxar from time to time. I like the idea of how likely it is that noone on the enemy team understands your hero like you do and it leads to alot of victory due to subtle things people just diddnt have the knowledge to pick up on or arent experienced enough in the match up to react in time.
Some examples being when people try to trade with me as whitemane. Yeah you got me to half health but i tool that opportunity to heal 2 other guys on my team for a ton or when im in valeera and people dont notice that they bumped in to me while I was invisible, probably just thinking that the pathing sucks or not even noticing.

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very few hots heroes come close to the millisecond level micro needed in certain fight games like smash (i dont play smash but i greatly appreciate people who are genuinely skilled at it @ tournament level)

kharazim is pretty close, and incidentally hes a fight type hero, i find stutter stepping while chasing/moving as him very hard though challenging, with full blazing fists talents its even more intense

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nah, hots isnt even the fastest by moba standards but things like baiting out skillshots is still a pretty relevant skill. There are plenty of heroes that really fall off if they miss something. Like orphea.

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Well, they’re both games.

Idk if that’s a lot really.

You could argue that any PvP game has the basic overview you provide—I didn’t read in deep detail, just skimmed.

On that note, let me leave a car analogy here which is totally relevant to HotS.

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Yeah let us (euh you) educate the playerbase!

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