Let's talk about XP

General Discussion
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It seems that the more I play and the more I learn about this game. The stat that seems to be a big indicator of who will win the game is XP. Players who have BOTH high XP and takedowns win more games. Why is that?

I know that a level results in roughly a 4-5% advantage over the opposing team in pure numbers (adjusted to scaling, of course). With Talent Tiers giving bigger bonuses. Scaling.

However, what is better to have when making the choice between joining your team or clearing the wave and being 10-15 seconds late?

Most comebacks are done at even-ish levels after level 20, most stomps end before 20.
So if you want to win more, what is better? Soak and avoid fights (unless required) until even, even though the enemy can also choose to maintain that lead by doing the same… or is it better to look for an uneven fight where you can win and do something with the team fight win, such as camps or objectives?

At what point is XP less important? Is taking structures better than Obj or soak?

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Usually you get high xp and kill count by winning, so I’d say those players instead of winning due to the stats, are getting high stats because they’re winning.

Most Objectives get one Structure at best, so getting a Structure while the enemy just gets the Obj is good.
But if you don’t get a Fort/Keep and you didn’t get the Obj either, you technically throw.

Risks need to be taken. An uneven TF (if happens on the same Talent Tier) is winnable. Fighting with one less Talent should be avoided tho.
But if your team got wiped out fight after fight, what would be different in the next TeamFight? Just soak in that case.

Tldr: if you [as a team] lose most teamfights, just soak. Otherwise soak as much as you can while still fighting.

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The rule of thumb is that early game, generally before level 7, soaking is far more important than fighting over nothing. A single minion wave yields more XP than a kill. Of course, if someone is so far out of position they are just begging to die, kill them (and don’t be that person yourself!). Once you have your heroic talent at level 10, that is a good time to start thinking about fighting.

I do recommend letting your team know what you are planning to do, either through pings or a quick chat. There are times where it is more beneficial to stall an objective with poke than to fully engage, while your off-laner gains an advantage in talents, XP, or structures.

4

This is a very hard choice, since if your allies team wipe then all your soaking work is undone as hero kills, especially against a team with a level lead, award a lot of experience.

Ideally your allies should play it safe until you arrive as they are a person down. However that is then depending on your allies to play well which is not something that can be relied on.

Early on giving up objectives for soak can be a viable strategy as long as you do not lose heroes doing so. Early objectives are weak and so easily defended and often will not bring enough advantage to compensate for the lost experience, especially if you have a level advantage. Later on in the game winning the objectives can be more important, so you need to efficiently use time soaking and helping the team to avoid hero losses and perform well in the objectives.

5

It is a tough question to answer, but take this for instance, if you compare the master league to well diamond and below.

In the Master league, we would often wait 1-2mins before even touching an objective if it is a 3 lane map.
This wasn’t a written rule, but usually everyone has something to do around then, like clearing camps (Making passive pressure on lanes) soaking a couple of waves of minions so we lose as little xp as possible while away from lane.
Sometimes we would even just say “Well screw it, we won’t win this one either way, might aswell siege our hearts out while the enemy team is away from the lane”.
This would often result in 1 person on the enemy team taking the objective alone, while the rest of the players would soak up.

Compared to diamond and below, where you often just rush the objective as fast as possible and headbutt each other til one of the teams win the objective.

Now this doesn’t mean that if you are in Diamond or below that you SHOULD stay away from the objective just to soak, because that would just result in your team going 4v5, because people are way to thickheaded to actually adjust to whats going on when playing at those ranks, which then eventually would result in you getting a storm of toxicity in your way, not that the toxicity matters but your team would probably be typing more than they would be playing.

This being said, it is an impossible question to answer what you should do in any circumstance, because everything is situational in HOTS.
From your rank, to your team, to your comp, to the enemy comp, to the camps taken, to the camps not taken, to the waves of minions, to the keeps you have EVERYTHING matters, the golden/fine line here is finding out when and where you should be and at what times.
I know this doesn’t help much, but that’s just the way it is.

Once you find that fineline, you can even smurf as high as Diamond without problems.

Another noticable thing between master and other leagues is that takedowns go from around 3-5 takedowns during a master match, while other leagues often have 20-40 kills.
XP is the nr.1 most important thing after sieging, and a single takedown is about as much XP as a wave of minions, so if your running around the map hunting for kills, your litteraly saying “I wanna MAYBE get XP, or MAYBE give the enemy team XP, rather than just safely soak up the same amount in my lane without risking the game”.
Often ranking up is learning to just play safer, learning that risky plays is NEVER worth it unless you wanna play every match as a russian roulette match.

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Simply put, experience is the most important recourse in the game. Having high exp and many takedowns are 2 stats that essentially feed off each other in a way. Higher level means more stats which makes it easier to get kills while kills give exp. All be it with diminishing returns.

There are a lot of factors that go in to when its a good time to fight. In general, its the most important to soak exp when your about to hit a talent tier or level 10 or when your behind on exp.
Like a lot of things, it depends. Here how it all works. Each level gives your team a small boost in health, damage, and healing, usually by 4%. Talents aside, being down just one level is not a big deal. Being down 2 levels isn’t good but fights are winnable if your careful. Being down 3-4 levels is when just about any kind of fight becomes very dangerous.
Talents are significantly more powerful then 4% and fighting down any talent tier is dangerous. Some talent tiers are stronger then others depending on the hero and reaching level 10 first can boost your chances to win that game to upwards of 70%. Once you hit level 20 however, those 4% boosts are out paced by the power of 20 talents and completed builds to the point that levels almost don’t matter once both teams are 20. This is why comebacks tend to happen after 20 because there’s not much left to gain after that. All the snowballing juice and everyone’s on even ground again while stomps can happen when one team hits 10 way before the other.

Well lets look at it this way. Each time a you fight another hero, you are taking a risk. Being ahead in levels can reduce that risk and not fighting at all means no risk. Its really hard to win games as a pacifist tho so its important to understand what it is your fight over.
Like mentioned earlier, minion waves give as much experience as a hero and are very easy and safe to beat. Many heroes can kill these in 1 burst and some can kill them wile not even in lane.
Heroes are probably the worse source of exp sense they can be difficult to kill and are worth more or less then a minion wave depending on how the game is going but in general, they have the worst difficulty to exp ratio.
Forts and keeps boost your teams passive experience generation. These are a huge source of experience over the course of a game and taking one early can be pretty devastating. One thing to keep in mind when you have to choose between an objective (especially an early objective which are generally weaker) and a fort/keep is that they essentially accomplish the same thing in the end. The only real choice to make is if you can do more damage to the enemy then the enemy is gonna do to you or if you can stall long enough to also take obj.
There are more ways to get exp but those are the big ones.

TL;DR: soaking op.

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I feel like the art of the comeback is based on XP alone (assuming the teams have equally skilled players). The game needs to emphasize the importance of XP. I like what they were thinking with the globes, but all that does is artificially buff people who suck at soaking.

Perhaps missing XP (100% and 25% ones) should have an audio queue, think of a feint, but non-ignorable “womp-womp” kind of sound with a small wave on the map showing you where you are losing XP. This would allow our less aware players a chance to be more effective and the sound would naturally let it known that they are failing when they are not soaking.