even if I play hots for a while already, I lately did my first draft mode solo rank game.
For beginners there is a lot to learn while drafting. Additionally there has to happen a lot of communication related to hero choice (respecting map, team mates, hero preferences, enemy team choices, etc.). There is a lot communication in pre-made teams and way more in solo ranked.
Even though, communication on draft screen is so important and usually a lot, I was very wondering that a feature (which would simplify draft mode communication a lot) was not implemented:
Displaying the favourite heroes of players below / next to players icons.
(Of course only visible on your own teammates)
Would the hero icons become too small? Does the UI Interface while drafting would look overload or somewhat ugly?
I mean, I do not even have to elaborate the advantages of seeing which heroes are favourite by my mates (and probably most played / best mastered), do I?
Couldn’t that be implemented?
And not just displaying which are the favourite. By dynamic frames / shadow overlays on the icons you could visualize if a champ of his favourites is already taken or banned, so you see how little his choices left to pick a good hero, which he is used to, has become and adjust your own choice, in case you see you want to pick one of his favs even though you yet have many alternatives and he got none.
I think confidence with a hero helps.
Even pros in the grand finals have a limited hero pool. Sure, their worst is better than my best.
Showing favorites could help, but not everyone is using the feature “properly”. I use them to pin heroes that are favorites of the week. I can easily find my favorites by level anyway.
Plus, my favorite heroes aren’t exactly performing these days. E.g. what would you do seeing these favorites: Nova, Abathur, Tassadar, Medivh?
So I’d suggest three categories: Favorites, Pinned and Draft Picks. The same hero could show up in multiple.
If you don’t know how to fill in ranked, you are bound to be in lower tier.
Wrong, pros in grand finals always play their best hero pool.
Why? Because it’s a team game.
You won’t see assassin player playing healer with $10k on the prize pool.
yes you are right, favs do not necessarly reflect your best heroes.
Would you prefer to call such selection of heroes differently?
“Indication of champs, which are my strongest”?
@Aphandra you will always have people who use functions inproperly. But if you seriously play solo ranked and want to improve team communication and you know that certain features help you doing so… I bet you gonna use it that way to play ranked right?
However the feature is gonna be called or if it is realized by Favs or not: the core topic here, is that it would be nice in draft mode, to see which are your teammates most played heroes. Don’t you agree it would give some advantage to see that? Less talk about the hero choice in solo ranked. More focus on what your enemies choose / ban and how you can react with your team to it, according to your and your teammate skills.
That’s what’s actually behind the topic. No matter if you use Favs for displaying player’s best heroes or somewhat else.
But visualizing it would help, wouldn’t it? Or do you enjoy unnecessary discussion , frustration about your mates hero choices and flaming about hero picking in solo ranked?
Just to add: I know 5 player teams, which help themselves writing down their most playes heroes in a separate excel list. So while drafting, they can see what to ban and what is left to choose for their mates to play. Even if they are in teamspeak, they do so. That was kind of indication for me, that such thing implemented in hots, would be quite an advantage.
…and that would be what i call improperly.
really though what one person says is the proper way to do it may be different than the next. since how you use your favorites is up to personal preference.
the way i use mine is completely logical. i favorite my highest win rate heroes. which incidentally are the heroes i usually play the most anyway, i play them the best, and i will have the most fun on them since i will be winning more.
You can pre-select heroes to show which one you would like to play. Others will also pre-select so you can kind of get an idea about your teams composition. Anyway, pre-selecting does not mean that the player will play that hero no matter what and it’s good to be flexible.
You can also rightclick on the profile of your team members and check what heroes they play a lot and what winrates they have.
I have a great idea… how about you pick a primary preferred “role” and then a secondary one. Then other players could see that in draft and work around it.
There’s an above average chance that teams are gonna get loaded up with 5 primary ranged assassin second melee assassin/bruiser over and over again if QM is any indication of what people prefer playing
Not that this is any better as youll just get more specifically which assassins and bruisers your entire team prefers playing
Yeah I know, but I rather like to spend my time discussing our roles and how to react to enemy picks and bans, instead of checking profiles. Displaying 5-7 heroes below player icons would make it more effective and let’s you lose less time scouting profiles, isn’t it?
I mean, the suggestion just came up to use the time in the draft screen more useful. Especially in solo ranked. If there is no demand for it and everyone is happy about the communication and your teammate picks, of course the discussion is of the table.
@Morogoth and Aphandra: let’s stick to the topic. Question is not if people use this feature properly or not. Question is, if it would improve the draft process and make it less stressful to cooperate with your teammates. The Assumption should be proper use…
@RayRay: displaying just 2 heroes imo is too less… there are 6 bans already. that both of those 2 heroes get banned is pretty high. Especially if ones 2 favourites are just the favourites because they are op (what makes heroes often favourite to certain people, becaue it makes them win more often). So the ban probabilty is high. And then the discussion starts again about alternatives.
So the question is, if people who are playing draft (no matter team or solo) don’t want better overview of teammates best champs or not? If you are happy to constantly get into non-optimal team constellation or not?
My example simply shows that I have a lesser need of a “favorites” and a greater use of “be aware of”. That’s how I came to suggest multiple lists.
However if the favorite list would be displayed, or people would recommend heroes from that list (currently they seem to look at played / winrate), I would definitely change them to those I prefer.
looks like you didn’t get the idea.
if everyone is like you, then you get 5 people playing warriors/assassins.
idk about you, but i would rather have 1 healer
Good point but if that player is not good enough on healer i rather have that player stay away from healer and have them pick what they are good at that we know they can get the job done. Playing without one of the core role ia far from easy i agree but its us at that point that need to figure out the pro of our weird comp and work it out lol
I really like OPs idea. I mean at minimum it gives your team-mates an idea of which heroes everyone is comfortable with and avoids the ridiculous scenario where the last pick is expected to tank or heal and flat out lacks confidence in either or both roles.
I actually prefer tank and heal to dps so it’s not a problem for me, but i see a lot of teams that bicker about this kind of thing when i do pick early and take a DPS.
Just a little more information would be helpful in avoiding that. Especially if you accept the fact that not every team is going to communicate effectively during the draft.
whats wrong with murky?