Hopefully this is a breath of fresh air for this forum.
This is for anyone who has climbed out of where they started. For example: Bronze to Silver, Gold to Plat, or whatever.
I wanted to ask a series of questions that anyone can answer from their own experiences, so that others can understand the problems people had and how they overcame them. I think that would be a good learning experience for everyone and will help those who truly want to learn how to get better. A lot of times we just see the same old answers, “soak, watch mini map, etc” but I think those are too vague and don’t really have an impact on their playing.
In order to keep this a thread where people can learn please try to follow these guidelines:
Don’t feed trolls, ignore them.
Be descriptive in answering the questions. Vagueness helps no one.
Be nice. If you don’t agree with something someone said, be constructive.
What was one thing you struggled with when you first started playing? What did you do to improve it?
What is something you practiced, that helped you improve? Did it help?
What was something outside of your control that affected your match? What did you do to overcome that? And what could others do in the same situation?
What heroes did you play/do well with? Why did you pick those heroes?
What is the biggest thing you’ve learned that impacted your overall skill and play style? How could someone else improve themselves if they learned this?
I hope this is helpful for those who really want to get better. I’ll start by answering one of the questions.
One thing I practiced that did help me improve was stutter stepping. I’m not an expert by any means but I sat in try hero mode with different heroes and practiced stutter stepping against minions, camps, and changing the enemy heroes as well. Its helped me play heroes like Valla, Sylvanas, ZJ, Fenix, and such a little better since I can dodge damage a little better and be a tad more unpredictable, which helps against heroes like Alarak or most mages.
It has helped me. Camps are much easier to take, and its much easier to chase and kite enemies. It has also helped me a lot when laning. Its definitely something I am glad I practiced.
Managing my mana. Solving this really came down to 2 things.
First, realizing that you don’t have to fight nearly as often as you think you do. Unless winning the fight means you get to go take a camp or an objective you can just walk away and go do something else. Other then deleting your mana, these aram fights often go on for a long time and there’s so many more helpful things you could have done in that time.
Second is to just be more efficient. Especially as a healer main, knowing who actually needs healing and who can heal them selves, correctly placing AOEs so that they cover the most relevant space as possible, and not casting things unnecessarily (an example being anduins divine star when theres no enemies to hit).
Mostly just learning who each hero tends to fight. I play a lot of whitemane so knowing how to duel each hero in the game helps your healing a lot.
You said it your self, “1. Don’t feed trolls, ignore them.”
For real tho, this is so important. People are less focused and dont react as quickly when they are upset. They can tunnel vision on things. Sometimes they just start spending a ton of time typing instead of playing.
Fight the urge to make a snarky comment and dont blame other people even if they really deserve it. If you want to improve, everything should be your fault.
Healers. A lot of it comes down to just being more efficient with your healing and working on your fallow ups.
Whitemane.
Guys, stop sleeping on her, shes kind of OP right now. Plus almost noone knows how to actually fight her. Especially in lower ranks where people just wont stop fighting and everyone wants to dive the healer (wm is very anti dive when played correctly).
I would plug my guide here but its pretty out dated now : p
Just know that being efficient with your mana is the single more important thing. Your mana bar can last a lot longer then your average healers when managed correctly.
Hmm. Then how about you share what hero you do well with and instead of tips of playing them, just say in a few sentences why you play that hero? It would be more helpful. I’ll change this question for future posts.
His unstoppable on demand lets me push a bit farther than I would with most heroes. He can solo or double soak, and Entomb is a great kill secure tool that even bad players can’t fail to see (most of the time)
I also like playing Tracer. I guess I like heroes with escapes. Maybe I have a fear of commitment…
Nothing comes to mind for Heroes specifically, but I took a lot of experience from other games.
And I’d say that in Starcraft 2, one thing I did was read some of the Art of War.
Mostly it gets you thinking about certain things, and you have to think outside of the match, when you’re watching replays.
Like travel time, and how important it is to not waste time running to locations that are too late to defend, or wasting time traveling a far distance to accomplish a big task that doesn’t provide as much value after the travel time is subtracted as just doing the small tasks right near you.
Like considering when a fight is worthwhile. Sometimes there is nothing of value to fight over, so retreat is perfectly acceptable. Sometimes you’ve already secured victory, so chasing a kill down becomes a waste of time.
Like how positioning can affect enemy movement, and good defensive posturing can prevent an enemy from even engaging at times. Or how intentionally careless appearing positioning can draw enemies to overextend into a trap.
I would very much say looking at the minimap is exceedingly important.
But you can’t just say “look at the minimap”
People actually have to make a conscious effort to practice that, and when you practice you have to do it, repeatedly, sometimes losing out on other skills until it becomes habit.
This goes along with the previous, but focusing on too much at a time, when you’re practicing, can be detrimental.
You have to build up good habits on a skill, and that can be hard to do if you’re only partially focusing on building up habits on many skills.
There was a time in SC2 where I just built units that cost only minerals.
The goal was to focus on spending, and gas was just extra complexity.
Eventually I added on gas for upgrades only, and I was playing at Diamond level while doing that.
Played against someone who built some Collosus, which are usually very strong against Zerglings, but they didn’t have a large enough support army.
People too often think about not having hard counters, being hard countered, and things that feel “OP” and just blame their failures on those things.
That deprives them of focusing on being more efficient with what they do have, and searching for more effective options with what they already have, instead they feel they needed to pick different talents, or heroes.
I think this is huge. Even if its the tank, if you can eliminate him then you can get the rest. I’ll have to say its better than everyone focusing someone different and leaving them with like 5% hp, but alive.
I still struggle with these two a lot. I’m trying to be more mindful on spell usage, but its a work in progress. Its a good thing to try to work on. It’ll help a lot.
I just want to add on to this by saying it also lowers the morale of the whole team, not just the one getting flamed. It can be very hard to not point fingers, and I think this is what a ton of players struggle with. A team who tries to work together is in much better shape than one who just points blame and gives up.
What would you say is something people should try to focus on first, before other things?
It’s useful to check your tooltip, and see which of your abilities costs the least and most mana. For example:
-Valla: A lot of people will W+ Q minion waves, which makes her run out of mana fast. If there’s no reason you need to clear quickly, just auto attack (This applies to most heroes). Otherwise just use W and AA the archers, then the knights.
-Malthael: Do not ever use your E on minion waves. It’s useless. It costs 50 mana, and doesn’t actually do anything since you only need two auto attacks to mark a wave. Again, unless you’re in a hurry, you don’t even need to use any abilities. You can clear quickly with just AA’s.
-Xul: After lvl 4. You don’t need to use anything other than W when clearing. Your Scythe uses 55 mana, which is a bit high, and you don’t need it. Your skeletons deal a decent amount of damage, and you still clear faster than most heroes in the game even without it.
Because of XP globes, I think it’ll be beneficial to clear waves as fast as you can since the globes lose value if they’re left uncollected. If you soak a full wave, and your enemy is slow to rotate, they’ll get less xp than you even if they collect them. I’m not sure the impact that has on the whole match though or if its worth blowing 30% of your mana each wave to do so.
With Valla, I only use W on the waves when there is a large wave. But you can also just spam E if you pick Death Dealer since it can reset and refund mana. Its a way for her to speed up her wave clearing without losing all her mana. But you’re right. Spamming all your abilities for waves is not a good use of your abilities.
Oh and I cringe when I see Malthael use his E to clear minions. Like… why?
I struggle more with using abilities in team fights. I place them stupidly at times and they don’t always get full value. Like for example, I place Jaina’s W wrong and they either only get hit by 1 wave, or it only hits a single hero and such. However, if you pick Arcane Intellect, you’ll have 10% spell power if you have a lot of mana, and both that talent and Fingers of Frost helps you keep your mana over 75%. So one well placed W can clear an entire wave a level 4 and after because of the bonus spell power while having high mana. Plus, once you finish the quest, you’ll get an additional 10% trait damage. And that’s massive. I almost never have mana issues with Jaina.
And that’s actually where I can get careless since I feel like I can spam abilities with her and never be out of mana and it causes me to just use them when they aren’t needed.
If you’re double soaking yes. Depending how far along minions are in the other lane. In some cases I like to just passively soak, to make sure some of my minions die in the middle of the lane and the enemy loses xp.
I actually only realised this last week. I was wondering how my enemy used vault 4 times at Lvl 5.
As Jaina, during a team fight I just don’t use my W at all until the tank CC’s someone, or the enemy is chasing a team mate and I force them to walk in Blizzard to reach them. Which they often don’t because of the slow. So I get damage and peel for my team mate at the same time.
Yeah for double soaking the quicker the better. I usually encounter teams who love to fight mid and so sneaking off and clearing a wave fast can give you an early lead if the enemy team doesn’t follow. I also think it depends on the hero you play because some don’t require a ton of mana to do so even at early levels. Greymane is one of em. Just Q, W and then E the whole wave if you want it done fast. If not, then just W and AA the whole wave. Like I said, idk if the loss of mana is worth the quicker clearing.
At 20 if they choose Caltrops, it gets even more crazy since they’re given more charges. However, Death Dealer is usually for AA build and at that point it might be better to either pick the Rain of Vengeance upgrade at 20 since it grants AA speed or Farflight Quiver if you want range. I think Caltrops fits much better with Q build… especially on BoE.
Yeah I think Q is best for poking if you’re waiting to follow up on something. I sometimes use W when I know I can hit it like in tight spaces where they feel trapped. It allows me to use E to root em (at 16) and then it gets much easier for everyone else to jump on em. But in open areas I’m a wild shot sometimes. Or they dodge right after the CC and get hit by only one wave of W. Kinda frustrating at times. I’ll make it a point to hold onto my W for a little and see if it has a big impact in fights. Hopefully so.
That’s efficient. I usually save ring of frost for large fights after some CC from my team has been applied, unless I’m desperate.
Its funny, I’ve played Jaina since I first started 6 years ago and I still don’t have her completely mastered. I’m better, way better, but I could still use work.
Well, once you have the root, you can always setup your own ring on at least one target. It’s too long to let them avoid the ring. Any non-tank who’s already taken damage should die.
I’ve played Jaina on and off. I hadn’t played her in a while, then used her in a scrim recently. And a player who saw the game told me they were impressed But I know I’m rusty.
For anyone playing Jaina, these two videos are sueful.
It’s been long enough that I often forget to activate Icy Veins.
One thing that helped me was to play ARAM. It’s one of the best ways to learn the about different heroes. Especially when you’re relatively new to the game, and you don’t know how to play that many heroes.
You’ll be forced to play one you don’t really know, and then you’ll learn some things. Then, the next time you go up against that hero, you’ll remember some of that hero’s strengths and weaknesses. You’ll know how to attack that hero better.
But I know I’m rusty.
