To People Who Still Play: Help Me Understand

General Discussion
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I’ve played this game off and on since it launched. I suck but I keep coming back, so I must be a glutton for punishment. I’m back for the tenth time, and right now I’m sitting at six consecutive Quick Match losses. Winning is not as simple as, “Play better,” or “Play smarter,” because there are many games where I don’t have to lift a finger and it’s a win (which I don’t even feel is fair).

There is something I’ll never understand about this game. I’ll queue up and play as a character I don’t normally play, and for whatever reason my team will dominate the opposing team—so badly that I’ll barely have to do anything. There are times when the enemy team is full of zombies who shamble into their deaths over and over again, and there are times when, whether it’s the individual player skill or the team comp, the enemy team will dominate my team. How is it possible that I get six matches in a row where my team is comprised completely of zombies?

Match after match, I will get teamed with players who’ll either not respond to pings and do nothing or will announce at the onset that they have never played the character they chose. I just had a Muradin on my team who tried to capture a boss by himself at level 4. It’s like… shouldn’t players have to meet certain criteria to be able to queue for anything above VS AI?

TL; DR
I’ve never played a videogame until HotS where I’ve lost six matches in a row. I’ve never been so depressed playing a game before (it’s all the more painful that it’s a Blizzard game). What do I have to do to get a win in this game besides playing AI? Uninstall, or keep losing and pray for a win?

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Well, bad luck is a thing. Did you insult any gypsies recently? Might need to go to a temple and ask for a curse removal.

On a more serious note…

The most obvious answer would be to get better. HOTS is a complicated game so there’s A LOT of aspects you can get better on.

And more useful answer would be to play heroes who matter the most in QM.
I’m making a small assumption here and assuming that you’re not ranked very high, based on how you describe your average teammates. And it is in low ranks, especially bronze, that they really do some idiotic basic mistakes, like not even going to lanes at all.

It’s the silliest and most frustrating reason to lose; people who simply do not go to lanes.

To that effect, the heroes who are by far the strongest in QM (particularly solo queuing QM) are heroes with waveclear who are also capable of duelling and fighting enemy heroes. Samuro comes to mind, but he’s a very difficult hero, but is very damn strong if you become excellent with him.

Other heroes would be Thrall or Fenix. They both have good waveclear and survivability/sustain and they’re both good in a teamfight or 1v1’s.

If you like to mix it up (or if you’re simply doing healer quests or tank quests or whatever), then some heroes are much better suited for solo queuing than others.

For instance, Garrosh would be the absolute worst to queue into QM with alone. He is extremely reliant on having a team and more importantly, just having a healer, as his selfheal/sustain is absolutely terrible compared to other heroes like Muradin with Third Wind as the level 1 talent.

Auriel would be a no-go, while Kharazim has the options to choose between being an assassin-healer(iron fist), a healer-healer(healing fist) or prolonged-healer(mana fist) and has a brutal ult vs strong tank heroes or bruisers or just generally really strong in 1v1’s and you can take either of his ults regardless of what kind of fisting technique you went for at level 1.

But as previously mentioned, HotS is a complicated game. Much more complicated than most think, I would wager. There are dozens of small things that one needs to take into consideration or be aware of or be capable of. Like split-second decision making on whether to retreat, when to stop peeling to help chase, when to stop chasing to help peel, when to just GET IN THERE and take some hits so your ally can escape.

Just yesterday I was playing a Samuro game where we(Illidan and I) ganked Guldan. But the Cavalry came at us big time. I had the option to simply escape safely and let Illidan die. instead, I took the risk and engaged them. There was no intent to actually kill anything, but I just went in and started wacking at them, then I fled in the opposite direction of where Illidan fled and we both came out of it alive.

I wish you the best of luck and hope you have fun!

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Thanks for the advice. However, I’m pretty adept at certain characters. Perhaps not Storm League, but I’m familiar with how the game works and how maps and many of the heroes are meant to be played. So, to get out of this mire… I should play better. :expressionless: It’s difficult to want to play better (or harder) when you know only five minutes into a game it’s a loss. Sucks all the motivation out of you.

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As Narha said, there are different types of “play better”. As mentioned, taking camps at the right time, and knowing when to clear, push, or simply soak can win games at lower MMRs. Playing a jack of all trades hero can help with that, such as Ragnaros, Malthael, Xul, or Artanis.

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part of the issue of QM is that you don’t really get a grasp of where you are in mmr compared to other players.

Each mode has it’s own matching rating and if you’ve left off and on, or are coming back on new/smurf accounts, you may be playing at a low rung of even QM.

Additionally, some of how qm matches can vary based on other parties, a slight loosening on matching for players on ‘new’ to them heroes (or tightening on highly leveled heroes) plus at lower levels, it’s easier to encounter smurf players that will stomp genuinely new players, or similarly, just run into troll/feeder accounts that run amok to see if they can get a reaction out of anyone.

Considering what you describe, I’d be more inclined to support the ‘low mmr’ level of QM, so the few ways to deal with that would be to get solid at select QM-carrying heroes (as others advise) get a group going (even just pick-ups from gen chat or lfg channels) and then que with complimentary heroes. (not necessarily a storm league comp as you might get matched against a similar composition, but heroes that work together well that maybe sub in a good bruiser instead of a tank, or use a support instead of a healer)

If you wanna ride out QM, you are going to have to win some games and move up the ladder, so that can be global/split heroes, or merc tanking bruisers (that can get some kills) or a few select heroes the game doesn’t match well against (such as yrel, since she can heal allies and other heroes matched against her cant)

Otherwise, migrating over to Brawl (aram) can be an easier way to have fun with the game, and not worry so much about all the qualms of QM.

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In my last game i was kind of rolling my eyes at a lucio who got out of position and threw a perfectly good push. Didn’t say anything. Then i ran in as varian and took a 1v3. Whole team (even the lucio) raged at me for a bit. I later got a pick and made up for it and then our chromie charged in 1v4 and died. So really all of us were making that game harder to win than it needed to be.

People are much better at noticing others mistakes than their own. Thats why salt mines are never “darn my reflexes sucked last game and i missed alot of skillshots” and always “wow my teammates suk”.

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nothing complicated about samaru/aba split push

specially a mirror sam who just swaps his clone back to objective and if you ignore him welll bye bye fort

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You’re welcome!

Well there’s ranks for all levels of skill in Storm League so it doesn’t really matter if you are adept or not. Storm League could be considered a better learning environment since it’s generally more serious and you usually would have proper compositions and more focus on teamwork.

But on the flipside, it also gets way more frustrating when you do lose, especially cuz of dumb idiot teammates. And there’s way more flaming and tilting, too.
Honestly, it’s the reason I don’t play SL. I prefer QM and ARAM because “it doesn’t really matter.” Losing a ranked match because of one idiot is so much more frustrating than losing a QM because of one.

Personally I never “know it’s a loss within 5 minutes of the game” because regardless of how dreadful or desperate the outlook is, I still believe it can be turned. And turning it around from a really low point is exciting too. A big challenge to overcome.

Changing your mindset might help, too, for all intents and purposes. Falling to despair, losing sense of hope for the match will directly inhibit you from playing at you best.

Even more so if you get tilted.

Personally I have A LOT of experiences of teammates who gave into despair, started saying “gg let’s just let them win” or “gg we lost” and they start to just sit in base afk, but I convince them it can still be won and they rejoin the match and then we turn it around and win.

Having a proper mindset and outlook is a bigger factor than most people realize.

We all should. :stuck_out_tongue: But one of my points with “Hots is complicated” is that there are so many points that one could play better on. Like Mercenaries. Timing them with the objective is kinda a common knowledge thing (that most people in QM aren’t that good at sticking to even if they know about it) but one can take it to the next level and figure out EXACTLY how much time one needs to clear merc camps with different heroes. For instance, NotPAradox or whatever mentioned that it takes him approximately 27 seconds for him to solo clear a Bruiser camp with Jaina. This way he knows exactly when he should go for it for the most optimal timing.

There is also other aspects like having good awareness of the enemy. Often times when there’s a Twinblade Varian he’ll go missing for a good minute or two without showing up on lanes or anything at all. This makes it extremely like he’s busy trying to solo a boss. And often times he’s allowed to, because people aren’t paying attention to it. But if you pay attention to enemies who are missing, it can set you up for a game winning kill+merc/boss steal.

I think I’ll just ignore you. You just seem like some angry troll butthurt over samuro and aba.
I didn’t even mention Aba+Samuro, lol.

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how am i butthurt about samuro aba?

u said the game is complicated

i refuted saying the game isnt

sam aba is an example there are other things that make the game super easy

stuvok on the wow map( forgot the name) or tower of doom can infinite stall for example and you cant do crap because hes behind double towers and a fort unless you willingly dive him which early game you will just lose lmao

but sure lets say the game is complicated i just dont

i guess it is easier to insult people then defend your position about why you think the game is hard tho :woman_shrugging:

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I stand by my previous statement of ignoring you. You seem like a troll to me. Don’t wish to engage with someone who’s 97% likely to be some silly troll.

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Pffft. What was there to defend against to begin with? All you did was make a random, irrelevant comment that “Aba+Samuro is not complicated!!111”, ignoring every single other point and an entire wall of text of arguments, info and opinions?

THanks for clarifying that you’re just a troll. Hahahahaha.

For the record I’ve said it before that Samuro+Aba is OP. But apparently in your mind, the fact that Samuro+Aba is OP means that the entire game itself is no longer complicated. Hahahahahaha, so laughable.

Alright, from hencefourth, I’ll really ignore you. You just made it so easy I couldn’t help myself to point out how silly you are.

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Well, your words have spurred me a bit. I will suffer through it more and see if I can improve by trying different things… such as what has been suggested in this thread.

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refuting something involves proof of claim, counter-evidence, your own testimonial experience, ie something more than just disagreeing with someone.

Contradiction isn’t ‘proof’.

It’s kinda weird you conclude it’s ‘easier to insult people’ when you haven’t offered anything to deviate from their position and have, in turn, effectively resorted to just insulting others instead of ‘defending your position’ – the one you really haven’t established outside of two brief name drops that could be taken as ‘exceptions’ than not.

So not only do you present a case that essentially undermines itself, you’re claiming you’ve done more (proof) than you actually have. Tack on a “oh you wrote a bunch of length [I’m] not going to read”

and it seems like your attention span is smaller than your ego.
If you’re not going to provide the information (proof) then it seems kinda silly to be insulted by those that provide it.

OP makes a request, another poster provides particulars with the intent to help (that OP acknowledges;) an so far you just just derail, deflect, and detract. If you’re not happy with being called a ‘troll’, then you’ll want to do more than act like one. And a key difference to that comes with providing something with substance instead of just claiming others have done it.

Or knowing what it actually entails to ‘refute’ something. Knowing is half the battle.

*cue GI Joe gingle

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I have a feeling Xenterex schooled you in a different thread and it’s been keeping you up at night.

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Well I mean if you’re dumb enough to think Xentenex has ever schooled anyone in anything besides word count then sure you do you.

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Just the fact that you’re here in a different thread trying to ad hominem Xenterex shows a severe case of butthurt. A butthurt you would only have if you got schooled.

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Man how can I argue with someone with an argument like “u got butthurt”. Am I allowed to use that too? Cause you seem pretty “butthurt” that someone would dare impugn your idol or whatever this person is to you. I mean looking at this thread though you definitely have that same long-winded, pedantic narcissism so it’s not really shocking that you would take this so personally. c:

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You could try to actually argue for once. Hahahahaha.
Yeah, I’ll add you to the list of people to ignore as well. Bye.

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im not even reading their responses tbh lol

i asked why he think the game is difficult and got called a troll so honestly they are worth nothing and contribute nothing

Like i said game is a mess but hero design is fine if you play for the hero and focus on hero concept yo u can enjoy the game despite its overall flaws

i lose games playing hamtank lili but i have a blast doing so

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I’m actually curious, what is exactly has a layer of complexity in HotS then?

Mind sharing some examples? Maybe while at it share some from other gamea that also have similar or just a layer of that complexity that is higher.