Heroes of the Storm - HGC China :: SPT vs BTG :: CE vs RPG :: TheOne.SGTY vs Sunny Lion :: TimeFlow vs SoA :: Discussion thread |
- HGC China :: SPT vs BTG :: CE vs RPG :: TheOne.SGTY vs Sunny Lion :: TimeFlow vs SoA :: Discussion thread
- Heroes of the Storm Patch Notes
- Opening Moves: When, Where, and Why You Should Cheese a Tower Early
- Blizzard Tease Next Heroes Again
- Tyrael and Auriel are the best couple
- Insights on Zagara from a GM Zag Main
- BamBam escapes with flair
- Negative adjustment for EVERYONE. HL is broken right now.
- Hey Blizzard, this sort of patching is really nice, and I'd love to see a bit more of it :)!!!
- Heroes of the Storm » Patch Notes » BlizzTrack
- The next Legendary Announcer should be: Cho'Gall
- Alex's cape no longer swings when you rotate her in hero select
- Grubby delivering his unique brand of humor
- Thrillidan
- Can we nerf Genji by making him not from Overwatch?
- Suggestion for Fixing Syvlanas' Trait (DunkTrain on TownHall Heroes)
- KSV Esports Adds Asset Management to Player Amenity Package for HotS Team & Others
- Bambam wants to be saved
- Finally reached Master tier after being gold last season!
- Esports LSU recruits Shot to replace Drated for Heroes of the Dorm 2018
- The Tutorial Battleground gives you a Starter Chest
- Storyline Matchups: What to Watch in Week 2 (NA)
- Grubby's Great Escape
- Sylvanas' Shadow Dagger CD not changed on Live, still 11 seconds
- My friend got a little too excited about camps...
- Ep.168 TownHall Heroes - Live in 1 hour!
| Posted: 24 Jan 2018 12:00 AM PST Remember to upvote this thread to make it visible after another one is stickied. Thanks!ScheduleToday's matches in HGC China should start at about 1:00 PST / 4:00 EST / 10:00 CET / 17:00 CST / 60 minutes from this post.
Note that there were four matches played earlier today which were not streamed on the English stream (and I don't know if they were streamed in China): CE vs SoA, RPG vs SPT, BTG vs TheOne.SGTY, TimeFlow vs Sunny Lion. You should be able to find their results and replay files on the official Chinese website linked below. Streams
HGC China - useful links
Game versionHGC China is played on the Tyrael rework patch (2.29.8) (current live patch). Tyrael is allowed, but Blaze isn't. HGC match threads are created by /u/lerhond. Please mention or PM /u/lerhond if you have any feedback. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Heroes of the Storm Patch Notes Posted: 24 Jan 2018 10:00 AM PST
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| Opening Moves: When, Where, and Why You Should Cheese a Tower Early Posted: 24 Jan 2018 12:59 PM PST
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| Blizzard Tease Next Heroes Again Posted: 24 Jan 2018 10:00 AM PST
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| Tyrael and Auriel are the best couple Posted: 24 Jan 2018 02:05 PM PST
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| Insights on Zagara from a GM Zag Main Posted: 24 Jan 2018 05:12 AM PST Originally this was going to be a massive guide, covering every little detail but I figured no one was going to read a book about a single hero and so we're going to keep it a small or that was the attempt. Ultimately this still ended up long so there's a TLDR; at the bottom. Still if you have any questions I'd be happy to try and answer them as best as possible.
While Zagara's kit very easy and provides little, mechanical challenge; there are several things I believe the community hasn't caught up on yet as well as some misconceptions when it comes to talents and solo lane match-ups which I want to address with this post.
As for myself, I am just a dedicated HotS fan like many of you, having been there since the beginning. Coming from SC2 as a Zerg at the time, having a Queen in HotS who spreads creep and bullies people away felt right at home. Since then I have accumulated over 2000 Zagara games and achieved Grand Master in EU Hero League 6 times including this season.
Grand Master Proof:
What are Zagara's roles in the game at a basic level?
For most of the playerbase, even at lower ranks this is nothing new and common knowledge. The biggest misconceptions about her come when we address the following topics:
Talents: https://www.heroesfire.com/hots/talent-calculator/zagara#oUUW
Breakdown of talent choices: At level 1 you want to go for Infest 90% of the time. Infest allows Zagara to crush certain match-ups. Infest allows Zagara to kill and out-trade common ganks like Genji. The only times when Zagara goes for Baneling damage is when she is not played in the solo lane or on Battlefield of Eternity for Immortal race.
At level 4 you want to go Medusa Blades in 95% of your games. Serrated Spines is almost never a good pick, only if you are playing against a Rexxar or Chen and get to AA infinitely. Envenomed Spines is a niche pick for Battlefield of Eternity or when you need it to snowball the solo lane harder/secure a kill. Overall Medusa Blades provides infinitely more damage, pushing power and consistency.
On level 7 Bile Drop is always the choice. Zagara is a spammy hero and so having 2 extra baneling charges gives you no damage increase most of the time. Your main role is clearing waves and pushing which means you will -always- get value from 50% more damage on bile drop. If you accumulate extra stacks throughout the game thats nice but its nothing you should focus on. The baneling slow is absolutely negligible at 20% on a 1,5 second duration. The only times you can consider it is when the enemy team has a composition of 4-5 melees.
At level 10 you always take Nydus Network. The only time you go maw is with massive combo potential and the enemy team being stacked on melees, even then its questionable with how much power Nydus offers but we will get to this topic soon.
Level 13 is Zagara's most flexible talent tier. Protective Coating is for when you are maintaining strong creep spread across the map. Hydralisk Transfusion is the all-round talent which works in most situations. Spell shield is a niche pick for when you play against something like Chromie with Time Loop to survive her combo every time.
16 is the Mutalisk tier. There is no other choice here. Never, in any situation. It chases over terrain. It deals cleave damage. It has a 30 second duration.
On level 20 you always upgrade your ultimate. Fury of the Storm is for when your team has no keeps, you are always defending and you need the damage for depushing. Alternatively when you are baseracing or need the extra DPS to destroy the enemy core.
Now we have the talents covered we can talk about something more jarring. Solo lane match-ups:
Even in high master and GM people still seem to believe that Chen is a Zag counter in the solo lane. Something that has not been true since she got reworked a long time ago. Sonya, Rexxar, Alarak, Thrall, Chen, Greymane, Artanis and everyone else out there. You are not supposed to lose any of these match-ups. Some heroes may do alright against Zag in one aspect but lose in another. e.g: Greymane and Alarak can take good trades against Zagara but will still get pushed in and lose the shrine/beacon. Rexxar/Chen can hold the shrine/beacon briefly but will lose all trades in the lane because of Infest and get pushed in on top of stacking your quest talents.
Effectively there are only two heroes in the game who win the solo lane against Zagara. One is Gul'dan who isn't played in the solo lane. The other one is Illidan who completely counters Zagara in general. Not only in the lane but also on the map -and- in team fights. He is as hard as a counter as it gets and one of Zagara's only real ones.
Gul'dan as a solo laner against Zagara is something that is possibly still under the radar. He can clear all creep and her summons effortlessly with Q spam. He will keep up with Zagara on wave clear and trades. He can drain her roaches and hydralisks and all damage he lands on her sticks as Zag can not sustain herself like he can.
If you're having trouble in the solo lane against certain match-ups I'd be happy to break them down in the comments but going over every possible hero right now might be too much information. Just know you are supposed to beat every hero in the lane except Illidan and Gul'dan.
Christmas Gameplay Changes:
Something I'd like to talk about briefly is how the Gameplay changes in December affected our Broodmother as many people expected this to be a nerf to summoners like Azmodan, Xul and Zagara. Since she bullies people out of the lane, she also gets double the amount of globes. Zagara is one of the few solo laners who have limited sustain. She can run out of mana and she doesn't have self-healing.
Now that she gets essentially two globes instead of one this increased her sustain by a lot. Especially on Braxis where you get not only the enemy globe but also the globe generator, Zagara now has near infinite mana in those situations.
The buff to minion damage directly translates into a buff for Infest as it increases the archer damage. Allowing Zagara to out-trade a hero like Chen even harder or kill a Genji who will try and gank her inside a minion wave. Naturally it also increases her pushing power in minion waves by a great deal. So overall this patch was a buff and that reflects on her win rate as it has been climbing again even after Blizzard had slapped a 100 second cooldown on Nydus not long ago which brings me to the next point.
Nydus Network:
Nydus worms used to be a tool you can spam quite frequently with their low cooldown, being very expendable. No longer the case with a 100 second cooldown, you now need to be more conservative in the early-mid game. Its best to start out with safe worm placements. One in your base fountain. One at your fort. Continue with at least one or two more safely placed worms on your side of the map before you can afford to be aggressive with them again.
People in Hero League seem to overlook the fact that Nydus is more than a global. Effectively Nydus gives you:
Now consider all the benefits of creep:
Nydus has the most synergy with Zagara's kit. It increases your DPS with Battle Momentum therefore your PvE damage. Your team fight damage. Your racing potential. You get more creep spread. You have infinite health & mana during poke fights. Its practically impossible for Maw to compete. Even if you play on 2 lane maps or Tomb you should be going for Nydus. The global is just a bonus compared to all the other benefits.
The global on the other hand allows many more things such as backdooring the enemy keeps and core at level 20. Your creep is ranged at 20 so you can put put tumors behind enemy keeps to nydus there later. Its not even required to push as just going there before an objective to unload an ability sequence and then leaving instantly will bait sometimes 3 or 4 people to come back and defend, giving your team a free objective or easy ganks on the map. You will create chaos, panic and stress by forcing the enemy to split in a time where you are supposed to stay as 5 for the final, possibly game deciding teamfight.
Nydus can also be used to gank people who step on your creep. Solo Valla clearing a wave or your creep in the middle of the lane? Just nydus right on top of her and get a free kill. Someone escaping a tight choke point with creep? Nydus to body block them Tomb and Battlefield are also two maps where its highly recommended to focus all your tumors and nydus worms to the objective locations. Respectively, the middle of the map in BoE and the gem turn-ins on Tomb.
Just covering the focus points of these two maps in all your nydus worms and tumors is a perfectly good play as you gain complete vision control. On Tomb, you are able to deny the enemy turn in and watch both locations all the time. Easily able to dance around with nydus to interrupt and have your team collapse on people and as you know not turning in all game usually leads to defeat. Creep Tumor Placement:
Something I noticed a lot when observing others play Zag is that either they are often sitting at 3 capped charges, having very little creep on the map. Or they put their creep down in meaningless locations, not gaining any benefit from its presence.
Generally you always want to use your creep nonstop. If you are at 3 charges you are not doing well, similar to StarCraft 2 where Queens also have something that 'punishes' inaction in form of Injects. Sitting on capped tumors means you effectively lost tumors on the map.
In the solo lane its perfectly fine to just expand a deep and powerful creep net that covers the entire lane and nearby bushes. Its something you should aim for. When it gets to the mid game however, you should start to focus your creep to important locations.
This means:
You want to gain all the bonuses of creep during a team fight but still be able to run away with the movement speed. This means you need to know when a fight might happen and be quick to make a creep highway behind yourself. This is also something commonly done in SC2 although offensively, putting a small, straight line of creep to run over.
The most important aspect during the mid-game about tumor placement is that when you put offensive tumors and worms near the enemy keeps, you should stack multiple tumors around 1 bush so it becomes frustratingly hard for the enemy team to clear. Instead of placing a tumor in the bush, you put it next to the bush. And then 3 more around it. You need to try and place them so that they miss their spells on them.
Only as you close in on level 20 where your tumors gain a 10 minute duration and become ranged, you can be more lenient with tumor placements. Even putting them around your core, your keeps and practically everywhere on your side of the map.
Also at level 20 you want to scout enemy bushes with tumors as they are ranged, there is no risk in using them to scout enemy camps and bushes. If you have the option to go near the enemy base, look to place creep tumors behind the enemy keeps and core so you have the option to Nydus there later and backdoor like Abathur and Zagara used to at level 10.
Team Compositions:
For the most part in Hero League, you are able to draft Zagara on every map and with almost every team. Just make sure you don't have triple ranged DPS. Arthas and Malfurion are good with and against Zagara, so taking them helps her out a lot. Arthas can cover Zagara from dive and most importantly counters Illidan which is the only hard-counter to her in the game. Malfurion helps with the lack of sustain on her in the early game as he can just rotate in for a heal and innervate on maps like Dragon Shire and once again, counters dive with roots and twilight dream. Both of them can also clear creep easily so having them on your team instead of the enemy team helps a lot.
Aside from those two, Abathur is still one of the most powerful synergy picks with Zagara for the following reasons:
Another good synergy is Nova as Nova brings extreme weaknesses to a draft. Mainly her lack of map presence and PvE. Essentially they cover opposite roles and enable each other to exist in a draft. My win rate with Nova on the team as Zagara from HotS Alpha all the way to now is near 60% according over 700 games, being the highest win rate hero on my team over a large number of games.
Its safe to say that the two girls are attracted to each other by being opposites. Nova covers the hero killing as our resident #1 Player Killer in the Game while Zagara takes care of the sieging, soaking, depushing and so on. Not to mention that she can counter gank incoming ganks.
Alternate roles for Zagara:
With this last section I'd also like to bring attention to the fact that Zagara offers more than just her solo laning. Going down these routes usually means taking baneling damage at level 1 instead of Infest so keep that in mind.
Zagara is a perfectly good hero to double soak against the likes of Xul on Blackheart's Bay with Volatile Acid on level 1, its fairly easy for her to do the Xul style rotation and using banelings to clear.
Another option is Zagara being in the 4man when your team already drafted a strong solo laner. Or you send Arthas top to counter an Illidan counter pick by just not laning against him.
Zagara essentially has the same role as Gul'dan, Junkrat and Chromie. Longrange, constant poke and sustained damage. She covers this job very well and especially on Braxis in the 4man, Zagara can become very oppressive as her summons cover enemy skill shots from the likes of Li-Ming or Stitches' Hook. She also offers pushing power in the 4man with the constant banelings and poke that is oppressive enough to choke out the enemy slowly. I highly recommend trying this out at least a few times if you are a fan of our Broodmother and haven't considered this yet.
All that done I'd like to close out this post with a TLDR; and once more mentioning that I'd be open to answer any questions in more detail if you're interested in how certain solo match-ups should play out or what to do on certain maps and so on.
TLDR;
[link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 24 Jan 2018 09:04 PM PST
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| Negative adjustment for EVERYONE. HL is broken right now. Posted: 24 Jan 2018 08:42 AM PST Many people including top GMs streamers and pros have been reporting getting negative adjustment points those past few days, increasing with every single game you play, no matter how good your win rate is. See more :
I suggest avoiding playing hero league until this bug is fixed. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Hey Blizzard, this sort of patching is really nice, and I'd love to see a bit more of it :)!!! Posted: 24 Jan 2018 03:13 PM PST Example Image: https://imgur.com/k1Bzn3o In the January 24 patch, Blizzard made some minor tweak changes to Brightwing (who got additional Health) and Tyrande (who received a little bit of extra AA damage). Whilst this has obviously been done before, I think it's fair to draw some attention to it. It's commonly accepted that a lot of heroes in this game are in a "decent" state, but with a tiny, tiny tweak could be a lot more viable. Just to give some examples, Raynor could use some additional HP, Alexstrasza could use a minor buff to some of her human form abilities, perhaps Greymane could lose a tiny bit of AA damage, or add some more to Garrosh. Consider giving Uther some more AA damage, or Rexxar! Who knows what would happen if Auriel or Gazlowe got some more max HP... Give Probius a .5s "grace" period on his Z! The sky is the limit, and I think it'd be really cool and well appreciated if we could see minor tuning a little bit more frequently. Every other week, just pick a role, select 2/3 underperforming heroes, and give them a small pat on the back. Just a minor buff, nothing outrageous, just a little more power! It seems like a pretty low risk thing to experiment with for a while :)! EDIT: /u/monkpunch added to the discussion (here) that it'd be cool if they would do tuning to talents as well. I didn't specifically mention that, but it's just as great!! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Heroes of the Storm » Patch Notes » BlizzTrack Posted: 24 Jan 2018 09:37 AM PST
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| The next Legendary Announcer should be: Cho'Gall Posted: 24 Jan 2018 12:52 AM PST "What did you expect? Two announcers are better than one jokes?" There are way too many awesome comments, bickering, and insane dialogues that can be done with a Cho'Gall announcer pack. Think of all the crazy liners! Cho being the rationale one while Gall is the outright crazy one. Just think of the countdown alone between the two - Cho counting down while Gall keeps interjecting on wanting to kill the enemies! Sample of Dialogue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhkG638mw_w [link] [comments]  | ||
| Alex's cape no longer swings when you rotate her in hero select Posted: 24 Jan 2018 03:02 PM PST Before the patch it used to follow the physics of the rotation and swing, now it just stays in place. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Grubby delivering his unique brand of humor Posted: 24 Jan 2018 04:02 PM PST
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| Posted: 24 Jan 2018 01:17 PM PST
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| Can we nerf Genji by making him not from Overwatch? Posted: 24 Jan 2018 03:13 AM PST If we remove the Overwatch tag, people will stop complaining about him right? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Suggestion for Fixing Syvlanas' Trait (DunkTrain on TownHall Heroes) Posted: 24 Jan 2018 04:06 PM PST
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| KSV Esports Adds Asset Management to Player Amenity Package for HotS Team & Others Posted: 24 Jan 2018 04:58 PM PST
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| Posted: 24 Jan 2018 09:07 PM PST
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| Finally reached Master tier after being gold last season! Posted: 24 Jan 2018 10:46 AM PST Finally reached Master tier today after a LONG grind(172 games, I guess it's not that bad.) I don't have too many friends into heroes, most of them play league. I wanted to share this accomplishment with somebody though, so here it is! A lot of -personal rank adjustment due to my previous few seasons being gold/plat. Additionally, during much of my climb I received frequent flame/rage after being placed in platinum, people were constantly hurling insults over my previous season rating and cursing matchmaking in hero select. I reached Master with a 58.7% win rate. My win rate actually improved by about 3-5% after reaching mid-high diamond. Through most of these games, I played almost exclusively Zeratul or Diablo. For some ending thoughts, I was thinking about grinding/climbing for grandmaster, but I may wait till next season when my personal rank adjustments hopefully aren't so brutal. It's a major pain to lose 10~ points a game because of how I performed in previous seasons. This season definitely made me into a Heroes regular. I'm really excited to play more and hopefully go for GM later this season/next season. Since it was mentioned in the comments, I felt I should add a few more stats! Heroes played: Genji - 28 Wins/25 Losses Zeratul - 24 Wins/8 Losses Ragnaros 16 Wins/10 Losses Diablo - 12 Wins/8 Losses Greymane - 7 Wins/3 Losses Games played in each role: Assassin - 139 Games Tank - 27 Games Specialist - 6 Games Highest Win Rate: Zeratul - 75% *Interesting note, I had a 100% win rate in D3+ with Zeratul. I played and won with Zeratul over 10 times in those games. Zeratul Build Shadow Hunter LV1 Darkness Descends LV4 Warp Skirmisher LV7 Might of Nerazim LV10 Mending Strikes LV13 Master Warp Blade LV16 Twilight Falls LV20 Allows me to effectively net mercs for our team, and pull off great burst/sustained damage. It's also great for boss/push. Also, funny enough, I've won many games by blinking around Nexus for the finish. The single target burst/consistent DPS this build puts out is very strong once you've learned how to optimize your ability useage. The sustain and increased overall DPS allows you to easily win fights with out of position tanks and bruisers who would otherwise be to bulky for Zeratul to quickly solo. This build is definitely heavily reliant on the player knowing where he should be in any given engagement though. Wormhole and Seeker offer a lot more ability to escape/reposition if the player makes a mistake. I filled depending on team comp with several other picks as well, however not in notable amounts. I must admit that I never once played a support character. My main role was assassin, with off-role being tank. Zera/Rag/Grey/Genji are definitely my top Assassins for making an impact on the game currently. Interestingly enough, my highest role win-rate goes to tank, with a 63% win rate. My main tank was Diablo, with Stitches and Artanis as my secondaries. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Esports LSU recruits Shot to replace Drated for Heroes of the Dorm 2018 Posted: 24 Jan 2018 12:56 PM PST
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| The Tutorial Battleground gives you a Starter Chest Posted: 24 Jan 2018 07:21 AM PST So i completed the tutorial battleground for some reason (been playing since alpha) and I discovered it awards you with a Starter Chest. For me it contained 2 epics, 1 being a 7day stimpack and the other a Hero. Pretty good reward if you havnt done it yet. Also I played as Tyrande and for what ever reason her Heal ability was back on its prerework cooldown, so 6sec instead of 12sec. So when your auto attacking you can cast it like ever 2 seconds. Its pretty awesome. Obviously some strange bug but its fun. Anyways thought I would let you guys know about that unique Starter Chest FORGOT TO MENTION: It doesnt alert you if you obtained it, it just shows up in the loot chest tab. As for people who arent getting it, i have no answer for you :( [link] [comments]  | ||
| Storyline Matchups: What to Watch in Week 2 (NA) Posted: 24 Jan 2018 12:58 PM PST
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| Posted: 24 Jan 2018 12:27 PM PST
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| Sylvanas' Shadow Dagger CD not changed on Live, still 11 seconds Posted: 24 Jan 2018 10:19 AM PST EDIT: Correction as per a developer: the CD was increased from 10 to 11 seconds.
[link] [comments]  | ||
| My friend got a little too excited about camps... Posted: 24 Jan 2018 03:11 PM PST https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/401455776171950083/405861768024424448/21_camps_XD.png The game was 24 mins long... [link] [comments]  | ||
| Ep.168 TownHall Heroes - Live in 1 hour! Posted: 24 Jan 2018 02:03 PM PST Hosts: Guests: Time & Date: Wednesday 1/17/2018 - 6PM EST (3PM PST -- 1AM CEST) Topics:
PATREON Support us in our mission to create great content for Heroes of the Storm! http://patreon.com/townhallheroes Missed the episode? [link] [comments]  |
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