Except that “specialist” seems to mostly mean “interacts mostly with towers and minions”. Well, that, or “so weird that we can’t think of where else to put them”, like Abathur and the Vikings.
But yeah, there isn’t really a good place in this game for the “debuff enemy heroes” niche. Some heroes get some of that, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone focused on it.
Roughly speaking, a “support” character is one whose primary job is to keep teammates alive. Tassadar is an off-healer, but he still fits squarely into the support category due to the combination of healing and shielding abilities.
Tassadar’s biggest strength is also his biggest weakness. He’s an incredibly versatile character who can fit a variety of roles, but other supports will outshine him in their focused areas.
What sucks about playing him in QM is while you have a barely healer, the other team, to keep balance, will get a Lili or something comparable.
I’ve been playing a bit - mainly the WoW hook pulled me in since I don’t have nearly enough time to play that anymore.
Jagaya#1482 if you want to team up some time.
Ok, so I’m trying to learn Sylvanas. I don’t understand her.
How should I be playing her? She doesn’t seem to do enough damage to really be a damage dealer, but I keep seeing guides that say that she’s supposed to be some kind of pseudo assassin. Really? All I get to do is just Q a lot, W bunches of minions, and kinda do damage with E. I’m not really seeing a lot of damage, to be honest.
The thing with Syl is that she does damage very consistently and, combined with her stunning attacks, she can stay in the fight for a long time. Her Q is great for using when you’re running away from a fight to get some extra damage on your pursuer and maybe make him turn around. She’s also really solid when it comes to assaulting walls, because she can shut down both towers, or soloing some mercenary camps.
The E ability, that banshee wail thing, does strike me as pretty blah, but can be handy as a short range teleport.
E is mostly used to either catch someone running away, or for running away yourself.
My problem with the banshee teleportation has two parts to it. If I’m damaging someone with the banshees, then teleporting means landing right on top of them, which is not usually a place where a ranged character wants to be. On the other hand, if I’m not damaging someone with them, it feels like a waste. Why use a damaging spell if you’re not damaging?
That said, I do like her. In fact, I’ve liked most of the specialists I’ve tried so far.
New set of free heroes already… good thing I got my specialist daily done.
This time, I think I want to learn ETC. Powersliding into a Mosh Pit feels SO GOOD oh yeah. Unfortunately, one time I got all 5 of my opponents… my own team had already ran. So they danced for a bit and then erased me.
I’m glad Sgt Hammer is on the free rotation - I’ve been thinking of buying her and this will give me a good window to decide whether I want to spend the gold or wait for the Monk to come out.
Played a game last night with Sgt Hammer and, oof, it did not go well. I don’t think she fits my playstyle at all, but I’ll give her at least enough shots to get her to level 5 before I give up altogether.
Hammer’s sort of an odd one. Her basic attacks are pretty good, as long as you don’t need to move much, but her abilities amount to a whole lot of nothing… At least, until and unless you reach 20, and win the game single-handedly.
Is the matchmaking any better for the hero league as far as producing decently balanced games? I’m getting tired of the randomness of quickmatch. I would say that it’s not clear who’s going to win after 5 minutes only in about 20% of games, in all other games it’s pretty clear one team is way better than the other. So having 20% fun, balanced games is a pretty awful ratio. In comparison, in DOTA 2, I felt like I was put into fair matches 90% of the time even after like 20 hours of playing.
I have 6 or 7 heroes. I was wondering if I should just buy up a few 2000/4000 gold heroes to make it to 10, or if it’s even worth bothering.
I’d settle for just getting games. I’ve been waiting 5min on average for a game, it sucks.
It does seem like Quick Match is slow. My (very small) sample size seems to indicate to me that if you’re playing an Assassin or Warrior, it’s slower because everyone wants to play those. If you’re suitably masochistic that you want to play a Support, it’s faster. But even so, 4 minutes seems to be about average for me.
The thing is, Quick Match isn’t just trying to match you up with four other folks. It’s trying to find a team for you and trying to find a similar team to put you up against. If it finds you a team without a support, it wants to give you an enemy team that also doesn’t have a support. This leads to longer wait times.
Beef: Hero League is better because there’s a non insubstantial barrier of entry. 10 heroes and level 25(?) ain’t nothing, even if you drop a ton of money on boosters and heroes. The teams are also (generally) more balanced because it’s draft format. Every now and then you get into that situation where somebody first-picks a character who is easily hard countered, or ignores team comp because they really want to play a particular character. But on the whole, Hero League matches are way more consistent. Protip: make sure you have two full warrior/healer/assassins that you’re really comfortable with playing, because there will come a time when you’re last pick on your team and you have to play a particular role if you want the team comp to be good. In these situations, it’s almost a given that the other team has grabbed your first-pick option for that role.
It’s also worth nothing: comebacks in HotS are way more doable than in Dota. Nothing can really be determined in the first 5 minutes of the game unless the problem is that your team is just plain bad.
Yay! I finally won an AI game all by myself. I don’t know why though. Due to the rotation I was playing with a totally new character (Tychus) so I had no clue what I was doing.
It was on a new map. It seemed like my AI teammates were actually working together, which really helped. Each time the winged guardians showed up, my team managed to take out the opposing guardian first. Usually the AI teammates are really bad about map objectives, but this time (or at least this map) they would have my back.
Agreed. I never played DotA, but unless your team is just extremely outmatched (hasn’t happened to me often) or your team just refuses to work together, the first few minutes don’t mean all that much. I only play one or two games per night, and last night I was sure we were giving a valiant, but ultimately losing effort. Then at around level 15 or 16 we really started clicking and rolled our way to a victory.
Thanks to the people suggesting LiLi. I’ve been playing her exclusively lately and really enjoying it. Though it probably helps that I’ve won more matches than I’ve lost during that time.
I’m digging Reghar. Solid healing + instant mount + lightning shield for early laning. Good stuff. Plus, a well-timed (or luck) Ancestral Healing really changes the game.
The biggest problem is that, if you want to do any damage, you have to get into melee, which is where you don’t want to be.
#Windfall1154, if anyone wants to play!