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Heroes of the Storm players

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21 Jan 2016 11:39 - 04 Apr 2016 22:21 #220406 by Jackwraith
www.heroesnexus.com/news/1599-new-diablo...ealed-wizard-li-ming

New Heroes in a couple weeks, including the Diablo 2 Necromancer!

No Corpse Explosion (Awwww!) but summoning skeles for free and Bone Armor. Plus, the scythe, man!
Last edit: 04 Apr 2016 22:21 by Jackwraith.

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21 Jan 2016 12:09 #220407 by jeb
Replied by jeb on topic The Necromancer returns to HotS
Skellymancer is best 'mancer. This is known.

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21 Jan 2016 12:38 #220411 by ChristopherMD
What is HotS?

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21 Jan 2016 12:43 #220412 by Jackwraith
Heroes of the Storm. Blizzard's MOBA that uses characters from Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft and, soon, Overwatch.

@jeb: Always the Summoner, man. I did some Poison and Curse (Iron Maiden!), but Summoning was where it was at. Mages, Fire Golem, and then Revive whatever looked good. CE the rest and Bone Spear your way to victory.

They just started the cycle of more frequent balance updates, too, so things should be a lot more dynamic, roster-wise. Got my Murky master skin a few weeks back and now just playing whatever comes to mind. Ugh, Lunara's bouncing motion is still awful, though.
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21 Jan 2016 14:03 #220419 by jeb
Replied by jeb on topic The Necromancer returns to HotS
I remember my computer's fan going into overdrive against Andariel or one of the other lots-of-dudes-around bosses with SkellyMancer. I'd have like 12 dudes, plus my polearm guy, plus the golem--there was stuff EVERYWHERE. Sigh. /players 8 for life.

I reinstalled HotS. I'll probably fire it up again. MOBA's just aren't grabbing me, generically.

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21 Jan 2016 17:53 #220442 by Jackwraith
Dude, like most games, MOBAs are 10x as fun playing with people you know. If you want to get some games in, just let me know. We can tool around against the AI while you find a hero or two that you're comfortable with and go from there. I have 2 or 3 other friends that play pretty regularly, too, so we might be able to get a good group going in QuickMatch.

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21 Jan 2016 21:03 #220457 by Cranberries

Mad Dog wrote: What is HotS?

Hammer of the Scots. They're introducing a dark magic element.
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21 Jan 2016 22:36 #220464 by iguanaDitty
Maybe this means they'll bring back the Necro for D3!!!
/me sighs...

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22 Jan 2016 10:50 #220598 by Jackwraith
Ha. Think that ship has sailed. There are so many ways to play each class these days that class expansion is highly unlikely. They put the Crusader in so that there'd be an actual shieldbearing class, thus utilizing a ton of gear and its associated art and allowing the Barb to continue on its merry way as the "aggro" warrior type. But with a summoner class already in the game, the Necro is not likely to return, much to our mutual chagrin.

Interestingly, the divide they tried to solve between "tank" warriors and "bruiser" warriors is one that still exists in Heroes, since there are only a couple real "tanks" in the game: Johanna, the Crusader from D3 and Muradin, from Warcraft. The rest kind of run the gamut from bruiser (Artanis, only a warrior because of his shield Trait) to healer/utility (ETC, who remains popular almost solely for one of his heroics, Mosh Pit) to engager (Tyrael, whose mobility and harassment power are great, but health total, not so much) to just... something (Anub'arak.) Lots of variety in that role, though, and everyone can find something to work with.
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31 Mar 2016 17:37 #225076 by jeb
I am playing HotS! Lord, I am terrible, and I reserve the right to totally bail once I earn my HEARTHSTONE cardback, but I will probably dabble in it as a F2P player for a while. You earn gold, gold buys more dudes--I can get behind this. The games are small form factor, like 20 minutes tops, would probably shorter if I didn't suck so much. I do like the homages to Blizzard's catalog--while the Diablo 2 Necromancer was the featured hero the game played that sweet Diablo 2 soundtrack over the menus and I got misty.

Jackwraith is our resident HotS MOBA expert and he and I chatted a bit in TM, presented here:

Jeb had a Quest to play as "Support" three times--Heroes are labeled Support, Assassin, Specialist

It's been fun though, but man, I can't do support. Soooo bad.

Jackwraith replied:

Support is in kind of a tough spot right now. Blizzard doesn't want them to be healbots, but then they can't do awesome damage because why would you play Assassins? They tried really boosting Rehgar's non-healing aspects but it got totally out of control, so they had to draw him back. However, when he or Kharazim roll around to the free-to-play list, I would give them a try if you want to play Support, since they're more combat-oriented than the others. Like ranged assassins, support is about positioning. As long as you hang around the backline, think about where your warrior/melee assassin is going to be, and then toss in your non-healing abilities at the right moment (like Li Li's blind, which is awesome), you should do OK. Just try not to stand still. Heroes used the SC2 engine, so attack-move (A left-click) is still the best way to keep moving until you want to hit a specific target.

And, of course, the F2P supports this week are Brightwing and Uther. BW is a-ma-zing with the latest buff to Pixie Dust, but she takes practice to really know how to play, both as a healer and with her other abilities. Uther was once the game's greatest healer but he, too, takes practice because of his long CDs and because his best build uses every "extra" ability (Shield, Cleanse, Shrink Ray, Benediction) which means you'll be using 8 keys, not 4 (and gives rise to the title "Piano Uther" (using the black and the white keys.)) I might back off and wait for Malf and/or Li Li to show up on the F2P list (which happens fairly often for both.)

Jeb responded:

I got the hang of it a couple more games in, looking for some Tanky dude to follow and buff. It just sucks to nothing but wait in the back though, maybe doing that long shot thing once in awhile. I know I am healing and that's helping Diablo or whatever, but I am not killing dudes. Fighting a lot of video game inertia there.

Jackwraith wrote back:

That inertia is the main problem with Support right now: People don't think they're interesting to play in many cases because they can't pull off the "cool plays" (which usually involve killing someone), other than Uther with Divine Shield and Kharazim with Divine Palm. But I also like playing Specialists, which often do the same thing. Murky may not make huge plays but, over the course of the game, I'm going to wreck you because I'm the one giving my team the XP edge and grinding your forts to dust.


I got his OK to bring this out front. I don't grok a lot of the MOBA lingo, and I would be laughed out of LOL or DOTA 2, but HotS is a very friendly game. The tutorial introduces the basic gist of lanes, minions, mercenaries, and all that. You're up and running in an hour or so, earning levels, gold, and checking out the sweet costumes. I haven't actually bought anything yet. There is probably some ideal way to optimize my farming and purchases--I see stimpacks, gotta be a way to exploit stimpacks--but I am digging it regardless as a nice diversion. My elder son likes it as well, lots of upside.

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31 Mar 2016 17:47 #225079 by Michael Barnes
HA! I saw this and thought "wow, I haven't seen people talking about Hammer of the Scots in a long time!"

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31 Mar 2016 18:54 #225084 by Jackwraith
The best thing about Heroes in the MOBA genre is that it makes team play essential. There are no "carries" in Heroes that you find in League or DotA2. "Carry" means that a character may be powerful enough and a player good enough to carry their team through the early levels until they all get powerful enough to win. In Heroes, you earn XP as a team, which means you all level as a team. There are no items to collect gold for. As you level, everyone gains access to their own set of talents. Plus, each battleground has unique objectives that enable you to win faster or win, period. If you like doing group games, this one's for you.

There are actually 4 classes (that being a very nebulous term): Warrior, Support, Assassin, Specialist. Warriors can be anything from a tank (Johanna (the Crusader from D3)) to a harasser (Anub'arak (the Crypt Lord from WC3)) to a near-assassin (Sonya (the Barbarian from D3)) to a near-support (ETC (the rock star from WoW.)) They're all intended to be frontliners (a character that is in the front of the fight and tries to both engage the enemy and peel them off their own backline, where the squishy assassins/supports stand) but they're not all meant to soak up damage like a sponge. Do that with Sonya and you'll die right quick, giving XP to the enemy and having to wait out the death timer, which gets longer as you level.

Supports are generally healers, but most of them have other abilities which can really be exploited to assist the rest of the team in teamfights (big engagements with the other side) and in clearing waves (minions sent out by both bases that try to knock down your defenses.) Supports generally don't do much damage, but they're often considered crucial to success.

Assassins are the killy people, ranged and melee. They don't need much explanation, except that there's a ridiculous variety of them. Blizzard helpfully informs you which heroes are easy to play (like Raynor (the commander from SC and SC2)) and which are hard (Illidan (the traitor demon hunter from Warcraft lore)), but it often really depends on the playstyle. I do fine with guys considered hard (Thrall (warchief of the Horde in Warcraft)) and not as well with some considered easy (Kael'Thas (former leader of the Blood Elves in WoW.))

Specialists are everyone who doesn't fit under the previous labels, but trend toward sieging heroes. The object of each game is to destroy your enemies' Core, which is protected by walls, forts, and keeps. Specialists tend to be the the best at clearing waves and knocking down those structures, but also have a bunch of unusual abilities or traits that make them not as obvious as many of the others. My favorite is Murky, a baby murloc from Warcraft. Started playing him because he was weird (has 1/4 the life of a regular hero but never has a death timer longer than 5 seconds if his egg is out) and played him all the way up to the master skin. But Xul (the Necromancer from D2), Zagara (the Broodmother from SC2), and several others are just as good.

There's incredible amounts of depth. I'm Jackwraith#1816. Feel free to flag me down if you want to try some games, anything from against the comp/AI to Quickmatch (people tossed together of roughly equal skill) to Hero League, which is a drafting mode that requires 14 heroes of at least level 5 to participate, so it's a bit of a climb, but well worth it, since drafting holds a whole 'nother level of strategy.
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31 Mar 2016 20:52 #225087 by dysjunct

Michael Barnes wrote: HA! I saw this and thought "wow, I haven't seen people talking about Hammer of the Scots in a long time!"


Me too! I was excited about the necromancer expansion. :(

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04 Apr 2016 10:04 - 04 Apr 2016 18:55 #225174 by Disgustipater
I just downloaded it. Time to figure this out.

Battle.net ID: Brine#11185
Last edit: 04 Apr 2016 18:55 by Disgustipater.

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04 Apr 2016 13:48 #225199 by jeb
Replied by jeb on topic The Necromancer returns to HotS
Yeah, figure it out! It plays a lot like bite-sized DIABLO 2. You are a dude, you have a role to play, and if you play your role, your team should do well. My son is really into this now. It's his go to over MINECRAFT and HEARTHSTONE. He made it to level 6, so now he gets quests and he'll be hooked by those I am sure. He was playing Azmodan, a big spider-looking demon from DIABLO and rocking it. He flings these death balls from across the screen, he shoots this crazy laser and gallops on his flaming spider feet.

I need to get back in there and get my stuff going, but I have to compete for the Mac on Sundays and my nights are DESTINY time while Iron Banner is going. Oh well.

I think you and I are linked in Battle.net already @Disgustipater from HEARTHSTONE. Let me know otherwise.

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