Heroes of the storm my first MOBA. I started in closed beta and I fell in love, even though I was awful! I started my climb fromthe bottom (even when the new ranking system came in) but for the past 18 months I have ranked in masters and been close to GM on a few occasions; EU server. As further ‘climbing’ credentials in season 1 2018, I levelled my US account from Gold to Master in just under 100 games played with an 80% win rate.

Climbing is a grind, you need to look at the endeavour as a whole, not as a string of individual events or games because your ultimate goal is to push your win rate as far north of 50% as possible. Focusing on some basic principles which are applicable in the majority of situations is more effective over time than investing in the ability to effectively deal with multiple niche situations.

Basic principles:

How am I empowering the 4 other players on my team?

What are our win conditions?

How do I communicate with my team

Your pick

How am I empowering the 4 other players on my team?

This breaks down into two broad buckets on thinking:

You can either enable your team in specific situations, for example, dropping an Ancestral Healing.

Or you can decide to empower them through making each of them slightly stronger than the opposing team, this is achieved through experience gain.

To decide which will work for you consider this: am I going to be able to climb faster & higher with my decision making or with my mechanical skills? For example, if you are a good League of Legends player you may well be very mechanically strong but still trying to get to grips with the new forms of decision making required for HoTS so you will outperform other players at a lower rank with your mechanics on a consistent basis.

For the sake of the ‘grind’ and increasing your win rate you should focus on roles that allow you to win via your decision making and focus on map control. There are clearer ‘learning moments’ and fewer opportunities for ‘luck’ to become a factor. If you are focusing on climbing through mechanics there are moments where you may be ‘outplayed’ by an opponent simply getting lucky with spam clicks, or you could mess up, or an unfortunate lag spike loses things for you.

Logically the conclusion is that a decision-making soak style is more consistent as no team ever gets waves of experience ‘accidentally’ and a lag spike while you are in lane will almost never be the disaster it is in a team fight.

Win Conditions:

Considering the win conditions is something that is rarely done at any level of play outside of competitive. Being one of the few people considering them dramatically increases your odds of winning!

What are your teams target win conditions? Usually they are the following:

Lane pressure and map control

Winning objectives

Team fighting and pick offs

Winning through lane pressure and map control means focusing on taking camps, at key times, and applying pressure where the enemy team is not to force your way through structures and gain a level advantage and taking an advantageous team fight then winning the game as you have exposed the core.

Winning objectives and team fighting often go hand in hand but depending on the map winning the objective can be subtly different to a straight up team fight — it can overlap more with lane pressure and map control than team fighting.

The win condition that you should focus on to climb consistently is map control and pressure. It will be the most consistent and is a win condition any one person can exert control over if they pick correctly.

As you climb your team will die a lot in 4 v 5 fights. Luckily early deaths are not super important and in lower ranks most players will not use the advantage anyway, let alone know when they should end! In the long run you should win regularly by exposing their core, winning one fight mid to late, and making the call to end; resulting in a win for you.

If their team has lost its kill pressure for more than 30 seconds, with core exposed, and you are at least halfway into the map you should consider going for core. Chances are they will mount a desperate defence too early and seal the win for you, if not you can get some core damage in and back off when their kill pressure is back up. Kill pressure will vary from team to team, it is generally a combination of their damage and crowd control.

As a general strategy, you should be looking to get your team into a position to fight a talent up, or at least with the buff of a level advantage. When fights are being carried out with high variance and limited coordination the extra stats start to matter a lot.

If there is a key objective fight, for example, they could get a curse from one more tribute pick up, then you should look to apply mercenary pressure in a lane and join your team. Hopefully one of your opponents will move to the mercenaries giving you a 4 v 5 or they will ignore it and you will get ‘free’ structure damage.

Communication:

A simple rule of thumb is to communicate what you are doing and nothing more. If you are asking someone else to do something you are potentially going to annoy them and tilt yourself if they choose to ignore you/flame in response.

Pings are fantastic, get used to using them to broadcast clearly the path and action you are going to take. You can also use pings as a quick ‘suggestion’ of what it might be useful for your team to do at any given moment, avoid pinging players directly though as in almost all cases this will aggravate someone.

In draft, broadcast what you want and why but avoid dictating what others should pick, this is something I personally fall down on, as more often than not you are likely to get a negative response. If you really do feel like you need to say something at least check what heroes a player may be comfortable with (just look at their profile) and say something like ‘Malfurion’ would be strong here, not pick ‘Malfurion instead of Lili because she sucks’. In many cases, you may also find you receive a less combative response if you use a private whisper instead of making it an ego battle with an audience by posting directly into the lobby.

If you are playing a style that is focused on map control and pressure it is important you communicate your intention to your team and broadcast your movements so they have the information required to make good choices; regardless of if they do.

Your pick:

With the goal of being controlling the map, soak and take camps effectively I recommend the following heroes:

(Some heroes has ranking boundaries marked on them to note the range within which I believe they can perform very well in even without mechanical mastery and in-depth understanding of the character)

Bear in mind it is worth developing your skill with some of the non-meta heroes so that you can pick them up consistently while you climb.

Greymane: Solid solo laner with rapid wave clear and the ability to clear camps. Also brings very solid burst and sustain damage to a team fight. A very versatile pick

Zagara (from bronze — plat): Very strong split push and siege potential with her minions spawn, able to solo well against the majority of heroes. Has a mediocre team fight but can pump out a decent amount of damage if the fight drags on and brings some utility with vision and the ability to add slows.

Gazlowe (from bronze — plat): In lower ranks, his turrets can be devastating in a team fight as they will often be ignored and not removed/moved away from. Can capably solo lane and take camps. Low mobility can make deep split pushes risky but he can certainly get some real work done while seiging.

Gul’dan: Fast wave clear and great self-sustain makes Gul’dan great for soaking multiple lanes and capable of holding his own in a solo lane if absolutely necessary. Try and avoid picking him up if someone else on your team also wants a mage.

Azmodan: Since his rework Azmodan is a force to be reckoned with, when he has high enough stacks he can soak an entire wave just by casting his q (or+q combo) and brings a lot of poke pressure and damage to a team fight. The problem you may run into is that he is weak for the off-lane soaking style early. Late his trait will help you put tonnes of structure pressure on your opponents and his minion spawn, in general, helps your team to siege up and dive under towers.

Zeratul: Zeratul is often overlooked in some ranks but he brings a lot of utility. He has strong wave clear and mobility making him a great split pusher, he is an able solo laner as he can safely dump damage on someone and move away, forcing them to tap and then leave lane before he has to. Being able to bring a lot of power to team fights, an incredible ultimate (Void Prison) and large amounts of wave clear with safe escapes mean he can split-push deep for exp and bring a lot to a fight.

Probius: This is my personal favorite hero and the one I executed my climb on the US server with. Here is a guide I have previously written on Probius:(https://medium.com/@arena.gaming.hots/top-5-probius-tips-ab1fd8f129d0). He is essentially a mage that has an amazing escape while split pushing (if you have strong map awareness) he can siege incredibly well and bring massive damage to a team fight.

Healers:

Rehgar: Rehgar is a fairly mid-tier healer at the moment, but he does have cleanse, decent sustain with healing totem on 4 and a powerful ultimate to clutch out saves on key team members. Most importantly for the purposes of climbing is the fact he can take camps, clear lanes and apply split pressure effectively and safely; Rehgar is incredibly slippery and can escape a lot of attempted ganks.

Brightwing: Brightwing is ok at clearing a lane and can do a good job of soaking exp while always being available to teleport to a teammate in need. She is a very high tier pick support at the moment but is somewhat less adept at pursuing the win conditions laid out above than Rehgar is.

Ideally, you do not want to end up in the support role as it is harder to execute on your game plan, but if you do these are two good options to make sure you can fill and still work towards victory on your terms if no one else is doing so!

Tanks:

ETC: Wave clear with echo pulse and a global at 10 means that ETC can be a solid split pusher who can soak a wave effectively.

Johanna: Johanna is a solid tank pick up that will before well as a damage soaking brawler in a fight but also able to clear a wave relatively quickly.

You actually want to be on tank even less than you want to be on healer! A team that is caught without their healer will stand up better than one caught without their tank. Try and avoid being cornered into the tank slot, but if you are both of these are great options.

This is not to say you cannot climb by being a mechanically brilliant tank player, it is just harder to climb as the driving force for the win conditions stated here!

Honorable mentions:

Abathur: excellent for this game plan but requires a solid amount of coordination from your team to be consistent, in part due to his weakness vs camp pressure and certain counter picks

Dehaka: Misuse of the global cast can be very punishing and his ability to siege is less than some of the others mentioned. There is also the remote but real possibility your team will leave you to main tank with him!

Falstad: I do not feel Falstad is in a good spot, having traded too much power for his global, and has many of the same problems mentioned with Dehaka.

The Lost Vikings: TLV are very difficult for your team to play with, they need to play a semi-coordinated roaming pressure comp for you to get value and most of the time that is too much to ask!

Samuro: Incredibly difficult to deal with if played well, but a very high skill cap before he even becomes useful!

Summary:

It is easier to win a game when you are ahead in experience so focus on getting your team into a solid position experience wise before you join the roaming 5 man and look to end.

It really is that simple! As you go you will need to get better at positioning, map awareness, team fighting, etc (I will create guides) but going into your drafts and games with a solid plan to carve out a win condition will make a huge difference to your win rate if executed correctly!

Relevant articles:

About the Author: My gaming tag is Arena and I am a high-level Heroes of the Storm player. In my professional life, I have worked in a variety of industries at well-known companies and have been a founder several times.