This article was written as a tribute to David Foster Wallace, taking inspiration from his piece 'Roger Federer as Religious Experience' published in the New York Times in 2006.



Almost anyone who has been following HGC on Twitch over the past 10 months has experienced what might be termed 'Heroes of the Storm Moments'. These are instances where, as you watch the ten players battle, your jaw drops and your hands find their way onto your head and sounds are made that bring partners hurrying in from other rooms to check that you're okay.



These Moments seem almost like teams have actually discovered a way to break the game if you've played enough HotS to comprehend the impossibility of what you just saw. Let's look at the last major international tournament: The Mid-Season Brawl. It's the 5th game of the Grand Finals: Dignitas vs Gen.G. Dignitas' fate looks sealed with just 5 points of life left on their core and at level 19 whilst Gen.G comfortably sit at 23 core health and level 20. Gen.G have just forced Dignitas top, playing for the bottom keep in order to give their next altar channel the 5-point killing blow that will end the series. Tsst on Garrosh channels for the last hit, which Dignitas manage to carefully delay until they can hit 20. Still, this fight will not allow them to win the game even if Dignitas manage to like wipe the entirety of Gen.G in one swoop. Gen.G have 4 keeps up, a healthy 23 points on their core and only one altar is active. Dignitas' chances seem to visibly wither a little more when they attempt an engage onto Tsst, who manages to walk away with relative ease. Casters Trikslyr and Khaldor echo viewer sentiment at home that Gen.G appear to be on a different level of play. Both teams back off and tap at their healing wells, having burned all their heroic abilities, and re-assess the situation.



Next Gen.G make a bold play, opting to have Rich on Hanzo fast-clear the sapper camp in order to threaten 3 out of 5 core hits on Dignitas whilst they are locked into defending the altar for dear life. Seeing Tsst step up to defend the altar, Dignitas know that this chance isn't going to happen again, and close in for a decisive punish. A taunt-lurking arm silence combo locks him down before he can react, and the remaining Dignitas members do not waste a second as they burn everything they have to delete his Garrosh. With the power of surprise on their side, Dignitas close in and begin chaining kills with their Genji-Ming reset combo, managing to pull off a 5-man team wipe. Most viewers probably think that this has made things a little more interesting. Dignitas might be able to claw it back. Yet no more than a handful of people on Earth expected what would be achieved next. Dignitas do not waste a fraction of a second as they ignore the altar and artfully distribute their team across the map – 1 to each of the enemy keeps relative to the amount of resources that player has compared to the keep health, resulting in the capture of all 4 keeps and total control of the map. A 7-point channel from the altar follows, and Gen.G scramble to retake a keep and end the siege on their core. Rotating to the bottom lane after being zoned out of their mid keep, Gen.G knock it down to less than half health and begin pushing Dignitas back. Snitch on Genji dodges Rich's Dragon's Arrow with an lightning-fast X-strike, but Reset makes great use of Falstad's Wind Tunnel talent to zone the other part of Dignitas. POILK on Li-Ming manages to displace their team with a Wave of Force, bumping Reset into dangerous territory where Snitch reacts instantaneously, viciously deleting him with a Swift Strike. Dignitas were waiting for this opening and close down on the rest of the members of Gen.G (Khaldor at this point can only scream "IS THIS REAL LIFE!? IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING?!") and get another kill on Sake's Malfurion and speed forward to aggressively defend the bell towers. Holding on for those valuable few more seconds, Dignitas manage to make the impossible possible, taking the 5th game in the series to a 3 – 3 deadlock.



Not only had a co-ordinated macro play of that magnitude and precision not been witnessed on Twitch.tv in the history of eSports, but up until this point nobody thought Dignitas would even be able to so much as put a dent in Gen. G's match record, having lost 3 - 0 to them earlier in the very same tournament, whereas Gen. G had yet to drop a single game since the previous Eastern Clash, sitting at 38 – 0. Twitch Chat was an unreadable ecstatic blur, Khaldor and Trikslyr were like visibly shaking and I don't know what sounds were involved but my partner says she hurried in and I was halfway off the sofa with an expression that suggested something medically terrible had occurred. This is precisely what I am getting at when I say Heroes of the Storm Moments. Many feared that with the dominance of Gen.G (formerly MVP Black, KSV Black) that continued after their victory at Blizzcon last year, the HotS eSports scene was going to enter the familiar rhythm of many other competitive games; a rhythm where one team becomes undefeatable and the spectator experience of major tournaments is tainted by dull predictability.