1. Drafting



Acceptable first picks include Samuro, Zarya, and Malfurion. Even if your Samuro is only level 5, you have to play him for the good of the team’s morale. Playing a crappy Samuro outweighs dealing with the trash talk your teammates will give you when the enemy takes the Blademaster.



Silver players also highly prioritize heroes like Valla, Li-Ming, and Rehgar because they tend to perform reasonably well simply by pressing Q-W-E-R in quick succession.



Let’s not forget Lt. Morales. Despite Brightwing and Auriel still being open, Morales is almost a guaranteed win because no one has the will or the ability to focus her down. Here’s a pro tip, though: If you interrupt her Beam in the middle of a teamfight, she’ll most likely forget to recast it.



Kael’thas is another hero who makes appearances unusually often, even after numerous nerfs. People who play Kael’thas typically don’t have Convection completed, even by level 20, but choose the talent anyway out of fear that their teammates may call them out.



One of the positives about drafting in Silver League is that it doesn’t actually matter that much. I’ve lost plenty of times to solo support Tassadar and double stealth Zeratul-Nova duos. In fact, having an unorganized comp works to your advantage because you can catch the enemy off-guard.

2. Objectives



Players in Silver League understand how objectives work, in that taking them is a probably a good thing. To them, objectives are the things that spawn when the announcer says something — but they are not sure what to do with them.



It’s common practice to try and turn in coins even though the team doesn’t have enough. You can feel the economic slump we’re in has seeped into the Nexus as players painstakingly turn in one or two coins at a time. However, that doesn’t mean that charity has died. If a player accumulates over ten coins, he’s more than happy to give them over to the enemy team by wandering off alone and face checking the enemy team.



Whenever we get a curse on the enemy team, there are incessant pings to do Boss instead of taking down structures to gain an experience lead. By the time the Boss is captured, the curse has almost ended and the Boss is left alone to die as people just hearth home. In fact, Silver players are much nicer people than those in Diamond or Master League because they refuse to use the poor Boss or Mercenaries as mere meat shields or the means to an end. They would have made Lincoln proud by freeing these captive creatures and letting them go their own separate ways.

3. Teamfights



There are only two approaches when it comes to teamfighting in Silver League: either endlessly force fights until one team flops, or never participate in one and push the lanes to your heart’s content.



In the first case, the best case scenario is the team wiping the enemy followed by taking more Mercenary camps or returning to lanes to soak experience. Even with the entire enemy team down, Silver players do not dare trying to dive forts and keeps because they’re terrified that the towers will instantly kill them. Perhaps it’s that they are displaying great sportsmanship — taking down structures to gain an unfair advantage goes against their principles.



If the team has a hero like Azmodan and Gazlowe, chances are that these players will not join teamfights. Instead, they’ll be as far away from fights as possible, pushing towers like there’s no tomorrow. Even if the enemy team comes down for a gank, these lords of destruction will not flinch and get in one last auto-attack on towers before they go down.



A variation on this backdoor strategy used to involve Leoric, who conveniently doesn’t have to go through the tedium of running back to structures after being killed. Since the majority of the playing time is spent in Ghost form, players who enjoyed this tactic could browse Facebook or read Shakespeare in the meantime. It is unfortunate that Blizzard decided to limit the game’s innovative strategy by banning these master tacticians.

4. Politics



By nature, people are political animals. Although many frown upon politicians, being political in Silver League is as important as being a decent player.



Let’s say I am the last pick and the team doesn’t have a support. Brightwing and Rehgar are still available, but I just got this legendary Tassadar skin that I need to show off. What do I do? I play the smart politician by going ahead with my awesome Mecha Tassadar and building him all damage; then, by the end of the match, I can still out-dps some crummy Jaina or Illidan and shift the blame on them.



It’s important to note that you should wait to point fingers until you have the evidence. Otherwise you’re not taking a full advantage of herd mentality. Once your teammates see that other assassins have dealt less damage than a lowly support, they’ll think that the team would have lost anyway even if there were a proper support.



Sometimes, it becomes quite clear that your pick messed up the draft. For those situations, have a couple of excuses ready, such as telling them you only have Li Li for support, questioning teammates’ talent choices, or pretending to be drunk.

5. Attitude



People say that games are meant to be fun. To Silver players, Heroes is not a fun game but a chore. The pure rage they feel from losing outweighs the meager pleasure they get from playing. The tragic part is that they have no other choice than to keep playing Hero League; if there were other game modes that people could play for fun without the fear of demotion, things would be different.



People in Silver see fun as a weakness. Fun is something only winners get to have and losers are not allowed to partake in. And if they’re not winning — thus not having fun — they just have to keep ramming their heads against a wall until they have fun.

Note: this article is not meant to poke fun at Silver League players, but to share some of the common mistakes we make as to improve upon them.