you do minus siege damage because you're Malthael, you actually heal forts when you auto-attack them" - Kala

Mount quicker and more often

Zagara is a monster early game but falls off as others gain power

Communicate with your teammates

Kala is a cool ass dude. He was Tempo Storm's coach for the 2017 HGC season and a Master/GM player himself. Most importantly, he's articulate, has a wonderful mind for analyzing others' play, and does community coaching sessions every Sunday on his stream. Oh, he's also the lead singer for a kickass band: Kitsune . You can find him on twitter @kurtislloydnbd or twitch @twitch.tv/kala . Also, his name is not Kayla ;)If you're interested in a coaching session with him, stop by his twitch page. There's a link to his discord server and there you'll find all the information you need to get a replay file to him (pretty simple, you fill out a google doc with some info and attach a replay to it).The match I decided to send was a fairly even game on Braxxis Holdout in which we throw away a 16 talent tier advantage and let the enemy get a 100% zerg-wave. It's one of those replays that can be hard to watch because there were a couple things I did blatantly wrong. But more than anything I wanted to hear his opinion on my own personal micro and my decisions on talents. Here's the HotsLogs breakdown of the match for reference:Coming into this coaching session I had lost my previous four Hero League games and had just demo'd into plat2. The match that was picked was a few days older than that particular run. After my initial 99 games, documented here , I'd spent the next 110+ games anywhere from 1 win away from promo into diamond and 800-points in plat2. That's a very small window considering the amount of games played. I have plateaued and probably losing steam as the season is coming to an end. This coaching session was both an opportunity to invigorate myself with one last push before the season ended but also to illicit some actionable changes that would help me in the coming season.Here's the VOD if you care to watch (in case I didn't embed this correctly, our replay review starts ~46min):Here's the main takeaways after watching the VOD a couple times:On the surface this is a seemingly fundamental component of the game. You move 30% faster when mounted so that you should want to be mounted the moment you have an opportunity to. One of the first things Kala noticed (and he repeats to many of the other people he has coached) was the amount of time it took for me to mount. Here's an interesting thought - I've literally said the exact same thing to friends I play with who are in SIlver/Gold. I'm constantly trying to get them to mount faster and thus rotate quicker. It just goes to show that you can always get better at something.While my reasoning was valid for wanting to four man and thus stack black harvest, Kala was adamant about owning the top lane with Malthael and just waiting out the first 4 levels until I could take Die Alone @ level 4. The reasoning is that the Pale Horse/Die Alone combo can secure a kill on Zag if she steps up too far and Malthael is properly patrolling the smoke around the globe spawn point. We had a Falstad, so that in theory I should be able to set up a juicy opportunity for Fal to fly and get an easy gank on the Zag. Once we secure the kill, Fal can stick around and Malth can rotate to take camps... now Falstad is pushing top with bruisers and Malthael can then grab siege camp. My guess is that this type of strategy will be even more important with 2018 gameplay changes.Such an obvious one. Kala said something in particular that really stuck with me. For context, the replay he did before mine was with a group of players playing Team League; he basically says that if a 5-man in TL can't see win conditions, you can "bet your britches" your solo-queue teammates can't see them either. It's super important to not take a fight 15/14 when you're about to hit 16... communicate that to your teammates. It's so fundamental to the game bet yet it happens time and time again. If I see it (and in this situation, I did) something has to be said (I didn't). Shot-calling is an acquired skill but it starts with the little things you tell your teammates in Hero League.Overall, this was an awesome experience. Since the coaching session I've gone 7-2 and I'm sitting at ~820 points in plat1:The 9-minute BoE match was interesting because in that game our Diablo DC'd before the gates even opened and never returned. Disconnects that severely impact the game have not happened often to me this season. I can only find three other instances in my notes of a player DC impacting the game (and one of those we won!). But even here there was a silver lining. One of Kala's MODs was on my team and noticed me and added me to his friends list (thanks ENiGMATiC!!!). I seriously love the HotS community.Like a PlatDog sniffing the butt of that sexy DiamondDog I'm right there with a week to make it happen. Let's Go!!!Cheersouroboros