Knowing how to play the various objectives in Heroes of the Storm is critical for being a good player. There are so many objectives that learning to be effective on all of them can seem like a daunting task. That is where this guide is going to come in. I am going to be pulling a few maps at a time and giving some strategies that generally seem to be the most effective for maximizing the potential of their objectives. There are six important questions I am going to be asking for each map and set of objectives. These questions are: How important is it to group as five at the objective? Is the objective less important than maintaining early game soak? Can you trade the objectives and how do I effectively navigate that? What level is pushing with the objective priority? How do I effectively pilot the objective? What heroes excel on this particular map? By answering these questions I should hopefully have improved your understanding of the maps and help you improve your own personal play on each map and objective.

Black Heart’s Bay is the map of choice for this guide. It is a map that stands out from the rest, because it is a map that can be won without team fighting if played properly. The objective of this map forces players to kill mercenaries and the coin chests that spawn periodically in order to turn in coins to bombard the enemy structures. This changes the priorities of the game and forces players to change their play styles. Thus, all the questions that I have been asking for these guides are not relevant to this map. I will only be focusing on four of the six: Is the objective less important than maintaining early game soak?, How important is it to group as five at the objective?,Can you trade the objectives and how do I effectively navigate that?, and What heroes excel on this map?

Is the objective less important than maintaining early game soak?

For the first question the answer is an obvious yes. As long as you deny your enemy enough coins for a turn in you can keep soaking as normal and try for an experience lead. The best way to do this is to trade the coin chests that spawn at around the fifty second mark of every game. Try to push up either the mid lane or the bottom lane and rotate players to the chest that you have priority on in order to deter the enemy from fighting you for the chest. This can be done by sending your solo laner from bottom to mid or by sending one or two of your heroes from the top and mid side of the map to the bottom lane. Whichever you feel will be easier to take is the best one to try to have the numbers advantage on. In order to maximize your coin gaining and experience it is important to have one hero that is devoted to taking mercenary camps while the rest of your heroes focus on soaking, but I will speak more on this subject in the section about which heroes excel on this map. Experience is your number one priority on this map until level ten, then the priority shifts to an even balance between collecting coins and experience. This map is all about rotations and making good decisions and trades.

How important is it to group as five at the objective?

Generally grouping as five is not necessary on this map unless you are trying to force a turn in or trying to deny a turn in. The best thing you can be doing as a team is having one person rotating around taking all the mercs, one hero bottom trying to at least stay even in the push game, and your group of three looking for opportunities to roam and gank. You will usually want to group as five in the late game when it becomes too dangerous for any one hero to look to split push. Your priorities in the late game become denying turn ins and boss. It is a constant balance between pressuring lanes, taking mercenaries, and looking for opportunities to turn in and do boss. Like I said, decision making and good rotations are the key to being effective on this map. Think of the late game (level 20+) as a greater than scale of importance. At the top is denying your opponent from turning in when you know your opponent has enough for a turn in (if they do not have enough the importance goes down drastically). Right below that is collecting coins when you do not have enough for a turn in (if you have enough, a turn in obviously rises above this in importance). Next on the scale is taking boss. Boss should only be done when you have vision of at least two enemy team members in the bottom lane where you know they will not be able to contest in time (obviously also when 2 or more enemies are dead). The next priority is pushing in minion waves to force your opponent to decide to either clear the wave or force a fight. Once your minion waves have catapults you will generally only have to shove in one or two waves in order to force your opponent to go deal with them. This is the best way to create an opportunity for a turn in or a boss. Catapults are so strong against structures now that if they are left unattended they will destroy forts, keeps, and even the core. That was a lot of words to basically say grouping is a very complex part of making decisions on this map, but just like with any other map, if you are unsure whether to group or not it is safest to stay with the team.

Can you trade the objectives and how do I effectively navigate that?

There are definitely trades to be made on this map. You can trade coins, forts for turn ins or bosses, and even trade pressure on different parts of the map based on what you want to do. The first thing I listed is the most simple trade to understand. Trading coins is very easy, like I mentioned above. All you do is as a team decide which chest you want to have numbers advantage at and concede the other one. You can also trade mercenaries with the opponent. If they are forcing on top side and are taking your top mercenaries then you can get an advantage by taking all of the bottom camps because siege giants will do a lot more work than bruisers. Just be careful that you do not give them boss in one of these scenarios, because that causes a huge loss of pressure by forcing you to go kill the boss while your enemy gets free run of the map.

Trading forts for turn ins is a tough call. It is generally in your favor if you have one person that can secure a turn in for your team to send them to the turn in while the other four defend if you have vision of all the members of the enemy team. The other time that this trade is in your favor is if they are taking a tier one and you know that your turn in will bombard a tier 2 structure. Giving up a tier one for a tier two is always a good trade and is something you can look to do on every map but Towers of doom because there are no tier 2 structures to take.

Trading pressure on the map is generally one of the hardest things to do. Top pressure is the best priority to have because the boss is located on the top side of the map, but bottom pressure can be extremely important in the late game because if you have catapults pushing in the bottom lane it can free you up for easy boss takes and turn ins. Generally the best advice to follow is get bottom pressure if you know it will lead into a keep take, but in all other scenarios try to keep top priority. Bottom pressure is unimportant until it leads to a keep because it is the furthest lane away from all of the most important objectives.

What heroes excel on this map?

The best heroes to pick on this map vary. I generally look to have a team composition that contains a character that can clear mercenaries quickly and efficiently (Illidan and Sonya), a hero that can effectively split push without putting themselves in too much danger (Sylvannas, Azmodan, Abathur, Murky, and Zagara), a hero with great wave clear and crowd control to help make quick rotations and ganks (Jaina, Kael’Thas, and Xul), and finally a mobile tank and a support that has some kind of crowd control. Globals are great to have on this map as well because they allow you to have split pressure around the map while also being prepared incase a team fight breaks out. I would say the ideal team composition for this map would be Illidan, Zagara, Jaina, ETC, and Brightwing. This team composition gives you everything I mentioned above and compliments each other nicely. Now obviously I know that it is unlikely to get all of these heroes together which is why I gave alternatives. Just look for mobility, wave clear, and safe split pushing. These are the best characteristics for a team comp to have for success on Black Heart’s Bay.

Conclusion

Black Heart’s Bay is one of my favorite maps because of the potential for split pushing and because of the amount of importance on good decision making and rotations. It is a nice change from the rest of the maps that generally require a ton of team fighting. A smart team can out rotate the enemy until they make a bad choice and take advantage to slowly build leads through turn ins until they can win without leaving it to a chance team fight. Generally grouping as five is not necessary on this map unless you are trying to force a turn in or trying to deny a turn in which opens up the map for split pushing. There are definitely trades to be made on this map. You can trade coins, forts for turn ins or bosses, and even trade pressure on different parts of the map based on what you want to do. The hero pool is slightly different on this map than others because it has a higher emphasis on mercenaries and on split pushing which is a refreshing change in my opinion. I know people like to be down on this map because of the lack of team fighting that can arise from it, but if you take the time to truly understand the intricacies of the map it becomes a fun, strategical map that has many viable ways to win. I hope this guide helps you with your future games on this map and I hope you will give me feedback on what you would like to see in future guides of this sort. Thank you for reading, and good luck on the battlefields of the Nexus.

-Caleb “PanDuhChuu” Jones

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