What is up HeroesHearth, McIntyre here, bringing you yet another blog post. Today I wanted to discuss and break down what I think the three critical roles of playing ranged assassins are when it comes to Heroes of the Storm. Much like my last blog post going over the melee/trashman role of the team I felt like I could continue to break down roles within a competitive team composition and will be focusing on the ranged today.With that said lets start with what I believe to be three essential components when playing the ranged hero for your team: Threat, Opportunity, following up on the engage/your tank. Each of these three things feed into each other in some way and when teamfighting/pushing out the map it's important to follow them or have some understanding of them.: What I think to be the most important of the 3 above, threat is a feeling or sense the other team has while you are pressuring the map/obj or attacking them during a team fight. This can be created in multiple ways but what is most important is that you are in some way generating it. Some examples of this may be autoing the enemy teams tank as Valla, throwing a cocktail as Greymane and withering down the enemy backline, splitting and pushing down a side wall. or just attacking down the immortal on BoE. All four of these things are putting the enemy on somewhat of a timer, forcing them to respond in one way or another, essentially making them play your game instead of having to play theirs. If threat isn't being generated this is when games start to feel out of hand or impossible to win (maybe a team member picked Azmo and you have no ranged damage + double tank) in a composition like that the lack of threat can cause the next two components to feel unreachable. Through Threat you create......: While ranged players typically aren't always the ones to create opportunity they tend to have a higher impact on completing this task. So what happens when we auto the tank as Valla? Or poke the enemy with cocktails? Maybe their immortal is starting to get low health and it's time for the enemy team to pull the trigger and try to make something happen. This is when the enemy tends to expose the weakness in their armor giving you a chance to strike and punish. A great example of this would be as Valla if you are auto attacking ETC and after getting to 75% health he decides to slide into you. Once he has committed this slide, he no longer is safe and must rely on support to keep him alive. This goes the same for you if you were hit by the slide. Regardless opportunity has been created by both sides as we now have an enemy ETC without slide who has just so happened to slide into our team/ and a Valla who may or may not have been hit by a slide. This is where the now last and final point shows up...You've threatened the enemy, you've created opportunity, now you just need to execute and create kills where the kill pressure is. This is typically where you may have created an easy slide for your own ETC into the enemy backline as they push up to defend their tank/ maybe the enemy has now clumped and your Zera can hit a sick VP. Regardless of what engage happens as a response it's crucial that you are there to follow up with your tank or other engage sees that chance. Without your damage/follow in most cases kill will not happen. And yes other teams will be focusing and targeting you just so you sometimes cannot create these kills but with good awareness of your team/the enemy/and what kills you for the most part even just a single spell in most cases lead to kills for your team.Now for a side note and one that I think is also important after using the word "Awareness", if for whatever reason the enemy is chasing after you and focusing you, kite do not try to damage, and try not to run away from your healer, until the enemy changes or is threatened off from chasing you. At any point if you see the focus change from you to another this is when you need to be going as hard as possible to trade/save a team member. Your Ana get's caught out and you are playing Greymane? Dive headfirst into their damage or healer to create space for your Ana, maybe with the threat you generate she no longer takes damage and they turn on you, this would be good as now Ana can heal you as she no longer needs to run away to survive. Maintaining awareness within a fight and recognizing what does and doesn't kill you is KEY to being a successful ranged player. I use ETC slide as the most obvious but if ETC slides your tank that means he can no longer slide you, so it's time to pump out some damage until you think his q is back off cooldown then reset.Now for an example, I'd watch this teamfight before, focusing on Rich applying what you've just learned above, then reading my breakdown below:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aTqscCBOfk#t=01h49m20sOne of my favorite plays by Rich when playing vs Fnatic in the finals at Blizzcon. In this teamfight you can see with the immortal being such low health (threat) Fnatic feels like they have to push in and force something to happen (opportunity) when Fnatic pushes in TsssT draws all attention onto himself pushing into the frontline drawing muradin Q, Arthas Root, and Valla Reign of Vengence you can also see Medivh presses his shield on his frontline. Recognizing this Rich immediately jumps over the wall onto Medivh as Greymane and pressures a very close kill attempt(threat) because he no longer is threatened and sees both no shield up and no CC's to lock him down(awareness). This forces Ancestral onto Medivh and pulls the rest of Fnatic back to defend their now exposed backline (opportunity) allowing his team to then push through the now exposed teams backside and clean up with some nice resets coming out of Reset on li ming.When looking at your own replays or the replays of others try to focus on these points when teamfighting and see if you can recognize them. This will help to adapt your own playstyle to allow you to hopefully create more threat, lead to more opportunity, and follow up and cash in on that opportunity you created, ranking yourself all the way to GM.If you enjoyed please sure to hit me with a like and check out the rest of my profile as I'm going to try to continue to create content to help you guys learn and improve. Also check out all my builds if you are interested in see how I talent and play certain heroes.Cheers,McIntyre