I still did very well with Hammer since the patch but maybe just lucky with matchups. Takes a lot of quickmatches to figure out if a hero is still strong and I think hero league queueing is a waste of time. Raynor is just not much fun to play even if he is now strong enough.

I've played maybe 15 games so far, it's really interesting. The main differences:

#1) I think the game is overall VERY well designed. The #1 best thing about it IMO (this *might* be because i have no idea what I'm doing, but I doubt it) is that game has a really strong sense of urgency where you feel like there are objectives all over the map that require your attention, whereas in LoL a lot of times I feel like you're like "OK guys baron is up in 2 minutes. Just farm and don't die until then." This is good because it makes every moment of the game feel intense where LoL is like, medium intensity laning phase, and then for the last 20 minutes it's like 17 minutes of running around and 3 minutes of intensity.

#2) I'm not sure how I feel about your team leveling up together. It definitely has some advantages, allows heroes such as Nova to roam and fufill their role without falling a ton of levels behind a pusher like Hammer. However I think a lot of people play to get individually really fed, in LoL and DotA some of the most fun games are the ones where you can 1v3. I mean ADC mains can argue that they are a team player, and maybe they do play 100% team oriented style, but lets be honest when they queue up they really just want to be able to snowball then 1v3. This is one of the main reasons people play LoL so i think it hurts the success of the game as a whole.

#3) No last hitting. Again as with #2, this has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is more ACTION, most people play just to fight- you can see this in lower level LoL games there are ALWAYS more kills than in higher level games because thats all they want to do. The disadvantage is that laning phase is like the most skill-intensive part of LoL and it's removed in HotS. The last hitting itself isn't very hard but it is 100% the central focus of what let's you outplay your opponents- if that sounds confusing, it's like shooting a soccer ball into a goal isn't very hard, but that's what the entire hard part of the game revolves around.

So yea so far IMO these are the 3 biggest differences and my opinions on them. Like I said earlier I think the game is very well designed, and I'm a huge believer of "real life variance" so even considering #2, if HotS was in the right place at the right time I fully believe it could be as popular as what LoL, and LoL could have flopped in terms of purely gameplay (maybe Riot crushed Blizzard in marketing or whatever, I don't really know).

This might help: https://www.hotslogs.com/Default

Knew it existed but hadn't checked it before. Good to see my recent love for Anub'arak was not completely without reason. I heard Blizzard disagreed with the hotslog stats though and that it doesn't match their internal stats.

I was able to get a key today and have never played a MOBA in my life. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Below lvl 10 make sure there is a hero in each lane unless there is an objective to get so you soak all the xp. Get to lvl 10 first and use your ults to decimate enemy team in team fight. Keep doing objectives and slowly push your way to core.

whats the range for getting xp in lanes? like maybe in terms of normal ranged auto attack? or is there a range increment like DOTA?

if you cannot play ranked yet , learn to play a healer , i tried a bit of unranked and no team had one

Quick matches are pretty horrible at the moment. Large influx of new clueless people and matchmaking is still pretty bad. Most matches are either easy wins or getting crushed because 1 or 2 people on your team don't do the team objectives or play lost vikings.

LOL i had an illidan calling me a noob and wanting to report me for the first 10 levels. I then pointed out I had over 10x his damage and he went quiet after that.

I think he thought one of my vikings was my only character

Also a lot of people bragging about their takedowns while having almost no damage or healing. Stopped explaining takedowns are shared and all you need to do to get a takedown is stand close to someone making a kill.

Fun thing is the amount of people standing in Anub'arak ult and wondering why they die so fast.

Having an invisible sniper character when you're not allowed any vision wards seems like an odd decision.

Stealthed chars are still visible

So I've heard, but damned if I can see them in the chaos of battle.

Well there has to be a plus side somewhere

Nova is already terrible at laning and is forced to roam to be useful, add the fact that in non battle situations stealthed chars are spottable and you got a decent problem for the nova player.

If you find you have too much trouble against stealthies, just pick tassadar or ask someone to pick him. BAM, Nova/Zera are now insta-dead.

Just started but I've played dota for years so I'm fine, this is pretty fun, I'm looking to play with some more teamwork though definitely

Add me y'all my tag is Bakes#1617

If you look at a minion when it dies in range, it will have a "+XP" pop out of it. So you can figure out the range by moving further and further from dying minions until it stops. I think it's ~twice the max range of your auto-attacks.

They changed the matchmaking recently, so no healer vs no healer is a lot more common now. If you solo queue as a healer, then you'll be matched vs teams that also have a healer.

That matchmaking change is not in there yet so playing healer is still a great way to have the upper hand. Forgot the stats but healer vs non-healer is a very favorable matchup

Here the post that says the change hasn't made it in yet:

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/forum.../17347306476#9

This is my first MOBA and I've only been playing about a month but I'm up for the same for learning/teamwork. I've gotten decent with Brightwing. Anyone's free to add me as well: Tetti#1231

You missed this post.

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/forum/topic/17347096740

Cool. Don't understand why that post didn't show in the blue post tracker but it is good news.

this would be pretty fun if the match making wasnt total garbage forcing me to just play vs ai

95% of games you know are over within 5 minutes

I am a filthy casual who played Ashe in LoL, who is most similar in this game

They really need to implement some sort of tard-gating. Like rank 40-50 should never be paired with a rank 8.

Hopefully they will implement all the improvements to the MMR system they talked about during alpha and beta. The excuse for not doing it was always that there were not enough players and waiting times would increase too much but that can't be the case anymore.