I play occasionally when hearthstone tilts me but just single player. Pretty sure I'm not good enough to play with humans

It's fun so far. Certain LoL experience transfers over. Just a matter of figuring out what builds and comps work best and familiarising myself with the heroes and maps.

Good sites for main builds? Are there widely accepted optimal builds or is it comp dependent? What meta champs are in right now?

^^^ see this is why I am bad

I don't even consider builds beyond, "Hey, this power sounds cool, I'll take it."

It seems like you can choose to forgo versatility and really focus on making one of your skills vastly more powerful, obviously this can be limiting in other ways but the most obvious is if you are a single target damage dealer you can max out stuff and nuke people.

I should read through early parts of this thread

Hotslogs has data showing pick rates and win rates for talents.

g bebe what did you play in league?

some heroes have multiple builds and options and a few have literally 1 build that is good, so it really depends

Most played league champs were Diana, Olaf, Aatrox, Malphite, Jax

So mostly tanky bruiser types and some assassin ish types. Always did better with melee style characters than mages

Daz, Akson, and I seem to want to play every hero in HOTS, but most others say to focus on a few. The heroes that are very strong (right now) that meet your description are Artanis, Thrall, and (maybe, bc they just got buffs) Anub/Arthas. Try to play them

Is Xul any good now? I bought him with gold back when he was first released but haven't played in a while and I think I read somewhere that he was nerfed

Olaf?!? Gotta play Lost Vikings then.

He's good on tomb and playable on other maps where you can soak two lanes, but in general, I'd consider him a bit weaker now. He's gotten powercreeped by other heroes that do a similar job, but are also better in teamfights.

Nice suggestion, Thrall is free for me right now so I tried him out and really liked him. Sick sustain with his passive.

Zuljin damage seems real.

Just logged in after a weeklong break, some kind of promo going on right now and all the heroes are available to play

Is there anywhere we have compiled battletags to add friends? Always looking for people to play with, especially with the new promo coming out this week.

I'm ImsaKidd#1634 , add me kthx.

Bobbo is the compiled list of 2+2ers.

Are you the Imsakidd I see in the in-game reddit channel?

Yeah, that's probably me.

McNulty#1363 / Bobbofitos#1622

I cannot play the game. Since the last patch, every time I run the game my screen goes black and I get that "No Signal" message floating around the screen, like I picked a resolution that my monitor doesn't support. Google comes up empty. Anyone had this problem? I've tried deleting, uninstalling reinstalled, etc.

that sounds bad. didnt even know you played! what is your username, can add you to the 2+2 hots players list

namath12#1386

I've played with you before drunk bastard

I wound up going into the variables.txt file and setting displaymode to 0, allowing the game to run in windowed mode, and now it works. But before the last patch it worked fine so either the patch ****ed something up or the patch + my nvidia drivers ****ed something up

dude, lol. had to look up your profile, we literally played 1 game 13 months ago. give me a break

actually I guess it could have been a lot of things but whatever it works now, I'll look for ya in game

The gold isn't a good enough reason alone to get a hero to level 5 (that is fast; just from 4 to 5 it takes some 7 games, that's also nothing).

But one needs some experience of more heroes. I leveled up to 5 or more about half of the heroes by level 40 total, the ones being any good, imo.

I think only about 14 (that one in theory needs) are good, and most of them have some serious weakness. I take at least half of those seriously and will get them to high level of competence.

I prefer Arthas(W), Sonya(W), Leoric(W), Tassadar("S"), Kaelthas(A), Li-Ming(A), Sylvanas(A)(not bought yet). Bought these by level 40 and no reason not to have these in the collection (see Wch Youtube, read at battle.net, and test run them).

I have an idea of the other 7-9 that I will be using if I have to, and 4 of them still need to test run, and at least one of them has top strong basic powers.

Many heroes have strong combos; you can sometimes succeed to kill a hero after a hero and that power doesn't show in numbers but is in the combos, like when facing many heroes, it more like multiplies than adds the damage, but from most part I prefer e.g. clearly strong basic powers and hope for a strong hero power/ability. It is also preferable to not be a sitting duck with warriors. Some heroes are easy to play and in many cases I have them as 8-14, that I can as so play more easily if I have to.

the meta changes all the time. meaning what is strong or weak differs from patch to patch - and sometimes even within a patch. (as in, a hero who was thought to be weak is actually strong, or vica versa) some heroes are particularly strong or weak against certain comps or heroes, some heroes are fairly baseline.

the easier a hero is to play, typically, the higher the skill floor. meaning what separates a bronze from a master is lower on certain heroes (ie. Li Li) than others (ie. Alarak). The master Li Li though is doing so so so so many better things than a bronze on any hero, but thats not the point. Generally, the higher the skill ceiling (depending on skill shots, various coordination, ult sequencing, whatever) the better that hero is in the hands of a better player (obviously) but it then follows the baseline winrate may underrate a hero.

After playing quite literally thousands of games, and playing *nearly* every hero many games, i've finally come to the conclusion that the strength of a hero is nearly irrelevant to the individual. if my best warrior is stitches, and i need to tank, but stitches sucks in the meta, i should still play stitches. but its important to learn how to play every hero at least to a small extent, so when you are up against the hero or playing with the hero you understand what that other hero is capable or incapable of doing.

~~

given i was a complete noob to the MOBA scene when i started, (and now i'm a master! yay!) here's advice i would give to those of you who are new to the game or havent quite yet played: Until you find "your" hero(es) that you love most / are best with, stick with the easiest to play heroes.

For tanking, it's ETC. His "skill shot" is his Q, which although possible to miss, is very forgiving. He has good self sustain, it's almost impossibly to **** up his builds (he literally only has 1 or 2 trap talents that are worthless, and thats his level 7 W damage), he's been strong basically forever, and his kit is so basic and related to tanking (re-positioning, stuns, displacement, self-healing) that you dont need to worry.

For bruisers, this means a front line hero who can absorb damage, dive the backline or solo lane or whatever, stick with Sonya. She was out of meta for a while when she was weak, got a big buff, and is now tier 1. Prior to being out of the meta she was tier 1, for the same reason she's good again: She can jungle easily, her only real skill shot is landing your spear (Q), which if you just Q into minions, is basically impossible to miss, she doesn't use mana so you can't **** up by being OOM all the time, and like ETC, has good self sustain in and out of combat.

For ranged damage, stick with Raynor. He's consistently one of the heroes people just think (correctly) is a noob hero, but he's basically never bad. He has a natural advantage with longer vision and range, you basically stand and shoot people, and he's so simple you have to talent into his E to even use it. (It's automatic!) His ult is beyond easy to use (it's a big battle cruiser) and in a lot of new games, games last a long time and Ray is actually one of the best late game heroes. You dont have to worry about skill shots with him, it's literally point and click, so you can focus on being in the right place at the right time.

For healing, it's Li Li. She's basically a joke to most people (unfairly) because of how simple she is, you literally don't have to target your Q (it does it automatically), her W (you put it on any frontliner or yourself), or your E (automatically hits stuff!) and her ults as well. In low games she's ridiculously strong, and like Raynor, really shines in the late game. I also think she's super cute and fun.

Other heroes that are easy to play and good to start with: Johanna (more wave clear focused than ETC, has a nice escape with her D making her unstoppable), Lt. Morales (people in low games fear the **** out of her, the truth is she's a super niche hero in higher level games) but her healing involves you just putting your Q (healing beam) on a dude and being in range of them. EASY!

Other than Raynor, pretty much all the damage dealers involve a lot more relative skill, so tanking or healing is a good place to start for newbies.

I think players value different things when they pick their top heroes. I prefer power when heads up and then I have some (most if counting all) range picks that need to keep the (very long) distance, that I also like, though they make strong damage also.

Tassadar just got weakened (because it was too strong), had to drop it out of my top list, as it is semi-protected now only for 5s rather than 8s, so one needs to hit and run with it. It takes usually about five minutes before it becomes strong (if you pick the only good option in the start where it becomes strong after 30 seconds of showering the heroes).

Tested Chromie to level 7 for free, and though it costs 10k gold, I might add it as it can cause serious hero damage from Li-Ming's extra long distance (who can't if there are minions in between). The downside is that it can't cause as much structure damage. And then of course, anything made more weak in the future, can be bad news.

If the hero is complex, there might be less a probability that it will be made weaker: if it is strong only in the hands of a strong/fit player.

I have now Tychus as one of my top enough picks, when they just made it a very little stronger. It is a very classic hit and run hero. Then I have Valla now, just 2k gold and on my top list/almost favourites; it was made stronger sometime in the past, and is easy to play. Raynor is also 2k, but I haven't bought it yet, in spite of the cost and level 8, as I have it now.

Arthas was just weakened very little, but it is still a top pick. Leoric got about 10% more power, nothing to mention, having been a strong (face to face) hero already, and the 10% makes no practical difference. Picking Leoric is somewhat about the state of mind, like when feeling less active (strong single swings).

Some heroes that might be popular are Nova, Valeera, Zeratul, but I have't got them tested yet. The Lost Vikings is one more I am waiting to get tested.

Since this thread hasn't bumped in a while, I guess someone should note that you can get a bunch of heroes starting tomorrow. Blizzard is releasing HotS 2.0 and you get a free Mega Hero Bundle just for logging in. Each bundle has 20 heroes!

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/heroes20/megabundles/

A bit more information about the 2.0 release, icydk

http://progamerreview.com/5-reasons-...the-storm-2-0/