I have 24k gold and level 40. Gonna max out some artifact!

Because I only bought stitches/valla/brightwing/hammer.

So got into this alpha a while ago but was caught up in other games. Just started playing last night.

I have lost my first 5 games in a row. I am assuming I am partly to blame for that, being the noob and having no idea the mechanics of the maps, but I am also wondering if using the random queue generally queues you into matches against premade groups?

Any good reading material where I can understand what I'm doing a bit more and make some smart purchases on Heroes to get started with?

If you solo queue then in most cases you play against another pug. Before you start playing versus just afk your hero of choice in practice mode or find some people to level your hero in coop. Then move to versus when you have unlocked all talents.

Play whatever the heroes in the rotation are until you find one you like and then purchase. Personally I like:

Stitches: Hook and gorge can be hilarious against new players.
Zagara: Easy hero with a crappy ultimate but still pretty strong
Nova: Fun if you like to finish off heroes, great on dragon map.
Diablo: Has an amazing combo at high levels that they will nerf soon though
Hammer: When played right with a decent team she is a huge pain

I have bought and leveled a lot more but these are the ones I liked early on.

Guess they got rid of artifacts

Something like artifacts is likely to return but this implementation was horrible. It was not like there were any meaningful choices. Don't remember switching artifacts once I picked them for a hero. Blizzard did give me more gold than I spent on artifacts so that was nice.

I think the system queues you against whatever. There's just not enough players at this point in the alpha that the matchmaking system can form good matches a lot of the time.

Have you played LoL or DOTA or HoN before? Usually people with a background in those games have a much easier time starting out in HotS. If not, I'm not actually sure where people go to find beginner's guides. I think some people suggest starting out with ranged characters, though, since a new player tends to die a lot more with melee chars. Valla and Raynor are some of the easiest characters to play.

I have some MOBA experience from Smite and have watched quite a few streams of LoL and DOTA2 over the years. I understand the core concepts well enough and was mostly referring to learning what each of the maps objectives are (ie: seeds, etc), character guides, tier lists, etc.

Anyways, the objectives were pretty simple and after a game or two on each map they all make more sense now.

Played a bunch more games last night and having a much better time of it now. Was winning quite a few games and had a number of good, low death rounds.

Really liking Sonya. She seemed so boring at first until I learned how to build her out right to hit like a truck.

Any suggestions on best Healer for solo-queue? Been playing Malf while free. His heals are strong but aside from Tranquility during a 5v5 I never feel like I am really turning the tide of a battle.

Lili was really overpowered but haven't played her since they took away the path of the ... talents so she might have mana issues now that I don't know of. Her ultimate will heal up your entire team in a team fight. Just take all the healing talents

Battle tags anyone? Keen to play some HOTS with some 2+2ers

Killerwalski#1334

Any champions that are good at shredding tanks? Keep getting tons of Novas/Zeratuls on my teams that can't do anything to Diablo as he runs in and destroys.

If there was a hero that could shred tanks then they would not be tanks anymore. Take out the rest of the team before you go after the tank. If you have stuns or polymorph then use those on the tank and kill any healers first.

Lots of Diablo players will way over extend with him because of his tankiness. Catch him in your back lines and focus him down, save your stuns/cc's for when he's trying to escape.

If there was a counter, Nova or other ranged dps are probably it. They can keep out of range of most of his abilities and lay damage on him from afar.

Zeratul is definitely not a counter. Melee assassins will have a hard time with tanks because their health is low. They are more of a hit the back line, kill a Nova / Support, and then get out of there type character.

I've had this Alpha available for a while but finally decided to try it. I've never played any kind of moba before but I had a lot of fun with the tutorials and a couple of practice games.

Game reset and back online now. *supposedly* the last reset but they aren't making guarantee's. Definitely the last reset on shop, anything you buy is for good.

Also double XP so great time to knock off some talent gating.

Time to AFK in practice mode to unlock their talents.

Edit: Looks like they fixed that trick.

Yeah, I noticed that too. Did they just change it so the 3-min AFK boot applies to practice mode? Seems kind of silly to add an AFK timer to a single-player mode.

Didn't check how long it takes but you definitely get booted if you are inactive. Still abused it by having the game running while doing other stuff and just run into the towers to die until I had enough time to quickly win the game.

Just got in today. Of course it's the day the new WoW patch hits.

On the flip side, I am finding it hard to get excited for the WoW patch because Heroes is so fun.

Tons of invites going out apparently. Probably now looking to stress test the production hardware before going to Beta.

Wow patch had my attention for the time it took me to do the quests, run ubrs and farm the bronze whelpling.

Says I got into the 'technical alpha'. i assume this is nothing different than anyone else has been playing.

Don't remember signing up so I assume a ton of people got invites.

Yeah technical alpha is the same as what we all have.

Blizzard beta's don't really have a sign-up, you just an "opt-in" on bnet so you may have just opted-in for all games and don't remember or something? I think it was called Blizzard All Stars when the opt-in first became available.

I have no idea. Hearthstone is the only bnet game I've ever played. I don't play on playing this game just thought it was interesting to get an invite.