Heroes of the Storm Forums

OK I have been playing MMO's since EQ. Dying is a part of gaming, however in MOBA, not good! I have read the strats and builds, made notes and gone in and leveled several different heroes in varying classes, my highest is only lvl 6, though. I felt that I was keeping up with a smooth learning curve. I would level in Vs AI to 4 and then go into quick match and give it a shot. Now I do understand that humans are actually tougher than AI, but I cannot seem to not die. I get yelled at a whole lot. Somedays you would think I had never played, on other days/games I could do nothing right. If I stay at range, I do not seem to kill enough enemies to add to the overall team goals, and If I get in the fight I get ganged up on and killed. I almost feel like they spotted the newest guy and POW, I'm dead. :).

OK, enough whining. I would like to hear from anyone who has some solid advice on how to get better at this game. My goals are not to totally suck and to help my team win and have fun doing it. I know that I am going to die, but hey lets keep it to the bare minimum. I hope to one day play in the bigh leagues. Who knows perhaps even semi-pro? It could happen? :),
Thanks for your time and consideration
Gray
P.s.
I did turn off the auto cast.

Hey man,

I'm sorry to hear about your misfortune! But it's fine, everybody has to start from somewhere. The good thing is that you are willing to improve :)
Best way to improve is through playing (Practice makes perfect right?). You can also go check out good youtube/streamers (MFPallytime) or pro games (KhaldorTV).

You say you die a lot. What heroes do you play? I'll cover possible reasons for you struggling:

Positioning: A very important part of this game (me and my team struggle with it every match) and you have to physically think while fighting: Am I in a safe spot where I could still help my team?

Hero picks: If you feel completely useless I suggest picking supports for the time being and just sitting far back and keeping your team's health bars filled. If you find your problem is that you always want to start the fights try out some tanks! If you think your heroes are weak you can also go check a hero tier list (just google it).

Team: There is always a chance that your team might just not be good, whether bad composition or bad players. I suggest you find a group of like minded lower level players who are looking to improve and start from there.


If you provide me with a little more detail I can do my best to help you :)
Good luck in future,
-GiGGa

ok let me get back to you while i do some exp grinding

What helps is starting with easy characters like Valla.
That's what I did and I still enjoy playing her.

She has many viable builds but one of the saver builds is the one below, which I use often.

You have tons of escapes due to double vault, Bolt of the Storm and slow from multishot.
You will also do tons of damage and have healing due to the ability of doing hungering arrow 3 times in a row by resetting the cooldown via vault.

You will drain mana quiet quickly but can also go back to base to get some more when you think you need it.

If you need a practice partner, feel free to invite me.

I know it's tempting to jump around and level as many heroes to 5 for the 500G as possible but I would suggest sticking with your favourite hero for a while in QM. There's no point playing HL if you're dying a lot and feel you're going to be a burden to the team (you'll just get flamed a lot more).

You need to get to a point where you know that hero inside out and have explored a range of talent trees to tease out the tree that's best for you given the situation. This can take a lot of games.

Also watch some pro guides/gameplay using that hero to gain more insight into how to play it.

Lastly in terms of dying, alot of players make the mistake of thinking if they see an enemy hero they have to attack it. The problem with that is they end up diving into a situation that spells their demise. Knowing when to engage and when not to is one of the trickiest aspects of the game and even pro players can get it wrong.

A good rule of thumb is if you're uncertain how an engagement will turn out, don't engage.

As an example, I'm on my own and I see an enemy hero on their own. There's a lot of uncertainty because I don't know if there's a second enemy hero lurking in the bushes or just out of my sight range. What I do know is I'm on my own and the next nearest friendly isn't close enough to help me out any time soon. Therefore the best I can hope for is 1v1, with a strong possibly I might get ganked by multiple enemies.

If you're a betting man you wouldn't take that bet.

Where I'm far more certain is I'm with 2 friendly heroes and I see an enemy hero. My mini map tells me 2 enemy heroes are top lane (and we're bottom) and 1 enemy hero is awaiting respawn. Therefore the best they can hope for is 2v3 with the possibility of 1v3.

That's the time to engage.

Positioning and map awareness is the most important aspect of the game to focus on in the beginning. Often its not about killing an enemy, but zoning them so you get better positioning than them.

There are a lot of good advice in the posts above. The only advice I want to add is to pick a Hero that make it relativly easy to stay alive.

I cant think of a better Hero than Raynor for training. First of all he automatically heal for a large amount when you are below 30 % health. Penetrating Round gives exellent damage and knocks the enemy back. This have saved me lot of times from beeing ganked because of bad positioning. He also have Inspire wich buffs your team (good reason for staying with your teammates late game).

Google MFPallytime an watch a Raynor guide or two. Happy hunting.

Wow, really appreciate the replies and the support. I guess I should say a bit about myself and a lil bit about what I have been doing with HOTS. I am one of your older gamers, discovered EQ at a late age. Before that Table top Battletech, once someone truly explained HP's to me.
I worry about playing support due to some of the newby mistakes I have been making, of which all of the replies have given me some good ways to fix most of them. I am guilty of leveling many to five for the gold. I have 5 heroes now. I have Zagara, Tychus, Tyrael, Sonya, and Tassadar. I have been trying out Kerrigan the last couple of days. I enjoy all of these toons. I believe that the most fun I have had has been with Sonya, Zagara and Kerrigan. It feels to me as though the ranged specialist is my comfort zone. I have been playing a bit, with the assasins at first, but truly I feel that the ranged specialists are a better fit for now. I know that by the time I really want to play hero league, I want to be able to fill any slot, but not going to worry to much yet, about that.
I will start trying to be more map aware and working to be better positioned. I normally play with my wife, it is a new learning experience for us and we are having a great time learning the game together. I will add Y'all to my friends list and tonight I will choose one hero and work solely with that one until, I know it inside and out and stay out of trouble. My name in game ID is Grayloch, my wife has my other favorite name; Toldek(k)sp? I will be playing this afternoon and evening and I will let y'all know how it goes. I will also add y'all to my friends list.
Thanks again
BTW......I have not had a chance to check out some of the youtube offerings yet. I will do my best to finish the honey do's and get to that by tomorrow, hopefully.

The 5 heroes you've mentioned I wouldn't class as that easy to play.

Tassadar can be quite tricky and in my opinion depends very much on which other heroes are on your side as to how you operate to get the most out of him. Kerrigan like most melee assassins requires a fair amount of experience to play well, otherwise you will end up dying a lot. I would steer clear of the likes of Kerrigan, Illidan and Zeratul initially and actually think Kerrigan is the weaker of the 3 (although that's a matter of opinion).

I don't like Sonya at all. Others may disagree but I think there are much better melee warriors to choose from especially if you want the sustain to help you from dying a lot. If you're that way inclined I would favour the tanks like Anub, ETC or Johanna over brawlers like Sonya, Arthas and Tyrael.

Both Zagara and Tychus are good but they play quite differently to most other ranged heroes. For that reason I don't think they're good heroes to learn with.

I agree with CanisLupus, I think Raynor is a very underrated hero and is probably one of the best to begin with to help learn the game and offer value to your team. He's very solid with good damage and quite a varied talent tree compared to some others. The only limitation is Raynor's top end isn't as high as some other ranged assassins which is why he isn't a popular choice amongst the pros compared with Kael, Valla, Jaina, etc.

If you were thinking of trying out a healer I would recommend Lili. She's not as good as Brightwing (which has a fairly high skill requirement) or quite as good the other healers but she's very straight forward to play and can really help out a team. A well played LiLi is better than a badly played Uther. Lili is also cheap at 2000 gold so an easy choice to help you get your 10 purchased heroes for Hero League.

The other advantage playing the healer role is you can simply follow other heroes around and heal them from the back rank which offers relative safety, so you wont die as much ;). This also allows them to initiate the combats taking the pressure off you as to when or when not to.

I did purchase LiLi today. I have watched MFPALLY's video on her. I am enjoying trying to play half as well, errr, near? as well, lol. I am going to do my best not to despair playing LiLi. I am terrible. I will try to do more from the back, rather than jumping into the acutal fight all the time. We will see how it goes,
Thanks for the advice. I will keep working her until I am comfy and only do others when I can finish a quest.