Positioning

Positioning is one of the single most important skills to master in any MOBA, but it's especially crucial in HotS where team fights can be frequent in all stages of the game. It's crucial regardless of what role or hero you're playing, but it's particularly important for a hero like Raynor who not only has low mobility, but is often a very high priority target for the enemy team.
There are some other techniques I'll be discussing in this chapter, but all of them either rely on proper positioning, or are merely techniques that help you maintain a good position. Positioning is a very dynamic and abstract concept, so it's impossible to cover all the possible situations you might encounter. But I'll do my best to give you a general idea of some best practices to follow.

First off, let's delve a bit into the role of a ranged assassin. I'm oversimplifying things a little bit here, but the primary role of a ranged assassin is simply to do as much damage to the enemy team as possible. In my opinion there are currently 2 different broad types of ranged assassins in HotS; mages and auto-attackers.
Some examples of mages include: Jaina, Kael'thas, Kerrigan, and * Sylvanas
Some examples of auto-attackers include: Raynor and Sgt. Hammer
Heroes like Valla, Falstad, Tychus (*and debatably Sylvanas) are what I'd consider hybrids - as in depending on how they build their talents they could either qualify as a mage, auto-attacker, or something in-between.

Anyway though, the reason I want to differentiate between mages and auto-attackers right now is because of how vastly different they operate and position in a team fight, and how they go about doing their damage.

Mages rely mostly on their abilities to do damage. As a result they usually do their damage in short bursts of high damage to one or more targets, and then are stuck doing low sustained damage with their auto-attacks to single targets until their cooldowns are back up.

Auto-attackers, as the name implies, rely mostly on their strong auto attacks to do decent and consistent damage to a single target and usually have one or more weaker abilities that allow them to do small amounts of burst damage to one or more targets.

What this means is that as a mage you have to be much more selective of how and when you use your abilities in a fight. For example Jaina's Blizzard is a decent ability if used on one target. But it's an insanely strong and potentially fight winning ability if it manages to hit 3 or more people. So a good Jaina or other mage player will look and wait for what they think is their best opportunity to get the most out of their abilities. Because once their abilities are on cooldown, they really can't contribute much to a fight besides their weak auto-attacks until their abilities come off cooldown again.
Because of this, mages don't really have to put themselves at risk for very long in team fights, but they may have to put themselves at high risk to use their abilities optimally. Once they unleash their abilities they can retreat to a safe place in the fight and auto-attack until they're ready to unleash another volley.

Auto-attackers on the other hand are completely the opposite. Their auto-attacks are on a very short cooldown, so it's not nearly as important who they hit as long as they're hitting someone. If a better target becomes available they can easily switch to hitting that target instead, but they don't need to worry nearly as much about putting themselves in danger to hit the 'optimal' target because their damage will always be relevant. The flip-side to that of course is that auto-attackers have to constantly put themselves in some degree of danger to be doing damage in a fight.

Ranged assassins are almost always the highest priority targets in any fight (with the exception of maybe some melee assassins like Illidan, Thrall, or Sonya). They simply do the most damage, and have the least health. So any time you move in range to do damage you're putting yourself at risk of being engaged on by the enemy team and brutally massacred.


So to put it all together; as I said Raynor is an auto-attack assassin, so your primary positioning objective in a team fight is to find the perfect balance between #1 staying alive, and #2 getting as many auto-attacks off on enemy heroes as possible. I'll go into more detail in later sections in this chapter on things such as target prioritization, threat assessment, and techniques for optimizing this fine balance.

---

Threat Assessment

So as you know from the previous section, the key to good positioning is a balancing act between trying to stay in a safe position in the team fight, and trying to get as many auto-attacks in as possible.

One thing you need to be able to do to find this golden balance is to constantly assess how much danger you're in and adjust your position in the fight accordingly. The first thing to consider is the enemy team composition. Some heroes are inherently more dangerous to attack than others. To simplify things, I made a list of heroes and how dangerous they can be to attack as Raynor in the context of a team fight. Keep in mind there are always caveats, and as always there are really too many unique situations for me to realistically cover. So at the end of the day remember to use your best judgement and treat this as more of a general reference of things to watch out for.

High Threat:

Arthas - With his Howling Blast and Frozen Tempest Arthas has the ability to root you from about the distance of your auto-attack range and keep you permanently slowed. In a 1v1 scenario this is less dangerous as you can usually just push him away with a Penetrating Round and walk away. However in a team fight if you're rooted and his teammates react you're probably going to be in big trouble!

Anub'arak - With his Impale and Burrow Charge, he has the ability to jump in and stun-lock you. Additionally, if he has Locust Swarm up, he can do most of the damage needed to kill you without much need for any follow-up from his team. His Cocoon also offers the threat of isolating you in a team fight, but it's hard to play around that without help from your team - although luckily it's similarly hard for the enemy team to capitalize on it without being at least somewhat organized.

Diablo - With his Shadow Charge and Overpower combo Diablo can really ruin your day. As with most of the tanks though, this is only truly dangerous if the enemy team is in a position to follow-up. That is unless he's using Lightning Breath, in which case of course you'll want to walk away from that!

E.T.C. - With his Powerslide, Face Melt, and Mosh Pit he's one of the most terrifying tanks in a team fight. Any time you're in auto-attack range of him and his Powerslide is off of cooldown you're at risk of getting caught and being forced to dance. The best things to keep in mind here are not to clump up with teammates for his Mosh Pit - ESPECIALLY not your support, or another hero who can cancel the Mosh Pit. Naturally, against an E.T.C with Mosh Pit you should always save your Penetrating Round in case you need to bail out teammates who are caught dancing!

Jaina - Her Summon Water Elemental is one of the most annoying abilities in the game for a Raynor, it can essentially permanently slow you for the fight and it does great damage. Oh and there's also usually a Jaina behind it which is equally terrifying. On top of being able to perma-slow you, she does extremely high burst damage. If she lands a full combo on you she can burst you through your Adrenaline Rush. Your auto-attacks slightly out range her abilities, but she can always chase you down and beat you 1v1 with Summon Water Elemental so give her a lot of respect in fights if she has her cooldowns up. If you just saw her use Blizzard and Cone of Cold somewhere else then by all means feel free to bully her a little.

Johanna - With Blessed Shield into Condemn she can really ruin your day. Like most tanks, she's not really that threatening to you on her own. But she can keep you locked down long enough for her team to kill you.

Kael'thas - With his Gravity Lapse he can easily disable you out in the open. And if you fight in a creep wave or near allied heroes he has the ability to do insane amounts of damage with his Living Bomb and the Chain Bomb talent which is very popular these days. With that in mind, if I decide to trade with a Kael'thas I usually make a point of dodging side to side in-between my attacks to reduce the risk as much as possible, or abusing the fact that my auto attack range is slightly longer than his Living Bomb range.

Kerrigan - With your low mobility you are one of Kerrigan's favorite targets. She can instantly catch you out of position with a full Primal Grasp Impaling Blades combo, and can engage at you from a very deceptively long distance by using Ravage once to finish off a minion and then using it again to jump next to you. Kerrigan is one of Raynor's biggest threats, if you don't know where she is in a team fight, or she still has her combo up then don't go in. Your only counter-play against a good Kerrigan as Raynor is usually just waiting for her to blow her combo somewhere else. You can potentially catch her out with a Bullseye Penetrating Round if she chooses to jump near you, but it's risky business and it won't always be easy to get the right angle unless she actually jumps on top of you.

Leoric (With Entomb) - Until you reach level 20 and can get Bolt of the Storm, Entomb is one of Raynor's biggest nightmares. Unless you have a clutch support like an Uther or Rehgar, you'll most likely die if you get caught with this ultimate. You'll probably survive a 1v1, but if any of his teammates are nearby to capitalize on the entomb you're most likely dead!

Muradin - With his Storm Bolt, Reverberation, Avatar, and Thunder Strike Muradin has the potential to catch you out, severely reduce your damage output, and even duel you 1v1. There's not too much counterplay against a good Muradin as Raynor, you just have to respect the stun and be prepared to kite back if he goes after you. He has the ability to zone you out of the fight and force you to shoot him which can be particularly irritating if he goes Imposing Presence. But sometimes you have no choice. Some damage is better than no damage, and as long as he continues to zone you out he's out of the fight as well - however that's still usually favorable for him!

Murky - You don't really have much counter-play to his Octo-Grab besides being far enough back when he uses it. Against Murky it's more important that your team either A. kills the Pufferfish to mitigate his damage on you, or ideally B. your support uses Cleanse so you can calmy walk out of the Octo-Grab.

Sonya (with Leap) - Normally fighting Sonya is as simple as avoiding the Ancient Spear and poking her down. But with Leap she has the potential to catch you out. The plus side to this is she gives up A LOT of damage by not taking Wrath of the Berserker. Most Sonya players in the current meta don't use Leap, but it's still something you should be conscious of.

The Butcher - With his Ruthless Onslaught and either of his heroic abilities he can do a lot of burst and sustained damage to you and be very hard to shake off. Similar to Kerrigan you'll usually want to stay hidden from a team fight until he reveals himself unless you have a support like Uther with his Divine Shield or Rehgar with his Ancestral Healing to bail you out.

Tyrael - With his Judgment he's extremely good at catching you out. As long as Judgment is off cooldown you need to be careful and stay far back in the team fight.

Zagara - She can out-trade you with her Hunter Killer, but most importantly the range on her Devouring Maw is about as long as your auto-attack range. The hunter killer is easily dealt with by either backing off, or having your team kill it immediately. But if you get caught in a Devouring Maw in a team fight you have no way of escaping if the enemy team follows up. At least not until level 20 when you can get Bolt of the Storm.

Medium Threat:

Brightwing - Her Polymorph can potentially get you in trouble, and it's definitely inconvenient, but you can still walk away if the enemy team tries to go for you.

Falstad - While he doesn't have much in the way of disables, he's an excellent duelist. As a fellow assassin he does a lot of damage. Be prepared to pull back if necessary, but be aware of the fact that he has way more mobility than you with the slow from his Hammerang and the gap-closer from his Barrel Roll.

Illidan - Generally speaking Illidan will be a very common target for you, and you'll probably be one for him. He can chase you down over long distances, and will crush you in a 1v1 fight. When fighting him make sure you stay close to the protection of your team. When he uses Evasion stop auto-attacking and either switch targets for a moment, or do your best to walk away and juke him. It's also the perfect time to hit Penetrating Round however it can be very difficult to consistently hit him while he jumps around the battlefield. The Bully Build is very strong against Illidan since landing a well timed Bullseye Penetrating Round can mean death for him.

Malfurion - If he has the Ellune's Grace talent, his Entangling Roots has a long enough range to hit you when you auto-attack him. Like any root, this can potentially be dangerous if his team follows up on it. But generally speaking it's not too risky to hit him, and Malfurion himself has no great way to follow up on the root.

Nova - With her extremely high burst damage, she has the ability to instantly kill you. The good news is with good positioning and good awareness of her position you can usually avoid her full combo. Be aware of the fact that she will probably try to flank you mid teamfight. Once she uses her damage combo she's extremely vulnerable and has no ability to escape so try to capitalize on that if you can. Generally speaking though, it's not on you as Raynor to chase her down.

Sgt. Hammer - As a fellow auto-attacker she also does very high sustained damage, however she can out-damage, and out-range you. She'll generally win a 1v1 if you're both just shooting each other so you're generally better off just staying out of her auto attack range, unless of course she's out of position or disabled.

Sonya (with Wrath of the Berserker) - You can safely poke her behind a minion wave, and potentially even out in the open. As long as you can avoid her Ancient Spear she has no way to close the gap. If she does land it you can still often win a trade and survive by knocking her away with a Penetrating Round and shooting her in the back while she retreats, or orbwalking away if she charges. However with the damage from Wrath of the Berserker it doesn't take her long to kill you at melee range so be careful!

Stitches - With his Hook ability you always have to be conscious of your positioning. As long as you only try to attack him when there's minions or allied heroes in-between you he can't punish you. That being said, allied heroes are poor cover as they have a tendency to move. If he does manage to land a hook it's usually enough to kill you with proper follow-up from his teammates. Especially if he's using Gorge and can pull you further back into his team.

Thrall - With his Feral Spirit and Sundering he has the potential to catch you out in fights. However Feral Spirit is fairly easy to dodge, and to do most of his damage he has to be in melee range with Windfury up. With a well placed Penetrating Round you can often stop thrall in his tracks, and with Bullseye Penetrating Round you can often bully him in a team fight. Similar to Sonya though, he can do a lot of damage in a small amount of time. Make sure you respect that.

Tyrande - You don't usually have to worry about trading with a Tyrande in team fights, you can expect her to try to hit you with Lunar Flare, but it's a pretty easily ability to dodge if you know it's coming. As long as she doesn't land the stun you can out-damage her. That being said, if she has a guaranteed stun to follow-up with, you can't afford to be within her range until that stun has been used elsewhere.

Zeratul - Raynor is actually very strong against Zeratul, at least if you're using the Bully Build and can hit your Penetrating Round. If you can land a Bullseye Penetrating Round when he blinks in, he's going to die. The only thing you have to fear from Zeratul is him catching you out in a Void Prison and giving his team a chance to burst you down.

Low Threat:

Abathur - What's he gonna do? Slap you? The only thing to worry about with an Abathur is that he might be baiting you. That is unless he's using his Ultimate Evolution in which case his threat level depends on who he's cloning.

Azmodan - He has no way to disable you, as long as you're not standing in his All Shall Burn he can't really punish you for shooting him.

Chen - He has no way to disable you, and he doesn't really do much burst damage. However you don't want to be stuck 1v1ing a Chen because he'll win eventually!

Gazlowe - Gazlowe's only real threat is catching you with his Grav-O-Bomb 3000 and Xplodium Charge combo. Since those abilities are both melee, you don't have much to fear by shooting him. Just make sure you keep your distance.

Kharazim - Unless it's a 1v1 scenario and he has Seven-Sided Strike, there's not much he can do to you. You will out-damage him, and he has no way of disabling you for his teammates.

Leoric (with March of the Black King) - Without entomb Leoric is no threat to you. Just dodge, or walk out of his Drain Hope if he lands it and you'll simply be able to kite back and gun him down with your superior range.

Li Li - She can be obnoxious to attack if she uses Blinding Wind, but otherwise you don't have anything to worry about when targetting her in a team fight.

The Lost Vikings - They can do a lot of damage if all 3 of them are hitting you, or they're using Longboat Raid!, but you can usually just walk away, or simply burst down the boat quite often.

Lt. Morales - She has no way to threaten you besides maybe a perfectly placed Displacement Grenade. Either way, you can generally hit her without any fear.

Nazeebo - His Plague of Toads and Zombie Wall are easily dodged, and you can cancel his Ravenous Spirit. The only thing you need to worry about with him his either getting caught by Zombie Wall (if you do you can easily use Penetrating Round to break out) or trying to fight him while his Gargantuan is on you.

Rehgar - He can't really punish you in a teamfight. He can technically come out ahead in a 1v1 scenario in the early game if you don't orbwalk (see next section) properly though.

Rexxar - He can stun you with Misha, but she has to be in melee range to do that so you can easily kite back if she runs at you and get free shots off on her. When fighting Rexxar treat it like you would fight a tank like Arthas. You don't want to ever trade hits, just abuse your long range and poke Misha down before you commit to trading any hits.

Sylvanas - She's generally not too much of a threat to attack, she has some potential burst with her Wailing Arrow and Envenom but generally speaking she's not a great duelist and you will be able to out-trade her with your superior damage.

Tassadar - With his low damage & mobility you usually don't have much to fear from Tassadar. He can potentially beat you in a 1v1 with all of his abilities focused on you, but most likely in a team fight he'll be shielding his teammates instead. Similarly, he'll beat you with Archon, but you can simply walk away if he uses it. His only real threat is a well placed Force Wall followed by his teammates catching you out, but it's very hard to actually isolate someone with it most of the time.

Tychus - Unless he's using one of his heroics on you he trades pretty evenly with Raynor. It's fairly easy to simply walk away from him in a fight if you're getting too low or you see him use either one of his heroic abilities. Just be conscious of the fact that he can chase you down while using his Overkill so similar to Falstad if you're going to run away you have to start running sooner rather than later.

Uther - His stuns are only at melee range, as long as you're keeping your distance when you attack him you have nothing to worry about.

Valla - You will out damage her and have higher health than her in a fight. If you're running the bully build and you land a Bullseye Penetrating Round you will almost definitely kill her. However you can't be completely reckless. Although you have a big advantage, she can potentially win if you're isloated and take the full damage of a Hungering Arrow.


As a conclusion to this section keep in mind that these are all very situational and you will often have to use your best judgement and learn from your mistakes. For instance, while Diablo might be a high threat hero when their team is in a position to follow-up, you won't have to worry about him if it's a 3v5 fight in your favor, or if you happen to know his Shadow Charge is still on cooldown.

Remember that you want to do as much damage as you can get away with doing. Generally speaking you'll want to maintain maximum range from your opponents since Raynor has one of the longest auto-attack ranges in the game. But if you're at a clear advantage, taking steps closer to your enemy will allow you to chase them that much farther with orbwalking (which I discuss in the next section).
Pay close attention to cooldowns and the positioning and composition of both teams. Sometimes the enemy team will also be effectively zoned out from following up on your because of the players on your team. Or as I mentioned earlier if you have a support like Uther that can bail you out of a nasty situation you can sometimes afford to play a bit more aggressively.

---

Orbwalking

Alright, so now that we've covered positioning and threat assessment, let's talk a bit about a technique called 'Orbwalking'. This is an extremely common technique in most MOBAs and comes in really handy no matter what hero you're playing. While it's merely a nice trick to learn on some heroes, on Raynor good orbwalking is a necessity to mastering him. It can quite literally double your damage output in certain situations.

So now that you understand how important it is, what IS orbwalking? It's actually pretty simple. It's just taking advantage of the dead time in-between your auto-attacks (more specifically, cutting off the useless part of your attack animation) to re-position to a more favorable positon in a fight. If you want you can think of orbwalking as a hidden talent every hero possesses that allows them to move at a slightly reduced speed while attacking any target within their auto-attack range.

Orbwalking can be used both offensively and defensively and has 4 main uses:

1. Kiting - I.E Attacking an enemy while simultaneously running away from them
2. Chasing - I.E Attacking an enemy while simultaneously running towards them
3. Dodging - I.E Attacking an enemy who has a skillshot ability while simultaneously juking to make yourself a harder target
4. Blocking - I.E Attacking an enemy while simultaneously blocking their escape path with your body

It's pretty straightforward, but it can take some practice to get right and time perfectly. Just keep at it and remember that this is one of the single most important techniques you'll need to learn to be a great Raynor player.

If you're still not clear on how it works, or learn better by seeing it in action; here's a video that does a great job dissecting the general technique to orbwalking. It's a league of legends video, but the concept is still exactly the same in HotS.

---

Target Prioritization

Target prioritization kind of goes hand in hand with everything I've covered up to this point. I've intentionally placed it below positioning, threat assessment, and orbwalking because those are all a prerequisite to having good target prioritization.

So what exactly do I mean by target prioritization? Well I'm sure you've heard it before in a game; "DON'T FOCUS THE TANK YOU @#$%ing NOOBS OMG!!!111". Which, in my mind anyway, essentially translates into "I don't understand how target prioritization works, but I have very strong opinions about it".

All joking aside though, TheOddOne (former pro LoL player) does a pretty good job explaining the 'don't focus the tank' myth here with some crudely drawn circles in MSPaint. Hopefully you'll recognize that in the video he's actually talking about threat assessment and positioning - it's often simply not reasonable to walk past the enemy team's tank line to hit more juicy targets because the front line is too big of a threat to ignore. Additionally, if the enemy team's damage dealers are so far back that they aren't doing any damage and therefore not putting themselves at any risk then they are effectively out of the fight and it's the perfect time to hit the exposed tanks in front of you.

With that being said, there is actually some truth to the 'don't focus the tanks' myth. Remember earlier when I was differentiating between mages and auto-attackers? As I mentioned a mage's abilities are precious and need to be used optimally for them to have a large impact on a team fight. It's often not worth it (unless your team is specifically focusing a target) for a Jaina to just blow all of her cooldowns trying to take down a full health Muradin when there's a perfectly good Valla behind him just begging to be blown up, or she has an opportunity to hit 3 enemies at once instead.

Anyway though, this is a Raynor guide, not a Jaina one! Your auto-attacks have an infinite supply as long as you're alive and come off of cooldown almost instantly. So target prioritization becomes pretty simple, threat assessment and positioning are king. Put yourself in a good position with an acceptable threat level, and hit the best target you can. If you can safely hit enemy assassins then definitely prioritize them, but if doing so puts you in too much danger, don't be afraid to just shoot the tank in the mean time!

The only time you may want to consider hitting specific target over your own safety is in situations when your whole team is trying to focus and burst down an enemy hero. However this usually requires a bit of coordination and is seen more in competitive games than in solo queue. As always, just try to use your best judgement.

---

Trading

A 'trade' is essentially any time you or an opponent deal damage to each other. Generally speaking, you 'win' the trade if you deal more damage to your opponent than they dealt to you; however it's not always quite that simple. There are a lot of factors you need to consider when trading. The two major ones in my mind are the sustainability of both heroes and the 'kill potential' in your lane.

Sustainability is very easy to explain - for example imagine you're laning against an enemy Li Li 1v1 as Raynor. You and her trade auto attacks and hit eachother with your abilities, and let's say you manage to come out ahead in the trade by doing twice the amount of damage to her as she did to you. However, after the trade she uses her Healing Brew a few times and she's already back to full health while you're still damaged. Because of her ability to consistently heal herself back up, and your lack of one, she can afford to take unfavorable trades and still come out ahead. To beat an opponent with high sustainability you have to either win the trade so favorably as to out-weight their sustain, or force them into an all-in fight where you have a chance to kill them before they have time to heal back up.
Keep in mind there's a 3rd option, which is simply not to trade. But I'll talk more about that when I get into zoning.

Kill potential can be summarized as how dangerous a lane is. For example you can easily out trade a Muradin in a lane as Raynor with your superior range. However let's say hypothetically the enemy team has a The Butcher and Tyrande roaming the map and you don't know where they are. Regardless of how well you can win trades against Muradin, you can't afford to trade with him because of the potential threat of the The Butcher Tyrande flanking you in lane and killing you.
Furthermore, with Muradin's superior mobility, stun from Storm Bolt, and intrinsically higher health pool he has the ability to escape ganks against him much easier, as well as being able to jump in and stun you to set up a gank from his teammates. So although you technically win trades against him 1v1, you can't capitalize on that advantage until you know for sure where his team is and he loses his kill potential on you.

The next thing I want to talk about in this section is 'zoning'. Zoning is being able to deny your enemy from soaking experience from their minion wave. To do this you must have total lane dominance and be able to push them so far away from the minion wave that they receive no experience. Having lane dominance essentially boils down to being able to simply out-trade your enemy, or having such high kill potential that they can't afford to come too close. Zoning is a great way to give your team a level advantage by denying experience to the enemy team. However it also puts you at a much higher risk of being ganked. While it's great to zone your opponent if you think you can get away with it, it's not nearly as valuable or easy to do in HotS as it is in other MOBAs like LoL or DotA. The disadvantage you get from dying while zoning an opponent heavily outweighs the value of your opponent missing some experience. So only attempt to zone when you're very confident of the enemy team's position, and your ability to out-trade your opponent. If there's any chance you'll get punished for zoning, just don't do it!

The last thing I want to talk about in this chapter is 'freezing'. This once again is a concept much more popular in other MOBAs and rarely used in HotS, however it's still a very useful tactic in some situations. Freezing is a lane management skill that boils down to manipulating where both team's minion waves meet and fight each other. This is important because kill potential on you increases dramatically the further away from your own base you become. Freezing a lane can not only help you zone an opponent out by forcing them to stray further from the safety of their own base, but it can also allow you to safely soak experience in cases where you're unable to win the lane by conventional means or are being zoned by the enemy. This is an extremely useful tactic on Tomb of the Spider Queen because you can safely gather gems near your base with less fear of being ganked by a roaming enemy team.
I'm not going to bother covering the technique to freezing in this guide, but want you to be aware of it as an advanced skill that can give you an advantage in the right situation. Unfortunately I couldn't find a video on freezing in HotS, and don't have the time right now to make my own. However here is a quick 5 minute video I found on freezing in LoL. This doesn't translate quite as well as the orbwalking video because in LoL you have to actually land the killing blow on a minion to get the full reward from it, but it should give you enough of an idea to get the general concept and apply it to HotS.

Map Awareness

Map awareness, if you're not familiar with the term, is simply being aware of what's going on in other places in the game at all times.
Players with great map awareness rarely get caught out by enemy team ganks and are able to confidently call out strategic plays on map objectives because they are aware of the position of both their allies and their enemies.
Aside from the immediate benefits to yourself of having good map awareness, it's also a skill that you can use to bolster the strength of your team. By pinging teammates who have weak map awareness when they are in danger you can effectively share your skill with them. Similarly, by making decisive and timely calls on map objectives based on allied and enemy position you can lead the team to making the correct choices, even if they don't have the awareness themselves to see the bigger picture.
It can even help you win trades in laning by baiting an enemy player out of position when you know your team is coming in for a gank, or alternatively you can waste the enemy team's time when they come to gank you and thus lessen the load on the rest of your team.

None of the other parts of this chapter are nearly as useful without first having solid map awareness as it's one of the keys to having the intel you need to devise a winning strategy in the first place. So make sure you really prioritize this skill by learning to watch your mini-map and keep track of where enemy and allied heroes are as much as possible!

---

Raw Knowledge

There is a lot of raw knowledge in HotS that can really give you an edge when deciding what you and your team should be doing at any given moment. It pays off to learn objective timers on all the maps, as well as optimal strategies for them.
For instance on Haunted Mines, a good tactic is to delay the capture of your team's siege mercenaries until the enemy golem is approaching your wall. This way your siege mercenaries can throw rocks at the enemy golem while safely standing behind your fort wall. This will generally protect them from the collateral damage from the enemy golem's stomp or root abilities, as well as make them safer from enemy heroes who are pushing with the golem. The extra damage from your siege mercenaries staying alive means the enemy team's golem will be much less effective, and your fort will last that much longer. Which can mean the difference between a win and a loss in close games.

Similarly, on maps like Sky Temple, Battlefield Of Eternity, Infernal Shrines, or Cursed Hollow where both teams will be fighting at a certain location over a common objective. Capturing mercenaries right before an objective is going to spawn will force the enemy team into an awkward situation where they can either choose to deal with the mercenaries and be down a person for the impending teamfight, or ignore the mercenaries and let them push on their forts/keeps while the fight goes on. Either way, it's a win/win for your team that can snowball into a huge advantage.

I'm not going to go much further into specific strategies here, but I recommend you try to familiarize yourself with the following information:

• Objective timers for each map (E.G When do the shrines spawn on sky temple?)
• Appropriate talent builds for as many heroes as you can, even if you don't play that hero
• Strategies for specific maps/scenarios like the two examples I mentioned above

With this knowledge you can make much more informed decisions and help guide your team to victory simply by playing the map better from a strategic standpoint, or encouraging teammates to pick talents that synergize well with your team composition or strategy for a given map. Keep in mind not everyone is going to want or care about your advice. But I'll talk more about that in the psychology/leadership chapter later!

---

Team Composition

Unfortunately, unless you're playing with a group of 4 buddies, you rarely have control over what your team composition is going to be. That being said it's crucial to analyze both your own, and your enemy team's team compositions to figure out your win condition. For instance, let's look at 2 different team compositions:

Team 1: Uther, Jaina, Muradin, Tyrande, Kerrigan

Team 2: Brightwing, Zagara, The Lost Vikings, Abathur, Sylvanas

Team 1 is an extremely scary composition when it comes to team fighting. They have a lot of ways to disable and catch targets, and have a lot of burst damage behind it to follow it up. Team 2 has a pretty awful teamfight in comparison. They have no great way of protecting their squishy heroes from the enemy, and in general are just lacking in any real front-line to peel and protect them from getting sacked.
However Team 2 does have an advantage over Team 1, which is the extreme pushing power and global presence of their team. With Sylvanas and Zagara they can easily push down forts and keeps if left alone, and with Brightwing, Abathur, and The Lost Vikings they have extremely high mobility and global map presence. Furthermore, none of the heroes on Team 1 are great at clearing minion waves, Jaina and Kerrigan can spend all their mana comboing waves but it won't be long before they run out of mana.

So what this means is both teams have separate win conditions.

For team 1 their strategy should be forcing team fights, winning map objectives, and taking advantage of their superior map control. They can effectively bully team 2 from any objective on the map they choose so it's important for them to try and exploit the advantage they have in map control and choose the most valuable objectives.

Team 2 on the other hand can win the game by avoiding team fights and pushing the enemy's base down. If they manage to push hard enough and fast enough they can overwhelm Team 1 and force them into a hopeless defensive position where they have to split up and clear minion waves instead of grouping up and fighting heroes like they want to.

It's usually not quite this obvious, I intentionally made an extremely polarized 'push' composition (team 2) and a 'pick' composition (team 1) as an example of differing win conditions. But rest assured, there is always a win condition, even if it's as desperate as just relying on a member of the enemy team to fall into a trap by face-checking a bush or overextending.

The last point I want to make here is that team composition isn't everything with two unorganized teams. Yes, it's very important, and it's a huge advantage to have the better one. But it doesn't matter how good a team composition is on paper if it isn't properly executed, which is something you should expect from solo queue games. It's on you to try and help your team execute the composition, as well as exploiting weaknesses in your opponent's composition and execution. Even if neither team executes properly, it's valuable for you as a player to understand your win conditions.

---

Soaking

'Soaking' if you're not familiar with the term, is just being in close enough proximity to an enemy minion when it dies such that you earn experience for your team. If an enemy minion/mercenary dies and nobody on your team is nearby to 'soak up' the experience then it's wasted. Experience is the equivalent to gold in other MOBAs like LoL or Dota; the more you have, the better items (talents) you can get, and the more of an advantage you'll have over your enemies.

The reason I want to talk specifically about soaking is because I constantly see people underestimating its value and giving up soak in order to secure a kill. In the early game (levels 1-10), soaking minion waves should be one of your team's #1 priorities (it's still very crucial from 11-20 as well!). You should be sure to keep at least 1 person in each lane for maximum experience gain.
Now don't get me wrong, ganks are great! You can earn some bonus experience from killing enemy heroes, and a successful gank has the potential to deny the enemy team from soaking a lane by killing them. However the experience you gain from killing 1 enemy hero is no where near as much as you get for a whole minion wave, and definitely nothing compared to the value of killing an enemy tower/fort/keep. This can be a very hard concept to grasp for people coming from other MOBAs where you're rewarded much more highly for hero kills but in HotS, at least in the early game, it's rarely worth giving up a full minion wave for a hero kill.

That being said, soak isn't always everything. There are times when it's acceptable to leave your lane to contest an objective, but I think diving into too much detail here is out of the scope of this guide, and similar to positioning there are just way too many scenarios to cover even if I wanted to. If you want to learn more about how this works though I'd recommend watching pro games and really paying close attention to how they manage to soak while contesting objectives. You'll find pro teams rarely miss any soak, and if they do it's usually only because they stand to gain a strategic advantage somewhere else to make up for it!

The important take away here, and the way you can use this to carry in your solo queue games is to try and cover lanes when an ally leaves. Or maybe give them a ping and ask them to stay in their lane for the early game. As a closing thought I want to point out that I think it's no coincidence that The Lost Vikings is consistently one of the heroes with the highest winrate on Hotslogs. A good lost vikings player can soak up all lanes and leave his team free to contest objectives or terrorize enemy heroes on the map wherever they please.

The Price of Rage

So with the importance of teamwork over individual play identified, the first thing I want to talk about is how important it is to keep a cool head in your games. You WILL be matched up with players who are highly unskilled, highly toxic, or just have a terrible attitude in general. It happens all the time, it happens to everyone, and it's completely out of your control. The only player you can reliably control in a game is yourself.
You might feel it's unfair that you should have any responsibility towards the attitude or skill of your teammates. But the reality is this is a TEAM game and the TEAM's attitude has a large impact on the game. If you want to play a game where you don't have to depend on teammates, go ahead and play Chess or something where the outcome of the game is decided 100% by your own skill. Otherwise, you're just going to have to grow up and deal with it - or don't if you don't mind the extra disadvantage.

While it may be easy and feel good to put that rank 20 scrub who is trash-talking you all game in his place, keep in mind that it comes at a price. Any time and energy you and your teammates spend arguing over something is time and energy that could have been spent focusing on the game. It can be hard not to get emotional in the heat of a game, but just remember that raging back at an angry teammate will in the best case scenario be a small distraction to your team, and in the worst case scenario escalate into a vindictive battle that drives people to intentionally throw games. As I said, sometimes this is completely out of your control, but quite often you can do things to mitigate or even completely defuse the damage from a toxic player which I'll discuss in the next section.

---

The Rager Compendium

In this chapter I'm going to make a list of some of the most common toxic players you'll run into, and what I think is the best approach to dealing with them in a game. One thing I want to point out first is that most of the typical ragers you encounter in a game actually genuinely want to win the game and have no idea of the negative effect their attitude has on the team. They often do it either out of pure frustration, or in a misguided effort to help the team. If you want to defuse a rager, it's important to try and understand where they're coming from and keep in mind it happens to all of us. Everyone has bad days.
Rather than criticizing them for being toxic mother$%#$ers you'll often find you get much better results by empathizing with them and playing to their soft spots. The majority of ragers start out as one of the breeds of low toxicity rager that I list below, but if rubbed the wrong way will become almost un-salvageable trolls. Anyway, without further ado let's get to the list!

Low Toxicity

The Commander - The commander comes from a position of self perceived superiority (whether illusory or not). Usually they start off the game with good intentions by trying to make calls on objectives and getting the team to follow up with them. The commander generally gets triggered when the team doesn't follow up on his/her orders. This usually results in the commander trash-talking one or more teammates, which ironically almost always ends in a situation where said teammate(s) intentionally make a point of ignoring every order the commander gives. In this situation you have two choices, which should depend on whether or not the commander was actually making good calls.
If you think the calls were good, you should try to appeal to the teammate(s) who are ignoring orders. As a neutral third party who hasn't been trash-talking them all game they're WAY more likely to listen to you. You can even try to appeal to their hatred for the commander by saying something like 'Look, this commander guy is an #$@hole, but I think he's right, let's just work together!'. If you're lucky they'll throw away their petty differences and see the bigger picture. Don't insult them, just try to rationally explain why the call was right, or if nothing get them to move on.
If you think the calls were bad, you should try to concisely explain to the commander why the call won't work. It's important to articulate it as clearly as possible, and try not to sound too negative about it. Depending on how inflated his ego is you may or may not actually be able to convince him he's wrong. If that's the case you can even try appealing to his sense of superiority by saying something like 'Look, that's a good call but there's no way random people from HL are going to follow up on it, let's try doing Y instead'. If you're lucky, the commander will concede that either his call was wrong, or that his trash teammates can't execute it. Don't spend the whole game debating calls though, if the problem doesn't resolve itself after a couple minutes at most you're probably better off just dropping it.

The Vendetta - The vendetta comes out when there are two or more players on your team that have a negative history together. Usually the first words you hear from vendetta are 'GG (adversary) is on our team, we lose'. For whatever reason, maybe a good one, the vendetta HATES their adversary's guts and will do anything they can to bring them down for the sake of revenge. Your best bet is usually to step in as early as possible and try to defuse the tension. While the vendetta may be extremely rude to their adversary, they can often be reasonably nice to the rest of the team assuming you don't try to take sides. Try to take advantage of this and remind them that their personal crusade has the potential to deal a lot of collateral damage to the rest of the team.

The Lone Ranger - Lone Rangers aren't always born from rage, but they still represent a threat to the team. Lone Rangers have no faith in their team and refuse to work with them. They usually either think they can simply carry the team with their individual skill alone, or they have become so demoralized over a lost team fight or objective that they see no other option. While your team fights valiantly for objectives The Lone Ranger can often be spotted split pushing another lane and executing their own personal strategy as a 1 man(or woman) army. Your best bet with a lone ranger is to try and convince them of the value of teamwork. By reassuring them of your particular team's unity, skill, and odds of winning by working together you may be able to convince a lone ranger to become a normal player and join the team. If that doesn't work, then your second best option is to usually to just try to work with the lone ranger, or make a strategy that compliments his actions. Sometimes having the whole team executing a bad strategy gives you better odds than only having part of the team execute a good one.

The Princess and The Coach - While technically two separate types of ragers, the princess and the coach are only a problem when they get paired up the same team. The Coach is a player who, usually with good intentions, tries to give their teammates pointers on the game. A regular player might take those pointers and learn from them, or decide the coach is full of **** and ignore the advice. A princess however is perfect in all ways and can never be wrong. Princesses will lash out at anyone who corrects his/her play which makes them a natural enemy to the coach. In the best case scenario this will work itself out if the coach can detect the princesses hostility and curb his overwhelming need to help, allowing the two to coexist peacefully.
In the worst case scenario the coach will insist on correcting the princess and a (generally uncivilized) debate will ensue. If left to their own devices in a situation like this, the princess and the coach are likely to transform into the troll or the sniper in game(see high toxicity), and will spawn in your future games as the vendetta. Your best bet for defusing these ragers is to step in early. Recognize the symptoms of a coach and a princess and try to get the coach to back off before someone gets hurt. As the princess won't accept any criticism your best bet is to appeal to the coaches good intentions and ask him to drop the issue and move on. Sometimes you may need to spin it in such a way that doesn't make the princess look like a child, because the princess is a child and may throw a temper tantrum if painted as the bad guy.

High Toxicity (deadly stage)

The White Flag - The White Flag has a firm belief that some team compositions or heroes are unbeatable, some players are impossible to carry, or that some players are impossible to beat. Before the match even starts they throw in the towel because of some perceived disadvantage. While similar to the Vendetta in this nature, their reaction is usually of a less personal nature and is often more extreme and spans a broader range of categories.
These are unfortunately one of the hardest breeds of rager to deal with as they usually have an almost religious belief that the game is hopeless. Your best bet at defusing them is usually trying to find a way to convince them that you can win under the current conditions. It helps a lot in scenarios like this to try and get early kills. If you can execute a successful gank or two it's usually enough of a morale boost to make the white flag gain some hope and actually play the game instead of wallowing in their own version of 'elo hell' all game. Try to keep chat as positive as possible throughout the game because generally speaking even if you manage to get them back in the game, they'll instantly revert to tilt mode and become useless at the first sign of trouble.

The Troll - While it's rare to find a genuine pure-bred troll that isn't mutated from another breed of rager they do exist. A troll is chaotic and evil, they feed off of the negative reaction of their teammates. Sometimes they have specific targets (particularly if they morphed from a lower toxicity rager), but often they are just looking to cause a ruckus.
Your best bet usually is just to try and work around the troll as much as possible. Most importantly DON'T acknowledge their efforts to troll you as doing so will only give them what they want and encourage them to continue trolling. It's rare, but occasionally when ignored the troll will revert to a normal player.

The Sniper - The Sniper is usually one of the other extreme outcomes of a poorly handled rager. When triggered, snipers spends the whole game watching their teammates plays, talent builds, and hero statistics waiting for a chance to criticize and belittle them. Generally the sniper targets a particular adversary on the team whom he/she disagreed with earlier in the game. While it might seem like a good idea to defend the sniper's target, it's important that you never get in-between a sniper and its prey because it will simply add you to its hit list and become even more useless to the team.
Similar to the troll, your best bet with a sniper is just to ignore them. As long as they have nobody to argue with, their sniping will be exposed for the petty $%#@ measuring contest it is. Also similar to the troll, some persistent snipers will continue to snipe until the game ends, but in rare cases after being ignored they will revert back to a normal player.


To conclude this section I want to first reiterate that all of us have the potential to rage, and most of us will sometimes. Recognizing when you're becoming a rager and defusing yourself is just as valuable as being able to recognize it in other players. Keep in mind that no matter how many games you play, there is one person you're GUARANTEED to be matched up with every game; yourself. Whether you like it or not, or think it's your responsibility to deal with it, this is a team game and social interaction has a large impact on the outcome of most games. So play nice.
The second thing I want to mention is that you won't always be able to successfully defuse a situation. In fact I'd say the majority of times people get to the point of raging they're usually too far gone to see the voice of reason. Don't waste the whole game trying to defuse a rager as it defeats the purpose of defusing a rager in the first place. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and accept that you need to try and win the game 4v5 or worse.

---

Leadership

Leadership is the final point I want to talk about in this guide as it relies heavily on tying almost everything we've covered in previous chapters. Before you can attempt to successfully lead your team to victory you must understand the mechanics of positioning, you must have the raw knowledge and map awareness to make decisive and constructive calls. You need to understand team compositions and win conditions, the importance of soaking, and perhaps most importantly you need to understand the psychology and potential outcomes of attempting to lead up to 4 random players of varying skill and mental maturity.

Leadership is one of the largest ways you can have an impact on a game. By making solid strategic and tactical calls and defusing potential ragers on your team you can help the team focus and coordinate on objectives, keep the team morale high, and keep them working together. By executing good leadership skills you have the unique ability to make a team of less skilled players win against an opposing team of higher skilled players.
The most important thing I want to point out here is the value of being flexible, level-headed, and humble when attempting to lead a team to victory. Nobody on the team voted for you to lead them, and some people simply don't want to be led, even by a pro player or someone with a strong reputation. Things will go wrong. You'll make the wrong calls sometimes, or you'll make a good calls that fail to work because your team didn't execute them properly. People will lose faith in you and blame you for a loss that may have been 100% out of your control. It can be frustrating, it's a lot of work, and it's often a thankless and overlooked job.
It's no coincidence that I identified the 'Commander' as a type of rager earlier in this chapter. While leading a team has the potential to carry a game, it's extremely important that you don't make the mistake of making things worse for your team by turning into a commander and raging. Sometimes all you can do is roll with the punches - keep trying to make the right calls and be very critical of your decisions. If the team refuses to follow and has other plans, it's usually better to just stick with them instead of turning into a lone ranger!