Welcome to Countering a hero with Mountie Tala. I'm going to go through some basic ideas and strategies on learning how to counter your enemy. I will be making more guides on how to counter specific heroes in heroes of the storm. Your Biggest advantage when it comes to countering the enemy hero is knowing what your enemy does and having as much knowledge about the enemy hero as possible.

Please watch this video for the full guide experience.

Play Video

The first lesson in countering is knowing what your enemies abilities are. If you don't know or understand what or how an enemy hero works, this will make it very difficult to counter them. The more heroes you play and learn the better player you will become.

Knowing just what an enemy's abilities do isn't always enough. The more knowledge you have about an enemy hero, the better and not just knowing what the enemies abilities can do, but how your own abilities can affect the enemy hero and counter how they work. For instance, using your zombie wall as Nazeebo and standing in the middle of it so you don't get hut by enemy's melee attack is a great idea to counter melee. Being able to think of new ways to use abilities can help you and give you a huge advantage especially if the enemy isn't expecting it. Just because your idea doesn't always work, doesn't mean it not a good one.

Lets take a look at enemy cooldowns. When an enemy hero uses an ability, knowing the amount of time left on that abilities cooldown is something you are going to want to know especially against heroes that do alot of burst damage or heroes that have escapes. Knowing the fact that your enemy Valla just used her vault and you now know she can't use that again for another 10 seconds, opens up a window of opportunity where you can dive her and she cant' escapes or if a jaina just laid her full combo she wont be able to do burst damage again for roughly another 10 seconds.

On top of cooldowns, understanding talents and the way they work or augment abilities is crucial. If you know the cooldown of Falstad's barrel roll (which is 14 seconds) but he takes the talent flow rider, which reduces the cooldown by 40% , you know he can use it again in 8.5 seconds, thus maybe changing your decision on whether to attack him or to play more defensively. Even knowing the enemies active abilities, Tychus takes both first aid and stone shield, he's not gonna be that easy to take down anymore, and it may be better to focus on a different enemy assassin who will be easier to kill. Remember don't take a build just because it has the highest win rate on hotslogs, build your hero to counter the enemy.

Also countering a hero is not just limited to knowing just about the hero. Understand an enemy's team composition is just as important. Going into a 2v1 fight against illidan knowing abathur can easily pop his hat on illidan means you should;t commit to a fight unless you are 100 percent for sure that you can kill him without a doubt and not dying yourself. Another situation maybe if you are a warrior and the enemy team has lots of heroes that use auto attack your going to want to take the imposing presence talent to help control the enemy teams basic damage output.

Image by: NahNahNivek

Ok so lets do a quick review of what we learned today:

- Knowing what your enemy abilities are and how your enemy works.
- Knowing how your abilities affect the enemy and thinking of new ideas.
- Keeping track of enemy cooldowns the best you can.
- Understanding talents and how they affect your decisions.
- Not Always building the exact same build because it's OP.
- Understanding the enemy's team composition and how it affects your decision making.
- Don't just counter a hero, counter the enemy team.

With all this said there is still much to know this is just some solid basics that i find important top helping new players. I am going to do more in depth reviews on how to counter specific heroes in the nexus. Hope you guys enjoyed the videos and hop to see you again.