Heroes of the Storm is my MOBA
I've never stopped playing Heroes of Storm since I started playing it one year ago. I love everything about the way it's designed, the way new characters and battlegrounds are added, the way the developers are open with the community, everything. The first time I knew Heroes was special was during AGDQ last year and I realized I really wanted to play Heroes instead of watch as much of AGDQ as I could.
I love all the changes it makes to the traditional MOBA model which I've always seen as janky and outmoded. The product of modders putting in messy shit and everyone rolling with it thinking that it's got to be that way. In Heroes everything feels right and it feels right quickly. A team levels together and every member is always valuable.Killing things is always the right call. Building a character is as simple as making a mutually exclusive choice every few minutes. Matches last around 20 minutes and due to the importance of the various (do read, various) objectives on the different battlegrounds teamfights happen throughout the match rather than just at the back half. I fully believe everything Heroes does that other MOBAs do not is absolutely the right call and makes for a better game that's easy to learn, hard to master rather than hard on both counts.
I'm going to break up this review with a short list of heroes I love to play in Heroes.
Kharazim from Diablo: My personal favorite hero at the moment, I play him a lot. He's the Monk from Diablo III and his big thing is he can teleport punch to any ally or foe and also can do healing, extra damage or regenerate mana every third basic attack he does depending on what talent you take at level 1. I love him because he's so damn mobile. His teleport punch thing has stacks so you can do it aggressively a lot of the time to get in there and do some work. It's also a really good reliable escape so long as there's an ally in range (a minion will do) in the direction where bad people aren't. Also since you are a healer it can be great for getting around a fight and getting your heals where they matter the most. There's also a talent I take for it that makes it so when you do a teleport punch thing on an enemy it unleashes a flurry of punches. Even when I'm building for healing stuff I take that talent because I love having that little bit of extra damage I can do when someone is really close to dead and really trying to get away. Mmmm. Khar is so good.
Muradin from Warcraft: Really just the definition of a tank. Has a great big leap, has a stun skillshot, has an AOE slow. When out of combat his health heals back up passively. He's great at really starting the fight. Jumping in, getting a stun off, slowing people trying to reposition (and slowing their rate of attack if he takes a certain talent) that sort of thing. He can be the front line you need for a while and then jump to the enemy's back line and fuck shit up there instead. He's also really great at getting away since his jump can be used defensively if you really have to, and then he'll start to heal back while he's out of fray allowing him to get back in it sooner than he otherwise would.
The Butcher from Diablo: Butcher is just an awesome and super well realized melee assassin. He's basically a horror movie monster who comes at you out on nowhere and is simply unrelenting. His basic thing is that he has to collect blood stuff from fallen enemies to get his attack power (and attack speed should be spec into it later on) up real high. Then he'll just do a ton of damage whenever he can especially with his E which allows him to charge, unstoppable and super fast, at any visible enemy and just chase them the fuck down and stun them on impact. He also has a move which applies a slow so you can't get away. He also can brand you which allows him to heal himself for a lot while he wails on you. Super deadly used right. Truth be told I'm not a great Butcher, my win rate with him is terrible, but he's super fun to play. Also I love how instead of doing the obvious thing and making him like a Stitches (the fat monster who hooks fools) skin they went for and nailed a completely different idea perfectly.
Kerrigan from Starcraft: The melee assassin I actually do well with. Playing her well is all about comboing her abilities. She can dive in, target her impaling blades, use her pull to pull enemies to where the impaling blades will hit and laugh as they're stunned and damaged for a great deal when the blades pop out of the ground. It's a lot about predicting movement, calling your shots and just getting in there and executing. She also gets shields from doing damage so pulling off that combo gives you a little something to mitigate the risk of putting yourself out there. She's really fun once you get how to use her abilities together.
Lt Morales from Starcraft: She's the Medic from Starcraft. She's just the best single target healer in the game. She can keep you up high, she can mitigate a bunch of damage and if all else fails she has a grenade which is useful for pushing guys either away or, if you're a crackshot, pushing them towards your team if you shoot it past them perfectly. Her weakness is basically that she can't heal herself actively in battle unless she takes a late game talent which makes her heal herself while healing others so basically you need to protect the Morales. With a good solid front line Morales does super well. If the enemy team cannot get Morales or at least get her to back off they'll find it hard to kill anyone else.
Jaina from Warcraft: She's the frost mage of the game and really just one of the core burst damage heroes in the current roster. She's pretty simple really, all her abilities chill enemies which slows non-boss enemies affected and make subsequent abilities do extra damage. She has a long range ice shard skillshot, an AOE blizzard which causes two waves of ice to fall from the sky which is super good clearing waves and a short range AOE ice blast. So what you want to do while playing her is get all your abilities off in quick succession and do a bunch of damage at once. Or just do what's safe and poke and stuff with your longer ranged abilities (the shard and the blizzard primarily) to do what you can getting a little bit of damage or zoning out while you wait for the right opportunity to fully unload. She's just a lot of bursty fun, just be careful to not be caught out since she doesn't have anything to escape beyond slowing enemies.
Abathur from Starcraft: Abathur is one of those heroes in Heroes that breaks the traditional rules. He's a hero that doesn't fight in teamfights. He's not a body you can just put into a lane and hit things because his body is really weak and his health pool is really low. What he does instead is while his body stays in base (or out of sight somewhere where he can soak XP for a lane) he puts a neural symbiote on another player and basically rides shotgun on them. The symbiote (or Abathur Hat as it's generally thought) has 3 abilities which he uses to get in his damage/shield allies and such. He's best with melee heroes that really get into the fray, are at ranges where all of Abathur's hat's abilities are in range to be useful, and benefit from his shields and other buffs he can give if he specs into them. Also since his symbiote can be cast anywhere on the map Abathur just has a global presence which allows him to help out wherever he's needed at all times.
Cho'Gall from Warcraft: Cho'Gall is another one of those heroes in Heroes that breaks the traditional rules only even moreso. Cho'Gall is a two headed ogre and, well, he's a two player hero. One player controls Cho, a beefy warrior with the biggest health pool in the game. The other player controls Gall, a dangerous spellcasting assassin who is attached to Galls body. Basically Cho handles the positioning while Gall just focuses on dishing out damage. To play them properly requires a lot of coordination. Even on a basic level before talents get involved Cho's E throws out a bomb and Gall's E detonates it. There's also a ton of stuff in their two separate talent trees which impact one another. For instance Cho can spec into an ability that makes him unstoppable but Gall has to activate it. There's more like that, it's really cool. Played properly the pair feel like a raid boss, requiring coordination to take down. It's really great work.
I simply love playing the game. I love to coordinate, I love to save lives. I love to come back from behind, I like to never give up, never surrender. I love telling teammates they did a good job. I love the thrill of the kill and the bitterness of being killed. I love learning new heroes both when they're added and when a buff puts a formerly weak hero in a much better spot. I love a win, I'm okay with a loss provided we all fought it out and did our bests even when it was most likely futile. I play this game most days and I don't see that changing. You should give it a go.
