Getting Started in Heroes of the Storm

Heroes of the Storm is finally available for anyone who wants to try it out. While the Blizzard MOBA game has been in open beta for a few weeks now, the official release happened on June 2, 2015.Now that everyone has access to the game, it’s time to take a look at how best to start off in the Nexus. Even players who are familiar with MOBA games won’t be able to approach Heroes of the Storm exactly like they do League of Legends or Dota 2. Heroes of the Storm was created to be more user-friendly than both games and that means there are different things to take into consideration when you first begin playing.

Pick a Class

First and foremost you need to decide what class you want to play as. Heroes of the Storm features Four classes, including Assassin, Warrior, Support and Specialist. While it’s important to try out every class (we’ll get to that in a moment), you should have a general idea of how you like to play games of this nature, even if you don’t have much experience.

If you enjoy attacking and dishing out significant amounts of damage, you’ll want to focus your attention on Assassin class characters. If you prefer to have more health points and serve as a tanking role that doesn’t generally inflict as much damage, select the Warrior class. If your main goal is to assist your team by healing or buffing, you should aim to play as a Support class. If what you want to do doesn’t fit into any one class, chances are you’ll enjoy playing a Specialist class that performs multiple functions during a battle.

Pick a Character

Once you’ve select a class it’s time to pick a character. There are multiple characters for each class, and they all play a little different from one another. There are a certain number of characters that are free to play with new characters rotating in every week. Select one of the free characters that falls into your class of choice and take them for a spin in a quick match or co-op game.

After a few games you should start to get a feel for how the character and class plays. If you’re enjoying yourself, try out the other free characters in that class. If it’s not quite what you expected, ask yourself what you didn’t like about it. If you didn’t like how the character played at all, it may be best to look at a different class. If you just weren’t feeling the specific abilities of that character, select another free character of the same class.

Play Every Free Character

In Heroes of the Storm you earn gold for winning matches, completing daily quests (random tasks such as winning three games) and reaching certain levels with each character. It’s highly recommended that you get every free character up to at least level five before the new rotation of free characters takes over the following week. This will help you learn how each character works, get better at the game, and earn enough gold to allow you to buy some of the character you enjoy the most.

While it’s always possible to spend real money on characters, skins and other goodies, if you have the in-game gold to buy a character it’s much better than spending real money. Getting every character to level five will allow you to buy several characters once everything is said and done. By the end of your first week of playing you should have enough to buy at least one character. This means you don’t have to worry about your current favorite character moving off of the free rotation.

Grind to Hero League

Once you’ve gotten the general idea of how to play Heroes of the Storm, spent a few weeks trying out different characters, and even purchased a few characters with in-game gold or real money, it’s time to start thinking about Hero League. There’s a big difference between quick matches and Hero League. The level of competition is generally higher and there can only be one of each hero in play (meaning you can’t have the same hero on both teams). It may not be for everyone, but if you want to try out Hero League you need to plan for it.

In order to play Hero League you first must meet a few requirements. You have to be player level 30 or higher and you have to own at least 10 heroes (not including heroes in the free rotation that you have not purchased yet). You may think that owning 10 heroes is a steep requirement, but there’s a good reason for it. Not only does this mean you have at least a decent understanding of the game, but in Hero League there’s a draft before every match.

During the Hero League draft the teams go back and forth selecting characters. Once your character is taken, you’ll have to pick another character if you want to play. Imagine you own nine characters, but you’re picking last out of the 10 players participating in the upcoming match. Let’s say all nine characters you own are selected by the time it gets to your turn. You’d be completely out of luck. Owning at least 10 characters means you always have a character you can pick, even if your other nine characters have already been taken.

Now that you’re off to a good start in Heroes of the Storm, be sure to check out some of our other coverage of the game, including beginner tips, or more detailed tips on how to play Li Li or Raynor!