Heroes of the Storm – How to Win in Hero League

Blizzard recently announced two new additions to the Heroes of the Storm roster in the way of Xul, a necromancer, and Li-Ming a wizard, both hailing from the Diablo series. These two new heroes are sure to bring new players into the growing MOBA, and that means new people playing Hero League, the ranked mode in Heroes of the Storm. Unfortunately, if you’ve played Heroes of the Storm, you know that many people, new and old, have absolutely no understanding of how to win in Hero League. We thought it was about time we offered some advice.

Team Composition

While there are a wide variety of team compositions that can win matches in Hero League, you still want to make sure you have an advantageous composition to give your team the best possible chance of winning. We’ll stick to the more traditional team comps in which you need at least one Warrior and one Support class hero.

Blizzard doesn’t differentiate bruisers from tanks and healers from support heroes, so you have to do that yourself. For example, Sonya and Johanna are both Warrior classes, but Johanna makes a far better tank, while Sonya is more like a bruiser that doesn’t inflict quite as much damage as an Assassin, but is much harder to kill than someone like Greymane.

Artanis is a popular Warrior who falls into the bruiser category. That doesn’t mean you can’t win with Artanis as the solo Warrior on your team, but it’s best to have a proper tank to compensate. This places Artanis in the third slot that’s usually reserved for a Specialist or an Assassin with stealth (Nova or Zeratul). Yes, you can win with a team comp of Artanis, Nova, a healer, Specialist and one more Assassin, but it’s not the most favorable team comp for most Hero League groups.

Order of Hero Selection

Blizzard has yet to implement a trade system that would allow players on the same team to change the order they select their heroes. In addition, the ability to ban heroes is coming, but isn’t quite here yet. For the time being, it’s important to make sure you select good heroes in the proper order. Selecting Nova as the first pick usually isn’t a good idea. This give the other team every opportunity in the world to counter that select with a team comp of two Warriors, Tassadar or anyone else who directly counters a Nova pick.

It’s also not a good idea to select Murky as the first pick. While Murky isn’t a bad character, rarely will you see him selected early. The first few picks should be reserved for more popular and high tier heroes such as Kael’thas, Raynor, Jaina, Muradin or a few others. If your team selects Murky and Li Li as your first two heroes, the other team can easily snatch up Kael’thas and Raynor and they’ll already have a very powerful comp.

Teamwork

It should go without saying, but teamwork is one of the most important aspects of winning in Hero League. If you’re soloing a lane at level 14 and your team is pleading with you to group up, that doesn’t mean kill a few more minions then slowly make your way over to the rest of your team. Even if you think the best course of action is for you to solo that lane, you’re still better off gathering with your team. If you die or the team dies without you, it’s a very bad situation. Your soloing strategy may (or may not) be better, but without the cooperation of your team you’ll still probably lose.

Going against your team is basically the worst thing you can do in Heroes of the Storm. Likewise, you need to know when it’s time to retreat. If you die and your team goes into a disadvantageous 4v5 and loses two more heroes, don’t respawn and immediately head over to the team fight. You’re only making a 2v5 into a 3v5, and chances are you’ll die right alongside your teammates. In this kind of situation it’s better to hang back and prevent another death so your team can regroup faster and avoid feeding the opposing team even more experience points.

There’s a lot to winning at Hero League, but hopefully these tips will help you understand that you’ll have a much better chance of winning if you work together instead of arguing about who’s doing what wrong. Stay tuned to Prima Games as we continue to cover Heroes of the Storm with a look at the two new heroes. In the meantime you can check out strategies for Kharazim, Lt. Morales and more!