How to play Heroes of the Storm
Hello everyone.
So today we are going to be doing a run-through on Blizzard's
Heroes of the Storm, a MOBA-style game
from the guys at Blizzard and it's very much drawing together what we
know from the character archetypes of Blizzard's games.
So World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. Now,
to get things started let's have a quick look around the interface.
So firstly along the bottom we've got our character portrait area
and this basically gives us our hero's progress, summary of our profile, rewards
and our daily quests.
So here you can basically see each of the heroes I've levelled-up, their current hero level and what's been
unlocked for each hero. The rewards
are basically when you first start the game you will have to level
up your profile to level 30 before you can start doing How to play Heroes of the Storm
league matches. Whilst you're levelling-up your profile
you'll unlock bonuses and some of these are gold that you can put towards buying new
heroes.
Daily quest give you things you can try to do every single day
in order to get some more gold. So for instance, play three games to support
hero
three games as a warrior, three games as an assassin. There are also things like play
eight games, win three games and so on. Now, if we go back
our next area is the play area. This is where we can set up our games,
we'll come back to that in a moment. The shop is where we can purchase new heroes
either for gold or real cash. We can also buy skins, make our heroes look nicer
mounts and there are bundles so you can
save some cash as well. Now the Stimpacks are all about giving you XP boosts How to play Heroes of the Storm
doubling or in this case,150 percent additional XP
if you happen to be using a Stimpack boost and also a gold boost as well.
The watch area is where we can go over
all of our old games we've played previously and see how we did
and so on. Community has not yet been implemented. Over here is the chat window
so we can talk to
well pretty much anybody who happens to be in the chat at this moment
and also the friends and party list here
as well. Interestingly you can tick to say I'm looking for a party
and then people will actually get a prompt saying someone is looking for a party - invite
them to your team.
And then we have the obligatory menu. But for now let's go back to play.
Now I'm going to go and change my hero and we're going to do this is as Thrall
just because he's a lot of fun to play. OK,
so what we're going to do now is play a game. How to play Heroes of the Storm
We're going to play this with Thrall and all we need to do is hit ready and what it will now do is start searching
and very quickly it should find us some people we can play with.
Now the whole point of Thrall
is he is a melee assassin. That means he's all about the up close and personal.
but he does also have quite a lot of good zone control options as well.
People don't tend to want to get too close to Thrall during the later game because
he's going to hit you hard and do an awful lot of damage very quickly. Right good team
mix here by the looks of it.
Bit of support, plenty of damage. We're going to be playing the haunted mines.
There are five I think different maps so far and each one takes on a
different theme with different objectives.
Now as I said in my preview Heroes of the Storm is
very much an objective based game. Teams that ignore the objectives
or don't play as a team to capture those objectives and fulfil the goals
tend to lose. It's as simple as that. A good team works together and stays together in Heroes
of the Storm.
Now load times can vary. It all depends on the speed of everyone else's
computers.
Unfortunately there is no loading bar here for individual heroes,
all we have is one master one as it were, so sometimes it can take thirty
seconds
or even a minute before it will start the game.
Now on this particular map we have a mine,
now we will have to go visit the mine, kill things in the mine
and the more things we kill, well the faster we will get
our creature up and running. The creature is really important to us and that is basically
going to do an awful lot of
damage by rampaging down the lanes - or is it actually?
It might be the curse on this one. I
can't quite remember exactly what happens with the objective here. I think
it's the curse
but it could very well be a creature. Can't quite remember.
Either way when we fulfil that objective
what will happen is a benefit to our team basically.
Now one thing to note is that there are no How to play Heroes of the Storm
items in this game. What happens is we all level-up
as a team together so we're all building XP for the whole team in one go
and as we level-up we will unlock new powers.
So one thing that I'm doing here is I want to really buff up Wind Fury at
every opportunity, increases my movement speed and also gives me a few other bonus
options as well because every attack I land gives me
Frost Wolf resilience. Five charges of that gives me a heal
when it hits. During the later half of the game
that becomes extraordinarily powerful. As you see here, we're mostly all staying together
up on this top lane. We're going to try and zone control basically. We want to keep him away from this
mine as much as we can.
At this stage lots of everybody dancing around each other no one's going to
really go in for the kill unless they see a
clear opportunity. There's one. Gone. You can see what we're doing here. We're just
slowly winding down the health as much as we can
and then there'll be an opportunity where couple of the rangers can just put in a
range attack and knock somebody out.
But like I say, this is the mine entrance we want to use
and so we're trying to zone a Thrall. Trying to keep the enemy as far away as possible
so we can get in there first. Now Wind Fury gives me a
speed boost which is really useful for either running away from things or trying to chase heroes down.
There's still only three here we've got one person below. Now bearing in mind that we're not
really fighting the creeps, this is not about
attacking creeps or anything like that. We do get XP for creeps
but we let them fight it out with each other. What we're interested in is zone control
and heroes if we can kill them. Because our XP all ticks-up together
if we're able when we hit level 10 to have a
small boost level wise over our
opponent - even if it's just 10 seconds that means we have our ultimate
hero abilities for 10 seconds and the enemy team doesn't.
You'll be surprised how often that can swing the fight. Right - here we go.
We're into the mines. Straight away everyone's in and the first thing we do
is go looking for these creatures that we need with a tent.
Someone usually hangs around there just try and make the enemy heroes
think twice about coming in here. If they do come in we are going to destroy them
is the plan. So here they come. They've been really stupid.
Land at least one of those out and see if we can kill Azmodan as well. Think I'm going to die. How to play Heroes of the Storm
Yep. Probably should have run away there
but anyway. So again here it's level-up time so mana tide,
frost wolf resilience also restores mana. That basically means that not only
when I hit my, do my five hits, do I heal but I also start
to regen mana as well. Very very useful. Now one thing to note
is everybody has a mount, you don't pay for this mount, there's no cost for this mount.
It is a cosmetic so you can buy prettier looking ones
but everybody gets a mount they can use so makes moving around the map
more quickly a really, well, easy thing to do basically.
All I'm trying to do here is just zone control. I want to get into the mine really.
'Cos over here
we're going to be fighting a rather large creature
in a moment.
But first
finish these guys off.
OK, now we're onto this big creature. This big creature will give us lots of the things we need for
the objective and does a lot of damage
at this level relative to obviously the amount of help I have and
the re-charger and re-gen I have as well. So I'm just going to leave combat for a second
to let someone else take the aggro on and come back in, finish him off. How to play Heroes of the Storm
And we collect up all these. Once we get to 100 skulls
then we've completed the objective. Ah right no it's timer some.
Basically what happens on this one, I'd forgotten, is
once the mine has been cleared of all of the NPC's
that give you these sort of Golem skulls then the Golem will spawn.
Whoever has collected the most has the most powerful Golem and it will set
off down the lanes
and start destroying things. Where it dies, it stops
and it will then be resurrected during the next objective phase at that
point so it makes it very strategic. You've got to choose whether you're going to back up
your Golem
or try and stop the enemy's Golem or a little bit of both.
Done well, this is where the kind of tide of the battle really can be changed.
Whoops. Time for some sippy cup. The sippy cup
otherwise known as a healing well someone on a livestream called it the sippy cup and
it's just stuck with me How to play Heroes of the Storm
so it's a sippy cup. Basically it gives you a re-gen buff. So what you'll get
is a health regen and also a mana regen as well. Now,
why have we not...
So it looks like I'm defending by the looks of it
So throw out some forked lightning
chain lightning and then wear away on this guy a little bit. Now
bear in mind their Golem is significantly weaker than ours, he has less health, he does less damage.
So, whoops, got rooted so from my
my perspective he's not, you know, our
we've got two guys here sort of defending against theirs
and we've got three of ours backing up our much harder one. In theory
we should be able to do a lot more damage than they will be able to do but
obviously they've put three heroes on trying to stop our hero so
you can see that it's kind of the meta of this it's reasonably deep
and how you kind of deal with this little problem. The further he gets down my
lanes before he dies the more the threat is going to be later
and obviously if they manage to then energize one of their Golems
substantially more than we've managed in a future phase then we could be in
real trouble if we don't stop him early enough. In this case we managed to
stop him on the
very first four. Missed a ski really was being silly there. He should have
backed off. Never ever ever stay toe-to-toe with someone who has How to play Heroes of the Storm
more health than you because most likely
you're going to die. Right, so what we're looking for here
is, there's nothing that necessarily that helps my frost wolf or my wind fury in a
way that I'm interested in
so what option there gives me an instant heal means I can turn that into a
clickable power.
Actually not necessary so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to go for empowering
my cooldowns so I want my cooldowns to pop quicker
and every time I do 'em a basic hit cool downs go
faster. Later on in the game that means I'm popping wind fury much more often
along with my other powers.
It's a big decider now. What I think I'm going to do here is
I'm going to head over and try and support our guys here because they're being pushed back a little
bit.
Actually, no I'm not. I've changed my mind because they're just
retreating anyway. We're going to stay up here and going to wait for the mine. We'll
grab a little bit of XP. Now I've got another power pot. This is my ultimate
level 10 so I'm going to go with earthquake here.
Sundering is useful but earthquake is better for chase downs. Simple as that.
And if we end up in a big fight with sort of three or four players, heroes on either
side How to play Heroes of the Storm
then that can actually turn the tide of battle. Now what we're doing now
is grabbing these mercenary camps. Mercenary camps are basic NPC's, we capture the
camp
we turn those mercenaries on our opponents' fort. Capture,
they then fight for us. This is an absolutely essential tactic
because it will force the enemy team to have to deal with those mercenaries for
a time. You can
see that even they've decided that they need to get in on these
mercenaries but I've got earthquake in and it's going to go
badly for them.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. OK he's pulled in his ultimate. You can see there it can, the tide can turn quite
quickly. I was basically out of position. My heroes are basically here. Their
heroes are over here and I'm stuck in this little patch here. Thrall is quite
susceptible to crowd control so if he gets stuck with a bit of crowd control
it can be very sticky. What would have helped there is if lele had been able to throw some
heals into me How to play Heroes of the Storm
it would have just buffed me off that damage that has taken under crowd control would have
gained a couple of seconds to escape. Wind Fury is very good for escaping if you
just get a couple seconds away from someone. So again here
we're upgrading again. This time it's going to be grace of air. Wind fury grant double
Frostwolf resilience
every basic hit or every hit gives me additional frostwolf
or should I say dealing damage so every
block of damage as it were.
deals Frostwolf. Now I'm going to pull back because there's not much I can do here really.
If heroes going to be silly might as well
just snatch one. Come on Lele we need to get out of here. But actually, what we're going to do
we're going to try and hold this position because at the moment
they're trying to get into the mine so I'm just going to hold them up for a little bit
and then run away. And the idea there really is I'm just trying to stop them getting in there,
you know, give them a few more seconds means that we're in there for a little bit longer
we get more points and
ultimately we will have the more powerful Golem again and we'll finish this guy off.
Head in and then we're going to mop up basically because our guys are in here
and we can now catch the enemy team as they retreat.
And that will be a wipe. So now basically we are in full control of the mines
and we've got plenty of time. This is their respawn timers here, it's going to be
15-seconds before they're in, 24 seconds before they're in and,
put it this way, more than enough time for us to mop up
everything that's in here I would say before they get back. So what I'm
going to do is I'm just going to make a start on this boss
and the other guys will follow me in a minute.
Frostwolf gone.
You can see there I'm actually healing as he's damaging which is very very useful.
Very beneficial for me. Imagine that on the
enemy heroes. Essentially for every five hits I'm doing to them,
I'm gaining back currently 589 health
that goes up every time I level. OK and
there we go. We've captured that and what we're going to do now is
going to walk back. There's no point in us trying to exit the mine, it
takes too long. We go back get our mounts and then power back out again.
See they've got a bit of a tear going on down here.
Their enemy Golem is there, ours How to play Heroes of the Storm
is practically in their base. They actually only managed to get through the first four
last time
so again we're much more powerful and the opportunity we have here is we
can kind of just sit back actually and not worry too much about their Golem
I don't think. What they do, the tear on down this lane will push hard and we'll
see if we can dislodge them basically from this end fort.
Should be doable. The key thing now is being
being able to move as quick as we can, bearing in mind they're all
wailing away on ours, that's fine they're nice and distracted and we're going to come in here in a moment
and just going to catch them.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to lay down
my earthquake
and that will just slow them down, cause a bit of confusion as well why am I suddenly running so slowly.
OK here we are onto our next upgrade so just quickly, wind fury final strike hits
three times, that's
additional frostwolf opportunities
and essentially means that in combat I'm then able to do with frostwolf
six hits, I believe, sorry five hits
which effectively is one set of heals, so we'll
just mash this fort
and we'll take out the sippy cup
and just wap that guy down for a moment, chase him down.
He's gone, got him. This is where Thrall becomes really really dangerous because
he's able to heal as he's doing hits and he's able to actually chase you down
and put that damage in. Get a lightning strike on him there
and that was as simple as that really. That's kind of a perfect play for Thrall.
They're running away and all you need to do is just tap in the lightning strike to finish them off.
This is the enemy's
nexus as it were. This is what we're trying to destroy. This is going to be a
very very fast game
I have to say. Finished in just under 12 minutes
done. 12 minutes. Brilliant. The average game How to play Heroes of the Storm
will take anything up to 20 minutes sometimes even longer up to 30 minutes.
The average game is around 20 to 25 minutes but hopefully that has been an
interesting
look at Heroes of the Storm for you. Like I say that was a particularly quick game
but it gave you a flavour for how Heroes of the Storm plays. It is very
objective based. If your team plays for those objectives and locks them down
does plenty of zone control then it is pretty much impossible to stop you, unless
you have another team that is going to play hard for those objectives.
So on this final screen we get our xp as well as obviously the stim bonus
for our XP boost and we also get a gold boost as well.
20 points from completing a match or 20 gold for completing a match
10 if you win and then your stim pack bonus as well. So you can see there that Thrall is
just a little shy of his level 8
and my player level is coming up nearly to 18. We can leave the game
and then of course we can play a new game. It's as simple as that. Hope that has been an
interesting look round Heroes of the Storm for you.
Do please let me know in the comments if you'd like to see some more of these
gameplay videos kind of explaining how this game actually works,
we'll do some more play throughs with different hero types and some different strategies.
Do feel free to like and comment on this video as well.
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How to play Heroes of the Storm