Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Sollosi's Favorite Heroes in Heroes of the Storm Updated for 2017


In November of 2015, I wrote three blog posts about my then-new obsession with Heroes of the Storm.  In the intervening two years, I've had my ups and downs with the game, but I still play almost every day.  This post is the first of two updates to my 2015 posts, in which I re-examine my favorite characters in the game. 

BlizzCon 2017 just concluded last week, and the big HOTS news is the two new heroes: Hanzo and Alexstrazsa.  A ranged assassin and a ranged support.  i.e. two types of characters that I'll use in AI, but won't take into QM unless I'm forced to last-pick the role.  Oh well.  They both look neat, so I'll eventually get both of them, but it's not urgent.  I think Alex looks cooler than Hanzo, and that's 95% due to the ability to turn into a dragon.

Late 2015 was perhaps the peak of my HOTS hype.  BlizzCon recently concluded, and I was very excited about the advent of Cho'gall, the game's first (and only) two-player hero.  I slowed down playing HotS in mid-2016, then got excited again in late 2016, when the combination of BlizzCon and the debut of the professional HotS league HGC.  Currently, I'm playing Heroes of the Storm almost every day, and I own 69 of the 73 heroes present.

So that's where I am with Heroes of the Storm at the moment. It's still my multiplayer jam of choice; I still manage to get my HOTS fix most days; and I always get excited for the addition of new heroes.  But my HOTS thoughts aren't quite the same as they were two years ago, so it's time for an update.  Here are the three 2015 Heroes of the Storm blog posts I wrote:

Intro to MOBAs and HOTS

My favorite heroes in HOTS

My most wanted heroes in HOTS

The second of those pieces is my list of favorite and least-favorite heroes in the game.  Here are those lists:

Sollosi's Favorite Heroes in Heroes of the Storm (2015)

Unreleased: Cho'gall
10. The Butcher
9. Anub'arak
8. Valla
7. Tassadar
6. Diablo
5. Jaina
4. Nazeebo
3. Muradin
2. Sonya
1. Sgt. Hammer

Sollosi's Least-Favorite Heroes in Heroes of the Storm (2015)

Unreleased: Tracer
5. Stitches
4. Nova
3. Zeratul
2. Li Li
1. The Lost Vikings

These lists are accurate for the time of writing, but the times have changed.  Since BlizzCon 2015 we've had more than 30 new heroes enter the Nexus and we know about a handful of others.  So here's where I rewrite my lists, followed by some comments.  We'll start with the list of favorites, then write up a few comments, then write the list of least favorites.

Sollosi's Favorite Heroes in Heroes of the Storm (2017)


Number Ten
The Butcher

The Butcher lands in exactly the same spot he did two years ago, even following a rework, for exactly the same reason: I avoid melee assassins and don't trust my teammates using them, but Butcher is fun in spite of my preferences.  His relatively recent addition of quest talents only makes him more exaggerated: he's a pure headhunter, but only gets stronger once you complete the quest and really start headhunting.  I love Butcher, but I'll never take him out of Vs AI.


Number Nine
Auriel

My go-to support choice recently, Auriel has really good team interaction (she can heal more as her targeted teammates deals more damage), along with really good Heroics and waveclear. I'm not very good at using her offensive and displacement skills to great effect, but I like her more than most of the other "heal-bot" characters and if I have to solo support in Unranked, I look her way. 


Number Eight
Xul

Part of my love of Xul is the joy of having a Diablo II Necromancer in Heroes of the Storm, but another part is that he's a decent (if unsafe) headhunter and a powerful wave-clearing hero.  Wiping out groups of minions to summon skeletons is great, and a few of the changes in his 2017 rework are nearly as great (I love the Cursed Strikes skill that increases attack speed).  I die more than usual when I use Xul, since he doesn't get many defensive skills without talent investment, but he's my favorite new Specialist in HOTS.


Number Seven
Zul'jin

Supplanting Valla and Jaina to be my favorite ranged assassin, the classic WarCraft troll isn't as powerful as either of them, but I have much more fun using him. Balacing self-harm with self-heals for speedy, powerful auto-attacks and an invincibility Heroic, Zul'jin has fewer tricks than Valla or a mage assassin but more satisfaction. At least from me.


Number Six
Muradin

Muradin has fallen in my personal rankings, but it's not his fault!  Muradin is still a quintessential warrior, with stuns, self-heals, and lots of tankiness, but he feels slightly stale compared to the more interesting kits of more recent HOTS warriors.  I still like using him, and he's a very safe warrior with a good balanced kit, and he was even helped by a 2017 rework giving him additional auto-attack bonuses and stuns!  But I find a few more heroes more interesting than Muradin since playing this game for two more years. 


Number Five
Dehaka

Dehaka's seen a number of nerfs over the months of 2017, and they were probably warranted.  With lots of baked-in healing skills to his trait and a life-restoring Heroic, Dehaka basically has three health bars for opponents to deal with.  He also has an excellent engage move, boosted speed in underbrush, and a global move skill, making him one of the best ambush heroes in the game.  Dehaka's kit is fun, and his playstyle is intense and powerful.  Hell, he still gets play in the pro scene after all those nerfs.


Number Four
Diablo

Diablo has hopped over Muradin in my rankings, in part because he's become more powerful and more specialized, and also in part because he's a brilliant headhunting warrior who's only gotten better at headhunting since getting a talent rework in late 2016 (I think? Might've been 2017...).  At this point, I'm as comfortable with his kit as I am with any warrior, and even if he's non-meta right now his talent selection is great. Still love Dibbles.


Number Three
Cho'gall

My early anticipation for Cho'gall was warranted!  I love both halves of the ogre. Cho is an effective bruiser with movement, engage, and self-healing tools, and Gall is a mage with excellent poke and sustain.  The real killer, though, is interplay between the two players. Cho getting in the best position for Gall to wreck shit, and Gall making the most out of his good cooldowns without a mana pool.  Cho'gall are limited to one body and one lifebar, but they're super fun to play (I love both, but a few of my friends hate playing Gall so I play more Gall than Cho) and extremely effective when the two players have good synergy.


Number Two
Sgt. Hammer

The only non-warrior hero in my top six, Sgt. Hammer is still an extremely satisfying damage dealer, with range-awareness and positioning key to success with her. She's bit more "passive" than most other heroes, since part of using Hammer effectively is to park her in siege mode and auto-attack, but her damage numbers speak for themselves (when you play her smart and have some protection from teammates). I probably wouldn't take Hammer into QM or UR, but she's fun to see those big damage numbers in AI matches. 


Number One
Sonya

Sonya has everything I want in a warrior.  Good sustain damage, ability to play solo, good resource management, defensive and healing skills, and a pretty solid engage.  Her tankiness is limited without talent investment and she doesn't have as much crowd control and peel as many other tanks, but I don't care.  The female Diablo III Barbarian is my favorite hero to play in Heroes of the Storm.


So that's the new top ten!  Before I move into my least-favorite heroes, let's talk about a few of the adjustments in my list between 2015 and 2017:


- Tassadar, Valla, Jaina, and Anub'arak are good, but not when I use them

These three made my list in 2015, and I still mostly like using them!  They're even meta picks in professional HOTS quite often.  However, my lack of assassin / mage skills make we a woefully bad Tassadar and Valla.  Valla is still a top-tier assassin and Tassadar's rework into an auto-attacking shield/leech support made him very strong, but neither of them are among my favorites any longer.  I still like Jaina a lot (she almost made this list at number 9 or 10), and her rework is interesting and powerful, but I just don't play mages often any more.  Anub'arak's role as a dive warrior and anti-mage is powerful and interesting, but it requires team coordination that I never get in QM or UR and the way I played him, as a sustain tank with beetle talents, isn't useful anymore.  I still like these four, but I don't play them often nowadays. 

- Nazeebo isn't one of my mains any longer

Once upon a time, Nazeebo was my 2nd-most-played hero, after Hammer.  I liked his safe damage from a distance, and got pretty good at tossing frogs and spiders. After multiple reworks, Nazeebo is very powerful, but a few of his skill and talent adjustments made him less fun for me. He has an enormous power spike with one of his level 20 talents, but my matches rarely get to level 20, and limited talent choices are never fun. His spider build is powerful, but the timing on the spider attack has changed, and I never adjusted to it.  Nazeebo is good in the right hands, but I don't like using him much anymore. Which is too bad, because he's one of my handful of heroes above level 15. 

- Lunara, Li-Ming, Garrosh and Zarya nearly made this list

Ultimately I decided that I liked Xul, Dehaka, Auriel, Cho'gall, and Zul'jin more among the 2016 and 2017 new arrivals. Lunara is a really fun AD carry and manipulating her poison damage is effective and powerful. Li-Ming entered the game as one of the most powerful assassins in HOTS history, and even after a few nerfs she's a high-damage, mobile, pokey mage assassin with a fun kit.  Zarya is a fascinating tank concept, throwing around powerful energy barriers and boosting her offenses the more damage is absorbed by her barrier; Zarya's not a solo tank, but she makes the entire frontline better with smart barrier usage.  Garrosh uses armor mechanics more effectively than any other hero, and has a supremely fun drag/toss combination that's useful and satisfying.  I love all four of these recent heroes, and they were seriously considered for the 9 or 10 spot. 

So that was fun.  But now let's get negative!  Unlike my 2015 list, I'll avoid stating a negative early impression, and instead just list my five true least-favorites.

Sollosi's Least-Favorite Heroes in Heroes of the Storm (2017)


Number Five
Alarak

As we've discussed earlier, I don't like using melee assassins and I'm not great at using piano-player dialed combos.  Alarak is an extreme version of both of these things, and lacks warrior tankiness or even Illidan's, Kerrigan's, or Butcher's self-heals.  Alarak can be a terrifying burst melee assassin, but his high skill floor and aggressive playstyle aren't my cup of tea at all.


Number Four
Nova

We can get into my lack of preference for stealth characters later.  Even setting that aside, Nova has been one of my least-favorite HOTS characters from the beginning, since she's a one trick pony (hero killing from range) with a boring trick that largely ignores wave clear or direct engagement in team fights.  She's the favorite hero of my best HOTS playing parter, David, but at least that means we never have to fight over who gets to use her.


Number Three
Zeratul

A sensitive, specialized stealth melee assassin that requires a great deal of precision to get the most out of his burst damage.  I hate basically everything in that previous sentence.  I am useless with Zeratul.


Number Two
Medivh

Medivh needs help from his team.  His protection spell, teleportation portals, and even scouting Raven ability are useful and powerful, but need team coordination and support to really work, and I never get that when I play with strangers.  Add a high skill floor and mage skills to that (two things I'm also bad at) and Medivh is basically unusable for me.


Number One
The Lost Vikings

Fuck the Vikings.  I'm not here to play an RTS game starring the Lemmings.


So that's my new negative thoughts.  A few notes, similar to the positive ones:

- I like Li Li and Stitches now

Stitches' now has okay waveclear and damage over time in addition to an excellent engage, and I like him much more now than I did two years ago, in part because of buffs and in part because I'm a better tank player now.  Li Li is similar (I ended up getting her in a bundle), but I like Stitches more.  I don't like how passive her abilities feel, and I find her personality and look a bit annoying, but now I can use her semi-competently without hating the game.

- I still hate stealth and macro-management

My least-hated stealth hero is probably Valeera, since her ability to disable and debuff and her melee combos are just as important as her stealthy nature, and I like a lot of what Val brings to the table.  But even counting Valeera, I don't like using stealth characters in HOTS because too much of it is being absent from team fights or objectives, and I feel it's a selfish play style.  Yeah.  Not into stealthies.  And The Lost Vikings are still miserable for me to play.  So are certain play styles for Medivh and Abathur, because I playing in one place at a time and not the entire map at once. At least Abathur is more fun than The Lost Vikings.

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That's that.  Another BlizzCon down, another blog post on the site.  I'm so far behind on game reviews that I'm not sure I'll ever write another, but don't rule them out.  I'm about 20 or 25 game reviews behind, and 7 or 8 Japanese superhero show reviews behind.  I'm probably mostly going to post larger articles on this blog going forward, since so much of my creative time is taken up by RPGFan writing and podcasting.  Ah well.  Blog you later!  (is that a phrase?  Whatever. It stays.)

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