HotS Replay Analysis #2

Match #2 – Blackheart’s Bay (WIN)

My Team: Diablo, Thrall, Tracer, Nova, Rehgar

Enemy Team: Artanis, Chromie, Jaina, Xul, Lt. Morales

Overview: For my 2nd Heroes of the Storm Replay Analysis, I played Support again. This match took place a few minutes after the dismal match I reviewed in my first Replay Analysis. Telling the Draft Lobby the story of the Nova/Zeratul duo got us all off on the right foot as we laughed at my matchmaking misfortune. This match was a fairly decisive victory, filled with strong teamwork throughout. 

Positive Takeaways: 

• I positioned myself well in the first fight over the watchtower, and was able to stick a totem at the top to prevent the enemy heroes from quickly leaving through the top. 
• A well-placed totem was able to assist our  weakened Diablo in getting behind our walls to recover health.
• Right after that totem drop, I stood in front of Thrall and soaked so ability damage to prevent him from dying (although this honestly might not have been intentional).
• I was able to quickly rotate from soaking the top lane to healing allies in the middle lane.
• During Level 6, the enemy Xul and Lt. Morales had overextended in the bottom lane. We were able to cut them off and another handy Earthbind totem was able to slow Morales down enough to kill her. 
• We were able to steal the boss at half health from the enemy team. A lot of that rested on the enemy only committing 3 heroes to fight the boss while we fought the other two first.
• I was able to save Diablo twice from death with Ancestral Healing. However, I missed saving myself by not committing to using Ancestral Healing on myself fast enough.
• Overall, my mana management was spot on – I don’t believe I had to hearth more than once the entire match.

Room for Improvement:

• I did not rotate down to the first chest fast enough, which meant I wasn’t there in time to save Nova from dying. There’s a pattern here, looks like I need to start hammering in those first objective times on each map.
• There were a few instances (most notably during Doubloon Camps) where I didn’t realize that Rehgar no longer continues attacking the same target once you swap to Wolf-Form. While minor, this is something to keep in mind as I continue playing him.
• I lingered a few too many seconds clearing a wave of minions instead of heading to the second set of chests. While no one died, we did have mercs in that lane and they were going to push through easily.
• We attempted to push the bottom inner gate with mercs, but trickled in. Diablo died in the process, so I should have hit “V” to try and pull him back before the enemy team bombarded him from the safety of the gate.
• Right at the 14 minute mark, I started second guessing catching up with the team as a few allies tried to push the bottom gate again, or quickly turn in. Once I realized I only had 1 coin and we needed 2, I started to head to my team. Then, I asked myself if I should go take a Doubloon Camp to turn in, before ultimately deciding to catch up with the team. This small mistake cost Diablo their second death, which I could have prevented.

Effect on Rank: I regained my Rank 35 points, bringing my overall record to 31-42. 

Sweet, sweet victory. 

Random Observations:

• This was the first time that I played against Chromie in Hero League, and I honestly don’t think I ran into her very much. I remember thinking about 3/4 of the way through the match “Wow, Chromie must be squishy because she’s dying a lot”, when in reality it was only 4 times.
• This truly was the polar opposite from the first match I analyzed – my team worked together extremely well, never got upset at one another, and kept chatter to a minimum.
• The enemy team wasn’t able to turn in a full set of coins to Blackheart, bonus!
• Thrall and I died at the very end of the match as the game-winning cannonballs were firing on the enemy core. Aside from those 2 junk deaths, I could have prevented all 3 of the legitimate deaths through map awareness and faster decision making. I’ll keep this in mind as I go forward.

Final stats on the match.

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HotS Replay Analysis #1

 

Climbing up from Rank 35 is kind of ridiculous…

I’ve been thinking about a writing project for a little while now, combining two aspects of my life that I love: Heroes of the Storm and writing about video games. Before the Ranked Preseason ends on June 14, I would love to climb the ladder and attain Rank 20 for the Elemental Wolf Mount. However, in an effort to climb the ranked ladder, I simply need to get better at the game.

I’ve read plenty of guides, I’ve watched the pros play, and there is always going to be the unknown element of matchmaking: getting put with trolls and verbally abusive players. Even though there are a lot of outside factors in a match, I can only control my own gameplay. To truly become a better Heroes player, I need to take an additional step: watch replay of my ranked matches and analyze my gameplay.

This will be the first edition of my Heroes of the Storm Replay Analysis, in which I watch one of my Hero League matches and attempt to pinpoint what I’m doing correctly and what needs improvement. Initially, I thought this match wasn’t going to teach me much about my own gameplay due to some terrible teammates. Ultimately, I learned a lot from simply looking back at the game with a critical eye.

Match #1  Sky Temple (LOSS)

My Team: Sonya, Thrall, Nova, Zeratul, LiLi (Me)

Enemy Team: Muradin, Artanis, Illidan, Rehgar, Sylvanas

Overview: Wow, so this was one of the more frustrating games that I have played in Hero League. It’s like the universe knew I was planning on writing my first Replay Analysis today and decided to give me one hell of a curve ball. With this match, I fully believe that our loss was 100% decided in the draft.

I picked 5th in the draft, so I let my teammates know that I could fill in. 1st pick was Thrall, 4th pick was pre-selecting Greymane, and picks 2 and 3 weren’t showing us who they were going to select. When their turn came up, they selected the two stealth assassins at the same time: Nova and Zeratul. Rightfully, our team exploded. 4th pick Greymane had to swap to a tank, and I picked up the slack with LiLi as the healing support.

Thrall and Sonya’s anger was met with nonchalance by Nova/Zeratul, making the toxicity that much worse. Nova/Zeratul had some early kills, but the team was never able to recover and work together due to the massive amount of typing from all 4 teammates. I didn’t type a single message after the match started and quickly muted my team about 1 minute in.

With this much typing, I don’t know how my teammates expected to you know, play.

Positive Takeaways:

• I don’t mind playing support, and since the other team had picked Rehgar 1st, I had to resort to a support hero I’m not as experienced with. Lt. Morales was banned, so I picked up LiLi to blind the enemy team’s Illidan, Muradin, and Artanis. The blinds were awfully helpful.
• With two stealth teammates, I had to solo lane a lot, but I did my best to keep us relatively even on XP as we marched toward Level 10.
• I rotated to the second temple objective right on time, despite soaking in the top lane at the time. However…

Room for Improvement:

• I took too bold of a path to get to the second temple at the bottom of the map, and got hurt along the way.
• I missed the 1st objective call, and didn’t start moving toward a temple until the enemy already had it.
• Once we got to the first temple we had a great team fight, but the enemy team had already fired off a lot of the shots from it.
• In my efforts to soak, I was attempting to get us caught up to level 10 behind the enemy team, but I overextended and ended up dying right as we hit 10.
• After the 10 minute mark, I hopped around too much with who I was helping on our team. Overall, we were so spread out that I wasn’t sure where I should be – I didn’t want to follow our tank because Sonya was extending incredibly far behind enemy lines.
• I hearthed to recover mana, and my team decided to march into a team fight without their healer.
• Near the end of the match I moved away from 2 of our teammates to go save Nova, which then allowed the enemy team to pick off three of our heroes.
• At the very end of the match, our team attempted to start a team fight to steal the boss, but I hesitated in wanting to go refill my health. I got to the fight a little to late to save a few of our heroes.
• Overall, my positioning and decision making was very erratic because I was so rattled by the toxicity within our team. I need to get better at shaking those things off after I have muted troublemakers.

Effect on my Rank: A loss is a loss, this one put me at a 30-42 overall record for Hero League. Fortunately, I had some points built up, so I stayed at Rank 35.

Random Observations: The Nova/Zeratul duo began chatting in Spanish about halfway through, and our Thrall replied back with a wonderful endorsement of resident presidential joke: Donald Trump. Great to know this Thrall is a xenophobic asshat.

Vote Donald Drumpf 2016!