Heroes of the Storm (A new MOBA game by Blizzard)

[Hooves]

The whole Heroes of the Dorm event really pushed out far more keys. I was surprised when I got that same mail I should really watch the tournament itself to see who's playing in it.

[Jazzrat]

It's a bit late but I just realized i got into the beta last month. Here's 4 free key if anyone wanted it granted, the game is leaving beta in june i think?

1) 2HKE4H-2448-GM6CRV-HJN2-VNNX6T

2) 4P229J-ZWVZ-BY2MFC-MER2-NRB2H4

3) NCKDBY-GJW8-X47CEH-VCHH-PP6NG9

4) FCP8HJ-KRG2-6Y424D-9HYK-RRGGCH

Please say if you have taken a key.

[Kafriel]

The game is now in open beta (has been for a couple days I think) so I gave it a shot. It is very fun in its simplicity with no gold and items (meaning people can't be as useless or troll-effective) and the importance of global objectives over lane pushing makes it even better! There is a lot of variety with the maps (and subsequently game modes) and a large enough roster of heroes to play with.

On the downside...heroes cost 10k gold to unlock and I get 30g per victory? That's...steep. Anyway, the matches are fairly short so that makes it a bit better. Just a bit.

[Skane]

Gold income is mainly from Daily Quests and levelling up Heroes to Lvl-5, and in the initial phase, from simply levelling up your account. Excluding the account bonuses, the daily average gold income, if you dutifully complete your Dailies in Quick Matches, is around 330+ gold/day.

So about 10,000+ per month.

Free player here, and I already got a fairly diverse roster. Lili, Raynor, Jaina, Tassadar, Anuba'rak, Nova, Sgt Hammer, Abathur, Valla, Tyrande. Currently sitting at 12,000+ gold, waiting for Kael'thas' price to drop before getting him.

Haven't maxed out my account level yet, so I got a few thousand more gold to look forward to.

Cheers.

[Kafriel]

Upon further inspection, hero cost varies from 2k to 10k gold. Currently interested in: Hammer, Tyrande, Tyrael, Tychus, Tassadar...and no, I'm not targeting heroes whose names start with a T xD Anyway, looks like only the first few matches are going to drag a bit till the dailies are unlocked. Thanks Skane!

EDIT: Scratch Tychus off my list. He's not bad but he ain't THAT good either...grenade route seems to be best.

Tyrande is amazing, she has everything a support hero should have and her battle presence is outstanding: considerable heal that can be buffed to ridiculous levels, a scouting tool to counter pesky heroes like Nova but also check on camps and brush, DAT TRAIT, decent skillshot stun, and two really great heroic abilities...I actually used shadowmeld to allow a Raynor on our team to backdoor the enemy core, it was hilarious. Starfall is like the hyperion, except it's immobile so I like it better. Trueshot aura + Nexus frenzy ftw, Tyrande never falls off!

[barcode120x]

Actually I'm starting to enjoy the game. Previously, when I played months ago in Alpha, was just turned off by having no items that and I totally despised these "missions" that help with attacking the enemy base. Now, I'm actually liking it. I really like how the game is somewhat balanced, where if a player is completely owning, he can still get rocked easily simply because there are no items. It does suck though that if you do are owning, the only advantage you have is your team is a higher level.

Funny, this game actually doesn't make me rage as much as DotA 2. There are plenty of times when your team can get back on its feet despite how far deep the enemy has destroyed your base. Probably the best plus about this game compared to other MOBAs.

[Kafriel]

That level difference can be game-changing though...I've had a bad game where we were 5 levels behind the enemy team (must be hard to fall so behind) and there was just no recovery from that...didn't help that the map was haunted mines, where the objective can be super strong and the map is just so small.

It really depends on the maps. So far, the best maps to make a comeback on are tomb of the spider queen and the gardens of terror, because they rely on good old laning presence instead of king of the hill tactics that need to be applied on several other maps (mines, cursed hollow, sky temple, dragon shire) in which whoever's got the best TF composition tends to win the match. Blackheart's bay is also like that in a way, because you have to get to Blackheart to deliver your gold...but it's slightly different because it's not timed.

Anyway, some maps are better for some heroes and certain heroes work best against other ones, you can't really know in QM and the matchmaking is weird as hell (got teamed up with LV40/40/32/28 when I'm 13 or something, even though we won with a difference I still knew I was the worst on my team). Sometimes it's frustrating to play against really good players, especially vs stealthies because they can deny your role in a team and at one game I had to spend more time just watching the death counter than actually playing for the last 10 minutes of the game.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

Love Tyrande, she's probably the Hero I play the most.. then they went and changed her on me. Haven't had much of a chance to try the new version, so not sure if it is an improvement or not.

edit: I have to say that I HATE that Trueshot Aura is like level 16 now, rather than like level 4 or what ever it was. It was so good for helping minions push lanes (eh, player allies to I guess).

[Kafriel]

Tyrande is still stronk, I got paired up with Illidan+Malfurion at haunted mines and we only died once the whole game :O Currently LV7 on her, need a few million exp for the next one...and 3 million more for the one after that :S

Many heroes have had reworks apparently....so I decided to buy Hammer. Slow like death and really vulnerable to stealth heroes (I'm looking at you, Zeratul) but oddly enough she is the one hero I wouldn't mind holding a lane by herself and just pushing while everyone else was doing something different. She can't get hit by forts and towers, she clears waves really fast and her orbital BFG can actually be set to orbit on 2 forts, effectively taking them from 100% to 0 in 4 minutes or so. Napalm is much better but that one was hilarious xD

I'm seriously considering her stealth shot as a first talent. It has saved my life quite a few times and makes her good at camping on...well, camps, but it's just so gimmicky and the extra 10% damage is always sweet. Need to experiment more on her.

[Ravagerblade]

Well, not that I've played this game but I just felt compelled to say this, lately, imo, Lore-wise Tyrande has been curbed and she's not that interesting anymore, I blame WoW for this for making her Malfurion's Trophy wife/bitch. Loved playing her in Reign of Chaos and the little bit in Frozen Throne. She was imo a true warrior of the night... lols.

I am hoping for this game to improve what she was before WoW.

[Hooves]

Originally Posted by Ravagerblade

Well, not that I've played this game but I just felt compelled to say this, lately, imo, Lore-wise Tyrande has been curbed and she's not that interesting anymore, I blame WoW for this for making her Malfurion's Trophy wife/bitch. Loved playing her in Reign of Chaos and the little bit in Frozen Throne. She was imo a true warrior of the night... lols.

I am hoping for this game to improve what she was before WoW.

Funnily enough, HotS just takes any period of the characters. With the pacifist Jaina.

[Raviel]

Originally Posted by Hooves

Funnily enough, HotS just takes any period of the characters. With the pacifist Jaina.

If you click on Thrall enough he actually comments about that, he says something along the lines of: "After a few expansions, Blizzard will replace me with Garrosh."

[Frailty]

Originally Posted by Raviel

"After a few expansions, Blizzard will replace me with Garrosh."

Inb4 Garrosh skin

[Spectacular_Insanity]

God, that daily EXP cap makes it freaking hard to get all my characters leveled up to 4 or so before I hit PvP. I feel like I'm running around with half a character if I go into PvP before level 4. >_>

[Kafriel]

There's a daily exp cap? I'm currently on the LV10 stim and get up to 360k per victory, definitely made more than a million exp a couple of days ago...

[Skane]

Originally Posted by Spectacular_Insanity

God, that daily EXP cap makes it freaking hard to get all my characters leveled up to 4 or so before I hit PvP. I feel like I'm running around with half a character if I go into PvP before level 4. >_>

Originally Posted by Kafriel

There's a daily exp cap? I'm currently on the LV10 stim and get up to 360k per victory, definitely made more than a million exp a couple of days ago...

There's an XP cap for Co-op vs AI matches.

[Kafriel]

I see, thanks for the clarification...I did notice that the A.I. exp & gold gains were absurdly low, to the point where it's not really worth playing. Hopefully that will change in time, there are many players who enjoy playing just co-op. For now though, I don't care if I get 4 losses in a row, it's still 140k exp at worst :P

[barcode120x]

Same, thanks for notice. Never knew there was an exp cap for coop. Any idea what the cap is at? Loving this 14 day stim boost that was activated. 140k exp on loss as Kafriel said, while winning is almost 300k .

I totally despised the weekly hero set like in League; however, if you hit level 12 and 15, you get +2 extra hero unlocks for the weekly hero set. On top of that, I bought the starter bundle (5 bucks) which was another 3 heroes. All in all, 10 playable heroes per week isn't so bad. Incentive to get each one to at least level 5 especially with my exp stim boost. Haven't played all heroes yet, but Zagara is my favorite so far.

[Kafriel]

It's easy enough to hit 5 on a hero, I'm not so interested as to try them all yet, still exploring possible talent builds for some of them...Specialist heroes are generally very strong, at least the ones I've seen except Azmodan (i.e. Zagara, Abathur, Sylvanas and sgt. Hammer), they can safely dish out a lot of damage or siege/camp by themselves, some matchups are really, really hard to play against...most striking atm being Sylvanas.

Heroes can be quite interesting after all; after losing 3 games as Valla, I decided to go beyond the casual dps with lifesteal and built her around hungering arrow - with 3 seeker arrows, half mana cost, cooldown after vault and 2 vault stacks she turned from right-click-to-win to a burst assassin, it was actually kinda fun.

Best victory so far was at 37 minutes, earned ~380k exp total. Scratch that, made 421k on a 41' game.

EDIT:

God, that daily EXP cap makes it freaking hard to get all my characters leveled up to 4 or so before I hit PvP. I feel like I'm running around with half a character if I go into PvP before level 4. >_>

I think you unlock all talents for all heroes at player level 25.

[barcode120x]

Originally Posted by Kafriel

Specialist heroes are generally very strong, at least the ones I've seen except Azmodan (i.e. Zagara, Abathur, Sylvanas and sgt. Hammer), they can safely dish out a lot of damage or siege/camp by themselves, some matchups are really, really hard to play against...most striking atm being Sylvanas.

Yep. Sucks though, most specialists are 10k gold. Spent my first 10k gold on Zeratul, had to pick him up and play him. As much as I wanna save up another 10k for a Specialist, I've had my eye on Tassador next. They so need to nerf Nova...even more so than Illidan. It also seems they scale takedowns to exp. My team lost pretty badly but I ended up going 20-5 as Zeratul and ended up with 214k exp (with the 100% exp stim boost). The last game I played/lost I did so-so and got around 140k exp.