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So, around rank 29 my plan was this for heroleague:
The New Plan
Pick Abathur on Sky Temple, Cursed Hollow, Tomb of the Spider Queen, Garden of Terror, Blackheart's Bay
Pick Jaina on Haunted Mines, Dragonshire, Infernal Shrines, and Battlefield of Eternity.
Pick support when team needs it (Either Malf, Uther, or lili)
Pick warrior when team needs it (Johanna or Leoric)
At this point the limits of Abathur began to become more clear to me. Teammates frequently didn't understand the character, so I decided to cut back to just two maps that are rather large but which also provide nice opportunities for split soak: Cursed Hollow and Sun Temple.
I also started looking my personal statistics for winrates on heroes and individual maps. Kael'thas is my hero with the biggest winrate, so I decided to incorporate him more. This plan worked well with my preference for Jaina already, since either mage will work together or against the other; so I could better ensure that I get the hero I want.
Mapwise I had a major problem though. Dragonshire, Haunted Mines, and Tomb of the Spider queen were all at sub-par winrates, with my overall heroleague winrates in them ranging from 20-30% each. So, I did some digging in strategy articles and the team liquid forums.
Haunted Mines
The one thing I learned very quickly when looking into this map is that Sylvanas and Tassadar are very strong on the map. Fortunately I have experience with these two characters, so I started drafting them. Every draft phase I now ask if someone on my team can draft sylv--- if they can, I grab tass. If they can't or don't respond, I grab sylv. The results from doing this have been very convincing: the 7 games I've played since adopting the strategy have been wins.
In terms of actual gameplay, the plan is very simple: I solo the "defense" lane of the map with tassadar and run reinforce structure/healing totem/mule/archon/prescience/dimensional warp/twilight archon. I ask my teammates to attack our golem lane with a 4-man comp with sylv. Then we basically just win--- tass is great in the mines and when defending an enemy golem can prevent most damage (If not all damage) the golem does. Sylv meanwhile ensures our golem does maximum damage against the enemy keep. Easy wins.
I'm a little nervous about ranking up while maintaining this strategy. I'm not 100% how I will combat it when eventually another team does it against me, but I figure I'll cross that bridge when I reach it.
Dragon Shire
For this map I reviewed several losses that I've had. It seems a key element of all of them is there: the struggle for the first dragon shrine goes a really long time, someone on our team dies and others have to back to base at the same time, and the other team gets the dragon. It snowballs from there.
So, I went to the teamliquid forums for heroes and asked for some advice for how to deal with the map when I am solo queuing and can't depend on teammates rotating correctly. The advice came quickly: try out zagara on bot lane. I started to do this, and quickly learned why it's a good idea. Zagara has excellent vision, so I rarely get ganked. She is very strong in the early game, so two enemies are needed to combat me or else I will capture the shrine and also push down the fort. Also she is very good at chasing squishy damagers away from teamfights with hydras, and can use maw as both an escape and to negate certain annoying ults. (Malfs and lili's, specifically)
My basic formula is the same every game: maintain a very strong presence on bot lane. If the enemy team overcommits to contain me, my teammates can secure top and rotate down to secure bot/dragon with me. If the enemy team only commits one person to my lane, I end up dominating, pushing down the fort. Once the fort is down I immediately pull back and take the bottom bruisers to push the lane fully to the outer keep, then take siege and rotate up to help my team take top/center/dragon.
This seems to be a very strong sequence, so I'm sticking with it for now. It has won my last 5 of my 6 games since starting to do it, which is a significant increase from my previous 30% winrate on the map.
Tomb of the Spider Queen
This is a map I'm continuing to struggle with. I decided to try a similar zagara strat outlined above: dominate bot, collect gems, don't get ganked. When level 10 hits form up with the team for team fights. It has seemed to work, but I've only gotten to try it twice now. (worked both times). Hopefully by the next time I write a blog, I'll have had better success.
Warrior Picks
Lately I've been thinking a lot about my losses, and I started posting strange comps I see on the TL forums. I take any feedback players give me from these, and frequently the advice is that I'm still a little too loose on when I pick which tanks. So, I've begun majorly preferring Muradin instead of more flashy things like ETC. This has had a pretty good effect on my games, as I realize I understand muradin pretty well and he is very forgiving for being out of position.
So currently my playbook is:
Mines: Sylv or Tassadar
Sky Temple- Abathur
Cursed Hollow- Abathur
Infernal Shrines- Kael'thas/jaina
Battlefield of Eternity- Kael'thas/jaina
Garden of Terror- Kael'thas/jaina
Tomb of the Spider Queen-Zagara
Dragon Shire- Zagara
Blackhearts Bay- Jaina/Kael'thas
Support: Uther or Malf (lili on dragon shire sometimes)
Warrior: Muradin or Johanna
This playbook took me from rank 29 to 21 over the last weekend. One thing I've learned is that wow--- games are of much higher quality once you get to rank 25 or so. Before this rank I frequently hit ragers and potatoes, but now everyone seems to just be decently talented. But then again, I'm also winning a large majority of my games. That might be contributing to people being in better moods.
Unfortunately, Abathur continues to receive a lot of rage from people in draft. I may need to replace him entirely on cursed hollow and sky temple even though my winrate with him is 60% on these maps. It's just not worth it
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You don't want to have such a strict playbook. As first picks having such a strict guideline for maps is fine but as later pick you really want to draft based on what players have more instead of the map.
Abathur for example is quite good on cursed hollow, sky temple (and dragon shire sometimes) but you either want illidan for symbiote build or a great clone target for cloning. If your team is kaelthas, sonya, leoric, uther for example you don't want abathur because it's bad for symbiote and you have no good clone target.
Abathur in general also has problems at lower levels of play, it's a good hero but he underperforms because people don't know how to play with him. The team needs to be good enough to understand you are weaker in teamfights and can pretty much only engage full on with clone, exception illidan.
That said If you want to go ranged dps mostly you can't go too wrong with kael/jaina every time. Especially jaina is just always good, kael you may want to reconsider. Maps like infernal shrines and tomb of the spider queen he's really good but maps like battlefield of eternity he's a bit lackluster. You pretty much want lots of globes with him and some sort of objective involving several minions where his chain bomb rocks.
Tassadar on haunted mines is also highly overrated. The reinforce structure build isn't even good.. especially since the latest changes to tassadar where shields on buildings and self were reduced. Not saying tassadar isn't good because it's a very good hero in general now but picking him specifically for mines is silly imo. As solo defense against the golem he's not as spectacular as people think, sure you shield buildings and prevent damage that way but you also do total crap damage against the golem. A high sustained dps hero like sonya or illidan tends to defend better solo because killing the golem much faster prevents building damage too and you finish the golem faster so you can proceed to push for extra xp.
I'd draft tassadar on almost any map these days especially, he's that good. But haunted mines is not his best map really.
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That's interesting about reinforce structure--- my thoughts are basically as follows on the skill:
1) Typically I want conjurer's pursuit for this map, however Tass tends to not have mana problems on this map. Fights are fairly short and the base or a healing fountain are almost always nearby since the map is so small. (it's the smallest map, isn't it?)
2) On hotslogs reinforce structure remains extremely dominant skill to take at this level on this map specifically for this map.
I guess if I wasn't going to take it, I might take Overload instead? Since mana isn't as much of an issue on the map this is the other choice I would consider. But then, if I take prescience/dimensional shift then I don't need overload as much, since tassadar can afford to move much farther forward into the frey.
As far as being rigid in my hero selections...
I do try to be adaptable depending on comp. Typically jaina or KT work against everything, and I don't know what is strong against sylv on mines. I suppose I could also pick tass instead of zagara if the enemy team picks a stealth character early, since that's probably one of the few counters I fear when I play zagara. My current plan is to continually build on and revise my playbook as I go and learn mistakes from losses.
Of course, I do try to pick the best warrior or support depending on enemy team comp//my own comp.
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Hmm, I wouldn't be so fixated on hero/map viability. Of course there are a few heroes that have preferred maps, but even something like Nova on Haunted Mines is still possible to have a good impact. In my opinion the more important relationship is the hero to the rest of the team comp and how it lines up to theirs - deciding whether to play bruiser-style tanks/melee assassins or defensive counterinitiators, choosing between burst healer or more of a long teamfight sustainer, and deciding if the damage side needs more push, or AoE, or single-target burst, or stuns. Even then, I'd personally rather my team play heroes they are individually comfortable with rather than blindly picking based on map or meta - kind of a shame people get so salty about Abathur picks, when he's actually pretty good...
As far as maps go, I also have my lowest win-rate on Spider. I think that map really just demands strong laning, and of course your team not stupidly throwing at the boss pit... Zag is really good on that map to sit bot - though you have to be really diligent with creep so you don't get ganked. She's not bad to take top too, because although its more exposed, your allies can rotate up to help you out pretty quickly. Haunted Mines is the opposite - all about the pre-mines teamfight. A lot of the time I spend on that map in the mid-late game is just sitting in bushes waiting to ambush them, or for mines to open.
Keep updating on how things are going! Climbing 8 ranks in a single weekend is pretty impressive.
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Zagara definitely feels like the best hero on Spiders to me. She has complete control of the objective and honestly I don't see a reason not to pick her in HL.
On Dragon Shire, I actually like to go mid with Zagara and stall out the objective forever while pushing the lane and taking town towers myself.
And I agree that general comp is a better idea for draft than picking map-specific heroes. Recently I enjoyed a bit of success by going Uther to support Butcher+Diablo/Johanna picks, you just chainstun people (especially all the fucking Nova picks) into death.
Other thing I noticed being much more effective than it should be is picking Kael+Jaina and then Malf with double warrior. Shit just melts on the other side while you sit behind the tanks laughing.
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I mean, obviously I'm picking heroes based on comp: that's why I have warrior and healers which are not map-specific.
But in general it seems that this approach is helping me rise in the ranks--- going from rank 35 to 12 in just a few weeks after changing strategies seems to speak for itself. The truth is that many of these heroes are on my list specifically because they fit into a wide variety of comps and then also perform very solidly on the maps I'm choosing.
Anyway, as I climb in rank I expect this drafting strategy to break down: I'll hone it as I go.
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EPT
