On February 24 2015 04:10 NonY wrote: I wasn't around when Hero League came out and don't really get how it works. So far I'm winning 200 points every win and losing 60 points every loss. I've been matching with mostly rank 1's and rank 2's for a while now. I'm 25 now. Is it gonna continue like this all the way to rank 1?
Probably, it's a little like the SC2 league system using an actual hidden MMR to match you. I assume your MMR is pretty high so your climb to rank 1 should be pretty steady.
The MMR had me too low (started off Hero League 0-3) so I spiked up to 10-5. So now it has me too high and I had something like 7 losses in a row (didn't help that I ran against the same partial-group 4 times in a row...). So for those of us who aren't world's best Jaina's it can be a little more swingy =p.
But I don't think the number of points for a loss ever changes, only points for a wins depending on how close you are to your 'target' league.
On February 24 2015 04:10 NonY wrote: I wasn't around when Hero League came out and don't really get how it works. So far I'm winning 200 points every win and losing 60 points every loss. I've been matching with mostly rank 1's and rank 2's for a while now. I'm 25 now. Is it gonna continue like this all the way to rank 1?
I think the way it works is that your hidden MMR starts off average, so probably rank 25, but your displayed rank starts off at 50. Since MMRwise, you are far above rank 50, it will give you 200/-60 until you start getting close to your hidden MMR. Once you get close to your hidden MMR, your gains/losses will start to even out. I've heard from rank 1 players that they didn't start slowing down until they were around rank 5, so expect to get 200 points per win for a while.
On February 24 2015 04:10 NonY wrote: I wasn't around when Hero League came out and don't really get how it works. So far I'm winning 200 points every win and losing 60 points every loss. I've been matching with mostly rank 1's and rank 2's for a while now. I'm 25 now. Is it gonna continue like this all the way to rank 1?
I think the way it works is that your hidden MMR starts off average, so probably rank 25, but your displayed rank starts off at 50. Since MMRwise, you are far above rank 50, it will give you 200/-60 until you start getting close to your hidden MMR. Once you get close to your hidden MMR, your gains/losses will start to even out. I've heard from rank 1 players that they didn't start slowing down until they were around rank 5, so expect to get 200 points per win for a while.
Ah this makes sense. I found my first few games of Hero League muuuch easier than QM.
I'm in the same spot as Tyler. I'm only in the mid 20s for rank but I'm at a 62% win rate (I think NonY has a ~70% based on his hotslogs, if it is in fact the same NonY I played with the other day). Earlier when I had lost a game, my team was all talking about how it's my fault because I was rank 30 but at the end of the day I'm at the same MMR as them, I just haven't played enough games for my rank to get that high.
Have we confirmed that you can get rank 1 with a ~50% win rate as the rumors say? I doubt I'll stay above 60% as I'm only solo queuing and I only have about 60 games as a sample but I hope to sit around 55-57% like in Dota so I assume it won't take me too long to get to rank 1.
i doubt the rank means much. It probably means you played a lo of matches in Hero league. Been playing QM only lately with friends and boy are the matches much harder in QM with the element of surprise (comp) lol.
On February 24 2015 05:38 VeryAverage wrote: I'm in the same spot as Tyler. I'm only in the mid 20s for rank but I'm at a 62% win rate (I think NonY has a ~70% based on his hotslogs, if it is in fact the same NonY I played with the other day). Earlier when I had lost a game, my team was all talking about how it's my fault because I was rank 30 but at the end of the day I'm at the same MMR as them, I just haven't played enough games for my rank to get that high.
Have we confirmed that you can get rank 1 with a ~50% win rate as the rumors say? I doubt I'll stay above 60% as I'm only solo queuing and I only have about 60 games as a sample but I hope to sit around 55-57% like in Dota so I assume it won't take me too long to get to rank 1.
I believe those rumors were mostly debunked. The rankings are bit more rigid with Blizzard trying to put 2% of the players in each rank.
Right now I'm rank 30 which doesn't worry me a lot because I almost never play ranked unless i play with a party. Yesterday i noticed two things: Ranked and matchmaking is just retarded. We were a 3 man party, all my team was between rank 10 the highest, and rank 49 the lowest, and then we got matched against what i can only assume was a 5 man party because 4 of them were players with master skins, and all of them were rank 1. ALL. So, if we trust Blizzard about the 2% thing, a party of the 2% best players in the region, was matches agaisn't a 3 man party of farily avarage players. So either what they say about the 2% is bullshit, and its just that the more you play the more rank you get, or the matchmaking is terrible. We also didn't queued for too long, it was pretty fast actually, like a minute or so. There could also be the possibility that our party was high MMR, but we haven't played enough games, but if thats the case, why then, if im rank 30 i win only 160? While nony for example on rank 25 wins 200? If our party was good enough to play with a five man rank 1, shouldn't we be gaining more points?
I'll keep avoiding ranked unless i play with a party or they fix the matchmaking/ranks.
It's very easy to explain why he gains 200, cause his hidden mmr is higher than yours, so game tries to push him faster to rank that corresponds with his hidden mmr. And you probably got matched vs all rank 1 party cause they waited for a game for 360 secs (i believe that was it?) and system decided to say fuck it and just gave em a game.
On February 24 2015 06:13 [Phantom] wrote: But the ranking do in fact not make sense.
Right now I'm rank 30 which doesn't worry me a lot because I almost never play ranked unless i play with a party. Yesterday i noticed two things: Ranked and matchmaking is just retarded. We were a 3 man party, all my team was between rank 10 the highest, and rank 49 the lowest, and then we got matched against what i can only assume was a 5 man party because 4 of them were players with master skins, and all of them were rank 1. ALL. So, if we trust Blizzard about the 2% thing, a party of the 2% best players in the region, was matches agaisn't a 3 man party of farily avarage players. So either what they say about the 2% is bullshit, and its just that the more you play the more rank you get, or the matchmaking is terrible. We also didn't queued for too long, it was pretty fast actually, like a minute or so. There could also be the possibility that our party was high MMR, but we haven't played enough games, but if thats the case, why then, if im rank 30 i win only 160? While nony for example on rank 25 wins 200? If our party was good enough to play with a five man rank 1, shouldn't we be gaining more points?
I'll keep avoiding ranked unless i play with a party or they fix the matchmaking/ranks.
I've had that happen as well. I did some premades with friends back when I was in the 40's, and I hit some very high ranking teams. Blizzard explained that they try to match people based on MMR as well as whether you are a premade or not. I'm guessing that premades have priority over MMR. I'm hoping that this is only because there's a shortage of players and will no longer be an issue after release. On ladder I'm noticing that I'm hitting the same people over and over again, so there definitely is not a whole lot of players.
Im not doubting one bit that nony is better than i, but my point was more in the lines of "if our party mmr was good enough to get against a full 5 people rank 5, why do we get 160 points? and if it wasn't, why do we got paired with them?
What you are saying makes sense, maybe THEY were the ones waiting for more than 6 minutes, but its still bad matchmaking.
On February 22 2015 15:10 Bigtony wrote: I dont understand why people take split on chen instead of the keg ultimate or why people take archon instead of force wall D: The positioning/repositioning potential of these abilities far outweighs the extra health they give.
I've never understood why someone would get the keg without a team built around it. You can be damaged in the wandering keg, which to me, goes against the main benefit of chen, the tankiest 1v1/ 2v1 hero in HotS. I spec to have 100+ regen per game along with bolder flavor, hardened shield and SEF and I love it.
Storm, earth and fire allows you to escape and chase very well by splitting and dashing to target locations. It allows you to body block and reposition by using q. If you aim correctly, which I still need to practice, you can nail a 3 person surround on an individual character and completely trap them. If you become focused, you have ten seconds of extra life, because unlike Odin, if your ultimate goes off, you will do extra damage, and if you pay attention, you will escape before the three pandas die. Just use that nice q to jump away!
Chen can easily tank forts and towers and force 1-2 enemies to split push against him. He shouldnt win against the other heroes, but they shouldn't be able to hurt Chen unless they have stuns/massive dps. And in this split push situation, SEF is always better than keg.
I don't think keg is necessarily bad, but it is far more situational than storm earth and fire imo and requires a team to utilize to its full effect. SEF is adaptable and can be put to good use in numerous situations.
I have completely opposite experience from yours. Not my most played hero for sure, but I've tried both things out with Chen multiple times, as well played a ton with him on my team and against him.
To me SEF seems so situational that I go for Keg most of the time. If your opponents have like 2 spammable AoEs your SEF won't do anything even with their ability to spread since they need to be grouped up together to actually do damage. They aren't tanky at all against Heroes, when opponent jumps on us with Chen and use SEF I just laugh, as we kill all three pandas in 5 seconds more or less. It also doesn't last long. Yes, I've managed to do some things with SEF like killing two heroes that were retreating and staying alive with 10% HP after that, but that stuff rarely happens. You lose your most important role, and that is being tanky annoyance for the opponent team that constantly slows enemy team with Flying Kick and Keg Smash and ties them in place/create space for your other heroes to do damage. You just have SEF and they aren't even doing that much.
On the other hand Keg doesn't need a team built around it, it just needs a team and this is a team game... even if you are playing solo there is something wrong if you aren't constantly with your team. Keg is useful for so many stuff, you can steal Merc camps and Boss quite easily, and I've done it multiple times(and since Zeratul nerf he is probably the only hero that can do it this effectively). You can save your teammates when they are running from 5 guys, literally one ulti could save both of you by just knocking them back, you can zone out 3 enemy heroes while knocking 2 of them into your team, you can perma disable few heroes by just knocking them out of fight or trap them into corner and when you reach level 20 if you take improved Keg they can barely touch you with that speed or you can do even more sick things as you can knock one hero out of the map lol(also with addition of hardened shield I don't really know if improved Keg is worth picking). I don't think if I ever saw Chen dying while using Wandering Keg(except for one time where enemy used this with like 5% HP to escape lol), you are just fast, you can't be slowed and you are constantly interrupting enemy heroes with hits, and fights are usually so chaotic against him while he is using Wandering Keg that team can't even focus on something normally. I've yet to see Chen dropping from full to half HP while being in Wandering Keg and knocking whole enemy team around.
Reading this really makes me want to try keg out in my own play a lot more. There's a lot that you wrote that I never considered, and I have 50-100 games on Chen (a few from lvl 10, not sure exact number). Stealing camps sounds sick, that's definitely a cool play, and being able to save your teammates WITHOUT sacrificing yourself is something I can't do. The disable is very nice too. It just sounds like a completely different playstyle I am unaccustomed to that sounds very effective.
I think that you can be MUCH more of a tanky annoyance with Storm, Earth and Fire because it allows you to take more risks. If the cast goes off, you won't die. You mention AOE, but using SEF as an escape, you just split, then dash ahead of the panda furthest away from the enemy. You get enough ahead that if you drop a quick combo into nothing (w+e), then you have 50 brew and have the run speed bonus PLUS the regen. It's very effective at escaping. And for chasing, you have a 25% slow debuff on it, so if there is a 1v1 or 2v1 situation where you need a little extra burst, this is it.
My general strategy with Chen isn't as teambased. Up to 7 you lane, and at 7, you can start fully tanking the towers. This forces the enemy to devote 1-2 people to Chen. With regen and SEF, you just kind of grind them down. I've won countless games around level 15 because the enemy is unable to kill Chen, and must waste time with 2 heroes trying to kill him. Chen can push a lane with absolutely no problem or downtime against one other hero. When the inevitable gank attempt comes, I use my brew, wait for the stun/disable, then use SEF.
This gives the team extra power in most objective fights. On objectives, you can help out or take a keep, depending on enemy comp, your comp, and the state of the game. But the individual power Chen has to direct the flow is very powerful, the most powerful pusher I've had experience with (for whatever the fuck that's worth).
I find the biggest use of SEF is the TIME it buys you. If you're using it to escape, the enemy is already focusing you with 2-3 heroes. SEF makes that task impossible and essentially gives you a 100% escape. And from here, if you're winning the fight, you can jump back in and keep focusing people down. UIltimately, Chen negates so much damage and takes so much attention from the opponents.
But damn I gotta try that keg now.
EDIT: Reading over this makes me think that Chen can be played with both ultimates and both styles depending on the enemy comp. I was kind of bummed that Chen seemed one-dimensional... perhaps not at all! And they're both about control!
Well glad that I gave you ideas. SEF is great in 1v1 or 1v2, even in some 1v3 situations. That one time when I've played with SEF we got into some very chaotic 5v5 fight, everybody were running around and attacking different heroes(well classic pub, what can I say), then suddenly 3 of the opponents started focusing me down while I was on that guy with low HP. I managed to get ulti off, killed that guy, killed another one while he was retreating with low HP and then managed to survive with 1 of my Pandas and escaped with like ~10% HP on a mount. It was definitely cool, and it bought my team a lot of time but when you play against a bit better opponents they will work together like machine, they will have 1-2 healers and you won't be able to chase people down. You are also not really good dps hero even in SEF, and the time it buys you in 5v5 team fight is not much when few AoEs kills those Pandas. I am not really sure if Pandas scale(in terms of HP) but it seems that they don't scale since later in the game Valla's split-shot takes like 1/3 of their HP. They definitely should scale though...
On February 24 2015 06:53 [Phantom] wrote: Im not doubting one bit that nony is better than i, but my point was more in the lines of "if our party mmr was good enough to get against a full 5 people rank 5, why do we get 160 points? and if it wasn't, why do we got paired with them?
What you are saying makes sense, maybe THEY were the ones waiting for more than 6 minutes, but its still bad matchmaking.
I think the chances are significantly high that they reached the max time and the system just puts them against the closest thing at that time. You see it when high level players queue as 5 on stream, the queue time is normally 6 min and sometimes it's a close game but a lot of times it's a stomp. In personal experience when I'm in a group of 5 the skill level of the other team varies greatly, especially after max queue time.
Basically, it should get better at release but as xDaunt has been saying it was better during Alpha so who really knows.
Since last patch I've been having really long queue times in Quick Match and Hero League (over 100 seconds each).
I went on a terrible losing streak yesterday so I did a co-op game for my sanity and it was instal-queue.
So I would assume the 'competitive' player pool being split into two game modes has made a mess of match-making. At least until more people get into the Beta.
On February 24 2015 06:53 [Phantom] wrote: Im not doubting one bit that nony is better than i, but my point was more in the lines of "if our party mmr was good enough to get against a full 5 people rank 5, why do we get 160 points? and if it wasn't, why do we got paired with them?
What you are saying makes sense, maybe THEY were the ones waiting for more than 6 minutes, but its still bad matchmaking.
Your hidden MMR gain/loss should compensate for team imbalances. You probably lost a very small amount of hidden MMR by losing to the high ranking team, but if you beat them instead, you would have gained a large portion of hidden MMR.
On February 24 2015 07:26 Wuster wrote: Since last patch I've been having really long queue times in Quick Match and Hero League (over 100 seconds each).
I went on a terrible losing streak yesterday so I did a co-op game for my sanity and it was instal-queue.
So I would assume the 'competitive' player pool being split into two game modes has made a mess of match-making. At least until more people get into the Beta.
AFAIK, co-op just fills 5 teams as quickly as possible, and does not take into account your ranking or team composition.
Makes sense, it doesn't have to care about 'fair matches' after all.
But I'm not that good yet that I shouldn't be facing long queue times at my MMR (hotslog gold/platinum) so I figured it was due to them splitting the pool of people willing to pvp.
For anyone interested, this is my average quick match game. (to watch it download it and save it on documents/heroesof the storm/account/whatever the numer is for your account/replays. Then just open your game and it should be there, called "WHY" xD)
The reasons I'm sharing it is because: 1.- im a "new" tychus player, im lvl 7 with him i think, and i haven't mastered him. As the replay shows, i sometimes go head first into battle, i think this is because im used to play tank, and i still don't know all the strenghts of my hero and when i should engage and when not, like my little 1 vs 1 vs valla on the mines demostrates, so any feedback about my play with tychus is welcome.
The other reason i want to show you the game is just to show you how a terrible experience solo queueing can be. Even when you try to take the leadership, and put smiley face when you give advace, and try not to point fingers specifically at someone, but still try to point out mistakes, or even when i try to intermediate between a team might disscusion because someone blamed illidan specifically for losing us an engage for "wasting the hunt", while in reality we all made the mistake of taking a bad team fight when we shouldn't have. it is ultimately futile. Even when you try to guide people, most will just do whatever they want, and then either AFK for a time (like sonya did) or just walk around doing nothing, like zagara did.
I'm not saying im great, but it is pretty obvious to me that I, at worse, know way more about the game than any of my team mates do even if i do make bad calls sometimes, so i don't know why i have to be playing with people who don't listen to advice, or don't give advice themselves (like the illidan on this match told me that we shouldnt enter again in the mines when i wanted to do it, which made me think and i agreed and we took the merc camps instead). Also, my complaint isnt "agsint" the "bad players", its agaisn't people who don't know nothing about team work, or just cause conflic in the team and make it a bad experience.
Someone a few pages back said that the biggest problem is that you can't carry but bad team mates will drag you down, and i kind of agree with the exception of bad players who do listen to advice. While i maybe wouldn't be able to carry, i don't want 1 or 2 persons constantly being a liability, because even when i win, most of the time theres is at least one person who is just "doing his own thing".
I'll see if Blizzard decides to changes this in some way, or if it gets better when the game comes out of beta.
Well I was just recently frustrated with bad teammates and poor matchmaking etc, but my experience playing high mmr hero league has been pretty good so far. I mean more often than not, you get players who understand the basics of strategy and decision-making, like skipping objectives when necessary. It's definitely an improvement over typical quick match games (for which I also had a high mmr, always hitting the 6 minute queues). Anyone who is really suffering through shitty teams and isn't already high mmr hero league should probably try to work on it.
It is possible to carry in this game despite a lot of testimony to the contrary. I'm 34-15 so far, and actually 24-6 in my last 30 games, all solo queue, a lot of which I've been matching with rank 1's. I'm sure most rank 1's could do the same or better if they started over. After I played through the absolute newbs that come with a fresh MMR, I got cocky and then went on tilt about bad teammates and went on a sick losing streak. After that, I figured out my recipe: I hardly ever tell my teammates what to do, I just ping or talk to let them know what I'm doing, and anytime I'm not in a fight I'm looking at the minimap more than my hero. I try to pick heroes that do a lot of damage and I kill people. And I don't expose myself to danger much. ezpz recipe for winning. Falstad 15-6 Jaina 14-4
So yeah, just focus on fixing your own shit whenever teammates' incompetence gets to be too much.
I'm like 4 mins in to the replay, and you have like 3 times now lectured your team about skulls, no one wants to hear that shit.
Also your laning has some massive issues, you took SOOOO much dmg for free and no reason.
I'm 4 mins in and you are lecturing your team they need to listen to you even though some of your knowledge is blatantly incorrect. For example your "skulls > kills" kills often worth more than skulls as it opens up the mines to free clear. It's the team that loses the lvl 4 that needs to split, and your teams Lvl 4 is WAYYYYY better. You should be looking to fight in that case.
Overall in 4 mins I can already see you don't understand this game ANYWHERE near the level you might think you do. You keep afk'ing to lecture ppl, you have a really poor laning phase this game, etc.
Stop lecturing people, it just annoys them and is likely to piss them off.
Don't go in solo que to improve your teammates, improve yourself.
EPT
