Sometimes things just go wrong. Maybe your team abandoned the lanes, maybe you lost a team fight or maybe some of your teammates got picked off. Whatever the case you are now behind. What do you do now?

On previous guides like Transitioning into the Nexus and our general guide, we have talked about the existence of a comeback mechanic. But what does that mean for your game? What should you really do? In this guide, we will explain the best way to play when your team is behind, why is it the best way to play that way, and give out some tips for specific scenarios you may encounter.

The Basics

Being behind is not pretty. You have added pressure, and the world seems to fall apart all around you. Your enemy is stronger, your structures are long gone, and you are behind in objectives. In those circumstances, it is easy to feel helpless and consequently wondering where it all went wrong. Some people will place the blame on themselves. Others will place the blame on matchmaking or their teammates, but this only seals defeat.

Take a second to think what your team has been doing wrong -- like getting picked off alone or not focusing a Hero correctly -- and fix it. Be objective and give suggestions, but don’t fall into the trap of blaming one person for the situation. Don't flame your team, lead them. If you start blaming and shaming, you will just ensure your team will not cooperate with you. If you want to be able to come back there needs to be harmony in the team.

That may sound like a little cliché, but it is true and it works. All the time you spend typing to your teammates about how bad they are is time that could be better used actually playing the game. Lead your team with as few words as possible and help them focus on the game. When everyone is on the same page, only then the comeback can begin.




Even if the situation is dire, most Heroes of the Storm matches are winnable, and the first step you need to take to achieve a comeback is to work together as a team. Once you’re communicating, your team must understand that the way you play when behind is drastically different than how you would play when ahead.

The "Underdog Bonus" reduces the amount of experience the team who is ahead receives for a kill, while the team that is behind on experience starts to gain massive amounts of it whenever they get one. Does this mean that if you’re losing, you should start a fight whenever you can? Not quite. The enemy team is still stronger than you, and that means it is easier for them to kill you. It doesn’t matter if they get less experience by doing it because they are getting the experience and your team isn’t, increasing their lead.

If you fall behind on experience, catch up with it by killing minions. It doesn’t matter if it's the early, mid, or late game; you need experience from the minions. As the game progresses, it’s less important to stay in lane and more important to group together, but if you’re behind, you can’t play like you normally would. Minions give a constant, secure way of obtaining experience, and it becomes increasingly easier to clear a wave as the game progresses. If you are a talent tier behind the enemy team, it is crucial to get experience from other sources other than kills before you engage in a battle. You’ll need to be very careful when doing it though, as the last thing you want is having the enemy team ganking you. A good way to avoid this is to clear one or two creep waves together with your team, moving to the next lane, rinse and repeat. Being close to your teammates will make it less likely for you to die. Pay attention to the minimap to determine when the enemy is approaching and avoid the engagement.

When behind on experience, it is very likely you are behind in map control too. Map control lets you know where your enemies are and allows you to act accordingly. Minions, structures, heroes and abilities can give you vision of the map. If you see the enemy team is predominantly in the top lane, you can try and soak experience or grab some mercenaries at the bottom of the map. However, when you are behind on on map control as well, you won’t always know where the enemy is at. This is where game sense comes in.

Game sense is the high level understanding of the game that lets you predict where your opponent is, what are they going to do, and the overall state of the match. When you don’t see the enemy on the map, take a time to think what could they be doing. Is the Boss available to grab? Maybe you can see only one hero but don't know where the rest of the team is. Where could they be? To develop a great game sense, you need to play a lot of matches to gain the experience and better understand the capabilities of Heroes, but if you purposefully take a time to analyze the situation you’ll develop it much faster.

You cannot predict every move, and different maps force you to move out into the center of them to secure an objective. Therefore, gaining better map control is crucial for a come back.

If you have read some of our Battleground guides, you know that there are better times to capture a mercenary camp in each one of them to get the full advantage of their pushing power. Most of the time, it's good to take them just before an objective spawns, as that will let them push a lane while the enemy is focused on the objective. When you are behind, though, sometimes you have to take your own mercenaries just so the enemy doesn’t take them from you. While you might not be using them to their fullest potential offensively, they will give you some breathing room and let you push the lanes, giving you back some of the map control you lost.

Once you’ve gotten your lanes under control you can try to gank lonely heroes. If the enemy is ahead, chances are they need to get very far into your territory to push a lane. Sometimes an enemy will make the decision to do it alone. At that moment, he becomes a high priority target because of how much experience you get if he dies. Just remember to check the minimap first to avoid being lured into a trap.

Team Fighting

Until now, we have told you to avoid direct engagements, and while it may seem counter intuitive to avoid fighting given the comeback mechanic, it is the smart way to play. Still, there will come a point where you will need to fight because of an objective or to defend a push. Luckily, killing a Hero is the fastest way to catch up on experience, so you do want to fight, but you’ll need to do it in on your own terms.

Here are some general rules:

• Avoid fighting when the enemy is on a talent tier advantage. Talents give a great amount of power to heroes and are balanced around levels, so if you fight an enemy who has the next set of talents at their disposal, there’s a much higher chance you’ll lose the engagement. The biggest power spike for this is level ten when Heroes get access to their heroic abilities. If the enemy unlocks a new talent before you, avoid fighting and try to soak experience elsewhere to hit level ten yourself. Sometimes, this will mean you’ll need to give up a fort or objective, but if you fought, they’d likely kill you and take the fort anyway. Wait until you’re on the same talent tier, and then engage. Remember, the difference in power between a level 16 and a level 15 team is much greater than the difference between levels 16 and 17 because of the talents.
  
  
• Always fight in favorable conditions. If the enemy is pushing your keep, that's a good place to fight since it gives you a defender's advantage. If one of the enemies is dead or very far from his team you can force a 5v4 fight that you can win, even when behind. You can also take advantage of potential boss steals. If you see your enemy fighting a Boss, that means they are all grouped in a small area where they can be easily surrounded. The boss is also attacking and using his abilities on them, which can force them into bad positioning and help you win the fight. However, fighting in favorable conditions includes not being behind on talent tiers. If the enemy team gets access to their heroics before you, and you try to steal the boss, they will kill you and take the boss anyway unless they make a really big mistake.
  
  
• Make sure your team has enough mana and your Heroic abilities aren't on cooldown. Your Hero is worthless if it can't cast skills, so make sure you and your team have enough mana to engage. Most Heroic abilities have more or less the same cooldowns, so a lot of people get confident thinking that if they have their Heroics available, the rest of the team has it too, but some Heroics like Mosh Pit have a much longer cooldown or one of your teammates may have used their Heroric early. Communicate with your teammates to find out if they have their Heroics available before you engage. Not having them available makes the fight much harder for you. Likewise, try to engage when the enemy doesn't have their Heroics available.
  
  
• Cut your losses. If you see the enemy is taking the Dragon Knight and there is only one person alive on your team, there's nothing you can do to stop it. Don’t suicide over it; that will just put you further behind. Sometimes, fighting only in favorable conditions means you’ll need to give up a fort, a temple or even a curse. It's unfortunate, but you’ll only make things worse if you decide to fight. Cut down your losses, regroup and and defend if necessary. A Boss going down through your top lane is bad, but it's not the end of the world. Giving up the curse tribute is difficult, but you can minimize the damage by covering the lanes or taking merc camps preemptively. There are always things you can do to minimize the impact of objectives that don't include dying repeatedly to the enemy team.
  
  
• Take advantage of your team’s strengths. Every Hero, and by consequence, every team composition, has a distinct set of advantages over others. Maybe you are playing a Hero that is not very good in the early game, but gets a big power spike in the late game. In these cases, it can be better to hold back from a fight at level 12 and wait until you get that very strong talent at 13 so you can capitalize on your power spike. If your team composition has a lot of AoE abilities, you could try to lure the enemy into a choke point where they will clump up and you’ll get the most juice out of your splash damage. Always analyze the strengths of your team composition and theirs so you can pick up better fights.

Throughout this article, there has been a common theme: stay alive as much as you can and fight only when you have the most chances of winning the engagement. Being alive is obviously a good thing, but what makes it so good that makes it worth it to even leave objectives behind?

In every match there comes a time where killing is no longer about the experience. Put simply, being alive allows you to play. If you are alive, you can soak a lane, push a keep, take a merc camp, or team fight. If you are dead, you are basically AFK and can't contribute hardly anything to the team. That’s why you should keep yourself alive. However, being alive is as important for you as it is for the enemy team, and that’s where the fun part begins. Let's talk about the most important aspect of the comeback mechanic, death timers.

Death Timers

Winning a team fight might help you get experience, but if the enemy destroyed your Forts and Keeps sometime during the game there's no way to get those back, so in a way, you’re still at a disadvantage. Experience alone isn't a comeback, but taking down an enemy Hero also erases him from the game for a while. While he’s out, it is easier for you to kill more Heroes, gain map control, and destroy their structures. While that won’t bring your Forts back either, destroying enemy structures will even things out. You will start making a comeback.

To make things more interesting, comebacks become increasingly easier as the game progresses.

Comebacks are directly tied to the death timers duration. The longer your enemies are waiting to respawn, the more things you are able to do. This works both ways: If you are ahead and kill an enemy, it can snowball your lead, and if you are behind and kill an enemy, you can achieve the comeback. That’s the reason it is worth it to leave some objectives behind just to stay alive. Professional players are well aware of this, and that’s the reason you will see them give up tributes, temples and other objectives and why, in general, you won’t see as many kills in professional games.

Hero talents are a second factor that makes late game comebacks more likely. While they give you a very big boost in power, there is a limited number of them. At level 20, you get the Storm talents, the last tier. From that point forward, you will always have the same relative strength to your opponent. At that point, every team fight becomes crucial for both teams as the Heroes are so strong that winning a team fight can net you can forts, keeps and even the Core in merely seconds. You don’t have anything to lose and much to gain. It doesn’t matter if you no longer have a single keep and the enemy has their structures untouched. If you wipe the enemy team you can win right there, so don’t give up.
When the late game comes, it brings with it the time to take risks. Every little mistake the enemy makes is a golden opportunity to achieve a comeback. If you see an enemy Hero away from his team, take advantage of it. If you see an enemy overextend in a team fight, focus him. If you can force a 4v5 fight, do it. The late game brings a set of high risk, high reward decisions. The team who is ahead can’t risk a lot, but since you are already losing, you might as well try. After level 20 you are never behind on a team fight. Don't be afraid and don’t let the opportunity of winning the game slip away just because of what happened earlier in the game. You can always win.

Some Extra Tips:

When one of your Keeps is destroyed, try to push that lane as far out as safely possible. Some people kill the creep wave attacking their core and then immediately leave, just for another creep wave to come and continue the siege. That lane will be forever on a disadvantage unless you destroy a keep or buy some time with mercenaries. Try to push it so you don’t constantly get catapults sieging your core.

Disengaging properly is important to keep you and your teammates alive. If one of your teammates is caught off guard and likely to die, most of the time is better to just leave instead of engaging in a bad position. Unless you are sure you can save your teammate and yourself, don’t engage. It is always better to have one player dead than two or more.

If you are somewhere on the map and for some reason a teammate is far away, don’t engage. Yes, it is a mistake from his part being away from the team, but it would also be a mistake from your part engaging in a 4v5. Keep an eye on the minimap and make sure not to engage until every member is there.

Final Thoughts

Comebacks can happen in every game of Heroes of the Storm, but you’ll need to fight for them. You’ll need to play smart, gain experience anywhere you can, take favorable engagements, and capitalize on the mistakes of the enemy team. To take the most advantage of the "Underdog Bonus" and win the game, your team will need to reorganize and start to play better. If you do, you’ll realize no game is unwinnable as long as you never give up.

While this guide is an excellent resource for understanding the best way to play while behind, achieving a comeback includes a lot of other very specific topics, from team leadership to map awareness. While we talked about the most important aspects of those topics in this guide, make sure to also check out these suggested reads:

• Hero League 101: The Fundamentals of Higher level Heroes of the Storm Play, by xDaunt
  
• A House Divided Cannot Stand, by CarlTheLLama
  
• Battleground and Hero guides