Heroes map breakdown

CavalierGuest and Heartless are back with the second episode of educational content. Find the first episode, 'Experience of the Storm' here. 

Maps in Heroes of the Storm: It's a really really big topic. It’s the defining element of this game in comparison to other MOBAs where they play on the same map every single time. Due to the limited time on the broadcast Heartless and CavalierGuest did a short breakdown per map currently in the HGC (and Heroes Lounge) map pool. These maps being; Infernal Shrines, Battlefield of Eternity, Braxis Holdout, Cursed Hollow, Dragon Shire, Tomb of the Spider Queen, Towers of Doom, Sky temple and Volskaya Foundry. At the end, they will also briefly touch on the new map, Alterac Pass. You can see and listen to the whole episode here. 

However, before we start diving into maps it's important to realise that every map has its own meta. Every map has a different XP economy and win conditions. Certain heroes could be very important on a certain map, but relatively unimpactful on another.  

Infernal Shrines is probably the most balanced map in the game, it is also one of the most picked maps in HGC and in Heroes Lounge. It is a really interesting map because it's very possible to completely ignore the objective and scale in the late game. There are two kinds of comps that are viable on this map. Objective comps and scaling comps. 

The objective comp focuses on getting the objective. Heroes with zone control are needed for this, think about Alexstrasza, D.va, Tychus and Ragnaros. The aim is to get the objective and get an advantage from that. However, if the objective is properly defended it can be hard to actually gain an advantage from it. A lot of the time the first objective will only get (a part of) the front wall. Cause the gain from this is so small it's not worth giving up XP in lanes. So especially with the first punishers, you will still have to send off people to soak the other lanes. Both teams do this and a lot of the times you will find that both teams come out even in XP, even though one team did get the objective. In order to create an advantage from the Punisher, you will need to find a way to fight with it. Stun heroes are very good to follow up on the Punisher. A hero like Medivh is very effective to just teleport over the wall and fight with it, but taking down the little walls on the side of the tower (sidewalls) allows your team into the base to fight with the Punisher. When you're there don't focus on the buildings, but focus on the heroes. When the heroes fall, the structures will as well. 

Scaling comps basically just ignore the enemy team and soak experience and eat away at the enemy buildings until their power spikes. Examples of this are a tass tracer comp, where Tracer is your only damage dealer. This works once she's level 16. Or a stitches comp, where you want to get a pick off with a hook, however pickoffs only really matter when the death timers are long and you can capitalize on them. With scaling comps, you can easily give up the objective and defend them. Because of the timers between the objectives (3 minutes between objectives) you only have to deal with a couple of them before your power spikes come online and you can start snowballing from there on. When defending the Punisher you want to kite it as far back as you can and split it from the enemy team so they can not fight with it. It's important to note that the objective scales over game time as well, so ignoring it later on in the game could be dangerous. 

When you realise the enemy team is giving up the punisher you can capitalize on that by pre pushing the lanes. Leave one hero on the objective while the rest goes in-lane and already takes down the gate to gain even more out of the Punisher. 

Battlefield of Eternity is a very unique map with a very good, some might even say too good for the games' health, objective. We've seen a lot of very quick games on this map. 

Like most map this map comes down to two kinds of comps again, an objective comp and a scaling comp. The objective comp is the race comp, you want to get the immortal down as quickly as possible. That doesn't, however, mean you need to have one of the race heroes like Hanzo, Raynor or Artanis. You have to look at your comp and think; 'we have the better race here', then you're the race comp. 

Side soak and defend comp is the scaling comp. You have the worst race of the two teams, so you can't just win by racing. You'll have to defend your immortal. However, if both teams just end up defending the race comp will eventually win through some sort of poke damage. You need to gain your advantage elsewhere and that is through side soaking. Believe it or not, Abathur actually used to be a big hero on this map because he could effectively double soak both lanes at the same time, body soaking the one and hat soaking the other. The side soak comp also needs immediate pick potential, displacements are very strong as you can fight with your immortal, stunning or placing people into the immortal's stuns. For example, an Alarak could pull someone into the stun of the immortal and follow up with a silence. That or you need a significant scaling advantage that is going to allow you to win you the game. Pick comps are always scaling comps. The longer the death timers become the more impactful your picks are. 

Because the objective is so strong, it's not recommended to pick a scaling comp that scales later than level 13, this because of the timing of the objectives. The 2nd objective spawns around level 11-12. 

Braxis Holdout is a map with many many strategies, and because of that, it's not very popular in the pro scene. They can't break it down in these nice two little categories. For a long time, there were 3 viable meta-strategies which were like rock, paper, scissors. Which were double global, the push composition and the 2-3 composition. 

The double global had, well, two globals, one in the off lane and one in the 4 man. The moment the 4 man would get in a fight or moved upon the global from the top lane would rotate down and you'd be in a 5v4. As soon as the fight was over the global from the 4 man would rotate back up to top to not miss any soak. They could keep rotating like that. This got countered by the push comp, where you'd draft a really strong 4 man, for example when Zarya-medic was still broken, Zarya could do a lot and just being healed up by the medic, but you couldn't dive on the medic because of the Zarya shield and the peel. The push comp in its turn got countered by the 2-3 composition. Where you would send two in the top lane and three in the bottom lane, you could add in a Chromie or even a Diablo. The two in the top lane would out push the one in the top a lot harder than the 4 in the bottom lane could push into the 3 man. 

To counter the 2-3 composition the 1-3-1 composition came to life. You would have your traditional off lane, and a very safe anchor bot, the anchor either having infinite self-sustain and an escape or incredible range, like Fenix, Junkrat, Chromie or even Gul Dan, even though Gul Dan does not have the escape he has such intense wave clear he doesn’t really have to go out there much. The other three just rotate up and down the map gaining advantages where they can, like doing camps and making rotations, Greymane was very popular because of his camp clear, Muradin being the best warrior for the rotations. Now the 1-3-1 really depends on rotations. But the fastest global in the game, is abathur. He has mines for vision control, and can easily rotate his hat giving assassin like damage and some healing killing the 1v1's. What is really good against Abathur? Push comps! So no we don’t have rock, paper, scissors anymore but rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock. And these strategies really do counter each other. Each of these strategies hard counters at least another one. You can lose in the draft on this map. The biggest discrepancy between first pick and second pick win rate in professional play is Braxis Holdout, so why would you voluntary pick a map where the first pick gives the biggest advantage of any map? First pick can pick the strategy they want and deny the tools you need to counter, now even more easily with the 6 bans.

The way you draft on Cursed Hollow is a bit more complicated that you usually think. With the size of the map, the objective and maybe most importantly, the two bosses that quite often become a win condition. Bosses are the actual end of the game on cursed hollow, 30% of all games end with a boss push on cursed hollow.

On cursed hollow it’s not so much about what the enemy team is doing, besides perhaps some pocket strategies that you’ll have to deal with like Vikings. Ideally you want a global because the map is so large. There’s a lot of things to fight over, there are a lot of invades possible, camps, bosses, but also having a boss on one side of the map and the objective on the other. You want them both, that can be done with a global.

You want to have mercability on this map as well. Mercs get a lot of value on this map again due to the size, a lot of time there’s only one person defending against it, generally there is one person, maybe even your global, pushing with it. So it’s a 1v1 but one side has a camp and the other does not. And the last thing you want on this map is boss control.

Whether it’s a Hanzo for the arrow, or an Abathur or even a Medivh to see and know when they’re doing a boss, and with that some sort of steal potential like layline seal, holy ground, even devouring maw. Know they’re doing it, and have a steal mechanic, even just a good team fight can be a good steal mechanic when they don’t have a knockback or securing mechanics.

Last year there was not a single win on cursed hollow in professional play that did not have at least 2 out of 3 of these (global, mercability, boss control) that won. In professional play, these things matter.  The objectives on this map are actually the bosses, we’ve seen Fnatic give up every single tribute but end up ahead, they actually managed to get a keep during an enemy teams’ curse.

The popularity of cursed hollow has dropped dramatically in the pro scene since the release of Hanzo. With W (scatter arrow) build you can bring down a boss in 6-8 seconds with perfectly played arrows. Which makes realising they are doing a boss a lot harder. When they’re missing for 3-4 seconds they’re in a bush, 5-6 seconds they’re on the boss. But when it takes such a short time to bring down the boss, by the time you realise they’re on the boss the boss is up and they can rotate to contest your boss. Hanzo is very difficult to beat on cursed hollow.

So looking at the things you need on this map (global, mercability and boss control), you can’t get these things from a support. Besides maybe solo support Abathur and Brightwing, who is both global and has boss control. All the supports lost their PvE, you can argue that Reghar and Kharazim have ok mercing, but it’s not great. So basically, when drafting you want 3 things, but only have 4 spots to get that. That’s hard, because not only do you have to have all these things you need to also have a reasonable composition in itself, have synergy. There’s not many meta heroes that do these things, so when they’re banned or taken by the enemy team you can be in a lot of trouble. It's not for a team that has small hero pools.

Basically, every top team in every region is unbeaten or has a very high win rate on Dragon Shire, higher than their average win rate in the tournament. The team on dragon shire with the better decision-making wins. It’s the most rotational map in the game. And if you understand rotations, you can win this map. It's all about having the right people at the right place at the right time. About rotating around the map generating small advantages while holding one of the shrines or holding middle so it can’t be capped.

The backbone of any draft on Dragon Shire is wave clear. You can not leave the lane until the waves are cleared, so the sooner you clear the wave, the sooner you can look for an advantage elsewhere. So, wave clear is especially important in the 4 man, but ideally also on your off-laner.

Your general win condition on dragon shire is bottom lane, because you have the two siege camps and the bruisers, so you want to try and open up bottom more than another lane. If you have the choice between getting the mid fort or the bottom fort you want the bottom one. You want to open it up to.

Another important thing to note about Dragon Shire is the triangle of bushes between the mid and the bottom lane. Also referred to as the Triangle of Death. Because you rotate through them so much, it’s easy to have the enemy in another bush and you won’t see them. Controlling those bushes is very important because it means your rotation is always safe.

Tomb of the Spider Queen is the 2nd most played map in Heroes Lounge. And its unique in the way that the objective is tied to the minion waves. You need to have some way to collect the gems from the spiders, which you then must bring to the point. So, both wave clear and vision are incredibly important there.

You have around 15 seconds between the top and the bottom lane, it takes you 4 seconds of unmounted walking to walk from mid to top lane, if you then take 2 seconds clearing the lane, and walk back and do the same thing, you basically have 18 seconds with nothing to do. So, it's not so much how fast is your wave clear? But how fast is your wave clear compared to the other team? If you have more time than your opponents, you can create more advantages.

You can win tomb by giving away the turn in, as long if your wave clear is that much higher than the enemy teams’. When your wave clear is somewhat even then vision comes into play, keeping an eye on those turn ins. Now, wave clear also gives vision in a way, if your wave is pushed you have the minions on the lane and they give vision, and it gives you time. In that 18 seconds between the lanes you can sit in a bush and watch the turn ins.

It also means you’re less likely to lose your gems, if you take that time to drop of your gems safely. If you have 18 seconds on every single rotation and drop them off on every single rotation you will never loose gems.

You can also use the time to get the camps, get the bruisers, get the siege, and forcing the enemy team to deal with that and you turn in for free. Wave clear is a way of winning tomb and is also a way of not losing tombs, at least till late game, which means you can draft scaling comps, as long as your scaling comp has wave clear.

When Towers of Doom first came out a lot of people felt like the map was incredibly snowbally, whoever channels the alters wins. And then the pros came in and were like ‘great this map is all about macro’ and people wondered why they weren’t fighting.

The entire map is only about team fighting and clearing waves. And it allows for scaling comps.  It’s a very team fight orientated map. You get to a point in the game where team fights must happen. Early team fights don’t have too.

The only punishment for scaling comps on this map is securing structures before they have their power spike. If you take the bell tower on the bottom lane, you’re threatening 6 shots on the core with the sapper camps, get an experience lead, because they will have trouble getting that back and get free altars. Securing the bottom two altars is basically impossible without the bottom bell tower.

So, in the scaling comp, you need enough wave clear, enough anti-siege to prevent that from happening. Stukov is very good with a scaling comp because he can silence the sappers and make sure they don’t charge at your buildings giving you a chance to kill them. The sappers channel a small little spell that causes them to explode at your buildings if you silence them you take that away.

That is the entirety of towers off doom, you macro until the late game, you win a teamfight, you get as many structures as you can get and then you hold those structures until the game ends.

Double soak heroes can be good on this map if you can convince your team to just focus on the bottom lane and gain advantages there.

Sky Temple is a very interesting map, the only map you can compare it to really is blackhearts bay, because the objective damages structures directly. Except for Abathur with mule there is no way to heal structures.

When you get ahead on structures, and then you trade the objective, you will always stay ahead on structures. The thing that matters the most on sky temple is structures.

It’s considered the most snowbally map in pro play because, when you’re ahead on structures you can just play very conservatively. The enemy has to find you and kill you and punish you somehow and come onto your side of the map. So, on this map, late game heroes suck. You just want to get ahead on structures and then sit on your lead for the rest of the game and play very slowly and carefully.

The major comeback mechanic on this map, when you’re behind on structures, is the boss. And not just one boss. On average you’ll need two bosses to win on sky temple. When you’re behind on structures you want to do boss asap, and then do it again in 5 minutes. It’s almost like a flowchart, when you’re ahead on structures: get or deny boss and win the game. Then they’re no more comeback mechanics in the game.

We’ve seen compositions abusing that just pushing structures and they won. We see a lot of pick comps, you don’t see a lot of team fight on the map because people are rotating around a lot protecting their structures from the minion waves and push you can pick them up, and when they get picked off then they can’t defend anymore so you get ahead. This makes mule very valuable on this map and with that Abathur first pick material. 

The objective on Volskaya used to be very weak, it’d do less damage than heroes themselves and it was more effective to pick up the support camp and get a lot of experience from that than fight over the objective. Since then it has been buffed and Volskaya is now the premier team fighting map in the game.

We’ve seen people give the first objective and stay relatively close in experience because they picked up the support camp in exchange but never the second and never the third. So, you don’t want a scaling comp on Volskaya, you want a comp that scales no later than level 10. There is basically nothing else to do on the map besides mercs and team fights, that’s it.

You want to make sure you get the turret camps because they give massive experience, you want to make sure to get the support camp because it gives massive experience and the items. You could do the other camps before the objective starts, it's not bad, but it's not necessary either. It's not a bad thing to do, they’re just not very strong.

This map is not very interactive and very brawly, the objective is very strong, so you want to basically get the first objective, push with it, it clears entire waves, is very good at getting pickoffs, especially with some form of CC and the laser from the gunner, get the 2nd objective, get the 3rd and win. It’s very brawly map, draft a comp that will win you the fight, draft yourself just enough wave clear not to fall behind on the macro and do camps.

Double support is probably always going to be the best team fight comp out there since it allows for so many mistakes and still be totally fine. You will just need enough wave clear since supports don’t do wave clear. And not just to clear the waves but clear them fast enough to give yourself time to do the camps.

Alterac Pass got changed recently, at first the objective was incredibly strong. It would have 25 armour and was incredibly hard to kill. Because it was so strong a lot of people just threw themselves at it because you have to have it and then, being on the enemy side of the map and a long way away from safety, died. The other team could then just move over and channel it all the way. What they would then do, because the objective was so strong, is go 5 man in a lane and push that one out. This would generally lead to a keep, getting you level 10. Then you would get the boss in that same lane, because you had level 10. That is if you have a team that is bad run into you. Otherwise you should just delay the objective. The enemy team should, if played well, not be able to challenge the objective till level ten. Because of the position of the objective it is not safe to realistically contest the objective on the enemy side until the mid-fort is down.

Now the objective is not as strong anymore, the 5 man pushing strategy is not as valid anymore. It has become a bit more of a late game centric map in a lot of cases. We’ve started to see quite a bit of Vikings, Azmodan, scaling and stacking heroes. The best strategy is still to delay the objective. The objective does not scale as well as heroes do so It will be easier to defend. So snowballing the map is not as possible with the nerfs that have happened. But the delaying strategy has also become less effective because the enemy team will level up as well, so you want some sort of scaling comp.

The boss on this map is the same as the cursed hollow map, besides the snowballs instead of the root. So, it’s not the strongest boss out there. They’re basically HP sacks that bait buildings to attack them instead of you.

The Gnoll camps are basically hell bats, but there’s 3 of them. You can have a really good push going with them, with the anti-armour on buildings and just watching the structures melt. Also, the core has armour and the Gnolls reduce armour! It's very unlikely that the boss will end the game on the core by itself, but the Gnoll camp will actually end the game, by itself, if it goes down uncontested down mid. So, for map pressure, the Gnoll camps are a lot better than boss. It’s a camp you want to split during the objective, it has a short cooldown and you basically want to get that on cooldown.

The core has armour based on the amount of keeps there are up, and unless you have a significant level advantage, you can’t end with only one keep down. On the other maps, when the keep is down, catapults spawn. Alterac Pass does not have catapults. A single lane will not end until the very very late game, when the core stops scaling but the minions don’t. The extra Gnoll that spawns instead of the catapult goes in front so gets focused down first, it also doesn’t do as much damage as a catapult does.