Heroes Lounge Season 3 presented by mYinsanity 

It’s about time! About a month ago, we witnessed a Division 2 team throwing some of the best teams of Heroes Lounge out of the Playoffs. We saw Season 1 winner No Trick Ponies fighting their way through the Loser bracket and then falling against finalist Lord of the Pings. And we have seen how a Free Agent team of some of the highest MMR players of Heroes Lounge won the entire tournament. 

From December 5th, 2016 to February 26th, 2017, in total 94 teams fought each other in 3 divisions during Heroes Lounge Season 2. In the meantime, rosters and team names have been changed, teams disbanded and new ones were formed, captains got deported. “Some” teams were picked up by a eSport organization and left them again and at least one James Baker is now wearing a Fedora.

For Season 3 of the largest European amateur league for Heroes of the Storm, we are supported by mYinsanity to make this season the best we ever had. As announced earlier, mYinsanity and their sponsors G2A.com, Esportclothing, and Logitech will contribute prizes for the teams and players of Heroes Lounge. 

At the start of Season 3 we have more than 100 active Heroes of the Storm teams signed up for the competition. Additionally, more than 100 Free Agents joined the fun and were put together in new FATs pushing the numbers of teams to more than 120. These teams were placed in five division depending on their average MMR. This time, the average MMR was calculated by a weighted mean of the players’ MMR for the game modes Hero League, Team League, and Unranked Draft with weights being 50/30/20. We ended up with the following MMR caps for the single divisions:

• Division 1: >2600
• Division 2: 2400-2600
• Division 3: 2200-2400
• Division 4: 2050-2200
• Division 5: < 2050 

Next week, the first round of Heroes Lounge Season 3 will officially start. In nine rounds each team will have to face one opponent per week in a Best-of-3 series. The matchmaking will be always done at Sunday midnight. Different from last season, this time we will use a Swiss Match Making system to reduce the number of unfair match-ups within one division. This means that this season we must be stricter when it comes to scheduling the matches. 

As you can read in the reworked rules set of Heroes Lounge, matches are not allowed to be delayed by more than one week. However, since in some of the divisions we have an uneven number of teams, not every team can get an opponent every time and, therefore, one team per division might get a BYE (free win) for one of the rounds. The number of BYEs a team can get per season is limited to one. If you have any questions about organizational things, read the little “How to Heroes Lounge” below and do not hesitate to reach out to a Moderator, an Epixors, or a Lounge Master on our Discord server. 

Heroes Lounge Season 3 Playoffs

We are sure you are happy to hear that we started to plan the Heroes Lounge Season 3 Playoffs much earlier than last season. As we discussed this amongst the organizers, we decided to stick to the scheme which went so well last time.

After the nine official rounds of the third season are played, we will have again one additional week in which teams can play their delayed matches. The Playoffs of Season 3 will take place then in the week of June 5th, 2017.

The top 8 teams of Divison 1, the top 4 teams of Division 2, the top 2 teams of Division 3, and the top teams of Division 4 and 5 will be qualified for the 16 teams Double Elimination Tournament deciding who wins Heroes Lounge Season 3. Ranking of teams will be determined by the number of wins. If these criteria do not lead to a distinct selection of teams, BO3 tiebreakers must be played on the weekend of 3rd/4th June 2017, latest by Sunday the 4th of June. The first round of Heroes Lounge Season 3 Playoffs must be played between Monday, June 5th and Friday, June 9th. All other rounds will be played on June 10th/11th, one week before the Dreamhack will take place.

How to Heroes Lounge 

First of all read the new rules! 

You also should check them frequently for the list of banned Heroes, Talents, or any kind of exploits. Every Sunday, at midnight, the new match-ups are created. After the match maker is done, you can check your next weeks opponent on your own team page on www.HeroesLounge.gg under "View team". The matches for every round will appear below the list of members. 

You should get in contact with the opponent team's captain as soon as possible, preferably via discord. Please be as pro-active as you can be in order to find a date for your match. Once you agreed on a date, one of the teams captains has to enter the date of the match on the website on the match page - the page which appears when you click on the match on your team page. If you have any problems to reach out to the other captain, do not hesitate to contact a moderator of Heroes Lounge. 

Keep in mind, you have to schedule your match until the next Sunday midnight to prevent being flagged as inactive. Scheduling means that you actually have entered the date for the match on the website. You can postpone your match by at most one week. However, also in this case you have to schedule the match before Sunday midnight. As a team captain you should check the discord server quite frequently due to several reasons: other captains want to contact you for scheduling the match, for arranging player substitutes, etc.. 

Casters want to contact you because they want to cast your game and they might want to ask you shifting your match by a few minutes in order to fit it into the streaming schedule. Last but not least, moderators want to contact you because of announcements about rule changes, bans, etc.. 

How to play a match in Heroes Lounge

As a team captain, you should check the discord on match day if there are any last minute changes by the other teams captain or casters or moderators. You should check if there is a caster going to cast you: Look at the calendar at your match, or ask casters on our discord server. Before the match has started, make sure you have joined the ingame Heroes Lounge channel via "/join heroeslounge". Find an agreement with the other teams captain about which #match_lounge_? you want to use on the discord server for map bans and picks. When the match has started, throw a coin (!coin command in discord) in the #match_lounge_? with the other teams' captain to decide who goes first in map bans. 

The winner of the coin toss will ban the first map and pick the first map after the other team banned the second. One of the captains has to create a lobby for the custom game and invite the other team captain and the casters via the ingame "heroeslounge" chat. At the end of the draft, make screenshots of the draft screens! After the first game, the loser team can decide if they want to have map pick or first pick in draft. As soon as the match is over, the winner captain reports the scoring and uploads the replays and draft screens to the website via the match page - the page which appears if one clicks on the match.