Introduction to "Heroes of the Storm" Quiz

Answer: Quick Match

In this mode, there were two teams of five human players that faced off against one another, where players could select a hero that they would be guaranteed to play. As the draft mechanics added a significant amount of time and complexity to the overall game, players new to the genre would have found it easier to learn the heroes and mechanics in Quick Match games.

Originally, Quick Match was a total wild west mode where all hero compositions went, but additional matchmaker rules such as no duplicate heroes (where possible) and the preference for a warrior, healer and ranged assassin on both teams were eventually implemented.

Answer: Their level one talent

Unlike competitors in the market such as "League of Legends" and "Dota 2" which had items, "HotS" instead gave people the chance to pick talents that augmented specific abilities or provided passive bonuses. Some of these talents had interesting synergies, for example Ragnaros had several options to empower his third basic ability, Blast Wave, and upon reaching level 16 he could talent to get a free second cast which would benefit from all its other talents.

Whilst prescribed builds were easily found online, good players would understand when less popular talents had a niche. Quest talents often featured at level 1, such as Thrall's Echo of the Elements requiring him to land the finishing blow on 20 enemies with his Chain Lightning ability, and provided a bonus upon completion.

Answer: Destroy the enemy's core

The core would start out with 14,000 HP and 7,000 of regenerating shield and would deal damage in a large area with a shocking bolt whilst prioritising minions over heroes. Its health did scale - 400 health and 200 shield a minute - but hero scaling far surpassed this benefit. Simply put -- destroy both the fort and keep in at least one lane and then destroy the core to win the game.

It's been a little bit of a meme that some less experienced players often lost sight of their overall goal, which was to destroy the core, instead choosing to destroy other forts or collect more mercenaries even when they could just run to the core and hit it. Part of the trickiness of this game is that experience, hero kills and mercenaries all did have an important role to play in this game, but the player had to carefully weigh up what would best help their team to secure their overall win condition.

Answer: Gaining experience by being close to enemy minions as they died

To destroy the core, teams needed to get levels. To get levels, they had to get experience, and a large chunk of that experience came from 'soaking' minion waves that spawned every 30 seconds from the core and walked down the three lanes until they met the enemy team's minions. At level 1, this amounted to 452 points of experience, where a hero kill would only gain 300 points.

Lane management and soaking were important aspects of early game play that many newer players needed to consider; since soak range was about half a screen, an enemy hero could be denied soak if they weren't able to stand near the minions, and each level provided a 4% standard stat boost as well as some level tiers offering additional talents. Also, if a hero died and no one else was able to reach that wave to soak it, their team would lose not only the hero experience but the missed experience that hadn't been soaked.

Answer: Map objectives

Maps were one of the defining features of "Heroes of the Storm" and whilst they varied in many ways, each of them had core map objectives that were important to secure to ultimately reach and destroy the enemy's core. These had the potential to be pretty wacky - on Volskaya Industries for example, players could pilot a powerful mech after holding a control point for a period of time, where on Infernal Shrines destroying 40 shrine minions would activate a powerful punisher who would walk down their nearest lane, jump on enemy heroes and cast deadly area spells.

The first map that players were likely to experience was Cursed Hollow. On that map, tributes would periodically spawn in one of six locations and when one team found three of them, a curse would reduce the enemy's minions to one hit point and disable enemy structures (except the core) from firing. This meant that on unattended lanes the minions would win their stalemates and deal some structure damage of their own, whilst heroes on the winning team would be able to manually approach structures. Team fights, where most or all members of both teams would contest the objective, often took place in these situations; however, strategically it was often sensible to let the other team gain a tribute uncontested. For example, if an enemy team had a talent tier advantage, or if there was the opportunity to secure significant uncontested structure damage elsewhere in return, it sometimes may have been sensible to give up a tribute.

Answer: boss

Not every map had a boss, or bosses. For example, Cursed Hollow was radially symmetrical and had a boss on both sides of the map, but Infernal Shrines lacked a boss mercenary although as stated the map objective spawned a boss-like punisher. They would spawn at the five minute mark and would take between four to five minutes to respawn upon death.

Bosses were often a high-risk, high-reward venture. Unlike objectives, whose spawn time was typically announced, bosses generally sat in specific places on the map until teams took a chance and took them on. Since these bosses fought back, it was not advised to fight them unless the enemy team could be accounted for. Losing a team fight over a boss would not only lead to the boss itself dealing significant structure damage, the team with the boss would also be able to push in uncontested. Since teams often lost games due to their bad decisions over the boss encounters, the boss area was often nicknamed the 'throw pit'.

Answer: Picking a new talent

Whilst some talents did provide immediate boosts to health or mana, they were few and far-between. Health and mana management were both important considerations; if a team member walked into a team fight with 20% mana left, they were likely to run out of the ability to cast abilities and spells before long. A hero who remained on the battlefield with low health would be at much greater risk of being picked off.

The Hearthstone took six seconds to use to return to the Hall of Storms behind their core, where health and mana were both replenished very quickly. The healing fountains were destructible structures near forts and keeps and would restore a significant portion of both health and mana on a two minute cooldown. The globes would regenerate a modest portion of health and mana for the player who picked them up as well as any nearby team-mates; this globe would only be obtainable by their own team for a couple of seconds where it would then also be open to the enemy to take, making the globes an important aspect of lane management too.

Answer: Experience for securing hero kills was reduced

The experience required to reach additional levels would increase over time, and so would the hero kill experience. If behind on levels, there was a significant boost to hero experience, encouraging teams who were behind on levels and/or structures.

Initially, death timers would only last fifteen seconds, plus whatever time it would take to ride from the Hall of Storms back to the fray. This would increase to a minute or longer at the endgame, providing a massive advantage to teams who could win late-game fights. Structures which were difficult to make headway on earlier would be destroyed by objectives, minions, mercenaries and heroes much more quickly as other than the core they didn't scale in health or damage. The lategame talents would allow more individual player impact in battles - one popular level 20 talent would reset every basic ability cooldown to zero, allowing for some potent combinations in a mechanically skilled player's hands.

Answer: Abathur - Bruiser

In "HotS", a bruiser was a tough melee fighter who dealt damage up close. They tended to be bulkier than melee assassins and tended to deal their damage more slowly. Abathur was a unique hero who planted mines, spawned locusts and could boost teammates with a symbiote that could provide a defensive carapace, an offensive spike burst and a needle spike attack. His role classification was support, and had one of the lowest health pools of any hero in the game and would never be in the frontline like a bruiser would be... unless his player wanted to wind up the enemy team.

A tank was a hardy frontliner with crowd control, a healer kept teammates healthy whilst enabling them and/or disabling enemies, and a ranged assassin was a frail damage dealer who could deal a large amount of damage from a distance. A standard draft would contain a tank, healer, ranged assassin, bruiser or melee assassin and a flexible role pick. In draft mode, teams would first ban two heroes each before picking one or two heroes at a time, using a third ban at the mid-point of the draft before finishing the hero picks on a first-come first-serve basis.

Answer: Grandmaster

Players who were able to reach Grand Master in a season - typically three to four months - would be able to display a lightning-bordered portrait as well as a special portrait and an epic season mount.

The ranking system in "HotS" was split into leagues and divisions. Each league had five divisions and could promote to the next division after winning a promotion game at 1000 points. Around 1% of players were in Master league, 7% in Diamond, 15% in Platinum and so on. Players would typically be matched into games with and against players of similar rank and division, meaning that those who could win consistently above average would eventually climb. In addition, first-time players would play placement games that would determine their starter league.