by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

For the past few months I have written a series of recurring articles entitled, “Things the Pros Do”. The premise of these articles is simple. There are certain things that highly skilled players do that other players don’t. These things are usually more the result of knowledge than skill. More often than not, the reason the average player doesn’t do these things isn’t because they don’t have the ability to do them, but rather because it has simply never occurred to them to do them.

As an Average Joe who plays with other Average Joes, I have realized that the opposite also holds true. Joe’s often do things that are wrong because it simply never occurs to them that it might not be right. With that in mind, I present to you, “Things the Joes Do”, a new series about mistakes that players make without realizing them.

In this first article we are going to talk about players returning back to base using their hearthstone. You might think that there is no way a person could mess up hearthing back to base, but you would be wrong. You might also think there is no way that you would mess up hearthing back to base, but don’t be so sure.

One of the more common mistakes that players make involves hearthing back to base at inopportune times. They hearth back out of instinct because they are low on health or mana, but there are times where that is not a valid concern.

I saw the perfect example of this the other day on Dragon Shire. Our team controlled both shrines, and we ended up winning a team fight in the middle lane, which allowed one of our players to capture the Dragon Knight. Our Li-Ming immediately hearthed back, presumably because she was at half health and mana. What she failed to take into account was the fact that the entire enemy team was dead for the next 20 odd seconds. This meant that her low health wasn’t an issue and she still had more than enough mana to be able to help push the DK before hearthing. This would have been much more effective than hearthing and trying to ride back, which meant she arrived just in time to watch the rest of her team fall back as the enemy respawned. It may not sound like much, but that was 20 seconds from a high damage Hero that was absolutely wasted during a key point in the game. All because she reacted out of habit rather taking a moment to actually access the situation.

I wanted to illustrated that story with a picture, but I wasn’t able to find the game in question. Fortunately, I took a break while writing this article and encountered a similar situation. In this image we have just captured an Arcane Punisher when two members of our team decide to hearth back. Rehgar is half health and almost out out mana so that is reasonable, but Kael’thas is full health and half mana. Why is he going back? I doubt even he could answer that question since he was most likely just acting out of habit.

Map awareness also plays a large part in decisions on when and where you should hearth. Even when the enemy team isn’t dead, being able to see where they are on the mini map can influence your decisions. Don’t automatically hearth back just because you are low on health. There will times that you can delay hearthing in favor of getting a little more work done as long as you have good map awareness.

Another example that you see all the time involves two players who are sharing a lane in the early game. So often both players hearth at the same time, as opposed to going one at a time. It makes much more sense for one player to wait until the other player returns so that you don’t miss out on any of that valuable early game experience. Even if you are on fumes, you can still soak the lane from a safe distance. This is something that most players understand in principle, but they make these types of mistakes none the less. Again, this is little stuff but it makes a difference over the course of a game.

The last example are the players who need to return to base, but choose to do so from poor locations. I can’t be the only one who has a seen a mounted teammate use their hearthstone to back when it would have been faster to just keep riding. Another common mistake involves players who try to hearth back from exposed locations. Even if they don’t get killed outright, all it takes is one poke from the enemy to break their channel and then they have to start all over.

I know these things sound incredible simple and that most players are going to say that they would never make mistakes like these, but that is the problem. Players who make these types of mistakes are often unaware of them. They have usually fallen into a rut and are just acting out of habit. You can avoid this by making sure that you are thinking about what you do before you do it, even something as simple as using your hearthstone.

Don’t just assume you are above mistakes like this. Take a few minutes to watch one of your replays and you might be surprised by the things that you notice when you aren’t caught up in the heat of the game.

Good luck and have fun!