Fundamentals 1: Experience

Hello! And welcome to the fundamentals series on Heroes of the Storm. In this first part, I'll talk about one of the most important things in HotS: Experience.

Minion Experience

Whenever a minion dies, you get experience, which in the current patch is a little orb your hero picks up when you move close to it. Experience is shared among the whole team, so if you pick one orb, all 5 heroes will get that experience. It doesn't matter where they are on the map.

Minion experience is the most consistent source of experience, and the team who gets more experience will level up faster, which means will get new talents faster, and have an important advantage when it comes to fighting and securing objectives. A wave of minions gives more experience than a hero kill, up until level 7.

For this reason, you want to always soak every single lane in the map. If the map has 3 lanes, you want to soak 3. If it has 2, soak 2. Aim to never miss a single wave.

More on this will be explained in the Rotations post, but for now, just know that experience is very, very important. 

In most low Elo games (Diamond and below) people don't really understand how important experience is, so they miss a lot. Either they roam too much, or stay in a lane too much seeking kills.

Giving your team an edge just by soaking can make a difference. Consider this situation:

• Both you and the enemy team are level 6
• Your team is close to level 7, and they are all grouping to go to an objective

What do you do? Do you group? Or do you try to soak and get to 7 before the enemy team does? 

The right answer would be for your whole team to soak 7 and then move into the objective. But games rarely go the way we want to. Assuming all your team is moving to the objective already, the right play is still ditching your team, ping them to back, type "wait for 7" and then go and try to soak a lane to get level 7. Then group with your team, and fight with an advantage.

Never fight in equal conditions if you can avoid it. Always fight with an advantage.

Does the enemy team have level 16 and you don't? Don't even show your face in objectives. Just soak. Even if your whole team dies, at least you can soak the remaining lanes and get some experience to catch up.

Did someone on your team just die and it's a 4v5? Don't even bother contesting, just go soak and minimize your losses. Try waiting for your ally to respawn or just give that objective away.

You get the idea.

Mercenary Experience

Another source of experience are mercenaries. Unlike minions, though, they give you experience when they die, no need to grab an orb. Some camps, like Hanamura's vision camps, give you a lot of experience, and it's very important to keep control of those camps.

Most of the time though, it's rare to take camps just because the experience they give. Most of the time, they are taken to pressure. I won't ellaborate much on this topic as it will get it's own post.

Kills Experience

Killing enemy heroes gives you experience. If both teams have equal soak, this can make a big difference and snowball the game. Note that HotS has a mechanic where if you kill an enemy hero which is higher level than you, you will get bonus experience.

This is a comeback mechanic, which is mostly abused in a level 16 vs 19 fight. A common last attempt to come back is fighting before the enemy reaches the massive advantage of level 20 talents. If you can win that fight, you basically are now equal with the enemy team, sometimes you can even just rush the nexus and win.

So remember to not give up and instead soak for that 16 vs 19 fight when everything is going really badly. That will be your last attempt. It also works the other way around, play safe until 20, then try to end. You might be tempted to fight 19 vs 16, because you feel like winning, but it's risky. Unless you feel really confident, it's better to wait.

Towers Experience

Killing towers also gives you experience, but it's not trivial: They give you a passive flow of experience. The more towers you kill (forts and keeps) the more passive experience you get. It's hard to really know how much it influences in the actual game. This passive experience flow helps with snowballing but it's not really that noticeable.

Killing towers is important because of how they open up the map and pressure lanes, rather than the experience they give. Still, it's good to know how it works.

That's it!

Hope it was useful. Remember, experience is king, try to get as much experience as you can. Never leave a lane before soaking it. Try to squeeze a talent advantage when you can. And soak soak soak! 

Sometimes you will have to double soak, even as an assassin, you will need to cover for the deficiencies in your team. That's just the way it is.

Good luck!