Fundamentals 2: Hero Pool

Hero Pool

First of all, if you are just playing for fun, then just play whatever is fun for you. If you are grinding Elo though, aiming for something like Platinum, Diamond, Master or Grand Master, then you'll most likely need to work on your hero pool.

A hero pool is simply a selection of heroes you are proficient with. The more you specialize on a hero the better you will play it, and the higher and faster you'll climb. If you play too many heroes, it will take you a lot of time to get good at them.

It's like the analogy of a naïve man searching for water. He digs a small hole, then quickly gives up as he thinks the earth is too dry, and starts a new hole. He then gives up again, for the same reason, and tries yet another place. Eventually, he made lots of holes, and got no water. In order to quickly learn the game, you have to commit to playing only a few heroes in ranked. Especially just one role, whatever it may be.

About three heroes to main is a good number. 

Cover Your Team's Deficiencies

Heroes excel at different things, but in a broad sense, we can talk about waveclear, mercenaries, and teamfighting.

Ideally, you want to pick heroes for your hero pool which are good or at least decent at those things. That will allow you to cover for whatever your team lacks.

A good example is Greymane. He can efficiently clear the minion wave, he can also solo mercenaries quite fast, and he even has great teamfighting. Other good examples are Sylvannas and Maiev.

A bad example is Genji, he is great at securing kills, but he doesn't have good waveclear, and he can't do hard mercenary camps. So if your team doesn't soak or doesn't do mercs, you can't really do much.

On the other hand, if you play Sylvannas, and your solo is slow to move, you can quickly cover his lane and soak the experience. If nobody helps you with a hard mercenary camp, you can still do it. And you can carry teamfights with good positioning and smart skill usage.

Some roles are harder to carry with when your team doesn't do anything at all, like healer and tank. But you still have ways to help your team win!

Alternative Roles

Ideally you want to have a secondary role which you are decent with, normally when starting out this is healer, as it has the lowest potential to mess up, but anything you enjoy playing works. 

For your secondary role you also want a few heroes you can play. Note that sometimes you will need to play other roles too. People don't listen, particularly in low rankings, and they just pick whatever they want to play. In that case, it's worth having at least one or two heroes for every possible role.

Of course it's not your main so you won't be as good, but in this case, it's enough to just play safe and not mess up.

For non-main roles, safe and easy heroes which are not commonly contested are the best choices.

A good example is Thrall. He is a safe solo laner which rarely stomps lane, but he can do just fine against basically everyone (good if you have to pick first) and he has awesome teamfighting and sustain. He is easy to play, and has good escape.

Suggestions

Here are some suggestions per-role:

• Ranged DPS: Greymane, Sylvannas, Falstad, Jaina
• Melee DPS: Maiev, Kerrigan
• Tank: ETC, Diablo, Johanna, Garrosh
• Healer: Rehgar, Stukov, Ana, Auriel
• Solo: Thrall, Sonya

Some heroes can't really do everything, tanks for example are quite bad waveclear (except Johanna), as well as taking mercenary camps. Healers suffer from this to some extent, but some healers have good waveclear (Rehgar, Auriel) and Rehgar can even do mercenary camps fairly well.

It's important to note that at higher rankings, people can do what they are expected to, so you can get away with more specific picks, as you won't have to do everything yourself. Li-Ming for example is a hero which is great at following your tank's engage. Your tank (or any initiator) catches someone, and she follows up with lots of damage. But without good initiation, she suffers a lot, because her waveclear and mercenary camps clear is mediocre. Still, on some maps, she's good even with those issues (Towers of Doom, Battlefield of Eternity).

All in all, you can play any hero you want, and with enough practice you'll climb anyways. Just remember, the fastest way is playing as little heroes as possible. Try to pick heroes which are good at everything, or at least have a very well-defined role, and have fun!

Hope this post was useful! See you in part 3, when we'll get started with macro!