HotS Advanced Strategy Guide: Team Positioning

[@StudioNBS]

every time I take a break from HOTS your videos bring me back

[@m0nZt3r]

Hey Paradox, I love your videos, I'm an ex GM player from EU. I had couple of good ideas for advanced things series I wanted to share with you (for example: Everything about Line of Sight, importance of Mounting in Combat, anticipation, wave clear mirroring (enemy waves are always spawning with yours, people often miss incoming wave because they dont look at position of their own),baiting enemies, Stealth rotation parking etcetc., mostly aimed at solo queue I suppose, I could help you to write some too, I'm also a massive psychology and philosophy buff so we'd get along. What is the best way to contact you? :)

[@griff3n69]

You can be my senpai lol

[@SYWPiano]

Do you do coaching?

[@griff3n69]

@@SYWPiano what rank are you? Role? Heroes? Any specific questions? Na server?

[@SYWPiano]

@@griff3n69 NA diamond 5 tank role. Mostly playing diablo muradin and etc. I have a lot of questions about how to approach team fights , positioning, trading and many more

[@griff3n69]

@@SYWPiano your above me I'm plat 3 but I just thought you might want to figure out what you want to focus on ahead of time so when you go in to be coached you kind of know what you want to work on. What I would do is try here there are people there who do coaching and schedule and requests. I haven't tried it this way personally scheduling it says plat/gold but you can see if they can help. I have played with one of the coaches shredded i think its the same one. You can ask him if he can help. I think its the same one if it is he has knowledge above diamond. www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/jxzma7/ccs_development_days_custom_games_with/?

[@BaptisteVigier]

loved that september serie and all your videos man, really appreciate your work and always looking forward to learn more about the game watching your videos!

[@semantik95]

I literally just shared this video with some of my LoL playing friends. The fundamentals you describe here are so good.

[@MrPorto4ever]

Awesome video. Keep up the great work.

[@LazyJukebox]

This was awesome. Have you ever thought about doing general strategies for each map? I know it’s a lot of work, but learning maps and common strategies for them is something hard for new hots players

[@nevadaanm9336]

he does have some good guides and builds on his website www.notparadox.com

[@mateussperandio4646]

This is awesome! Great concent, thanks for it! Hope we get to see more of this :D

[@mrsteph87]

now this was a good hots strategy video!

[@Zorkoso]

this is hopefully gonna help me big-time, thanks in advance!

[@magius5625]

Great video! Another video idea: when to take core. I just got into an argument with my team when to take it and we all had different ideas for when was the right time to take core. Just an suggestion. Thanks again for the video content!

[@onkelpappkov2666]

Rule of thumb: If you win bot lane Zerg on Braxis Holdout, get 2 picks, secure bot lane Bruisers and there is only a keep bot lane, no wall, then Nova MUST go top to defend the fort against the mighty Ultralisk and Uther MUST make sure to heal her. Ignore team pings to win the game and instead go brawl . All that salt ages my skin.

[@jamester0772]

Yeessss been hoping for something like this for a while. So glad you made this video, thanks! :)

[@raccoonking888]

Love the video! Thank you for continuing this content!

[@choonbox]

Reality: All stay mid, die before objective, lose lanes, lose game, feel sad. Cry.

[@Grim_Bud]

soak to try to keep the game up with 0 waveclear hero, get yelled at because team wants to fight with solo laners in the 4mans at 3 levels late

[@onkelpappkov2666]

I like the hourglass formation where the enemy form a rough hourglass shape and we queue up to trickle through their killzone one after the other like sand. Can't stop flowing. Would be a shame if we just regrouped.

[@warxdrum]

i liked the detail that you put into this and that you pointed out what how the positioning affected the enemies. if you don't have something bruisery, but instead a raynor, a mage and a greymane. would you put the person with the most survivability on the edge position that is furthest from the heal or would you put the person with the best flanking potential on that side? flanking potential seems like it should be the same for both edges of the formation, but i'm guessing that the mage would stay with the heal, which leaves us with one edge and one middle aa damage dealer. is this even a good question or would you say that without a bruiser it should be played front to back anyway?

[@interimchanger]

11:01 - "they [red team] don't force this fight" 11:18 - yrel [red team] walks directly into entire blue team uncontested on mount 11:41 - "so, the enemies [blue team] engaged on them [red team]" sometimes it feels like I'm not even watching the same game as the person talking over it? like it's almost a willful misinterpretation of what's happening so that you can fit the game into the narrative of this "crescent moon" positioning instead of talking about the fact that blue team got straight outdrafted - you say you want to talk about how high level teams should draft and it feels like this is a pretty dang good moment to talk about it instead of abandoning the point to make a point about how "blue team gets clustered and red team spreads out" at 8:32 when in fact red team just straight up engaged after chromie showed bot lane and was no less clustered than blue team

[@VinnyTN]

True about 8:32. But if you watch closely at 11:18 - blue team focused and engaged on diablo first, letting yrel walk in. Yrel was responding to blue teams engage not the other way round. It starts with the root on diablo, that was the cue for blue team to throw all they had at diablo.

[@interimchanger]

@@VinnyTN yeah blue team focused diablo but my point is that the video is framing it like red team's "positioning" was the entire reason they won the objective when in fact there are a bunch of other different factors that caused red team to win the objective? like before the fight even begins red team is ALREADY 17 MINIONS UP because they already had vision on blue chromie and blue leoric while they were clearing waves before objective, which might be an important point to mention when talking about how red team can disengage and continue the objective while blue team has to overcommit to a fight or lose the objective but instead we have to keep hammering on this crescent moon positioning if blue team was up 17 minions before the fight starts, they have a lot more time to poke and get vision, but again, this is mentioned at no point during the video and this is also the case during the first objective fight at around 6:54 - at the time of the fight red team is already up 23 minions because garrosh tried to initiate a 4v5 and gets chunked to half health before leoric even arrives, allowing red team to get 20 minions ahead, but paradox is so busy pulling a john madden and drawing all over the screen that he skips right over the MAIN REASON red team is able to posture aggressively while blue team has to sit back without vision? going back through paradox's videos, he does this a whole lot? and in this video he spends SO LONG talking about 5 head theorycrafting stuff that four whole minutes pass between garrosh getting chunked and blue team trying to re-engage, which is why I totally missed it until I rewatched and actually saw what happened. I mean I get it, if I spent the first third of my video on a sponsor ad and a single concept, I'd do whatever I could to fit the rest of the game into this "crescent moon positioning" narrative thing but I dunno, if your goal is to make people better at hots maybe it would be better to actually watch what's happening instead of trying to 5 head with positioning, you can have the most beautiful crescent moon hots has ever seen but it's not going to change the fact that your team was drafted with slower waveclear and you're arriving to every objective 10-15 minions behind

[@and1str93]

@@interimchanger While I don't disagree with any of your points that you made, because they were well argued and proven, and they gave a lot of insight, the point of the video is still about positioning, and not necesarily about what mechanics are behind team draft and/or lane clear / objective prio. It's not an overview of how a match should work/look/feel, it's strictly a video about positioning and showing that in a perfect scenario, positioning does help a lot in team fights, and he's trying to explain what, in some circumstances, team positioning can offer.

[@AN-sm9ju]

I actually disagree with everything you have said. The tactic used is similar to strategies that have been used in combat for years. In order to really understand the positioning, you have to understand vision. The positioning actually begins before 11:01. Diablo made his position known. He also set up an obvious flank. The blue team did not have vision on all the other members. But they knew where diablo was. This is very important. This gives them three options: 1. they can funnel into the objective and allow diablo to flank them, and risk being ambushed, 2. they can engage on diablo and draw out the red team out and hopefully kill him before his team can help. or 3. they can pull back and give up the objective. . They chose the better of the 3, which was to engage the flanker and hope that the enemy team was not in position to save him. But yet again, because of positioning, they were able to respond and turn the fight. Yrel was in position to counter engage, and the healer was in position to assist the player that was in the most danger. If malf is not in position to help diablo or if yrel was not in position for the counter engage and zone, diablo is dead and there is no trade.

[@interimchanger]

@@and1str93 if it's strictly a video about positioning in a perfect scenario and how it helps in team fights, I feel like the video is way more convincing if it actually presents any objective fights from a neutral game state? I didn't see a single objective fight from a neutral game state for this entire video and like, I'd understand if it's hard to find an example of a purely neutral game state where the teams are relatively even in level, map pressure, and draft - you can't spend too long looking for the perfect team fight because those are actually pretty rare in hots, but I would hope that if that's the case, the video would at the VERY LEAST mention how draft, or map pressure, or even the super basic concept of level tiers would affect a team's position hell, this would be a vastly more useful video if it was framed as something like "how to position when you're behind vs. how to position when you're ahead", but literally none of these factors are mentioned AT ALL in a 20 minute replay commentary. not only that, paradox goes as far to say that red team is winning by positioning ONLY at 12:07, right after the fight that red team started 23 minions ahead on, and for the life of me I can't figure out why you would make that definitive of a statement outside of like, maybe paradox just didn't watch the replay before making the commentary? that definitely seemed to be the case in the zeratul video that was made a few weeks ago where paradox spent like 5 minutes talking about how the zeratul player was 5 heading the entire early game when the zera was literally just trying to complete the globe quest stuff like this is why I feel like I'm being trolled when watching paradox videos? like, I'm not a super expert on the game but I'm sitting here scratching my head because the LITERAL GAME STATE provides counterexamples to why red team is ahead and the supposed expert on hots and psychology is either not seeing that red team is ahead before the fight even starts, OR he's straight up ignoring these factors and neither of these scenarios make me feel like I've gotten better at hots from watching this

[@scorchdnutz]

I do this with xul :) i always attack from the side but i think as a squishy this will help me because i usually stay right behind the tank, thanks!

[@meganb.2249]

18:03 It's that moment that I struggle with the most: when to chase kills to win the game versus when the team (or only a part of the team) needs to trek ALLLL the way back to the objective to finish it For the end.

[@maks223]

Could you make video about playing Illidan?

[@ChillyMountain]

Something a bit chilly about this video 🤔🥶

[@onursevindik59]

there should be guilds in hots . . . I watch these vids and get into solo q . . .GG

[@Teh-Penguin]

Nice to see that HotS competitive scene is still alive after Blizzard abandoned it.

[@Deathworg1]

Thank you for this video!

[@phuglee]

super nice vid

[@adrianmalinowski1073]

2:39 vid starts

[@christians7706]

very intressting

[@ttsait]

good video bro

[@luispq7469]

wow the title says positioning but its far more into team formations, I love it, just think title doesnt say what it really is.

[@cschleiger1991]

None of this works for QM. lol unless u have a team on mics and communicating....ppl playin QM dont always have that luxuary. So even if ur doin well if the teams not, you loose. Just frustrating.

[@PeterMacansky]

[@-41337]

dude makes a few videos 2 years ago: "when i was an analyst for HGC" lmao well he sure is pro at something at least and that's self promotion

[@tomvanramshorst2146]

Idk you must be bad at searching cause i see plenty of vids on it