Dear DrmDestryr,
@followgrubby was talking about 'promoting' minions what is that? He was Azmodan btw.
@TechMike14
Dear @TechMike14,
Promote by itself is a talent limited to two supports (Tassadar and Brightwing) and two specialists (Gazlowe and Nazeebo). When chosen by them, it “gives a targeted allied lane minion +300% Health and +100% damage for 30 seconds” and comes complete with two charges.
Beyond the talent itself, many of the Heroes have their own garden variety as either an ability or talent.
- Abathur = Symbiote
- Azmodan = General of Hell & Bound Minion
- Raynor = Inspire
- Rehgar = Gladiator’s War Shout
- Sylvanas = Possession
- Tyrael = Righteousness & Smite
- Zagara = Infest
Why Promote?
The history of promote is a rather long and sordid one. As you can see in this video, it used to be that you could Promote everything that wasn’t a Hero, including mercs and objectives, making it overpowered. The talent, however, was never meant to be a game winning device so much as a game changing mechanic.
While its inevitable nerf led to a lot of rage, it nonetheless remains an incredibly viable tactic for any team.
The purpose of promote is to add pressure. This is why it is mainly a specialist talent/ability. The more disruption the promoter can cause, the better chance your team has to claim objectives and assert map dominance.
Using Promote
So you have a Hero that has some form of promotion. What do you even do with it?
While the talent, no matter the iteration, lasts about 30 seconds tops, that doesn’t mean it’s useless because of how short it is. If anything, because of its limited duration, this makes its success dependent on tactical maneuvering.
Say, for instance, it’s the start of the game, and you’re Raynor. Now, you know you can run into the middle of your minions and give them all a buff at the cost of mana. If you keep doing this, you eventually run low and have to retreat to the fountain. By the time you’re back, your minions are right back in the center, rendering your push pretty useless. In this case, it’s far more prudent to use your basic attacks to clear out enemy minions and then buff your guys as soon as they get to the towers, buying you even more time to damage tower structures. Plus, with a solid supply of mana, you can pop off a few quick shots with your high damage abilities on the structures before having to retreat.
Azmodan is a bit different if only because pushing is directly built in to his entire purpose. His activated trait is a global buff giver that is free to cast. Because it costs you nothing more than the 30 seconds it takes to cool down, this means sending him out every chance you get is almost expected. The tactic with this, however, is more about choosing the correct lane to send him. He’s relatively easy to kill so you need to make sure he pushes where he’ll live the longest. If a lane is completely unguarded, that’s clearly the strongest choice. However if things are broken up in the typical 2-1-2, where you send him should be based on who he’ll be up against as well as if your fellow teammates will help keep him alive.
Each Hero that has this promotional gift uses it for a different purpose, so make sure you give a bit of thought as to how it would best compliment your Hero. After that, it’s all about the trial and error.
Not Using Promote
Now, just like everything else in this game, there will be people telling you not to pick this for specific maps or against specific team comps. To this I say the choice is ultimately yours. Only you know how you use your Promote and only you can make the final call as to whether it will benefit the team or not. A lot of people will immediately point to Haunted Mines as a “no-go” zone but then follow it up with an example of that one time they had their a**es handed to them on a silver platter because the Hero that took Promote was too good.
Trust your instincts, and you’ll be fine. After all, the only way you really learn is by doing.
-DrmDestryr
Dear DrmDestryr,
You try out Ballfield of Eternity yet?
-Monkers
Dear Monkers,
Heck yes I did. And if you haven’t yet, I highly suggest it! On your Heroes Battle.net page, directly over the Play button is the Region/Account dropdown menu. Choose PTR: Heroes of the Storm and get yourself access to the public test realm.
Now, keep in mind you are going to be lowly level 1. All the skins you bought will be there but you will be talent gated so try not to get too angry. Within this test realm are people from every region. I was lucky enough to get on right as someone was making a custom game to test out the new map. While it was a loss with our Sonya biting it no less than 17 times, everyone was pretty chill and more than happy to have a good time as we stumbled through the map together.
It’s Big
Even though there are only two lanes, it’s huge so the confrontation factor is, for the better part, null. It stays this way only until the guardians show up. Once they’re battling it out in the middle, confrontation is all but inevitable.
Why?
Because the winning Immortal gets a frickin’ shield equal to the amount of health they have upon winning. So protecting your immortal is nearly as important as downing theirs.
WTF Mercs?
The mercs are also much different here! Gone are the siege giants and bruisers now replaced by goatmen with spears and a rakanishu priest with two dogs respectively. Interestingly enough, each merc camp has three total targets which makes it a bit trickier for the bribers of the game.
The goatmen have the siege giant logo, and the rakanishu has the bruiser logo. While they are relatively comparable to their other map counterparts in terms of toughness, three goatmen are quite a lot more time consuming than two siege giants at the same level.
I predict this will lead to a lot more group merc action like in Haunted Mines.
It’s Ambush Heaven
Expect this map to be the favorite of pro teams that love ambushes. With more vents and hidden passageways than Tomb of the Spider Queen, you’ll soon learn on this map to never venture out unless you have a buddy.
The Fountains
They make the Diablo health fountain noise.
It’s awesome.
-DrmDestryr
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