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An Overview of the Metagame Evolution and Balance in Heroes of Newerth
A Strategy Overview written
by: KSlidz
In this section I will edit in several definitions and answer many questions as I will in reserved posts.
Ok so let me start off defining metagame and what I mean by evolution. (These two are closely related.)
The metagame is the part of the game (almost all competitive video games) that is separate of the player’s skill and mostly has to do with the play styles the game mechanics favor. This (In Heroes of Newerth) is the strategies the players perform and create before the game begins to win the match.
The evolution of the metagame is defined as adding different components of the game to shift the balance to favor one particular style of strategy to another. This includes adding heroes, items, and mechanics that directly favor a strategy or a counter strategy, or by adding heroes, items, and mechanics to directly counter strategies.
The evolution of the metagame and its balance is all based upon the choices the players are given to modify a strategy.
The Four Strategies and Where They Come From
Quick Side note: this section is about the basic
strategies not about all possible hybrid versions.
I believe in this section it is best to start off with the point of Heroes of Newerth to best explain the strategies involved.
As anyone who has played HoN knows the way to win a match in HoN is to destroy the enemy’s base or to convince the enemy that they have no plausible way to defend their base by creating a large experience and gold gap. As another article recently has noted HoN is a game about attrition. To do these things there are four major actions in a game of HoN: (which is where the four strategies comes from)
1: Pushing towers and ultimately to the world tree
2: Ganking the enemy team
3: Defeating the enemy in team fights
4: Letting the carry farm so that s/he may eventually be able to outlast and outperform the enemy team consistently
From these four basic actions come four basic strategies, The Push Strat, The Gank Strat, The Teamfight Strat , and The Turtle Strat. Each of these strategies has different strong points in the game and each one is counters, is countered, and is neutral, with at least one strategy.
Push Strat: (Early Game) This strategy capitalizes on a dominance early game and is all about pushing the enemy’s territory towards their main structure and well. This strategy, when successful, leaves little room for the enemy to farm creeps and can even destroy a main structure (thus winning the game) before most heroes finish their core items. This strategy is all about preventing the enemy team from getting items and experience. (Sidenote: unlike strategies listed later Push Strat is not necessarily about getting a large experience/gold lead but is about Stopping the enemy from doing so (may be redundant but this is a very important point that must not be missed))
Push Strat COUNTERS Turtle Strat
Push Strat IS COUNTERED BY Gank Strat
Push Strat IS NEUTRAL WITH Teamfight Strat
Turtle Strat: (Late Game) This strategy is about letting one ally hero that has unusually high potential reach a higher level of power than that of the heroes on the other team. When this strategy is successful a hero is produced that is a champion for one team that cannot be paralleled in team fights or otherwise. This is done through obtaining powerful items that have a high amount of synergy with the champion. The goal of this strategy is to maintain as many towers and as much map control as possible until the champion is produced.
Turtle Strat COUNTERS Teamfight Strat
Turtle Strat IS COUNTERED BY Push Strat
Turtle Strat IS NEUTRAL WITH Gank Strat
Teamfight Strat: (Mid-Mid/Late Game) This strategy is about having great synergy in spells and is mostly comprised of powerful aoe nukers/disablers. This strategy is centered on great map control and being able to overpower the enemy team and get a genocide. A successful team fight strat is dependent on little to no farm and mostly on experience. The goal of a teamfight strat is to create ultimatums type situations for the enemy team and to eliminate them either enough times to create an insurmountable gold and experience gap or to eliminate the entire enemy team in a short time so that the respawn timer is too long for the enemy to mount a defense.
Teamfight Strat COUNTERS Gank Strat
Teamfight Strat IS COUNTERED BY Turtle Strat
Teamfight Strat IS NEUTRAL WITH Push Strat
Gank Strat: (Early-Mid/Mid Game) This strategy is all about constantly dividing and conquering enemy players. This strategy is achieved by having great map awareness and being extremely mobile. A successful Gank Strat creates a large gold and experience gap early and will consistently degrade enemy morale. A Gank Strat lineup mostly will not require much early farm and is based mostly off of hero abilities. This strategy ultimately wins when heroes have several luxury items when the enemy heroes have often times not finished their core. This strategy creates heroes with carry type items earlier in the game than is normally possible. This strategy is only possible if it is possible to achieve many hero kills quickly and continuously.
Gank Strat COUNTERS Push Strat
Gank Strat IS COUNTERED BY Teamfight Strat
Gank Strat IS NEUTRAL WITH Turtle Strat
How these strategies interact and why certain strategies counter others.
Each of these strategies is successful when the particular strategy’s strength is in the same place as the opposing strategies weaknesses. This is determined by the time in which the particular strat is strongest and how good a strategy is at accomplishing the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy main structure.
So I am going to list the ultimate strength of each strategy and the weakness of the opposing strategy.
Push Strat is the best strategy at preventing the other team from obtaining farm and keeping map control. The reason this strategy works so well against Turtle Strat is because the weakness of Turtle Strat is that it requires prolonged tower life and larger amounts of farm.
Gank Strat is the best strategy at having great mobility and getting hero kills to create farm. The reason Gank Strat works so well against Push Strat is because the weakness of Push Strat is that the pushing team is spread thin across the map so they are easily isolated and killed. When a Push type team is killed they fail their main goal of preventing farm because their deaths become a source of farm.
Teamfight Strat is the best strategy at having an undividable unit that works as a unit. This strategy works so well against Gank Strat because the weakness of the gank type strategy is that the hero specialization is in one versus one circumstance. Teamfight Strat elimantes those situations and creates a situation in which several enemy hero can be eliminated at once.
Turtle Strat is the best strategy to create an unstoppable force that only gets better as the game progresses and is the best at limiting the amount of hero kills the enemy can get. This strategy works so well against Teamfight Strat because they cannot have a very strong force at very many places on the map at once. When a Teamfight Strat fails to create situations in which several enemy heroes die they do fall behind in gold and experience farm because they stay together splitting the resources they gain equally, creating very small bit of gold and experience.
The classification of roles and where those roles land in the four strategies.(upcoming section)
Comments? Questions? If someone is willing to help edit this s/he can pm me any time in-game or out.
I will trying to be adding more constantly please do not flame me if I fail.
Last edited by KSlidz; 09-23-2010 at 02:16 PM.
I think you should elaborate on each strategy more. I'm sure I speak for alot of other players out there in the low/ pub games want to try to learn more about the different advantages/ disadvantages and how different heroes can benefit in each category.
I will this is more of a draft
its in the draft section ill add much more detail
I'm pretty sure this isn't rock paper scissors. It's not as simple as gank strat beats push strat gg...............
---There are tanks in HoN | BDing is legit | LoL has overtaken WoW as most played game ---
--> Your argument is invalid <--
when i flesh it out i will show why each strat beats the other.
for example, the strength of a turtle strat is late game, whereas the strength of push strat is early game, (I will also be citing multiple competitive matches once I get the time) the push strat when executed correctly will tear through a turtle strat. In fact the reason Balphagor is so strong right now is, think about it... The biggest strategy around right now is trilaning, trilaning is the eptome of turtle strat, not only that but in the metagame the strongest heros are teamfight heros.
so since the balance of the game leans towards teamfights, (as stated in many other discussion) the natural order is to go turtle strat to beat it, so since the biggest strats right now are turtle/teamfihgt balphagore is amazing.
ult is anti team fight, and he is agreat pusher.
I will be adding a lot to this article but I have not had the time and am putting up pieces at a time
I will also address the role of semicarrygankerteamfighterpusher in one character and why they are so deadly to so many strats and why they dominate pubs.
my plans for this guide are to explain each interaction seperatly list all heroes and skill and describe its function as well as items
i also will items wach strat should vie for and what strat of a certain kind is better in different situations.
so please give a reason why you would say it isnt rock, dynamite with a cuttable wick, scissors.
almost all good strategy at their bones have that in mind
in fact that is the whole concept of SC2 (have like 20 rock paper scissors interactions)
plus you are forgetting that there are a selections of 5 heros allowing for a mixup in types of heros
i will later go into detail as to why having a completly mixed team may work and may not work
as of now this is a very breif overview
Last edited by KSlidz; 09-23-2010 at 02:33 AM.
Originally Posted by lolsworth
plus look at this
S2 when badgered by complaints that the metagame was a complete push metagame what did they do and what was the hero pool comprised of
S2 added a bunch of ganking heros. gank oriented heros have a good early game and phenominal mid game.
push oriernted heros have an amazing early game but since gank heros could out last push heros and could single them out really easy (thats why defiles got just tank items to be able to live through the bust damage).
the hero pull at that time consisted mainly of carry type heros (which are the poster child for turtle strat) which is why push strat was so big at the time.
so S2 added gank heros to counter push heros, which were the bane of all hard carries
looks legit to me
Last edited by KSlidz; 09-23-2010 at 01:25 PM.
holy **** please add some punctuation to your ****ing posts because i have no idea what you are saying and you keep talking like this (did i mention you talk like this) because i dont know why maybe you have no education or your punctuation buttons are broken who knows maybe you know but i dont know maybe everyone else knows except me but you better fix that ****ing keyboard if thats the problem because its a pain in the eyeballsacks to read your shet
but good OP. sounds interesting, looking forward to read revised versions
I like how you're totally allergic to capitalization and then start swearing over someone not using punctuaion.
It looks like a good start. But you really need to elaborate on how the starts works and how they counter eachother.
Looking forward to come back here in a week or so and see what you've done
this is so retarded
bump for addition of new section
btw am researching honcast.com matches to find the best examples and will hopefully be able to add replays soon or at least links
Last edited by KSlidz; 09-23-2010 at 02:19 PM.
why is this retarded
I am obviously just showing the basis of strategy within HoN and why the metagame is evolving the way that it is. I am not claiming to have completly covered every facet or even a complete section in the portion i have discussed. I am spending a lot of time on this and although my skill with each and every hero is not superb my knowlege of the strategy of this game has grown wiht every replay I have watched.
Please discuss with me why my implications are incorrect.
I am also not stating that liek in pokemon fire beats water no contest I am just showing how each strategy is viable.
I also have not described the extreme role that the jack of all trade classes play. (valk slither and most semicarries)
I wouldn't say retarded, but I still think saying one strat directly counters another is not correct.
For example, trilane (the metagame at the moment) is a kind of turtle strat which at this stage has no apparent counter other than
a) TB/Hag/Pharaoh doing really well at mid/top and coming down to rape at level 7 or 8
b) Using a trilane yourself
Some people are saying hardcore push will come in and stomp the trilanes but I haven't seen any evidence to support this yet
PS Water beats fire in Pokemon
PPS Slither is not a semicarry
---There are tanks in HoN | BDing is legit | LoL has overtaken WoW as most played game ---
--> Your argument is invalid <--
Slither is a versatile hero that can be played a numerous number of ways
I agree that the best way is to play him as support but unlike dshams ( anohter suport) he has semicarry potential
as stated in my main article I would agree that pushing strats counters trilaning
I do not have a match ID but many push oriented heroes have lately been winning in the competitive scene. (polly wog and HB, even some torturer play)
I am waiting for a team to employ a defiler and ophelia and completly destroy the enemy team. Another hero that is huge right now is balphagore... for 2 reasons, minions (mostly pushing towers) and his anti team fight ult.
I am not trying to claim absolute rules of the game but give basic synopsis of core strategies. Just like the list of hero roles. (that list has more hybrids listed) Heroes can be played many different ways, just like different strategies can be implemented in different styles.
Just try this line of reasoning next time you play with some friends and see what happens. I will be trying to add a list of essential hero roles soon and how they affect the metagame and basic strategies... directly or indirectly.
oh and also I am going to address the definitions of counter strats and "anti" type heros... they are not the same. (eg Balphagore is anti team fight becasue of his ult but is not a carry oriented hero. rather his ability is made to get stronger in the presence of teamfights where as a carry strat uses the weaknesses of teamfight strategies) (another way to put it is anti: only is good versus one type (very niche) where as counter is a strat that is generally strong in the areas the opposing strat is weak)
Last edited by KSlidz; 09-23-2010 at 09:49 PM.
How does Slither have semicarry potential? Because he's Agi??
Anyway, that's off topic. And yeah, MatchIDs for examples of one strategy beating another would be good for example and context.
The Polly game (if we're talking about the same one) was won not by pushing but by Polly being an absolute maddog and ganking all over the map.
---There are tanks in HoN | BDing is legit | LoL has overtaken WoW as most played game ---
--> Your argument is invalid <--
One full stop and comma, you start a sentence with "but" and no capitalization. I think you should take your own advice before you embarrasses yourself more.
Okay, if you had some logical, common sense, you would realize that I was actually mocking him by utilizing the method that he uses when typing.
Nice try.
Read above before embarrassing yourself again. Notice how I used one run-on sentence as an entire paragraph as he did in his response post. If you were a little smarter, you could've caught the allusion. I'm sure you'll catch on soon, though, no worries. Not everybody is able to notice these obvious subtleties. Oh, by the way, if you hadn't noticed yet again, the sentence before this one is flavored with a nice pinch of sarcasm.
Last edited by Poopship; 09-23-2010 at 10:47 PM.
I like your effort at describing the metagame strategies. It might help to discuss which is dominant currently, which heroes typically fit that strategy, and how one might pick against that strategy - for example you are on a team with :
Panda, Devourer, Swiftblade and Electrician. What hero should you be picking and how can you tell what the team strategy is ? Not saying this is the example you should use, only saying it might be useful for readers to understand how their pick can synergise or go against the team strategy.
You need high level games that support your conclusions on team strategies or I'm not buying.
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