Heroes of Newerth

I still haven’t been playing very much Starcraft II, the game just seems to have lost it’s charm with me. It doesn’t seem as complex as Brood War was and that reason solely turns me off from the game.

However that previous paragraph is quite contradicting considering I’m now playing Heroes of Newerth (HoN) again. Which is a pretty simple game by Starcraft metagame standards.

So anyway this entry will be about HoN…

I’ve played this game a lot during it’s beta stages, before it I played a lot of DotA. Which I think was the better game for a lot of reasons. I was quite good in beta but this was also because I had a full team of competent players to constantly game with, and even sometimes game against. But now I’m lacking good playing partners and the amount of variance I encounter is quite hair pulling. I was a few points shy of 1700 MMR, now I’ve slipped to around 1600 in the past 5 days. It’s annoying how 1 poor player on a team can throw the entire game for your team.

The Bad:

I wouldn’t call myself an amazing player but I am better than the average gamer. I have played poorly as well some games. I can easily admit that. It’s incredible though the amount of blame that virtually every HoN player is unwilling to accept on themselves. The community is completely atrocious, it’s full of unwarranted self-important uneducated “children”. The reason I say children is because most users act like they're prepubescent still even though they’re clearly over the age of 18. It’s pretty sad and makes me lose a little bit more faith in humanity with every game I play. Everyone is incapable of spelling; I swear 99% of the people who play that game don’t know the difference between “Your” and “You’re”. I could go on and on about this so I’ll just leave it at that.

It’s also annoying how most public players don’t play the “role” their hero should be. You’re extremely lucky if you get a player who will ward the shit out of the map whenever he can. Or one who gives you the farm if you’re the hard-carry. I enjoy using Sandwraith so this is a huge problem in a lot of games. No one ever lets you get the creep kills which makes you almost useless. Lack of wards is always a big issue too. Without them you can’t tell when a gank is coming your way until it’s far too late in most cases. People always pick heroes that don’t benefit the team very well. Not to mention most people play for themselves only. Kill stealing is rampant because everyone only cares about their stats. It’s painful at times and I always ask myself “Why do I even play this game?”. The answer? Because DotA 2.0 isn’t out yet.

The Good:

Well onto some good points, I’d say the metagame has improved a lot since beta. More players know what items to get also due to the help of in-game guides. Before it was really a huge free for all like DotA was. If you were new or unfamiliar with your hero you would just buy what you thought was best and usually get hounded for going something dumb. So it’s good in that sense that is gives newer players a better edge against the veterans.

The game is actually really fun and enjoyable when you have a full team to play with. Even though it still may be rage inducing at times, I find it’s significantly less stressful when you have a team that can carry it’s weight and people who understand their jobs within the game. I typically like playing carry-type heroes or else supports. I don’t like tanks very much.

My favourite hero in the game right now would probably be Sandwraith as I sort of mentioned before.



He requires a lot of farming and a lot of players dislike him because of it. I like him though because if you have a good team that knows what they’re doing he can be a really efficient carry. He can maintain a constant presence in the game as well because of his ultimate. His deflection and damage reduction give him a lot of survivability in a battle. His sand spell gives him good utility as well since it slows, does AoE damage, has great range, and it can also be used to help escape from dire situations.

Once you get him farmed up weaker heroes on the opposition team have a very hard time doing anything because of his mobility and damage; Especially if you catch them alone. However, he’s quite useless with a useless team on your side. He’s just very item dependant and if you don’t get that farm in then you don’t get those items.

I’ll write more about HoN in the coming weeks as for right now… I need to play some more games!