The art of playing from behind

Everyone is a great player while ahead. All your skills connect, you just blink in with Zeratul, kill the enemy carries, wormhole back and proceed to take a selfie. But what happens when you are behind? It seems like you can’t make a difference, you feel discouraged and your team appears more and more to be consisting of you plus 4 bots. Heroes of the Storm is a fast-paced game of patience. First one to lose his nerve loses the game. Suddenly the 13 kills, 5 forts and 3 level deficit on Sky Temple at minute 13 disappears as you manage to take down three enemies and rush to their core after just one won team fight.

Be aware of powerspikes and exploitable strategies

No, I am not speaking about the Shadow Assault that just got hotfixed. I am speaking about small things that could lead you to victory even when behind. Just to mention a few – Sonya and her early level solo boss potential, Zeratul and his amazing Void prison and map control, Kael and his level 16 powerspike with the ignite talent. Those are all techniques that when used correctly can help you decide a team fight and the game. All they need is patience. Make sure you are always aware of the talent paths that others are going for. Checking your enemies' and allies' talents throughout the game will help you be aware of when their powerspike is coming.

The easiest exploitable strategy when behind is waiting for the overconfident enemy carry to do a misstep. And when he does, kill him mercilessly -- whether you spot him on the minimap and hide in a bush that he's about to facecheck, or just demolish him with all your crowd control after he tried to dive your backline. Killing the enemy carry always feels like a great success, boosting the team morale as well as the xp.

When playing with a deficit, your primary concern is to follow the enemy movement so you can pick up a solo kill 

Playing from behind is the time to take risks in your talent build in hope for rewards. Such risks might include taking the Bloodlust heroic instead of Ancestral Healing on Rehgar, picking Chain Bomb at level 13 instead of Flamethrower on Kael'Thas, or swapping the level 13 Jaina Ice block for an aggressive Icy Veins. 

When playing with a deficit, your primary concern is to follow the enemy movement so you can pick up a solo kill on the Sylvanas that decided to solo bruisers or the Jaina that just got in the bush to Hearthstone. With control abilities like Zeratul's Void Prison, Anub'arak's Web Blast, or Zagara's Devouring Maw, you can easily remove parts of the enemy team from fights and quickly clean up someone before the abilities expire. 

Always look to trade objectives and kills

It’s the little things that matter. Don’t spend even a second being idle. As the enemy team is ahead, a one-for-one kill is totally worth it. If you just saw an ally die and the enemies are together at the objective, don’t give them more kills, spread out and take mercenary camps. Needlessly dying can only further complicate your situation. By taking the mercenaries and thus trading objectives, you deny the enemy an opportunity to pressure you later with those camps. It might not always do much, but it's better than just dying in an uneven fight and watching the gray screen for a minute. Remember, in a random Heroes of the Storm game, the enemy will likely not be coordinated enough to always neutralize the mercenary camps without losing a structure or two.

If you just saw an ally die and the enemies are together at the objective, don’t give them more kills, spread out and take mercenary camps.

You don’t always have to force trade-offs and lose the primary objective. Educate yourself on all timers and patterns here, and play around them in order to claw your way back in the game.

An example – you are Sonya, and you know the chests are spawning in a minute. What do you do? An option is to cover the top vision tower, if it isn’t covered; wait 20 seconds just in case an enemy is onto you, the enemy checks Boss, sees nothing, leaves and then you proceed to take it. Around the time of chest spawn you are done with the Boss and you can try helping your team with the doubloons. Here the enemy has to either give up doubloons or let the Boss push the top lane really hard. If not a Sonya player, try convincing your allies to pull off this move together. Taking such high-risk, high-reward decisions sometimes ends up in disaster, but often is the first step towards turning the game around.

Another thing of paramount importance is to avoid fighting without a reason. If there is no objective to contest and you are fighting simply because of your high testosterone, you are putting yourself further behind. The team that is behind doesn’t want to take every fight possible and disengaging is always an option.

Develop a full retreat habit

As the game goes on, your enemy will become sloppier, since they are ahead and feel that they just need to play it out. You, on the other hand, should respond with optimal shape. Use the timers, and, if you are not planning a trade-off, go back to the Hearthstone in order to refill your health and mana. Every point counts, and with the enemy most likely coming to the fight with slightly exhausted health and mana, this can give you a potential edge in the next team fight.

Apart from this, don’t be afraid to recall to the Hearthstone at all. A lot of people still think of Heroes of the Storm as they do League of Legends. Don’t forget that this isn’t such a slow game--things happen fast. You don’t need to waste time recalling to buy items, and after a recall, you don’t walk back to lane. You fly on a magical carpet with extra movement speed. Use this magical carpet to keep yourself in shape at any given moment. Use fountains during fights to just tap them and go back in; don’t use them as your primary source of health and mana.

Commit to decisions

A person who makes a sub-par decision but commits to it can get better results than a person who makes a good decision, but dances around it. There is a free Boss, but your team refuses to take it? Leave it, follow them in their ridiculous quest of wasting good opportunities and hope for the best. You just killed 4 enemies at minute 23 and can push keep and core, but your team goes camps? Go camps with them, don’t risk a 1v1 death to the last enemy. I know, it's frustrating, but this is a team game and you should commit to decisions as a team. It is true that many Abathurs, Gazlowes, Sylvanas with Possession, and Azmodans have managed to win the game 1v5, ignoring each team decision. But this is not the best way of playing from behind. Counting on your team, even if said team is made up of badly programmed bots, is the way to go. 

Watch live video from Heroes of the Storm on Twitch

If you want to see all of this in action, make sure to check the second game between Na'Vi and Virtus Pro from the Road to Blizzcon European Qualifier. An amazing game in which one team patiently traded from behind until their moment came and they seized it. The game starts at around 01:01:10.

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