Interview with Veineless: 'Having certain Heroes being stronger than others is something that is needed'

Heroes of the Storm is in its beta stages but it is swiftly growing as a popular eSport. Attracting players from all different backgrounds of gaming, whether they are avid Blizzard fans or just a lover of the MOBA game type, they have been getting behind this game. But how will Heroes of the Storm do as an eSport? On January 3rd Team Dignitas announced their Heroes of the Storm team by this time Marcel 'Veineless' Lehmann was already a seasoned player. We had the chance to sit down and have a chat with Veineless about being a part of this growing eSport.

Firstly let’s talk about how you got into playing Heroes of the Storm? What attracted you to it?

Veineless: When I first heard about Heroes of the Storm I really liked the idea of an entirely team-based MOBA as that is what a team game should really be in my opinion. Already being a complete roster from another game, me and my team decided to give it a shot and ended up really liking it, deciding to actually switch over to it and compete with the same roster.

 

How would you say playing Support in Heroes is different to in other MOBAs such as League of Legends and Dota2?

Veineless: I think the most important thing when it comes to Supports in Heroes is that pretty much all of them are not just Supports, but most importantly Healers. In other MOBAs Supports tend to be more CC based and less focused on healing. In fact, if you don't have any sort of Healer in a team, you will probably not be very successful in the long run. With that being said, Supports tend to fill an entirely different role in Heroes, while they generally focus on Crowd Control and Vision Control in Games such as League of Legends and DotA, they are way more teamfight oriented in Heroes of the Storm and tend to support their teammates directly instead of indirectly through vision and such.

 

What is your current practice schedule like?

Veineless: Me and my team try to scrim from anywhere between 2 to 4 hours daily and generally play Hero League whenever we feel like it/have time to do so. Eventually, we will increase our scrim time, once we are done with our last tournament in our prior scene.

 

You’ve consistently been placing in the top 8 in the ESL Go4Heroes cups how are you and the team working to improve upon that?

Veineless: As we are still fairly new to the scene, we think that top 8 currently is not really that bad. Although we were happy with placing top 8 for our first official tournaments in the scene, we think that we can do way better. With that being said, we have already immensely improved in recent scrims and will try to continuously do so but have yet to prove that in official matches.

 

What is your opinion on balance at the moment, given that it is still in its closed beta stage?

Veineless: Even though the game is still in its closed beta phase, I think that the current balancing is actually very good. Having certain Heroes being stronger than others is something that is needed as it gives Blizzard the opportunity to rotate between "viable" Heroes from time to time. Saying that though, I think the only real difficulties with the current balancing is the fact that there aren't that many Heroes that are available for play.

 

Blizzard can typically be very conservative with balance changing, often going for the approach of seeing if players can find their own solution, do you think they will keep this approach in Heroes and what would be the pros and cons of that?

Veineless: I think that Blizzard has been doing a good job so far in terms of Hero balancing. They have been listening to the community (looking at you Resurgence...) and generally didn't really leave anything that is like waaay too good out there for a long time. Generally, I feel like if one or two Heroes are way too strong, there will always be certain counterpicks to it, and if not, the community already introduced Bans in competitive play, so balancing isn't really that much of a problem in a MOBA environment as in an MMORPG environment such as in WoW. I think Blizzard will keep doing a pretty good job in Heroes of the Storm balancing and hope to see that they won't just keep nerfing overpowered things but rather buff the underpowered things.

 

How do you feel about the lack of banning in draft? Do you think that it will need to be implemented or that it adds an extra level to the game?

Veineless: I think that the current Draft System is still really unfinished. The fact that there is no swap option and the pick order is randomized just doesn't really make sense to me. I think that is one of the main reasons Bans are needed in the current version of Draft, just because the team with second pick has a higher chance to have one of the two players being players of the Heroes that are currently considered top tier picks. Generally, the competitive scene already has an established 1 ban per team and I think this will still be implemented into Hero League Draft by Blizzard.

 

Who is your favourite Hero and why?

Veineless: Currently, my favorite Hero is Brightwing as I really love Champions that can really do a lot to save their teammates. This is generally done by Healing and some sort of CC which Brightwing both has in the form of her passive and Polymorph. Also, the Polymorph not only defends her teammates but opens up focus opportunities onto enemies. Brightwing generally brings a lot to a team and is very fun to play, and she's also pretty good for Hero League because of Phase Shift.

 

What are your thoughts on the battleground system? Which is your favourite battleground and are there any which you think need improving?

Veineless: I really like the Battleground System. It opens up for teams being good on certain Battleground and requires Teams to be able to play multiple teamcomps. It adds variety and makes the game less boring to play for longer durations. The only real downside of the System would be that you have to learn multiple maps when joining the game. The only Battleground that I feel currently needs improving is Haunted mines as it is way too vulnerable to heavy snowballing due to it being only a 2 lane map and because of the timing of mines being crucial if someone dies.

 

Are there any heroes or villains that you’re hoping will appear in Heroes of the Storm from any of the Blizzard games? Who and why?

Veineless: I don't really know about Blizzard lore but I would appreciate Deathwing being in the game just because it was my first bigger raid I've done in WoW. :D

 

What are some of your aims and goals for 2015 with regards to the team, tournaments and events?

Veineless: For 2015, we aim to be qualifying for all the major leagues/ladders coming up and aim to just keep improving so that we end up being really a top team. Generally, we just want to constantly improve at all times.

 

What do you think it will take for Heroes of the Storm to become a mainstream eSport or is it already on its way?

Veineless: I think Heroes of the Storm already has everything it needs to be a mainstream eSport. The fact that there are already over 60 teams participating in the weekly tournaments speaks for itself. A game generally becomes big in eSports when the community starts building up the competition for it. If the developers end up creating some sort of official league around it, it's definitely good, but not needed at this point. I think we are seeing the making of the next big eSport, especially because it already has a big following just because of the fact that it's made by Blizzard.

 

To finish with as beta invites are going out a lot more frequently now, plus the founders pack allows people to buy into the beta, what advice would you give to new players starting out?

Veineless: Remember that in this game teamplay is of great importance. Try to have one person in each lane until you're about level 10 and then just start grouping with your team. Also try to follow calls that people make, even if you think they aren't really the best thing to do, doing a rather bad thing as 5 is better than doing 2 different things split up. If you have any questions about myself or Heroes of the Storm, feel free to ask me on twitter, I am more than happy to answer everything I can :) Most importantly, it's a game after all so have fun!

 

Follow Veineless on Twitter: @Veineless and on Twitch: Veineless