Hna Strategy - My personal advice

J.P.P.P.P.P 2011-03-31, 00:51

Firstly lets get 1 thing straight. By hna strategy i do not mean anything to do with hero selection, items or even use of abilities. What i mean is the basic strategy that underlies in the game. I'm posting this because i have played so many games reccently with player who have played many games, consider themselves skilled at hero control and item selection, yet they have no idea why they lose (often against less skilled and less experienced opponants). The answer is simple, they don't follow basic strategy.

I'm just going to cover some basic strategies: of course in reality you must sometimes adapt from these strategies, but these are the general steps i feel people should take depending on the situation.

Firstly i'll talk about an offensive strategies:

Offensive strategies should be used when:
- You have many stuns and the opponants have few or none
- You have many summons and the opponants have few or none
- You have no or few agility heroes and the opponants have several
- You have heroes with significant experience or stats advantage

Offensive strategies are aimed at pushing the opposing team back and over time killing their towers and eventually their barracks. To carry out an offensive strategy you must be ready to take some minor risks and really focus the opponants whenever you get a chance. When you get near the opponants towers you should get 4 or 5 heroes in that line and really try to gaurd your creeps. Your opponants will usually now react in 1 of 2 ways:
a) By teleporting down and attempting to stop you
b) By trying to push your towers on the opposite line

If they choose option a) then you must look for an oppertunity to focus 1 of their weaker heroes (preferably before the other heroes can arrive in time), if this cant be done you must concentrate on defending yourselves and your creeps, either through mass stuns, healing or general nuke damage. If you manage to kill a hero then take advantage of your numbers and overpower the rest, try to kill as many towers as possible and if you kill 2+ heroes send 1 hero back to buy bats and immediately rejoin the battle. If it is at the end of a long end game, you should also consider buying a golem for a final push. If at any point it seems like you will lose a hero or lose all your creeps, you should immediately retreat and creep the other line attemping to push those towers instead.

If they choose option b) then you have to decide whether you can destroy their towers before they can destroy yours. This decision should be made based upon the number of aoe nukes, number of summons and hero levels. If you feel like you can push them, then go for it, destroy their towers and then immediately ALL tp back to minimise your own damage. If you don't feel like you can out-push them, then have 2 or 3 of your team go back and minimise damage, while the others attempt a 'mini-push'. If the heroes from their team then tp down the remaining heroes on the attacking line should tp back and try to pick off any remaining heroes in the defending line.

If at any point in either of these adaptations, the opponants buy bats or gryphens then you must all go back and kill these, there is nothing you can do to continue to push, effectively they are swapping 900-1000 gold for temporary safety.

People carrying out offensive strategies, should buy units and push as soon as they can as long as they are being succesful suppressing the opponants heroes. If they are not, they should consider a change of strategy.

Next i will talk about a defensive strategies:

Defensive strategies should be used when:
- You are faced with an overwhelming number of stuns
- You are faced with an overwhelming number of summons
- You have many agility heroes and few strength heroes
- The other team has a significant experience advantage

Defensive strategies attempt to delay the progress of the opponants team, so that they can gain a long term advantage. The type and extremity of the defensive strategy you play, will depend upon the opposing team. To start a defensive strategy, heroes should be split so that the strongest long run heroes (generally agility heroes) get the most experience. If this proves too difficult then heores should split to give these heroes the best protection. In defensive strategies, you do not attempt to focus any enemy heroes, unless it is during a defensive maneuver. You must try to use your abilities to kill as many creeps as possible, every creep counts, so dont lose focus of this objective and don't be tempted to try and focus an enemy hero unless they are in an extremly obvious position of vanurability. If the enemies try to counter your defensive strategy with an offensive strategy, this is your chance to finally do some damage. You must be ready to move about and help your teammates in both lines, even if tp is on cd, you should often run to help them. When somebody on your team is focused your team should try to follow roughly this procedure:
1) All rush to that hero
2) Do all you can to make sure that hero will survive
3) Look for an oppertunity to focus an enemy hero

Sometimes 2) and 3) just aren't possible, if this is the case, try not to lose heart, just continue the strategy as normal and wait for the next oppertunity, do not be tempted to try and focus in order to pull the k/d ratio back, if you play this strategy correctly, you will get to do that later.
I use some basic guidelines when judging the severity of the defensive strategy needed:
a) If the opponants have a 0-2 stuns, a 0-2 level advantage or a strong agility hero then you should stay out of the opponants tower range at all times.
b) If the opponants have 3+ stuns, a 3+ level advantage or 2+ strong agility heroes, then you should stay behind your side of the river, yes all that way back :O, it may seem like you are missing out on a lot of potential creeps or action but you are at least surviving and preventing the opponants team from gaining additonal xp and giving your team a better chance in the long game.
c) If at any point the opponants team is over your side of the river and NOT focusing a hero, you should be BEHIND the line of the towers.

Do not buy units until they are making a noticable push against your towers, at this point you should buy ONLY the units neccesary to continue to defend.

When you have gained a significant xp or stats advantage then you should switch to an offensive strategy, but make sure you are prepared for the extremity of a high level hero fight by equiping yourself with a mix of offensive and defensive items.

These are just the basic 2 strategies, there are many pro adaptations and alternative strategies that rely on hero selection, risk-taking or both.

Hopefully someone will find this helpful, thanks in advance if you bother reading it! ^^