Hero League - Ultimate Guide To Getting Rank 1 | Part 1

Hello lads, and happy holidays! Today our seasoned Heroes of the Storm boost team will talk about how to reach rank one. Our boosters grinded from the bottom of the ladder up to the top, the legendary “Rank 1”, many times, and have a few tricks to show you. We had a discussion about the most common practice to climb the ladder: practicing only a few champion, spamming only your main, or simply following our HotS tier list picking always the “op” heroes and so on. In the end, we gathered our ideas and realized this guide hoping to help you reaching your goal.

Before starting, let me be clear. Everyone should play games mostly for fun, but you need some competitive spirit to get to rank 1. You should also have a lot of time to play, willingness to improve and to try new strategies, and a decent raw skill. If you think that you meet these criteria, go ahead and read!

Keep in mind that this is the first part of the article: in the next days we will publish the second part.

Be Proactive, Always Do Something

During our duo queue boost sessions, we actively see games and players of all ranks and skills. We noticed that the main difference between rank 1 players and lowers ranks is not in raw skill and “team fighting” in general, but in PvE, player versus enemy. Simply, ranks one focus more on killing minions, pushing waves, soaking experience, damaging structures and securing objectives and camps. Sure, they have more game knowledge, usually have more skill and are better at fighting in general, but the biggest gap is in the fact that they don’t waste time at all.

Focus on soaking experience.

Soaking experience should always be your main goal, in every stage of the game. Here are a few tips about it: Soak experience from the maximum distance if you don’t feel safe. As long as you see the purple popup when a creep dies, you are getting experience If someone is ganking or rotating, move yourself. Try to always have at least one person soaking every lane at any time

Don’t leave your lane unless you really have to. Abuse the wells, don’t chase too hard for kills and don’t recall unless you are really low on health points and mana. Focus on soaking, not on fighting. Hug your towers without shame, and mute the enemies if they try to taunt you in chat. It’s better to lose some damage to your structures than to die for a three man gank.

Stay safe, always If an ally leaves his lane, push as hard as you can your lane and go cover it. HotS is a team game, and you should always help your team mates and soak as much experience as possible. Heroes with good pushing potential are on top of our Heroes of the Storm tier list for a good reason, so let’s take advantage of that!

Always look at your mana bar, and don’t waste too much mana to push the wave or harass the enemy unless you are sure to get an advantage out of it. You can’t really join a team fight or an objective if you don’t have enough mana or health points.

Winning the lane doesn’t always mean “killing your opponent”. Soaking experience and denying experience from the enemy is almost as efficient as killing them, and we can tell you for sure that it’s safer. I know it, the stat sheet doesn’t show who denied more experience, but it’s still the most important thing to do in a game. Heroes with long ranged abilities are perfect for this. A perfect example is Zagara, that is so strong, according to our HotS tier list, because of the denial potential of the Hydralisk, that forces the enemy either to take a lot of damage or to run away from the creeps.

Give Up Objectives And Mercs

We already talked about objectives in our previous articles, and we repeat it now. Objectives are important, but not essential! If your team is out of position, or you don’t have enough health points or mana, or the enemies have an experience lead, don’t suicide just to contest an objective. Take a small loss and go soaking experience somewhere else, or push a lane and try to trade objectives.

Same goes for mercs: according to our Heroes of the Storm boost team, mercs are pretty overrated, especially pre ten, since they are really hard to kill and you can’t get huge advantage from them. Later in the game they become more important, but remember that they should never be at the top of your priority list

This ends the first part of our guide. If you liked it, check our site in the next days for the second part.