The LA regionals was by far the best North American Heroes of the Storm event to date. With a larger pool of viable competitive heroes than any previous tournament, teams were free to be creative in their drafts. What resulted was nothing short of amazing, with Cho'gall, Lunara, and Greymane all seeing plenty of play and even heroes like Artanis and Illidan snuck out to play.
Cloud9 Barrels over E.T.C
With his moshpits, powerslides, and continuous self heals, E.T.C. can be a huge threat to any team, even the current world champions Cloud 9. What better way to counter a mobile bovine stun machine than with a little pandamonium? Although the cowman himself is surprisingly nimbly, the other members of his team were decidedly not.
With a quick gust, Falstad was able to separate those dangerous assassins from a ripe mosh, negating it's deadly set up. Afterwards, a quick barrel by Chen shakes thing up nicely, causing confusion and putting people right where they don't want to be. All the while Lunara and Falstad are chipping away at healthbars and you've got the perfect recipe for a Naventic cocktail.
Tempo Storm gets lost
With their backs against the wall against surprise underdogs King of Blades Alpha, Tempo Storm had to get a little creative. They threw a curve ball that few could have predicted, their ace in the hole was The Lost Vikings. Rarely seen, and even less often used to success, Kaeyoh controlled his Vikings like a true warrior of Valhalla. No lane was safe from his indiscriminate soak.
Despite KoBA's best efforts (and greatest attempt at a Sonya combo wombo this side of a Chen barrel) the pressure and level advantage of the Vikings proved to be too fierce. Their dreams were raided and pillaged more effectively than a coastal English village.
Cloud 9's Cho'Gall-buster beetles
Cho'gall is big, and scary. In a teamfight you're given a choice between focusing him or being eternally peppered by slaps, shadows, and molten fire. As two heroes in one, his impact on a teamfight is inarguably the biggest in the game. So what if you could just... remove him from play?
Well it turns out you can do exactly that. With a well placed web wrap Cho'Gall is reduced to a squirming mound of silk. With him out of the picture his team is forced to move back, but Cho'Gall doesn't have that luxury and his fate is left to Anub'arak. The giant ogre warlock isn't so tough without a healer is he?
Team Blaze feels the hatred
Team Blaze is something of a team of mad scientists when it comes to their strategies. Their unpredictability coupled with their huge hero pools make them an incredibly difficult opponent to draft against. When you see a draft like this though, if you didn't notice the Johanna, Greymane and Li-Ming and Cho'Gall bans you could easily think it was from a year ago.
A true blast from the past, Team Blaze worked this old school comp to perfection, making high risk high reward plays with the Illidan. Capitalizing on their near infinite aggressive opportunities, Blaze was able to smoke COGnitive out.
Blaze and Cloud9 compete for wackiest draft
This one is just a mess. Cloud 9 tested the waters of a warrior-less draft a few times during the LA regionals, but this one almost completely failed. A little Templar happened to wander by and completely ruin their plans. Ok not really, they were just generally outdrafted, but Artanis was played, and Artanis won, and that's all that really matters right?
In good nature, the C9 players poked a little fun at the draft and themselves for letting it happen.
This is definitely one of the strangest professional drafts to date, and the game is something of a masterpiece.
If there's one thing to take away from these awesome drafts and strategies, it's that heroes is in one of the best places its ever been. Niche heroes, pocket strats, and comfort picks are at an all time high and it seems like most every hero is capable of winning matches at the pro level.
With the ever watchful eye of Blizzard on it, we can only hope that this means a great game state in the future for HotS and viability for all heroes.
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