"Here We Go Again" with Heroes of the Storm 2.0

I quit playing Heroes of the Storm about a year ago, right around the times when Greymane was released. He was still priced at 15.000 gold when I left and I never even got the chance to play him. So this should be around January 12, 2016.

The release of Heroes of the Storm 2.0 and the pretty successful marketing campaign they followed to announce the release, I found myself playing this game again. Let's be honest here; it's really hard to say no to a "Get 20 heroes for free" promotion. I picked the assassin bundle. I don't like support, tanks or bruisers aren't what I crave and I already had about 90% of the specialists, which is my main role so I went with the assassin bundle as I was missing a lot of interesting heroes. From the list I was missing Alarak, Chromie, Falstad, Greymane, Gul'dan, Li-Ming, Lunara, Tracer, Valeera and Zul'jin. Whopping 10 heroes.

Assassin Mega Bundle

Of course coming back to the game after such a lengthy period of time, I was in awe when I saw all the new heroes that were released. After buying the mega bundle and looking at the list of heroes that weren't in the bundle, I almost went mad after seeing Ragnaros and Medivh and I immediately bought them with the gold I had already saved up from playing a little more than a year ago.

Once you click with a hero the enjoyment you can get out of the game is tremendous. I've had this with my beloved Abathur before so I already knew that feeling. As soon as I started playing Medivh, I started getting the same feeling again. I knew I had to master him. By mastering him I don't mean leveling him up to 15, as this is when Heroes of the Storm believes you have mastered a hero. I mean playing him to his fullest potential as far as my skill level goes, even if this happens post level 15. Well I did get him to 15 and while my performance is inconsistent (this is a general statement applies to every hero, sometimes I play insanely well, one game after that I might play a bit poorly), once I play him well, I play him really well by my own standards. So I consider him to be mastered alongside my Abathur whom I can safely say that I can play at a pro level.  

Medivh quickly became one of my most favourite heroes alongside Abathur.

After Medivh the other heroes I enjoyed a lot were Alarak, Greymane and Ragnaros. Surprisingly I really liked Auriel as well. This came as a surprise because I normally dislike support heroes with the exception of Tassadar and Tassadar is not even a healer. Auriel became the first legit healer hero I enjoyed playing. I liked Alarak the best among these heroes and I absolutely love the voice acting and his condescending lines. I already loved him in StarCraft so it was a pleasant surprise to see him in Heroes of the Storm. Sadly I am not that good with him, but I do land about 70-80% or so of my combos so I guess I'm doing a lot better than I did initially. Fingers crossed for an Alarak announcer in the future :) He is the only announcer I'd even consider using instead of Abathur announcer.

With 2.0 came a lot of new features. My favourites include the addition of loot chests and reduction of hero experience required to level up. With loot chests basically the entire game became free. I unlocked skins for heroes I don't even own or played before. When Auriel became free this week, I already had a legendary skin ready for her :D Hero experience required to level up in higher levels were too much pre 2.0. I remember farming for 2 million or so experience to get to level 10 from level 9. Now it's around 1.200k experience required to reach much higher levels than 10. I absolutely love this change.

I didn't expect to enjoy Auriel.

That being said, I can't understand the removal of master skins. I get that players had a dilemma once they reached level 10 and they could either buy a hero or a master skin but this didn't call for the removal of master skins altogether. Master Skins could have been unlocked after reaching a certain level with that hero for free. Additional tints could be unlocked once you level up even further. Right now there is no indication of how much time a person has spent on a certain hero (unless checked on their profile, excluding master hero portraits) but master skins used to do this. I also hate the idea of map rotation. We have so many wonderful maps and that's one of the best things about Heroes of the Storm. Why limit that to 6 maps? I won't be discussing map rotation at length because with Malthael patch map rotation will be removed from AI, QM and Unranked game modes while still existing for Hero League and Team League modes. 

Speaking of Malthael, I'm chuffed to bits that he is the next hero. I really want the Angiris Council to be in Heroes of the Storm and of course I want all the Greater Evils and definitely Duriel as well. We desperately need angels to be able to fly as an option for mounting though. I understand that people might want to show off Malthael's Phantom on Malthael and Tyrael's Charger on Tyrael but I'd prefer my angels to utilise their wings as intended, for flying :D I also find it funny that The Angel of Death himself has to go to graveyard every time he dies while Leoric lingers around :P

I am really glad to be back into the game and I'm enjoying myself even more thanks to the presence of my wonderfully entertaining co-op partner.