Greetings! k0nduit here, and today I've got an article for you on Ultimate Economy in Heroes of the Storm. It's a topic I've been working on in my own gameplay as of late, and a principle that I feel is perhaps a bit underemphasized when it comes to becoming proficient in developing a gameplan for the current game state. I believe the first time I heard/learned about the phrase "Ult Economy" was in the context of playing Overwatch, Blizzard's FPS. I think that the term should probably be a part of Heroes of the Storm's lingo as well - though HotS' Ult Economy has its own flavor, of course. In a nutshell, observing the "Ult Economy" involves keeping track of what ultimates both teams have available and using that to structure your gameplan. But it's not just about the numerical quantity of ultimates on each side, it's also about how those ultimates match up - we'll discuss this in today's article as well. So, without further ado, let's get into it!

Heroically Using Your Heroics

Ultimate abilities in HotS (i.e. Heroics), as you know, are often extremely impactful and game-changing. The presence or absence of Heroic abiliites in a teamfight can completely swing the outcome of said engagement. Have you ever been on the receiving end of a Gul'dan Horrify that hits 4-5 members of your team? Spoiler alert - it's horrifying.

The fundamental concept of Ult Economy arises because most Heroics have lengthy cooldowns. To give a few examples, ETC's Mosh Pit has a 120 second CD, which is on the higher end of Heroic Cooldowns, while Orphea's Eternal Feast has a 50 second cooldown, on the lower end. Because ultimates are usually so powerful, and because they have long cooldowns, there will be periods of time where a given hero's output and teamfighting potential is comparatively high and also periods where it is comparatively low (because his/her heroic is cooling down). Being aware of and managing your team's Ultimate availability is critical and is the first step to understanding Ult Economy.

A common mistake I've seen (and done myself) is taking teamfights when your team doesn't have important teamfighting Heroics up. This seems like a simple guideline to follow, but there can be some confounding factors that make this guideline more complex and not as straightforward as it would seem. The first thing to keep in mind is that you can be incentivized to take a teamfight when in actuality it's not favorable for you: the best example that comes to mind is when a map objective is spawning.

The Cursed Hollow Example

Let's say you're on Cursed Hollow and both teams have two tributes secured so far. The fifth tribute has just spawned (which will be "Curse point" for either team), but your team's big teamfighting heroics are still cooling down from the last tribute fight: Tychus's Odin (100s), Fenix's Purification Salvo (90 sec), Rehgar's Ancestral Healing (100s), etc. are all down. Your opponents, in contrast, have shorter cooldowns in the 60-70 second range and are more or less ready to go. You can attempt to stall the tribute until your ults are up, but this can be very risky with your composition. If the enemy team is tracking cooldowns properly, they'll know that your ults are unavailable and might look to hard force a teamfight if you try and posture around the tribute. In this case, it's often going to be a good idea to give the tribute and defend the curse, rather than attempting to fight for the tribute without your important teamfighting Heroics. Though it feels bad to yield a curse, you'll have a better chance of winning the game by conceding the tribute rather than taking the teamfight down ultimates; if you do take the teamfight, you're unlikely to win, and decisively losing a teamfight just as the enemy team Curses you can be catastrophic!

Sometimes though, you can be a bit patient and wait for your ultimates to finish cooling down, and then engage - it's very contextual. Patience is key here; while it can be tempting to rush into a fight, holding back and stalling from range (if you have the capabilities to do so safely, is another primary consideration) for 10-15 seconds for a big teamfight ultimate to come up can make all the difference.

Evaluate Your Available Resources Before Taking a Fight

Put simply, whenever you're evaluating whether you want a particular teamfight, always factor in your ultimate availability. This practice is something you need to build a habit of doing - it won't come without paying attention to it. Before every potential teamfight, ask yourself: "Are our important Heroics available? Are they coming up soon? Are the enemy's Heroics available?" You want to frequently and consistently be asking yourself these questions so that they become ingrained into how you think about teamfight evaluation and structuring your macro gameplan. It's not easy (I'm still working on this myself in fact!), but occasionally glancing at your team's Heroic cooldowns - you can view them below each hero's portrait - and using that info to structure how you build a gameplan and figure out when and where you can be aggressive will pay big dividends down the line.

ETC's Mosh Pit has immense game-changing potential, but its cooldown is appropriately lengthy.

As mentioned in the line of self-questioning above, you need to be thinking about the opponents' Heroic cooldowns as well. Oftentimes you'll be able to do this based on 'feel', particularly after you've played a lot of Heroes of the Storm. For example, you'll know a particular enemy Heroic's cooldown, notice that a decent amount of time has passed since its last use, and be able to say with confidence that it's up again. But the longer the cooldown, the harder it is to judge based on 'feel', and the more valuable it is to know the exact time it'll be back up so that you can play around it. Sometimes, knowing the exact timer on an opponent's Heroic use can be a critically impactful piece of information. Things like Mosh Pit, Void Prison, and Odin are high-impact ultimates that are important to know when they're up, and conversely, when they're down. If you know that certain abilities are still down for even just 15-20 seconds, forcing a teamfight can pay big dividends. For these kinds of lengthy-CD heroics, I would advise typing out in chat when the ability was used, so you'll know it's back up.

Applying the Principles of Ult Economy

Let's discuss some common considerations, lines of play, and tactics you can apply with a solid understanding of the Ult Economy of the current game state:

If you hit level 10 before your opponents, and your opponents are playing too far up/are giving you an opportunity to engage, then by all means, rip your ultimates and win a free teamfight and get a free advantage on the map. First off, there's a high likelihood that you'll win the fight and be able to get an advantage (because your team has Heroics while the enemy does not), so you're favored to get good value. Secondly, your Heroics will probably be near-ready by the time the enemy team gets their Heroics or when the next objective spawns. You see this come up sometimes on maps like Volskaya Foundry and Infernal Shrines, where there's a good chunk of time between the first and second objectives spawning. However, if your opponents acquire level 10 soon after the initial fight, then make sure to play safe in order to avoid giving your opponents an opportunity to fight while your own Heroics are down.

As mentioned in the above tip, getting good value from your Heroic usage is important. The bigger the cooldown, the more you want to make sure you're getting an appreciable advantage from its expenditure - you don't want to deploy a Mosh Pit for a random kill that can't yield a bigger advantage on the map! One common pitfall to consider regarding the concept of value is when you use a Heroic (even just an average CD Heroic, like Hanzo's Dragon Arrow at 70s) to get a kill, but the enemy you eliminated respawns in time for the objective fight and you don't have your Heroic back up yet. In such a situation, you gained a little bit of experience, but now you're down a key tool in your arsenal for the objective fight, which usually pays the winner much greater dividends. In short, try not to expend key cooldowns when an important fight or map objective is imminent - unless those cooldowns expended result in some kind of advantage for the objective itself.

Sometimes, an advantage in the number of heroics you have available can trump a raw numbers disadvantage. Here's a scenario that I see come up a decent amount: your opponents blow the vast majority of their high-impact Heroics in order to secure a kill - but only one kill. Your team still has 4 Heroics available; depending on the texture of the compositions and matchup, in this kind of situation you can sometimes reengage and take that 4v5 and might even be highly favored in doing so. Try and engage decisively to even the numerical odds quickly!

What kind of Heroics each team has available is also an important factor to consider. For example, Yrel's Ardent Defender isn't a huge playmaking ult that you have to play around. You can probably take a fight if that's the ultimate you know they have available. In essence, you don't always have to wait to have all your ults up, you can take fights normally too even if the opponents have a couple ults available - if you don't feel too threatened by them. It's contextual - figure out what you're wary of, and if those are things you can play around adequately, then maybe it's OK to take the fight.

Understanding Resource Investments

Before we go any further, here's a good place to mention this: Some non-Ultimates are key players in the Ult Economy. The "Ultimate Economy" covers a broader market than just Heroic abilities: things like Cleanse, D.Va's Self-Destruct, Tyrande's Elune's Chosen, etc. are all high-impact abilities with non-trivial cooldowns that require some planning and forethought to properly manage their downtime. Level 20 talents like Rewind are also cooldowns that you should consider waiting for before you engage in another teamfight.

As you play more and more HotS, you'll sometimes hear a phrase along the lines of "trading resources". What this refers to is exchanging one cooldown for another; sometimes this is the result of both teams trying to make a play on one another, and other times it's answering an offensive cooldown with a defensive cooldown (like Cleanse-ing some potent CC, for example).

In HotS, it's important to think about and get a solid understanding of how teamfights should play out in a given match. You'll naturally figure things out through observation and experience in a game, but the real win percentage lies in being able to understand the flow of teamfights BEFORE they happen. In essence, you should think about the matchup from the beginning of the game and start planning out your gameplan. A key component of this analysis is figuring out whether and how to counter the opponent's Ults, and how the enemy will do the same to your own team's Ults. For example, let's say the enemy Garrosh has taken Warlord's Challenge and you're playing Rehgar. Other dire circumstances notwithstanding, you should plan to use your Cleanse to help whoever gets Taunted - be ready with Cleanse as soon as someone gets tossed!

Whitemane's Scarlet Aegis is a great answer to a number of AoE damage and/or CC ultimates.

As I mentioned, thinking about the value you'll be getting with your Heroic usage is important. Sometimes it's better to hold onto a high-impact ultimate (e.g. Horrify) in a teamfight until you see a better opportunity, rather than using it immediately at the start of the fight. It can be a tough call to make but allowing your opponents the chance to group up a bit when they're trying to collapse for a kill can outright win you the teamfight. Additionally, it may be a good to to wait on Horrify until you see that the enemy support has been forced to use Cleanse because of a teammate's CC. This kind of setup requires some coordination, but exchanging cooldowns (even basic ability cooldowns, which can also play a part in the Ult Economy) to ensure that a different, higher-impact cooldown gets value is a great way to make a play.

When it comes to optimizing for value, defensive cooldowns are perhaps even tougher to employ than offensive ones. The first thing to think about regarding defensive ultimates is to always use your cooldown with a plan. Cleanse, as mentioned above, should be used to counter something in particular from the enemy team - not necessarily an ultimate, but maybe some kind of CC that's particularly threatening in a given context. Big defensive heroics like Whitemane's Scarlet Aegis, Lucio's Sound Barrier, and Auriel's Crystal Aegis can sometimes be used to prevent allies from dying to general focus fire, but other times they're best used as "answers" to particularly threatening abilities from the enemy team. For example, Scarlet Aegis serves as a good counter to Genji diving in with Dragonblade, and Lucio's Sound Barrier controls Fenix's Purification Salvo well. Think about how you see your defensive Heroics best being used in upcoming teamfights. Do you want to counter, or "answer" anything specifically from the enemy team? Sometimes you'll use your cooldown for general damage mitigation, and other times you'll use it to answer something - both of these can happen in the same match, it's contextual; but, the important thing is to have considered beforehand your potential use cases so you can play towards them, should they come up.

Defensive cooldowns are one way to answer offensive cooldowns, but offensive CDs can answer offensive CDs as well! Sometimes the best answer to a Diablo Apoc combo is to use your powerful CC on the enemy damage dealers so they can't follow up. Taking this a bit further, counter-engaging can be the best move, and expending your own offensive resources can diminish the value your opponents get from their offensive resources.

Taking Advantage of Faulty Investments

Heroics can be very high-impact when used correctly, and, as we've discussed, ensuring you get good value from them is important. However, it's critical to realize that sometimes things do go awry, and you can take advantage of mis-invested cooldowns.

What I mean by this is that, sometimes, you don't have to fight into an opponent's cooldown expenditure and can just disengage. For example, let's examine a defensive Thrall Earthquake. Imagine a scenario where your team is collapsing on Thrall, and, feeling threatened, he pops Earthquake defensively. The disruption from EQ stops you from getting an immediate kill, and additionally you know that his team is rushing to help him and teamfight. Here, you have two options: option one is to continue to try and get the pick on Thrall, but this can be a bit risky and it's not guaranteed you'll get the kill before his team gets there to help; and even if you do get the kill, you may have expended too many resources to properly manage the opponents who are rushing in and looking for a teamfight. The second option is to disengage as soon as you realize that chasing becomes difficult. In this way, you get an essentially free cooldown (a 100 second one at that) and have a big advantage in the upcoming skirmishes and teamfights. Earthquake is a huge teamfighting ultimate, and not having it available is a critical tool lost for the enemy team.

In essence, don't be afraid to force out a cooldown and be happy with that. Fighting into the cooldown gives the opponent full value (because the enemy team is rushing in to fight on top of the Earthquake and to help Thrall), while disengaging, though you could've potentially gotten a kill, gives you a free resource advantage over the enemy team. You can even use a cooldown in the pick attempt on Thrall (Mephisto's Durance of Hate, for example), and while you technically traded 1-for-1 on ults, Durance will be up 40 seconds sooner than Earthquake - so you've still "won out" on the resource trade. Be sure to look to take advantage of that 40 second window! In general, if you've forced or baited out a cooldown, try to take advantage of it while it's down - play a bit more aggressive, and look for teamfights a little more proactively to exploit that you have a resource advantage over the enemy.

Another great example of this is Alexstrasa's Dragonqueen. Dragonqueen is a such a powerful cooldown (it typically makes you heavily favored to win a head-on teamfight) that oftentimes the right play for the enemy team is to disengage from it; this is usually a reliable strategy as well, because Dragonqueen doesn't offer great chasing capabilities. So when playing Alexstrasa, you really HAVE to make sure you're in a situation to get great value from DQ when you pop it, because otherwise your opponents can just run away. I actually don't like Alexstrasa a lot for this reason; because so much of her power budget is in Dragonqueen and enemies can often just run away from it, it's often a little difficult to pop the cooldown with confidence. However, this is why Alexstrasa is so strong on maps like Infernal Shrines and sometimes Volskaya: the nature of the map objective on those battlegrounds is such that teams MUST fight into the Dragon in order to secure or defend the objective (in a relatively small area, to boot), so you're guaranteed to get value from popping Dragonqueen.

Defensive cooldowns in particular are tricky to use for a similar reason, as they often have to be used "reactively, but proactively"; what I mean by this is that oftentimes you want to pop the cooldown a little bit in advance of when the damage arrives, but teams that are responding well or are intentionally trying to draw out a cooldown can take advantage of that, then disengage. One example of this is Lucio's Sound Barrier: if you use it too early, then teams can just wait out the 6 second duration and then reengage with your team being down a key defensive cooldown. It's good to keep in mind this potential pitfall (whether you're playing Lucio, or are playing against him), so you can alter and manage your play accordingly.

The Ult Economy is Booming

Taking a deeply analytical view of a match can be difficult, but it will yield great dividends. Speaking from experience, there have been many occasions where you might think: "How did we lose that teamfight? What should have gone differently? Should we not have taken that fight?" Analyzing the Ult Economy of the teamfight is a great first step in order to understand what you could've done better.

The biggest message that I want to convey in this article is to track your own and the enemy team's cooldowns, and have a good, if not exact idea of their availability when considering whether a teamfight is good for you. If you need a little bit of time before you have key cooldowns up, then wait and be patient! Communicating with your team is helpful too: be sure to communicate things like, "I've got Horrify up in 10 seconds, let's stall a bit and then go in." You'd be surprised at how much such a simple communication habit can help increase your win percentage! The key things are patience and knowing when to wait for particular ultimates that you need to be available - figure out your team's gameplan and play towards it. Understanding Ult Economy will help you take good fights, and if you're taking good fights, then you'll be in a strong position to win the game!

That's all for today, I hope you enjoyed the article. If you'd like to discuss anything HotS, have comments/feedback on this article, or just want to say hi, feel free to tweet me @k0nduit and I'll get back to you.

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