Introduction

In Heroes of the Storm, we are blessed with a good sized map pool, all with different objectives meant to keep the players on their toes and try to gain an advantage over their opponents. Today we are looking at the map Cursed Hollow - a map where teams fight over tributes to bring the Raven Lord's Curse down upon the enemy teams minions and structures.

Map Objective

The goal for the teams on Cursed Hollow is to destroy the enemy team's structures and defeat their core to end the game. To help them do this, Tributes of the Raven Lord will spawn around the map. Channel a tribute without getting interrupted and when your team has gathered 3 tributes, the Raven Lord will curse the enemy team's minions and towers.

Cursed minions are reduced to one hit point and the lanes will naturally be pushed toward the enemy structures, if not taken care of. The Curse does not however reduce mercenary minions to one hit.

Cursed structures will be disarmed and unable to fire at minions and heroes. This makes the structures really vulnerable and highly likely to fall to either the minions pushing or the non-cursed team grouping without fear of taking cannon fire.

Watchtowers

Cursed Hollow has 2 Watchtowers, which are placed fairly deep into each team's side of the map. On this map, the Watchtowers provides great vision of nearby Tribute spawn points and the 2 Giant camps on the map.

Mercenary Camps

There are a great number of mercenary camps to be picked up at Cursed Hollow. We have 2 sets of each of the classic camps: Siege Giants, Knights, and Grave Golem (Boss). On Cursed Hollow, the camps are placed deep into each teams site of the map and an enemy team will have to go behind enemy lines to steal a camp away from the enemy site of the map.

Decision Making

On a map with so many objectives, you have to make decisions constantly. In this section I'll cover some of the basics, but remember that these only apply in most situations and not all.

Tributes: If your team is keeping up in experience with the enemy team and you are not outnumbered in living heroes, then you should always rotate for the Tribute when it spawns. Some good advice is to always engage the Tribute spawn from your teams site of the map, so that you are not trapped or separated from your team.

When should you not go for a Tribute? If your team is behind in experience and it is not a Curse Tribute (The Third tribute collected by a team which will activate the Raven Lord's Curse), then the spawning of a Tribute is an opportunity to catch up. Keep a hero in each lane to soak experience and sent one or two heroes who can poke safely to delay the Tribute for the enemy team.

If you are the one going to the Tribute, then remember that you are fighting an already lost fight and dying will be a waste of the soaking that the rest of your team has been doing during it.

Siege Giants: The Siege Giant camp on your team's side of the map will get the most value if you take it when a Tribute is spawning on the other vertical direction of the map. This means that if you are the team on the left site of the map, then you should take your Siege Giants when the Tribute spawns on one of the three points in the lower part of the map so that they can push the lane and structures while both teams are fighting over the Tribute.

When to steal enemy Siege Giants? The enemy Siege Giants are placed deep into enemy territory, which makes it really risky to go in to steal them alone. The best opportunity to steal the enemy Giants is when you get some kills on the enemy team at the Tribute spawn close to the camp. A single exception is if you are playing The Lost Vikings and can go and bribe the camp.

Boss and Knights: These two camps are placed right next to each other and if you take a Boss, then you might as well take the Knights right next to it. But when should you ping the Boss and ask your team for assistance? Well, the Boss takes a fairly long time to cap and it deals a good amount of damage to you while you try to take it, so you will need to know that the enemy team will not collapse on you while you are trying to go for your Boss.

Some of those situations could be when you get some kills on enemy heroes and you can rotate to your Boss as a full team. Another riskier situation is when you spot a low mobility enemy hero on the other site of the map and think you have time to rush your Boss before the enemy team can rotate.

Going for Double Boss: When you have taken the Boss on your team's side of the map, then you can use the time it takes for the Boss to move to lane to take your Knights as well. If you can see, that the enemy team's heroes are still visible in lanes and not fighting their own Boss, then you should rotate to their boss and take that while the enemy team is dealing with the first Boss on the other side of the map and the Knights in the middle lane.

We Just Cursed the Other Team! Should We Go for Boss or Structures? This is where it gets tricky. If you lost a teammate or two in the Tribute fight, then you should go and push a lane as a group. If all your heroes are still alive, then I would say that it depends on where the Tribute spawned at. If the Tribute spawned in one of the two closest locations to your Boss, then I would go for it, but if you are further away, you are going to waste half the duration of the Curse rotating across the map to take your Boss. Never go for double Boss while the other team is cursed, it's a waste of time that could be spent on pushing structures.

Heroes That Thrive on this map

Cursed Hollow is a large map and so heroes with great long-distance-mobility have an advantage on this map.

Heroes like Dehaka, Brightwing, Falstad, Abathur with clone, and E.T.C. with Stage Dive are highly effective at creating a numbers advantage when a small skirmish fight breaks out somewhere on this map. Other than that, Abathur and The Lost Vikings have the opportunity to give their team the experience lead when both teams fight over the map objective.

During a Curse, Lunara is really good at taking down structures with her high siege damage potential when she doesn't have to be afraid of structures. Having a Tyrande is always great for vision on a large map like Cursed Hollow, either to spot enemy rotation or, more importantly, to see if they are trying to take a Boss.

Writer's Opinion

I personally like Cursed Hollow a lot. It is my second favorite map, beaten only by Infernal Shrines. I like the classic three lane format with a map objective that lures in both teams for a fight. While other maps have that too, I'm a fan of the narrow areas surrounding the map objectives. I think it makes the teamfights more interesting, with great possibilities for flanking. I also like the Curse. It gives a sudden rush when you can charge straight into a minion wave take it out in one hit and then start beating on a tower, all to see how much you can get out of your window of time.

All-in-all, I love this classic map.

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