Hey y'all, k0nduit here. Today's article covers a subtle, but critical, concept to consider when it comes to macro decision-making: sometimes the winning line of play is to voluntarily yield structures.

When talking about game strategy, I always emphasize to avoid playing on autopilot, i.e. following a default line of play without considering your other options. When the enemy is sieging down one of your forts or keeps, the default line of play - and perhaps even the natural, instinctual, gut feeling - is to group up and try to defend your structure. The reason why this is the natural play pattern runs deep: it feels natural, almost self-evident, that you shouldn't let your opponents gain ground or allow them to secure an advantage in the match. In order to prevent that from happening, you defend your structure - it's as simple as that. But, the reality of the situation is that it's not always in your best interest to defend your structure, and in fact it can actively work against your team to even attempt to defend. In this article, I'll be using an example-driven approach to demonstrate the thought process behind tactically conceding a structure. Below, you'll find five common situations where it's a good idea to think about letting a structure go.

1. Defending Against a Big Objective Push (Particularly With No Gate)

The most manifest examples of this first situation arise when dealing with the Punisher on Infernal Shrines or the Immortal on Battlefield of Eternity. When pushing against you, these objectives can often create situations where the best play is to give up a fort and defend at your keep. Forts provide a good amount of defense, no doubt - but if a big objective is pushing against you, it will soak all of the structure's DPS and CC, allowing the enemy team to engage freely and with the support of the objective's mechanics (e.g. the Punisher's Jump, the Immortal's stun circles). But what is perhaps most devastating to the defending team's efforts is that every fort offers potent flank routes for the aggressing team. Whether you're in the top, mid, or bot lanes, your opponents can quickly rotate around and set up lethal flanks, pinching you from two angles and leaving you with no recourse.

If there's one piece of advice to take away from this situation, it's that if your fort's gate has been taken down, then you need to be extra careful, not only in your defense, but even regarding your decision to defend in the first place. When your opponents are able to step up and position around the fort, that's when a lot of your positional advantage in combat drops off. Sometimes, teams will make the call to break one of the side walls (as it has much less health than the main gate) in order to get around, position better, and aid their pushing objective. Watch out and be prepared for this strategy!

2. On Multi-lane Objective Pushes

Another situation where yielding a structure can be the right play is when the enemy team has secured an objective that's pushing multiple lanes. The maps that come to mind immediately are Alterac Pass, Tomb of The Spider Queen, and even Cursed Hollow (as the Curse effectively pushes all 3 lanes). The nature of these objectives is that they apply map-wide pressure, but at less potency than a singular big objective (like a Punisher). However, the danger comes when trying to divide your forces to clear all of the lanes; in an attempt to not lose any structures to the enemy's objective push, you may end up losing multiple, or even all of the structures across your lanes.

When dividing your forces between the lanes, each lane has its own context, i.e. what enemy Heroes are pushing that lane with the objective, how healthy/weak your fort in that lane already is, etc. Some lanes may not be worth committing resources in order to defend, even if they are theoretically defendable. In these situations, think about trying to minimize losses, rather than preventing losses entirely. For example, let's say the enemy team has chosen to 5-man push bot lane with their Webweaver in the mid-game. Rather than trying to defend this fort, you can concede it to the enemy team, get free clears on the mid and top Webweavers, and then regroup to defend your bot keep wall. It's all about figuring out what gives you the best chance to win moving forward. Losing one fort (and sometimes even one keep) isn't really all that big of a blow. Keep in mind that with the new XP format, giving up a structure does not harm you much in the short term!

3. How Risky is it to Defend?

As I mentioned, it's a very natural feeling to want to defend a structure that's being sieged down. However, you must always be thinking critically, and you must be ready to override that instinct to defend with logic/reasoning. How big is the risk you're taking when you step up to defend? Sometimes, due to the capabilities of the Heroes on the other team, a defense that initially looks doable might be impossible. For example, Arthas can summon his ghouls and very easily dive on you, and Sylvanas can disable a structure entirely and allow her team to pile on top of you without fear of structure pressure. Think carefully about what tools the enemy team has to punish you if you step up to try to defend.

This discussion is most pertinent to situations where your team has suffered a couple takedowns, and the enemy team is pushing a structure with a numbers advantage - a situation where stepping up without a full team's worth of backup gets exponentially riskier. If you're confident that the enemy team won't be able to punish you, or you think you can outplay their attempts to do so, by all means, step up and drop some waveclear and make that defense happen. But before doing so, you have to have truly considered the enemy team's capabilities, as well as your Hero's own capabilities, and analyzed that your defense has a good chance of success. From another angle, think about whether it is worth it to try and defend the structure - there might be something else you could be doing on the map that's more productive. Even just securing soak is a great line of play that can have a big impact on the match. In fact, if you decide that you're not going to defend a structure, hanging around it posturing isn't accomplishing anything! Leave it be and go soak another lane! And lastly, the faster you run through this thought process, the faster you'll rotate and the more value you'll get from soaking.

4. Structure Trading!

HotS, and MOBAs in general, are not only fighting games but also strategy games. In strategy games, it is rarely the case that you can command your troops and lose nothing over the course of a match; in other words, it's important to understand that there is no shame in losing a fort, and that the "perfect match" where you don't lose any structures is not really something to strive for. If you are gaining an advantage elsewhere on the map, or even just matching the opponent's efforts, then it is totally fine to concede a structure that the enemy team is aggressing upon. Embrace the quid pro quo, give a structure to take a structure!

A common situation that comes to mind is when your team has secured a couple kills in the top lane, while you're stuck hanging around the bot lane fort with the rest of the enemy team, who are all sieging your structure. In this situation, while it may be tempting to try and defend, you know that your team will be able to get the top lane fort (in addition to the kills they just secured), so even if your opponents get the bot lane fort, you're still overall ahead in terms of experience from the whole sequence. Attempting to defend may get you killed, and that will allow the enemy team to perhaps press forward further and gain their own advantage...so, the play then becomes to yield the structure and look to gain value elsewhere.

5. Play to Give Keep and Defend the Core!

This last example is one of my favorites. One of things I like to emphasize is planning ahead in the match and playing to concede a keep and defend the core is the ultimate manifestation of how important thinking ahead and critically analyzing your next move are. Let's say the enemy team is pushing into your keep with an objective in the late game, and the objective's pretty healthy. There's no way that you can realistically save the keep in this situation, and so stepping up too far in order to damage the objective can be dangerous. Let the keep go down and play slow. Get damage on the pushing objective, use your core health as a resource (similar to card games, where a common strategy is to use your own health as resource), and win the ensuing fight to save the game.

A lot of this has to do with evaluating and waiting for a better fight opportunity. Around the keep, you're likely to be clumped with your team when trying to clear the objective, which opens you up to devastating engages from the enemy team. Around your core, you have more space to work with, your opponents are limited by the presence of neighboring keeps, and the persistent AoE Core damage can be threatening. Perhaps most importantly though, you gain a lot more time to wear down your opponents. The core has a great deal more health than a keep, and you can use your Core's health as a 'resource' to win the ensuing fight. If your opponents are hitting the core, and you're hitting them, you're gaining an advantage in the fight.

Closing Thoughts

So, there you have it! The moral of the story is that sometimes you will have to lose the battle in order to win the war. Keep in mind that there are hybrid situations than arise from combining the examples above, so keep all the principles discussed in mind. Always remember that the winning line of play doesn't necessarily mean you will win this particular push - rather, the winning line of play will put you in the best position going forward to win the match.

Author's Disclaimer:

I currently work for a company contracted by Blizzard as a Game Master. All thoughts/opinions from this article are my own, and not Blizzard's!

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