YMMV / Heroes of the Storm

• Abridged Arena Array: Almost every high-level competitive match begins with Towers Of Doom. Unlike most of the game's maps, it is impossible to directly attack the Core; instead you have to seize control points that shoot it for you. Said control points only spawn every few minutes, so it's impossible for the enemy team to simply take the game off one misstep; but likewise you have to teamfight for them. This combination of forgiving timing and high skill requirements makes it almost omnipresent in professional play.
• Accidental Innuendo: The characters have a "bouncing on mount" animation, which works well when riding horses, wolves, and all the animal mounts. But when riding the Golden Rocket...
• Adorkable: Anduin is excited to see different kinds of magic he has never seen before, like Li-Ming's arcane magic or Deckard's horadric cube, and acts awkwardly shy and babbles around Lunara, Orphea and Nova.
• Annoying Video Game Helper:
  • For people playing in Training Mode to try out a new character or earn a little XP without playing vs. AI or against other players, Uther's voice constantly interrupting the game to give you advice about things you already know all about will get real old, real fast — especially if he tells you about mounting up to move faster when you're retreating from a fight and you can't mount because you're taking damage, or claiming your health is low and you should go heal at 50% HP.
  • Some also think this of Dr. Cook, the announcer for Braxis Holdout. In the middle of a zerg rush, he'll constantly tell you to stop the enemy team's zerg rush especially when most or all of your team may be dead and unable to prevent it, you're currently stuck in a teamfight or the enemy's wave is so laughably tiny that the minions can take care of it.
  • Some characters (Garrosh, Zul'Jin and Artanis) are more efficient when they are at lower health. That will not stop your allies from telling you to go at a fountain to heal up.
• Audience-Alienating Era: The Hanzo patch was considered a major low point for the game. Several gameplay changes were implemented like changing the stealth mechanic, removing structure ammo, several buffs to mercenaries and minions and a new improved ranking system. The problem is it wasn’t implemented in the best way. Minions and mercenaries were over-tuned making it harder for the losing team to come back and making the games incredibly snowbally. Several changes to stealth heroes made them much more obnoxious to fight against (particularly Nova and Valeera). And to say the ranking system changes were poorly handled would be an understatement: Blizzard had to restart peoples' placement games three separate occasions before the problem was fixed or at least as close as they could get to fixing it. The Blaze Patch tried to solve several of these problems with tweaks to minions, mercenaries and stealth heroes, which eventually settled in as the accepted solution.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: While managing to get a fanbase, the game had many hurdles that prevented a wider appeal, such as the fact that MOBAs are known for a hardcore and beginner unfriendly playerbase, Blizzard's characters being not as well-known, and the PC exclusivity when fans of casual, party games mostly rely on consoles.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Murky. Due to being such an unusual fighter, he tends to garner fans or detractors easily. Some find him to be a fun and unique character, who is difficult to master but rewarding if done, especially since the game does at least balance Murky to not be too much of a threat. Others find him tedious to play as, or find that he can either drag a team down if a player isn't good, or be so dangerous that he can easily beat most characters he fights with ease. Changes that reduced his building damage seem to have solved this particular break, after he spent some time in the detested bottom tier, but he remains a polarzing character regardless. He's either regarded as a hero with a high skill floor and ceiling, a gimmicky failure... Or a abomination from hell, constantly requiring someone to duel him at all times to prevent towers and camps falling to him willy-nilly.
  • Nova is very, very good at bursting enemy heroes nigh-instantaneously, but comes with the drawback of being a Glass Cannon. As a result, playing against an enemy Nova can run the range from "make one tiny mistake, die instantly" to "get Clairvoyance/play Tassadar, barely a threat". This generated numerous forum threads and arguments during the last part of the alpha. Even after, Nova's high damage and ability to do a ton of burst damage makes her a difficult character to discuss, because she's either too overpowered, or too specialized.
  • Zeratul for similar reasons, though not nearby as extreme, as Nova. His stealth and high burst damage result in a broadly similar playstyle, but he's slightly less frustrating to play against, probably due to being a melee hero and not being as single target oriented. Unlike Nova above, however, Zeratul's base is more solid due to his crowd clear capability and the Void Prison heroic, meaning that he's more than your average stealth killer unit.
  • Tychus gets this due to his penchant for dealing very high sustained damage, meaning that it's hard to stand up to him for too long without being rapidly whittled down. It was even worse before a patch that changed it, where his Commandeer Odin Heroic Ability effectively gave him a second life. Combine these two things, and you have a hard-to-kill, hard hitting powerhouse.
  • Abathur. He is perhaps the most mechanically-unusual hero in the entire game genre, and people either love him or hate him for that. A bad Abathur essentially turns the game into a 4v5 for his team, leaving a lot of haters, while good Abathurs are loved by their teammates, and the players themselves love playing him. As a result, one half of the playerbase wants Blizzard to make more heroes as unique as him, while the other half wants him removed from the game entirely.
  • And then there's Tracer. There are those who enjoy her presence in the game, but there are others who find her to be almost impossible to fight against, with her absurd amount of mobility (for a MOBA) making her difficult to take down and evade.
  • Even before her release, Valeera's base has been already volatile. While she certainly has her fans that consider her a very cool character or are simply happy to have a Rogue representative, she has the unfortunate timing of being the fifth Warcraft character that has 'Assassin' as their class in a row, leading to her taking the heat of the trend's reception. It doesn't help that she's not actually prominent in Warcraft lore (especially when compared to other characters, even other rogues like Garona Halforcen, who has had similar screentime but much more impact), being much more notable for her appearance in Hearthstone. Finally, as a Rogue, she has a stealth mechanic, which made many concerned that she would be a pain to fight against at lower level.
  • Stukov was subject to a lot of this after his kit was revealed. A lot of players were disappointed to find out that he was a virus-based support with a lot of physical attacks. They were expecting a siege specialist who'd summon Infested Marines, much like how his Co-op Commander functions in Starcraft. A large criticism was that him being a support was slapped on to an unfitting character. Others were quick to point out that a summoner Zerg is already very common between Kerrigan, Zagara, and Abathur, all of whom have some form of minion summoning, and that he had a very interesting skillset support by him originally having a healing skill in the campaign.
  • Garrosh, even at just his announcement, broke the base as much as he did in his home game. Most transferred their hatred to him from the original game or lament that it isn't his more 'stable' and popular father Grommash that got in. Others feel indifferent or glad because Garrosh actually grew on them (even as a villain) and he already has coverage from Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, where he is a bit more chilled.
  • Hanzo. He is: a) another assassin hero, b) another Overwatch hero, (the abundance of both of those there were already complaining about), c) he's already a Base-Breaking Character in Overwatch, d) all his abilities in Overwatch are That One Attack. This ended up being fairly unfounded when he was released in a very weak state, however.
  • Yrel is saddled with the heated debate of whether she is taking a spot that could have been filled by another paladin (Tirion Fordring, Turalyon, Lady Liadrin), Draenei (Velen, Akama, Nobundo) or both (Maraad). Coupled with the fact that she's a character from one of World of Warcraft's most divisive expansions in the middle of the otherwise almost universally well-received Echoes of Alterac content drop, and you have a recipe for very ugly arguments.
  • Depending on who you ask, Orphea's announcement is either a clever way for Heroes to stake its claim as something more than "that MOBA with Blizzard characters" or it's crushing the original point of the game. The character herself is equally divisive, split between those who like her design and want to learn more about her backstory, and those that find her too generic and sudden to be interesting.
  • Most of what was said about Orphea also applies to Qhira, with endless debates about whether introducing another Nexus-original was the right move or whether Blizzard should focus on beloved characters from other franchises first, as well as whether they should've done an established Nexus character before cutting another one from whole cloth. There's also the question of whether her kit is decently interesting in its own right or whether it's literally just Sonya but with DOTs.
• Broken Base:
  • Artifacts and leveling up of heroes to access talents. Players were not happy (to say the least) about having to spend large amounts of time and gold to fully unlock the options on a character, among other issues. Artifacts were removed on August 4, 2014, and talent gating was removed for all players levels 25 and up on May 12, 2015, followed by it being removed altogether on December 8, 2015.
  • Much like League of Legends, the issue of Toxic Gaming has caused a split between those who think Blizzard needs to step in and take care of the issue, and those who think it isn't Blizzard's problem, and thus more or less tell players to "suck it up".
  • Some of the new voices provided for the game. Especially to some like Anub'arak... okay replacement, or vastly inferior to his old voice, which was actually used for all Crypt Lords (including in melee maps), from Warcraft III?
  • Whenever a Warcraft hero is announced, the fandom either gives a big "YAY!" or groan "More Warcraft heroes? What is this, Heroes of Azeroth?" This eventually peaked in Blizzcon 2015, where 75% of the new Hero reveals are from Warcraft (Cho'gall, Greymane and Lunara (Dryad)), the last 25% is... Tracer. Who won't come until her game is released mid-2016. There were also those who countered the groan that even if Warcraft heroes oversaturated the roster, it's counterbalanced with the fact that so far, there were no maps based on Warcraft's setting Azeroth, despite some PVP maps like Arathi Basin being a highly requested map.
  • In lieu of the Eternal Conflict, there were debates that if the Diablo III Wizard made it to the game (they're the last of the current Nephalem roster at that time), it will be either a male Wizard or a female Wizard. Both sides have strong claims, as the male Wizard's inclusion will even the gender balance of the Nephalems (but not the gender balance of Diablo characters overall) as well as the fact that said gender prominently being on the promotional images of Diablo games has no relevance (that's why we got Sonya, for instance) so Blizzard can easily create a new identity from scratch, like with Nazeebo, Johanna and Kharazim, and furthermore, Blizzard has expressed that they do like the freedom of making an Original Generation character based on pre-existing models with no canon identities. The female Wizard, on the other hand, is very much a fan-favorite, especially the one that appeared in the Firefly short story, Li-Ming, is widely considered the canon version of the class, and much like Valla (the only playable Nephalem that uses a predefined identity), directly ties to the story more than other short story classes (Story ends with her personally heading to Tristram, and a character featured in her story appears near the end of Reaper of Souls), so IF the fans get a female Wizard, there are those who are hoping that it's exactly Li-Ming. And Blizzard themselves are no stranger with the trope of Acting for Two, so the prospect of Grey DeLisle doing both the Wizard and Nova wouldn't be a strange practice and could be alluring as well, as much as having the equally awesome Crispin Freeman on the cast. Regardless, debates between those who wants male or female Wizard remain strong. Though in the end, it turns out to be Li-Ming.
  • The announcement that the first Starcraft Warrior is Artanis on a Zealot set. A lot are happy, but a number of players are displeased that he took the spot from fan-favorite Fenix, insisting that he should be the Zealot representative.
  • There's also The Medic's announcement in that case. As stated above, Blizzard liked to create characters from scratch, it gave them more freedom (like in Kharazim and other Nephalems), so this is the case with The Medic. A lot are displeased that there ARE some lore-wise Medic templates that are ignored, such as either Egon Stetmann and Ariel Hanson^note Though the pleased ones point out that Stetmann and Hanson are first and foremost scientists than medics, and in which the displeased ones counter with novel-based medics that never made appearance in game such as Lisa Cassidy, citing that Blizzard has done the same with Rehgar and possibly Valla., and others are just glad with Blizzard's decision and cite that Medic units were very widely used in Brood War custom games, which is what people remembered the most about Starcraft^note The game was designed for more mass-army wars than having RPG elements like growing hero units like Warcraft, so these 'faceless' units are the ones people mostly remember for playing Starcraft, so they deserve a more 'accurate' representative and Blizzard's newfound liking about creating characters from scratch is the perfect reasoning for that. The pro-camp is split further of whether Lt. Morales is a good name for the medic (as it is a pun to 'morale', which Medics boost by healing allies) or it just sounds weird and Blizzard should have used a more feminine name.
    • Something which really pissed some corners of the fandom off was that Blizzard made Morales something of a Consummate Professional and didn't model her on one of the Medic's highly enjoyable personalities in either Starcraft game — either as The Tease from StarCraft or The Intern from StarCraft II. Some don't really care and are just glad she works mechanically; others are displeased enough to question whether she's worth buying from the shop at all. Some thinks that there's still some charm in her being The Comically Serious.
  • Blizzard revealed at BlizzCon '15 that they were dividing the "Takedowns" stat into kills and assists, like other games in the MOBA genre. Most of the fanbase appears to hate the idea, because of the belief that splitting takedowns would make the game environment even more toxic than it already is by people obsessed with getting a good KDA to the detriment of the game, or by people who will accuse their teammates of "kill-stealing." The worst part about the latter is that kills don't grant any kind of bonus compared to assists, so who landed the killing blow doesn't really matter. It was released in the Cho'Gall patch in spite of the fan backlash. Then, players started arguing over whether the order should be Kill-Death-Assist or Kill-Assist-Death, with Blizzard eventually settling for the latter.
  • The announcement of Zarya in the Starcraft-themed "The Machines of War" event caused something of a split in the fanbase. While she was well-received by some, others think that another Starcraft character should have been included to fit the spirit of the update, or that they should have used a different Overwatch character (D.Va is the most frequently cited example, partly due to the potential for meta humor stemming from D.Va being a professional Starcraft player in canon). Some also criticize her skillset for being too bland (particularly the fact that her W and E are practically the same ability with different targets), while a few are left wondering why her skins in Heroes of the Storm are so much better than the ones in Overwatch. Others are just incensed they decided to make a Starcraft event during the same time Legion came out, raining on Warcraft's parade, though others point out that the roster is very bloated with Warcraft characters so having events based on other games balance it out (especially when the next five characters after Zarya are all Warcraft characters).
  • "Heroes 2.0" is either a way to renew the game, encourage new players, and will add tons of content, or is something that punishes veteran players (due to how loot boxes are awarded), who's looting system becomes identical to Overwatch's, and an attempt by Blizzard to squeeze even more money out of everyone while making the game even more a copy of other MOBAs.
  • With the additions of Lucio, Genji, D. Va, Ana and Junkrat, whether there has been too much focus on Overwatch. There are many who are happy to see more Overwatch heroes being added, arguing that the series is under-repped compared to the older games and that since it is new and popular it's logical for Blizzard to want to capitalize on that. Others, however, feel that the series being new doesn't excuse so much focus being put on it, and that if you aren't interested in Overwatch then it's frustrating to see Overwatch hero after Overwatch hero being added and Blizzard should try to space things out more. Not helping matters is that the teaser to D.Va's reveal seemed to indicate something totally different was coming^note Large scratches and burning embers in Hanamura, leading many to believe the new character was something big and fiery -Deathwing and Prime Evil Diablo were popular guesses- instead it just ended up being (regular) Diablo with the twist D. Va was there to help Genji fight him causing disappointment when she was revealed instead.
  • Somewhat tied to the above are the Nexus Challenge events, which encourage Overwatch players to try out Heroes by offering exclusive rewards in both games - at least in theory. In practice, during the first week, many players simply rushed through required games by fighting AI on the easiest difficulty and never came back. The second week and on restricted the challenge to PvP games... which ended up backfiring, as some players grouped up to lose games on purpose just to earn rewards as quickly as possible, arguing that Blizzard shouldn't "force them" to play other game to get the skins they want. Even though just as many players enjoyed the event and decided to stay, fandom can't decide if the challenges are a good or a bad idea. Also, the game has a large demographic that plays exclusively Versus AI and the game had rewarded the mode equally up to that point for quests and during events, making many feel alienated who often preferred Heroes of the Storm over other games in the genre for that very reason.
  • For some, Overwatch characters have replaced the Warcraft characters in terms of over-saturation, with nearly half of the heroes in 2017 being from the game, as well as ALL of the maps. The fact that many of the characters as well as the Hanamura map are base-breaking themselves has lead to further dissent. Those arguing against this point out that Overwatch still has fewer characters than any other game in the Nexus and thus has catching up to do, as well as the fact that the non-Overwatch characters debuted in 2017 included many fan favorites anyways such as Malthael, Kel'Thuzad and Stukov.
  • The Tassadar rework, which turned him from a shield-based support to a ranged burst assassin. Despite how weak Tassadar was before, he had a fairly dedicated fanbase. Detractors point out how Blizzard effectively removed a hero they liked and added something closer to Gul'dan or Jaina. Those in favor argue how Tassadar's old kit was basically unworkable with heroes like Valla and Tracer in the game, and it's better to have a balance-able hero than one that needs to be kept useless.
  • Late in 2020, the devs added the "Gladiator's Medallion" to the game, a self-cleanse on a 5-minute timer. Players who disliked Heroes's emphasis on hard crowd-control were pleased at their new Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card; players who enjoyed it were less enamored. Blizzard removed it again after three months, having failed to find a version of the idea that worked the way they wanted it to.
  • And, of course, the big one: Why did the game fail to capture an audience? It cannot be denied that the failure happened — at its final Blizzcon, it had the convention's largest prize pool but the smallest audience — but no two players are likely to agree on why that happened, with complaints ranging from "Blizzard tried to force it as an eSport" to "It was too casual at heart" to "It used the StarCraft II game engine which broke ground in 2007" to "It came out too late, since League of Legends had been out for 6 years when it was released" to "Making it a Mascot Fighter meant it competed with Blizzard's other games instead of taking market share from LoL and DotA 2" to "Activision's Corrupt Corporate Executives ruined everything" to "It's perfect, what are you all talking about?"
• Casual-Competitive Conflict: The mere existence of Quick Match has some players frothing at the mouth. Since the days of League of Legends, drafting — each player choosing a specific character to play, and debating whether Player X should or should not pick Character Y because it will have Effect Z on the match — has been a key component of the game, meaning you were infused with an important mindset before the first shot was even fired: "Divided We Fall. This is Serious Business." In comparison, in QM you don't get that; you just pick whoever you want and play them regardless. It's much more comparable to Super Smash Bros.... which is a good analogy to draw, since Heroes of the Storm is not Blizzard's Dota, it's Blizzard's Mascot Fighter. And the point of a Mascot Fighter is not to win, it's to have fun doing silly things with your favorite hero. Many of the game's choices, particularly the shared EXP bar, enforce this, by limiting any individual player's ability to "carry" the team. To add insult to injury, QM is the default play mode for the game, the mode every player starts with first and the mode a lot of people never leave; it's actually the most popular mode in the game. Therefore, to the casual crowd, QM is the best thing about the game... and to the "Stop Having Fun" Guys, it's the worst. You could even make an argument that the decision to hew so closely to the Casual side of the conflict hamstrung the game's eSports scene: when most players spend their time in a mode where they are not taught the basic fundamentals of strategy — EXP gain, Never Split the Party, Combination Attacks, etc — in fact, a mode where Blizzard is incentivized to keep them Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance, because it levels the playing field and results in more people having more fun — the best players will have trouble rising to the top. After all, the game is actively trying to prevent them from excelling.
• Cheese Strategy: The "Juice Pirates" tactic involves using Morales' "Heal Bus" Medivac Heroic to zip to an enemy building, with Tyrael's Sanctification giving your team 3 seconds of invincibility during which to deal as much siege damage as possible. It focuses on the Instant-Win Condition of MOBAs — "Destroy the Core and you win, end of story" — to the exclusion of every other element of the game (camps, objectives, kills, staying equal in levels). It also works, leading to a certain amount of irritation from players on the receiving end of the tactic.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Kael'thas had the dubious honor of being the most picked hero by far in any MOBA, with a 99.7% Pick/ban rate at his peak, thanks to his braindead-easy to land stun, massive, absurd damage, and ability to nullify all of his weaknesses with only one or two talents. Even after a series of nerfs that left him below-average, KT remained the most commonly picked and/or banned hero, to the point where it was generally held that the 2nd team to draft didn't get a real first ban.
  • Let's just say it probably wasn't because of pure fluke that the most popular guide to the Lost Vikings on the HeroesNexus fansite was one which told the player to by-and-large avoid talents which strengthened individual Vikings in favour of hotkey-based talents most useful in the early-mid-to-late-game. And none of the guides recommended talents which would benefit Erik beyond entry-level gaming. This grew to such levels that Blizzard proceeded to reshuffle the Lost Vikings' entire talent system in a later patch, making the almost-always selected 'Viking Hoard' talent their passive trait instead and wedging two hotkey-based ability talents into the same tier, forcing players to use more variety in their builds.
  • Varian is, in theory, a hero that can choose between three different builds to become a Warrior or an Assassin as the situation demands. In practice, it's almost mind-numbingly common for Varian to take Twin Blades of Fury in conjunction with Second Wind to both deal and tank damage. This was averted with removing his stun on his charge meaning he can only peel in tank mode.
    • Double averted, since now his best build is undoubtedly the one based on his Parry, providing him with the Protected status for extremely long durations until that one was nerfed as well.
  • Cleanse is an activatable ability, gained only through Talents, that makes the target Unstoppable — that is, immune to all forms of Crowd Control — for 1 second. There was a long period of time when this was the go-to Talent for your hero if they had it; you didn't even think about the other Talents at that tier. Since Blizzard's goal is to promote Talent diversity, they've been creating alternatives, but it took until they gave Uther "Guardian of Ancient Kings" — which protects victims of crowd control by giving them 75% damage reduction — before people stopped auto-prioritizing it.
  • At one point you could be forgiven for thinking Zul'jin only has one talent on each section of his tree. Zul'jin used to almost always get You Want Axe?, Let the Killing Begin, Recklessness, Taz'dingo, Ferocity, and Amani Resilience. The only exception is his level 13 talents which were a tossup between Eye of Zul'jin and Forest Medicine. This is because most of his talents while not awful they don’t buff or benefit from his auto attack Damage. And it’s usually more beneficial to just auto attack the enemy with his insane damage output. He got a lot better after his rework, though.
  • Kharazim's concept is a Healer that can pick from three traits at level 1 to enhance either his healing with Transcendence, his damage with Iron Fists, or his self-sustain with Insight. In practice, Transcendence and Insight might as well not exist due to his very Assassin-like playstyle. Kharazim being a squishy melee hero, combined with the burstiness of large-scale fights, means he simply can't afford to deliver a lot of basic attacks in teamfights unless he's chasing down weakened or disabled enemies with intent to kill them in the next two seconds, at which point it's a bit too late to be healing things or resetting cooldowns and gaining mana. You're only likely to get value out of them in PvE situations, where you'd still rather have some extra damage, and as such Kharazim essentially doesn't have a trait in the mid to late game if he didn't grab Iron Fists.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Lost Vikings. Their comical personalities, great voice work, highly-styled designs and unique mechanics make them a big hit, as do their numerous Shout Outs to retro gaming. Even better, as long as one masters their unique mechanics, they're one of the most effective heroes in the game, capable of soaking up Experience faster than the other team while transforming into a major force of destruction late game.
  • Xul too, due to being a fan favorite from Diablo II and also being the first Diablo player character not from III. It helps that he's also a very powerful hero with a ton of utility.
  • When it comes to skins, some are much more popular than others, such as Wonderous Amazon for Cassia, whose popularity should surprise no one.
  • Kel'Thuzad was far and away one of, if not the most requested characters for the game. His popularity became a meme in and of itself, with fans claiming that he was being teased in every hero teaser in some fashion, even if the actual hero being teased was obviously not even part of the Warcraft franchise. It goes without saying that once he was finally revealed, fans went nuts. He even got his own event, a liberty only afforded to the entirety of a represented franchise.
  • Following Kel'Thuzad, Fenix was one of the next most highly requested characters for the game, with a few of the former's memes transferred to him. Then, after a relative drought of new heroes to focus on reworking Medivh and Sonya, Blizzard hit the fanbase with Fenix, appearing as a Dragoon like he does for half of the original Protoss campaign and all of Brood War's story. Needless to say, any irritation fans had with Blizzard over a schedule slip evaporated in an instant.
• Fan Nickname: There's a few for the heroes and combinations of their abilities.
  • Abathur's Symbiote is commonly called a Hat. Abathur himself is sometimes shortened to "Abby" or sometimes ABBA. The rare Abathur who achieves a kill with his basic attack is referred to as a "Slapathur."
  • Azmodan's Q ability (Globe of Annihilation) gets called the "Azmodunk". Sometimes extends to Azmodan himself.
    • BEHOLD! Azmodunk, Lord of the Court! Now a real skin!
    • Likewise, his E ability (All Shall Burn) is a channeled beam spell that has many players going Shoop da Whoop.
  • A Raynor player who refuses to leave the lane can be derided as a "Laynor." He also is mockingly called a "Glorified Lane Minion". Until his rework, that is...
  • Right after official art for Whitemane was released, players called her "Thigh Inquisitor" because, uh... well. Frequent players of Whitemane are punned as Whitemains.
  • Zagara and Zeratul are sometimes shortened to "Zag" and "Zera" respectively. Really, any Hero whose name can be chopped down for the sake of brevity in chat tends to have this happen (Kael'thas = Kael/KT^note The latter has largely fallen out of favor, now being used to address Kel'Thuzad...though others may insist that Kael'thas gets to be KT while Kel'Thuzad is KTZ., Azmodan = Azmo, Gazlowe = Gaz, Orphea = Orph, Leoric = Leo, Samuro = Sam, Illidan = Illi, Kerrigan = Kerri, Malfurion = Malf, Muradin = Mura, Nazeebo = Naz, Tassadar = Tass, Brightwing = BW, Deathwing = DW, Anub'arak = Anub, The Lost Vikings = TLV, Sylvanas = Sylv, Kharazim = Khara, Ragnaros = Rag, Imperius = Imp, Stukov = Stu, Malthael = Malth, Garrosh = Gary, Junkrat = JR/Rat, Alexstrasza = Alex, Artanis = Art/Arty, etc.)
  • Uther used to have a "Piano Uther" build, which was because he was able to choose five talents that provided an active ability, causing him to have abilities mapped to the 1-5 keys in addition to QWER. It was named as such due to having some similarity to the many black keys over many white keys of a piano.
  • Zeratul Void Prison + E.T.C. Mosh Pit w/Tour Bus = Prison Bus
  • Sonya Leap w/Crater + Chen Wandering Keg = Washing Machine
  • Nazeebo Zombie Wall + Nova burst damage = Fish in a Barrel
  • Tyrael Judgment + Falstad Hinterlands Blast = Crispy Taco
  • Stitches Gorge + Medivh portal = Kidnap/Milk Carton
  • Johanna Falling Sword + Genji Dragonblade = Falling Dragon
  • E.T.C.'s Mosh Pit + Orphea's Eternal Feast = Mosh Feast
  • Any sufficiently strong combination (usually of Heroic Abilities) generally is designated a Wombo Combo.
  • The boss camp on Sky Temple (any boss camp, really) is often known as the Throw Pit because of the number of games that get decided there when one team tries to take the boss, then the other team comes in, wipes them, and steals the boss.
  • The Punishers on Infernal Shrines have become known as John Cenas, thanks to a video that was shortly made after its spotlight was revealed. The casters at the Americas Cup on September 19-20, 2015 went along with the joke and started calling them John Cena a couple times. CarBot then made a parody based on this.
  • Dehaka's Q ability (latching onto and dragging people with his tongue) has given him the name "Zerg Yoshi".
  • Li-Ming is usually called with a shortened 'Ming'. Aside of that, calling her 'Azula' still works just like in her origin. Alternatively, people reversed her name into 'Ming-Li' or (especially among the Twitch crowd) "MingLee."
  • Chen's Storm, Earth, and Fire heroic is often referred to by commentators as "Panda Pals".
  • Gul'dan's Rain of Destruction is often referred to as "Rain of RNG" because of the random placement of the meteors.
  • For whatever reason, Diablo is usually referred to as "Dibbles"^note This may be related to players mocking him as "Dibbles, Lord of Weakness" prior to his Balance Buff, and the name has stuck even after.
  • "Juice Pirates" is a backdooring strategy named after a team that was famous for performing it which rapidly moves the team together to ignore fighting the enemy team when able and simply target their structures to win victory. The participants for the strategy vary but usually includes Tyrael with his Sanctification ultimate to render his allies invulnerable and definitely involves Lt. Morales and her Dropship ultimate to suddenly bring herself and teammates over to an enemy structure to take it down.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Ever since the Love is in the Air trailer announcing Love Bug Anub'arak, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who isn't gushing over him and Zagara being a couple.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Blaze's line wondering what happened to Raynor will sting a lot to French players, since he was released two months after Patrick Béthune (Raynor's dubber) died from cancer. Likewise, one of Raynor's "healed" quotes is, translated, "you and me medic, it's 'till death do us part". Which, likewise, stings a bit more.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: The game got a 6.5 out of 10 from IGN, a stark outlier among other review sites' scores. Additionally, the review demonstrated a poor understanding of the game. Fans have not let this go, and even Blizzard themselves have gotten in on the act — a banner◊ displaying the score can be found among the audience in the Arena. IGN has since re-reviewed the game with a much more positive score, and even acknowledged the memetic nature of their previous review.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Blizzard once promoted 'Blizzard Outcasts' crossover fighting game as an April Fools' Day joke, no doubt as an offshoot for this game, and Kael'thas was part of its roster. And now, Kael becomes one of the playable characters in this crossover game. And a high-tier character to the boot!
  • Sonya complains (if poked enough) that no loot appears when she kills her enemies and the game makes no sense, while Valla wonders how many she has to kill before a Legendary item drops. At the end of a match at the Battlefield of Eternity, once a core is destroyed it unleashes tons and tons of loot, including a Legendary or two!
  • Certain World of Warcraft jokes are now even funnier. Illidan is disgusted about Monks (which are not, as Illidan says, a real hero class) becoming playable before Demon Hunters? Muradin jokes about your favorite character coming back to life after an expansion pack or two? Abathur comparing perfection (which he says is unobtainable but can be pursued) to the Ashbringer? Well, as of Legion, Blizzard are set to implement Demon Hunters as a playable Hero Class, fan-favourite Illidan is being brought back to life and the Ashbringer will be obtainable, as long as you roll a Paladin.
  • Cho'Gall's existence is the ultimate Brick Joke. Back in 2004, Blizzard's April Fool's joke was to state that ogres would be a playable race in WoW, but require two players to control them. Fast forward to BlizzCon 2015 and he's of the new heroes announced, and requires two players to control him.
  • Tyrande's Shout-Out to Sailor Moon gets a bit more hilarious when it turns out there is someone else who will get a Sailor Moon-esque skin, and it's not her: Star Princess Li-Ming.
  • A two-fer with one of Nova's Stop Poking Me! quotes: "No, I am not Kerrigan. And if I had my own game, you'd know that." Which is a reference to StarCraft Ghost, a game she was meant to star in before it was canceled. However, not only did she eventually get her own expansion pack in Starcraft II, but the portrayal of Nova in said expansion pack thus far has received flak from the player base for being a Replacement Scrappy for Kerrigan.
  • One of Tassadar's Stop Poking Me! quotes has trying to look over the current Protoss unit roster, finding no Reavers or Dragoons. Both Reavers and Dragoons make a return in the campaign of Legacy Of The Void.
  • Thrall saying he might get replaced by Garrosh in the future if you poke him enough? D.Va saying she used to main Garrosh in Fighters of the Storm 2? The former is now impossible and the latter entirely feasible now that Garrosh has been added as a completely separate hero.
  • Samuro gets a Monkey King skin....but apparently long already had his playstyle (a stealth + decoy and auto-attack ability with a AoE grinding-damage ultimate) mirror a more closer Monkey King ripoff from another MOBA made beforehand...funnier still, Samuro is very similar to his VideoGameWarcraft III incarnation and can't be a gameplay ripoff by that token either.
  • One of Illidan's Stop Poking Me! lines is him afraid that Maiev followed him all the way into the Nexus. Three years after Illidan got added to the game, Maiev was announced as a playable hero.
  • In Ana's Stop Poking Me! lines, she separately quotes Deckard Cain's "stay a while and listen" Catchphrase and asks if she's so boring she puts people to sleep. Then Deckard was announced for the game, with a Heroic (named Stay a While and Listen, no less) that allows him to actually bore people to sleep!
  • One of the Grave Keeper's lines in Towers of Doom is him declaring that he will "never return to those wretched mines." In October 2018, Blizzard removed the Haunted Mines from the standard map rotation indefinitely, meaning that, indeed, no one will be returning to the mines (outside of Custom Mode at least).
• Low-Tier Letdown: Has its own page.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "6.5/10" ^ExplanationThe score IGN gave Heroes after its release in 2015. While many fans didn't disagree with the score, since the game did seem unfinished, as it had many weak features (like the (lack of a proper) ranking system), they strongly disagreed with the arguments of the reviewer, who was known as a Dota 2 fan and kept wishing that Heroes was more a traditional MOBA. Thus, whenever fans rated something sarcastically as something bad, they gave it a score of 6.5/10. Blizzard went along with the joke and added eastereggs with signs on maps that read "6.5/10" and later added an in-game banner with that particular inscription as well. IGN did a re-review with a different reviewer a few years later, giving Heroes a more favorable score.
    • "No comeback mechanics" ^ExplanationOften mentioned along with the score whenever a comeback happened. "No comeback mechanics" (paraphrased) was one of the noted reasons why the game supposedly deserved such a low score. Note that Heroes actually had and still has many options to stop a snowballing.
  • Zeratul, a HotS-original hero. ^ExplanationVideo game blog Kotaku published an article about an upcoming Starcraft II prologue for the Legacy of the Void expansion, featuring Zeratul as its protagonist. The author erroneously claimed that Zeratul's first appearance was in Heroes (2014), when he was actually one of the major characters of Starcraft since the first game back in 1998, leading to fans mocking Kotaku for not being an authentic website about video games.
  • B-stepping ^Explanation'B' is the button to use the hearthstone and get back to base. While using the hearthstone, a Nexus symbol is displayed on the ground. Players who are attempting to taunt their opponent, start moving and holding (or pressing) 'B' several times, leaving several Nexus symbols on the ground.
  • #1 Player Killer Hero! ^ExplanationNova's kit revolves around bursting down enemies at the expense of any utility. Thus, Nova players can be selfish and obsess over killcounts, bragging about how many enemies they have KO'd whether or not this actually ends up helping the team. This has since abated due to her talent rework, as it places a greater emphasis on DPS rather than burst. The real origin however comes from the streamer "chu8", where he won a game with a terrible comp as Nova, after being lectured about how overpowered Nova supposedly was, since she was the "best player killer hero in the game". Even then, this becomes an Ascended Meme - if D.Va scores a kill on Nova, she remarks "#1 Player Killer? Oookay..." and there is a minion carrying a "#1 PK Nova◊ in the stands of the Punisher Arena Brawl map.
  • JOHN CENA ^ExplanationBased on a video, where an "Unexpected John Cena" joke was made. Thus, the community started calling the Punisher (the Arcane Punisher in particular) John Cena.
  • How to play Abathur: AFK in base and win. ^ExplanationAbathur's play style involves keeping him away from combat and contributing with map control and a symbiote that gives heroes additional abilities. New players often think the people playing him are AFK.
  • PREMIER GANK WARRIOR ^ExplanationIn the patch notes for the Medic patch, Blizzard gave Diablo some buffs, expressing their wish that Diablo becomes the "premier gank Warrior. Unfortunately, when the patch hit live, it became apparent that Diablo was still a subpar hero, and the fans aren't letting that line slide. Delves into Hilarious in Hindsight after the scaling balance patch, which brought Diablo back into the limelight.
  • FEEL THE HATRED OF TEN THOUSAND FEEDS! ^ExplanationIllidan players have an inescapable reputation for feeding the enemy team.
  • Kael'thas is the world's best salami salesman. ^ExplanationKael'thas's ready quote is, "Selama ashal'anore!" The first word is pronounced similarly to "salami."
  • XUL, MOTHERFUCKER, XUUULL!!! ^ExplanationThe Necromancer is named Xul, and spelled actually like how you say "Zuul". Because necromancers are meant to be scary, the phrase from the Nostalgia Critic is also used in reference of ownages courtesy of Xul.
    • THERE IS NO ____, ONLY XUL! is similarly used.
  • HELL, IT'S ABOUT TIME. ^ExplanationTychus's Catchphrase is used whenever a highly anticipated change is announced. Came to a head on 3/21/16 with the announcement of imminent hero bans in Hero League and the Tychus rework. Sadly, this turned Harsher in Hindsight when it turned out that Tychus was still a weak hero after the rework.
    • But he still can't have his cigar. ^ExplanationTychus is known as a Cigar Chomper and rarely seen without a cigar in Starcraft II. And much like Graves from League of Legends, shortly after he's inducted to HotS, his cigar is suddenly removed for unknown reasons, now they can share the meme together.
  • KILL THE MEDIC!^ExplanationWhen fighting Lt. Morale, less experienced players will usually tunnel vision her over anyone else, and will scream at the team for not attacking her in chat. This is not always a good idea especially when she’s being protected by her entire team.
    • Mocus Forales^ExplanationA mutation of the all-too-common "Focus Morales!" comment after a lost team fight, usually used to mock any Bronzie giving (mis)advice.
  • Slug life, Slapathur, Don’t try to kill the slug ^ExplanationThanks to Abathur's Difficult, but Awesome gameplay style, he has the able to get some of the best and most amazing kills in the entire game. One of the most frequent is him slapping a low HP enemy player to death and securing the map objective
  • Azmodunk ^ExplanationShortly after Azmodan was released in 2014, players noted how his Globe of Annihilation looks like a basketball and Azmodunk is throwing three-pointers to kill people from long range. Thus, he quickly got a new nickname.
  • HEROES NEVER DIE. ^ExplanationEven before release, Auriel is noted to have one of her heroic being a resurrection skill, which prompts the fans to just use Mercy's line to refer to that one skill, never mind that Auriel only revives one hero, not a bunch of dead heroes in her vicinity. Hilarious in Hindsight now, since Mercy was reworked to only rez one as well.
  • (insert old Blademaster quote on Samuro here). ^ExplanationDue to Vocal Evolution and a little bit more serious than before, Samwise Didier didn't transfer a lot of his old hilariously memetic Blademaster quotes, which was RIFE with gratuitous Japanese accent, to Samuro. So it's up to the fans to insert old Blademaster quotes in the broken Japanese accent, such as mentioning that Samuro tells grasshoppers to snatch a pebble from his hand, or his blade can still cut through armor while still cutting a tomato, promoting 'twin blade action for clean close shave', and his Battle Cry being "TASTE-UH MAH BLADE!!"
  • Heroes of Warcraft/Assassins of the Storm. ^ExplanationThe number of assassins in the game overwhelms the other classes, and the number of Warcraft heroes overwhelms the other series, making fans use this phrase to complain whenever Blizzard added a hero from Warcraft or an Assassin. This reached its peak during the end of 2016 and early 2017 where five heroes consecutively released were Warcraft Assassins (or "Assassin" in Varian's case. Ragnaros would also be reclassified to a Bruiser later). Adding to this, around this time, Hearthstone ditched the subtitle 'Heroes of Warcraft', leading to jokes that the subtitle was being transferred to this game.
  • The next hero is Kel'Thuzad ^ExplanationKel'Thuzad is a major fan favorite from Warcraft that was in the game's preliminary builds, but not making it to the game quick enough. This had gone long enough that if there was any chances of a new hero being announced, they're instead guessed/mistaken as Kel'Thuzad. Other characters like Imperius, Cairne, and Deathwing have been subject to the same meme since his release, but never to the extent he was.
    • It's obviously Terokk on a raptor. ^ExplanationTerokk (a minor NPC in World of Warcraft) has been one of the wild guesses people throw out whenever a new hero is teased. It started when Dehaka was teased, and while many correctly guessed Dehaka, there was one person that argued that it could be Terokk. Others speculated it could be Vol'jin on a raptor, then people began to mix these guesses up and memed that it must be Terokk on a raptor.
  • You expected Grom (for your Hellscream), but it was I, Garrosh! ^ExplanationCrossing over with Jojos Bizarre Adventure and the fact that Garrosh and Dio Brando share the same voice actor, this is to show that most fans usually prefer Grom Hellscream as the representative of the Warsong clan or axe-wielding Orc warrior... but they got Garrosh first.
  • THE ARCHLICH OF NAXXRAMAS, ESTEEMED LICH LORD OF THE PLAGUELANDS, COMMANDER OF THE DREAD NECROPOLIS, MASTER AND FOUNDER OF THE CULT OF THE DAMNED, FORMERLY OF THE COUNCIL OF THE SIX, CREATOR OF THE ABOMINATION, SUMMONER OF ARCHIMONDE THE DEFILER, BETRAYER OF HUMANITY, HEARTHSTONE ENTHUSIAST, AND MAJORDOMO TO THE LICH KING HIMSELF, KEL'THUZAD. ^ExplanationOver a year before the announcement of Kel'Thuzad, a certain user started posting comments asking for his addition on the Heroes subreddit's weekly "rage threads", using this exact list of titles. Other redditors caught up to this and started creating their own lists, related to other highly-requested characters (Fenix and Malthael being the most notable examples). This particular list was ascended in Kel'Thuzad's Spotlight, where cloaken ends the video by reciting it, and a slightly modified form is one of Kel'Thuzad's Stop Poking Me! lines.
  • Althiccstrasza ^ExplanationAlexstrasza's model is a lot more buxom with wider hips than her WoW counterpart (which uses a modified female Blood Elf), and people definitely took notice. Combining it with the already-existing THICC meme was inevitable.
  • On a similar note, Whitemane is also known as "Thighmane" or the "Thigh Inquisitor" for showing off her legs with magnificent thighhigh stockings.
  • Chen OP. Nerf Chen. ^ExplanationChen has been one of the weakest heroes in the game for ages. Naturally, this has gone full 360 from the fan base asking for buffs to people saying he's completely broken and needs to be reduced in power level. Very much a Discredited Meme now that Chen has been successfully reworked.
    • Damn, X is OP. Gotta nerf Chen. ^ExplanationDespite other heroes being stronger statistically-wise, according to third-party sources, Blizzard still kept nerfing Chen, due to their own (more accurate) statistics, leading to disbelief, as most considered him trash at that point. Thus, whenever new patches/strong heroes or reworks came out, people joked that Blizzard have to nerf Chen to keep things balanced.
  • Glorified lane minion. ^ExplanationLike Chen above, Raynor had been a prime victim of Power Creep. His gameplay was one-dimensional (barely having a trait, no escape, no E ability, only focused on AA, weak overall). This phrase was used by a popular streamer to describe Raynor, and stuck due to how appropriate it was. Thankfully, his rework in 2018 solved these issues.
  • Handsome Mal'Ganis ^ExplanationMal'Ganis' face has really been prettied up for this game, and people took notice. He's frequently compared to Handsome Squidward◊ as a result. At least one of the animators got in on it as well, since he's given a Dwayne Johnson-style pec dance animation.
  • MY HUSBAND IS DEAD ^ExplanationDuring the Dragonshire visual update, the announcer was given new voice acting. This includes the aforementioned quote, which is the front half of a line used to call out the objective starting. The total abruptness of line as well as its inappropriate timing made it ripe for the memes.
  • Esports-related memes:
    • 323 ^ExplanationDuring a game between Cloud 9 and Cognitive Gaming in 2015, the observer accidentally dropped his keyboard and pressed "323" at the end of a chat message, causing an interruption of the game for several minutes. At that point, Cloud 9 was losing the game, but after the game was resumed, they regained composure and Cognitive lost their momentum, causing people to accuse the observer of fixing the game. Either way, whenever a pro game had to be paused, people started spamming "323" in the chat.
    • Anything and everything to do with Totino's Pizza Rolls. ^ExplanationTotino's was one of the primary sponsors of the 2015 Americas Cup, and fans latched onto it.
    • Chinese bush meta ^ExplanationDuring the first Blizzcon tournament in 2015, the Chinese teams became infamous for laying traps and hiding with all five members for an unsuspecting player to run into a bush without checking for an ambush. Also known as "party bush".
    • "One hour of practice"^ExplanationA statement taken out of context from pro player "Arthelon", who was complaining about the community. He was referring to mechanical maneuvers Heroes's arguably most gifted mechanical player, "Rich", was doing and how he himself would maybe need "one hour of practice" to do the same. People commonly quoted this particular phrase to mock North American players who could reach the skill level of the Korean players with just one hour of practice.
    • lagf ^ExplanationDuring the HGC Qualifiers, professional player "Zuna" apparently was lagging, resulting in him dying to a fort. The typo stuck with the community. His team later went along with the joke and called themselves "Lag Force", giving each of their members' names the label "LAGF".
    • NA LUL ^ExplanationLUL eventually became a twitch emote that features TotalBiscuit's face laughing. The meme (and variations of it) also made it to Heroes, where it was noteworthy that no pro NA team managed to beat a European or Korean team for more than a year of competitive events. Pro team, "Team expert", added salt to the wound by holding signs that read "NA LUL" after beating an NA team in a tournament.
    • On a similar note: "Sometimes in life you lose, sometimes you face NA."
    • Kaelaris the Curser. ^ExplanationEsports caster, Kaelaris, had the tendency to cast games where he prematurely congratulated the first pro team that attempted to destroy the Core and then ended up wiping (with less than 5% of the Core's health remaining), leading to the other team to end the game. Thus, people claimed that games Kaelaris casts where he calls Core attempts are cursed.
    • third guy ^ExplanationPro games were usually casted by two people, while during tournaments, a third person would sometimes serve as an expert and analyze interesting scenes post-game. (Former) Pro player "Cauthonluck" was dubbed the "third guy" after a stream, with other pro player "Fan" being called "fourth guy" during a tournament, where four casters were discussing the game.
    • #getTRICKED ^ExplanationTricked eSports were a pro team with mixed and unpredictable results. Known for their meme captain AlexTheProG and their meme comps, they managed to get some impressive wins against usually far stronger teams, with people meme'ing that everyone "got Tricked".
    • POILK'd ^Explanation Dignitas player, POILK, managed to pull off one of Li-Ming's hardest combos in a professional match, thus people started to say that players who get killed by that particular combo "got POILK'd".
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • "Choose a talent!"
  • Due to the nature of the game, "QUAD KILL!" (kill 4 enemy heroes in a short time) would already be a good enough sign that you can start turning the tides. But even better is "MEGA KILL!" which almost always leads to..."Enemy team dominated!" ^note The only way in which a Mega Kill isn't automatically an enemy team wipe is if the opposing team has the Lost Vikings, who can count as multiple kills.
  • Also when your team complete a map objective that grants advantage against the enemy team.
  Blackheart: Seems we've reached an accord! Let's show your enemies A JOLLY GOOD TIME!
  Dragon Knight: Your enemies shall FALL!
  Neithis: Yes! That is enough! You will be rewarded, as promised!
  The Raven Lord: You have won my favor, heroes. Let your enemies know. my. wrath.
  Illarian: Let the Burning Hells atone for their sins!
  Warhead Junction Adjutant: Nuclear launch detected. (enemy fort explodes)
  • Heroes who have a tendency to pull off Big Damn Heroes moments tend to elicit this with their voice clips as they do so, from Rehgar running in to drop a gigantic heal on you as you're taking focus fire, or Abathur dropping a symbiote on you to help secure a kill or shield you from certain death.
  Rehgar: You're not dying on me!
  Abathur: Organism Abathur with you.
  • The distinctive "ding" sound that plays when a hero gains progress for an in-game quest. Many players will admit to regularly taking infinitely-stacking quest talents^note Technically, as Try Mode will show, these talents only go up to 9001 stacks., which usually aren't all that practical unless the enemy team's composition in some way facilitates them, solely to be able to hear the dings and see the progress notifier pop up for the entire match.
• Nausea Fuel: Take a close look at the animation for Stukov's Healing Pathogen. The healing mist isn't fired from his arm, it comes out of his back. More specifically, it comes out of the bulbous Zerg boil growing out of him. He pops a zit, and covers you in its goo to heal you, then the regeneration spreads like a virus. Jeeeez.
• Never Live It Down: Whenever a new teaser is out and it looks like it's pointing at an obvious hero, you can expect someone to say that it'll be a totally random character with no relation to the teaser, usually one from Overwatch. ^ExplanationDuring the lead-up to the Hanamura Showdown cinematic, Blizzard said they were revealing a new hero. The first teaser for the trailer was the Hanamura door with massive claw marks across it and some embers. Speculation was wild, ranging from Deathwing to Baal. However, once the cinematic was released, it turned out the claw marks were made by Diablo and the new hero was actually D.Va, who had absolutely no clues pointing at her. Needless to say, the fan base hasn't forgotten. Hilariously enough, the Heroes team gave a nod to this by teasing the reveal for Deathwing on their Twitter using the infamous claw mark.
• Pandering to the Base: Apart from the characterisation issues listed under Author's Saving Throw, Blizzard picked up on the fanbase's dissatisfaction with the Warcraft-heavy lean the game took for some time. To that end, they allowed the Diablo universe to take centre-stage during the Eternal Conflict event . Patches featured Johanna the Crusader, the Butcher, King Leoric and Kharazim the Monk as new heroes, the Battlefield of Eternity and the Infernal Shrines as new battlefields portraying the titular Forever War between the High Heavens and the Burning Hells and new/reworked skins for Diablo and Tyrael, as well as a skin for Nova based on the Diablo II Amazon, who sadly didn't make it into the game as her own hero. Furthermore, in tandem with the announcement of Legacy of the Void they also promised to add the first Warrior hero from StarCraft: Artanis, using a Zealot-type set.
  • Furthermore, they must have noticed that amongst Diablo II heroes, the Necromancer class is usually the fan favorite. Therefore, once they're done including all Nephalems, they immediately released a ''Diablo II' hero and it's exactly a Necromancer (named Xul).
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • After the announcement that Cho'Gall would be played by two players fans waited for him to come out with excitement. When he came out though he was made available only by going to Blizzcon or buying a virtual ticket. Blizzard attempted to balance this with a daily where a friend who had Cho'gall could give them Cho'Gall for free by winning two games as him. The problem? Many people didn't have Cho'Gall! Even though many players asked for help by buddying up on the forums, some people disliked Blizzard's choice to make him so hard to get. Making this issue worse was Blizzard's decision to keep this system/daily all the way till January, a whole two months after his release. This meant that players went two months without being able to buy a brand new Hero.
  • Stealth heroes are either Skill Gate Characters or this. While you can see the invisible flicker as they move around, Blizzard has pointed out how this becomes an 'eye test' and makes the game less accessible to certain people. Eventually they changed the Stealth mechanic into Visible Invisibility.
  • The game's original role system — Warrior, Assassin, Support, Specialist — took a lot of flak. They were the categories that new players were first exposed to, which is problematic because they each contained at least two distinct gameplay types. (See "An Adventurer Is You" on the main page for details.) In a Reddit AMA, Blizzard acknowledged this issue, and within the next year revised the roles to Warrior, Bruiser, Melee Assassin, Ranged Assassin, Healer and Support... even though this left The Lost Vikings square-peg-into-round-hole'd as Support heroes.
  • Blizzard began releasing events, such as Caldeum Complex, with tiered unlockables that are achieved by doing certain gameplay activities — heal 25,000 damage, capture 10 mercenary camps, etc — in PvP matches. Though the intent was to simply encourage people to play more matches, it instead resulted in people focusing on those objectives to the exclusion of everything else, and expecting their short-handed team to win without them... a tricky proposition when 4-on-5 fights are Unwinnable by Design.
  • To coincide with the release of Mei, Blizzard added a weather mechanic to the game. The mechanic itself was seemingly simple: Each map had a specific type of weather that toggled on and off as the match progressed, providing a buff to everyone in the match (fog granted stealth, snow provided shields, etc). However, the new mechanic was met with heavy backlash. For one thing, there was no way of knowing when the weather was actually about to toggle, which messed with ganks. Another problem was increase in complexity, as players who didn't read the patch notes had no way of knowing what type of weather each map had before actually starting the match (which for ranked players was after selecting their heroes). Finally, the weather was extremely graphics intensive, with players reporting heavy frame-rate drops when weather was active. The mechanic was dropped after a month or so, replaced with the similarly controversial Gladiator's Medallion shortly afterwards.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: This is kind of a given, seen as it's a MOBA. From armchair-RTS-ing like everyone else is just a unit for them to move on the map to yelling at anyone who shows any sign (in their opinion) of being a noob, there's plenty of grief to go around, even when the only thing at risk is ego from loss to computers in a human-vs-AI game.
• Tainted by the Preview: The alpha and beta of the game threw up many mechanical issues. Although most issues were fixed eventually, their presence caused quite a number of players to write off the game.
• That One Attack:
  • Nova's Triple Tap has pretty much earned this status among non-Nova players. The attack is lethal, dealing a ton of Damage three times! Squishy Mage characters are killed usually by the second hit and a Warrior hero can be easily killed if they aren't at full HP. Making this worse is Nova's level twenty talent which allows her to, if she kills a Hero using it, to have it automatically refresh the cooldown, meaning she can decimate Heroes with it. Its only weakness, being that it can be stopped if something blocks the laser, is minor since if used on a Hero thats alone, there's little way they can stop it.
  • Kael'Thas' Pyroblast is everything Triple Tap is and more. For starter, it cannot be stopped by anything, so if it starts to fly and your health is low enough without heal or damage reduction available, you're as good as dead. For two, it actually explodes for AoE damage, so players used to Taking the Bullet against Triple Tap is going to have a rude awakening. Last, it has a similar lvl 20 talent to reset its cooldown; it doesn't need to kill the hero, but it needs to catch multiple heroes in its explosion, made easier by the fact the talent also increases the explosion radius.
  • Xul's Bone Prison, while it doesn't deal much direct damage, is an amazing ability, and unlike the previous two entries, is not a Heroic Ability. To wit, it's a 2 second fire-and-forget root that's pretty much a death sentence to all but the tankiest heroes if Xul manages to get close enough to cast it, since even if Xul can't kill you by himself, his team will gladly collapse onto you while you're helpless. It can also be talented at level 4 to spawn two skeletons that attack the rooted target, and at level 16 to increase the damage the rooted target takes by 25%. Its two saving graces are that it's got a short range (only a bit larger than Xul's melee range) and you have a couple seconds to try and escape before the root actually effects you, but it still doesn't help much.
  • Cheap Shot. Valeera's signature bread-and-butter opener: a point-and-click stun with a lengthy duration that's performed while in stealth. While Valeera is considered very weak in the higher leagues (and completely worthless on the pro scene), this skill elevated her to the top of the hate lists in lower leagues. Combined with her high burst, this skill lets Valeera capitalize on out-of-position opponents with extreme efficiency, often outright killing them if they were already injured.
• That One Level:
  • According to a thread on the forums, Haunted Mines takes the cake by far, with Blackheart's Bay somewhere behind. Both maps are maligned partly because of how much they snowball; a stronger team is likely to get more objectives on these two maps, especially a team that excels at teamfighting. Haunted Mines has even been known to have games that end within ten minutes. Blizzard seemed to realize this and removed Haunted Mines completely until it could be reworked.
    • Even post-rework, the Mines were still disliked by many. Blizzard essentially gave up and removed the map again in October 2018, this time indefinitely (although it's still available in Custom Mode).
  • The next map to get in this queue is Braxis Holdout. It involves two control points. When one team controls both of them, their holding pen begins to fill with a Zerg Rush. Whenever a team get to 100%, both waves are unleashed into the map's two lanes. (A team with 0% charge still gets a few zerglings for fairness's sake.) In theory, the map is balanced, because if you can steal both control points, you begin to fill your Zerg meter, making counter-pushes easy. The problem is that, in practice, the points rarely change hands; even in high-level play, it's most frequently 100% vs 0%. Additionally, the first wave is typically launched before Lv.10, when your team is not particularly strong; the 100% rush can easily take one of your (two) Forts, start threatening the Keep, and probably get the opponents up a Talent Tier, possibly the incredibly-powerful Lv.10 tier which unlocks Heroic Abilities. No amount of Comeback Mechanic can save you at that point. Braxis was eventually retooled to make the 0% Zerg wave much larger, making it less punishing to lose the objective.
  • Never has a map garnered this reputation so quick as Hanamura has. It's the game's first payload escort map, with protected cores like Towers Of Doom. The map is badly unbalanced. Standing within five feet of the cart counts as "Contested", and players have to divide their attention between pushing their cart, stopping the enemy cart and stopping forts from falling, which gives a damage bonus to the other team. The game typically devolves into a slugfest around the carts, with the stronger team able to simply camp it while another team member pushes theirs to victory.
    • Originally, if a team managed to take both the Fort and Keep of a single lane down, they would get a Sapper minion in place of the usual Catapult. This generally spelled doom for the other team, as now they had to pay attention to their payloads, the enemy's payloads, the boss, and up to two lanes that no longer have any defenses. An update a couple months after the map's release removed the Sappers. While this removed the aspect of adding another thing to pay attention to, it also made it so the only way to win was pushing payloads or defeating the boss. This allowed particularly dickish teams to drag games out indefinitely by refusing to push their own payloads while also preventing the enemy team from pushing.
    • The map also alienated many Heroes. The low value of taking towers lowered the power of siege heroes; the drastic distance between lanes and tendency to group up for fights at carts made roamers & gankers less useful; the constant moving of carts made characters that took time to set up fights less useful; and the game being over so fast meant late-game heroes never came into their strength. All of this combined to ensure this map had the lowest roster of viable characters. This could be a bit annoying for ranked game, but Quick Match is the most played mode and this tendency made it hated in quick match. Picking any quick match hero that is not built for team fighting was dangerous when there was a chance of being thrown into Hanamura and forced to play a game as The Load.
    • Hanamura was so despised, it was removed from all gamemodes (except Custom Matches) to receive a major overhaul a mere four months after its inclusion. Fortunately, the reworked version released a year later (cores are no longer protected, the map only spawns one payload for both teams to fight over, and captured payloads damage enemy structures akin to Blackheart's Bay rather than targeting the core directly) was much better received.
    • ...Of course, even the revamped version has its detractors. Both lanes have a "Sentinel" mercenary camp, which is basically a Boss but respawns at the rate of a normal Siege Camp. Capturing this repeatedly can be very valuable; it will march down a lane, siege the heck out of the enemy buildings and turn the Objective phase into a Morton's Fork: either you lose a building to the Sentinel to capture the Objective, or you lose a building to the Objective to stop the Sentinel. Some players go so far as to call the Sentinel "the real Objective" for this reason. Other players, who don't understand this, will naturally get steamed at their teammates' "Skewed Priorities."
  • Garden of Terror also draws some flak due to the utter consternation that is the night phase. With two Garden Terror mini-bosses to watch for alongside the enemy team, it's not uncommon for teams to be all over the place, making it near-impossible to focus on any one part of the map; if the enemy happens to be more coordinated than you, tough beans. And that's before getting into the player-controlled Garden Terrors, which can give you yet another thing to deal with and split your attention even further, as well as being annoyingly hard to kill due to their long-duration building disable and polymorph. The Garden was eventually announced for a rework... which wasn't received well, as it merely paired Cursed Hollow's tribute system with Tomb of the Spider Queen's objective.
  • Blackheart's Bay is one of the oldest maps in the game's pool, but has come with frequent complaints. At the center of the map is Blackheart's pirate ship; if you pay him enough gold doubloons, he'll bombard your opponent's buildings with cannon fire. Coins must be turned in to Blackheart himself, and are dropped on the ground if Heroes are slain while carrying them. All of this is pretty simple. The problem is that the coins themselves are obtained by taking neutral camps: in addition to three Knight camps, two siege camps and a boss, there are four unique "Skeleton Pirate" camps hanging around, all of which give 2 coins each, and two treasure chests (5 coins each) which spawn periodically. None of them are in lane, and they're all spread out in a way that allows each side to avoid each other. This is the heart of players' complaints: it's not only possible but recommended to play this map in such a way that your team does zero Hero Damage and Siege Damage the entire time!^note Your fights with all those neutral creeps don't count towards Siege Damage.
  • Dragon Shire. The map itself is simple: adjacent to the outer lanes is a control point. If one team controls both points, they can channel a third point off the middle lane which will transform the player into a giant dragon Physical God which walks around, breathes fire, hits things really hard and can kick people around the map (literally). The reason it's considered bad is that Heroes of the Storm was designed from the ground up around team play. To get the objective, your team has to split up into three groups — even though most maps are played with only two groups — and then win individual duels or 2v2 skirmishes to gain control of all three points at the same time. Not only does each individual player need to be good at what they do, but they have to be on the same page in terms of what they plan to do and when: just one player wandering off to do their own thing for thirty seconds is enough to lose the objective, and therefore the match. The Required Secondary Powers for this map are communication and teamwork, all things a Pick-Up Group is simply not likely to have. Thus, Pick-Up Groups hate the map; and coordinated teams, who can actually communicate, love it for being an easy win, in turn making more people hate it for balancing reasons.
  • Towers of Doom has the same issues as Dragon Shire. A team who are talking and communicating can easily dominate the game, but a team that are just running around doing whatever are going to hate it as the enemy team sieges them in ways they can't stop and in ways their teammates don't seem to understand. (One of the keys is to look at the layout of the map. Towers of Doom has the same Pumpkin Sappers from Haunted Mines, but with additional functionality: if you escort them into the enemy team's kill zone, they damage the Core, the only other way to do that besides winning Bell Towers or taking the Boss. There's one such camp at the Top lane and two at the Bottom. Therefore, simply owning both Keeps at bot and feeding the enemy team 6 pumpkins every 150 seconds can be very productive.)
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • In the spirit of It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Being a MOBA, this game is subject to the trope. The biggest concern from the gaming press has been the relative watering-down of technical skill; the title has been compared to Mario Kart, with the secondary map objectives taking the role of Blue Shells. Having said that, the gaming press have also acknowledged that a MOBA with a Mario Kart attitude—fun first, competition second—could prove to be exactly the Gateway Series the genre needs.
  • The latest Azmodan rework inspired a very negative reaction. The rework vastly changed Azmodan's core abilities and talent tree, to the point many of the character's fans were outraged at what they saw as a massive nerf disguised as a rework, especially when it was being applied to a mostly inoffensive character that had a healthy winrate. Other complaints included the sentiment that the rework completely destroyed Azmodan's gameplay identity, particularly in regards to his two most popular builds, Lazer and Dunk Azmodan, being rendered either impossible or vastly underpowered by the rework, as well as the rework greatly neutering Azmodan's ability to push and siege multiple lanes from afar, which was seen as hypocritical given that the stated goal of the rework was to 'solidify his role as a long range sieger.' The idea about it being a nerf was pretty damn unfounded, but it's still up for debate whether his kit is ruined or not.
  • The removal of the player controlled Terror on the Garden Of Terror map. Instead turning them into three NPC lane minions akin to the Web Weavers from the Tomb Of The Spider Queen. Fan backlash was instant, with the announcement video receiving almost 1000 downvotes within an hour of posting.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Or interaction. Despite being another major troll, Zul'jin has no quotes about Vol'jin, who would become the Horde's Warchief, and did not even insult him in the wake of Vol'jin's death in the Broken Shores, despite trolls under Vol'jin being one of the possible people to kill Zul'jin in The Burning Crusade or how Vol'jin only kept the Warchief title for such a short time.
  • In addition of this, none of Xul's interactions with Li-Ming make mention of her teacher Isendra, who is the Sorceress that helped Xul in defeating Diablo in his time. Though Cassia remembers and mentions their link.
• Ugly Cute: Pajamathur. Taking the hideous looking Abathur, and giving him a pacifier, big doe eye, adorable little PJ's and a Zerg bassinet◊ to nap in.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • All Heroes have three Basic Abilities (assigned to Q, W and E) and their Passive (D), and most Heroes have at least three Talents that augment each of them, allowing you to focus on one of them above all. A few, though, don't have enough Talents to make that possible: Varian, released in November '16, had only one Talent to improve his Q, and didn't receive a second until March '18, and Chromie had a similar problem with her E.
  • Garrosh was released with Body Check; a talent that could be directly improved by picking later talents which were locked unless you had Body Check. This was soon repeated for Ana's Aim Down Sights and began looking like a potential mainstay. However, they immediately stopped adding talents like this, and eventually removed Ana's when she was reworked. Ultimately the mechanic was too unpopular, since you had to pick a weak talent and make it stronger by giving up other talent tiers, and was quietly discarded.
  • Varian was the first hero who was able to be changed stat and gameplay wise, as he could use three different skill lines that adjusted his playstyle and stats to be either a Glass Cannon, Stone Wall or Fragile Speedster depending on his talent options. No other hero since has this freedom, making Varian the only unique hero who can essentially be specialized. (This mechanic was abandoned when the Confusion Fu inherent in his design made him impossible for the matchmaking AI to place.)
• Unexpected Character: Any of the Original Generation heroes can qualify, especially when it comes to new personalities given to the unit.
  • Sgt. Hammer was the first OG hero in the game. She replaced the popular General Warfield since Blizzard felt they could do a lot more with his kit. Keep in mind that Warfield had been included in all of the promo builds of the game during its lengthy early development.
  • Rehgar came to be in much the same way, replacing the early version of Thrall. While Rehgar wasn't invented for the game, he was a comic book character and hadn't even debuted in WoW, surprising everyone when he became the first orc hero.
  • In Diablo III, the Barbarian is usually represented/advertised by the male one. HOTS instead gave us the female Sonya, as of that time, to ensure that there will be more gender balance.
  • For a long time prior to her reveal the fans thought the female Crusader would be the more well-known Anajinn, who appeared in the same short stories Valla and Li-Ming originated from. The catch is, unlike Valla and Li-Ming, Anajinn's story doesn't talk about going to New Tristram in search of the falling star, so Blizzard had to create a Crusader who did go there from scratch — Johanna. The same goes for Sonya, Nazeebo and Kharazim.
  • Probius is this especially. Many people were expecting Karax based on the teasers. Some stretched and guessed at Fenix or even Stukov. But come on, who could expect a Protoss Probe?
  • There's actually a dryad in World of Warcraft named Mylune who has a more peppy personality about protecting nature. For some reason Blizzard decided not to use her and instead designed Lunara, with a different personality (and a bit of a ruthless streak). A Stop Poking Me! quote references this—"Call me Mylune again and I'll kick you with my back hooves. And front ones."
  • There was a unique Firebat NPC in Starcraft named Gui Montag who appeared in the Enslavers map (only in briefings, although his unit appears in the Map Editor), so fans expected him to be the representative of Firebats... but they instead went with Blaze, an original identity. Most likely it was because "Gui Montag" is a Shout-Out to the lead character of Fahrenheit 451 and could have attracted a lawsuit... but other people predicted that, instead of Gui, we'd get Franko Tildon or Hank Harnack, other established (if even more minor) firebats. (This was a bit softened when StarCraft II: Co-op Mode retconned Blaze into the game by incorporating him into Tychus's army.)
  • For April 2018, Blizzard tried to invoke this by announcing that they would be unveiling an "unusual" hero. A lot of people immediately guessed that it would be Deckard Cain... and they were right.
  • Whitemane, while being a cult character in World of Warcraft who got a few fan requests, was rather unexpected. When people thought of a proper Warcraft priest, the more prominent racial leaders, Anduin and Velen, came up first.
  • Orphea. Not only is she an Original Generation character, she's a Canon Foreigner to Blizzard itself, being the first Nexus Original hero. Popping up at Blizzcon took quite a few people by surprise. Then again, if you followed the comics, it was pretty obvious she was getting hyped up.
• Values Dissonance: Much like Graves from League of Legends, Tychus had his cigar from Starcraft II Wings Of Liberty removed. As Honest Trailers says, "Yeah, God forbid they let you play a character who smokes when you can still play as the literal Devil!"
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion:
  • Malthael is often misread as "Maltheal", which leads to people mispronouncing it as such.
  • Maiev's name is sometimes mispronounced as "Mai-eve" or "Maeve".
  • Warlords of Draenor players, and people who watch Yrel's spotlight are aware that her name is actually pronounced "yee-rell". Everyone else struggles with her fantastic name at first, usually referring to her as "eer-ell".
  • Some players read Lt. Morales' name as "morals", like morality, as opposed to the Spanish surname "more-al-ez". It doesn't help that she's an Original Generation character and it's a Punny Name because of her high morals as a medic.
  • A lot of people struggle with Qhira's name, not helped by her spotlight being the only one not to have any voice over. Officially, it's pronounced "keer-ah".

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