How to Play Heroes of the Storm – Battleground Tips

Heroes of the Storm is a game where two teams of five heroes battle it out against one another. However, there’s a lot more to the game than just five versus five warfare. The maps, better known as Battlegrounds, are just as important to the match as the heroes battling within them. If you ignore the objects that each Battleground requires, there’s a good chance you won’t be victorious. Let’s take a look at the currently available Battlegrounds and the important aspects of each.

Blackheart’s Bay

The primary objective in Blackheart’s Bay is to collect doubloons and give them to Blackheart so he bombards the opposing team with cannon fire. The number of doubloons needed increases as Blackheart fires at the opposing team, starting with 10 required doubloons. In order to obtain doubloons you need to attack treasure chests, skeletons and mercenaries.

What may be most important to understand about Blackheart’s Bay is that if you’re killed, you drop all of your doubloons. This gives the opposing team a good chance to collect those dropped doubloons and turn them in to Blackheart. It’s extremely important to fight as a team and never go alone in this Battleground. If you can gang up on opposing players, you can score some easy doubloons. This means you should turn in doubloons often so you don’t lose them to the opposing team.

It’s also important to watch yourself and your teammates when you’re turning in doubloons to Blackheart. This is almost always where you’re going to get ambushed. It takes a moderate amount of time to turn in doubloons, and if your hero is attacked in any way, you have to start over. When your team is ready to turn in doubloons, head to Blackheart in a group large enough to fend off an attack from the opposing team. If you’re lucky, the defeated enemies will drop doubloons as well.

Cursed Hollow
When it comes to the Cursed Hollow, the objective is everything. When you collect three tributes (which spawn periodically around the Battleground), the Raven Lord curses your enemy. This causes enemy minions to be reduced to one health and enemy forts will not attack. These two restrictions make it significantly easier to push into enemy territory, which is why it’s important to obtain three tributes before the opposing team.

While it should be common sense, you do not want to see your teammates die in battle here. You’re going to have team battles around the location of each tribute, and if your team loses these battles, the opposing team will have an easy tribute and most of your team will get incapacitated until they respawn. This gives the opposing team time to mount an offensive, especially if they just acquired their third tribute.

Stay together and make a strategic stand at the location of the tribute. It’s imperative that you take control of the tributes, but not to the point of losing half your team. If you see that you’re fighting a losing battle, retreat to save your team. Three tributes are required to curse your opponents, so it’s OK if you lose one or even two. What you don’t want to do is lose your entire team defending the first tribute, giving the other team plenty of time to wreck havoc on your forts with little to no opposition.

Dragon Shrine
There are two shrines in the Dragon Shrine Battleground that need to be controlled. This is where the first team battles generally take place. Once you have control of both shrines, a hero needs to stand in the center of the Battleground where the Dragon Knight statue is found, then take control of the Dragon Knight and advance toward the enemy forts to cause mass destruction.

You need a good team strategy in this Battleground because you need to capture and defend two positions at once while at least one hero takes control of the Dragon Knight. This is not an easy task, but if you can work as a team to kill most (or all) of the opposing heroes, this task becomes much easier.

Head for the shrines to see what kind of opposition you face. If you can take one shrine with ease, do so, then focus on taking the other shrine. Keep in mind that a single hero from the opposing team can capture a shrine if you leave it completely unguarded, but it’s worth the loss if you can dispose of most of the enemy team. If only one or two enemy heroes remain, they won’t be able to do much to fight off your entire team. Once you have the Dragon Knight, mount of unified offense against the forts of the opposing team.

Garden of Terror
At night, horrors will spawn around the Battleground. Attack this minions and collect the seeds that drop. Once you have 100 seeds, a Garden Terror grows in your base that can be controlled by one of your teammates. Take the Garden Terror and mount an offense against the forts of the opposing team. They will be almost completely focused on the Terror, leaving the rest of your team free to attack at will. Keep in mind, when the Garden Terror falls, the hero within will be in the midst of a brutal attack. Be ready with crowd control abilities to get them to safety, or be prepared to lose that teammate until they can respawn.

Unlike some of the other Battleground objectives, each team can spawn a Garden Terror at the same time. That means it’s important to spawn your Terror first so it can occupy the other team and hopefully prevent them from spawning their own Terror, or at least stall the process. If you need to obtain seeds quickly, look for the larger minions (they look like mini-Terrors) and attack them with two or three heroes to spawn more seeds than you’ll get from the lesser horrors.

Haunted Mines
Periodically the mines below the Battleground will open. There are two entrances to the mines near the center of the Battleground. You’ll have a bit of warning before the mines open, so have your entire team in position and ready to enter the mines as soon as they become open. Once inside the mines, seek out the undead and defeat them to find skulls. Collect as many skulls as you can while the mines remain open.

A Golem spawns near the enemy forts The more skulls you collect while the mines are open, the more powerful your Golem will be. This is why it’s important to have your entire team collecting skulls. You’ll also run into the other team while in the mines, so the more heroes you have down there, the easier it will be to dispatch enemy heroes you encounter.

When the mines close, head to the spawning point of the enemy Golem and take it down as quickly as possible to limit the amount of damage done to your base and forts. If you collected more skulls than the opposing team, you should have time to push into their base after defeating their Golem. If not, take down a few mercenary camps and prepare for the mines to open again.

Sky Temple

The Sky Temple Battleground contains three temples that periodically awaken. When a temple activates, stand inside the circle to spawn enemies that must be vanquished. Take down all of the enemies and the temple will attack forts of the opposing team. When a Guardian appears at the temple, take it down as well.

While the temples are important to control on this Battleground, in general they seem a bit less important than some of the objectives on other Battlegrounds. You still need to focus on controlling them and send at least two or three heroes to capture and defend, but there seem to be more wins on this Battleground without a heavy focus on the objectives.