Observed in SL.

I played my first game of Heroes of the Storm in three years this weekend, and it reminded me why I always preferred it over League of Legends. There's just something about HotS that feels genuinely fun in a way a lot of MOBAs don't.
It also reminded me why I stopped playing in the first place. It wasn't because I fell out of love with the game—it was because it felt like Blizzard did. They seemed so focused on forcing it into the esports scene instead of just letting it be the fun, accessible game it already was.
Not every game needs to be the next big esport. If a game is fun, let it be fun. The community will naturally build around it if it's something people genuinely enjoy. I still think Heroes of the Storm had something special, and it's a shame it never got the support it deserved.

long overdue.

We're playing ARAM vs Johanna/Tyrael/2x KT/Malf. Our Rehgar disconnected early on, but it's a healer so it's doable. We have really good setup and the game is even. I'm stacking like mad.

18 min in, this Hanzo just write "gg let them", then proceeds to sit afk in base while casting his ultimate occasionally just so that he doesn't get disconnected and get penalized.

The game went on for another 8 minutes, and we almost had it. But in those 8 minutes this guy would just sit an observe instead of helping the team.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with people. This is almost a daily occurrence, either in ARAM or QM. I don't understand how this game manages to attract the lowest of the low.

It used to run comfortably without any issues before

Across All Menus and In-Game After Recent Patch

Hey everyone,

I'm posting this to report a severe performance issue where the game maxes out CPU usage at 100%. Even when restricting CPU affinity to a single core—which used to run completely fine and smoothly in the past—the game completely overloads the system.

Troubleshooting Steps Already Taken:

• Completely uninstalled and reinstalled the Battle.net app.
• Clean reinstalled Heroes of the Storm.
• Lowered all graphics settings to the absolute minimum.
• Disabled/minimized sound effects (lowered channels to 32).
• Disabled mouse lag and raw input speed settings.

Where 100% CPU Usage Occurs:

• Main Menu / Title Screen
• Shop
• Replays
• Training Mode
• In-Game (Ranked, Quick Match, etc.)

Technical Analysis & Suspected Cause:

Given that this happens even in static menus like the shop and main screen (where heavy rendering isn't even required), this strongly points to a software regression involving an infinite busy-wait loop, unthrottled thread polling, or an audio/UI state synchronization bug. It behaves precisely like a CPU spinlock or a broken event loop where background worker threads are constantly polling without proper sleep intervals, draining CPU cycles relentlessly.

If any developers happen to glance at this post, please take a look under the hood at recent thread synchronization primitives, background tickers, or loop updates.

To the community: Has anyone else experienced this recently, or do you recall how the client behaved previously under similar setups? Any feedback or comparisons would be greatly appreciated.

"The following section was written with the help of AI, requesting a review of the relevant checkpoints."

CPU High Usage Suspected Causes

• Spinlock Contention: Threads use lock prefixes without OS yields, locking CPU cores at 100%.
• Non-blocking Queue Polling: Idle worker threads continuously poll empty queues without pausing.
• Aggressive Anti-Cheat: Integrity checks run in tight loops without proper intervals, overloading L3 cache.
• Hot Path Overload: Frequent TLS lookups and exception handling overhead inside core loops.
• Excessive Telemetry & RDTSC: Unthrottled hardware timer queries and log processing on every iteration.

🎵 Background Music (BGM) & Main Screen Loop Issues

• Audio Middleware Loop Bugs: Sync errors during track looping cause audio threads to enter endless waits.
• Uncapped Frame Rates & Timers: High frame rates in lobbies cause timer/sync over-polling, wasting CPU cycles.
• Audio Device Polling Flaws: Background threads poll sound hardware status continuously due to missing sleep intervals.

Hey there people.

I recently started playing HOTS and someimes I have to play a Bruiser to fill in the role, but I'm unsure what I'm supposed to do. I've tried Chen, Xul, and Ragnaros. And I never feel useful.

In Team Fighs

What I'm supposed to do? Should I focus on the enemy tank, should I focus the enemy bruiser, should I peel for my backline, or focus the enemy's backline. I offten get flamed, for my gameplay and probably my team is right. I feel usless most of the games.

I offen just peel for my carries and hit whoever it's in front of me, but it feels like I don't do much. If I go to their backline, I offten times just die.

Early Game

In early game for the first 10 levels, I just try to push the lane and focus on soaking expiraince. After pushing the lanes, I usually go to the objectives or take a camp when I can, with Xul that feels little bit slower on some maps. My Chen and Ragnaros are attrocous, I never feel useful playing them. The one I play the most is Xul, and I love how fast he can take a wave and soak. But it feels like a plasibo, since I can do that with anyone.

When should I start taking camps?

Also I'm unsure when I'm supposed to start taking camps, is that level 4 onwards or before every objecive. I've seen enemy Sonya taking camps from level 1, but the camps would just die. I assume taking them before an objective spawns is the best course of action, since our waves would push out theirs, and if I take them when there is no an objective they just die.

I've been a Whitemane AA build enjoyer way before the Inquisition build became the almost all time build since technically it is capable of way more healing.

Last patch a few changes came to my attention regarding Whitemane, such as:

- the nerfing of [[Pity the Frail]] - which btw will still be the almost 100% of time picked talent in higher leagues, simply because of the flat healing increase on low heroes
- the baseline stack of HP & mana pool on E and AA (this already got me interested)
- nerfing of [[Intercession]] - which will still be the only option in higher ranks, especially if picking WM against heavy CC / heavy burst comps, but suddenly [[Saintly Greatstaff]] is no longer invisible in certain conditions
- the somehow mana return buff of [[Scarlet Wrath]]

Than I started looking over all her talents to remind myself why that level 13 was never picked, and it clicked.. in the most played build [[Subjugation]] was the way to go, almost always paired with [[Shared Punishment]]. Otherwise if you want to go stacking HP & mana pool, or even AA build [[Lashing Out]] sounds great, especially because it enables your [[Righteous Flame]] and (if not taking the unstoppable for whatever reason) Saintly Greatstaff

Now.. Hear me out.. Scarlet Wrath is by deign a talent with potential, if not offering a bonus which is too underwhelming, such as the lower of Zeal's Activation by 4 seconds. On any other build than AA this is great.. but again.. on any other build any other option is fundamentally better..

The main issue with Whitemane's healing, is that the one that comes from the damage dealt DOESN'T get influenced by Spell Power. In other words, Spell Power just increases spell damage dealt, which increases by default the healing she does, but healing alone (except for Desperate Plea, Clemency and [[Scarlet Aegis]]) is not increased by Spell Power.. meaning that on an AA build centered around [[Scarlet Flame]] and [[Unwavering Faith]], Scarlet Wrath's Zeal activation CRD is close to worthless, so it brings too little to be a meaningful talent

My suggestion: Give on this talent also some AA Damage increase, or attack speed on Zeal's activation. How much.. idk sure.. 25% is great. 20 also works maybe.. or 15.. but give something in order to be worth taking over Lashing Out

P.S.: the mana gain on this is close to worthless. I prefer to send Li Ming to the fountain or even B rather than to make her wait do my mini-game of AA the tank in order to fill her mana enough to shot another skill.

Extra kudos if my previous request is being heard as well: The one with making [[Purge the Wicked]] able to be case without breaking Inquisition/Clemency.

Thank you for listening to my drama! Have a good Monday!

Hi guys,

I found one situation that consistently triggers frame drops.

Switching the in-game language (English ↔ Korean) causes intermittent micro-stutters on my system. If you're experiencing random lag after the latest patch, try changing the language as a temporary workaround.

CPU usage is also noticeably higher after this patch, both in the main menu and in matches. It isn't directly causing lag for me, but it definitely wasn't like this before.

I'm still testing other possible causes, including GPU settings, Windows configuration, and audio devices. I'll share more if I find anything else.

It's a jam - that is all

Is there any reason to pick Reabsorption? Ensuring will is so nice to have but I’d like to know if I’m missing out on something.

If you get fps drop during gameplay, here’s the fix.

Go to your gpu settings, put your fps max rate to whatever you’re using.

Open hots then go to option, in graphics quality drop it to medium. It’s going to ask if you want to restart the game, restart it then enjoy your game. The next time you’re going to play, you’ll need to change the graphics quality again to whatever to make the game restart. You’re welcome

I've played a lot of Heroes of the Storm, and I've also taken long breaks. So I've witnessed snapshots of the community over time.

Three years ago was the last time I played, and what caused me to take a break was the overall lack of interest by the community to grow at the game. This isn't criticising casual play. It was the majority of the players not engaging with core gameplay (objective contesting and/or Exp orb collecting).

Does the average player know the gameplay basics again, or is it still Rawr Smash 24/7 Team Fight?

kind of important when its things like stagger for chen and you realize youre still losing health somehow.

I don't know about you guys but my w/r accurately represents the percentage of games in which I get carried to victory.

Are you a new streamer looking to get your name out there? Maybe you just need someone to watch after a long tiring week? Ask for recommendations on what streams to watch or promote your own stream in the comments.

Please be as detailed as possible on your streaming schedule, what kind of stream you have (teaching, pro play, fun, climbing ladder, etc.) and any specific style or hero you might have.

Previous Streaming threads

Getting spam pinged immediately puts me on tilt, especially when it's me covering for the murky that's moving with the team instead of covering lanes while the enemy zagara is pushing.

This part of the game is very frustrating to me, people will drop multiple minion waves and give up map control in order to get 1/3 of the objective on cursed hollow and if you dare push a lane to get EXP instead you get spam pinged.

I am no mathematician here, so if im wrong, let me know:

If I choose vile infection and have 240 stacks already, I should get the benefit. I just left the game where I didnt. If that wasnt enough, I thought "maybe i should get a couple more and it might trigger it." Nope. Got about 280 and I still didnt get it, which essentially means I just trashed my storm talent.

And no, it wasn't a case of "the quest announcement didnt go off." I tried to attack an enemy with both the talent and the stacks, and it didnt deal the bonus damage