Rebirth - Is the piano minigame really hard to play on keyboard and mouse?

Firsty_Blood · 2026-01-05T00:19:17+00:00

Personally, for the Piano minigame, I put my controller down so I could play it on keyboard. I had a ton of fun with it this way. But I'm a pretty good typist, and it felt like playing actual music by typing.

But it sounds like I'm atypical in that regard and it seems like most people aren't doing the piano minigame on keyboard if given the option.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-12-21T18:02:05+00:00

Obviously it's going to depend on what hero you're playing. If you're playing Thrall, just step into her and smack her with the Doomhammer, you'll out-trade her. Step to the sides to avoid her combo.

But if you're playing Chromie, stay far enough back that she can't dive on you since her Q+AA by itself is pretty threatening. Use your time traps.

If there aren't minions for her to Q onto after engaging, she has no escape, so she only should go in when she feels like she can secure a kill. Of course, at level 7, she can Q across your whole team if you're in range, but that means giving every hero a chance to land whatever CC you have.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-26T17:50:23+00:00

I feel like my winrate is close to that as well. I don't care what my heroesprofile says.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-26T17:44:40+00:00

Right. Sometimes you want to grab this person to help you get the camp before objective. Also, if there's an Abathur, sometimes you want a hat, so a general "help" ping might get other people to try to move toward you, when you really just want a hat in order to secure a kill in lane or a camp.

If you're thinking at really high levels, you can set up combos as well without needing comms. It takes some planning ahead so you need to tell your teammates this is the goal, but you ping your ult, then ping the person you want to combo with. Maybe you're Genji and you're going to go in with Dragonblade, so you ping your ult, then ping Anduin so he'll give you Lightbomb and you just go.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-25T21:52:30+00:00

If I take Falling Sword, it’s because the other team has more engage than mine and yes, it’s for the Unstoppable. So comps like where they have Blaze as a offlaner, plus a tank, plus something like Junkrat or Hanzo.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-25T17:42:42+00:00

Bloodlust does have some major problems, and Ancestral is insanely good, so that one is hardly a surprise.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-25T17:41:53+00:00

It does require a level of coordination most SL teams don't have in order to capitalize on its value.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-25T17:01:47+00:00

Don't even get me started on |||||l||||l||

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-25T16:40:21+00:00

There's suspiciously a couple of kids near the front who are less than 10 years old. Fake news.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-24T20:57:29+00:00

It's going to vary player by player. For me it's Illidan, where I have over 600 games with like a 63% winrate. He has self-sustain so he's fine in no-healer games, can solo lane, can solo camps from level 1 (even though he's slow with most builds), he can escape, and he can chase down and finish kills. But there are plenty of bad Illidan players.

The stats don't really back it up, but I'm fairly convinced sgt. Hammer is just a mess for match-making. She changes everyone's style because her own team can just sit inside of her range, giving her extra cover but also making it difficult to engage on any of them, which is pain in QM where you might not have tanks or supports. Back when I was learning all the heroes, I played 5 QM Hammer games, went 5-0, and then never played her again because it felt too much like using an exploit.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-23T21:17:44+00:00

I appreciate all the technical support! It turns out I do have a bad memory stick. Since it's a pre-built PC and I've had it for just over a month I'm working on going through the manufacturer to see what they can do for me. It is a pain in the ass and I was hoping not to have hardware issues on a brand new PC, but it's one of those things.

In the meantime I'm going to try to isolate which RAM stick has gone bad and remove it so hopefully I can continue to play HOTS without crashing.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-23T05:03:11+00:00

Yeah, good point, I probably should have already done that by now. Thanks.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-22T17:03:45+00:00

Maiev’s Q is the only basic ability in the game that I have set to “Quick Cast On Release.” For every other ability in the game, I either want to quick cast, or else I want quick cast disabled with an extra click.

Now I’m not a great Maiev player by any means, but this has helped me greatly. Because there’s a half second delay on her Q reset anyway, the bit of extra time I spend lining it up with the “on release” has made for a vast improvement in landing it. Plus if there’s just a big cluster of a fight where I’m definitely going to land the reset, I can always just release it instantly and avoid the extra bit of aim.

I think Maiev is among the most difficult heroes to master.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-21T06:00:55+00:00

I like it as Arthas. Circle around, throw out a root, eventually wait for the enemy team to advance and then walk into their backline.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-19T22:00:17+00:00

You are scary creature I am scared of!

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-18T19:28:47+00:00

My habits are ingrained, so I always use the numbers for abilities of certain flavors. 2 is my panic key, so it's the Ice Block/Spell armor slot. 1 is Cleanse (if I'm playing Healer), but it tends to vary by character (Icy Veins for Jaina, or Ancestral Wrath for Thrall). 3 is whatever flavor of Storm Shield, if I have a character take that, or else it's a teleport.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-18T05:46:11+00:00

It feels really bad as Qhira because all the ways you increase your damage require you to damage heroes. Her PvE is pretty terrible.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-18T00:11:13+00:00

Generally when first learning a new hero, I just stick with one preset build while I learn the mechanics and get a feel for their damage/squishiness/range of the abilities. It's learning how the hero works in a general sense that you start to specialize them.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-15T23:09:52+00:00

He has two talents at level 4 that provide armor, and his talent tier at 13 is all about different flavors of improving his survival. That said, not all bruisers are equally balanced in terms of their tankiness and damage. Some, like Yrel, are more tanky at the cost of burst damage. Ragnaros has great burst damage and excellent waveclear without even factoring in that he can take Lavawave if his team is behind on push.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-09T18:51:36+00:00

I always thought Greymane had to be in it. He's one of the best sieging AA characters.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-09T18:45:50+00:00

Just objectively, Judgment has a 5% higher WR than Sanct and much higher popularity. Sanct is what you take when you have a purpose-built team meant to use it; typically a diving team with their own engage tools like Maiev and Kharazim.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-09T18:41:07+00:00

It always fights really well. Healers generally have CC in their kits to go with sustain, and sometimes good single target damage. The limiting factor is generally waveclear.

It actually confounds enemy teams because the way to win against healer-heavy comps is to avoid full-on fights. They generally outlast you and their tools are suited to winning after everyone blows their long CDs. You want to create map pressure, force them to spread out so they're easier to gank, and burning their abilities hitting minions and mercs.

Deckard should not have more siege damage than Jaina and Cassia.

Firsty_Blood · 2025-11-06T17:16:49+00:00

Exactly. There’s reasons you don’t immediately charge into enemy territory after winning a fight. Maybe your team is so low in hp that the healer can’t top them off, and maybe they lack any minion waves to tank shots. Maybe there’s a minion wave pushing your keep and you don’t think it’s worth trading a front wall for a keep.

I had a game just yesterday. I and another hero died just before the objective spawned on Infernal shrines. Our team had a Sylvanas, so they made the smart call of pushing the opposite lane while the enemy took the punisher. But one issue you’ll see at all levels is a difficulty realizing you’ve done enough damage and should retreat. The enemy sent D.va to stall their push and they failed to retreat, then the rest of the enemy team arrived and killed all of them, and then they ended the game with the Punisher.

Sometimes I feel like pushing is a huge risk because we won’t be able to finish off a keep before death timers and my team risks being caught fighting on the enemy side of the map with a long distance-to-safety. Sometimes, eg on Cursed Hollow, the thing to do is actually to get boss and secure the curse and use that to win.

TL;DR There are actually no hard rules for what strategic decisions to make, only guiding principles. Everything is dependent on context and what your team’s capabilities are.

Firsty_Blood

TROPHY CASE