No reason really i was just looking to expend my hero pool.
Everyone keeps saying the vikings are super hard to play.
Not really, i think the reason many people have a hard time with the viking is because they come into the game and think "I've to control every viking perfect, and have super good control" in their very first game, then as soon as viking die they get distracted which in turn leads to another lost viking, and after the game they end up thinking "this is way to hard/annoying" and never plays the vikings again.
The key to playing the vikings is to focus on one area at the time and slowly build up your knowledge, think of the vikings as you would if you tried to learn an RTS, we will go more indepth about how you learn the vikings later on.
Do vikings work only in higher mmr games?
No the vikings works on any skill level, to test it out i made a new account got the vikings and 360qued away.
Here are the results after 31 games played.
3.5k MMr reached with a 71% winrate, if we are to believe the vikings takes ton of time to learn then our win ratio should be much lower.
Spoiler: Click to view
1.1 Stream
As always live gameplay can be found at http://www.twitch.tv/povmeric with constant commentary, tips, and random madness, warning i do play other games as well and stream them.
Olaf the Stout
This talent should never be needed, olaf is tanky enough by himself and by taking this talent you give up a lot for a very small gain.
Spy Games
This could be taken if you are facing nova/zeratul and want to trilane soak, but you are still giving up bribe, up to you.
Explosive Attacks
Decent for fastpush and if you are looking to splitpush later in the game, also very useful if your team is lacking waveclear.
Viking Bribery
This talent is amazing due to the pressure you can create but stealing camps before objectives, or on mines taking the enemies giant so they can't get the them for the first Golem.
Note: every wave contain 7 creeps, if you are then able to soak all 3 lanes you get 21 stacks per wave.
So in a perfect world you could get 42 stacks per min, equal to 1 bribe use.
Pain Don't Hurt
This give you sustain on bale, however, once you get better viking control you won't find yourself needing it due to your passive health regen from collecting orbs and from just picking up orbs.
Erik the Swift
Same argument as with Pain don't hurt, once you get used to the vikings you won't find Erik in need of heal.
It's a Sabotage!
This talent is to slow, the damage is low and the ammo drain feels lacking.
Mercenary Lord
This one is amazing for the vikings it allows you to solo boss later on but more important it allows even more pressure by having a viking next to a merc wave forcing someone to clear it, which allows you to group up with your team and take a 5v4 fight or the other team will find themselves losing a fort here and tower there.
Baleog the Fierce
To low damage to be looked at and Bale's clear is good enough on it's own.
Spin To Win!
Not only is it fun to use but it deals a lot of damage, and it can really suprise people when their health suddenly drop followed by a boat.
Norse Force!
The shield is just to low to be taken over spin and by not taking spin you lose a lot of damage in teamfights.
Longboat Raid!
Very good damage and range allows you to force melees to run away giving your team space, can also be used to flank forcing the other team to either turn around for the boat, or take free damage with the threat of losing their backline to a spin after the boat.
Play Again!
If you are looking to splitpush this is the key talent, it allows you to push all the lanes and when more than one person turns up to gank a viking you can relocate all vikings to another lane and burn down a fort or at least a few turrets.
We will be talking more about this one later on.
Hunka' Burning Olaf
A bit of waveclear for our olaf, however, if you are looking to splitpush you will have play again and won't need this talents minor clear speed buff.
Jump!
This is almost 100% taken most of the time due to how easy a viking can blow up, even more so when you have teammates with living bomb next to you.
Note: you can get over Hero created walls with this, like nazeebos zombie wall.
Nordic Attack Squad
This is the talent you want to take, however, because jump is such a core talent for vikings it is very hard to play with this talent, if there really aren't any aoe threat to your vikings then you can take this but there is such a huge risk to play without jump.
Large and In Charge
Should only be taken if you really lack a safe stun in your team and there is something you need to interrupt on the enemy team such as a nazeebo or a lili that play very far behind her team and no one else in your team can stun her out of her ult.
Impatience Is a Virtue
This talent is amazing because it reduce the cd of your ultimate as well, don't forget we have spin to win! and jump, and sprint being affected as well.
Overall this is one of the strongest talents in the game due to the fact it affect your whole kit.
64 KB Marathon
No real use, it allows you to setup a nice bodyblock but the chance you can pull it of and have your team follow up is very low, just lacks use.
Executioner
Very good talent, gives you a lot more damage and could be taken over Impatience but the overall value of impatience is greater but not so great that it is a must.
Ragnarok 'n' Roll!
If you can't get into melee range you must take this for more damage in teamfights, more the chance of not being able to melee at all is very low, so for the most part this one can be ignored.
Checkpoint Reached
This can be taken if you need to really force an fight and no one on your team can do it safely.
The Sequel!
Very low value for a level 20 talent, it could be taken if you doing some super cheese push where you just trying to create pressure without ant regards to the lives of your vikings.
Viking Fury of the Storm
Another amazing talent, together with spin to win! the burst is real, you can make 50% of an assassin health bar to vanish in an instant while at the same time allows you to solo a boss and clear waves even faster.
As for now we are mainly playing soak vikings which means there aren't any matchups you can win, instead we will be focusing on threats that can reduce your soaking ability or nullifies it.
Abathur
nullifies
Spoiler: Click to view
Abathur ability to match your soak and be with his team within a second is what makes him such a threat to the vikings.
The problem is a good Abathur can match your tripple soak during the first few objectives which leads to you losing the power you bring early game.
You must here choice what you want to do.
A) You 3 lane soak and hope your team can win a pure 4v4.
b) you keep 1 viking in lane for soak (erik) and send the other to the team and try to win the fight fast, do note if the fights drags on here you will lose the XP war.
c) bribe a camp and take 2 of your vikings to the objective and leave the last one to buff the mercs with merc lord.
d) put all your vikings in, whatever, lane abathur is currently in, this will force him to focus on that lane and he won't be able to soak or help his team without losing turrets, the difference from A) here is you are slowing down the game due to lower xp income for both teams and you are keeping abathur from helping his team.
Later on in the game your focus should be on keeping the waves away from your side of the map so abathur can't get free buildings etc while you are of fighting with your team.
nova
Go away
Spoiler: Click to view
Nova is a very good character versus the vikings due to the fact she can snipe Erik and make quick work of olaf while getting Gathering power stacks.
The way you deal with nova is either:
A) dual soak only.
We all know novas love hunting erik, the way you play around it is keeping erik inside the gates and only control bale and olaf, this will ensure eriks health and leaves nova either confused since she can't find him or she will give up and pick another target, as soon as you see her in another lane bring out erik again, and when nova vanishes bring him back inside the gate.
B) stick erik with the strong lane.
This is more risky since you will be forced to control all 3 vikings at the same time and much more likely to go bad, it also can bait your team to try to help erik when nova shows up and get them into a mess as well, either way it isn't the best of ideas but can work if you have good viking control.
Zeratul
Same rule applies to zeratul as with nova with one exception, zeratul can kill olaf much easier which will require you to be more alert compared to a nova who needs line of sight to kill a viking.
zeratul
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Spoiler: Click to view
Same rule applies to zeratul as with nova with one exception, zeratul can kill olaf much easier which will require you to be more alert compared to a nova who needs line of sight to kill a viking.
In short zeratul is just a more difficult nova in the early game, however in later parts of the game he is less of a threat due to your insane burst damage and your ability to keep your backline safe from all ins.
Note: Early game Vikings are all about that soak, it is what allows the viking to work early game due to a lack of damage, this is why anyone that can stop their soak or soak equal is such a threat due to the vikings whole early game power gets negated.
1) Ai/custom
The first thing you need to learn when you pick up the vikings as your new hero is the range from which you can soak, to find this out start an empty custom game and focus on 1 viking and true to figure out how far back you can stand to get the soak from a wave.
Once you are more familiar with the soaking range you want to start practicing soaking with 2 vikings at the same time, while checking the map so you get a feeling when a viking is to far away to catch any soak.
Finally you want to start taking your 3rd viking into the calculation and try to soak with all 3 while keeping an eye on the map.
2) QM
When you are used to the viking soak range and are able to guess if a viking is to far away from it by looking at the minimap you should start bring the vikings to QM the reason you wanna learn the soak range while playing custom/ai games is by doing so you won't create any pressure and will have time to learn in a controlled environment.
If you were to start doing it in QM you would have angry teammates yelling at you and more than likely vikings dying left and right leaving you feeling bad and maybe giving up on the viking project.
Now when you are facing real players you can start improving your viking control when people are trying to chase you down, one thing you will notice fast is people really like to overextend to reach a viking once you get more used to the vikings you can start baiting with a viking while doing something else with another one.
Your goal for now should be: Keeping all your Vikings alive > soak > picking up orbs > baiting.
4) Mid game 10-19
Just like with little murky you need to understand when your team needs you and when you are safe to push out lanes/soak.
example) you have a triple soaking going on, a 1v1 fight breaks out next to olaf, maybe you should send over olaf to help but if you try to send all your vikings to aid the fight might be over before you get there resulting in an experience lose for the team.
The majority of times you are soaking in mid game is because
A) You are ahead and are trying to keep up the pressure/xp lead
B) You are behind on exp and are trying to catch up by soak
The rest of your team should be spent being close to the team so you can help with your boat, different rules applies to the splitpush vikings but we will be talking about them later.
5) late game 20+
If you are soaking after level 20 you are doing something wrong, stop.
Note: you should never be found teamfighting before level 7 because you lack any kind of impact and even then level 10 is preferred due to the importance of early game soak.
1) 10 first and the other team chose to fight.
If you managed to get 10 first and the other chose to fight or are close to your team, just initaite: run in spin and see what happens, either they run away or engage, if they are engaging boat away and let your team help you, if they were to run away see if your team can lock them down for a boat, else better let them run of and return to soaking.
2) both teams have ultimates
If both teams have access to their ults you have to think about what they other team wants to do.
Lets look at their options.
A) The other team have a lot of melees that wants to dive your backline or have zeratul.
In this case you want to always be next to your backlane, as soon as the enemy team tries to dive your jaina/kael/x/y/z turn around and help peel them of/kill them a lot of people gets surprised by the viking damage and forgets to take it into calculation when diving in.
If the enemy team don't engage wait on the frontline with your warriors and wait for the fight to break out.
As soon as someone start the fight attack whoever is close to you but don't use any cds if you can help it, then see if they are trying to get to your backline, If this is the case peel of and help your backline, if they aren't trying to reach your backline you are free to start brawling in the front.
B) The other team has a lot of range damage
In this case it is unlikely you will have any chance defending your backline by staying close to it, instead you want to setup a Viking boat raid!
What you are looking to do is either
1) start the fight by flanking with a boat, this will force the fight and the enemy have to decide if they want to turn around for the boat killing their backline or go forward and engaging your team, in either case a fight will ensure, make sure you are close enough to spin to win once your boat time out for a suprise burst.
2) wait for the other team to start the fight, if this is the case your boat flank will be awkward for the enemy team, they will already be engaged in a fight and now this random boat shows up killing their damage dealers from far away, this will ensure chaos and more than often makes the other team panic and make bad calls.
3)Late game
Same rules applies as to mid game fights with one exception, you now deal a ton of burst damage with fury of the storm, this makes your damage higher outside of the boat which means your boat is more of a zoning tool from now on rather than your main source of damage.
Note: The jungle should always be taken right before an object to create maximum pressure or to create pressure on an already losing team, if you randomly take the jungle when the game is even you are only keeping the game more even, always try to get max value from your mercs.
1) When to jungle and when to soak.
You always want push in your lane/soak all the minions before you run of jungling, otherwise you will end up getting a camp but losing your gates and then having your merc killed right after.
If there is another player from your team in lane you need to check how many Bribe stacks you have and see how many you might lose by righting of.
example 1)
there are 2 minions left in the lane, you can saftly go away to jungle a bit without losing anything (exception being first Mines)
example 2)
there are 10 minions left in the lane and a zagara pushing in.
Better if you like your buildings and would prefer not giving up free exp.
example 3)
there are 10 minions left and a lili pushing in.
In this case you could go away a jungle for a bit assuming you won't lose to many minions to the turret and you are certain no one will suddenly show up and help lili push in.
2) Preparing the jungle.
note: don't forget your bribe stacks are capped at 100, always check how close you are.
As stated earlier you always wanted to try taking the jungle before an event is about to happen (objective, random teamfight, illidan hunting a murky)
Preparing the jungle is all about trying to figure out which merc camp you can take before something happens and how much soak you might lose then weight it against each other to figure out when to do something.
example 1) taking top mercs when there are enemies at your gate.
example 2) taking mercs while a fight is happening close to your location.
3) maps
on certain maps there are greater value taking the jungle at a certain time.
sky temple: preparing top mercs before the bot temple spawns haunted mines: stealing the enemies giants to prevent their aid during the first golem infernal shrine: preparing toplane mercs for the second shrine spawn garden of terror: stealing the enemies bot giants for the second night
We will go deeper into each map in the map section of this guide, these are just some early game examples of good merc timing.
This part of the viking gameplay is one of the easier one to understand, it is quite simple.
1) Erik
You want Erik (the little red one that dies all the time) to be with the strong side of your map.
The strong side of the map is where you have 2 other players or 1 strong waveclearer with someone roaming nearby.
The reason you want erik close to the strong side is simply because by himself erik is very weak but by paring him with a strong lane you make sure he is safe and ensure you have time to respond to any dives on erik.
In the mid game you want erik in a lane that is either frozen (equal number of creeps on both side) or a lane pushing into the enemies, the reason you don't want to have him in a losing lane is becomes he doesn't do much by himself so the value he will have in a losing lane is only soak and when you want to prevent or stay ahead of the other team giving up free experience isn't the greatest idea.
Bale
When it comes to Bale (the green dude) you want him in either a sololane where his waveclear shines or in a lane that lacks waveclear but has high damage, (a raynor lane for example) but more than often you will find bale in a solo lane.
You don't want be in a solo lane vs a strong pusher due to the focus it will force upon you to keep bale safe.
Mid game you want Bale to either waveclear a lane that is pushing in or applying pressure by himself.
Olaf
Olaf (the big blue dude) wants to be in the hardest lane preferable together with someone, just to ensure survial and bribe stacks, do note that olaf's waveclear is awful and come mid game you want him in a lane close to your team.
Your goal early game on the haunted mines is to get 80 bribes so you can steal the enemies giants.
Remember earlier on we talked about how many creeps you get per wave (7 per wave, per lane)
So in a perfect world we could gain: 7 * 2 = 14 * 2 = 28 bribes per min.
28 * 3 min = 84
SO in an ideal world we could steal the enemies giants after 3 min of soak with the safety net of 4 creeps, but more than likely you will have time to grab a few bribes from the next wave.
Note: you want to send Erik to grab the mercs due to his speed, you also want to keep Erik close to the giants so he can buff them with merc lord, but make sure he gets out.
note 2: if you send a viking into the mines it should be olaf and your goal should be stealing skulls without giving up olaf.
2) mid game
Before 10 you want to keep soaking the lane, however, when the second mine phase occurs make sure Bale and erik are in the lane your golem is going in order to push the lane and in best case kill buildings or drain ammo for your goal.
3) after level 10
At this point you have to chose to either force a fight, keep soaking or bring your vikings together and hardshove your golems lane, this come down to a game per game and who your teammates are.
If your team is super bad at fights but gets a lot of skulls you joining them won't turn the tides but you pushing down the buildings creates pressure which can lead to people from the other team coming back and maybe now your team can take a fight with you joining them in creating a 5v4 from your lane pressure.
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