Well met!
I am Valerian, a European player of HotS that has played the game roughly since Alpha on and off. I have reached rank 1 in the first season and have more or less always played ranked since unless I did not have the time due to RL study schedule (I am studying to become a Psychologist, you psycho, you). I main Support but have played all roles and I think this sort of guide can easily help any new or even old players that want to get a bit more serious about it all.

I wanted to write a guide that's short and sweet that pretty much explains how to counter-pick ANY hero in Hero League that you can easily check if you are unsure on what to pick versus that sneaky Nova or how the heck you're supposed to stop that counter-pushing Zagara.

I am going to try and mention as many counters for every Hero that I possibly can, however the human error will no doubt be there. Feel free to correct me, give me feedback if you disagree with something even though I think I know my stuff well!

Some heroes are easier to counter than others, this section will mention the red flags that you should learn by heart to get some easy wins in Hero League by simply drafting correctly.

ASSASSINS:
Chromie

Chromie's temporal-loop ultimate will bum-blast you into oblivion unless you pick a cleanse.

Rehgar, Uther and other supports can provide that as well as heroes with Ice-Block.

Divers such as Sonya (get used to Sonya, she's kinda broken right now!) or Diablo can easily reach to the enemy Chromie and destroy her.

Stuns can work in case she picks the 'Bye-Bye' talent that lets her hearthstone out of danger if not interrupted.


Greymane
Is countered by Arthas, don't even ask why, just pick Arthas, free win, you're welcome. Okay but for real: this guy's main source of bringing the pain is diving in Worgen form where Arthas will slow his attack speed down so much he will be utterly useless, just a wet puppy in the rain, cowering before the King of the Dead.

Genji
Is countered by stuns and silences. Uther and Malfurion can silence or stun him as he is about to dash out or deal a ton of damage. Alarak is not too bad against Genji but generally speaking try not to touch the Highlord of Kingdom Mean-Comments unless you have devoted hours on him because he is quite frankly the hardest hero in the game IMO.

IllidanTanks such as Arthas that slows down his attack speed or Johanna that silences and stuns him, or Varian (with taunt. duh.)can easily shut down Illidan and if that doesn't work...

... Brightwing can teleport to the victim of Illidan's THE HUNNTTTTTT ultimate, polymorph the blind emo night elf poser into a cute lil' squirrel and even push him back with her glorious Emerald Winds ultimate. Good stuff really.
Li-Ming
Just pick Anub'arak. Not only will his beetles eat a bunch of her spells that were intended for your poor backline he also has a spell-shield on a short cooldown, can combo his stuns to bait her teleport, can interrupt her laz0r-beam ultimate and even cocoon her. I swear to God whoever made Anub'arak did not like playing against Li-Mings one bit.

Nova
Some men want money and power. Some men want to see the world burn. And some men play Nova for some ********ed reason. Luckily Tassadar can not only reveal Nova with his Oracle Trait (D) but can put down a zone of poop for her to step on, nulify her burst via shield-use and just become untargettable when she tries to ult him. Tassadar in general counters stealthies but I feel he has an extra 'screw you' button for Nova due to her lack of teleports by putting a wall just behind her as she tries to run.

Others supports such as Rehgar and Kharazim also can reveal Nova with some of their talents.

The Butcher
Basically same as Illidan, this angry fellow is easily countered by Block talents, Arthas, Johanna and other tanks and is generally considered a free-win if your enemy picks him in higher ranked matches.

I realize if you are a Butcher main and reading this you are probably thinking I am the world's meanest prick but in reality you are a fool and should stop trying to convince yourself with lies that this guy can work. You know it fully well within your heart that a guy that can only say 'FRESH MEAT' over and over cannot and will not ever be top-hero material!

Tracer
Not only is this IRRITATING woman incredibly strong at the moment the matter of fact is that even her so called 'hard counters' require quite a bit of practise to pull off properly. Please be advised: a good Tracer will not give a damn what you draft against her and will triumph against any odds.

Nevertheless Varian not only breaks shields that Tracer's best friend Tassadar provides with his Shattering Throw talent, Varian is also able to taunt a Tracer into place long enough for her squishy health-bar to be reduced to zero and to give you a brief respite from the madness that this champion stands for.

WARRIORS:

Anub'arak
This guy is countered by literally anything that has a ranged high-damage auto-attack. Valla Zul'jin whatever, you call it. Just pick something that will destroy his small life-pool that he has no armor for and make him regret and re-consider his life-choices.

Arthas
Lunara in particular due to the combination of constant magical damage with some Health percentage damage makes her a bit of a pain but other magical-magic-mages can get the work done such as Kael'thas.

Chen
Yikes, this Pandaren is hardly a fit in this category as he is not really Hard-Countered by anything if played well however I will briefly mention that Uther with consistent stuns and generally any other Valla stun ultimate, E.T.C. powerslides and so on so forth can be combo'd to bring an overextended drunken fluffy panda to an early liver-failure and subsequently: an early grave.

Cho and Gall
I will let you in on a little secret: Cho'gall is bad if the people playing them are bad, bad if they don't have a great healer behind them and they need to hit level 16 to get their power-spike to stand any chance 5v5 versus any team.

HOWEVER Tychus, Malthael and other auto-attackers with health-percentage damage in a combination with a good lockdown from a tank such as Diablo or E.T.C. or even our dung-eating beetle-friend Anub'arak can easily close down a game versus Cho'gall well before level 16 happens for them.

Supports with Nullify/damage reduction abilities such as Tassadar can make Cho'gall useless for a few seconds by reducing the damage of both of those with just a single cast.

Please do not be one of those people that say that Leoric counters Cho'gall because that's just like, totally wrong. Leo isn't bad but saying he counters Cho'gall is just well over-exaggerated, he has one talent at level 16 and one talent at level 20 that counters high-health tanks and entomb makes me sad in real life.

Diablo
Same as Anub'arak, invest in auto-attackers and you'll be happy for days. Valla and Tychus and stuff, bro.

D.Va
If you are between picking this hero and literally any other hero pick the other hero. D.Va is literally garbage, I have seen one good player make this thing work, I hate her, she's terrible, she serves no particular purpose that others can't already do, here is a list how to make their D.VA-main life even more miserable than it already is and deserves to be.

Guess who can just flat-out push the destructing mech of D.VA? Da comrade, iz Stukov, privyet. To a lesser extent he can also silence D.Va to deny her dashing out with her lil' speed boost thing. Alarak can also move the mech with his mean-comment-about-is-that-the-best-healing-you-can-do-? powers.

E.T.C.
Hahahah... Oh, really? Okay fine. Well first of all, this guy is INSANE right now so try to flat out ban him but there's a way or two you can make his life hard. Specifically Li-Ming's ultimate Wave of Force is a ranged guaranteed interrupt given she does not position mega-stupid to stop the Mosh-Pit right as it starts and put it on that glorious 3 gazillion hour Cool-Down.

To a lesser extend Brightwing has 2 interrupts (Polymorph and Winds), Valla can dash out of mosh as the fat cow powerslides and then interrupt him with her own ultimate but generally speaking Li-Ming has the moooo-ves to counter this rock'n'roll bull.

Another thing to mention here briefly is to ban or pick Uther as he can Divine Shield E.T.C. as he ults making him uninterruptable and pick a support with Cleanse yourself so that you can help someone out and maybe they can interrupt it.

Garrosh
Hahahahahahaha, you're funny dude, I like you. No you can't counter Garrosh, hahaha, are you insane? Just ban or pick this s%&@. Hahah, countering Garrosh, get outta here.

But really? Try to pick Medivh to shield the victim of Garrosh for the burst that is about to come their way and then portal them out, even though there is little guarantee this will work at all.

Rexxar
I am the kind of person that enjoys solo-laning as this half-ogre half-Orc god of a hunter in Braxis Holdout and destroying unsuspecting enemies but today I will open up as to what I think just completely screws this fellow up.

The main man himself: Varian with dual wield is one of the few heroes that combine the durability and damage to fight off this guy at the point and come out ahead by murdering Misha whilst healing from auto-attacking and parrying just when they are around that 10-20% Health left point.

The obvious draw-back to picking Varian is that he can't really do anything until he hits level 10 so uh, take it with a grain of salt.

Some Rexxar players make the mistake of taking Animal Husbandry that is a talent which will forever increase their max Health bar as long as they are alive. Punish them by running an aggressive composition such as Genji, Malthael, Sonya and murder him to reset his quest and essentially remove an entire talent from him whilst also removing any potential joy this person had gotten on that day.

Sonya
There are no easy answers here, Sonya is one of the, if not THE best, heroes in the game right now. A godlike laning phase, able to solo-merc camps, pretty damn good and tanky in teamfights, Sonya can often seem daunting to deal with which is why I'm here to tell you that you need to...

... just pick Zagara. Not only does Zag destroy Sonya in lane by correct position and constant poking you can capitalize the fact that Sonya may leave the lane to do merc camps to push down her Keep's wall and even take the Keep if they naively think you will leave the lane.

Other things to keep in mind are that Sonya's leap will counter half a dozen champions such as EVERY MAGE and EVERY OTHER SUPPORT so try to pick tanky and heroes with stuns that can interrupt her whirlwind as she heals only when doing her lil' spinny weo-weo-weeeee thing.

Zarya
One word: Taunt Varian. It may be untrue that this was one word but what IS true is that Zarya's shields can be completely REMOVED by Varian and then taunt the slow-moving tanky bruiser that is Zarya to easily score a takedown.

Another strategy says that you do not neccesarily need Varian but can just pick dive-heavy heroes since Zarya's shielding only really works in slow fights. Push more damage that she can shield with high damage heroes such as Valla and Jaina and Zarya will wish she had picked anything else instead.


SUPPORTS: Coming, like, soon and stuff.

SPECIALISTS: Yep. Same thing.

Yep, anyday now.

Kerrigan in infernal shrines. Uh, more details soon!