Convective Pressure

A popular game mode in Heroes of the Storm is Brawl, where each team’s five heroes fight down a single, confined map lane. There are no map objectives other than to push down the opposing team’s core, and players get a limited—and randomized—selection of heroes to play. Each player only gets to choose from three characters, including heroes they haven’t unlocked on their account. This gives a great opportunity to try out new characters, new combinations of traits and abilities, and to work on teamfight skills.

There isn’t room for heroes to run off on their own so the combat is constant and all-encompassing. Abilities that affect a large area are very valuable, because escape is very difficult. Characters like Azmodan with his Globe of Annihilation, Lucio with Crossfade, and many others are very powerful, but the king of them all is Kael’thas the firemage.

I’ve written about Kael’thas before, particularly about a level one talent called Convection. If he is able to hit heroes with his Flamestrike ability twenty times before dying, the power gets a significant and permanent damage boost. Adding in higher-level talents, this powerful AOE pillar of fire can be absolutely ruinous for a team confined to close quarters—exactly the circumstances found in a Brawl mode match.

If he hasn’t completed his Convection quest, on death the counter resets back to zero. In a recent Brawl match my friends and I were faced with a Kael’thas who was very determined to finish his quest, and quickly. We wanted to make sure that, no matter the outcome of the rest of the match, we wanted to deny the Kael’thas his quest. Sometimes it really is all about the small victories.

I made a highlight reel of that Brawl match, which I hope is entertaining to Heroes of the Storm players. I tried not to clutter up the screen with too much explanatory text, so my apologies if things aren’t immediately coherent to non-players, but I think the clip absolutely answers the question of “Did Kael’thas get his Convection?” with amazing clarity.

Some additional quick notes:
– Kael’thas was played by “GeneralMeow” on the blue team
– I played Rhegar, a healer, and am listed as “FreshFeesh”
– My buddy Shocktar was Stitches, a tank with the ability to move other heroes
– My other friend Alpha was Anduin, another healer

With that out of the way, I’m happy to present a little highlight reel of the time we tried to stop a Convection quest: