Am I the only one who only only plays SL and never QM, to play games with "decent" team comps and matchmaking, because of draft/hero select, since QM is horrible?
TL/DR: QM is UNPLAYABLE... (and always has been).
The thing is, QM is a total mess and nightmare, and in SL you at least get to actually play HotS, because of draft:
- QM doesn't have the usual team comps of 2 DPS, one fighter, a tank, and healer (Im aware there are more META role compositions, but you get my point...). You instead get 4 DPSs, and a bruiser... SOMETIMES a healer, but forget about a tank in QM. In SL ppl will often go out of their way to fill roles from my experience. Yes, the game tries to put Healers vs Healers in QM, but it's rare.
Also, HotS is very balanced around having heroes from different roles IMO. It's not like in League, where champs are self sufficient, because they self heal or tank more, with runes and items, if they want.
- In QM, you don't know the map. A hero WILL be "S" or "C" tier, depending on which map it is. From the top of my mind, IDK: In BoE you want AAers who can race (Raynor with Exterminator, Valla, ZJ...) over Mages, in other maps you want heroes who are great at PvE, in Hanamura you aren't likely to play Diablo because its an open map with no walls, and so on...
- Picking and counterpicking: Correct me if I'm wrong, but some heroes totally negate others (As in 100% vs 0% chance to win), even more than in other MOBAs. For instance, if the enemy picks Anduin or ETC, you can instapick Liming for her "on demand" CC with "R", and they cannot pick Salvation/Pitmosh ever otherwise they troll,or instead they "1v5" if you have no CC in your draft to cut those ults. Tracer will stomp double mage comps or comps without ranged AAers, Tychus will delete double tank comps (Happened to me recently), Hammer just wins if the enemy doesnt have long range such as Stitches or Chromy, KT cant Pyroblast if the enemy has Maievs/Tracers or anything that has untargettable or immunity, some healers (Ana and Morales?) just explode vs specific heroes like Illidan/Tyrael/Tracer diving at them as they can't self peel like other Healers, and so on...
Other more extreme cases are: Butcher and Liming getting free meat and resets from Vikings, or Auriel and Chogall being kinda free elo (If you find ppl in Discord to play them together).
The game IS balanced around drafting. I'm pretty sure I've lost more games in HotS because of a bad drafts, over in other MOBAs like say LoL for example where "100% to 0" counters are rarer.
... Due to all of these reasons, if for instance I wanna practice Junkrat, I literally have to throw myself into SL, because QM is such an unrealistic scenario to try heroes in, as you're likely to get 4 DPS heroes per team. You cannot even learn/practice a hero, because QM is literally not "HotS" for me. It's really bad.
Not only that, forget about expecting your allies to do camps, or PvE. And I'm not saying ppl at SL are awesome at macro, but I swear god QM is terrible.
Random thoughts... And sorry for the format, I'm writing from the phone.
PS: Devs could've removed QM instead of Unranked, in all honesty. The game mode was healthier, if somebody actually Qeued.