Grubby · @followgrubby
10th Jun 2016 from TwitLonger
Blackheart's Bay 4-0-1 strategy: leave 1 enemy archer up.
Someone asked me this in relation to this YouTube Video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTpyb2HZH3o so I decided to share in case anyone else found this interesting. His question was:
"Hi grubby, i have a question. Why do you always seem to have the first ban and why is it always Illidan? I like a lot these kind of games but haven't played HPTS in a while since i got used to playing dota and tend to choose that over other similar games. I get what you say about playing a lot of these games at the same time, you dont get to learn much about any of them. But I really like the bllizzard characters so i still follow the game because of it. Thx a lot and keep up posting Wc3 and HOTS, really fun to watch"
My answer:
The minion wave at the mid lane clashes first, so the logical thing is to kill that wave first as 4 people, and then rotate to the top lane and kill that wave. Ganging up together as 4 and rotating two lanes is a common strategy that was first discovered on Dragon Shire mid-bot lane, and has since progressed to many maps including Tomb of the Spider Queen but not including Cursed Hollow as the distance between lanes is too great (you'd miss out on minion XP by the time you get back).
However, since Chests spawn on BHB at 00:50, the quicker way to do things is to let minion wave clash with 1 person in attendance or 0, do the top wave as 3-4, rotate to middle, take whatever XP is left and then fight over the chest.
Let's say in a common scenario, Team A does 1-3-1 (1 top, 3 mid,1 bottom) and Team B does 4-0-1. The 4 from Team B will force the 1 from Team A to wait at the Gate+2 towers to soak the XP from the wave, because he can't safely AA or spellcast on enemy wave without dying. As a result, he will get full minion wave XP in about 5-6s with the help of his two Towers. This finishes at about 00:47 give or take a few seconds. He can then still make it to the mid lane with the chest and help his team fight over it, having received full XP for his team from the top wave.
If Team B clears 6 out of the 7 minions, and leaves 1 footman or 1 archer at full HP, the Team B minion wave will take a few crucial seconds to take out the last minion, during which time the solo laner from Team A can either start attacking the wave and having them aggro on him and move more slowly towards the towers, or he can let them advance to the towers with the seconds of delay, and definitely arrive late to the mid chest, forcing Team A to fight with 3 players vs 4 players over the chest, or giving up the entire wave of XP from the top lane (if the solo top laner from Team A decides to join his team immediately anyway).
To my knowledge, no one ever does this (what I suggest), but I don't see a good reason not to. Team B gives up 1 minion of XP from top lane to potentially deny 7 minions of XP to the enemy team, or get a "free chest (4 vs 3 doesn't always result in victory, but it should).