Hi I’m Drunk! I’m the offlane player for Chicken Nuggets, the former S5 storm div winner and current S8 heroic div team. I’m writing here today to talk about the offlane role, why it exists, what its purpose is, how to maximize your impact in the role, how certain heroes fit the role better than others and what considerations to take in when drafting your offlane hero.
What is the offlane role?
The offlaner is the player assigned to soak the lane(s) opposite to the lane the bulk of their team is focusing on.
Why does it exist?
The nature of HotS is that the power level of 4 heroes fighting together is much greater than the summed power level of those 4 heroes individually. This is because different heroes have innate synergies that boost the power of their allies when fighting together (eg cc chaining or supporting hyper carries) and so your teams power and kill pressure is maximized when grouped together. This creates a meta that supports a 4-1 team split rather than a 3-2 or 1-1-3 or 1-2-2 split (on the majority of maps).
The only reason teams don’t run around as a 5 man the entire game is because soaking exp is also necessary and given the average size of maps + rotation speed in HotS, all lanes of exp can be soaked by either a double soaking offlaner or a rotating 4 man.
How to offlane
The majority of maps in HotS are vertically asymmetrical 3 lane maps, with one vertical side of the map being more important to control than the other side. This means that it is beneficial for the bulk of your team to focus on winning and controlling the strong side of the map. This leaves the weak side of the map for the offlaner to continue soaking experience.
In most maps, the offlaner will hold the weak lane while the 4 man rotates between mid and the strong lane (dragon shire, infernal shrines, sky temple)
In other maps, there will be 1 lane in particular that is so much more important than every other lane that the 4man will solely focus on that lane while the offlaner double soaks 2 lanes (towers of doom)
For 2 lane maps, the offlaner just holds the opposite lane to the 4man.
Maximizing your impact: Early game
There are definite ways to carry your team through great offlane play. The 2 primary ways to play offlane in the early game are to either push wave priority or to freeze wave priority. Both playstyles have their pros and cons and you should tailor how you play the offlane according to the matchup between you and the enemy offlaner.
With a wave priority focused playstyle, your aim is to clear the minion wave faster than your enemy and push them to where they need to stand near their tower gate to keep soaking xp. You can do this by either literally waveclearing faster than they can waveclear, or by zoning the enemy offlaner away from your wave by fighting them. If done successfully, you now have the wave priority and you’ve created the space necessary to go and do something else productive without losing soak. These are things like…
- Double soaking
- Joining the 4 man for a 5v4 teamfight
- Taking camps
- Poking towers for structure damage
With a passive focused playstyle, your aim is to threaten the enemy offlaner by forcing them to overextend in the lane in order to catch soak. This is done by not damaging the enemy minion wave and instead freezing the minion wave right outside your tower aggro range. If done successfully, the enemy offlaner will have to overextend in order to keep soaking the lane which gives you the opportunity to…
- Engage a fight onto the enemy offlaner (you have the safety of friendly towers beside you and they have no protection)
- Call a gank onto your lane by your team
- Zone the enemy offlaner so far back that they stop being able to soak the XP from the dying minions
You will need to pivot between these 2 playstyles frequently depending on matchup and the state of the current game (e.g. play passively to start but push wave priority before a crucial objective). If you do this well, you can begin to create an exp advantage for your team and give them a lot more options for macro decisions to make.
Maximizing your impact: Mid/Late game
No successful offlaner wins by staying in the offlane the entire game. As the game progresses further and further on, it becomes increasingly important for the offlaner to be grouped with the rest of the team. You never want to be caught in a situation where your team loses a 4v5 fight because the enemy offlaner decided to group with their team and you decided to stay in the offlane. In a sense, your goal as an offlaner is to allow your team to hit their power spike levels as quickly as possible so that you can 5v5 teamfight with a talent/level advantage or at least curb a talent/level deficit.
The offlaners role in a teamfight can vary depending on comp matchup. Sometimes you will play as a 2nd main tank in order to protect your squishy backliners. Sometimes you will play as a distraction in the enemies backline so that your team can blow up the enemy frontline. Sometimes you will have a coordinated dive with your DPS players to kill the enemy backline.
The exact nuances of play style for each offlane hero are too many to describe in one guide, but here are 2 general play styles that most of them will fit into
- 2nd Main Tank style
In this style, you want to position yourself as a 2nd frontline so that your team can control more space to corner the enemy team, be protected from flanks and have more flexibility in choosing targets to focus. To do this, you will want to observe where your main tank is positioned and hold an adjacent flank to where they are holding such that the two of you can cover as much area as possible while still being able to converge onto an enemy target together. You do not want to stack directly on top of the main tank because then you two will share the damage and cc taken from the enemy team and you do not want to be too far from the main tank because then you will not be able to converge and focus down the same target.
Example heroes that fit this playstyle: Blaze, Leoric, Imperius, Rexxar
- Dive and Disrupt style
In this style, you want to dive the enemy backline in order to pull their attention away from your other teammates and onto you. This is advantageous because it allows the rest of your team to focus a priority target while the enemy backline are distracted by you. Generally speaking, the value of an offlaners life is less than the value of a main tank/support/dps’ life so a 1 for 1 trade is usually favorable. That being said, the offlane heroes that excel at this style are the ones who are able to dive deep, pull attention, cause chaos and still live.
The moment you decide to dive is also very important because if the rest of the team is not in position and ready to fight, you will end up diving, blowing cooldowns and losing health for no value gained because your DPS were not ready to trade damage back. Conversely, if you dive too late, it’s likely that your team has already used their major cooldowns and won’t be able to capitalize on your aggression.
Example heroes that fit this playstyle: Dehaka, Chen, Yrel
In a sense, you need to decide whether to focus the main kill target to assist your team in the kill, or to focus the off targets to prevent them from counter-attacking onto your team. Most of the time, it would be ideal to focus the main kill target, but sometimes it is too dangerous to group up too closely with the team.
Drafting considerations
While drafting there are 2 main points you want to consider when picking your offlane hero.
- Will you win the 1v1 against the enemy offlaner?
And
- Do you fit within the rest of your team’s composition?
To answer the first point, it is often advantageous to draft your offlaner in the later stages of the draft so that you can counter-pick the enemy offlaner if they have shown their offlane pick already.
To answer the second point, you should look to see what kind of composition the rest of your team is running. Are they a dive comp? Hyper carry comp? Do they have slow damage over time or burst damage? Are we in need of a second frontline or are we in need of a divey backline disruptor?
Another very important factor is the map consideration. On some maps, it is highly more important to win the 1v1 than it is to fit into the team comp of your 4man (braxis holdout, dragon shire) and on another maps it is vice versa (battlefield of eternity, tomb of the spider queen). Adjust your drafting priorities accordingly
Final Notes
The offlane role in hots is one that doesn’t get the same level of recognition and guidance as the other roles like main tank, damage and support do. However, the offlane role is one that is always necessary and has the ability to be tremendously impactful. It is mechanically intensive, requires a good sense of enemy position and requires good macro in deciding when to rotate.
Hopefully this guide has taught you something new or changed your perspective on what mentality to adopt while playing in the offlane.
For any further questions or advice, please feel free to reach out to me on discord!
Drunkdwarf#5109