Experience is shared, and that changes everything

01The team levels, not the player

Every hero on your team is the same level, and that level comes from minions dying near any of you, from forts falling, and from enemy heroes dying. Nobody can farm their way ahead of their team, and nobody can fall behind it either. The consequence is blunt: a player standing somewhere that generates no experience is not playing badly, they are not playing at all.

02Soaking is a job, not a chore

Being present when a wave dies — soaking — is worth about as much as a kill and happens every thirty seconds in three places at once. Most games below a high level are decided by one team leaving a lane empty for two minutes while five people chase one hero. If you are ever unsure what to do, walk to the emptiest lane; you will almost never be wrong.

• A level advantage is the only lead that exists here. Protect it.
• Chasing a kill across the map usually costs more experience than the kill gives.
• Dying is expensive twice: you lose your soak and you feed theirs.

03Level spikes are the real clock

Because there are no items, power arrives in steps: every talent tier makes the whole team stronger at once, and level ten — when everyone gets a heroic ability — is the largest single jump in the game. Being one tier ahead of the enemy is a bigger advantage than any individual play, and it is the reason teams stall a fight for thirty seconds before taking an objective.