Storm League


 *  Fight alongside (and against) the best of the best solo, or bring friends in a party of up to five players and storm the Nexus together.

Storm League is the Ranked Play game mode that allows players to queue up and play with (and against) other players of similar skill in a more competitive environment.

Draft
It may be tempting to jump straight into Storm League, but before you do that, you should learn a bit about the process. Picking your Hero in a Storm League game follows different rules from Quick Match. Instead of just selecting your favorite Hero and clicking "Ready", both teams go through a selection process called a Draft. Each side takes turns banning and picking Heroes until 10 Heroes (5 for each team) have been selected. Once the draft is complete, the match begins. Before the match, players can choose to show their preferred roles in the Ranked menu, so thay other team members can understand their playstyle.

Battleground rotations
Storm League uses a slightly reduced pool of playable Battlegrounds. The current rotation includes the following maps:

Seasonal Questline
Special Seasonal Quests are available to all players at the start of every season. The Quests require players to win a certain amount of games in Storm League to claim Loot Chests and a unique Seasonal Mount. Players must complete the entire questline in order to be eligible for the Grand Master leaderboards and end season rewards, featuring a Ranked Portrait based on the highest rank achieved during a Season.

Requirements & restrictions
Storm League employs some restrictions to improve the competitiveness and match quality:
 * Players must have 16 or more Heroes available (including Heroes on Free Rotation, but not including Cho'gall) and account level 50 or higher to queue for Storm League.
 * Players that are under a Silence Penalty or have to complete Leaver Penalty games are unable to queue for Storm League.
 * In order to view their rank, players must each season complete a set of 3 placement matches.
 * These games are mostly a formality, as they are in no way different from regular matches, except that your rank is not visible and you cannot party with players that have already placed. Players start every season from the Rank they were at the end of the previous season.


 * In order to be eligible for the Grand Master leaderboard, players must have reached Master league and completed the seasonal questline.

Parties

 * The collective Matchmaking Rating of the party is adjusted upward based on the party size.
 * In Diamond 1 and below, all party members' ranks must be within 2 leagues of each other.
 * Eg. Players in Diamond 2 can queue with players as low as Gold 5, but not with players in Silver league.
 * Players in a party of 5 may ignore this rule, but the Matchmaking Ratings of the players that are not within 2 leagues of the highest are ignored in the calculation of the team's collective MMR.


 * If any Master ranked players are in the party, all party members' ranks must be at least Diamond 5. Parties of 5 may not ignore this rule.
 * Players that have not completed placement games may only party with other players who have not completed their placement games.
 * All allied parties are shown during the loading screen, but parties of the enemy team are hidden until the end screen.

Trivia

 * Hero League and Team League have been merged into Storm League. The starting MMR in Storm League was taken from a player’s last highest MMR from Hero League or Team League, whichever is higher.