Experience

Experience (often referred to as experience points or XP) is a measure of a team's actions in the current match. Floating text displays XP as golden numbers above the target's head. Experience is shared between all members of each team, and when enough experience is gained, all Heroes on the team gain a level. Gathering XP is imortant, as every time a Hero gains a level some of their statistics are increased, and upon reaching levels 4, 7, 10, 13, 16 and 20 they are also granted access to new Talents (Chromie being an exception due to her trait), making your Hero - and your team - more powerful. Heroes begin each match at level 1.

Experience can be gained by killing enemy Minions or Heroes, capturing Mercenaries, destroying Structures, clearing some Objectives and passively over time.

Basic Mechanics
All experience in the game is gathered by individual heroes, but it's collected and unified into progress for the entire team. You don't need all five heroes to be present for an experience event in order for it to be applied to all five heroes. You simply need one person to get it, and everyone benefits. That’s why it's only necessary to have one person soak a lane at any given time while others on the team roam. It's also why you don't need to “feed” a particular hero on your team to carry you, and kill-stealing is completely irrelevant. Heroes of the Storm is truly a team game down to its very roots.

If a minion dies in range of two people, that experience will not be counted twice for your team's total. All experience is only counted once, regardless of how many people are present. On the scoreboard, that experience will be divided by the number of people there, and the matching fraction of the total will be assigned to each player to show their contribution. That frees up the remaining players to make rotations and look for kills, something which is much harder to accomplish in traditional MOBAs where each player is responsible for their own experience acquisition.

Passive Experience
Both teams passively receive 23 XP per second starting from 35 seconds after the gates open at the start of a match. Destroying a Fort or Keep will provide your team with a stacking 20% (=4.6 XP/s) increase in this passively-earned Experience.

Since both teams receive this bonus, it has only a small impact on the game, especially only in the early phase of the game. However, in long skirmishes the team with an XP lead can take an advantage of the trickle XP: For example, on Cursed Hollow both teams may fight over the first tribute while being on level 3. But one team might just level up to 4, gaining a power spike from getting their tier 2 Talents before the enemy, due to this constant XP income. Thus, in some situations it can give you an advantage to just delay a fight.

Minions
The main source of XP in the game are Minions, which spawn in waves of seven in every lane every 30 seconds. Each Minion wave is collectively worth 480 XP, increasing by a small amount for every minute passed in the game. Collecting experience from all Minion waves on a three lane map is worth more than double the base passive XP gain between the spawns. There are two ways to collect experience from Minions:

Experience Globes & soaking
Upon being killed by a non-Heroic source, Minions leave behind Experience Globes that can be collected to contribute to your team’s collective total experience. Heroes that are not Stealthed or in a Bush pull Experience Globes towards them from a fairly generous radius and finally pick them up when they are drawn close enough. The most fundamental strategy when it comes to gathering experience from Minions is called "soaking", which means simply staying in the proximity of clashing Minion waves to collect the experience when they die.

Last hitting
Experience can be also collected from Minions by last hitting them, ie. directly dealing killing blow to them with Abilities or Basic Attacks. In this case, the killed Minion will not drop an Experience Globe, but the experience from the Minion death is automatically awarded to the Hero, removing the need to get in range to collect a dropped Experience Globe. There is no difference in the amount of XP gained from killing Minions directly and collecting Experience Globes from dying Minions, but it is a very useful mechanic to Heroes with long range Abilities, like Azmodan, as collecting experience by last hitting has no range limitation. More often, however, it may be better to let the Minion wave die of "natural" cause, as killing enemy Minions pushes your Minion wave forward, closer to the enemy Towers, where it is more dangerous for you to collect experience, but safer for your enemy to!

Mercenary Camps
All Mercenary Camps grant all Experience to the team that captured the camp.

Destroying Structures
Another source for experience are the enemy Structures on the map. Of all destructible buildings, only Towers grant a static number of XP when destroyed, regardless of whether a hero was nearby or not. Destroying a Fort or Keep will provide your team with a stacking 20% increase in Passively-earned Experience. Each instance of this is bonus is worth approximately one Minion wave every two minutes.

Walls, Gates and Healing Fountains do not grant any experience.

Killing enemy Heroes
Killing enemy players provides global experience for your team, meaning that the experience is awarded regardless of proximity, allowing something like a damage-over-time effect or long-range spell to kill an enemy from far away without penalty. However, Heroes dying to neutral (uncaptured) Mercenaries or Monsters do not grant the enemy team Experience unless a Hero gains Takedown credit due to having applied damage or proximity near enough to the death.

At even levels, Hero kills grant experience equal to 250 + 50 * [target hero level]. (300 XP at level 1, 350 at level 2, 1000 at level 15, and so on.)

Underdog bonus
A team that has less XP than the opposing team gets an "underdog bonus" for Hero kills. The amount of bonus XP earned per takedown will scale significantly based on how many levels apart the teams are, and caps off at a four-level difference. Bonus XP will be granted for each takedown until team levels become even. Additionally, a team that is ahead in levels now earns fewer experience points for takedowns, and the effects work inversely. Likewise, this handicap ceases when the teams are leveled. This level scaling takes into account the XP progress towards the next level.

At 4 or more levels difference, the underdog bonus is +100% of the target's baseline XP, going down to roughly +60%, +30% and +10% at 3, 2 and 1 full levels difference, scaling in between.

Likewise, Hero kills grant less XP for the team that is ahead on XP. Roughly -10%, -30% and -60% at 1, 2 and 3 full levels difference, up to a minimum of -95% of the target's XP at 4 levels advantage or more.

''Example: Red team is exactly at level 13, Blue team is exactly at level 15. If Blue gets a hero kill on Red, they will earn (250 + 50 * [13]) * (~70%) = 630 XP. If Red gets a kill on Blue, however, they will earn (250 + 50 * [15]) * (~130%) = 1300 XP, roughly double what Blue would get. This means that with the underdog mechanic in place, teams that are disadvantaged in XP gain vastly more value from kill trades than those with a lead.''

Summoned units
Hero-summoned units, with the exception of Misha, do not grant experience upon death.

Summoned units can collect XP from Minions, however, they must deal the killing blow in order to do so, as summons that are not classified as Heroic Pets cannot collect Experience Globes.

Level requirements


To rank up the level, a team needs to gather experience points. Experience points are a score that both teams accumulate from various sources with the sole goal of leveling up. Each team starts at the level of 1 and can reach level 30 at most. How much XP each team needs to collect for each level can be found in the following table:

This formula can be used to approximate the total XP needed to reach certain level, within 4% margin of error level 5 onwards:

Total xp = 0.7556*lvl4 - 29.559*lvl3 + 483.81*lvl2 - 251.36*lvl + 566.16

Experience and the Hero Level
The experience that a team accumulated in a match is completely transferred to the player’s Hero Level progress and for the player's profile in total. These pools exist outside of individual matches, and upon reaching certain levels unlock Loot Chests and other features. However, these levels are reached far more slowly than those during matches, with many matches rewarding less than 1 level in total. The current level and experience accumulated by each team is displayed at the top of the screen throughout each match. The levels and experience of the player's total profile and for individual Heroes can be seen on the profile screen. The amount is doubled when you are using a Boost and an additional 5% for each other player with a Boost in the game.