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I read this blog post about playing Abathur yesterday evening and it talks about 'experience soaking'.
Most Abathur players will not utilize their body very well and just sit somewhere safe, but they're not actually soaking any experience
Being a casual player of Heroes of the Storm, I've not heard this term before.
What is experience soaking? How does it work, and what is its relevance to Abathur players?
It is thorougly discussed in this reddit post. It describes what it is and how it works, as well as how to perform it properly.
The question:
So soaking XP you have to be a certain distance to the minions that are killed. With any other character this is easy as you're usually right in the lane fighting them. I know with Abathur that if your locusts or mines get the killing blow then you get XP however that is a pretty low chance especially in early game.
How do you soak XP properly with Abathur? I keep seeing people saying to body soak does that mean to throw Abathur out into the lane and not in a bush near the lane? Do I hat one lane and help mow it down and then just bounce around hatting lanes or should I actually be in the lane with Abathur and doing damage and slappin' those minions?
Answer:
There is certainly an art to know when, where, and for how long you can go out into lane to soak.
Most importantly, your vision radius is how close you need to be to dying minions in order to passively body-soak the XP. This aspect is largely ignored by many Abathur players imo.
Experience for killing minions is only awarded in 2 cases:
The problem is that if Abathur is located in the base, behind the safety of the walls, he is not actually near the minion and can't get EXP through the first method. This costs the team EXP, especially if the Abathur player is soloing a lane.
When your hero is near creeps that are dieing, it gains xp towards your team lvl. Exp soaking means you are staying in a range where creeps are being killed (either by you or other creeps/ppl).
The extract you posted suggests (and is true) that most non-pro players when playing Abathur are just leaving the hero in base and focus on "merging" with other players. You should go somewhere near creeps are being killed so you also gain xp.
