I've played this game very sparingly since beta and I lurk here regularly but I honestly don't know shit about it.

I understand the mechanics of (most) things, how leveling and soaking work, what the rough objectives are of all the maps, etc., but in terms of metagame and how to play it, how to draft, what things synergize, I'm at a loss. I couldn't tell you why some things are good and some things are not. I couldn't tell you what makes a hero stronger than others in the meta. I don't even know which heroes are supposed to go where.

The majority of this is from lack of experience from playing so little, but I did want to post here to confirm, as someone who's lacking game knowledge, that it does feel like I lack it here moreso than most games I play. I'm ranked low Gold in LoL, so not good at all, and I still feel confident in being able to "see" the drafts and how a team composition might work well together, or what weaknesses it may have to what the enemy is doing, and how those things will influence the pacing and strategy of the game. I don't have any of this in HotS.

I think the reliability of having one map with one standard way to play in LoL creates a pretty easy to understand framework with only minor variations in how champion picks influence how the game plays out. You'll always have 1 top, 1 jungle, 1 mid, and 2 bot; the only changes in how to play the game come from if the laners are oriented towards diving or poking. Your game knowledge accumulates with many matches played on this same set of rules over and over with a couple changes in variables each time.

HotS? Not a fucking clue. The maps change, the number of lanes change, even the number of characters in the game changes. It doesn't feel like learning how to play a game, but how to play a hundred kinds of the same game. I could spend hours researching how to most effectively draft for and play on Blackheart's Bay, but I don't feel like any of that would help me if I got thrown onto Haunted Mines. It definitely feels like there's way more I need to learn about this game than other similar games, and I don't feel like I would ever learn it just by playing—especially considering if I queued up right now I'd be thrown onto those maps with people in my skill range, who also don't know what the hell they're doing, and what does that teach me?