Cursed Hollow is a popular battleground in the multiplayer online game Heroes of the Storm. It is known for its distinctive dark and eerie theme, which adds to the overall atmosphere of the game. The battleground is set in a haunted forest, surrounded by ancient ruins and dense fog, providing players with a sense of mystery and suspense. The objective of Cursed Hollow is to collect tributes that spawn periodically throughout the map. Once a team has collected three tributes, a curse is activated, impairing the opposing team's structures and minions. This curse can be a game-changer, as it significantly weakens the enemy team, giving the team that activated the curse a strategic advantage.

The Nexus Compendium

As one of the first and most ancient realms pulled into the Nexus, the realm of Raven Court has grown large and prosperous over the millennia. The province of Cursed Hollow, a gothic landscape of twisting villages and farmlands, serves as an ideal trial grounds for the Heroes of the Storm.

• Official Site: Battleground Page
• Realm: Raven Court
• Released: 2014-03-13 (during Alpha/Beta)
• Rotation: Ranked and Unranked

• has 3 Lanes with Minions
• has 2 Primary Objectives to follow
• has 6 Camps (Mercenaries enabled during Objectives)
• has 2 Watchtowers to capture
• holds 1 Entity in it
• has 3 Resources available

Battleground Map

Click on the image to see an enlarged and more detailed version of the map.

Primary Objectives

These objectives are what makes the Battleground unique, and are essential to know in order to win.

Camps

When captured at the right time, Camps can make a huge difference or provide a needed bit of support.
Note that Mercenaries are enabled during the Primary Objectives.

Watchtowers

Capture these to gain vision, until captured by the opposing team.

Entities

These entities are found in this Battleground, one way or the other.

Also known as Oberon, he's the ruler of the Raven Court, and on a crusade to dominate or control all realms of the Nexus, in order to, seemingly, protect it from an unknown threat. Highly dissatisfied with the path his daughter, Orphea, has taken.

Resources

Useful websites, that gives detailed information about certain aspects of the Battleground.

Heroes Patch Notes - Cursed Hollow Patch Notes

Heroes Profile - Cursed Hollow Win Rates

Heroes Wiki - Cursed Hollow

Battleground Rotations

In Ranked and Unranked game modes, not all Battlegrounds are playable at all times. This changes every once in a while with a Battleground Rotation.

Curse Upon You! A Strategy Guide for Cursed Hollow

Should we take a boss, or push for structures? Let's take a look at how to play the map of the Ravenlord!

Introduction

In Heroes of the Storm, we are blessed with a good sized map pool, all with different objectives meant to keep the players on their toes and try to gain an advantage over their opponents. Today we are looking at the map Cursed Hollow - a map where teams fight over tributes to bring the Raven Lord's Curse down upon the enemy teams minions and structures.

Map Objective

The goal for the teams on Cursed Hollow is to destroy the enemy team's structures and defeat their core to end the game. To help them do this, Tributes of the Raven Lord will spawn around the map. Channel a tribute without getting interrupted and when your team has gathered 3 tributes, the Raven Lord will curse the enemy team's minions and towers.

Cursed minions are reduced to one hit point and the lanes will naturally be pushed toward the enemy structures, if not taken care of. The Curse does not however reduce mercenary minions to one hit.

Cursed structures will be disarmed and unable to fire at minions and heroes. This makes the structures really vulnerable and highly likely to fall to either the minions pushing or the non-cursed team grouping without fear of taking cannon fire.

Watchtowers

Cursed Hollow has 2 Watchtowers, which are placed fairly deep into each team's side of the map. On this map, the Watchtowers provides great vision of nearby Tribute spawn points and the 2 Giant camps on the map.

Mercenary Camps

There are a great number of mercenary camps to be picked up at Cursed Hollow. We have 2 sets of each of the classic camps: Siege Giants, Knights, and Grave Golem (Boss). On Cursed Hollow, the camps are placed deep into each teams site of the map and an enemy team will have to go behind enemy lines to steal a camp away from the enemy site of the map.

Decision Making

On a map with so many objectives, you have to make decisions constantly. In this section I'll cover some of the basics, but remember that these only apply in most situations and not all.

Tributes: If your team is keeping up in experience with the enemy team and you are not outnumbered in living heroes, then you should always rotate for the Tribute when it spawns. Some good advice is to always engage the Tribute spawn from your teams site of the map, so that you are not trapped or separated from your team.

When should you not go for a Tribute? If your team is behind in experience and it is not a Curse Tribute (The Third tribute collected by a team which will activate the Raven Lord's Curse), then the spawning of a Tribute is an opportunity to catch up. Keep a hero in each lane to soak experience and sent one or two heroes who can poke safely to delay the Tribute for the enemy team.

If you are the one going to the Tribute, then remember that you are fighting an already lost fight and dying will be a waste of the soaking that the rest of your team has been doing during it.

Siege Giants: The Siege Giant camp on your team's side of the map will get the most value if you take it when a Tribute is spawning on the other vertical direction of the map. This means that if you are the team on the left site of the map, then you should take your Siege Giants when the Tribute spawns on one of the three points in the lower part of the map so that they can push the lane and structures while both teams are fighting over the Tribute.

When to steal enemy Siege Giants? The enemy Siege Giants are placed deep into enemy territory, which makes it really risky to go in to steal them alone. The best opportunity to steal the enemy Giants is when you get some kills on the enemy team at the Tribute spawn close to the camp. A single exception is if you are playing The Lost Vikings and can go and bribe the camp.

Boss and Knights: These two camps are placed right next to each other and if you take a Boss, then you might as well take the Knights right next to it. But when should you ping the Boss and ask your team for assistance? Well, the Boss takes a fairly long time to cap and it deals a good amount of damage to you while you try to take it, so you will need to know that the enemy team will not collapse on you while you are trying to go for your Boss.

Some of those situations could be when you get some kills on enemy heroes and you can rotate to your Boss as a full team. Another riskier situation is when you spot a low mobility enemy hero on the other site of the map and think you have time to rush your Boss before the enemy team can rotate.

Going for Double Boss: When you have taken the Boss on your team's side of the map, then you can use the time it takes for the Boss to move to lane to take your Knights as well. If you can see, that the enemy team's heroes are still visible in lanes and not fighting their own Boss, then you should rotate to their boss and take that while the enemy team is dealing with the first Boss on the other side of the map and the Knights in the middle lane.

We Just Cursed the Other Team! Should We Go for Boss or Structures? This is where it gets tricky. If you lost a teammate or two in the Tribute fight, then you should go and push a lane as a group. If all your heroes are still alive, then I would say that it depends on where the Tribute spawned at. If the Tribute spawned in one of the two closest locations to your Boss, then I would go for it, but if you are further away, you are going to waste half the duration of the Curse rotating across the map to take your Boss. Never go for double Boss while the other team is cursed, it's a waste of time that could be spent on pushing structures.

Heroes That Thrive on this map

Cursed Hollow is a large map and so heroes with great long-distance-mobility have an advantage on this map.

Heroes like Dehaka, Brightwing, Falstad, Abathur with clone, and E.T.C. with Stage Dive are highly effective at creating a numbers advantage when a small skirmish fight breaks out somewhere on this map. Other than that, Abathur and The Lost Vikings have the opportunity to give their team the experience lead when both teams fight over the map objective.

During a Curse, Lunara is really good at taking down structures with her high siege damage potential when she doesn't have to be afraid of structures. Having a Tyrande is always great for vision on a large map like Cursed Hollow, either to spot enemy rotation or, more importantly, to see if they are trying to take a Boss.

Writer's Opinion

I personally like Cursed Hollow a lot. It is my second favorite map, beaten only by Infernal Shrines. I like the classic three lane format with a map objective that lures in both teams for a fight. While other maps have that too, I'm a fan of the narrow areas surrounding the map objectives. I think it makes the teamfights more interesting, with great possibilities for flanking. I also like the Curse. It gives a sudden rush when you can charge straight into a minion wave take it out in one hit and then start beating on a tower, all to see how much you can get out of your window of time.

All-in-all, I love this classic map.

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The Cursed Hollow

Map Details: Collect the tributes for the Raven lord and once he is appeased, he will curse your enemy to help sway the battle in your favor!

Cursed Hollow is a traditional Three Lane Map where both teams start off fighting each other as they do in any map.

The Objective of this map is to gather Three Tributes that spawn one at a time in random areas of the map. The Raven Lord will give you a warning that a Tribute is about to spawn and the location of the Tribute will show up on the map. A hero must click a Tribute in order to capture it after a short channel time. Once a tribute is captured another won't spawn for a while. There will only be one Tribute up at a time.

Once you gather three Tributes the enemy team gets Cursed. This causes all of their minion waves to only have 1 hp, their fortifications won't fire and will all have 50% health. Enemy Heroes and Mercs remain unaffected by the Curse.

The tributes you've gathered do not go away if the enemy team curses you. If you had 2 tributes before the curse you'll have 2 after it.

So now let's talk about what you should do on this map:

Above all else it is greatly important to capture Tributes on this map. The current form of the Curse is completely crippling and creates a opportune time to push an enemy base. Neither team will survive long if they get hit with 2-3 curses.

You can go about securing curses one of two ways:

1) Apply constant and strong pressure in all lanes. Try to time a large push right before a tribute is about to spawn that causes their team to have to send at least some people to defend their base. The timing of this is difficult to coincide with tribute spawns but if done well then the fights over the tributes themselves become easy. I've seen tributes be captured by a single person uncontested with this strategy.

2) Work on keeping the lanes pushed back away from your base but try to above all else stay alive. Have good communication with your team so that you all rotate together when a tribute spawns. The goal here is to rely on your team fighting skills. This is how a lot of the tribute fights turn out in most of the games. Rotation is key if you're going to do this though because most of the time the first team that gets their members there wins. If you're doing this strategy then your team needs to know that when the Raven Lord says a tribute is about to spawn that they MUST drop what they are doing and head there. Any delay can case this strategy to fail.

More often then not teams use a combination of both of these tactics. If you do well in 1 then 2 becomes easier. With decent teams this map is usually done after 2-3 rounds of curses so each one is really important.

If you know that the enemy team is about to curse you and you know that you can't fight over the tribute then sometimes the best defense is to go on the offensive. If you can mount or set up an attack that forces them to defend while you're cursed then you can make them waste their curse. This, however, is a risky move.

Do note that this strategy is based off of the current map and is subject to change if they change the map. Also note that this is a general strategy and that things fall apart in game at times. It's up to you to adapt to what's going on.

This curse can be a game-changer, as it significantly weakens the enemy team, giving the team that activated the curse a strategic advantage. The map layout of Cursed Hollow consists of three lanes, each with their own set of structures and mercenary camps. The center of the map contains a large tribute spawn location, which is a central point of contention for both teams.

Players must react quickly and coordinate their efforts to secure these tributes and gain control of the battleground. One of the key elements of Cursed Hollow is the emphasis on teamwork and coordination. Communication between teammates is crucial, as players must strategize and coordinate their movements to secure tributes and defeat the enemy team. The map also requires players to make quick decisions and adapt to changing circumstances, as tributes spawn randomly throughout the game. Cursed Hollow offers a challenging and engaging gameplay experience for Heroes of the Storm players. Its spooky and atmospheric setting, combined with its unique objective, adds an extra layer of depth and excitement to the game. Whether playing casually or competitively, Cursed Hollow provides an intense and memorable battleground for players to enjoy..

Reviews for "Warding Off the Spirits: Countering Cursed Hollow's Curse"

1. Sarah - 2/5 stars - Cursed Hollow was a complete letdown for me. The map feels cluttered and chaotic, with no clear strategy or direction. The objectives are confusing and don't add much to the gameplay. Overall, it just feels like a mess, and I dread having to play on this map during matches.

2. John - 1/5 stars - I absolutely despise Cursed Hollow. The map layout is a nightmare, and it's way too easy to get lost or stuck in weird corners. The objectives don't feel rewarding or impactful, and the constant back-and-forth between lanes is frustrating and monotonous. I would rather play any other map than Cursed Hollow.

3. Emily - 2/5 stars - Cursed Hollow is one of my least favorite maps in the game. The constant tribute spawns can quickly become tedious, and the randomness of their locations makes it even more frustrating. Additionally, the map feels unbalanced, with some areas being extremely difficult to defend. I find myself quickly getting bored and frustrated every time I have to play on Cursed Hollow.

4. Michael - 2/5 stars - Cursed Hollow is not a map that I enjoy playing. The constant interruptions from the tribute objective take away from the overall flow of the game and can make it feel disjointed. The size of the map also makes rotations between lanes cumbersome and time-consuming. Overall, I find Cursed Hollow to be a frustrating and unenjoyable experience.

Breaking the Curse: An In-depth Analysis of Cursed Hollow's Winning Conditions