Now, this is one of the most important things for new players to grasp in this game. The heroes in HoN have three normal abilities and an ultimate, much like LoL; however the abilities scale four times, as opposed to LoLs five, and the ultimate abilities both scale at three. The main differences in the two games are going to take a lot of explanation so let’s get started.
In LoL there is a passive ability for every champion, and some scale with level like their abilities. There is nothing in HoN to say is a counterpart to this. There are passive skills that you level, but there is still only the four skills and LoL has some passive skills of its own. This I feel brings more customization to HoN because in LoL you want to synergize with your passive. This means that in LoL you build in some way to increase your passives’ effectiveness with your hero. This is an amazing concept, but also restricts the customization. If you have a Hero in HoN that can DPS well, you can build him in many different ways such as Life Steal, Slower, Armor Reduction etc etc. While these aspects still are available in LoL, if your passive states that every fifth attack deals 120% damage in and AoE, you’re going to focus more on damage and speed than the other possible options. While this in HoN can lead to more builds, it also leads to more knowledge required than in LoL to build correctly in some ways because aiming for the synergy with your passive gives you a set path to build on. As you can see, both games have a give and take on this for being better or worse.
Another glaring difference that cannot be overlooked is the scaling abilities. In LoL you build Ability Power to scale your abilities up, there is none of this in HoN. There is Damage that can be interpreted as “Attack Damage” like in LoL for scaling abilities, this ONLY benefits your auto attack unlike benefiting both scaling abilities and auto attack like in LoL. This also leads to HoN having a severely different stat system than LoL. In HoN there are three primary attributes, which separate all the heroes and these are; Agility, Intelligence and Strength, which all have benefits to having it as your primary, and getting it as a secondary stat. Agility will grant an agility hero attack damage, but it will also benefit everyone with attack speed, and armor. Intelligence will grant and intelligence hero damage, but it will also gran mana and mana regen to everyone. Strength will grant a strength hero damage, but it will also give everyone more health and health regen. When you her level up he gains a set bonus to each stat, usually his primary is the highest followed by the other two. This stat system opens up more diversity in items and functionality; while it also makes items useful on different types of heroes instead of just intelligence per say. In addition to these base stats there is armor, magic resist, health, mana, damage, attack speed, critical chance as well as orb effects that do things such as life steal, move slow, armor reduction, and even one gives a chain lightning strike a chance to occur when you attack. I am not going to go more in depth with these now as the item section is up later and will explain this. So, in essence you no longer pick an AP Scaling Nuker, you can pick an Int nuker which would be a direct comparable hero without scaling; or a Str nuker, and while the abilities will not scale, it leads to more interesting gameplay and more options and diverse heroes.
In most other facets what you pick will still be the same for say a nuker, ganker, assassin what have you, but they are going to have a primary attribute that will influence the items and the way he is played more than just getting an AP nuker that is plain and simple and easy to build.
Since there is really no other section to add this and I don’t want to compare abilities because there are so many, I will add some Champion -> Hero likenesses at the end, but there are no standard “Cast Ranges” like in LoL. When you trigger your ability, there is no magical circle that shows you’re your range, however there are some mods that can be installed to do this for you. Along with this, there are few actual “Skill Shots” that require you to only hit what you want, as there are mostly just aiming and it hits that spot/area.
So, here are some Champion -> Hero comparisons if you are looking for someone in particular.
Jax -> Pandamonium
Panda jumps onto someone like Jax and then has abilities to stun/push back. Hard Hitting and Tankish
Warwick -> Dampeer
Great DPS while being able to jump onto someone all while having a strong gank potential. *No ability to see enemy heroes*
Master Yi -> Swift Blade
Swift has a spin like Garen, but is not a tank and Swifts Ult is Alpha Strike on Crack.
Garen -> Legionaire
Legionaire is that annoying ass tank that never dies, can taunt, kills at X life and he has a chance to Spin after blocking an attack, making him pretty much Garen with spin being a chance on block, with a high block chance.
Karthus -> Thunderbringer
This little monkey spams lightning abilities which makes him a harassing caster, but his ult is just like Karthus except instant. His ult also reveals everyone it hits but if a unit is invisible it will take no damage but be revealed.
Annie -> Hellbringer
Both of these are pesky little casters that annoy and harass you constantly. Annie is more of a nuker while Hellbringer is more support; but both of their ultimates summon a minion that can obliterate the enemy if casted right.
Amumu -> Pharaoh
Pharaoh's ultimate is just like Amumu's bandage toss where he snares someone and flys towards him, plus he has an ability to entrap someone and make them helpless against his DPS while being able to take punishment.
Blitzcrank -> Gauntlet
Both of these are able to take some nice punishment while dealing good damage and initiate if needed. Gauntlet throws his first like Blitzcrank but he goes to the enemy instead of dragging them to him. He also charges up his fist for a brutal attack like blitz.
Dr. Mundo -> Moraxus
A great tank when coming to the end game and they both can throw something at the enemy to deal nice damage early and a slow that is effective all game.
Akali -Nighthound>
Both of these are "assassins" but Nighthound can be permanently invisible and his cloud silences enemies and increases they're chance to miss, unlike Akali that becomes invisible in her cloud. They both are excellent gankers and have the ability to pounce on an enemy.
I’m hesitant to mention any more than this by there being so many similarities in skills, but the hero plays differently. All the ones mentioned above will function the same in essence. Jax can take a lot of damage and deal out a lot, so can Panda; likewise with Yi and Swift being squishy killers etc etc. I will most likely add more of these later after some discussion.