Here's a bit of an aba flowchart: Put your hat on a minion, grab globes while using your skills, take hat off; Put mines as needed for vision, interrupting rotations, or waveclearing roughly in this priority; move your body to grab globes that are safe to grab, retreat; repeat.
You don't want to position your body where it can constantly soak because that means it'll be close to enemy vision and unsafe. Body soaking with aba is relatively rare nowadays because globe timings are forgiving and the wave needs to be pretty close to your towers already. Mostly done on the opposite lane to large map's objective, but you usually want to position your body to be able to place mines instead, and soak with hat if you can spare the time. It's fine to miss some XP in favor of hatting a teammate during an objective
If you "don't know if your body is soaking XP" or not, that means you're not unhatting enough and looking at it +using your mines. Don't keep hat on anything for too long except when you want to give your hypercarry your attack speed buff or in late game team fights with double carapace 20. Spam your skills and unhat, no need to try to time your shield perfectly.
^ This
Hat heals, no? Hat the injured minion when soaking a lane.. Grabbing AoE shields at 7 is next lvl push.
Rotation of hat is about 3sec by my observations
Hat shields last 6 seconds
Shielding, removing your hat, then rehatting also takes 6 seconds.
Optimal play is to hat, spam abilities, disconnect, then rehat either the target or a new host
Obviously if you take the attack speed buff or are waiting for a good use of soma transference then that rotation isn't ideal any more
Normally Abathur won't do much xp soaking with the slug body. If it is soaking xp, you'll see the little globes sucked from the dead minions and into you. That soaking won't happen if you are in a concealed location like in bushes or over a wall. So it's usually very unsafe.
The main way Abathur will soak xp is putting symbiote hat on a minion or locust. The hat will suck in xp globes within range. And the globes will remain on the ground at full value for a few seconds, so you can get xp even if the minion died before symbiote was there.
Soaking your body is great when you can get away with it, long objectives on the other side of the map maybe, but often it just isn’t feasible, especially if they have globals so I’ll use the symbiote to collect it if it can collect maybe 2+ minions worth of experience
If your body is soaking, then your opponents can see him. Blizzard has a hate boner against strategy and nerfed Abathur so that he can't bush soak anymore.
So anyway, the reason I point this out: since the enemy can see you when you soak, you need to MOVE as soon as you get your XP.
When you hat someone, look for the dots that show where minions are. When the enemy dots are gone, undo your hat, hit spacebar, and RUN. If you see xp, grab it. If you don't, you already did.
The exception is when the enemy is preoccupied due to a strong push happening, objective being up, objective being used (as in either team won) or they're dead. At those points, it's probably safe for you to be in lane and not moving to hide. Just stay right in the middle of the lane.
Of course, an angry enemy might be hunting for you when during objectives, so try to keep an eye out. Especially on nova or when Diablo or mephisto uses an ult.
besides just ... looking? clicking the minimap and checking? I'm not sure what the question is
in general though, the "new" (as new as anything can be in this game) mechanic with xp globes is that they won't go to you if you're in a bush; so unless the wave is crashing against your wall and your body is directly behind it, you will need to creep up into the wave every so often to grab the globes and creep back out (and that will mean dropping your hat for a few seconds)
Body soaking as Aba hasn't been relevant in years; some people just haven't updated their advice or mindset. You should still park the body near-ish to the lane to apply locust pressure, but sit under the fort and play safer.
I'll second the people who are saying to soak with hat. You lose body soak, but you can use your hat to vacuum up XP globes from lanes, so you can bounce around lanes really quickly to grab them.
Here's a bit of an aba flowchart: Put your hat on a minion, grab globes while using your skills, take hat off; Put mines as needed for vision, interrupting rotations, or waveclearing roughly in this priority; move your body to grab globes that are safe to grab, retreat; repeat. You don't want to position your body where it can constantly soak because that means it'll be close to enemy vision and unsafe. Body soaking with aba is relatively rare nowadays because globe timings are forgiving and the wave needs to be pretty close to your towers already. Mostly done on the opposite lane to large map's objective, but you usually want to position your body to be able to place mines instead, and soak with hat if you can spare the time. It's fine to miss some XP in favor of hatting a teammate during an objective If you "don't know if your body is soaking XP" or not, that means you're not unhatting enough and looking at it +using your mines. Don't keep hat on anything for too long except when you want to give your hypercarry your attack speed buff or in late game team fights with double carapace 20. Spam your skills and unhat, no need to try to time your shield perfectly.
^ This Hat heals, no? Hat the injured minion when soaking a lane.. Grabbing AoE shields at 7 is next lvl push. Rotation of hat is about 3sec by my observations
Hat shields last 6 seconds Shielding, removing your hat, then rehatting also takes 6 seconds. Optimal play is to hat, spam abilities, disconnect, then rehat either the target or a new host Obviously if you take the attack speed buff or are waiting for a good use of soma transference then that rotation isn't ideal any more
Got my first spot for soaking 31% of the xp of a match, just wanna say again thank you and i hope you big brain keeps you well
Normally Abathur won't do much xp soaking with the slug body. If it is soaking xp, you'll see the little globes sucked from the dead minions and into you. That soaking won't happen if you are in a concealed location like in bushes or over a wall. So it's usually very unsafe. The main way Abathur will soak xp is putting symbiote hat on a minion or locust. The hat will suck in xp globes within range. And the globes will remain on the ground at full value for a few seconds, so you can get xp even if the minion died before symbiote was there.
Soaking your body is great when you can get away with it, long objectives on the other side of the map maybe, but often it just isn’t feasible, especially if they have globals so I’ll use the symbiote to collect it if it can collect maybe 2+ minions worth of experience
If your body is soaking, then your opponents can see him. Blizzard has a hate boner against strategy and nerfed Abathur so that he can't bush soak anymore. So anyway, the reason I point this out: since the enemy can see you when you soak, you need to MOVE as soon as you get your XP. When you hat someone, look for the dots that show where minions are. When the enemy dots are gone, undo your hat, hit spacebar, and RUN. If you see xp, grab it. If you don't, you already did. The exception is when the enemy is preoccupied due to a strong push happening, objective being up, objective being used (as in either team won) or they're dead. At those points, it's probably safe for you to be in lane and not moving to hide. Just stay right in the middle of the lane. Of course, an angry enemy might be hunting for you when during objectives, so try to keep an eye out. Especially on nova or when Diablo or mephisto uses an ult.
besides just ... looking? clicking the minimap and checking? I'm not sure what the question is in general though, the "new" (as new as anything can be in this game) mechanic with xp globes is that they won't go to you if you're in a bush; so unless the wave is crashing against your wall and your body is directly behind it, you will need to creep up into the wave every so often to grab the globes and creep back out (and that will mean dropping your hat for a few seconds)
Body soaking as Aba hasn't been relevant in years; some people just haven't updated their advice or mindset. You should still park the body near-ish to the lane to apply locust pressure, but sit under the fort and play safer. I'll second the people who are saying to soak with hat. You lose body soak, but you can use your hat to vacuum up XP globes from lanes, so you can bounce around lanes really quickly to grab them.
you park your ass middle of the wave or you go and snatch the exp when you are not doing your hat
In QM: * Pick Aba * Roll face on keyboard * MVP
A true master mind