Brother, brother, oh so fair why is there blood all over your hair?
The Lost Vikings patch surprised everyone with an unexpected update to our boy, Jim Raynor, the Marine. What exactly happened here, and why? Let's check it out.
We'll start with a quick look at some of the comments found in the Patch Notes Addendum. If you haven’t really been following any of the updates, the Patch Notes Addendum is a section of the official Heroes of the Storm blog where the developers seek to clarify some of the design changes they bring to the game.
Raynor is the big Talent revamp release for this patch. We had a couple of goals for Raynor’s changes: Allow for multiple builds (previously we felt that an auto-attack build was the only encouraged and viable option).
Some of the latest build development for Raynor revolved around his old, now-removed, Trait Lead from the Front, and the Quick Fingers talent. The build hinged upon the massive amount of cooldown reduction provided by Hero and Minion kills to use abilities much more often than they were tuned around. This allowed Raynor to “snowball” team fights after a single fortunate kill, and trade or push very effectively while laning.
Despite the fact that corresponding talents are still available, the build is but a shell of its former self. Part of the old version’s viability came from the fact that Quick Fingers came online at level 4 and provided twice the amount cooldown reduction that Puttin’ on a Clinic did, making it an earlier, stronger choice. On top of this, Puttin’ on a Clinic and A Card to Play now also compete with much stronger choices, making them less appealing at the level 13 and 20 tiers respectively. Coming online when the laning phase is more or less done with has killed an important aspect of the build’s appeal.
In light of this, the claim that “an auto-attack build was the only encouraged and viable option” is just less than true.
Rework the Trait, which we felt was misplaced on Raynor (as an easier-to-play Hero).The full story on Raynor’s Trait change can go pretty deep, but here’s the short version: Lead from the Front required players to master a mechanic (last-hitting) that Heroes of the Storm really isn’t about, and furthermore we were asking many of the newest players to the game to understand it.
Lead from the Front has never required players to master last-hitting, much in the same way that the newer Puttin’ on a Clinic does not currently; the requirement was that of having recently damaged a destroyed entity. This is an important difference, because the latter does not require active management from the player’s part.
I understand and fully agree that, from a design standpoint, last-hitting can prove to be problematic. However, it is undeniable that the mechanic has been, and nowadays remains, a pillar of the AoS-genre ever since its first year 99’ rendition. I can't stress this enough: Be very careful when making design decisions around the lowest common denominator. Especially when considering the fact that the talent did not ever require players to last-hit in the strictest of senses in the first place.
Raynor is the tutorial Hero, and usually the first Hero new players get comfortable with – we wanted him to exemplify our design value of “easy to learn, hard to master” as much as possible, and Lead from the Front wasn’t delivering that value.
I can't help but feel that Lead from the Front was taking too much blame for Raynor's lacking “easy to learn, hard to master” design. I'll explain why shortly, after we have a look at a succinct summary of his skillset:
- Advanced Optics (Trait): Passive bonus to range.
- Penetrating Round (Q): Skillshot line damage and knockback. 12 sec cd.
- Inspire (W): Area of effect attack speed buff. 15 sec cd.
The first thing that strikes me is that Adrenaline Rush is entirely passive. Raynor is the only Hero to feature a passive skill as part of his Q, W or E abilities.
The second thing that is worthy of mention is that there’s only one ability that requires some form of "advanced" player input: Penetrating Round. Every other skill can more or less simply be used in the general vicinity of combat with a certain degree of success.
I believe that therein truly lie Raynor’s design issues. If the developers wish to present this character as the de-facto “easy-hard” example, they’ll need to further develop his "hard" side by adding depth to his skillset. Inspire and Adrenaline Rush would be good places to start.
The new Trait, however, does fit that bill: increased weapon range requires no prior knowledge to make use of (good for newer players), slightly keeps Raynor safe (good for newer AND experienced players), and allows Raynor to pull off kiting maneuvers by default (good for experienced players who know how to exploit it).
I sincerely believe that this change is being attributed too much importance in terms of the character depth than it provides. It's also self-evident, in the sense that none of your Hero's stats (health, damage, speed...) never really require any prior knowledge to make use of. And in the sense that, yes, better players are capable of making better use of their stats. Obviously - they're better players! But the variable at play here is the player's skill, not the bonus's depth breadth.
Let's have an example of what I mean. Say we added something extreme to Sonya's Trait, something along the lines of a 100% increase to her health. Could we justify this change by claiming that "the increased health allows her to make more dangerous plays, which helps new players, but also, better players that can make use of their experience to exploit the stats increase"? No! Of course not! We're just arbitrarily making the Hero better relative to everybody else; the improved playability is simply a byproduct of a raw value of the buff - and not its depth!
Traits should be about defining your character. They should be about giving them something more than you can give them through sheer stats alone. They should make links between your Hero’s story, lore or personality and their gameplay. Advanced Optics just doesn't do that. Especially since the tooltip is outright wrong - Raynor doesn't have 20% more range than other ranged Heroes - Nova's range is just as high from level 1, and a plethora of other Heroes can increase their own range as games progress!
The old Trait is still around in the new Talents: Puttin’ On a Clinic and A Card to Play.
I appreciate this, however, these talents just aren't nearly as good as they once were. They both used to be "free", in that they were caked into his original Trait. They didn't have to compete with other level 13 and 20 talents. They could be improved (read: doubled in power) through a level 4 talent, Quick Fingers. And last but not least, they kicked in as soon as the loading screen was over to go and do some shooting. This is huge.
Previously controlling the Banshees was somewhat confusing. We programmed them initially to target the enemy you were attacking, but this was pretty hidden functionality.
I just always assumed that Banshees functioned the way they did (right-click to attack) because it closely mimicked the Starcraft, and because it differentiated the skill from other summoning skills (Ultralisk and Mutalisks comes to mind). Nothing in their control ever struck me as confusing, if not for the generalized clunkiness that came with being unable to control them individually. They should now be easier to utilize, but this comes at the cost of skillset diversity.
Raynor's win rate over the last 7 days
Next, we’re going to take a look at the actual patch notes.
-Searing Attacks (Talent) removed
-Basic Attack damage reduced from 40 (+12 per level) to 35 (+11 per level)
-Inspire (W) Attack damage bonus removed; Attack Speed bonus increased from 15% to 25%
From reading the Patch Notes Addendum we knew that one of the revamp goals was to push Raynor away from his perceived mandatory auto-attack build. This Basic Attack damage reduction actually made Raynor the lowest auto-attack damage per second dealing ranged assassin, bar Nova and Jaina. The removal of Searing Attacks, and the nerf to Inspire (15% damage and 15% attack speed > 25% attack speed) only further widen the gap. Before the patch, Raynor could be built as the highest damage dealing Hero. His drawbacks were that he took a while to really get going, and was rather easy to bully around due to his lack of an escape skill.
I’m fully aware that raw numbers don’t mean everything. However, looking at the rest of the patch notes, this damage loss isn't really made up for aside from the Double Barreled talent, and to an extent, Confident Aim. We'll talk about them soon.
-Mercenary Lord (Talent) added at Level 7
-New Talent (Level 1): Raynor's "Recruitment"; This is an improved version of the Bribe Talent that requires only 15 stacks to bribe a Mercenary instead of 20.
Thematically, these make sense from the whole Jimmy “leadership” standpoint. However, the recent changes to Mercenary Lord, requiring proximity, made it an extremely bad choice for anyone, including Raynor. As for Bribe, it only really sees play on Brightwing, Falstad (less) and Murky. The common factor between these three Heroes is their map-wide mobility, something Raynor lacks. Raynor’s Recruitment, while objectively better than Bribe, unfortunately competes with Give Me More, a crux of Raynor’s survival.
Penetrating Round (Q)
-New Talent (Level 4): Confident Aim; Penetrating Round’s cooldown is reduced by 4 seconds upon striking an enemy Hero.
-New Talent (Level 7): Hamstring Shot; Upon impact, Penetrating Round slows enemies by 20% for 3 seconds.
-New Talent (Level 13): Double Barreled; Penetrating Round becomes charge-based, with a maximum of 2 charges.
Confident Aim has become the new go-to pick. I kinda like it, too - it just rewards you for hitting stuff, and the cooldown reduction is significant. It competes with Focused Attack, which is undertuned, Vampiric Assault, which isn't very good anymore due to the auto-attack being more or less dead, and Activated Rush, which also feels undertuned.
As for Hamstring Shot, it comes off as underwhelming. The slow is lengthy, but rather weak (Frost Shot, an equivalent talent, slows by 40% for 2 seconds on a 8 sec cooldown).
Double Barreled has also become a go-to pick. Partly because it's really good, partly because it synergizes with every other Penetrating Round-related talents, and partly because everything else on that tier is... ehh... yeah. I talked about Puttin’ on a Clinic earlier, so no need to go over that one. Giant Killer is just what it’s always been. I don't think it can compete with an extra instant 400-800 line damage that knockbacks and stuns later on. And as for Steel Resolve, well… we'll talk about it below.
Two barrels, better that one.
Adrenaline Rush (E)
-New Talent (Level 13): Steel Resolve; Increases Inspire’s duration by 50% and causes Adrenaline Rush to automatically apply Inspire
-Activated Rush (Talent) moved from Level 13 to Level 4; No longer requires activation in order to reduce the cooldown for Adrenaline Rush; Cooldown reduction lowered from 15 to 10 seconds
25% extra attack speed is good. More 25% attack speed is better. However, the uptime increase isn't that significant - about 30%, not accounting for Adrenaline Rush triggering (which could overlap anyway). Also, Double Barreled is simply too good to pass.
As for Activated Rush... it's okay, if you feel like you're going to need to heal every 30 seconds. It'll save you. But otherwise, the pick is dead. There's just no other way of putting it. Adrenaline Rush lacks the offensive versatility of a mobility skill.
New Talent (Level 20): A Card to Play; Raynor’s Heroic Ability cooldown is reduced by 10 seconds whenever any Hero (ally or enemy) is killed.
This is the other half of what Raynor's old Trait was - minus being able to benefit from allied deaths. I personally find it weird and unwieldy. Let me explain why: If you somehow wipe out your enemy's team without a single loss, great! 50 seconds off your cooldown that you probably just used. Also, you're going to win the match right away because "there's no one left to stop you, ha-ha!". If the opposite happens, and your team is wiped out, well... the talent didn't really help out. And if some kind of freak accident happens where 8 people die across both teams, you'll pretty much be stuck waiting for a minute before you can make any pushing progress. Which means that your Heroic's going to be back up in time for another fight anyway. Nexus Frenzy and Bolt of the Storm pay off instantly.
New Talent (Level 16): Relentless Leader; Raynor gains 50% Crowd Control reduction. Additionally, once every 5 seconds, Raynor will knock back nearby enemies if he becomes stunned.
A fine counter to ETC and Muradin. However, I doubt it'll see much play. The Double Barreled Raynor meta benefits too much from Bullseye to skip.
New Talent (Level 20): Dusk Wings; Banshees remain cloaked while firing, and fire 50% more frequently.
The old version of this talent provided a 33% damage increase, whereas this one is more like 50%. This is a buff, however, it isn't as safe a pick as Bolt of the Storm, and probably doesn't provide as much damage as Nexus Frenzy.
Hyperion (R)
-Battle Hyperion (Talent) removed; Now starts with the Yamato Cannon effect that was previously granted by the Battle Hyperion Talent
-New Talent (Level 20): Scorched Earth; An additional set of lasers continually blast the ground, dealing area-of-effect damage.
This is the highlight of the update, giving Hyperion an interesting sieging niche. Scorched Earth's power is very hard to evaluate (on top of being seemingly random), and most players including myself have shied away from the talent at the benefit, once again, of the fail-safe Nexus Frenzy.
Raynor's most popular talent picks (Master league)
In conclusion
This update’s goal was to offer more diversity in Raynor’s build paths. This goal was unfortunately not achieved. The update has also incidentally shed some light on some of the design issues that affect the Hero’s design as well as the talent system as a whole. Furthermore, Raynor’s relatively recent competitive resurgence as a glass-cannon was completely smothered. He makes for a good introductory character due to his ease of ability management. However, given that positioning is such a vital concept to master in the AoS-genre in general, his lack of mobility actually makes him one of the harder Heroes to play at even a modest level
Which is funny because in sc2, the counters of the siege tanks are either things that outrange it, or can get close to it fast enough...which isn't the case because right now, hammer doesn't really have a lot of the weakness the usual sc2 tank would have.
Now, about jim, I don't know. I think he's supposed to be a good all around hero, easy to learn hard to master as he says but I agree that he doesn't achieve that, its like he's stuck in the middle of the rework.
On March 09 2015 02:29 Tufas wrote: I have no idea what any of this means .. Lost Vikings ?? The arcade thing for SC2 ?!?! But the rest doesn't make sense .. whaaaaat
its a guide/analysis for raynor in blizz's moba, heroes of the storm.
On March 09 2015 02:29 Tufas wrote: I have no idea what any of this means .. Lost Vikings ?? The arcade thing for SC2 ?!?! But the rest doesn't make sense .. whaaaaat
You mean Lost Vikings, the Blizzard game from 1992?
On March 09 2015 02:29 Tufas wrote: I have no idea what any of this means .. Lost Vikings ?? The arcade thing for SC2 ?!?! But the rest doesn't make sense .. whaaaaat
You mean Lost Vikings, the Blizzard game from 1992?
I was 2 years old in 1992, its safe to say that I do not remember that game
The entire design idea of having multiple viable talent builds is not very agreeable to hots' entire design. Unless they really start changing either the maps or the design of the game, talents that contribute to large team fights will always be the most important, and it's pretty easy to heuristically figure out the best talents for that. If other strategies like split-pushing were more viable, you could branch out and see other builds be more useful.
Even if you do get multiple builds being viable, it's still only at the level where you will just follow a basic decision tree process to know which build to use. It's not interesting, dynamic strategy. It's boring, rote, memorized, paint-by-numbers strategy.
The lack of mechanical depth in the game also means you can't create builds based on adept mechanical skills of the player either. I know a lot of mechanical depth is criticized for being arbitrary (and a lot of the time I'd agree), but there's a lot of good that comes out of having a good degree of mechanical depth in the game. I'm not sure why blizzard is so afraid of making characters that are much harder to use than others; there's still plenty of simple, straightforward heroes for other players to use.
It's disappointing to know that blizzard has all these resources and a huge guaranteed player base to take advantage of and they are churning out such an uninspired moba with severe design issues.
On March 09 2015 22:23 PRJ wrote: The entire design idea of having multiple viable talent builds is not very agreeable to hots' entire design. Unless they really start changing either the maps or the design of the game, talents that contribute to large team fights will always be the most important, and it's pretty easy to heuristically figure out the best talents for that. If other strategies like split-pushing were more viable, you could branch out and see other builds be more useful.
Even if you do get multiple builds being viable, it's still only at the level where you will just follow a basic decision tree process to know which build to use. It's not interesting, dynamic strategy. It's boring, rote, memorized, paint-by-numbers strategy.
The lack of mechanical depth in the game also means you can't create builds based on adept mechanical skills of the player either. I know a lot of mechanical depth is criticized for being arbitrary (and a lot of the time I'd agree), but there's a lot of good that comes out of having a good degree of mechanical depth in the game. I'm not sure why blizzard is so afraid of making characters that are much harder to use than others; there's still plenty of simple, straightforward heroes for other players to use.
It's disappointing to know that blizzard has all these resources and a huge guaranteed player base to take advantage of and they are churning out such an uninspired moba with severe design issues.
I would agree more with your thesis if there was a particular composition that was standard ( X support + X warrior + X dps). As it is, I don't think the game is designed with this idea in mind. Multiple specs are good because they allow skilled players to adapt (inspiring presence vs illidan or hammer, differences from one map to another, etc.) and they allow heroes to fulfill multiple roles. I like the design philosophy, but that doesn't mean it can't be executed better (I agree with the article that Raynor doesn't feel as diverse as other heroes).
Yeah I disagree with what he says. The are times where you want other talent over the usual talent that you usually choose. For example if the enemy team has little to no stuns, maybe you don't take the one that halves the duration of disa less and then you take that other talent. Of course there will always be the most played build but that's another topic.
About skill influencing talent chooses I would say they're somr of that. For example with zeratul if I know the player isn't as skilled I wouldn't recommend him to use worm hole or rewind because he won't use them correctly and probably miss the skill shots and he would be better using something else. That's an example, but future heroes will probably be more complex. And the fact that there are different maps assures that some heroes are better on some maps than others.
On March 09 2015 22:23 PRJ wrote: The entire design idea of having multiple viable talent builds is not very agreeable to hots' entire design. Unless they really start changing either the maps or the design of the game, talents that contribute to large team fights will always be the most important, and it's pretty easy to heuristically figure out the best talents for that. If other strategies like split-pushing were more viable, you could branch out and see other builds be more useful.
Even if you do get multiple builds being viable, it's still only at the level where you will just follow a basic decision tree process to know which build to use. It's not interesting, dynamic strategy. It's boring, rote, memorized, paint-by-numbers strategy.
I agree with this, but only within the scope of the current design. In general, I agree that the current talent trees are very uninspired. However, does that doom the system as a whole? I think not - in fact, I object absolutely, because what we see here is merely anecdotal. What we see isn't that great, but that doesn't mean it can't ever be so. Our devs just need to... be more involved, say.
I don't really want to use this is as a mean of promoting my own stuff, but I think that you'll find the talent tree I've designed for my Imperius hero concept to be rather well crafted. You can find it http://nou.myfreeforum.org/about162.htmlhere - just scroll down to the talents section. Why do I think it's good? 5 reasons:
1) Every talent tier feels rewarding because they change your skills in a significant-enough way
2) You can build around specific skills (for instance, Q all the way)
3) You can build around aspects of your character (for instance, offensive, defensive, utility/crowd control...)
4) There are plenty of opportunities to adapt to certain enemy strengths or team synergies
5) You never feel pigeon holed into blatantly superior talents; they all feel like they could make legitimate picks
Of course, it's hard to comment on theoretical projects. Perhaps I'm wrong, and that there would always be a clear-cut way of building the character. But I honestly doubt it.
I think a lot of heroes have a variety of viable options in their talent trees. Zeratul, Stitches, Abathur and most of the supports immediately come to mind. Other heroes, like Raynor and Tyrael, do not. In short, there's nothing wrong with the system. Blizzard just needs to put more thought into how it's applied vis a vis certain (maybe most) heroes. And Blizzard is aware of this problem. They've already said that Tyrael is on deck for an overhaul.
The talent system isn't that hard to design better I think so we get more choices.
Most talents are some procentual increase in something, like +x% damage/range etc. They just need to tweak these MUCH more nerfing the top talent and/or buffing bottom talents. For example they should start removing or buffing all worthless talents like focussed attack, superiority etc. With gradual tweaking they can easily get most talents balanced.
There are some exceptions where a talent is rather black and white and you can't tweak it easily, for example where an effect doubles something. Even then though there is often a way to nerf or buff it, for example what they did to second storm or the hunter killer talent on zagara (cd for second cast). And if that isn't possible and the talent is so superior you can always shuffle a bit between tiers or buff other talents. For example double bomb on zeratul is fun and I wouldn't mind keeping it but the rest needs a serious buff on that tier, potentially buff rending cleave there to 100%. With just tweaking you can get there it reallly isn't that hard.
Final thing though are synergetic builds where talent A taken synergizes well with talent B later so you pretty much have to take them together. These can be fixed by removing synergies a bit or shuffling around talents (let talents that synergize too much together be on the same tier). For example I think a talent like first aid should say 35% of BASE hitpoints. It wouldn't matter much for functionality but synergies that remove choices like first aid + metamorphosis would be gone.
Overall it isn't too hard to fix I think if they are just willing to make much more microfixes. Talent too dominant? nerf it by ~10% or the rest by that much. Then wait a few weeks to so. Rinse and repeat, it's really easy. Now is the time they should do it as balance is off anyway, if you wait too long with it the oppurtunity for it is lost.
On March 10 2015 06:53 xDaunt wrote: I think a lot of heroes have a variety of viable options in their talent trees. Zeratul, Stitches, Abathur and most of the supports immediately come to mind. Other heroes, like Raynor and Tyrael, do not. In short, there's nothing wrong with the system. Blizzard just needs to put more thought into how it's applied vis a vis certain (maybe most) heroes. And Blizzard is aware of this problem. They've already said that Tyrael is on deck for an overhaul.
The problem being their last two overhauls (Raynor and Chen) haven't done anything to improve the playability of those characters and aren't doing anything to put our faith in the current system. I'm not saying they can't utilize the talent system to create interesting characters (Jaina and Thrall were well done) but when you consider what the reworks have done to Abathur, Chen, and Raynor I'm afraid to see them rework Tyrael or Diablo.
The info was gathered thanks to https://www.hotslogs.com/ There you can upload your replays and get useful info like your winrate with each hero and stuff. The site gathers the data and then you can get interesting things like the overall win percent of the heroes, the most used builds and talents and the respective winrate with that build and other cool stuff. You'll probably find your profile there, but if you haven't uploaded the replays yourself it may not be as accurate, since it gets the info if someone from your party or the enemy team uploads it, if no one uploads it it won't show.
There's also http://www.hero.gg/ where you can do the excat same thing, but it is shown in a different manner.
On March 10 2015 06:53 xDaunt wrote: I think a lot of heroes have a variety of viable options in their talent trees. Zeratul, Stitches, Abathur and most of the supports immediately come to mind. Other heroes, like Raynor and Tyrael, do not. In short, there's nothing wrong with the system. Blizzard just needs to put more thought into how it's applied vis a vis certain (maybe most) heroes. And Blizzard is aware of this problem. They've already said that Tyrael is on deck for an overhaul.
The problem being their last two overhauls (Raynor and Chen) haven't done anything to improve the playability of those characters and aren't doing anything to put our faith in the current system. I'm not saying they can't utilize the talent system to create interesting characters (Jaina and Thrall were well done) but when you consider what the reworks have done to Abathur, Chen, and Raynor I'm afraid to see them rework Tyrael or Diablo.
The overhaul of Li Li turned out ok to be honest. She has quite a few decent talents to choose from, can go for healing or a damage build and only has a few useless talents. Her least picked talent is Bolt of the Storm, that's not exactly a terrible talent :p . Other then that, only Pro Toss, Lingering Blind, Elusive Feet and Safety Sprint seem week, maybe Water Dragon, Gale Force and Storm Shield could use a buff as well. Even including all of those that still leaves 19/27 decent talents which isn't too bad.
On March 10 2015 06:53 xDaunt wrote: I think a lot of heroes have a variety of viable options in their talent trees. Zeratul, Stitches, Abathur and most of the supports immediately come to mind. Other heroes, like Raynor and Tyrael, do not. In short, there's nothing wrong with the system. Blizzard just needs to put more thought into how it's applied vis a vis certain (maybe most) heroes. And Blizzard is aware of this problem. They've already said that Tyrael is on deck for an overhaul.
The problem being their last two overhauls (Raynor and Chen) haven't done anything to improve the playability of those characters and aren't doing anything to put our faith in the current system. I'm not saying they can't utilize the talent system to create interesting characters (Jaina and Thrall were well done) but when you consider what the reworks have done to Abathur, Chen, and Raynor I'm afraid to see them rework Tyrael or Diablo.
The overhaul of Li Li turned out ok to be honest. She has quite a few decent talents to choose from, can go for healing or a damage build and only has a few useless talents. Her least picked talent is Bolt of the Storm, that's not exactly a terrible talent :p . Other then that, only Pro Toss, Lingering Blind, Elusive Feet and Safety Sprint seem week, maybe Water Dragon, Gale Force and Storm Shield could use a buff as well. Even including all of those that still leaves 19/27 decent talents which isn't too bad.
Her kit is dearly uninspired. I can't think of a less interactive hero, and her rework actually made that worse by limiting dragon talents and making them autoturrets. I just don't get it.
On March 10 2015 06:53 xDaunt wrote: I think a lot of heroes have a variety of viable options in their talent trees. Zeratul, Stitches, Abathur and most of the supports immediately come to mind. Other heroes, like Raynor and Tyrael, do not. In short, there's nothing wrong with the system. Blizzard just needs to put more thought into how it's applied vis a vis certain (maybe most) heroes. And Blizzard is aware of this problem. They've already said that Tyrael is on deck for an overhaul.
The problem being their last two overhauls (Raynor and Chen) haven't done anything to improve the playability of those characters and aren't doing anything to put our faith in the current system. I'm not saying they can't utilize the talent system to create interesting characters (Jaina and Thrall were well done) but when you consider what the reworks have done to Abathur, Chen, and Raynor I'm afraid to see them rework Tyrael or Diablo.
The overhaul of Li Li turned out ok to be honest. She has quite a few decent talents to choose from, can go for healing or a damage build and only has a few useless talents. Her least picked talent is Bolt of the Storm, that's not exactly a terrible talent :p . Other then that, only Pro Toss, Lingering Blind, Elusive Feet and Safety Sprint seem week, maybe Water Dragon, Gale Force and Storm Shield could use a buff as well. Even including all of those that still leaves 19/27 decent talents which isn't too bad.
Her kit is dearly uninspired. I can't think of a less interactive hero, and her rework actually made that worse by limiting dragon talents and making them autoturrets. I just don't get it.
Now to be honest I never played her (or the game itself) before she got overhauled. So I have 0 reference to what she was like before. All I know is that she has a lot of viable/semi viable options/paths in terms of talents right now. Unlike heroes as Nazeebo or Zagara where it always feels like I'm taking the same talents every game. That said, yes she does have the easiest kit to play with in the game. But I still think she's fun, unlike Raynor who bores me to no end.
On March 10 2015 06:53 xDaunt wrote: I think a lot of heroes have a variety of viable options in their talent trees. Zeratul, Stitches, Abathur and most of the supports immediately come to mind. Other heroes, like Raynor and Tyrael, do not. In short, there's nothing wrong with the system. Blizzard just needs to put more thought into how it's applied vis a vis certain (maybe most) heroes. And Blizzard is aware of this problem. They've already said that Tyrael is on deck for an overhaul.
The problem being their last two overhauls (Raynor and Chen) haven't done anything to improve the playability of those characters and aren't doing anything to put our faith in the current system. I'm not saying they can't utilize the talent system to create interesting characters (Jaina and Thrall were well done) but when you consider what the reworks have done to Abathur, Chen, and Raynor I'm afraid to see them rework Tyrael or Diablo.
The overhaul of Li Li turned out ok to be honest. She has quite a few decent talents to choose from, can go for healing or a damage build and only has a few useless talents. Her least picked talent is Bolt of the Storm, that's not exactly a terrible talent :p . Other then that, only Pro Toss, Lingering Blind, Elusive Feet and Safety Sprint seem week, maybe Water Dragon, Gale Force and Storm Shield could use a buff as well. Even including all of those that still leaves 19/27 decent talents which isn't too bad.
Her kit is dearly uninspired. I can't think of a less interactive hero, and her rework actually made that worse by limiting dragon talents and making them autoturrets. I just don't get it.
Now to be honest I never played her (or the game itself) before she got overhauled. So I have 0 reference to what she was like before. All I know is that she has a lot of viable/semi viable options/paths in terms of talents right now. Unlike heroes as Nazeebo or Zagara where it always feels like I'm taking the same talents every game. That said, yes she does have the easiest kit to play with in the game. But I still think she's fun, unlike Raynor who bores me to no end.
Lili isn't really that good. She only shines as a healbot against bad players and poorly composed teams (ie teams that don't take enough stuns). Once you interrupt her ultimate, she doesn't do much other than run around at relatively high speed and be generally difficult to kill due to her cc reduction talents.
Since a lot of people really suck at the game and team comps generally aren't that thought out, she is a beast in yoloQ. (at least in my ranks)
The thing about the "autoturret" was changed in the same patch as they changed raynor's banshees. (and kerrigans ultra methinks). so it's not about making her "easier" but to change/remove all talents that require you to attack an target for something to happen.
On March 24 2015 00:55 Hryul wrote: Since a lot of people really suck at the game and team comps generally aren't that thought out, she is a beast in yoloQ. (at least in my ranks)
The thing about the "autoturret" was changed in the same patch as they changed raynor's banshees. (and kerrigans ultra methinks). so it's not about making her "easier" but to change/remove all talents that require you to attack an target for something to happen.
She's really a good support for new players because she is so mindless to play. Her heals auto-target the most injured ally, and she is capable of crapping out a ton of healing if left to her own devices. It doesn't really get much easier than that. Her drawback, however, is her limited utility. Most critically, she has no CC unless you take water dragon. Even then, she doesn't have any hard CC, which means that picking Lili forces other team players to take heroes with hard CC.