Chromie, Keeper of Time, has been added to Heroes of the Storm and is now available for play! Read on for a brief overview of her Abilities.
Trait
Timewalker
You’ve traveled into the future, and as such, will learn your Talents 1 level earlier than your teammates.
Basic Abilities
Sand Blast (Q)
After 1 second, fire a long-range blast that damages the first enemy Hero it hits.
Dragon’s Breath (W)
Fire a blast into the air that lands after 1.5 seconds, dealing damage to enemies in an area. Enemies cannot see where the blast will land.
Time Trap (E)
Place a Time Trap that arms and Stealths after 2 seconds. The first enemy Hero to touch it will be placed into Stasis for 2 seconds. Only 1 Trap can exist at once.
Heroic Abilities
Slowing Sands (R)
Create a swirling vortex of sand which greatly slows enemies caught within its area of effect. The longer Slowing Sands is active, the greater its slow becomes.
Temporal Loop (R)
Target enemy Hero will be teleported 3 seconds back in time to the position they were in when you initially cast Temporal Loop.
System Changes
Hero League Matchmaking
The top few hundred players in the world have extremely high matchmaking ratings (MMR), and the MMR gap between these players and the general population can be dramatic. At times, only a few of these extremely talented players are in the queue waiting for a match. In these cases, a highly-skilled player could previously be matched with several of the best available allies in queue, along with one lower-rated player in order to help balance out the team’s average MMR and find a match more quickly.
A new change has been implemented with today’s patch in which the matchmaking system will prefer to create a game that’s a little less even, using the highest-rated players available, rather than create an even game that includes lesser-skilled players.
In the overwhelming majority of the games it creates, the matchmaking system prefers very even matches. However, in cases like those described above, the matchmaking system will prefer to create games where the high-level player has a slight advantage, but all players are closer in skill, rather than set up a match where the high-level player has to work harder to “carry” a lesser-skilled teammate. In essence, today’s change will help to maintain the overall fairness and integrity of the league over the fairness of that specific match. Additionally, this should only occur after a relatively lengthy wait in the Hero League queue.
Art
General
The Specialist role icon has received updated artwork to better reflect Specialists as masters of unconventional warfare.
Heroes, Abilities, and Talents
Many Heroes have received updated Ability and Talent button art.
The Dragon Knight and Garden Terror have received updated Ability button art.
Heroes with unique Mount Abilities have received updated Mount button art.
Abathur – Deep Tunnel
Brightwing – Phase Shift
Dehaka – Brushstalker
Falstad – Flight
Gall – Hurry Up, Oaf!
Lunara – Dryad’s Swiftness
Rehgar – Ghost Wolf
Sgt. Hammer – Thrusters
The Lost Vikings – Go, go, go!
A new visual overlay has been added to better indicate when the player is affected by Stasis.
Ice Block (Talent)
Cho — Molten Block (Talent)
Chromie — Time Trap (E), Time Out (Talent)
Jaina — Improved Ice Block (Talent)
Rexxar — Feign Death (Talent)
Zagara — Devouring Maw (R)
Zeratul — Void Prison (R)
Arthas
Arthas has received updated visual effects to coincide with his Talent rework.
Visual effects for Arthas’ Rune Tap Talent will now display closer to the center of his model rather than appear overhead.
Shop
Bundles
New Bundles have been added!
Fel Queen Chromie Bundle - Available until May 31, 2016.
Battle Beasts Bundle - Available until June 7, 2016.
Ultimate Battle Beasts Bundle - Available until June 7, 2016.
Triumph Bundle
The Storm Bundle has been removed from the in-game Shop.
New Hero
Chromie has been added to the in-game Shop.
Skins
Master Chromie
Fel Queen Chromie
Price Reductions
Nazeebo’s prices have been reduced to $6.49 USD and 4,000 Gold.
Nova’s prices have been reduced to $8.49 USD and 7,000 Gold.
Sound
Questing Talents
New sound effects have been added that will play when making progress with a Questing Talent.
User Interface
General
After a match is found for an unranked game, a new “Connecting…” message will appear if there is delay in connecting to the server, and a new “Waiting for Players…” message will appear when waiting for other players to connect.
Draft Mode
Hero Bans
The first round Ban timer has been increased from 45 to 60 seconds.
In-Game UI
Questing Talents
Questing Talents have received visual polish that should help players better distinguish them from other Talents, and more easily track progress toward quest completion.
Questing Talent progress will now be more clearly indicated in Ability tooltips, Talent tooltips, and on the Buff bar.
Questing Talent icons on the in-game Score Screen (TAB) will now display progress toward completion for all players in a game.
A Quest icon will briefly appear and float next to the Hero or the Hero’s target when making progress toward an unfinished Questing Talent.
Visual effects will briefly appear around a Hero when they complete a Questing Talent.
Ability Buttons
Ability button borders will now be greyed out borders when the associated Ability cannot be used.
Floating Combat Text
Many additional Hero Abilities have received the new critical strike floating combat text style to better inform players when critical strikes are triggered from Ability and Talent effects.
Hero Select
Role description tooltips have been added to Role sorting buttons on Hero Select.
Queue Time Estimates
A “High Estimated Wait Time” notification will now display above the Ready button during times when the selected Hero is a very popular choice in matchmaking queues.
This will most often occur on days when a new Hero is released.
This notification will prompt players to try another Hero while wait times are very high, but will not prevent them from queuing with the high-traffic Hero.
Battlegrounds
Healing Well
25% of a Healing Well’s maximum Health has been converted into a Shield. Shield Regeneration delay of 8 seconds.
Developer Comments: We’ve noticed some rather un-fun behavior in the form of sniping Healing Wells over time using very long range Abilities. While we’re okay with players doing this to a degree, we found it was too effective given how little counterplay there was. To help solve this, turned a sizable portion of Healing Well Health into a Shield. This means that if you offer your Healing Well some respite from enemy attacks by chasing opponents away every now and then, it will start to regenerate some of that Shield. Only you can protect Healing Wells from those pesky Arcane Orbs!
Talents
Battle Momentum
Battle Momentum has been made Hero-specific, and now only applies to Basic Ability cooldowns.
Diablo
Diabolical Momentum
Basic Attacks now reduce Basic Ability cooldowns by 0.75 seconds instead of 0.5.
No longer reduces Heroic Ability cooldowns.
Johanna
Blessed Momentum
No longer reduces Heroic Ability cooldowns.
Kerrigan
Bladed Momentum
Basic Attacks now reduce Basic Ability cooldowns by 0.75 seconds instead of 0.5.
No longer reduces Heroic Ability cooldowns.
Tyrael
Angelic Momentum
Basic Attacks now reduce Basic Ability cooldowns by 0.75 seconds instead of 0.5.
No longer reduces Heroic Ability cooldowns.
Tyrande
Lunar Momentum
Basic Attacks now reduce Basic Ability cooldowns by 0.6 seconds instead of 0.5.
No longer reduces Heroic Ability cooldowns.
Zagara
Swarm Momentum
Basic Attacks now reduce Basic Ability cooldowns by 0.75 seconds instead of 0.5.
No longer reduces Heroic Ability or Trait cooldowns.
Developer Comments: Our intention for Battle Momentum was to create more active gameplay by using your Basic Abilities more often, but we found that a lot of this Talent’s power lied in its ability to reduce your Heroic cooldowns. We wanted to increase the cooldown reduction granted by the Talent, but didn’t want Heroic Ability cooldowns to drop to absurdly low levels. By making it only reduce the cooldowns of Basic Abilities (Q, W, E), it allowed us to increase this cooldown reduction without making it overpowered. We’ve also made Battle Momentum Hero-specific, so that we can tune each one without affecting all the rest, since Attack Speed, melee versus range, and the nature of your Basic Abilities can all drastically change what is balanced.
Conjurer's Pursuit
A reward has been added to this Questing Talent.
Quest: Gather Regeneration Globes to permanently increase Mana Regeneration by 0.10 per second, up to a maximum of 2.5 per second.
Reward: After gathering 25 Regeneration Globes, also increases maximum Mana by 100.
Developer Comments:We’ve added a completion point to this Talent. Upon completing its quest, players will be provided with some additional power. This allows us to offer spikes of power in-between Talent levels, or even for a single player on a team. Now, simply picking the Talent and only partially completing it is worse, but finishing the quest will return a larger reward. Choosing the right Talents on the right Battleground or with the right team composition has always been an important goal for us, and this change pushes this Talent to closer align with that goal.
Executioner
This Talent has been reworked.
Increases Basic Attack damage by 30% for 3 seconds after hitting a Stunned, Slowed, or Rooted target with a Basic Attack. Using Basic Attacks against a Slowed, Rooted, or Stunned target during this time will refresh the buff duration.
Developer Comments:We like the punishing nature of Executioner, but have found over time that its benefit to the player is too narrowly scoped. We’re changing the Talent to be more consistently useful by giving the player a temporary Attack Damage buff that procs when they first hit a crowd controlled target.
Hardened Focus
The Health bar next to the Hero Portrait will now display a marker that indicates whether the Hero is above or below 80% Health.
Will now display an icon in the Buff bar next to the Hero Portrait while its effects are active.
Regeneration Master
A reward has been added to this Questing Talent.
Quest: Regeneration Globes now grant 1.0 Health per second, stacking up to 30
Reward: Upon gathering 30 Globes, also increases Health by 500
Developer Comments: Please see the Developer Comment for Conjurer’s Pursuit.
Seasoned Marksman
A reward has been added to this Questing Talent.
Quest: Increases Attack Damage by 0.2 for each enemy Minion killed nearby, and 0.5 for each Hero Takedown, up to a maximum of 40.
Reward: After gaining 40 bonus Attack Damage, Seasoned Marksman can be activated to increase Attack Speed by 30% for 3 seconds. 60 second cooldown.
Developer Comments:Please see the Developer Comment for Conjurer’s Pursuit.
Heroes
Falstad
Battle Momentum (Talent) removed.
First Aid (Talent) removed.
Overdrive (Talent) removed.
Vigorous Assault (Talent) renamed to Hammer Gains
This is now a Falstad-specific version of Vigorous Assault.
Health restored per Basic Attack increased from 15% to 20% of damage dealt to the primary target.
Tailwind (Trait)
Flow Rider (Talent) moved from Level 4 to Level 13.
Hammerang (Q)
Power Throw (Talent) removed.
Hammer Time (Talent) removed.
Crippling Hammer (Talent) moved from Level 13 to Level 16.
Secret Weapon (Talent)
Now also increases Hammerang range by 30%.
Basic Attack damage bonus reduced from 80% to 60%
Lightning Rod (W)
Charged Up (Talent) moved from Level 4 to Level 7.
Now also increases Lightning Rod’s range by 15%.
Number of bonus strikes reduced from 3 to 2.
Static Shield (Talent) moved from Level 13 to Level 4.
Shield amount per strike reduced from 5% to 4% of maximum Health.
Barrel Roll (E)
Shield duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds.
Free Roll (Talent) removed.
Updraft (Talent) moved from Level 1 to Level 4.
Now also increases Barrel Roll’s Shield amount by 40%.
Developer Comments:We have been trying our best to support and balance the ‘mage’ versus ‘auto-attack’ builds that Falstad has access to, but continue to teeter-totter as small changes to popular Talents tend to dictate full build-paths. The changes Falstad is receiving may seem massive (and to an extent they are), but we tried our best to keep his current builds intact while opening some new and exciting combinations. Overall, we are not hoping for a huge swing in power in one direction or the other, but to open up more compelling choices at each Talent tier.
Kael'thas
Living Bomb (W)
Sun King’s Fury (Talent)
Bonus Basic Attack damage reduced by 20%, from 171 (+4% per level) to 137 (+4% per level).
Kerrigan
Summon Ultralisk (R)
Cooldown reduced from 80 to 70 seconds.
Maelstrom (R)
Cooldown reduced from 100 to 90 seconds.
Developer Comments:We are hearing your feedback about Kerrigan. Although the changes this patch are very minor, we are full aware of the community’s support and enthusiasm for revitalizing the Queen of Blades. Although we don’t currently have any extensive changes planned for her, she is definitely on our radar and you can expect to see some more tweaks coming soon™.
Li-Ming
Cannoneer (Talent)
Cannoneer stacks will now be displayed in the Buff bar next to the Hero Portrait.
Tal Rasha's Elements (Talent) has been reworked, and now reads as follows:
Using Abilities grants 5% Ability Power to a maximum of 20%. This bonus is reset when the same Ability is used within a chain.
Disintegrate (R)
Temporal Flux (Talent)
Now gradually Slows enemies caught in its beam, up to maximum of 60%.
Developer Comments: After our last round of changes, Li-Ming’s win rate and overall balance has leveled into a great spot. However, we felt that there were a couple of changes to her level 20 Talents that would help them better fit her intended design goals. Both Tal Rasha’s Elements and Disintegrate will now take a bit more planning and finesse to execute to their max potential.
Raynor
Berserk (Talent) removed.
Zeratul
Berserk (Talent) removed.
Gazlowe
Xplodium Charge (E)
Stun duration reduced from 2 to 1.75 seconds.
Damage increased by 10%, from 212 (+4% per level) to 233 (+4% per level).
Developer Comments:We’ve received a lot of feedback from players regarding the popular strategy of chaining movement impairing effects, like Stuns and Roots, on an enemy Hero. While we want this to be a viable way to play, we feel it’s currently too prominent and powerful at higher levels of play. As a result, we are reducing the duration of many of these effects in the game. In scenarios where this change nerfs a character we don’t otherwise want to nerf, we’re coupling it with a buff to help offset the difference. While this change hasn’t reduced all effects that might make you lose control of your Hero, we feel these are some of the more egregious ones. As always, we will make further changes if necessary.
Xul
Bone Prison (E)
Root duration reduced from 2 to 1.75 seconds.
Amplify Damage (Talent)
Vulnerability duration reduced from 2 to 1.75 seconds.
Developer Comments: Please see this Developer Comment above.
Brightwing
Polymorph (W)
Duration reduced from 1.5 to 1.25 seconds.
Slow amount increased from 20% to 25%.
Cooldown reduced from 15 to 12 seconds.
Mana cost reduced from 75 to 60.
Greater Polymorph (Talent)
Duration bonus reduced from 1 to 0.75 seconds.
Developer Comments:Please see this Developer Comment about reducing CC times.
Li Li
Cleanse (Talent) added at Level 7
Shake It Off (Talent) moved from Level 7 to Level 16.
Cooldown reduced from 15 to 10 seconds.
Fast Feet (Trait)
Safety Sprint (Talent)
Now provides the Movement Speed bonus regardless of Li Li’s remaining Health.
Healing Brew (Q)
Herbal Cleanse (Talent) removed.
Developer Comments:While one of the core components of Li Li’s design has been that she does not target her Abilities, we were not happy with Herbal Cleanse and its odd usability. In addition to some other minor Talent adjustments, we’ve decided to give Cleanse to Li Li to help her compete with other Supports in this area.
Lt. Morales
Advanced Block (Talent) renamed to Automated Block.
Malfurion
Tranquility (R)
Will no longer Heal non-Heroic units.
Rehgar
Lightning Shield (W)
Stormcaller (Talent) has been reworked.
Now restores 3 Mana when Lightning Shield damages an enemy Hero, up to a maximum of 30.
Earthbind Totem (E)
Earthgrasp Totem (Talent)
Empowered Slow duration reduced from 1.5 to 1 second.
Developer Comments:Stormcaller has been changed so that it offers a little different gameplay than Spiritwalker’s Grace. While they both restore Mana, Stormcaller will offer a higher reward but not have the same guarantee as Spiritwalker’s Grace. Each also has different synergies with other Talents. Earthgrasp Totem’s slow duration was nerfed slightly because we found the duration of such a powerful slow on a short cooldown was pretty frustrating to play against.
Uther
Hammer of Justice (E)
Stun duration reduced from 1 to 0.75 seconds.
Cooldown reduced from 10 to 8 seconds.
Mana cost reduced from 50 to 40.
Developer Comments:Please see this Developer Comment above.
Anub'arak
Health increased from 1926 (+4% per level) to 2026 (+4% per level)
Health Regeneration increased from 4.01 (+4% per level) to 4.22 (+4% per level) Health per second
Dampen Magic (Talent) added at Level 1.
Mercenary Lord (Talent) removed.
Spell Shield (Talent) removed.
Imposing Presence (Talent) removed.
Locust Needles (Talent)
Area damage increased from 50% to 60% of Basic Attack damage.
Scarab Host (Trait)
Assault Scarab (Talent)
Beetle Basic Attack damage bonus increased from 25% to 30%.
Beetle, Juiced (Talent)
This Talent’s functionality has changed, and now reads as follows:
Every third Basic Attack against enemy Heroes spawns a Beetle.
Impale (Q)
Bed of Barbs (Talent) moved from Level 7 to Level 13.
Damage increased from 26 (+4% per level) to 46 (+4% per level) per second.
Extended Spikes (Talent)
Now also increases Impale damage by 25%.
Harden Carapace (W)
Shield amount increased from 260 (+4% per level) to 300 (+4% per level)
Cooldown decreased from 8 to 7 seconds
Mana cost decreased from 35 to 30
Persistent Carapace (Talent) removed.
Symbiotic Armor (Talent) removed.
Urticating Spines (Talent) moved from Level 7 to Level 13.
Area damage reduced from 105 (+4% per level) to 80 (+4% per level), and deals double damage to enemy Heroes.
Chitinous Plating (Talent) moved from Level 13 to Level 7.
This Talent’s functionality has changed, and now reads as follows:
While Hardened Carapace is active, taking damage from enemy Abilities decreases its cooldown by 0.75 seconds, up to 3 seconds maximum.
Shed Exoskeleton (Talent)
Movement Speed bonus increased from 25% to 30%.
Burrow Charge (E)
Underking (Talent)
No longer reduces the cooldown of Burrow Charge, but still increases range by 20%.
Now also increases Burrow Charge damage by 100%.
Epicenter (Talent)
No longer increases Burrow Charge damage, but still increases its impact area by 85%.
Now also decreases the cooldown of Burrow Charge by 4 seconds per enemy Hero hit.
Locust Swarm (R)
Mana cost decreased from 100 to 75
Cocoon (R)
Cryptweave (Talent)
Channeling will now occur automatically while Anub’arak remains near the Cocooned enemy.
Developer Comments:We want Anub’arak to be a Warrior who is good against enemy spell casters, so we gave him some Talents that point him in that direction. We also saw an opportunity to improve his Talent tree, as many of his Talents are outdated. He should feel much better at diving squishy backline Heroes, and his Talent choices should be more compelling.
Arthas
Health increased from 2382 (+4% per level) to 2582 (+4% per level)
Health regeneration increased from 4.96 (+4% per level) to 5.37 (+4% per level)
Regeneration Master (Talent) removed
Mercenary Lord (Talent) removed
Spell Shield (Talent) removed
Relentless (Talent) removed
Stoneskin (Talent) removed
Rewind (Talent) removed
New Talent (Level 7): Icebound Fortitude
Activate to reduce damage taken by 25% and reduce the duration of silences, stuns, slows, roots, and polymorphs by 75% for 3 seconds. 50 second cooldown.
New Talent (Level 20): Death's Advance
Passively increases Arthas’ Movement Speed by 10%. Activate to increase this bonus to 30% for 3 seconds. 50 second cooldown.
New Talent (Level 20): Anti-Magic Shell
Activate to reduce Ability damage taken by 100% for 3 seconds, and heal for 25% of the damage prevented. 60 second cooldown.
Frostmourne Hungers (Trait) (D)
Destruction (Talent) removed.
Obliterate (Talent) removed.
Eternal Hunger (Talent) has been reworked as a Questing Talent.
Quest: Using Frostmourne Hungers on an enemy Hero permanently increases the Mana it restores by 4, up to a maximum of 40.
Reward: After hitting 10 Heroes with Frostmourne Hungers, its damage bonus is increased to 125%.
Frost Strike (Talent) moved from Level 7 to Level 13
Now also reduces the cooldown of Frostmourne Hungers by 2 seconds.
Death Coil (Q)
Death Touch (Talent) removed.
Immortal Coil (Talent) moved from Level 16 to Level 7
Casting Death Coil on an enemy Hero now restores Health equal to 100% of the damage dealt.
Embrace Death (Talent)
Damage bonus reduced from 20% to 10% for each 10% of Health missing.
New Talent (Level 4): Deathlord
Reduces Death Coil’s cooldown by 2 seconds and increases its range by 25%.
Howling Blast (W)
Root duration reduced from 1.5 to 1.25 seconds.
Cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds.
Mana cost reduced from 70 to 60.
Frost Presence (Talent)
Now reduces Howling Blast’s cooldown by 5 seconds if it hits an enemy Hero.
Trail of Frost (Talent)
Now also increases the range of Howling Blast by 30%.
Frozen Tempest (E)
Damage per second increased from 48 (+4% per level) to 52 (+4% per level)
Biting Cold (Talent) moved from Level 13 to Level 4
Damage bonus reduced from 50% to 30%
New Talent (Level 13): Frigid Winds
Frozen Tempest reduces enemy Attack Speed by 8% per second, up to 40% maximum.
New Talent (Level 16): Remorseless Winter
Enemies that remain in Frozen Tempest’s area of effect for 3 seconds are rooted for 1.75 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 10 seconds.
Army of the Dead (R)
Ghoul Health increased from 799 (+4% per level) to 960 (+4% per level).
Legion of Northrend (Talent)
Ghoul bonus Heal amount increased from 25% to 50%.
Summon Sindragosa (R)
Damage reduced from 255 (+4% per level) to 230 (+4% per level).
Slow duration increased from 2 to 3.5 seconds.
Disable duration against non-Heroic enemies increased from 10 to 20 seconds.
Absolute Zero (Talent)
Slow duration increased from 2 to 3.5 seconds.
Developer Comments:As one of the very first heroes that we created, and one who hasn’t had many changes since his release, Arthas has been on our radar for some time as a Hero whose Talents needed some sprucing up. In addition to giving him some powerful new Talents befitting of the Lich King, we also moved around and modified many of his options so that he has multiple build paths with different playstyles. Additionally, please see this Developer Comment above.
Arthas Talents
Level (Tier) 1 (1) Block (!) Eternal Hunger (Trait) Frost Presence (W) — 4 (2) Frozen Wastes (E) NEW: Deathlord (Q) Biting Cold (E) — 7 (3) Rune Tap Immortal Coil (Q) NEW: Icebound Fortitude — 10 (4) Army of the Dead (R) Summon Syndragosa (R) — — 13 (5) Trail of Frost (W) Frost Strike (Trait) NEW: Frigid Winds (E) — 16 (6) NEW: Remorseless Winter (E) Frostmourne Feeds (Trait) Embrace Death (Q) — 20 (7) Legion of Northrend (R) Absolute Zero (R) NEW: Death's Advance NEW: Anti-Magic Shell
(!) indicates a Questing Talent. Italic text indicates a NEW Talent. Bold text indicates a MOVED Talent.
Chen
Health increased from 2556 (+4% per level) to 2658 (+4% per level).
Health Regeneration increased from approximately 5.32 (+4% per level) to 5.54 (+4% per level).
Diablo
Shadow Charge (Q)
The implementation for this Ability has been reworked.
No longer automatically Stuns the target at the end of the knockback phase, and instead applies a Daze for the duration of the knockback.
Targets that collide with terrain will still be stunned for 1 second.
Diablo will now continue travelling toward the enemy target for the duration of the knockback phase.
Apocalypse (R)
Stun duration reduced from 2 to 1.75 seconds.
Developer Comments:Shadow Charge seems like a really simple Ability, but on the backend there were a lot of technical manipulations to make everything work the way they were intended. These were starting to create odd gameplay and bugs, so we’ve simplified the design of the Ability so that Diablo travels right alongside his victim as they are knocked back, instead of walking really fast toward them. Additionally, please see this Developer Comment above.
Johanna
Iron Skin (Trait) (D)
Shield amount increased from 613 (+4% per level) to 674 (+4% per level).
Developer Comments:We originally tuned Iron Skin to hold a large portion of the power in Johanna’s base-kit. The scaling changes we did in November hurt the strength of the Ability, so we are tuning it up in order to help bring back that original feeling.
Leoric
Health increased from 2373 (+4% per level) to 2468 (+4% per level).
Health Regeneration increased from approximately 4.95 (+4% per level) to 5.14 (+4% per level).
Reanimation (Talent) has been changed to match Regeneration Master’s new functionality.
Upon gathering 30 Health Regeneration Globes, Leoric will respawn 10 seconds faster.
Muradin
Give ‘em the Axe! (Talent)
After hitting a slowed, rooted, or stunned target with a Basic Attack, increase your Basic Attack damage by 60% for 3 seconds
Second Wind (Trait)
Third Wind (Talent)
Bonus Health Regeneration threshold increased from 50% to 60% of maximum Health.
Stoneform (Talent)
Heal amount decreased from 50% to 40% of maximum Health.
Heal duration increased from 8 to 10 seconds.
Storm Bolt (Q)
Stun duration reduced from 1.5 to 1.25 seconds.
Infused Hammer (Talent) removed.
Perfect Storm (Talent)
Now also reduces Storm Bolt’s Mana cost by 25%.
Thunder Clap (W)
Healing Static (Talent)
Now only Heals Muradin when Thunder Clap strikes enemy Heroes.
Heal amount per Hero hit increased from 1.5% to 5% of maximum Health.
Dwarf Toss (E)
Landing Momentum (Talent)
Movement Speed bonus increased from 20% to 25%.
Movement Speed bonus duration increased from 4 to 5 seconds.
Developer Comments:The changes to Muradin were done to help balance out his Talent tree. A few Talents were a bit over or under-tuned, and he kindly offered us his hammer in order to forge some better options. Additionally, please see this Developer Comment above.
Rexxar
Hunter-Gatherer (Talent) has been changed to match Regeneration Master’s new functionality.
Both Rexxar and Misha gain Health Regeneration bonuses up to 30 Health per second, but only Rexxar will gain the 600 Health bonus on Quest completion.
Misha, Follow! (Trait) (D)
Misha will now follow enemies to their last known location, even into bushes or vents, much like Zagara’s Hunter Killer.
Sonya
Leap (R)
Stun duration reduced from 1.5 to 1.25 seconds.
Damage increased by 10%, from 123 (+4% per level) to 135.3 (+4% per level).
Developer Comments:Please see this Developer Comment above.
Stitches
Hungry for More (Talent) has been reworked as a Questing Talent. Quest: Collecting Regeneration Globes permanently increases maximum Health by 30, up to a maximum of 900. Reward: Upon reaching 900 bonus Health, Stitches’ Movement Speed is increased by 10%.
Tyrael
Health increased from 2373 (+4% per level) to 2468 (+4% per level).
Health Regeneration increased from approximately 4.95 (+4% per level) to 5.14 (+4% per level).
Bug Fixes
General
Fixed an issue in which typing certain characters using Traditional Chinese Quick IME could cause the Taiwanese client to crash.
Corrected several typos and tooltip errors across several aspects of the game.
Art
Tychus will no longer appear to stand while Mounted.
Fixed an issue in which several Hero Abilities and Talents were using outdated button art.
Gall’s Giant Scorcher and Shadowflame Talents now properly use different color variations for their button art.
The visual effects Infested Tychus Skin’s Overkill will now properly appear centered on the primary target.
The visual effects for Tassadar’s Plasma Shield will now properly appear centered on Nazeebo.
Adjusted the positioning of a spike at the base of Master E.T.C.’s guitar.
The back of Ranger-General Sylvanas’ leaf earring now appears more leaf-like.
The armor under Judgement Uther’s left armpit has been patched to offer better protection during his adventures in the Nexus.
Battlegrounds
Immortals on Battlefield of Eternity are now consistently flagged as Bosses.
Cores on Towers of Doom will no longer appear to lose their Invulnerability Shields after a Fort is destroyed.
Corrected the positioning of several houses near the southernmost Altar on Towers of Doom.
Reset Talents in Try Mode will no longer cause Archangel Diablo’s Fire Stomp flames to change color from blue to red.
Fixed an issue in which attacking enemy Walls at certain angles would cause the Hero’s Basic Attack animation to play, but deal no damage.
Heroes and Talents
Gall can now properly cast Hurry Up, Oaf! while channeling Shadowbolt Volley.
Gall’s Shadowbolt Volley will no longer be interrupted by Silence and Polymorph effects.
Gall’s Shove can no longer be used while Cho’gall is Rooted.
The Hardened Focus Talent will no longer affect Malfurion's Innervate cooldown.
The Rewind Talent will no longer affect Rehgar's Ghost Wolf cooldown.
Fixed an issue that could cause Abathur and Gall players to be flagged as AFK if they did not move from the starting area, despite issuing commands to their Heroes.
Casting Dehaka’s Isolation on a summoned unit or Heroic pet, such as Misha, Gargantuan, or a Holo Decoy, will no longer also cause the Hero who owns that unit to lose allied vision.
Additionally, if one of The Lost Vikings or Chen’s Storm, Earth, Fire Spirits are hit by Isolation, only the affected unit will have reduced personal vision, but the player should retain allied vision.
Alternatively, if the only living Viking or Spirit is hit by Isolation, the player will have reduced personal vision and lose allied vision for Isolation’s full duration.
Enemy Heroes hit by the outer edge of an Xplodium Charge will now properly refill Gazlowe’s Rock It! Turret charges after learning the X-Tra Large Bombs and ARK Reaktor Talents.
Johanna’s Falling Sword will now properly cancel enemy Heroic Abilities when its Stun is applied during those Abilities’ casting times.
Self-casting Cloud Serpent as Li Li after learning the Mending Serpent Talent will no longer cause duplicate Healing combat text to appear.
Lt. Morales' Safeguard will now use the new floating combat text style, rather than the old one.
When Murky’s Pufferfish is cast in a Bush or Vent, its explosion radius will now briefly appear to enemies with its area of effect before the Pufferfish explodes.
Murky’s Egg will no longer be destroyed if Murky is Stuck by Tracer’s Pulse Bomb, but killed before the Pulse Bomb explodes.
Fixed an issue that could cancel Nova’s Triple Tap when attempting to cast it on an enemy Nova who is already channeling Triple Tap on a different target.
Fixed an issue that caused Nova’s Holo Decoys to deal more damage than intended after learning the Anti-Armor Shells Talent.
Enemies will now be able to more easily distinguish Nova's Holo Decoys from the real Nova when the Decoys are revealed.
Attempting to cast Nova’s Pinning Shot or Tyrande’s Hunter’s Mark on an enemy just as the target enters a Bush or Vent will no longer cause the Ability’s sound effects and animations to play as though it were successfully cast.
Casting Teleport just as Tyrael’s Judgment is about to hit Li-Ming will no longer cause her to slide a long distance.
Fixed an issue that could occasionally cause Sonya to stutter and fail to issue a Basic Attack.
Angelic Flash will no longer allow Tyrael to teleport out of Root effects.
Tyrael’s Status bar will no longer persist on-screen during Archangel’s Wrath if he is killed by Zagara’s Devouring Maw.
Holy Radiance will no longer return Mana or have its cooldown reduced when cast on non-Heroic units after learning the Wave of Light Talent.
Fixed an issue that caused the Hardened Focus Talent to reduce cooldowns for Uther’s Holy Light and Holy Shock more quickly than intended.
Fixed an issue that prevented Uther’s Holy Shock from revealing the target if it was cast just as they entered a Bush or Vent.
Right-clicking an enemy Structure while channeling Zagara’s Baneling Barrage will no longer cause her to move to that Structure without attacking it.
Zeratul’s Wormhole Talent will no longer allow him to Blink out of Root effects.
User Interface
Resolved an issue that could cause players to become disconnected from draft lobbies when rapidly clicking among Hero Skin Variations.
A.I. difficulty preferences will no longer be reset to Adept after restarting the game client.
Mount preferences will now be properly saved across Hero League and Custom Game draft lobbies.
Queuing as the Auto-Select Hero will no longer grant players access to Skin and Mount Variations they do not own in the next game.
Fixed an issue that prevented the Trait hotkey (Default: “D”) from being rebound to the “F” key.
Parties searching for a match will now be properly removed from the matchmaking queue if the leader leaves the party or cancels searching.
On May 18 2016 03:42 NonY wrote: Bye Bye! is one of the best talents of all time. Absolutely hilarious. (reduces hearthstone cast time by 75%, hearthstone not interrupted by damage)
As soon as I read that talent I knew I had to try it out. Looks super fun
In general Chromie feels like a bit of a departure from recent hero design: for many new heroes single level talent tiers have been placeholders for upgrading specific abilities. For instance, Tychus's level 1 are all dash talents, lunara's level 4 are all wisp talents, etc. I wonder if they changed their mind, or if the intention was never to make every hero like that and it was just a special thing for those heroes.
On May 18 2016 03:42 NonY wrote: Bye Bye! is one of the best talents of all time. Absolutely hilarious. (reduces hearthstone cast time by 75%, hearthstone not interrupted by damage)
Tyler, when are we going to get a HOTS stream? Assuming you have time of course.
On May 18 2016 04:51 karazax wrote: Grubby said aoe Battle Momentum bug is back for Kerrigan when using Fury of the Swarm with the new battle momentum.
That was back before the patch. (for months even?) Generally I think this bug was hugely nerfed when BM stopped affecting her ult.
On May 18 2016 05:04 karazax wrote: Yeah but they fixed it on Kerrigan a patch or two back, now it is back again.
As of March 22nd it was not fixed and people were saying it got fixed previously but now it was back. given that the build never rises very high on hotslogs, I suspect it wasn't fixed after it broke again. (whenever that was)
On May 18 2016 06:34 karazax wrote: Yeah it was fixed at the end of March and came back today because they reworked her Battle Momentum again.
That's the PTR patch notes. The Dehaka patch notes the following tuesday dropped these changes? Can't say I've played Kerrigan at all in the April/May timespan, but I've been looking for the change in patch notes and it has not arrived.
I'm not impressed by Chromie so far. She feels like a weaker Li Ming with no escape, mana problems, and a utility Heroic instead of more damage. The amount of dmg she deals is very respectable however, so there might be a way to build a comp around her, but she certainly won't shine in QM...
That aside, Raynor feels very solid now. The skill you get for completing his Seasoned Marksman quest is really good (basically the old berserk), and Executioner is much better with the majority of CCs. He also happens to be pretty good with+vs Arthas and Chen, who seem really strong this patch. Good stuff.
The big loser seems to be Leoric. He was already pretty bad, and he got nerfed again. There can be only one Undead King and Arthas took the mantle!
On May 18 2016 08:17 Pwere wrote: I'm not impressed by Chromie so far. She feels like a weaker Li Ming with no escape, mana problems, and a utility Heroic instead of more damage. The amount of dmg she deals is very respectable however, so there might be a way to build a comp around her, but she certainly won't shine in QM...
That aside, Raynor feels very solid now. The skill you get for completing his Seasoned Marksman quest is really good (basically the old berserk), and Executioner is much better with the majority of CCs. He also happens to be pretty good with+vs Arthas and Chen, who seem really strong this patch. Good stuff.
The big loser seems to be Leoric. He was already pretty bad, and he got nerfed again. There can be only one Undead King and Arthas took the mantle!
Bye bye seems like a pretty good escape XD
My personal opinion from what I've played is that Timewalker on 1, Bronze Talons and 3 and bye bye/Time Out are under appreciated.
I also think that Chromie needs the buddy system more than a lot of heroes and should really never be alone.
I'm not impressed by Chromie so far. She feels like a weaker Li Ming with no escape, mana problems, and a utility Heroic instead of more damage. T
Also, she can't chase and her "stun" needs setup and makes the enemy immune to dmg, so she feels like a toned down Li-ming/Kaelthas :D :D
Her range is insane though, randomly eating away 1/4h of a squishies HP bar at a time. It just feels clunky that you have a cast time AND a quite slow moving animation for your Q, I think 1 of those would have been enough of a restriction (not being able to lane is already a huge restriction).
Bye Bye is fun and really shines on some maps (towers, even more so after the 12 min mark), while on others like GoT you just are out of the fight for too long.
On May 18 2016 08:17 Pwere wrote: The big loser seems to be Leoric. He was already pretty bad, and he got nerfed again. There can be only one Undead King and Arthas took the mantle!
I don't understand, he's got buffed. Leoric is the warrior that was OP as hell and had a 90% popularity for weeks. He doesn't need much to become a monster again. I bet he's about to become a very solid pick again.
Arthas: 3 QMs, 3 times highest damage over Heroes like Chromie, Nova ,... Sustain is OK'ish but i doubt it'll be enough for solo tanking. Can stay long in fights and frostmourn wrecks hard
Anub: The disrupt is enormous, spikes and burrow everywhere. Huge fun. Can be played as a Spec (Beetles and cleave), Bruiser, Offtank. Main tank... dunno.
Chromie: Havent played her myself. Bye Bye most annoying talent ever. The "setups" that ppl try in QM's are pretty obvious. Have seen Chromies with 80k Hero dmg. Have seen Chromies with 30k...
Keep in mind,all done in QM with bad or no supp mostly
On May 18 2016 08:17 Pwere wrote: The big loser seems to be Leoric. He was already pretty bad, and he got nerfed again. There can be only one Undead King and Arthas took the mantle!
I don't understand, he's got buffed. Leoric is the warrior that was OP as hell and had a 90% popularity for weeks. He doesn't need much to become a monster again. I bet he's about to become a very solid pick again.
You think this buff isn't enough ?
Nope, it is just a straight nerf even though it seems like he got buffed...
If you knew how to play Leoric you would get 70-100 HP/sec regen from reanimation which helped a lot in sustain fights where Leoric excels, and it also reduced your respawn time from 60 to like 30 seconds. After the patch it is capped at 30 HP/sec, it is a lot harder to get because you need 30 globes now for that regen instead of 20, he also didn't get any kind of health boost like other tanks with regeneration master talent and he gets only -10 sec on respawn time while you could get more than that previously anyway.
Leoric only use right now is against double or triple Warrior compositions, he is nowhere near the monster he was before. The scaling changes completely butchered him. Unlike other Tanks he doesn't have any form of hard CC and isn't able to peel off the enemy from his mates. His real power comes from being the lane bully, having a lot of sustain, respawning in fights a lot faster and having great wave clear, and pretty much every single of these things have been nerfed to the ground with the scaling changes and some patches.
Thank you. I didn't realize they capped the total of globes until I played him this morning, it's true it kinda sucks. But I got the 30 globes in 11 minutes on a small map, without the help of my QM teammates but by roaming a lot. It's not long at all. But I'm not sure it's a nerf.
Leoric got a health and regen buff, but a "regen cap". About the respawn timer: New Leoric: 30 globes regen effect + regen buff + 10 seconds bonus + more health (so less deaths) Old Leoric: X globes regen It makes Leoric stronger now on big maps, stronger early and mid game. Probably weaker late game if you consistently farmed globes.
I suck at maths but I don't think Blizzard did nerf him. But I admit I'm not sure it's a buff anymore. ^^ Maybe some wizzard can calculate how much faster you respawn with 30 globes + the buffed regen now (excluding the 10 secs bonus of course).
edit: found this, don't know if it's legit. Don't even know what to read in it. Comparing farming 52 globes with 30 is weird because farming requires you to use your play time on a specific task instead of doing something else. That'd also mean Leoric is way stronger at 30 globes than he was before. Seems he forgot to take into account the buffed regen and buffed health.
There is no buffed regen (unless you mean the +0.2hp/s baseline, which is more than lost after your first globe). The regen got nerfed from 1.5 to 1hp/s per globe, and caps at 30 now. At 30, you regen 30/s instead of 45/s, which will lead you to die more often to use that ~5s faster respawn. Any globe you gather past that is wasted, when it matters the most, i.e. close 20min+ games. This is a huge nerf to his only viable lvl 1 talent.
He's also terrible vs heroes that go for your backline, and Anub happens to be the best at it.
The 5% HP, although very nice, does not make up for it. Leoric rarely died before, his HP pool wasn't the problem. His Q got destroyed by scaling changes, and he's been nerfed two more times. His only job is to face Cho'Gall, but Anub is probably better at that too.
Over the past 12 games I have had 10 (TEN FUCKING GAMES) Where I had to report at least one person, for flaming, trolling, feeding, going afk. It's getting really obnoxious and discourages me. Anybody else noticing this??
Games right after a patch are attrocious. One game you play near your level, the next the average is 1k below your MMR, and spreads are insanely high. At least queue times are really fast........
What was Lunara's win rate when she first came out, or any of the fall 2015 heroes really. Chromie is down below 40% of games reported to hotslogs, and I'm just curious.
Pwere > TBH I still don't agree. Basically Blizzard says "stop farming and do something with your life" so we should give it a try. I think they didn't mess with these numbers randomly. I still agree that it feels like a nerf, but I'll stick with "slight rework" for now. I really think he's playable, and so far combined masters+diamond winrates are higher than they were (well, only good Leorics played I guess).
On May 18 2016 22:32 SC2Toastie wrote: Over the past 12 games I have had 10 (TEN FUCKING GAMES) Where I had to report at least one person, for flaming, trolling, feeding, going afk. It's getting really obnoxious and discourages me. Anybody else noticing this??
Got 3 HL games, 3 shitty games. And I can't say I was good, I was meh. We were all lost. And we lost. Fell behind early EVERY GAME and never catch up. Warriors were even more lost than these guys on the friggin' island. And were as good as this show ending. We played double warrior each time. It sucked.
It was stupid to play HL today, better to wait a couple of days unless you don't care about terrible games.
Lunara had less than 40% WR at first, if I remember well, but she got buffed. Morales too. About Srey's list, how come he doesn't "promote" Johanna now that Mura's down ? She may be the best solo tank now.
okay I thought Chromie would have mana issues. But you only have mana issues if you leave up your slow ult permanently >.> . Or well poke an objective for 10 minutes because your team doesn't manages to win a lane 1v4 o.o.
Mura became a better solo tank now, especially in comp, where you might get a cleanse or heal if you need them. Atleast my opinion. You just have to go a bit more old fashioned on the talent choices when tanking. But who cares about tanking. Give em the axe destroys anything that move as fast or slower as you.
Also yay I am holding chromies winrate up. Her timings are super intuitive to hit someone who got trapped or ulted. Just going with the atillery build. They can't catch you once you hit 25 heroes and get the extra vision and then just bye bye the moment you see someone. She is pretty epic with Johanna as a barrier between you and the enemy. I think we might see a group of Johanna, Chromie and Li Ming. Run into a trap and you get 100/0 if you have no invul.
On May 18 2016 23:11 Leolio wrote: Pwere > TBH I still don't agree. Basically Blizzard says "stop farming and do something with your life" so we should give it a try. I think they didn't mess with these numbers randomly. I still agree that it feels like a nerf, but I'll stick with "slight rework" for now. I really think he's playable, and so far combined masters+diamond winrates are higher than they were (well, only good Leorics played I guess).
On May 18 2016 22:32 SC2Toastie wrote: Over the past 12 games I have had 10 (TEN FUCKING GAMES) Where I had to report at least one person, for flaming, trolling, feeding, going afk. It's getting really obnoxious and discourages me. Anybody else noticing this??
Got 3 HL games, 3 shitty games. And I can't say I was good, I was meh. We were all lost. And we lost. Fell behind early EVERY GAME and never catch up. Warriors were even more lost than these guys on the friggin' island. And were as good as this show ending. We played double warrior each time. It sucked.
It was stupid to play HL today, better to wait a couple of days unless you don't care about terrible games.
Lunara had less than 40% WR at first, if I remember well, but she got buffed. Morales too. About Srey's list, how come he doesn't "promote" Johanna now that Mura's down ? She may be the best solo tank now.
We'll just have to see what shakes loose then, she definitely isn't as quriky as lunara on release. I just can't see her being ignored on maps where you have to channel objectives. Her range is just too good.
I agree about Jojo, the tank class as a whole just got super funky though.
This is pretty much the final kick in the dick for Leoric, he already was pretty sub optimal after these nerfs but still viable if you played him well, now he pretty much only exists to be an off tank against double warrior comps and against Cho'Gall. Nerfing him yet again was really unwarranted.
Arthas feels fanfreakintastic though, he has needed a rework like this for so long.
Wait, gathering globes past 30 doesn't boost your HP regen any further? Say you get 50 globes, it's still 30 hp regen added? I've gone past the quest mark on Illidan's lvl 1 quest and it still kept adding, even showing 250/200 or something.
On May 19 2016 03:00 Thezzy wrote: Wait, gathering globes past 30 doesn't boost your HP regen any further? Say you get 50 globes, it's still 30 hp regen added? I've gone past the quest mark on Illidan's lvl 1 quest and it still kept adding, even showing 250/200 or something.
On May 19 2016 03:00 Thezzy wrote: Wait, gathering globes past 30 doesn't boost your HP regen any further? Say you get 50 globes, it's still 30 hp regen added? I've gone past the quest mark on Illidan's lvl 1 quest and it still kept adding, even showing 250/200 or something.
The phrasing seems to me to indicate it caps at 30, which is REALLY bad.
D, Q (sometimes E), Q, Sindragosa, D, D, Speed/spell shield.
Immortal coil is a must, insane talent. Makes Deathlord at 4 pretty good too but the extra damage from biting cold can be fine if you need to do some rotating. Embrace death at 16 is a trap talent it doesn;t add much. Because of that i've been going full Frostmourne build since I especially like Froststrike at 13 the best anyway. I see Remorseless winter at 16 and Block and 1 getting better stats though and perhaps they are just better. I like the great mana the Frostmourne build gives though.
As for Chromie, she seems really weak so far. She is like tyrande in extreme, you really need good setup to hit. Xul is a great buddy for her though, the root is exactly long enough to comfortable hit a W-Q combo. Theorizing I think tyrande + xul + chromie could be a cool gank squad, if you hit the root and then tyrande and chromie hit their spells it's enough to kill heroes like li-ming. With some damage talents on chromie even enough to kill some supports. Could be really good. In QM without any setup you can rely on she seems awful though, you are completely reliant on people zoning for you and having the patience to abuse her poke. Terrible pub hero but I wouldn't be surprised if she had her uses in pro play on a map like Cursed hollow.
Build I don't know, W build seems to be pretty logical but a talent like Bronze talons has more raw power I think but doesn't synergize as well. Timewalker's pursuit may be underrated too, lategame it gives about as much damage bonus on your combo as the other quest talents but is much easier to get early and gives some nice extra mana.
From the changes Anub is the real allstar though. Still thinking burrow build on him with dampen magic at 1 and the W talents at 7 and 13. But multiple options seem fine, the locust needles for great waveclear is pretty decent too.
I'm a Muradin noob, only ever played 3 HL games (3 wins though) on more than 1000 but I started to like him. Now I don't even know what to pick anymore. Can someone give me a hint ? I feel this new patch is confusing people and I should play solo warrior since everyone is like "hey Arthas/Anub' is OP let me play him because even though I'm a terrible player I probably already know how to rock with him".
Are Arthas / Anub' any good as solo warriors now ?
edit: Thezzy and SC2Toastie > Yup it is capped at 30, this is why people worry. Even though noone played him anyway ^^ (/trolling). But it really gave Leoric a stronger early and mid game. After 10-12 minutes he'll probably be worse. But after 10-12 most games are already snowballing.
But I get your sentiment. I have a really hard time figuring out which warriors can solo now. I think it is still Johanna, ETC, Muradin (Stitches), but double warrior comps with the likes of Arthas, Diablo, Anub'Arak, Dehaka are insanely cool to play and very effective.
However, HL dictates 1 healer 1 tank 3 ranged DPS cus thinking is overrated and copy'ing and flaming is the cool thing to do.
Yeah double support or double warrior is good now as some of the better tanks function better then. Arthas can solo tank somewhat but it's far from ideal, it's just not the warrior you want to be functioning as spearhead of the team.
Everyone drafting 3 ranged DPS in pubs is always a big frustation. At the moment it's never the right choice imo, you see it in pro play too. It's 99% of the time 1 tank, 1 ranged dps, 1 support, 1 melee and 1 flex. Still half the drafts even at 3k mmr+ start with 3 ranged dps :<.
Everyone drafting 3 ranged DPS in pubs is always a big frustation. At the moment it's never the right choice imo, you see it in pro play too. It's 99% of the time 1 tank, 1 ranged dps, 1 support, 1 melee and 1 flex. Still half the drafts even at 3k mmr+ start with 3 ranged dps :<.
This is one of my biggest annoyances as well. None of the tanks in this game can solo-defend a 4 man backline. IMO, the optimal composition currently is close to a defensive frontliner (Muradin, Rexxar, Johanna, ETC, Stitches, Anub-Arak), an offensive frontliner (Arthas, Diablo, ETC, Sonya, Artanis, Anub-Arak), a ranged DPS, a support, and a flex (Wave clear/tyrande/melee dps/ranged burst).
But so many games start with Chromie Li Ming Raynor Tychus Greymane Lunara LOL YOU TANK FOR ME OR REPORT
Blizzard needs to try and implement -something- to prevent that from happening. Something to encourage playing all roles, rather than just ranged dps or dick around.
An issue IMO is that QM games end up being shit comps all the time (5 DPS?), so people go to HL for a 'decent' composition, unwilling (unable) to tank/supp
They need more interesting support heroes I think, but it's hard to balance. Last new support was Medic and she is arguably one of the most boring heroes to play with with minimal play making capabilities. Of course balance wise it's hard to make supports as they all have to heal at a good level to be viable and if they are too good at anything else they either make old supports obsolete, or encourage more double support comps.
wow... today I learned that the Butcher doesn't care about time if there is fresh meat >.>. Charged right through my trap.
They should add sub groups, so they can make matchmaking more fair and won't have to work with those silly special rules anymore. That would allow them to make more interesting support heroes, without having them labeled specialist. But with the special rules they can already make more interesting characters, but character design takes alot of time, so it will take a couple of more month before we will see more interesting supports, actually labeled support :p.
But Morales is far from boring, she has everything full support wants. Shields, Heals and disposition, which is one of the hardest skill shots in the game imo, if you want to use it to its full potential. But of course she is really boring for everyone who doesn't love playing full supports.
On May 19 2016 22:59 FeyFey wrote: wow... today I learned that the Butcher doesn't care about time if there is fresh meat >.>. Charged right through my trap.
On May 19 2016 16:57 Leolio wrote: I'm a Muradin noob, only ever played 3 HL games (3 wins though) on more than 1000 but I started to like him. Now I don't even know what to pick anymore. Can someone give me a hint ? I feel this new patch is confusing people and I should play solo warrior since everyone is like "hey Arthas/Anub' is OP let me play him because even though I'm a terrible player I probably already know how to rock with him".
Are Arthas / Anub' any good as solo warriors now ?
edit: Thezzy and SC2Toastie > Yup it is capped at 30, this is why people worry. Even though noone played him anyway ^^ (/trolling). But it really gave Leoric a stronger early and mid game. After 10-12 minutes he'll probably be worse. But after 10-12 most games are already snowballing.
do you mean what to pick for a hero, or what to pick for talents on Muradin? if for talents, checking hotslogs and picking the highest winrate talents works reasonably; there's also a set of talent builds somewhere on this forum. Or I can give you a quick primer (haven't checked the changes thoroughly)
Ok so I won't learn Arthas, as solo tank is what works in HL. Duo tank requires poking, engage, coordination ... most of the people in HL aren't able to play this, at least at my level, r1-5. But melee assassins and Xul make wonderful results.
zlefin > Yes I was asking for insights on how to build Muradin. I won 2 HL games easily with ETC (0 deaths on both games) but Muradin felt clunky, and even kinda squishy (lost of course). I don't know him well enough to understand how to build him now. I use hotslogs but it's not really helping me understand, there's too little data for now. I went thunder clap build + avatar + stone form but I'm not convinced at all. Guess I should work on Johanna as the magic is kinda gone with Mura. ^^ I guess for Muradin it's wait for more data and see.
edit: Cho Gall has insane winrates now. People are confused, players pick Cho Gall, people are even more confused and lose.
I haven't played him since the patch changes; but many of teh general rules still apply: playwise, make sure to save your E for escapes and don't use it to initiate.
he is a bit squishier with the nerf to stoneform at 16. not sure if stoneform still worth it; give em the axe is quite good, especially in double warrior comps.
the first 2 thunderclap talents are what to take if the enemy has strong autoattackers (illidan/thrall/raynor), otherwise get other stuff.
Everyone drafting 3 ranged DPS in pubs is always a big frustation. At the moment it's never the right choice imo, you see it in pro play too. It's 99% of the time 1 tank, 1 ranged dps, 1 support, 1 melee and 1 flex. Still half the drafts even at 3k mmr+ start with 3 ranged dps :<.
This is one of my biggest annoyances as well. None of the tanks in this game can solo-defend a 4 man backline. IMO, the optimal composition currently is close to a defensive frontliner (Muradin, Rexxar, Johanna, ETC, Stitches, Anub-Arak), an offensive frontliner (Arthas, Diablo, ETC, Sonya, Artanis, Anub-Arak), a ranged DPS, a support, and a flex (Wave clear/tyrande/melee dps/ranged burst).
But so many games start with Chromie Li Ming Raynor Tychus Greymane Lunara LOL YOU TANK FOR ME OR REPORT
Blizzard needs to try and implement -something- to prevent that from happening. Something to encourage playing all roles, rather than just ranged dps or dick around.
An issue IMO is that QM games end up being shit comps all the time (5 DPS?), so people go to HL for a 'decent' composition, unwilling (unable) to tank/supp
I've had people raging at me for suggesting either dual frontline or an additional support when we already had KT, Li-Ming and Tyrande, claiming we would be lacking dps. Right. If you can't blow someone up with KT + Li-Ming + Tyrande, you're never going to blow someone up.
On May 19 2016 22:47 karazax wrote: They need more interesting support heroes I think, but it's hard to balance. Last new support was Medic and she is arguably one of the most boring heroes to play with with minimal play making capabilities. Of course balance wise it's hard to make supports as they all have to heal at a good level to be viable and if they are too good at anything else they either make old supports obsolete, or encourage more double support comps.
This is a big problem and definitely isn't confined to HoTS...the idea of playing omniknight for 45 minutes in DOTA makes me sad. Tanks suffer from this too although to a slightly lesser extent I think.
Morales is a good example of a "boring" hero. Even if you find her fun to play she's not all that fun to watch either. Safeguard's importance doesn't come across well, the heal is "easy" to use at lower level, and the ult again doesn't appear to take much skill (in reality the timing is very important of course). I would put LiLi in that category too with Malfurion bordering on fun.
Middle of the pack you have Rehgar and Uther. Uther's benediciton talent really helps him be fun to play, and I feel talents can really add to heroes without changing their core too much. Uther has plenty of buttons and fairly impactful heals, shame his auto is so lame. Rehgar is just generally well designed now even if his individual talents (ex ult) feel quite low impact.
Brightwing is generally fun, mobility is awesome. Kharazim is at the top, mobile, feels like a badass, high impact and visibility ult. Tassa and Tyrande can do a bit of everything so their diversity and utility feel great.
Blizzard are getting better overall at making heroes I think but support needs a couple of good new entries to convince, and I think particularly Morales could do with a bit more spice, dropship is a complete piece of crap after all.
Patch released today: We’ve just released a new patch for Heroes of the Storm in order to apply a few bug fixes. Check out the patch notes below.
Bug Fixes
Heroes and Talents
Abathur can no longer cast Hearthstone while channeling Ultimate Evolution.
Fixed an issue that could allow Artanis to strike three times, rather than twice, during his Twin Blades Ability.
Fixed an issue in which Diablo’s Shadow Charge could Stun Unstoppable targets in certain circumstances.
Kerrigan’s Abilities will no longer receive cooldown reduction for cleave damage dealt to secondary targets of her Basic Attacks after learning the Fury of the Swarm and Bladed Momentum Talents.
Fixed an issue in which Kharazim’s Way of the Hundred Fists could deal additional damage while channeling Seven-Sided Strike under certain circumstances.
The visual effects for Nova’s Triple Tap will no longer persist until death if Triple Tap is interrupted by a Daze effect during casting.
Zeratul can no longer cast Singularity Spike five times in rapid succession after learning the Double Bombs and Rewind Talents.
RIP Kerrigan Fury of the Swarm and Battle Momentum bug, only lasted 2 days this time
Why is Reddit so incredible stupid, hypocritical, and infuriatingly childish, yet it's the only large, active community for Heroes? How do we draw more attention to TL.net from the players who are reasonable??
On May 20 2016 00:35 zlefin wrote: I haven't played him since the patch changes; but many of teh general rules still apply: playwise, make sure to save your E for escapes and don't use it to initiate.
he is a bit squishier with the nerf to stoneform at 16. not sure if stoneform still worth it; give em the axe is quite good, especially in double warrior comps.
the first 2 thunderclap talents are what to take if the enemy has strong autoattackers (illidan/thrall/raynor), otherwise get other stuff.
Thank you, this is the kind of insight I need. :-) (well I of course knew that E is for escape ^^) I'll try him again a couple of times in HL, with different options. Did it in QM, kinda worked fine.
On May 20 2016 00:35 zlefin wrote: I haven't played him since the patch changes; but many of teh general rules still apply: playwise, make sure to save your E for escapes and don't use it to initiate.
he is a bit squishier with the nerf to stoneform at 16. not sure if stoneform still worth it; give em the axe is quite good, especially in double warrior comps.
the first 2 thunderclap talents are what to take if the enemy has strong autoattackers (illidan/thrall/raynor), otherwise get other stuff.
I like the 5% hp on clap talent at 13 often now. And then instead of stoneform give em the axe. Basically you replace a damage for heal talent at 13 but vice versa at 16.
But if you don't need the clap talents the stormbolt build is a bit closer in power now.
The change on Muradin really opened him up a bit. He still has a bunch of useless talents like all the dwarf leap stuff. But there are more options.
Thank you I'm starting to understand the new Muradin better.
I tried the lvl 4 reduced cooldown on clap + lvl 13 clap heal + lvl 16 Give them the axe, it worked great but it was only QM. 5% healing per hero hit + reduced cooldown seems huge vs an heavy frontline.
On May 20 2016 16:30 SC2Toastie wrote: Why is Reddit so incredible stupid, hypocritical, and infuriatingly childish, yet it's the only large, active community for Heroes? How do we draw more attention to TL.net from the players who are reasonable??
I wish Muradin wouldn't be so Mana heavy. Only hero I have to do Mana management all the time. Well + other tiny things you have to manage. Leap talents aren't useless, they are just hyper specific and only good under certain circumstances. Usually if you are the offtank, which happens basically never. But they guarantee that he can be talented against everything. They could split up the leap range though and put half of it in both other talents. Would probably be to strong though.
Building Muradin as a DD is the most fun you'll ever have with any Hero! I guarantee it
My goto build for QM Mura or HL last pick surprise:
1 Perfect Storm 4 Thunder Burn 7 Piercing Bolt (get faster stacks) / Battle momentum 10 Haymaker aka Bowling 13 Thunder Strike 16 Axe all the way 20 Grand Slam Baby
Keep in mind, you are quite "squishy" but damage output is insane (not quite Mage level but still...) And i really want to see the face of KT/ Morales/ .... when i punch them through their whole team right into the middle of mine... ahhhh ye
On May 20 2016 16:30 SC2Toastie wrote: Why is Reddit so incredible stupid, hypocritical, and infuriatingly childish, yet it's the only large, active community for Heroes? How do we draw more attention to TL.net from the players who are reasonable??
What set you off?
The entire new page and approx. 99.8% of the 'comments'
I think the reason Leap is not talented is because the talents are more initiate-teamfight oriented, whilst you want to save your E to escape or potentially aggressively reposition.
On May 20 2016 16:30 SC2Toastie wrote: Why is Reddit so incredible stupid, hypocritical, and infuriatingly childish, yet it's the only large, active community for Heroes? How do we draw more attention to TL.net from the players who are reasonable??
What set you off?
The entire new page and approx. 99.8% of the 'comments'
I guess you don't really have to own what you say on Reddit so much.
On May 20 2016 16:30 SC2Toastie wrote: Why is Reddit so incredible stupid, hypocritical, and infuriatingly childish, yet it's the only large, active community for Heroes? How do we draw more attention to TL.net from the players who are reasonable??
What set you off?
The entire new page and approx. 99.8% of the 'comments'
I guess you don't really have to own what you say on Reddit so much.
Frankly, it's hard to make substantive posts which will be popular. So, we end up with a ton of posts which are effectively appeals to the masses. ("Dear god not another nova", "Don't rage at me just because I firstpick nova I know what I'm doing", "Please don't dive in first without team", "please just win the game when you can", "please [insert basic strategy advice that everyone knows but most people don't do 100% of the time]")
On May 20 2016 16:30 SC2Toastie wrote: Why is Reddit so incredible stupid, hypocritical, and infuriatingly childish, yet it's the only large, active community for Heroes? How do we draw more attention to TL.net from the players who are reasonable??
What set you off?
The entire new page and approx. 99.8% of the 'comments'
I guess you don't really have to own what you say on Reddit so much.
Frankly, it's hard to make substantive posts which will be popular. So, we end up with a ton of posts which are effectively appeals to the masses. ("Dear god not another nova", "Don't rage at me just because I firstpick nova I know what I'm doing", "Please don't dive in first without team", "please just win the game when you can", "please [insert basic strategy advice that everyone knows but most people don't do 100% of the time]")
TBF, I'm not sure if those posts are crowding out more "substantive posts". It wouldn't surprise me if those threads fall within the scope of "today's top 25 most substantive posts". It's mostly just the lack of interesting/new content means there's never 25 things that are really worth talking about - so there's always going to be trash on the reddit frontpage.
How do we draw more attention to TL.net from the players who are reasonable??
Also probably part of the issue here on TL as well. We need more things to talk about. The issue with being reasonable is at some point the conversation ends.
On May 21 2016 05:34 Thetan wrote: Also probably part of the issue here on TL as well. We need more things to talk about. The issue with being reasonable is at some point the conversation ends.
Re: supports, I definitely agree that the game needs more supports, and it would be nice to see that they have impactful abilities. On the other hand, I actually rather enjoy the healbot style; coming from being a dedicated raid healer in WoW I actually do find just saving your teammates from their own stupidity rewarding in and of itself.
I enjoy playing Lt. Morales because it really tests your ability to position yourself while doing triage on your team - you (usually) have the mana and throughput to keep everybody up, but you have no AoE heal or HoT so you have to rely on the low beam CD to switch targets quickly and proactively enough to keep everyone up. Especially against a Li-Ming it really turns into a balancing act once everyone gets pretty low.
I understand that most of the playerbase would probably prefer more Tyrande-style supports that can have good damage and playmaking with her stun, but I do hope they introduce solid throughput healers too.
The addition of Chromie is just making me wonder if Dustin is taking HOTS down the good old Starcraft route of design and implementing, "Terrible terrible damage" to every new addition to the game.
Chromie isn't OP, but it's just another hero that has a powerful snare and can nuke someone down from 100% HP to 50% HP amongst so many other heroes that can nuke you down. Xul? Nuke you down with a powerful root. Li Ming? Safe noob friendly nuking coming at you in force.
Agree with the guy above me, this game needs more ways to keep people alive, more and interesting supports should be added. Brightwing is excellent in both design and utility, Supports should be modeled after that philosophy.
Or at least add some damn tanks, Deheka is a secondary tank at best, more of a tanky ganker.
Some of the Overwatch healers seem likely to make it in the game at some point. You have Lucio who can switch between aoe healing similar to Brightwing, and an aoe speed boost, a knock back and an aoe shield/over heal with his ultimate.
Zenyatta has exceptionally low health, with a shield that regenerates, a heal over time orb that can be placed on one target at a time and a damage booster like Tyrande to go with good attack damage and an ultimate that makes him invulnerable and does a Tranquility like aoe heal for several seconds.
Mercy has a healing beam like the Medic, but can switch it to a damage boosting beam. She also has the ability to dash to allies sort of like Kharazim, and an AoE team res ultimate.
Any of them could potentially be good HOTS supports with a bit of tweaking.
I hope that the next few releases are supports/specialists. Medivh has a lot of promise as I love a weird hero but there are fewer supports than any other class in the game and at competitive levels not like LiLi gets a lot of attention.
This "get blown up in 2sec" is truly not fun. Or is it? Agree, supports could fix that problem.
I suggested before you give supports more "dmg reduction" tools. For example, old diablo+tyrande combo with lets say thrall behind and some other dmg dealer, a support should imo be able to protect your squishy from going down if played properly/specced properly.
On May 21 2016 11:29 karazax wrote: Some of the Overwatch healers seem likely to make it in the game at some point. You have Lucio who can switch between aoe healing similar to Brightwing, and an aoe speed boost, a knock back and an aoe shield/over heal with his ultimate.
Zenyatta has exceptionally low health, with a shield that regenerates, a heal over time orb that can be placed on one target at a time and a damage booster like Tyrande to go with good attack damage and an ultimate that makes him invulnerable and does a Tranquility like aoe heal for several seconds.
Mercy has a healing beam like the Medic, but can switch it to a damage boosting beam. She also has the ability to dash to allies sort of like Kharazim, and an AoE team res ultimate.
Any of them could potentially be good HOTS supports with a bit of tweaking.
AoE rez (or a rez in general) would be totally broken in HotS and I really hope Mercy will never be introduced to HotS. Mercy could be an alternative skin for Morales, imo. If you cut her ult, she seems quite similar to what Morales does.
Lucio would have the same issues in Heroes as he has in Overwatch. Winning a team fight ? speed boost to win more. And don't forget that Mercy has a damage Amp, while Zen has a take more damage debuff. They would all add to the damage haha.
Still annoyed they nerfed Lili super hard with removing herbal.
On supports: I think blizz should've learned more lessons from the evolution of supports in League of Legends; since they had the same problem of some supports tending to be boring to play healbots (especially early soraka); and they've put in a lot of work over time to make their gameplay more interesting.
On May 20 2016 16:30 SC2Toastie wrote: Why is Reddit so incredible stupid, hypocritical, and infuriatingly childish, yet it's the only large, active community for Heroes? How do we draw more attention to TL.net from the players who are reasonable??
What set you off?
The entire new page and approx. 99.8% of the 'comments'
I guess you don't really have to own what you say on Reddit so much.
Frankly, it's hard to make substantive posts which will be popular. So, we end up with a ton of posts which are effectively appeals to the masses. ("Dear god not another nova", "Don't rage at me just because I firstpick nova I know what I'm doing", "Please don't dive in first without team", "please just win the game when you can", "please [insert basic strategy advice that everyone knows but most people don't do 100% of the time]")
TBF, I'm not sure if those posts are crowding out more "substantive posts". It wouldn't surprise me if those threads fall within the scope of "today's top 25 most substantive posts". It's mostly just the lack of interesting/new content means there's never 25 things that are really worth talking about - so there's always going to be trash on the reddit frontpage.
How do we draw more attention to TL.net from the players who are reasonable??
Also probably part of the issue here on TL as well. We need more things to talk about. The issue with being reasonable is at some point the conversation ends.
The issue with reddit is entirely on the hivemind that is present there. I can point you to multiple users who literally never exceed the 5 word count on comments and downvote everything they see. The downvote system is excellent. In theory. In practice, it just enforces the hive mind thinking.
It is impossible to have a reasonable discussion, because a discussion requires two different points of view. One is 'right', the other is 'wrong'. The sharks show up to downvote, and once you are at -1, they start shitposting. It makes no sense at all. Combine that with the extreme nitpicking (a 500 word post will be downvoted and invalidated because you made a comment about Murky not being a tank).
Lastly, the extreme hypocrisy. People will always argue assuming the OP being a jerk and a toxic flamer. One cannot make criticism of plays, mechanics, or anything, really. Anything negative gets downvoted and trolled.
My problem is with how Reddit apparantly is the main discussion area for Heroes, whilst it's a very hostile environment that does not encourage discussion, but rather encourages trolling and restating popular opinion again and again. And Murky/Abathur shitposts. Constantly.
On May 21 2016 11:29 karazax wrote: Some of the Overwatch healers seem likely to make it in the game at some point. You have Lucio who can switch between aoe healing similar to Brightwing, and an aoe speed boost, a knock back and an aoe shield/over heal with his ultimate.
Zenyatta has exceptionally low health, with a shield that regenerates, a heal over time orb that can be placed on one target at a time and a damage booster like Tyrande to go with good attack damage and an ultimate that makes him invulnerable and does a Tranquility like aoe heal for several seconds.
Mercy has a healing beam like the Medic, but can switch it to a damage boosting beam. She also has the ability to dash to allies sort of like Kharazim, and an AoE team res ultimate.
Any of them could potentially be good HOTS supports with a bit of tweaking.
AoE rez (or a rez in general) would be totally broken in HotS and I really hope Mercy will never be introduced to HotS. Mercy could be an alternative skin for Morales, imo. If you cut her ult, she seems quite similar to what Morales does.
The ult would take tweaking and changes, but I don't think Mercy is really that much like medic except for having a healing beam. She is much more mobile, and has the damage buff beam so I think the play style would be significantly different. Eventually most new supports are likely to have some similarity to an existing support in the way they heal.
On May 21 2016 23:29 SC2Toastie wrote: What saddens me is how Medivh is a support hero through and through, yet is qualified as a Specialist because he has 'no healing'.
It's probably for the best for quick match where both teams get one support. I doubt Medivh will be able to solo support. In draft modes being labeled support or specialist is just a label, doesn't prevent a team from using them how ever they want.
yeah quickmach rules are the reason for specialist tag on supports. They wanted to switch Tyrande and Tassadar as well, but decided to increase their healing numbers instead and nerf their talent diversity.
On May 22 2016 03:13 FeyFey wrote: yeah quickmach rules are the reason for specialist tag on supports. They wanted to switch Tyrande and Tassadar as well, but decided to increase their healing numbers instead and nerf their talent diversity.
I really miss static charge builds
Tass still really fun to play though. Probably my favorite base kit/ult in the game with force wall
I don't know exactly how Mercy works in Overwatch but I think a rez spell in HotS could actually work; it would be balanced if they made it like in WoW - single target, long channel, easily interruptable (like the hearthstone in HotS, you could cancel it by damage alone instead of needing a stun or silence). Hots already messes with the death timer with heros like Murky and Leoric, so I don't think this would be too far of a jump.
You could have it reduce the death timer, and maybe let her place something to get the teammate back in the fight. On the whole though, it is a problematic skill for a moba I think. The other bit about her kit is that healing beam is pretty medic like from what I'm reading.
Any OW people can confirm if she plays a bit like Medic in TF2 or Morales in game?
I often wondered at the concept of a suicide support - one that would literally give their life to resurrect a teammate. You sacrifice regular healing/utility etc in exchange for bringing back a hero. Like if Divine Palm restored to full HP/mana but killed Kharazim.
On May 21 2016 23:07 zlefin wrote: On supports: I think blizz should've learned more lessons from the evolution of supports in League of Legends; since they had the same problem of some supports tending to be boring to play healbots (especially early soraka); and they've put in a lot of work over time to make their gameplay more interesting.
On May 21 2016 23:29 SC2Toastie wrote: What saddens me is how Medivh is a support hero through and through, yet is qualified as a Specialist because he has 'no healing'.
On May 22 2016 13:54 Larkin wrote: I often wondered at the concept of a suicide support - one that would literally give their life to resurrect a teammate. You sacrifice regular healing/utility etc in exchange for bringing back a hero. Like if Divine Palm restored to full HP/mana but killed Kharazim.
I think all three of you aren't properly evaluating how strong consistent heals are in this game. I think the general problem is that there's an assumption (probably from other MOBAs) that supports don't have to be healers. I don't think this is true in hots.
If I remember correctly, the issue with soraka back in LoL wasn't that she was boring, but that she was the *only* healer - and that healing is so powerful that just having *one* true healer made it so that any team that drafted her had an innate advantage.
Healing basically allows you to be more aggressive / more present on the map, which is an immense tactical advantage for a team with a healer vs one without. You can take objectives with less risk while having the health to push another objective afterwards. You can siege/defend better by negating your enemies pokes. You can win the game off a won team fight, rather than needing to waste time porting to base for health / waiting for a full minion wave to tank turret.
Healing is so strong, that I think it's an all-or-nothing design decision in your game - you either require team comps to have a strong healer, or you don't have any strong healers in the game at all. LoL and Dota decided to go with 'none', where as Hots decided to go with 'all'.
So while Medivh would be a LoL and Dota support, I don't think he fits in with Hots "supports" purely because the core design philosophy of supports in Hots is different than the supports in the other two games. In LoL/Dota, you just need a hero on your team that is impactful without farm on your team. In Hots, you need a healer on your team.
So after playing 2 HL games on new Falstad: he's still amazing. The hybrid build obviously isn't a thing anymore but the trait mage build is as strong as it was, the CD increase on Epic Mount hurts a bit, but it was well deserved IMHO. Doesn't make Falstad any less god pick.
funnily enough, moving Updraft to 4 was actually a buff since it allows you to take it when going mage build now.
Mercy Ult could work if you limited her range. In addition it could start out as a ress that would only give 25% hp and then upped to 100% on level 20. It's not necessary to implement the exact ultimate form on level 10, it could be that it only becomes that way on 20. Mercy's Ultimate has the potential to be a double edged sword as if people are only ressed to get instakilled that would be beneficial for the enemy team. It's not straight out imbalanced.
Same with Zenyatta, could have ultimate be so that he himself is not invulnerable while channeling regen. The regen could the constant at the same rate as Tranquility or even lower with a higher radius, with the 20 talent only giving Zenyatta invulnerability and no extra healing power. One of his weaknesses is that he can't self heal with orb of harmony, which is kinda how other supports should be able to get an edge over him.
I was just wondering what everybody's favorite heroes are currently!
For Warriors, Muradin and ETC. For Bruisers, Dehaka and Artanis. For Melee Assassins, Zeratul and Greymane. For Ranged Damage, Kael'Thas and Sylvanas. For Supports, Tyrande and Uther. For Niche, Rexxar (ISUCKSOBAD) and Abathur.
Hmm, warriors - Muradin and Johanna Bruisers - Sonya and Anub'arak Melee assassins - I don't play them Ranged damage - Falstad and Kael'thas Specialists - Sylvanas and Zagara Supports - Rehgar and Tyrande
Warriors- Anub and Chen Bruisers- Sonya Melee- Thrall Ranged Damage- I'm kind of Chromie obsessed atm. Specialists- Murky, TLV support- you don't want me to play support.
On May 23 2016 02:01 SC2Toastie wrote: I was just wondering what everybody's favorite heroes are currently!
For Warriors, Muradin and ETC. For Bruisers, Dehaka and Artanis. For Melee Assassins, Zeratul and Greymane. For Ranged Damage, Kael'Thas and Sylvanas. For Supports, Tyrande and Uther. For Niche, Rexxar (ISUCKSOBAD) and Abathur.
I really wanna learn how to TLV tho (((((
Warriors: Muradin, Tyrael DPS Mura with give em the ax is to fun now with the buff! Its like picking thrall and only pretending to tank! Tyrael with new battle momentum is great teleporting everywhere and being annoying, just gotta hearth every 30secs
Assassins: Valla (or anyone with executioner - ray, grey...) That shit is OP as hell if you have rehgar or jaina. Valla can also take frost shot at 13 which should make exe at 16 read "permanently increase basic attack damage by 30%"
On May 23 2016 02:01 SC2Toastie wrote: I was just wondering what everybody's favorite heroes are currently!
For Warriors, Muradin and Johanna. For Bruisers, Dehaka and Sonya. For Melee Assassins, Zeratul and Thrall. For Ranged Damage, Kael'Thas, Lunara, and Valla For Supports, Kharazim and Brigthwing. For Niche, [I don't play this role]
For Warriors, ETC, Diablo, Johanna For Bruisers, Arteezy For Melee Assassins, Xul... Greymane? For Ranged Damage, Raynor, Zagara, Nazeebo For Supports, Tassadar, Rehgar, Morales, Uther
Tanks: Muradin, Johanna Bruisers: Anub and Leoric Melee: Kerrigan Ranged: Li-Ming, KT, Valla Specialist: Zagara, Sylvanas, Abathur Support: Uther, Morales
For pure fun but not effectiveness I'd add Tyrael with Judgment and Holy Ground. Fun as hell to play, but it can lose you games with randoms due to your damage being low, your ultimate being your only stun and lacking any kind of real presence and strong peel other than a minor slow and a speed boost for your allies. Also, mana hungry if you are constantly fighting. If they buff his damage and mana a bit and give him a new trait he might see the light of day again outside of being a Sanctification tool.
Warriors - Muradin Tank Build Bruisers - Muradin Damage Build Melee assassins - Muradin Damage Build Ranged damage - Muradin can Dwarf Toss I count that as ranged. Specialists - Muradin Hammer build Supports - Muradin (can self heal and protect others !)
Blizzard better not say 5 Muradins vs 5 Muradins would be unfun in Arena.
I also play Zagara but only when I am on top of my game. Want to keep my Winrate with her. And well if my dailies end up 3 times assassin/support I kinda have to clear those.
Sometimes the enemy team first bans tracer. Sometimes you decide to ban something other than li-ming or KT in return. Sometimes the enemy team firstpicks li-ming in response. Sometimes I get to play KT in heroleague.
15 minute game. I only got 15k hero damage(stitches had 24?), but most of our kill confirms. Pyroblast is surely fun against zeratul, li-ming, and brightwing.
On May 23 2016 02:01 SC2Toastie wrote: I was just wondering what everybody's favorite heroes are currently!
For Warriors, Muradin and ETC. For Bruisers, Dehaka and Artanis. For Melee Assassins, Zeratul and Greymane. For Ranged Damage, Kael'Thas and Sylvanas. For Supports, Tyrande and Uther. For Niche, Rexxar (ISUCKSOBAD) and Abathur.
I really wanna learn how to TLV tho (((((
DPS Mura with give em the ax is to fun now with the buff!
Greymane with executioner has SICKENING damage output as well....
In fact, with Worgen Cleave, you actually deal less damage with Go For The Throat if you can hit 2 targets with your AAs, that's how sick it is
Heroes like Jaina, Arthas, Muradin, Xul (Skeletal Mages) can give near permanent Executioner to teammates and it's insane. Others can proc it for themselves (Valla). I fear the talent gets nerfed soon because of this, though. Maybe to 2s?
On May 21 2016 23:36 SC2Toastie wrote: The downvote system is excellent. In theory. In practice, it just enforces the hive mind thinking. Lastly, the extreme hypocrisy. People will always argue assuming the OP being a jerk and a toxic flamer. One cannot make criticism of plays, mechanics, or anything, really. Anything negative gets downvoted and trolled.
Its the same for everything else, like youtube. This system does not work for the reasons you stated. Oddly enough, the best useful comments are ALWAYS negative, alongside with shit posts. I've seen a lot of charlatans releasing fake videos (like the Xcom impossible ironman run) and everytime someone shows up with statistical evidence thats a feat impossible to be accomplished, he gets instantly downvoted by ppl who can't understand his arguments, replaying with nothing more then: "You are wrong m8" My suggestion: Common sense: search for upvoted comments. Good advice: search for downvoted comments.
On May 21 2016 23:36 SC2Toastie wrote: It is impossible to have a reasonable discussion, because a discussion requires two different points of view. One is 'right', the other is 'wrong'. The sharks show up to downvote, and once you are at -1, they start shitposting. It makes no sense at all. Combine that with the extreme nitpicking (a 500 word post will be downvoted and invalidated because you made a comment about Murky not being a tank).
The more ppl there are, the dumber it becomes. Its a statistical fact. Few numbers = more often quality posts but less frequency and vice versa. Now, having an entire post invalidated just because someone did not agree with a part of it is really frustrating and happens to me all the time. Not sure how to prevent it from happening and i would like to hear some thoughts about it.
On May 21 2016 23:36 SC2Toastie wrote: My problem is with how Reddit apparantly is the main discussion area for Heroes, whilst it's a very hostile environment that does not encourage discussion, but rather encourages trolling and restating popular opinion again and again. And Murky/Abathur shitposts. Constantly.
There are 2 good ways to present a different point of view: 1- Sarcasm. Not recommended. 2- Present a question with a situation where a presented hypothesis doesn't work. Ask his opinion about that. Make it so like he is the one who acknowledges there is something amiss rather then you pointing out what is wrong. This tactic isn't something i made up, its a consolidated sale technique. Keep in mind no one likes to be proven wrong. If he still is in denial, consider the option of you being wrong or he is plainly outside your reach and avoid further replies.
Remember: trolls just want attention, do not feed then and they eventually leave. Just ignore all shitty comments and move on,
2- Present a question with a situation where a presented hypothesis doesn't work. Ask his opinion about that. Make it so like he is the one who acknowledges there is something amiss rather then you pointing out what is wrong. This tactic isn't something i made up, its a consolidated sale technique. Keep in mind no one likes to be proven wrong. If he still is in denial, consider the option of you being wrong or he is plainly outside your reach and avoid further replies.
You appear to be more knowledgable about the subject than I am, but I don't think you can compare the 1-to-1 interaction of consolidated sales/personal discussion with a discussion on a public board. There is no (social) obligation for the other person to respond in a rational way. They can ignore you, nitpick the question, say "strawman" (this one triggers me ), etc.
I think the only way a downvote style system can work is by limiting the downvote power of users. This requires trustworthy moderators to give specific users, who contribute well and are reasonable, the power to up- or downvote comments. It also requires moderators to actively discipline users that do not contribute.
(for example, this guy: https://www.reddit.com/user/--TaCo--. Check his post history. On TL.net he would have been banned within a week. Personal anekdote: He started discussion (picking a fight?) with me a couple of weeks ago, and he just instantly downvoted my posts with 3 different accounts. My 600 word post got 3 instant downvotes, his "no fuck you", "li ming proves powercreep blizzard moneygrab" got to +4. After 2 of such exchanges, I was 100% positive this guy upvotes and downvotes anything he comes across with multiple accounts. This results in my posts becoming the food for trolls and him getting his epenis extended. Moderators HAVE to take action against such abuse, and limiting the spread of voting power is one way.)
I think nothing can be done on Reddit, it's too big. Moderators cannot treat abuses the way they should.
Your only weapon is to be smarter than them (which you are) and not go on this kind of board. Tried to participate to the official forum too, just trying to add a creative opinion on the new Leoric, versus 20 "OMG Leoric nerfed" posts and while I didn't got as much flame as you, it was obvious I was talking to morons who don't even want to consider a different point of view.
The only reason I see to visit game specific subreddits anymore is to have an aggregate of amusing content like WTF moments and the occasional VOD from Khaldor or something. Other than that, you all generally keep me covered.
Lol the only time I ever visit reddit is when one of you guys post a link here. I'm pretty sure the amount of stupidity there would make me either homicidal or suicidal or both
That HL is unplayable at times is not even QQ anymore, it's just a fact. I will probably get me the new witcher 3 addon and come back to Heroes after the dust of the soft "reset" has settled.
On May 21 2016 23:07 zlefin wrote: On supports: I think blizz should've learned more lessons from the evolution of supports in League of Legends; since they had the same problem of some supports tending to be boring to play healbots (especially early soraka); and they've put in a lot of work over time to make their gameplay more interesting.
On May 21 2016 23:29 SC2Toastie wrote: What saddens me is how Medivh is a support hero through and through, yet is qualified as a Specialist because he has 'no healing'.
On May 22 2016 13:54 Larkin wrote: I often wondered at the concept of a suicide support - one that would literally give their life to resurrect a teammate. You sacrifice regular healing/utility etc in exchange for bringing back a hero. Like if Divine Palm restored to full HP/mana but killed Kharazim.
I think all three of you aren't properly evaluating how strong consistent heals are in this game. I think the general problem is that there's an assumption (probably from other MOBAs) that supports don't have to be healers. I don't think this is true in hots.
If I remember correctly, the issue with soraka back in LoL wasn't that she was boring, but that she was the *only* healer - and that healing is so powerful that just having *one* true healer made it so that any team that drafted her had an innate advantage.
Healing basically allows you to be more aggressive / more present on the map, which is an immense tactical advantage for a team with a healer vs one without. You can take objectives with less risk while having the health to push another objective afterwards. You can siege/defend better by negating your enemies pokes. You can win the game off a won team fight, rather than needing to waste time porting to base for health / waiting for a full minion wave to tank turret.
Healing is so strong, that I think it's an all-or-nothing design decision in your game - you either require team comps to have a strong healer, or you don't have any strong healers in the game at all. LoL and Dota decided to go with 'none', where as Hots decided to go with 'all'.
So while Medivh would be a LoL and Dota support, I don't think he fits in with Hots "supports" purely because the core design philosophy of supports in Hots is different than the supports in the other two games. In LoL/Dota, you just need a hero on your team that is impactful without farm on your team. In Hots, you need a healer on your team.
I remember things differently; though you may've played a bit earlier than I had; I was somewhere around season 1 iirc. Back then there was a real problem with soraka just being a healbot. In lane, all she did was stand at/near the tower, and restore hp/mana to her lane partner (usually the adc). The issue isn't whether healing is strong or weak (though that does have effects) the issue is the amount of playmaking ability and interaction the abilities have. When your primary job is to essentially be a mobile moonwell, and just stay far back and keep everyone topped off, that can get quite boring. And they have made a lot of changes to make supports more interactive.
wow sounds like either a trashing, or 5 people on the enemy team were all lane neglecting.
Really starting to like Chromies trait, feels like she is the mage to go for when you want a comp that is slow in the early game. Well or if you have an ETC. -> Moshpit in 3 seconds here ult at 20 is fun.
On May 24 2016 22:46 SC2Toastie wrote: Holy shit, HL is in a bad shape, yeah...
Just won a game with 5 level lead. FIVE LEVELS?!
Think I lost one 4 levels behind today. Usually means 1 player AFKs / 1 bot player (you don't see the hero name anymore it seems) / 1 feeds without being too obvious (to avoid reports).
zlefin > TBH I only play Tyrande and BW. Tyrande is perfectly viable as solo heal as long as you take Shadowstalk and the 13 level if needed. Tyrande is skillshot heavy, don't have time to get bored, and BW is map awareness demanding + APM taxing in fights. It's impossible to not have fun with these 2. I think the other supports are boring only when you get your ass kicked. You feel like your team wastes all your work and you can't do much more than what you already do. If the game is tight, you can't be bored playing support, even healbots like Morales.
On May 24 2016 23:01 FeyFey wrote: wow sounds like either a trashing, or 5 people on the enemy team were all lane neglecting.
Really starting to like Chromies trait, feels like she is the mage to go for when you want a comp that is slow in the early game. Well or if you have an ETC. -> Moshpit in 3 seconds here ult at 20 is fun.
I think the best way to think of her is like people set up tyrande stuns, but she should never, ever be alone.
I don't think she is as bad as people think, but it is a mother fucker to land skill shots some times.
they're in a game with some decent players now. pretty impossible to get a really good game (5 good players on both teams) at this hour on NA though. abathur + muradin
edit: played against them. my team was winning and honestly should have won but in typical hero league fashion, our teamwork/calls were terrible and some objectives and fights got totally botched. i dont think they were able to make anything happen except maybe take leadership of their team so they were less likely to be so out of sync
On May 21 2016 23:07 zlefin wrote: On supports: I think blizz should've learned more lessons from the evolution of supports in League of Legends; since they had the same problem of some supports tending to be boring to play healbots (especially early soraka); and they've put in a lot of work over time to make their gameplay more interesting.
On May 21 2016 23:29 SC2Toastie wrote: What saddens me is how Medivh is a support hero through and through, yet is qualified as a Specialist because he has 'no healing'.
On May 22 2016 13:54 Larkin wrote: I often wondered at the concept of a suicide support - one that would literally give their life to resurrect a teammate. You sacrifice regular healing/utility etc in exchange for bringing back a hero. Like if Divine Palm restored to full HP/mana but killed Kharazim.
I think all three of you aren't properly evaluating how strong consistent heals are in this game. I think the general problem is that there's an assumption (probably from other MOBAs) that supports don't have to be healers. I don't think this is true in hots.
If I remember correctly, the issue with soraka back in LoL wasn't that she was boring, but that she was the *only* healer - and that healing is so powerful that just having *one* true healer made it so that any team that drafted her had an innate advantage.
Healing basically allows you to be more aggressive / more present on the map, which is an immense tactical advantage for a team with a healer vs one without. You can take objectives with less risk while having the health to push another objective afterwards. You can siege/defend better by negating your enemies pokes. You can win the game off a won team fight, rather than needing to waste time porting to base for health / waiting for a full minion wave to tank turret.
Healing is so strong, that I think it's an all-or-nothing design decision in your game - you either require team comps to have a strong healer, or you don't have any strong healers in the game at all. LoL and Dota decided to go with 'none', where as Hots decided to go with 'all'.
So while Medivh would be a LoL and Dota support, I don't think he fits in with Hots "supports" purely because the core design philosophy of supports in Hots is different than the supports in the other two games. In LoL/Dota, you just need a hero on your team that is impactful without farm on your team. In Hots, you need a healer on your team.
I remember things differently; though you may've played a bit earlier than I had; I was somewhere around season 1 iirc. Back then there was a real problem with soraka just being a healbot. In lane, all she did was stand at/near the tower, and restore hp/mana to her lane partner (usually the adc). The issue isn't whether healing is strong or weak (though that does have effects) the issue is the amount of playmaking ability and interaction the abilities have. When your primary job is to essentially be a mobile moonwell, and just stay far back and keep everyone topped off, that can get quite boring. And they have made a lot of changes to make supports more interactive.
I think we started playing around the same time, and there's a decent chance I don't remember things correctly.
Dug up an old post where Morello talks about the soraka nerfs here: http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3850506 (ctrl+f for "Morello"). It's an interesting thread, where basically the LoL devs explain why dedicated healers don't have a place in LoL, which is something the Blizzard has taken a completely different stance on.
My basic takeaway from the thread is that the presence of a healer fundamentally changes the nature of the game. Which is why they had to take that away from soraka, since 1) she was the only true healer and 2) they didn't like the impact on the game by adding more true healers.
I think it's fair to say that healing is game-altering enough that you're at a disadvantage if your team doesn't have a healer. Comparing to LoL doesn't make much sense, because LoL has actively tried to remove strong healers from their game, where as Blizzard has actively tried to add them.
On May 24 2016 23:01 FeyFey wrote: wow sounds like either a trashing, or 5 people on the enemy team were all lane neglecting.
Really starting to like Chromies trait, feels like she is the mage to go for when you want a comp that is slow in the early game. Well or if you have an ETC. -> Moshpit in 3 seconds here ult at 20 is fun.
I think the best way to think of her is like people set up tyrande stuns, but she should never, ever be alone.
I don't think she is as bad as people think, but it is a mother fucker to land skill shots some times.
People probably think she is bad because of her winrate, which means she is exactly as bad as people think. [worst winrate for a character release ever?]
On May 24 2016 23:01 FeyFey wrote: wow sounds like either a trashing, or 5 people on the enemy team were all lane neglecting.
Really starting to like Chromies trait, feels like she is the mage to go for when you want a comp that is slow in the early game. Well or if you have an ETC. -> Moshpit in 3 seconds here ult at 20 is fun.
I think the best way to think of her is like people set up tyrande stuns, but she should never, ever be alone.
I don't think she is as bad as people think, but it is a mother fucker to land skill shots some times.
People probably think she is bad because of her winrate, which means she is exactly as bad as people think. [worst winrate for a character release ever?]
I thought Lunara had her beat for worst win rate ever. I don't think she is tip top, but you could do worse for a hero choice, just my opinion though.
She could do with that health buff people have been talking about, I'm probably done trying to solo with her though. Need at least a buddy to really enjoy the experience.
The problem with Chromie is that from day 1 people looked at her winrate and said NO CHROMIE INSTA LOSS FUCK YOU. Chromie requires a particular playstyle, similar to a Hover Siege Sgt. Hammer that requires some CC to land her attacks. Chromie can poke and blow shit up like the best of them, but..........
People like to dive super hard without regarding their team comp. Chromie cannot play in a dive composition, nor can she peel for herself effectively. Characters like Sonya, Thrall, Greymane, Muradin, ETC, have to be aware of this fact and NOT dive like mad men.
However, sticking to what you always do is easier and having a scapegoat to flame is convenient.
On May 24 2016 23:01 FeyFey wrote: wow sounds like either a trashing, or 5 people on the enemy team were all lane neglecting.
Really starting to like Chromies trait, feels like she is the mage to go for when you want a comp that is slow in the early game. Well or if you have an ETC. -> Moshpit in 3 seconds here ult at 20 is fun.
I think the best way to think of her is like people set up tyrande stuns, but she should never, ever be alone.
I don't think she is as bad as people think, but it is a mother fucker to land skill shots some times.
People probably think she is bad because of her winrate, which means she is exactly as bad as people think. [worst winrate for a character release ever?]
I thought Lunara had her beat for worst win rate ever. I don't think she is tip top, but you could do worse for a hero choice, just my opinion though.
She could do with that health buff people have been talking about, I'm probably done trying to solo with her though. Need at least a buddy to really enjoy the experience.
Looks like lunara was at 32%, which is the same as Chromie. (and also the worst winrate for a character release ever.)
On May 25 2016 03:41 SC2Toastie wrote: The problem with Chromie is that from day 1 people looked at her winrate and said NO CHROMIE INSTA LOSS FUCK YOU. Chromie requires a particular playstyle, similar to a Hover Siege Sgt. Hammer that requires some CC to land her attacks. Chromie can poke and blow shit up like the best of them, but..........
People like to dive super hard without regarding their team comp. Chromie cannot play in a dive composition, nor can she peel for herself effectively. Characters like Sonya, Thrall, Greymane, Muradin, ETC, have to be aware of this fact and NOT dive like mad men.
However, sticking to what you always do is easier and having a scapegoat to flame is convenient.
I'm starting to think she should just never auto attack in a real game; maybe if she is hugging the wall early game but otherwise not much reason to do it.
I may have to play some tonight with the mindset if I can AA I'm in a bad place. She is the back line's back line
On May 25 2016 06:09 SC2John wrote: I'm going to write an article about how badass Lunara is now.
She's so good that I've taken 13 out of 15 of my last heroleague games, mostly drafting her. Meanwhile, she's so annoying that enemies have begun to harass me after game with BM. I guess there is nothing worse than being leaping striked to death by a lunara MotherFox who manages to leaping strike away from the kerrigan sitting next to you right afterwards.
Though my last few games my hero damage has dipped dramatically. I wonder if she is just super punishing to anyone who over extends, and as my MMR increases I can expect to see all that free damage go down?
Also, I think many people in my MMR zone(ranks 15-10 currently) are simply unaware of what really counters her. Many healers just outright lose to lunara in a poke war(uther, tyrande, brightwing), many healers are very vulnerable to being focused by lunara(rehgar, medic). Monk is really good against her, malf is ok--- but monk is not a hugely popular or widely picked hero.
Yes, as the quality of game increases your ability to do free damage will decrease. Thornwood Vine is also generally a better option as a heroic.
I managed to win a HL game at rank 1 with Lunara when my team was Gazlowe, Murky, Abathur and Nazeebo - because yes, that does happen. Our opponents - Falstad, Johanna, Thrall, Kael'thas, Rehgar.
I think I've had the biggest comeback I've ever witnessed in ranked...
Garden of Terror, Anub disconnects early, so we get stomped. It's level 12 vs 16, they have two terrors stacked, 1 keep left vs 6. They somehow don't know how to finish even though it's a 3k+ mmr average.
We hold two more Terrors, lvl 16 vs 19, and that's when Anub finally reconnects...
We get a Terror but have to use it defensively 3v5. Then we get two kills while we chase them from our core. One more while taking down their fort and keep. We then go for core instead of Terror, which apparently confuses our enemies greatly as we get an easy kill right before respawns, and we take the core down before minions finish ours, with 8 kills and 1 Terror vs 23 and 6.
I rarely write a game off, but our entire team had given up on this one. We were chatting while clearing lanes and wondering why they didn't finish it. Then we casually chase them the entire map and win. Good times.
On May 25 2016 03:41 SC2Toastie wrote: Chromie requires a particular playstyle, similar to a Hover Siege Sgt. Hammer that requires some CC to land her attacks. Chromie can poke and blow shit up like the best of them, but..........
Just having CC isn't enough to guarantee hits with her attacks.
I think part of why Chromie is struggling is that, unlike other champions, she relies a lot more on prediction than on raw reaction - especially since stuns got nerfed on the same patch she was released. If you see your tank hit someone with a 1.75 second stun, it's already too late to guarantee W hitting (.25 reaction time, 1.5 delay on cast, + ping/latency/movingmouse/pressingbuttons). Hitting someone with the middle of W w/ the Dragon's Eye talent is even more unforgiving.
In order to reliably hit her W, you literally have to looking for / predicting the 1.75 second stun before your tank even throws it out. Because reacting to it after it hits is too late.
This is also why I love Chromie's design right now. To effectively play her (from the delay on her W and Q to setting up her E), you actually have to be constantly predicting the future - not only of how your enemies are going to move, but what your teammates are going do to. It's what makes her one of the hardest heroes in the game to play effectively.
I also don't think it's right to think of Chromie as a poke hero - because healing is so strong in the game, the value of 'poke' is heavily diminished. She's a long range burst mage that is capable of almost killing most squishies from full health in one combo. Ideally, even in a heavy dive team, by properly combo-ing your abilities with the cc of your teammates, you should just be at worst trading 1 for 1... except the person that ran in to kill you is real far out of position, and you were going to be useless for 3 seconds anyway because all your spells were on CD.
I ALSO DISLIKE HOVER SEIGE. Graduating range ftw. ^_^
Graduating range or thats our town ranged squishy scrub. (well unless they are called Chromie)
I find predicting W with Chromie pretty easy, because its not shown on the ground. So people don't react to it unless you stand right next to them.
Her Q for me is just wild spam unless paired with E or R.
I am still figuring out which build to do when. But I find the spam Ws build with her extended vision is never wrong. Its just super hard to get ready. But every other build is based around a rather good accuracy.
And not sure about the never autoattack, its a really nice burst if you go for Time Traps. But your Oh shit button sends you back to base, so I only do that on small maps. But its also removes the need to hit alot.
Should probably mention though that I combo her with Johanna.
And I agree right now that everyone wants to dive. And I can understand why, its really rewarding atm and not that risky as it used to be.
On May 25 2016 10:11 FeyFey wrote: Graduating range or thats our town ranged squishy scrub. (well unless they are called Chromie)
I find predicting W with Chromie pretty easy, because its not shown on the ground. So people don't react to it unless you stand right next to them.
Her Q for me is just wild spam unless paired with E or R.
I am still figuring out which build to do when. But I find the spam Ws build with her extended vision is never wrong. Its just super hard to get ready. But every other build is based around a rather good accuracy.
And not sure about the never autoattack, its a really nice burst if you go for Time Traps. But your Oh shit button sends you back to base, so I only do that on small maps. But its also removes the need to hit alot.
Should probably mention though that I combo her with Johanna.
And I agree right now that everyone wants to dive. And I can understand why, its really rewarding atm and not that risky as it used to be.
For my money it is either Deep Breathing or Timewalker's pursuit. The Bonus AP, or Vision is way better than the Q quest talent imo.
How do you use time traps? I've been trying to play only around my time traps. using them to create a space and ideally punish the overextender or at least guarantee a stack towards a quest talent. Always behind or parallel to them, only in front if I am reasonably or 100% certain I know where the enemy team is
On May 25 2016 10:11 FeyFey wrote: Graduating range or thats our town ranged squishy scrub. (well unless they are called Chromie)
I find predicting W with Chromie pretty easy, because its not shown on the ground. So people don't react to it unless you stand right next to them.
Her Q for me is just wild spam unless paired with E or R.
I am still figuring out which build to do when. But I find the spam Ws build with her extended vision is never wrong. Its just super hard to get ready. But every other build is based around a rather good accuracy.
And not sure about the never autoattack, its a really nice burst if you go for Time Traps. But your Oh shit button sends you back to base, so I only do that on small maps. But its also removes the need to hit alot.
Should probably mention though that I combo her with Johanna.
And I agree right now that everyone wants to dive. And I can understand why, its really rewarding atm and not that risky as it used to be.
For my money it is either Deep Breathing or Timewalker's pursuit. The Bonus AP, or Vision is way better than the Q quest talent imo.
How do you use time traps? I've been trying to play only around my time traps. using them to create a space and ideally punish the overextender or at least guarantee a stack towards a quest talent. Always behind or parallel to them, only in front if I am reasonably or 100% certain I know where the enemy team is
I think Dragon's Eye is Chromie's strongest talent at level 7, as long as you're good enough to land it. I like Piercing sands at level 4, which lets you actually more reliably hit backline squishes w/ your Q. And given those two talent choices, I've actually been taking the Q quest talent at lvl 1 (though I want to see if I can actually get away with taking the W quest, even without mobius loop).
I think Timewalker's pursuit is a trap. Looking at the damage from landing a single, untalented Q+W combo, you have to wait until level 23 when the 5% extra damage is better than the 100 flat damage from the Q quest. And even then, Timewalker's pursuit doesn't scale as well with the level 16 ability power boosting talents - Timewalker's pursuit scales additively ( 5% more ability damage + 50% more ability damage = 55% more damage) with the level 16 talents while the Q/W quests scale multiplicatively with them (5% more base damage * 50% more ability damage = 57.5% more damage).
Q quest talent is easier to get then the W quest, and I don't think you can avoid the W spam talent on 7 if you want to get the W quest done in a timely fashion unless you roam with something like a Kerrigan/Johanna combo. So when I think I have to bring in alot early on then I go Q.
As for the traps, I find them really versatile, since they give vision and basically jump at you when they caught someone. Which is a reason why I like the Q build. Since I can take the slow traps on 7. So I tend to use them as a warning tool mostly outside of team fights, put them to block a choke that could screw me. In teamfights I usually use them to form a defense screen with my ult. So its basically impossible to dive on me or to chase my team without allowing me to hit everything I got. Sands of Time ult is really op thanks to giving you vision. But the other one is a guaranteed hit of your skills. Otherwise I pretty much put them under me. That way people can't remove it with an unstoppable.
And well once you have 3 Traps available, the enemy team is fucked if one person gets to deep in a team fight and is caught in a trap. Because endless lockdown. Especially deadly since you get your 20s at 19.
I tried to be in your face with my traps a few times. But I had to Bye Bye way to often and I saved some enemies by putting them into stasis that way. And one time someone tried to save themself from tripple tap by running into one trap. Luckily I noticed their intend in time.
And you get your early game kills and free objectives if you put a trap in the usual pathways for objectives.
I think the size of Chromie is a hint to use her together with Hammer btw ! The space Chromie can control on 19 ....
I didn't do that much math with the Timewalkers pursuit but that further narrows what my choices would be on one which is fine with me.
I like the 3 traps on 19 too, do you think on 12 then it is Time Out/the range increase or bust? I was thinking initially one of the safety talents is necessary but in reality it seems like if Chromie has someone diving on her its too late, and Time Out so far has always resulted in my team fucking off while I wait 7 seconds to die.
I think they should add some range to Time Traps, about the same range as KT's Gravity Lapse, or at Muradin's storm bolt, and bump her health a bit and she would be significantly more competitive. Ranged TIme Trap would let you scout bushes, use it offensively, and put it in front of you when running so you can kite melee into it.
Someone from the forums messaged me the other day on bnet inviting me to TL games, but I neglected to save the message or the username. I'm generally up for playing with TL forum folks though, so whoever it was feel free to message me again.
I actually go Range or Bye Bye on 12. Bye Bye is a bit needed against a few heroes that can just stare you down without your team being able to do something and a nice comedy event against the Hunt if you expect it or it comes from long Range. But Range is pretty good especially if you win a team fight and they can't escape in straight lines. But both escapes are basically as if you died for that team fight (unless the fight is near your core). I can see Timeout being taken to go in do some damage and then stasis yourself and hope your team can push the enemy in that time. But you would have to trust your team then...
And I think any buff to time traps would make those to strong. Chromie would be like a ranged creep Zagara. Well she already is depending on talent choices. But I am not good enough with her to say if she is to weak or to strong. I just like her.
On May 27 2016 18:44 FeyFey wrote: I actually go Range or Bye Bye on 12. Bye Bye is a bit needed against a few heroes that can just stare you down without your team being able to do something and a nice comedy event against the Hunt if you expect it or it comes from long Range. But Range is pretty good especially if you win a team fight and they can't escape in straight lines. But both escapes are basically as if you died for that team fight (unless the fight is near your core). I can see Timeout being taken to go in do some damage and then stasis yourself and hope your team can push the enemy in that time. But you would have to trust your team then...
And I think any buff to time traps would make those to strong. Chromie would be like a ranged creep Zagara. Well she already is depending on talent choices. But I am not good enough with her to say if she is to weak or to strong. I just like her.
Would you adjust her Q to attack immortals and garden Terrors? I've heard people rather accurately say that she is not especially good on Battlefield, and Gardens at least in part because she is down 1/3 of her spells for objectives.
For tomb, she would have the same issue with web weavers but kind of compensates with the turn in denial from basically the well.
How come we all expect these list so much now ? I really never cared about tiers (except when 4 or 5 heroes were way better than anything else in the meta), but I jump on this list as soon as it's published. ^^ Thanks karazax for sharing.
I think Arthas is either overated or mostly played by retards at the moment. I also think Falstad is still god tier vs 2 tanks with AA build. And finally think Tyrande is T1 and can perfectly solo heal, and her winrate suffers from every retard wanting to play double heal Tyrande.
Now that the patch has been played a lot, is Anub' any good solo tank now ?
On May 27 2016 23:17 Leolio wrote: How come we all expect these list so much now ? I really never cared about tiers (except when 4 or 5 heroes were way better than anything else in the meta), but I jump on this list as soon as it's published. ^^ Thanks karazax for sharing.
I think Arthas is either overated or mostly played by retards at the moment. I also think Falstad is still god tier vs 2 tanks with AA build. And finally think Tyrande is T1 and can perfectly solo heal, and her winrate suffers from every retard wanting to play double heal Tyrande.
Now that the patch has been played a lot, is Anub' any good solo tank now ?
If the opponent is mainly mage damage yes in my opinion, he still feels kind of fragile against AA damage.
I too don't put much stock into these lists, good broad frame of reference though what I enjoy playing differs from Srey's opinion.
Play what you like, if what you like is out of the popular lexicon try and do it well is pretty much all I ask.
On May 28 2016 07:22 Slydie wrote: If the support is also the shot caller and team leader, which I think is pretty and works very well, the support can indeedg have a big impact...
But neither of those things have much to do with the character the support is playing. (you could do them as any role)
On May 28 2016 07:22 Slydie wrote: If the support is also the shot caller and team leader, which I think is pretty and works very well, the support can indeedg have a big impact...
In that case, the shot caller and team leader is having a big impact and coincidentally he also spams his Q on cooldown to burst a little health onto the Greymane.
On May 28 2016 07:22 Slydie wrote: If the support is also the shot caller and team leader, which I think is pretty common and works very well, the support can indeed have a big impact...
In that case, the shot caller and team leader is having a big impact and coincidentally he also spams his Q on cooldown to burst a little health onto the Greymane.
Don't forget playing supp (not being capt.) is a good way for mediocre players be useful on good teams, as the level difference from decent to superb matters less... I have tried this myself some times, annd it does make me feel better than I am! Also, a good team knows better how to make life easy for the support.
The challenge with making new supports that can have bigger impact outside of healing is that support is just a label. A solo support that can make significant non-healing plays either makes other supports obsolete and becomes first ban/first pick, or if all the supports are reworked to that level then teams start going double support and risk making heroes from other classes obsolete.
I don't think it is as dire Merryday says, but the damage and tank roles have received a lot more attention with the heroes being released and I think it would behoove Blizzard to do one or even 2 support releases in a row to flesh out the roster of potential supports.
I would get to feeling jilted if I had to hear all day about how Rich was wrecking shit and I was just sat there in wolf form occasionally throwing a lightning shield on his sonya too.
Weird in most games supports are the one holding the team together countering the big play of the enemy team, just like in Heroes, making plays is for damage dealers, because they have most of their concentration on the enemy team. You want a support who can counter an enemy play or support a big play of your team. Its just better then having your healer have to do a big play. Because that means they have to concentrate the enemy and their own team. Yeah those characters have the highest skill cap, but they usually fail at their support duty. Of couse you can overbuff them, Since no one will ever play them at their full potential. And if they aren't overbuffed people will stick to pure supports. Especially in a 5v5 game, where you don't have many spots available for supports. And well in Heroes a team wipe lategame means usually a loss. So you want a healer that can stop a wombo combo. Not one that starts it. I mean we had Tassadar as supports that can have a rather high impact. But people liked to not call them supports at that time.
On May 29 2016 01:11 Hellonslaught wrote: Funny cuz in LoL, supports are often the ones who make the big plays. Blizzard is doing something really wrong.
I've said this before, but I'll continue to repeat it. Comparing HotS supports to supports in other MOBAs is meaningless, because HotS supports fill a completely different role than supports in DotA/LoL ("is a strong healer" vs "effective without farm).
On May 29 2016 01:37 ThomasjServo wrote: I would get to feeling jilted if I had to hear all day about how Rich was wrecking shit and I was just sat there in wolf form occasionally throwing a lightning shield on his sonya too.
I think this is basically the biggest issue - it's really hard to see an impact of a healer over the course of the game. The positioning, the mechanics, and the teamfight awareness is just as hard as a support as an assassin.
When you play well a support, your assassin gets all the credit since they're the ones that did the damage. And when you play poorly, your assassin gets all the blame, cause they're the ones that died.
Even if the support had full control over whether or not their team would win/lose a fight, it's incredibly hard to accurately credit/blame the support - which I think is the basis for why people feel like "support are just healbots" and "supports can't carry games".
It's the same as most sports. In football, you don't necessarily see how Paul Pogba (midfielder) had 90% pass accuracy, X intercepts, ran 15 KMs and basically crushed the opponent team. People see who scored, and maybe who made the last pass. But one who knows the game will know how good that guy was. His teammates know how much he made them win. This is enough. Don't try to make idiots understand how good you are with a support, it's a waste of time. The occasionnal noob will only want to play Ronaldo, Messi or Ibrahimovic (Assassin) but a good midfielder makes or breaks a team. The occasionnal noob won't understand everything the support did and will think he carried. I personnaly don't care. I've played multiple games carried by: Tyrande, Tassadar, Rehgar, Brightwing, Morales, DPS Malfurion, Uther, Kharazim and Lili. While typing this I remembered games where the named support carried. In the end I named them all. :D
On May 28 2016 05:31 Slydie wrote: Is it only me, or is the game disgustingly balanced right now? Acording to hotslogs, every hero except Chromie packed from 44,5% to 55,1 % atm! You can't possibly ask for more, and the next patch and hero can only make it worse!
It's been like that since the 3rd or so nerf to Ming. The thing is thanks to bans and Blizzard getting better at balancing, HL is quite nice at the moment. And since the new releases are mostly assassins / specs they don't throw the game off balance.
On May 29 2016 01:11 Hellonslaught wrote: Funny cuz in LoL, supports are often the ones who make the big plays. Blizzard is doing something really wrong.
The difference in LoL and Heroes is the life sustain on the damage dealers. Life steal and whatever the spell equivalent was allow LoL damage dealers to heal themselves, especially when they are fed. Heroes damage dealers don't have that, so they need another source of healing, which means supports are essentially forced to be healbots.
You could probably change that without Blizzard changing any heroes by only taking damage dealers with life steal talents and skill them for self sustain while only using tyrael or tassadar to shield against the burst, but it's not as reliable. Damage dealers and some of the bruisers and tanks need more ways to sustain themselves before we can have non-healbot supports.
I don't think they will make non-healing supports any more viable than they currently are as solo supports. I can see more Tyrande/Tassadar style supports that can do decent damage and lesser healing, but if the heroes who primarily contribute thru their healing are no longer considered the best solo support option, then those heroes will be obsolete. Medivh can invulnerable a target thru burst and if the other heroes had self sustain it might be enough in some match ups, but I suspect he will still be paired with another support like Tyrande or Tassadar in most pro games.
I guess with Medivh the meta will switch towards double supports a lot more. Right now a lot of people want to double support, I have to explain in evey single draft that I want to solo support as Tyrande and "No, I don't want you to play your beautiful 15 € Transformer-skin Tassadar, if you want to solo heal go for it or let me have my Tyrande you damn robot. ".
Thing is, double support doesn't work very much at rank 1-5 as far as I can tell, maybe Medivh will add something new to the table. (won 2 today as solo heal Tyrande, one of these games the opponent went double support Rehgar+Uther)
On May 31 2016 22:34 Leolio wrote: I guess with Medivh the meta will switch towards double supports a lot more. Right now a lot of people want to double support, I have to explain in evey single draft that I want to solo support as Tyrande and "No, I don't want you to play your beautiful 15 € Transformer-skin Tassadar, if you want to solo heal go for it or let me have my Tyrande you damn robot. ".
Thing is, double support doesn't work very much at rank 1-5 as far as I can tell, maybe Medivh will add something new to the table. (won 2 today as solo heal Tyrande, one of these games the opponent went double support Rehgar+Uther)
Rehgar Uther isnt a good dual supp combo though.
Dual supp usually had Tyrande or Tassadar at the basis, with a second main support.
Yeah I think if you're gonna run double support you need to be sure one of the two of them can do good damage, either to players or as wave clear - Tyrande does the first and Tass the second.
I love playing double healer against AA as Lili, going full blind damage build. Very good sustain damage in teamfights, and blinds and healing for support. In my experience both ults can work based on the situation, too.
double support needs a different team setup and talents. So it doesn't bring alot to the table if you just go standard with the other 3 heroes and do the usual blind banning. Also doesn't help against burst comps. Before the recent nerfs to stun you could play Lili as a second support/tank vs stun heavy comps. But they nerfed Lili alongside the stuns T.T .
Medivh isn't a support, right? He's a specialist. Despite the fact he will contribute more like a support.
Either way, I think we will see comps with him built around going absolutely ham, with lots of melee etc to make use of his engage. Supports that can keep up with this will be the most important - that means Rehgar will be top support for Medivh, imo.
On May 31 2016 23:40 Larkin wrote: Medivh isn't a support, right? He's a specialist. Despite the fact he will contribute more like a support.
Either way, I think we will see comps with him built around going absolutely ham, with lots of melee etc to make use of his engage. Supports that can keep up with this will be the most important - that means Rehgar will be top support for Medivh, imo.
I'm more thinking of Monk, making it sth like Medivh, Monk, Thrall, ETC/Mura/Joh and some AoE poker like KT/Luna
Guys, I can't wait until these ladder changes are implemented.
* No more silenced players * No more seeing rank 1 medic paired with rank 30 etc. * Maybe with no more silenced players, people will be less salty because silence is an actual punishment?
What kind of comps do you think Anub is best in? Im thnking of trying to specialize more in Warrior for a bit.
Is he best in double warrior comps with a Bruiser like Sonya or a disruptor like ETC or a straight tank like Johanna? Is he best with double support comps? Is he best with melee heavy dive comps?
So hes more of a take-against than a build-around?
Is he generally better vs. double supports or double warriors? Or is he just pretty fine vs. non-AA, bad against AA, and great against Mage as a general rule?
On June 01 2016 05:34 Zambrah wrote: So hes more of a take-against than a build-around?
Is he generally better vs. double supports or double warriors? Or is he just pretty fine vs. non-AA, bad against AA, and great against Mage as a general rule?
He has good dive and good poke, so I don't think you need to build around him per-se. But many of his skills(dampen magic, cocoon) work especially well against particular types of enemies, so that's why I think of him as a counter pick. [Or at least--- a pick if you want to discourage specific types of drafting later in the draft]
Well, by build around I mean more like a generally solid option like Muradin. I suppose a real build-around hero is one like Illidan.
Well I'll stick to playing him in QM for now anyways, I'll take him into HL when I know more about the 'ol Underking after actually playing him vs. a variety of heroes
On May 31 2016 22:34 Leolio wrote: I guess with Medivh the meta will switch towards double supports a lot more. Right now a lot of people want to double support, I have to explain in evey single draft that I want to solo support as Tyrande and "No, I don't want you to play your beautiful 15 € Transformer-skin Tassadar, if you want to solo heal go for it or let me have my Tyrande you damn robot. ".
Thing is, double support doesn't work very much at rank 1-5 as far as I can tell, maybe Medivh will add something new to the table. (won 2 today as solo heal Tyrande, one of these games the opponent went double support Rehgar+Uther)
Tyrande Tass is great though! Assuming your team isn't dumb and actually picks 2 solid teamfighting dps with some decent waveclear and a tank, I think it works at pretty much any level HL (pro idk).
Nothing worse than having a tyrande tass combo and having a late pick assassin switch to az/xul/sylv/any other spec cause they don't see the "specialist" tag in your comp and therefore think that is what the team needs. Tass has good waveclear, and you just have to make due with the utility your team has elsewhere in the place of a true spec. You also can't pick nova/zer/chromie either for that reason though --- you can struggle pretty hard in lane.
With so many assassins that have solid lane presence (some can waveclear pretty much instantly), its not that hard to get a good comp with tass tryande, but people love specs and cloaks so you can end up with some really bad comps as well.
Unranked Draft Mode and a little bit of mmr changes incoming. All a bit too late I'm afraid. This needed to happen a year ago, now it will probably just segment the queues even more and lead to even less 3k+ partners to get matched with. I get a single player higher mmr than me once every couple of games as is and I'm only 3500. I can't imagine what it's going to be like when that number is split again.
For real. A year ago the two-man restriction on heroleague was awful for me since I couldn't play with my RL friends together as a group except in QM. Surprise! They all quit the game since getting exactly 5 for TL was always so rare and QM is not fun in the long term, so now this mode is worthless to me.
Perhaps most revealing is in the developer comments: "Chromie is the type of Hero who .... is very inconsistent. She’ll always be that way to a degree, which is by design. "
Sounds to me like they gave the keys over to whoever designed sgt hammer. I guess chromie will be permanently at the bottom of the winrate pile
Idk, I think it is by design and makes sense - you literally have to predict the future to land your skillshots with her effectively, which I think is cool. The fact they have made those shots do even more damage means that skilled Chromie players will really be able to decimate.
I agree with Larkin, shes inconsistent but only as inconsistent as your skills let her be. Every skillshot is inconsistent, Chromie is just more inconsistent than most, has a ginormous skill ceiling. :D
She's definitely gonna be on the bottom of the pile though, heroes with ginormous skill ceilings and really high skill floors in the way Chromie is probably won't see competitive play without being able to 1-shot people in a way that makes her too good when played well enough.
I think Peer into the Future, Bronze Talons, Chrono Sickness, Slowing Sands could be a good start for her. Bronze Talons is gonna be stronger because of the shorter cooldown on Sand Blast. Just hitting the tank every time with Sand Blast and an empowered auto will be pretty good damage. Slowing Sands is basically a ward that you can keep placing every time you are gonna stop somewhere for a moment. Combine that with Peer into the Future and you have a lot of opportunity to know where your enemies are. Against a dive comp, having Slowing Sands already set up in your own back line is helpful. Most heroes who dive can dive in past Slowing Sands, but if they have to use their dive to get past your front line and then deal with Slowing Sands, they can have problems. Chrono Sickness is really strong as well but hasn't seen as much play due to people wanting a bigger combo or better wave clear. It's really strong for early game skirmishes. And now with 2.5 sec Sand Blasts, you should be able to Sand Blast as soon as they come out and have a second Sand Blast at the end of the 50% slow.
Pocket of Time is pretty nuts, as 70% slow is on another level than 50%. Andorhal Anomaly actually becomes pretty attractive when you have Chrono Sickness. You can really ward up an area or put traps all over your back line. The 2 second stasis is not necessarily helpful, but when combined with 3 sec 50% slow, it is. But if you don't need much control or protection, then Past and Future Me is also buffed as Sand Blast is buffed.
Basically, she can have a ton of utility and control while doing pretty good sustained damage and still having good burst when Dragon's Breath is available. The way she's currently played is: ineffectually chip away at tank or almost kill a back line but not quite and then go back to ineffectual chipping, while contributing nothing to anyone else's damage or safety, and dying instantly when someone gets to her. The way I want to see her played: control and safety and setting up team kills with Peer, Chrono Sickness and Slowing Sands, constantly use Sand Blast and empowered auto on the safest/easiest target, use Dragon's Breath on cooldown to clear waves, and in team fights save Dragon's Breath for a CC'd squishy target or as a finishing blow on any target.
On June 03 2016 01:01 NonY wrote: I think Peer into the Future, Bronze Talons, Chrono Sickness, Slowing Sands could be a good start for her. Bronze Talons is gonna be stronger because of the shorter cooldown on Sand Blast. Just hitting the tank every time with Sand Blast and an empowered auto will be pretty good damage. Slowing Sands is basically a ward that you can keep placing every time you are gonna stop somewhere for a moment. Combine that with Peer into the Future and you have a lot of opportunity to know where your enemies are. Against a dive comp, having Slowing Sands already set up in your own back line is helpful. Most heroes who dive can dive in past Slowing Sands, but if they have to use their dive to get past your front line and then deal with Slowing Sands, they can have problems. Chrono Sickness is really strong as well but hasn't seen as much play due to people wanting a bigger combo or better wave clear. It's really strong for early game skirmishes. And now with 2.5 sec Sand Blasts, you should be able to Sand Blast as soon as they come out and have a second Sand Blast at the end of the 50% slow.
Pocket of Time is pretty nuts, as 70% slow is on another level than 50%. Andorhal Anomaly actually becomes pretty attractive when you have Chrono Sickness. You can really ward up an area or put traps all over your back line. The 2 second stasis is not necessarily helpful, but when combined with 3 sec 50% slow, it is. But if you don't need much control or protection, then Past and Future Me is also buffed as Sand Blast is buffed.
Basically, she can have a ton of utility and control while doing pretty good sustained damage and still having good burst when Dragon's Breath is available. The way she's currently played is: ineffectually chip away at tank or almost kill a back line but not quite and then go back to ineffectual chipping, while contributing nothing to anyone else's damage or safety, and dying instantly when someone gets to her. The way I want to see her played: control and safety and setting up team kills with Peer, Chrono Sickness and Slowing Sands, constantly use Sand Blast and empowered auto on the safest/easiest target, use Dragon's Breath on cooldown to clear waves, and in team fights save Dragon's Breath for a CC'd squishy target or as a finishing blow on any target.
Is Peer basically farsight like on Rehgar or is the area bigger.
On June 03 2016 01:01 NonY wrote: I think Peer into the Future, Bronze Talons, Chrono Sickness, Slowing Sands could be a good start for her. Bronze Talons is gonna be stronger because of the shorter cooldown on Sand Blast. Just hitting the tank every time with Sand Blast and an empowered auto will be pretty good damage. Slowing Sands is basically a ward that you can keep placing every time you are gonna stop somewhere for a moment. Combine that with Peer into the Future and you have a lot of opportunity to know where your enemies are. Against a dive comp, having Slowing Sands already set up in your own back line is helpful. Most heroes who dive can dive in past Slowing Sands, but if they have to use their dive to get past your front line and then deal with Slowing Sands, they can have problems. Chrono Sickness is really strong as well but hasn't seen as much play due to people wanting a bigger combo or better wave clear. It's really strong for early game skirmishes. And now with 2.5 sec Sand Blasts, you should be able to Sand Blast as soon as they come out and have a second Sand Blast at the end of the 50% slow.
Pocket of Time is pretty nuts, as 70% slow is on another level than 50%. Andorhal Anomaly actually becomes pretty attractive when you have Chrono Sickness. You can really ward up an area or put traps all over your back line. The 2 second stasis is not necessarily helpful, but when combined with 3 sec 50% slow, it is. But if you don't need much control or protection, then Past and Future Me is also buffed as Sand Blast is buffed.
Basically, she can have a ton of utility and control while doing pretty good sustained damage and still having good burst when Dragon's Breath is available. The way she's currently played is: ineffectually chip away at tank or almost kill a back line but not quite and then go back to ineffectual chipping, while contributing nothing to anyone else's damage or safety, and dying instantly when someone gets to her. The way I want to see her played: control and safety and setting up team kills with Peer, Chrono Sickness and Slowing Sands, constantly use Sand Blast and empowered auto on the safest/easiest target, use Dragon's Breath on cooldown to clear waves, and in team fights save Dragon's Breath for a CC'd squishy target or as a finishing blow on any target.
Is Peer basically farsight like on Rehgar or is the area bigger.
Same area, just the tweaked numbers (Peer lasts for 2 sec, has 25 sec CD. Farsight lasts for 10 sec, has 30 sec CD. Both reveal heroes for 4 sec).
Peer is just really great to have at level 1, first of all to make level 1 fight have a higher chance of success, and for defending against roaming ganks all throughout early laning phase of games, brush checking, and for securing kills. The other talents have essentially 0 impact on the game until much later, while Peer can continue to have a huge impact late game. Also nice utility against stealth heroes.
If you feel unthreatened and you think sustained poke will be powerful on a particular map or against a particular team comp, then Compounding Aether, Piercing Sands, (Mobius Loop), (Slowing Sands), Reaching Through Time, Shifting Sands build can do a ton of work. But I feel like that's actually kind of rare, unless you're able to last pick Chromie against a comp that'll allow you to do that. Like if they have no real threat to you in a team fight and having a weaker early game won't be a problem. Otherwise, Peer into the Future, Bronze Talons and Chrono Sickness are gonna get way more work done for most early game skirmishes.
On June 03 2016 01:01 NonY wrote: I think Peer into the Future, Bronze Talons, Chrono Sickness, Slowing Sands could be a good start for her. Bronze Talons is gonna be stronger because of the shorter cooldown on Sand Blast. Just hitting the tank every time with Sand Blast and an empowered auto will be pretty good damage. Slowing Sands is basically a ward that you can keep placing every time you are gonna stop somewhere for a moment. Combine that with Peer into the Future and you have a lot of opportunity to know where your enemies are. Against a dive comp, having Slowing Sands already set up in your own back line is helpful. Most heroes who dive can dive in past Slowing Sands, but if they have to use their dive to get past your front line and then deal with Slowing Sands, they can have problems. Chrono Sickness is really strong as well but hasn't seen as much play due to people wanting a bigger combo or better wave clear. It's really strong for early game skirmishes. And now with 2.5 sec Sand Blasts, you should be able to Sand Blast as soon as they come out and have a second Sand Blast at the end of the 50% slow.
Pocket of Time is pretty nuts, as 70% slow is on another level than 50%. Andorhal Anomaly actually becomes pretty attractive when you have Chrono Sickness. You can really ward up an area or put traps all over your back line. The 2 second stasis is not necessarily helpful, but when combined with 3 sec 50% slow, it is. But if you don't need much control or protection, then Past and Future Me is also buffed as Sand Blast is buffed.
Basically, she can have a ton of utility and control while doing pretty good sustained damage and still having good burst when Dragon's Breath is available. The way she's currently played is: ineffectually chip away at tank or almost kill a back line but not quite and then go back to ineffectual chipping, while contributing nothing to anyone else's damage or safety, and dying instantly when someone gets to her. The way I want to see her played: control and safety and setting up team kills with Peer, Chrono Sickness and Slowing Sands, constantly use Sand Blast and empowered auto on the safest/easiest target, use Dragon's Breath on cooldown to clear waves, and in team fights save Dragon's Breath for a CC'd squishy target or as a finishing blow on any target.
Is Peer basically farsight like on Rehgar or is the area bigger.
Same area, just the tweaked numbers (Peer lasts for 2 sec, has 25 sec CD. Farsight lasts for 10 sec, has 30 sec CD. Both reveal heroes for 4 sec).
Peer is just really great to have at level 1, first of all to make level 1 fight have a higher chance of success, and for defending against roaming ganks all throughout early laning phase of games, brush checking, and for securing kills. The other talents have essentially 0 impact on the game until much later, while Peer can continue to have a huge impact late game. Also nice utility against stealth heroes.
If you feel unthreatened and you think sustained poke will be powerful on a particular map or against a particular team comp, then Compounding Aether, Piercing Sands, (Mobius Loop), (Slowing Sands), Reaching Through Time, Shifting Sands build can do a ton of work. But I feel like that's actually kind of rare, unless you're able to last pick Chromie against a comp that'll allow you to do that. Like if they have no real threat to you in a team fight and having a weaker early game won't be a problem. Otherwise, Peer into the Future, Bronze Talons and Chrono Sickness are gonna get way more work done for most early game skirmishes.
Interesting, i really never gave that level 1 talent any consideration but I can see it being useful for sure. As for level 19, I'm a huge proponent of Andorhal. It becomes even better if your teammates prove to pay attention to your traps, but a slowing sands circile+3 time traps around objectives=just a fuckin' nightmare for the opposing team to engage over.
I'm going to play at a buddy's house this weekend, I'll have to give Peer a go.
I might just stubbornly pick Chromie in HL and if people complain, I'll just tell them who cares it's the end of preseason. I don't think anyone will really get upset. I really want to play her a lot in some decent games and QM does not provide.
On June 03 2016 03:30 NonY wrote: I might just stubbornly pick Chromie in HL and if people complain, I'll just tell them who cares it's the end of preseason. I don't think anyone will really get upset. I really want to play her a lot in some decent games and QM does not provide.
It also gives a jaded perspective of things as well. I've found that she can do pretty well in QM when you both spawn healerless.
Your poke is so good that when you land those combinations you just soften everyone up to the point where it is difficult to stick around for long.
Did you see my post earlier though about playing her with as few auto attacks as possible? What do you think? I liked Bronze Talons to start, but find that when I'm in range even an extended AA range she is too vulnerable.
On June 03 2016 03:30 NonY wrote: I might just stubbornly pick Chromie in HL and if people complain, I'll just tell them who cares it's the end of preseason. I don't think anyone will really get upset. I really want to play her a lot in some decent games and QM does not provide.
It also gives a jaded perspective of things as well. I've found that she can do pretty well in QM when you both spawn healerless.
Your poke is so good that when you land those combinations you just soften everyone up to the point where it is difficult to stick around for long.
Did you see my post earlier though about playing her with as few auto attacks as possible? What do you think? I liked Bronze Talons to start, but find that when I'm in range even an extended AA range she is too vulnerable.
I think bronze talons is clunky since I'm pretty sure casting your Q stuns you for long enough that you miss out on an auto attack. It's not like other followthroughs where you can weave your spells into your autos.
Then again, you gotta compare it to the other options. If you're not likely going to use the piercing Q or larger E effectively, then you are not losing much with an empowered auto attack.
Oh I like the Chromie changes. Time to train without loop. Auto attack Q auto attack is nice, if you know the target will be stunned soon. I need the larger E though I am not that accurate ^^; .
On June 03 2016 04:09 MotherFox wrote: Then again, you gotta compare it to the other options. If you're not likely going to use the piercing Q or larger E effectively, then you are not losing much with an empowered auto attack.
It surprises me that people seem to be undervaluing piercing Q. It's pretty easy to use piercing Q effectively - you just aim your Q on the backline champions you want to hit, and you'll wind up hitting them instead of just accidentally hitting the tank in front of them.
Chromie's biggest issue is when she's played as a poke instead of a burst mage. Mostly because "poke" doesn't stick enough in this game to be meaningful due to healers. Being able to reliably hit your burst on squishy targets is important, and piercing Q is by far the most effective talent at that tier for doing that.
On June 03 2016 04:09 MotherFox wrote: Then again, you gotta compare it to the other options. If you're not likely going to use the piercing Q or larger E effectively, then you are not losing much with an empowered auto attack.
It surprises me that people seem to be undervaluing piercing Q. It's pretty easy to use piercing Q effectively - you just aim your Q on the backline champions you want to hit, and you'll wind up hitting them instead of just accidentally hitting the tank in front of them.
Chromie's biggest issue is when she's played as a poke instead of a burst mage. Mostly because "poke" doesn't stick enough in this game to be meaningful due to healers. Being able to reliably hit your burst on squishy targets is important, and piercing Q is by far the most effective talent at that tier for doing that.
In my experience, landing the skill shots is the bigger problem than a tank body blocking them. If your target isn't CC'd or on a predictable path, which they probably won't be if you're relying on Piercing to get your Q there in the first place (there's a tank disrupting you), then it's really hard. Chromie landing Q and W simultaneously on the same squishy target is definitely a powerful thing, but it's not nearly reliable enough to make that the thing justifying her spot on a team comp.
Bronze Talons is a very good talent for increasing your reliable burst. It's a pretty big stretch to say that Piercing is "by far the most effective" when Bronze Talons is so good at it as well, and undeniably better in a lot of common real game scenarios. Virtually any time your target is in the extended auto attack range radius, it performs better. And when your preferred target isn't, then you resort to kiting back and killing the warrior, which you're much more effective at with Bronze Talons. Kiting back and killing the tank is something a lot of DPS heroes must resort to anyway. If you don't contribute to whittling down the tank at all, and you fail to kill or bring an enemy squishy so low that they must retreat, then you've contributed nothing to the fight.
How often can you really knock out back line squishies? I feel like that's the trap everyone fell into when playing her in the first place that resulted in 30% win rate.
Well I'm sure people will certainly be trying to play her that way so if it works then we'll know. I think it's better to take the guaranteed damage every time (and build her for that) unless you're trying for a finishing blow then you might consider going for the long shot to get a kill.
ye Talons are really nice especially if your team lacks slows and if you played chromie to little, so your spells aren't on point most of the time. I think she needs alot of playtime to get consistent enough with her. But then she becomes insane. Doubt to many will invest that much time into her, so everyone will be: "no this hero sucks I will now play like crap to make sure my opinion gets validated !"
Piercing can be nice too though, because while you slap the tank with your Qs, the backline has to dodge as well. I think Chromie has alot of Talent options, that make her more consistent or stronger, but never switch up her playstyle.
On June 03 2016 04:09 MotherFox wrote: Then again, you gotta compare it to the other options. If you're not likely going to use the piercing Q or larger E effectively, then you are not losing much with an empowered auto attack.
It surprises me that people seem to be undervaluing piercing Q. It's pretty easy to use piercing Q effectively - you just aim your Q on the backline champions you want to hit, and you'll wind up hitting them instead of just accidentally hitting the tank in front of them.
Chromie's biggest issue is when she's played as a poke instead of a burst mage. Mostly because "poke" doesn't stick enough in this game to be meaningful due to healers. Being able to reliably hit your burst on squishy targets is important, and piercing Q is by far the most effective talent at that tier for doing that.
In my experience, landing the skill shots is the bigger problem than a tank body blocking them. If your target isn't CC'd or on a predictable path, which they probably won't be if you're relying on Piercing to get your Q there in the first place (there's a tank disrupting you), then it's really hard. Chromie landing Q and W simultaneously on the same squishy target is definitely a powerful thing, but it's not nearly reliable enough to make that the thing justifying her spot on a team comp.
Bronze Talons is a very good talent for increasing your reliable burst. It's a pretty big stretch to say that Piercing is "by far the most effective" when Bronze Talons is so good at it as well, and undeniably better in a lot of common real game scenarios. Virtually any time your target is in the extended auto attack range radius, it performs better. And when your preferred target isn't, then you resort to kiting back and killing the warrior, which you're much more effective at with Bronze Talons. Kiting back and killing the tank is something a lot of DPS heroes must resort to anyway. If you don't contribute to whittling down the tank at all, and you fail to kill or bring an enemy squishy so low that they must retreat, then you've contributed nothing to the fight.
How often can you really knock out back line squishies? I feel like that's the trap everyone fell into when playing her in the first place that resulted in 30% win rate.
Well I'm sure people will certainly be trying to play her that way so if it works then we'll know. I think it's better to take the guaranteed damage every time (and build her for that) unless you're trying for a finishing blow then you might consider going for the long shot to get a kill.
I specifically mentioned that Piercing is the best for more reliably hitting your Q on squishy targets, which can't be too wrong (I can't imagine it's particularly safe for Chromie to be autoing a ranged assassin in a teamfight).
Though I actually haven't tried Bronze Talons - I'm mostly just theory crafting. I'll try it sometime tonight to see how it feels before commenting much more about it.
I think the trap that people fell into was thinking Chromie's strength/niche was "strong poke mage" - something that would actually be really strong in other mobas, but isn't worth much in hots.
On June 03 2016 04:09 MotherFox wrote: Then again, you gotta compare it to the other options. If you're not likely going to use the piercing Q or larger E effectively, then you are not losing much with an empowered auto attack.
It surprises me that people seem to be undervaluing piercing Q. It's pretty easy to use piercing Q effectively - you just aim your Q on the backline champions you want to hit, and you'll wind up hitting them instead of just accidentally hitting the tank in front of them.
Chromie's biggest issue is when she's played as a poke instead of a burst mage. Mostly because "poke" doesn't stick enough in this game to be meaningful due to healers. Being able to reliably hit your burst on squishy targets is important, and piercing Q is by far the most effective talent at that tier for doing that.
In my experience, landing the skill shots is the bigger problem than a tank body blocking them. If your target isn't CC'd or on a predictable path, which they probably won't be if you're relying on Piercing to get your Q there in the first place (there's a tank disrupting you), then it's really hard. Chromie landing Q and W simultaneously on the same squishy target is definitely a powerful thing, but it's not nearly reliable enough to make that the thing justifying her spot on a team comp.
Bronze Talons is a very good talent for increasing your reliable burst. It's a pretty big stretch to say that Piercing is "by far the most effective" when Bronze Talons is so good at it as well, and undeniably better in a lot of common real game scenarios. Virtually any time your target is in the extended auto attack range radius, it performs better. And when your preferred target isn't, then you resort to kiting back and killing the warrior, which you're much more effective at with Bronze Talons. Kiting back and killing the tank is something a lot of DPS heroes must resort to anyway. If you don't contribute to whittling down the tank at all, and you fail to kill or bring an enemy squishy so low that they must retreat, then you've contributed nothing to the fight.
How often can you really knock out back line squishies? I feel like that's the trap everyone fell into when playing her in the first place that resulted in 30% win rate.
Well I'm sure people will certainly be trying to play her that way so if it works then we'll know. I think it's better to take the guaranteed damage every time (and build her for that) unless you're trying for a finishing blow then you might consider going for the long shot to get a kill.
I specifically mentioned that Piercing is the best for more reliably hitting your Q on squishy targets, which can't be too wrong (I can't imagine it's particularly safe for Chromie to be autoing a ranged assassin in a teamfight).
Though I actually haven't tried Bronze Talons - I'm mostly just theory crafting. I'll try it sometime tonight to see how it feels before commenting much more about it.
I think the trap that people fell into was thinking Chromie's strength/niche was "strong poke mage" - something that would actually be really strong in other mobas, but isn't worth much in hots.
Yeah I know you meant specifically squishy targets. But I think the idea of an obvious team fight situation is weighing too much on your mind when imagining what talents get the most work done. On a lot of maps, especially before the late game, fights happen in smaller numbers where the tank might not even be present. Where walking forward as a squishy doesn't necessarily mean death. People trickle in toward objectives, not all set up waiting 5v5, or there are multiple objectives up at once. Some people die, some go back for fountain, etc. Most of the maps are conducive to fights like this, or what I'd rather call skirmishes. Things get chaotic around objectives. Q + auto, in my experience, makes for much more reliable damage on high priority targets in these situations than Piercing does.
During this phase of the game, Peer and especially Bronze Talons are getting wayyyyy more work done than someone working on Compounding Aether (zero benefit) and Piercing Sands (not enough enemy hero density for it to even come into play much). Also during this phase of the game, tanks are a lot easier to kill. If your team can't help you kill their back line, but everyone can contribute to focusing the tank, then the best move might be to maximize damage to the tank.
On Dragon Shire. I was a menace. I took Temporal Loop in this game. Everyone was 3k+ but no one was really good. The high 3k low 4k games play a lot differently so I need experience with her there, but this matchmaking... ;( There are a lot more dangerous heroes to Chromie that they didn't have, but like I said as a last pick, or with the right bans, or with your allies picking counters to Chromie's counters, I don't think she'll necessarily be super niche.
On June 03 2016 03:30 NonY wrote: I might just stubbornly pick Chromie in HL and if people complain, I'll just tell them who cares it's the end of preseason. I don't think anyone will really get upset. I really want to play her a lot in some decent games and QM does not provide.
I think people will complain anyway ;-) , but I'd be interested to hear about the results. I definitely find Chromie interesting, just bought her but not ready to go into competitive play yet. Is the above game HL ?
edit: About Temporal Loop, it seems the goto ultimate to me, you're almost guaranteed to hit your 2 skill shots with this (and a lot of practice ^^). And a lot of survivability of course.
On June 03 2016 03:30 NonY wrote: I might just stubbornly pick Chromie in HL and if people complain, I'll just tell them who cares it's the end of preseason. I don't think anyone will really get upset. I really want to play her a lot in some decent games and QM does not provide.
I think people will complain anyway ;-) , but I'd be interested to hear about the results. I definitely find Chromie interesting, just bought her but not ready to go into competitive play yet. Is the above game HL ?
edit: About Temporal Loop, it seems the goto ultimate to me, you're almost guaranteed to hit your 2 skill shots with this (and a lot of practice ^^). And a lot of survivability of course.
I think it is better if you can't rely on your teammates for much, but slowing sands+timetrap with good teammates is just as good if not better.
If you have slippery opponents though, Temporal Loop would be good too. Both her Ults are pretty viable, so you do you boo :p.
Did you keep your time trap out and near you at all times? I think Nova is worse to play against than Zeratul as Chromie, but that is me.
I was watching Cris play her on stream this morning and it bugged me how infrequently it was being used by him. I feel like that is essential to playing safely near damage and dive heroes.
You were right on the money, I didn't use the traps very much. Won the 3 next games, thank you. On stationary objectives, where you can easily predict where the opponent is, she's awesome. So much fun to play, and she helps you anticipate the opponent even better. And the icing on the cake is that nobody knows how to play vs her in QM so unless there's a cloakie or Tracer on the opponent team, you can really kick some ass.
My "complain" would be that the dragon quest takes too long. I know, aim better and it'll take less time. But still a very long one IMO.
So, I only draft chromie on towers of doom, so YMMV.
I use traps extensively, but only for retreating choke points. The advantage of these is I can set up the traps without risking overextending myself. They have the advantage of saving myself/allies frequently. Once I get level 19 I always take the three-trap skill, and that works really well: before the shrines pop up you place three traps around a shrine most of its exit/entrance chokeholds, and you effectively get the shrine since you have a lot of vision/area control around the shrine.
The downside to traps, however, is that they interrupt your skill shots fairly easily. If you for a moment forget a trap is in a location because an ally is standing over it, it's easy to get your full combo wasted and save an enemy with a trap. I kind of wish the traps would allow the enemy to take damage from chromie's abilities while they are in them: since the trap's duration is the same as chromie's windup time it's not very abusable, but would prevent chromie's abilities from canceling each other out.
On June 04 2016 01:06 MotherFox wrote: So, I only draft chromie on towers of doom, so YMMV.
I use traps extensively, but only for retreating choke points. The advantage of these is I can set up the traps without risking overextending myself. They have the advantage of saving myself/allies frequently. Once I get level 19 I always take the three-trap skill, and that works really well: before the shrines pop up you place three traps around a shrine most of its exit/entrance chokeholds, and you effectively get the shrine since you have a lot of vision/area control around the shrine.
The downside to traps, however, is that they interrupt your skill shots fairly easily. If you for a moment forget a trap is in a location because an ally is standing over it, it's easy to get your full combo wasted and save an enemy with a trap. I kind of wish the traps would allow the enemy to take damage from chromie's abilities while they are in them: since the trap's duration is the same as chromie's windup time it's not very abusable, but would prevent chromie's abilities from canceling each other out.
The amount of times I've thought I timed the WQ combo so it would just hit them leaving the trap and it protected them I cannot count. I think that would be a bit too strong if she could guarantee someone takes the full brunt of her combination then possibly the Bronze Talents AA on top of it? Would be a bit crazy.
Agree entirely that 3x Traps is the way to go, but I think they are super useful in lane as your pivot point. Keeping them slightly to the side so they don't get taken out too easily to buy you 2 more seconds to get to the gate if need be.
On June 04 2016 01:06 MotherFox wrote: So, I only draft chromie on towers of doom, so YMMV.
I use traps extensively, but only for retreating choke points. The advantage of these is I can set up the traps without risking overextending myself. They have the advantage of saving myself/allies frequently. Once I get level 19 I always take the three-trap skill, and that works really well: before the shrines pop up you place three traps around a shrine most of its exit/entrance chokeholds, and you effectively get the shrine since you have a lot of vision/area control around the shrine.
The downside to traps, however, is that they interrupt your skill shots fairly easily. If you for a moment forget a trap is in a location because an ally is standing over it, it's easy to get your full combo wasted and save an enemy with a trap. I kind of wish the traps would allow the enemy to take damage from chromie's abilities while they are in them: since the trap's duration is the same as chromie's windup time it's not very abusable, but would prevent chromie's abilities from canceling each other out.
The amount of times I've thought I timed the WQ combo so it would just hit them leaving the trap and it protected them I cannot count.
I'm surprised at this. Generally I combo as soon as I see someone in the trap, and it will just barely hit them on getting out. The time it takes me to move towards my trap and then activate my abilities is ~ the same time as the stasis duration.
If it helps any: there is a small clock displayed above the target both for the stasis and the time-lapse ult. For the time lapse ult, for instance, if you combo as soon as the clock hits the 6 o'clock position, you will perfectly hit them when they appear in the sand. You can use testing mode to figure out when you need to do the combo for you to hit it perfectly for both effects. (and I recommend this, as it makes it more calculated and less "by feeling")
On June 04 2016 01:06 MotherFox wrote: So, I only draft chromie on towers of doom, so YMMV.
I use traps extensively, but only for retreating choke points. The advantage of these is I can set up the traps without risking overextending myself. They have the advantage of saving myself/allies frequently. Once I get level 19 I always take the three-trap skill, and that works really well: before the shrines pop up you place three traps around a shrine most of its exit/entrance chokeholds, and you effectively get the shrine since you have a lot of vision/area control around the shrine.
The downside to traps, however, is that they interrupt your skill shots fairly easily. If you for a moment forget a trap is in a location because an ally is standing over it, it's easy to get your full combo wasted and save an enemy with a trap. I kind of wish the traps would allow the enemy to take damage from chromie's abilities while they are in them: since the trap's duration is the same as chromie's windup time it's not very abusable, but would prevent chromie's abilities from canceling each other out.
The amount of times I've thought I timed the WQ combo so it would just hit them leaving the trap and it protected them I cannot count.
I'm surprised at this. Generally I combo as soon as I see someone in the trap, and it will just barely hit them on getting out. The time it takes me to move towards my trap and then activate my abilities is ~ the same time as the stasis duration.
If it helps any: there is a small clock displayed above the target both for the stasis and the time-lapse ult. For the time lapse ult, for instance, if you combo as soon as the clock hits the 6 o'clock position, you will perfectly hit them when they appear in the sand. You can use testing mode to figure out when you need to do the combo for you to hit it perfectly for both effects. (and I recommend this, as it makes it more calculated and less "by feeling")
Might depend on latency? 2 sec trap, dragon takes 1.5 sec, so with low latency you want to cast when the clock is at 3:00. For temporal loop, at 6:00.
edit: oops, didnt complete my thought here. for high latency, those markings might not work, so you'd do at like 1:30 for trap (which is pretty much asap) and 4:30 for temporal
On June 04 2016 01:06 MotherFox wrote: So, I only draft chromie on towers of doom, so YMMV.
I use traps extensively, but only for retreating choke points. The advantage of these is I can set up the traps without risking overextending myself. They have the advantage of saving myself/allies frequently. Once I get level 19 I always take the three-trap skill, and that works really well: before the shrines pop up you place three traps around a shrine most of its exit/entrance chokeholds, and you effectively get the shrine since you have a lot of vision/area control around the shrine.
The downside to traps, however, is that they interrupt your skill shots fairly easily. If you for a moment forget a trap is in a location because an ally is standing over it, it's easy to get your full combo wasted and save an enemy with a trap. I kind of wish the traps would allow the enemy to take damage from chromie's abilities while they are in them: since the trap's duration is the same as chromie's windup time it's not very abusable, but would prevent chromie's abilities from canceling each other out.
The amount of times I've thought I timed the WQ combo so it would just hit them leaving the trap and it protected them I cannot count.
I'm surprised at this. Generally I combo as soon as I see someone in the trap, and it will just barely hit them on getting out. The time it takes me to move towards my trap and then activate my abilities is ~ the same time as the stasis duration.
If it helps any: there is a small clock displayed above the target both for the stasis and the time-lapse ult. For the time lapse ult, for instance, if you combo as soon as the clock hits the 6 o'clock position, you will perfectly hit them when they appear in the sand. You can use testing mode to figure out when you need to do the combo for you to hit it perfectly for both effects. (and I recommend this, as it makes it more calculated and less "by feeling")
I'll have to try this tonight, I'm going to a buddies to "LAN" sans LAN hots tomorrow night, I want to practice up because Imma play chromie all night.
On June 04 2016 01:06 MotherFox wrote: So, I only draft chromie on towers of doom, so YMMV.
I use traps extensively, but only for retreating choke points. The advantage of these is I can set up the traps without risking overextending myself. They have the advantage of saving myself/allies frequently. Once I get level 19 I always take the three-trap skill, and that works really well: before the shrines pop up you place three traps around a shrine most of its exit/entrance chokeholds, and you effectively get the shrine since you have a lot of vision/area control around the shrine.
The downside to traps, however, is that they interrupt your skill shots fairly easily. If you for a moment forget a trap is in a location because an ally is standing over it, it's easy to get your full combo wasted and save an enemy with a trap. I kind of wish the traps would allow the enemy to take damage from chromie's abilities while they are in them: since the trap's duration is the same as chromie's windup time it's not very abusable, but would prevent chromie's abilities from canceling each other out.
The amount of times I've thought I timed the WQ combo so it would just hit them leaving the trap and it protected them I cannot count.
I'm surprised at this. Generally I combo as soon as I see someone in the trap, and it will just barely hit them on getting out. The time it takes me to move towards my trap and then activate my abilities is ~ the same time as the stasis duration.
If it helps any: there is a small clock displayed above the target both for the stasis and the time-lapse ult. For the time lapse ult, for instance, if you combo as soon as the clock hits the 6 o'clock position, you will perfectly hit them when they appear in the sand. You can use testing mode to figure out when you need to do the combo for you to hit it perfectly for both effects. (and I recommend this, as it makes it more calculated and less "by feeling")
Might depend on latency? 2 sec trap, dragon takes 1.5 sec, so with low latency you want to cast when the clock is at 3:00. For temporal loop, at 6:00.
edit: oops, didnt complete my thought here. for high latency, those markings might not work, so you'd do at like 1:30 for trap (which is pretty much asap) and 4:30 for temporal
You (or at least I) also can't just expect to react to someone stepping in your trap and punishing it. It has to actively be something you're looking for - if you just hear the sound of it activating and try to find where, you're too late. It has to be something you're aware of / looking for in order to react properly to it.
I tried your Peer -> Bronze talon build yesterday, and I'll give you it's probably the best early game build for Chromie. And bronze talons was legit good vs the Tracer I played against one game.
I did miss my Q quest / Piercing Q though later on in some the mid gamey teamfights past level 10. The lack of the power spike I'm used at ~lvl 12 when the Q talent pops along with the extended range felt weird. +15% base damage on Q * 2 targets is legit. Though I'm also probably used to playing that style, and maybe didn't position myself aggressively enough to get the most of Bronze Talons (didn't wind up getting may bronze talon procs off in the later game teamfights).
And not to undermine the chromie game you posted before (I'm actually just curious), but is it reasonable to say that Chromie has to be pretty good vs a solo BW support? Of all the supports people tend to solo with, it feels like BW in particular doesn't have enough focused healing output to mitigate chromie's poke damage.
LOL, look at that comp, holy shit. Shockingly effective, Kharazim put out a ton of damage and the stun+root chains were insane and it was almost impossible to kill anyone since QM no coordination
you don't have to find where. There is an arrow pointing you in the direction of the trapped target and a sound ping and its shown on the minimap. So with a bit of training you can blind Q your traps x3. Still got to move your camera for the W
Bw is the best anti poke healer, because she doesn't spend Mana for it. Sure not much she can do if you constantly hit. But no healer can do something against that much damage. Only weakpoint of BW is her self heal against poke damage. In Chromies case however easy to dodge for BW. And BW can speed boost people.
One game today with Chromie made me think that they should remove Quest talents for her on 1 and instead give the Quest boni at a predetermined level, 12 for example. It would fit her time theme even. My first W landed in 5 people hiding in bushes, they decided to rush me anyway, but had a Johanna with me, which resultet in another 4 hits. Got my W buff while the first objective was running. Enemy team never recovered. If it wouldn't be based around hitting your skill shots, Chromie would get a bit more consistent too. On the other hand I think pro teams could manage to push those quests and get them really early to spiral games out of control.
Jesus Reddit is making me MAD. The amount of whine posts about the ESL tournament, even though somewhat warranted, is retarded. Just people karmawhoring and restating the general opinion and flaming this weekends' designated victim. After whining all week about daed gaem.
Why the fuck is that disgraceful board still active, holy fuck.
On another note, I feel like Chromie has a place in competitive but very map/comp specific. Played against her on Cursed Hollow earlier and they were basically guaranteed first curse with her being able to position safely in a fort and prevent us from ever channeling. We managed to turn the game around and win anyway, but it definitely seems like it could work.
The new upcoming heroes sound really bad ass. No link this time, iam lazy. You can find them on gosugamers.
One of the new maps sound really bad ass to, I really hope its a map for ALOT of specialisations on your team. Fun with some new comp for a specific map.
1. Gul'dan - probably around the movie release. His main trait is sacrificing life to do extra damage, then stealing life 2. Samuro - blademaster with stealth 3. Auriel - D3 angel with a resurrect ally ability 4. Varian - typical WoW warrior build with charge, taunt and a cleanse
skins: Volleyball Li-Ming, Mystic Kingdom Arthas, Mechalord Gazlowe maps: 2 SC2 ones, Braxis Holdout (take objectives to send zerg swarm) and Warhead Junction (collect nuclear power items to send nukes) mounts: Red Hare, Gyrocopter"
Found on reddit, apparently some 4channer with a good track record of predicting these things posted these
here is the link. This is from a leak on 4chan from someone who accurately predicted every hero (and most skin additions) since November 2015.
Hey, new stuff on the way: Gul'dan - probably around the movie release. His main trait is sacrificing life to do extra damage, then stealing life Samuro - blademaster with stealth Auriel - D3 angel with a resurrect ally ability Varian - typical WoW warrior build with charge, taunt and a cleanse skins: Volleyball Li-Ming, Mystic Kingdom Arthas, Mechalord Gazlowe maps: 2 SC2 ones, Braxis Holdout (take objectives to send zerg swarm) and Warhead Junction (collect nuclear power items to send nukes) mounts: Red Hare, Gyrocopter”
On June 04 2016 09:33 Thetan wrote: I did miss my Q quest / Piercing Q though later on in some the mid gamey teamfights past level 10. The lack of the power spike I'm used at ~lvl 12 when the Q talent pops along with the extended range felt weird. +15% base damage on Q * 2 targets is legit. Though I'm also probably used to playing that style, and maybe didn't position myself aggressively enough to get the most of Bronze Talons (didn't wind up getting may bronze talon procs off in the later game teamfights).
Yeah you are right that Q quest and Piercing starts to get really strong at 12 as you get range and Q quest is complete. Things to consider are how much a difference you think the other talents will make to your early game. Will they help you get your team to level 4, 7, 10 or 13 at a key time? If so, then that's much more important than your personal power curve. Also, when you get +25% range and +100 Q damage, how likely is it to immediately start doing work? Just things to consider based on the team comps and map and play style. I have definitely been in games where each build would be better than the other.
Chromie's hotslogs win rate coming up to 50% will likely depend on people knowing when to draft her and how to build her for that particular game, which seems obvious but there are other heroes that can pull their weight with the same build in almost any draft or map. I guess that's why I started posting about Chromie in the first place because I saw people drafting poorly and/or building her poorly for the situation and then not taking responsibility for it or learning from it (instead, just saying "Chromie sucks and needs to be buffed.") It seemed like the hive mind of players got an idea of Chromie's role and the best Chromie build and then tried to make it work and mostly failed and then called her underpowered, without reconsidering other roles and builds. The popular way to play her definitely works in some games and shouldn't be completely avoided but a lot of people need to rethink her to totally understand her.
And not to undermine the chromie game you posted before (I'm actually just curious), but is it reasonable to say that Chromie has to be pretty good vs a solo BW support? Of all the supports people tend to solo with, it feels like BW in particular doesn't have enough focused healing output to mitigate chromie's poke damage.
We didn't wind up winning but I played with a buddy at his place last night and had a blast as chromie, Not used to being the highest MMR on a team, but landed a whole mess of skill shots.
The Zen of QM is real. I spent all my luck the previous match where I played as Tychus and we played against a Cho'Gall.
On June 05 2016 03:26 SC2Toastie wrote: Jesus Reddit is making me MAD. The amount of whine posts about the ESL tournament, even though somewhat warranted, is retarded. Just people karmawhoring and restating the general opinion and flaming this weekends' designated victim. After whining all week about daed gaem.
Why the fuck is that disgraceful board still active, holy fuck.
/rantover
Can you stop bitching about reddit in this thread? If we wanted to know what was going on at reddit, we would go to reddit.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Auriel will get a Mercy skin if she really can ressurect allies T.T . Finally Sc2 maps though. When I fell for the Overwatch hype and want the Overwatch heroes in heroes asap and some Overwatch maps now instead of anything else. (Just hope the Mercy skin will get her own Voicelines ... the Widow skin is rather blarg) Heroes could use the marketing of the other games so well, with planning their releases around those.
On June 06 2016 00:04 karazax wrote: here is the link. This is from a leak on 4chan from someone who accurately predicted every hero (and most skin additions) since November 2015.
Hey, new stuff on the way: Gul'dan - probably around the movie release. His main trait is sacrificing life to do extra damage, then stealing life Samuro - blademaster with stealth Auriel - D3 angel with a resurrect ally ability Varian - typical WoW warrior build with charge, taunt and a cleanse skins: Volleyball Li-Ming, Mystic Kingdom Arthas, Mechalord Gazlowe maps: 2 SC2 ones, Braxis Holdout (take objectives to send zerg swarm) and Warhead Junction (collect nuclear power items to send nukes) mounts: Red Hare, Gyrocopter”
On June 06 2016 00:04 karazax wrote: here is the link. This is from a leak on 4chan from someone who accurately predicted every hero (and most skin additions) since November 2015.
Hey, new stuff on the way: Gul'dan - probably around the movie release. His main trait is sacrificing life to do extra damage, then stealing life Samuro - blademaster with stealth Auriel - D3 angel with a resurrect ally ability Varian - typical WoW warrior build with charge, taunt and a cleanse skins: Volleyball Li-Ming, Mystic Kingdom Arthas, Mechalord Gazlowe maps: 2 SC2 ones, Braxis Holdout (take objectives to send zerg swarm) and Warhead Junction (collect nuclear power items to send nukes) mounts: Red Hare, Gyrocopter”
Whatever happened to Medivh? Or is he still next?
He's next, this week or next I'd imagine. just advance hype for what is coming
On June 06 2016 00:04 karazax wrote: here is the link. This is from a leak on 4chan from someone who accurately predicted every hero (and most skin additions) since November 2015.
Hey, new stuff on the way: Gul'dan - probably around the movie release. His main trait is sacrificing life to do extra damage, then stealing life Samuro - blademaster with stealth Auriel - D3 angel with a resurrect ally ability Varian - typical WoW warrior build with charge, taunt and a cleanse skins: Volleyball Li-Ming, Mystic Kingdom Arthas, Mechalord Gazlowe maps: 2 SC2 ones, Braxis Holdout (take objectives to send zerg swarm) and Warhead Junction (collect nuclear power items to send nukes) mounts: Red Hare, Gyrocopter”
Whatever happened to Medivh? Or is he still next?
He's next, this week or next I'd imagine. just advance hype for what is coming
You know what I want? The ability to exclusively play on certain maps, because when they release the StarCraft maps thats the only thing I'm going to want to play.
It would also be just great to never have to look at Towers of Doom again
So, the other day I played a lengthy garden game where the enemy Johanna took Regen Master, the 20% extra shield, and Storm Shield. They were level 26 by the end (we won, incidentally) and I worked out that with her shields active she would have over 10,000 hit points.
Then I was playing Nazeebo in vs AI and trying to see how many stack of death ritual I could get to see how much hp I could get on him - I managed to get him to around 5000 by level 22, which I thought was pretty good. It made me think that theoretically he could have infinite health if he kept farming stacks.
So I was wondering, what's the highest hp you've ever seen in one game? A level 30 Azmodan with storm shield? A full souls Diablo with pre-nerf Rehgar shield? A Nazeebo in a 1 hour 40 game with 9000 stacks of death ritual?
Omg, don't tell them the truth about Imbazibo! They will end up nerfing him if too many people realize how imba he actually is. Did you ever get to level 30 in game? I may also have but I don't remember. Don't have a lot of "long" games nowadays.
On June 07 2016 16:45 Larkin wrote: A Nazeebo in a 1 hour 40 game with 9000 stacks of death ritual?
None of my games would last that long. By the time the 40th minute has passed, I would have already been fed up enough with the game to just quit out. ^_^
I had an interesting Chromie-centric draft / team comp we cobbled together in Team League. Not sure what the lessons / takeaways are, but an interesting datapoint I thought was worth sharing.
Caveat: Level of play wasn't the highest (was playing with a bunch of friends who are kind of new to the game). But I think our team comp just beats theirs.
Draft Map: Towers of Doom Second Pick. Their ban: KT Our ban: Falstad
They pick: Li-Ming We pick: Thrall, Xul They pick: LiLi, Johanna
Our ban: Valla Their ban: Lt. Morales.
We pick: Diablo, Malph They pick: Slyvanas, Raynor We pick: Chromie
Draft thought process / Wall of text: (feedback on this is appreciated, I actually haven't drafted that much): Our Thrall/Xul picks were kinda locked in from the beginning (comfort picks for players with limited champ pools). I've realized I don't care about playing vs li-ming, so didn't bother banning her. After the LiLi/Joha picks was when I starting thinking about forcing a Chromie comp. Assumed they still needed a strong solo laner, and an extra dps. Decided to ban Valla over Sonya, since I kinda just wanted to draft more peel anyway to protect Chromie and b/c Sonya doesn't really do much with LiLi. Here, I knew we wanted to have some disenage-y, defensive picks. We picked Diablo as a kind of defensive tank, and malph support (kind of wanted uther, but our player didn't really play uther. In hindsight though, I think malph worked out). Rounded out with Chromie at the end.
Lane setup:
We ran Xul top, Thrall bot. Chromie/Diablo/Malph mid.
Most of the game, we actually ran a 4-1 split. Xul stayed top for a super long time.
Things I realized afterwards about what made this comp so good - Anybody roaming from mid to the sidelanes is strong (strong gank set up from xul/thrall/diablo, and strong followup from chromie/malph/diablo). - Having two strong solo laners let mid lane be aggressive and safe - Mid itself is formidable. Malph / Diablo CC combos well, Chromie can follow up on both. - Sidelane pressure + chromie poke to defend shrines gave us options when the shrines came up (either cap if we have a man advantage, or stall if we don't and let one of Xul/Thrall just continue to push). - If they split too hard, our pick potential was super high - Zero Pressure on Chromie. We had strong enough disengage and they had weak enough engage that they couldn't really stop me from shooting them, even if we were undermanned (4v5, 3v5). - We would also out-sustain them in seiges (malph vs lili). - Either of Chromie's ults are good vs the enemy team.
This honestly worked out like a split push + poke/seige comp that the enemy team didn't have an answer to.
Questions (because I'm too tired to answer these myself) - Was I just playing with scrubs, or am I right in thinking that our team comp just beats theirs? - If I'm right, where in the draft did the enemy team mess up? - What are the takeaways in terms of "when is Chromie a good pick?" - How map dependent was this comp?
On June 07 2016 16:45 Larkin wrote: So, the other day I played a lengthy garden game where the enemy Johanna took Regen Master, the 20% extra shield, and Storm Shield. They were level 26 by the end (we won, incidentally) and I worked out that with her shields active she would have over 10,000 hit points.
Then I was playing Nazeebo in vs AI and trying to see how many stack of death ritual I could get to see how much hp I could get on him - I managed to get him to around 5000 by level 22, which I thought was pretty good. It made me think that theoretically he could have infinite health if he kept farming stacks.
So I was wondering, what's the highest hp you've ever seen in one game? A level 30 Azmodan with storm shield? A full souls Diablo with pre-nerf Rehgar shield? A Nazeebo in a 1 hour 40 game with 9000 stacks of death ritual?
Thetan > I'd say you kinda won the draft anyway. 3 man frontline with Xul vs Johanna is very greedy from your opponents. Chromie seems good as long as you can protect her or at least prevent people from getting to where they think she is (no Illidan, no Tracer, no Fals, no Nova, no Zera on the other team). Don't think Chromie is map dependent at all.
Thetan: I'm not good at drafting myself but i feel the enemy got an OK draft but played pretty horrible. Raynor can take on Thrall on Botlane ezpz, Sylvanas can take on Xul, mid seems an even poke fight. Your teams gank potential is stronger, but their siege seems a lot stronger. Guessing this could have gone either way, depending on skill. Maybe if you are the most experienced / skilled player on the field, you may have well won that for your team
Kind of disappointed that there are no balance changes at all with the new patch. New ranked is of course a big deal, but not going to get much PTR participation with just Medivh for people to test, and only 2 people out of 10 who can do that at a time.
On June 07 2016 16:45 Larkin wrote: So, the other day I played a lengthy garden game where the enemy Johanna took Regen Master, the 20% extra shield, and Storm Shield. They were level 26 by the end (we won, incidentally) and I worked out that with her shields active she would have over 10,000 hit points.
Then I was playing Nazeebo in vs AI and trying to see how many stack of death ritual I could get to see how much hp I could get on him - I managed to get him to around 5000 by level 22, which I thought was pretty good. It made me think that theoretically he could have infinite health if he kept farming stacks.
So I was wondering, what's the highest hp you've ever seen in one game? A level 30 Azmodan with storm shield? A full souls Diablo with pre-nerf Rehgar shield? A Nazeebo in a 1 hour 40 game with 9000 stacks of death ritual?
There was a game I caught of Chu's where he was Nazeebo, he had around 400 stacks of Death Ritual on Tomb I think it was, the levels were in the early twenties.
He had over 6.5k health which is probably the most for that character I've seen personally. Highest HP in general I'd guess would go to some variation of Cho'gall+shield.
I'm scared of unranked draft. Why would anyone play unranked draft ? - because they're a group of 3-4 friends - because they're people scared of losing ranks, there's a lot of these guys - people who want to train with some heroes
I mean, if I go do unranked draft, it's to test my heroes in "playable" teams, not 5 assassins vs 5 assassins like it's the case right now in QM.
BUT I guess everyone will just do that ? "Guys I'll play Illidan no matter what.", "Guys I've only queued to train as Zeratul" ... Seems like a scary place.
PTR very lackluster. Medivh, who you can only get with real money for PRT, and ladder changes which make little sense to test on PTR. Besides a few overdue bug fixes (cho'gall) this patch is extremely lackluster. There are so many things that need balancing still and nothing is done.. They really need to grab every patch oppurtunity to fix some unused heroes imo, why aren't we seeing a butcher or gazlowe fix? Why isn't illidan nerfed? His overall hotslogs stats are weak perhaps but look at master only or follow any pro game and it's super obvious he is quite broken. They can't be handling a 100% must ban like this... Fix it already.
Interesting that the new ladder system will have 7 bands with 5 subdivisions in each. The current system is ostensibly 50 ranks, but you can't lose points until you hit 40: so it's really 40 ranks. In the new system, there are 7x5 = 35 ranks, so it is basically the current rank system. Maybe the power of counting in 5s will comfort people?
Or is it 5x5 then master and grandmaster? This is still 27 "ranks", but I guess an improvement.
On June 08 2016 01:19 MotherFox wrote: Interesting that the new ladder system will have 7 bands with 5 subdivisions in each. The current system is ostensibly 50 ranks, but you can't lose points until you hit 40: so it's really 40 ranks. In the new system, there are 7x5 = 35 ranks, so it is basically the current rank system. Maybe the power of counting in 5s will comfort people?
Or is it 5x5 then master and grandmaster? This is still 27 "ranks", but I guess an improvement.
I wouldn't care at all if it's 10 divisions or 50 ranks or whatever. As long as they are not equal size, ie being rank 1 means nothing. The only tangible improvement will be a more meaningful rank at the top end, which is quite useful for those players.
On June 07 2016 21:39 Leolio wrote: I'm scared of unranked draft. Why would anyone play unranked draft ? - because they're a group of 3-4 friends - because they're people scared of losing ranks, there's a lot of these guys - people who want to train with some heroes
I mean, if I go do unranked draft, it's to test my heroes in "playable" teams, not 5 assassins vs 5 assassins like it's the case right now in QM.
BUT I guess everyone will just do that ? "Guys I'll play Illidan no matter what.", "Guys I've only queued to train as Zeratul" ... Seems like a scary place.
Yeah, "I'm locking in as Murky/Gazlowe and no one can stop me".
Not that this doesn't happen in HL rank 1, but still.
Well that's the same with QM but people lock in their gazlowe without you seeing. At least in unranked draft you have a better chance at a half decent comp and can gauge the situation in draft and prepare yourself,I'm sure some people will be like that but take it with a pinch of salt, it's unranked!
I've been staring at Medivh's talent tree for a while, but am not drawing any conclusions on what is most powerful. Has anyone else been thinking about potential builds for him? Seems like he'll be weak in HL but potentially powerful in coordinated games.
EDIT: The best I can come up with is that at level 7 arcane charge vs master's talent seems like arcane charge is obviously much better. The ability has a base of 399 damage according to heroes nexus, so 25% bonus damage on your next hit after hitting an enemy starts at better than the bonus 100 all the time, and actually scales with level. Plus you don't need to wait for a quest or play silly so you don't die.
but then the idea of having raven familiar and having a team of 5 pop out of a portal and all autoattack the same target is appealing...all that aside, the arcane barrier explosion one is probably best.
On June 09 2016 01:46 MotherFox wrote: I've been staring at Medivh's talent tree for a while, but am not drawing any conclusions on what is most powerful. Has anyone else been thinking about potential builds for him? Seems like he'll be weak in HL but potentially powerful in coordinated games.
EDIT: The best I can come up with is that at level 7 arcane charge vs master's talent seems like arcane charge is obviously much better. The ability has a base of 399 damage according to heroes nexus, so 25% bonus damage on your next hit after hitting an enemy starts at better than the bonus 100 all the time, and actually scales with level. Plus you don't need to wait for a quest or play silly so you don't die.
but then the idea of having raven familiar and having a team of 5 pop out of a portal and all autoattack the same target is appealing...all that aside, the arcane barrier explosion one is probably best.
399 is not much. It's 190 at level 1. Definitely a substantial nuke but nothing crazy. Arcane Explosion does almost the exact same damage as a normal Arcane Rift so you'll get more sustained damage and more burst damage with Arcane Explosion, though I'm guessing that'll be reliable only against melee enemies.
For HL, I'm thinking he'll be a strong pick against melee-heavy comps and diving comps. He'll have good sustained damage if he can be a mid liner in team fights where both teams maintain their position. And he'll be a great protector if the enemy team tries to dive: Force of Will on their target when they first come in, then Poly Bomb them, then Force of Will their target again, then portal away if necessary.
I don't think he'll be as good with heroes who are divers themselves. He'll get more work done defending against divers and he can enable anyone to dive by using portal offensively once it's safe to do so. I have my doubts about building team comps (and building his talents) around using portal offensively immediately. I think that'll mostly end up not working at all. Portal will work best as an escape, or when escape turns out to not be necessary, as a tool for chasing.
The build I'll probably try first: 4 Mage Armor, 7 Arcane Explosion, 10 Poly Bomb, 13 Quickening, 20 Glyph of Poly Bomb. 1 and 16 I'll probably decide more based on map and team comp. For level 1 I'll have to get a feel for his mana issues and how useful Portal Mastery will be.
I played with him a few times on the PTR server after posting last night. Had difficulty really making a difference in games, probably because I was first-drafting him just to try him out.
As expected, force of will is by far the easiest of his abilities to use effectively. Though by the end of the second game I was beginning to do some fancy footwork using portal and arcane rifts. It appears very difficult to gank medivh. Combining portals with force of will and his raven form means medivh can escape on a dime unless he is stunlocked to death.
the level 1 talent that lets you select two locations for the portal is important, I think. You can select the first point, and allies can see that you've selected it---but you can wait for as long as you want before selecting the second point and starting the portal. That way allies can be prepared for where the escape point is going to be from, know you are thinking of using it, etc, etc.
It turns out I(and you) were right about force of will's damage talent being very useful at 7. It's hard to get allies to use the portals unless you are partied with them, so I'm still unsure about the block talent, and the damage one is definitely out. The one awkward thing about force of will damage talent is you can't really use it against things like immortals if you are racing damage down, but I guess it's not really for that anyway.
Didn't get a chance to use lay line. Poly bomb didn't have good opportunities, since we didn't face off against heavy melee comps and splits were relatively easy. If you only end up poly'ing two people, poly bomb ends up being slightly worse than brightwing's rewind polymorph. Seems like you really need magical moments for it to work out well. (or allies helping you set it up)
Overall do you think he'll fit into the double support, or supportish+support style meta? Rehgar+Medivh say instead of Tass Rehgar kind of composition?
At this point I wouldn't draft him ever. He didn't feel impactful enough without depending on teammate coordination. Of course, I don't know how higher ranks or pro games work out. Would be really fun to see some pro play with him.
So until we see people clue into how to play with a Medivh, in pug games, just enjoy killing the Medivhs that can't place portals well, and avoid spreading poly.
On June 10 2016 04:05 ThomasjServo wrote: So until we see people clue into how to play with a Medivh, in pug games, just enjoy killing the Medivhs that can't place portals well, and avoid spreading poly.
Yeah sure. Maybe other players can get more use out of him, but I know I was pretty worthless with him outside of uther-like saves every 5 seconds.
Let’s talk numbers: the 400 damage for Arcane Rift is at lvl 20, that means only at lvl 20+ does Arcane damage provide more damage than The Master’s Touch. The Master’s Touch also provides the bonus for the first hit, meaning it still outperforms Arcane Rift beyond lvl 20. Furthermore, it reduces the CD from 2s to 1s if you hit a hero. Giving you a dps boost of 100%, stacking with the 100 bonus dmg.
So The Master’s Touch significantly outperforms Arcane Rift. The disadvantage is it comes online at a later stage in the game and you need to be able to complete the quest.
Aw, just played with Mana. Next game we draft so KT is open as a first pick. We all say 'pick KT'. Teammate ignores and picks Zera, so we decide to go cheese and go for Morales/Hammer. Worked for a bit. Then we lost. It's a lot more fun, knowing there's the reset on Tuesday and nothing matters now
On June 10 2016 08:26 Larkin wrote: Aw, just played with Mana. Next game we draft so KT is open as a first pick. We all say 'pick KT'. Teammate ignores and picks Zera, so we decide to go cheese and go for Morales/Hammer. Worked for a bit. Then we lost. It's a lot more fun, knowing there's the reset on Tuesday and nothing matters now
It's definitely surreal since nothing feels like it matters so I just sit back and enjoy the game. But then I ask myself if it ever mattered, and if all my try harding ever got my anywhere anyway.
btw, regarding the ladder changes: Will there still be individual MMR's in Teamleague? I still think it's a horrible idea in a teamgame, tbh. I don't get why they got rid of the creation of teams in the first place.
Before you could have multiple teams with a separated TEAM-MMR each, so you had the opportunity to play with some guys more seriously (-> good rank there) and with others, maybe worse and less experienced players, mostly for fun without ruining your MMR if you do so (-> at least I think that's been the case. In an ideal world it would have) . Because they cut it, I don't feel like playing with less experienced players is a good idea, because it might just ruin my rank if I do. I just think in teamleague, a full 5-man-premade environment, Team-MMR is superior to individual MMR in every regard, tbh.
Try harding and sticking to the meta so that my team mates don't get demoralized are two different things for me anyway. So HL is fun atm. Can't wait for unranked. No more Mirror QM, no more you gotta play Meta HL.
I'm not too worried about the increased queue times (adding new mode = same number of player but more split), i got quality games recently (HL) with 20 secs queue times.
Can't wait to play unranked with Chromie ^^ got another game vs Nova + Dehaka, it was hell (we won though).
Hm. It seems that in this patch, they changed Training mode so that you can no longer get free experience by going afk every game while your 4 AIs battled the opposing 5 AIs. It worked perfectly fine every day up until yesterday lol. Oh well.
On June 15 2016 04:38 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Hm. It seems that in this patch, they changed Training mode so that you can no longer get free experience by going afk every game while your 4 AIs battled the opposing 5 AIs. It worked perfectly fine every day up until yesterday lol. Oh well.
Plasma Mango will no longer be in Training Mode Every time I wake up at 4 am.
On June 15 2016 04:38 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Hm. It seems that in this patch, they changed Training mode so that you can no longer get free experience by going afk every game while your 4 AIs battled the opposing 5 AIs. It worked perfectly fine every day up until yesterday lol. Oh well.
Plasma Mango will no longer be in Training Mode Every time I wake up at 4 am.
Medivh, The Last Guardian, has been added to Heroes of the Storm and is now available for play! Read on for a brief overview of his Abilities.
Trait (Z)
Raven Form
Instead of Mounting, Medivh can transform into a raven, increasing Movement Speed by 15%. While transformed, you can see and fly over all terrain, and are immune to all effects. Casting an Ability immediately transforms you out of Raven Form.
Basic Abilities
Arcane Rift (Q)
Launch a rift that damages all enemies in its path. If an enemy Hero is hit, Arcane Rift’s cooldown is reduced by 5 seconds and 30 Mana is refunded.
Force of Will (W)
Protect an allied Hero from all damage for 1.5 seconds.
Portal (E)
Create a set of portals between you and the target location, allowing allies to teleport between them. Portals last 6 seconds.
Heroic Abilities
Poly Bomb (R)
Polymorph an enemy Hero, suppressing their attacks and Silencing them for 2 seconds. On expiration, Poly Bomb spreads to other nearby enemy Heroes.
Ley Line Seal (R)
After 0.5 seconds, unleash a wave of energy that imprisons enemy Heroes in Stasis for 3 seconds.
General
Ranked Season One
Season One of ranked play has begun, and Preseason has ended.
Preseason Ranked Rewards have been awarded to qualifying players.
You can find out more Ranked Rewards in this blog post.
You can find more details on the Ranked Play Revamp coming with Season One in the User Interface section below.
Training Mode
AFK Detection has been added to Training Mode games.
Veteran Introduction
A new Veteran-level Tutorial has been introduced to the game.
The new Veteran tutorial can be accessed through the “Challenges” button in the options menu, or by selecting “Veteran” when first entering the game on a new account.
System Changes
Matchmaking
Uncertainty Boost
Players will receive a boost to their uncertainty rating during Season One placement matches.
Uncertainty represents how confident our system is in knowing that you belong at your current rank or rating. Boosting uncertainty will allow for significant adjustments to be made to MMR during these placement matches.
Find out more about uncertainty in this blog post.
MMR Normalization
MMRs have been normalized to bring in outliers on both the high and low end of the MMR spectrum.
This change should result in faster queue times in all games modes for players at either end of the spectrum without sacrificing match quality.
Find out more about MMR normalization in this blog post.
MMR Seeding
Players entering Hero League for the first time in Season One will have their Quick Match MMR used as a guideline to determine their initial matchmaking.
Future seasons will use Unranked Draft Mode MMR to seed into Hero League matchmaking.
Team League incorporates a similar system, using a portion of each players Hero League MMR to find an average before matching them appropriately.
Players entering Unranked Draft Mode for the first time will also use their Quick Match MMR as a guideline to determine initial matchmaking.
Performance
Significant improvements have been made to the stability of the framerate in all game modes.
Improvements have been made to game performance in Versus A.I. games.
Shop
Bundles
New Bundles have been added!
Knight Owl Medivh Bundle – Available until June 28, 2016.
Multiverse Bundle – Available until June 28, 2016.
Ultimate Multiverse Bundle – Available until June 28, 2016.
Mounts
Returning Mounts
Cyberwolf
Mount Removals
Billie the Kid
Ringmaster’s Pride
New Hero
Medivh has been added to the in-game Shop.
Skins
Master Medivh
Knight Owl Medivh
Price Reductions
Lunara's prices have been reduced to $8.49 USD and 7,000 Gold.
User Interface
General
A clock has been added to the Home Screen.
New Play Mode: Unranked Draft
Unranked Draft is a new game mode that will feature a pick and ban system identical to Hero League.
There will be no party size restrictions in this new game mode.
Unranked Draft Mode will have its own unique MMR (Matchmaking Rating).
Initial Unranked Draft MMR will be seeded from current Quick Match MMR. Find out more about this in the MMR Seeding section under System Changes.
You can find more information on Unranked Draft in this blog post.
Ranked Play Revamped
The ranking system in Heroes of the Storm has received a massive upgrade, and is now divided into League Tiers and Divisions, rather than 50 Ranks.
There are seven League Tiers in total: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, and Grand Master. Progress through each League Tier can be tracked as follows:
Bronze – Diamond: Players are split into one of five Divisions within a League Tier. Earn Ranked Points by winning games to progress from Division 5 to 1 in each of these League Tiers.
Master: Instead of Divisions, Master League displays the total number of Ranked Points earned, so that players can more easily track progress against others in Master League.
Grand Master: Only the top 500 players in each region will achieve Grand Master status. Grand Master League Badges will display that player’s rank within the top 500 for that region.
Play 10 Placement Matches in Hero or Team League to receive a League and Division Placement.
For Example: Depending on a player’s performance during placement matches, they may be placed into Gold 3. By consistently winning games this player can then be promoted through the Divisions within their League Tier, up to Gold 1. Winning enough games will present the player with a Promotion Match, which offers the chance to be promoted into Platinum 5.
On the other hand, consistently losing games will result in demotion through the Divisions, down to Gold 5. If the player loses enough games, they will similarly be presented with a Demotion Match. By winning this match, the player will retain their standing in Gold 5. By losing, they will be demoted to Silver 1.
You can find more information on the Ranked Play Revamp in this blog post.
Heroes Tyrael
Basic Abilities
El'Druin's Might (Q)
Mana cost reduced from 55 to 50
Righteousness (W)
Mana cost reduced from 65 to 60
Smite (E)
Mana cost reduced from 50 to 45
Judgment (R)
Mana cost reduced from 100 to 80
Bug Fixes
General
Fixed an issue causing several Quest talents to not play their sound effects and exclamation popups when progress was made.
Fixed an issue causing game crashes while using some overlay programs.
Sound
Tracer: Basic Attack sounds will no longer play during Polymorph effects.
Fixed an issue that caused Heroes to not play unique VO when healed.
Fixed an issue that caused specific Basic Attack and ability sound effects to play much louder than intended.
Battlegrounds
Towers of Doom: Players should no longer encounter a significant FPS drop when the first round of Bell Towers fire.
Garden of Terror: The Garden Terror's basic attack splash will now correctly deal bonus damage to structures affected by Overgrowth.
Tomb of the Spider Queen: Fixed an issue that caused Webweavers to spawn at the friendly Core if enemy minions were present.
Heroes and Talents
Chen: The leap distances of the Storm Earth, Fire clones should now be consistent.
The Butcher: The cooldown of the Enraged talent now accurately matches the tooltip at 25 seconds.
Tyrael: Fixed a bug that caused Archangel’s Wrath to explode immediately in specific situations.
Kael’Thas: You are now able to cast the free Empowered Living Bombs when you have less than 50 mana.
Cho’Gall: Shadow Bolt Volley can no longer be canceled by right clicking.
Tracer: The Pulse Rounds talent should now increase the range and charge rate of Pulse Bomb by the amount stated in the tooltip.
Abathur: You can no longer use Hearthstone to port back to base while channeling Ultimate Evolution.
The Butcher: Hamstring now deals the correct amount of damage to Heroic targets when both the Cheap Shot and Chop Meat talents are selected.
Brightwing: The additional pulses created from the Continuous Winds talents will now properly push back enemy Heroes.
Brightwing: Fixed an issue that allowed Brightwing to heal allies with Soothing Mist while dead.
Dehaka: Shift queuing a command to use Essence Collection will now correctly heal Dehaka.
Sylvanas and Xul: Fixed an issue that made Xul uncontrollable if Sylvanas and Xul cast Mind Control and Bone Prison on each other.
Abathur: Fixed an issue that allowed Evolve Monstosity to pick up coins and gems, which were then permanently lost upon death.
User Interface
Fixed an issue that caused the Draft UI to occasionally disappear in Hero League and Team League lobbies.
Looks like it, the "leak" that came out a few weeks back from the person who predicted a bunch of other stuff accurately for several months said Gul'dan would be around the movie and these are his ability names:
Gul'dan:
Hand of Gul'dan Chaotic energy Rain of fire Drain life Life tap Fear
On June 15 2016 06:24 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I wish it were possible for your MMR to be based upon your actual performance, rather than whether or not your random team wins.
On June 15 2016 06:24 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I wish it were possible for your MMR to be based upon your actual performance, rather than whether or not your random team wins.
How would you do that off the cuff?
Possibly some sort of ranking based on kills/ deaths/ score or something? I don't know if it's possible, but surely a downside of laddering in team games is being penalized for things out of your control.
great medivh comes to the nexus and again unleashes evil onto a world. (so the 2 characters i despise since warcraft 1 are coming to heroes back to back yay ... )
On June 15 2016 19:27 FeyFey wrote: great medivh comes to the nexus and again unleashes evil onto a world. (so the 2 characters i despise since warcraft 1 are coming to heroes back to back yay ... )
Was Gul'dan in WarCraft I? I thought he was introduced in Tides of Darkness.
i broke the bigempct/rawrjar duo queue 8 game win streak with a chromie game! and they were thrall/anub xD it was my promotion game too. diamond 2!
beware being at 950+ points, needing to get another win to get promotion match, then starting at 250 points in new division no matter how many points "above" 1000 you were during your promotion. in other words, dont get your hopes up that points will carry over. ultimately, i had a win that was worth like 35 points
Medivh's release kind of got the shaft.It was really hyped up, and then just kind of overshadowed by the tournament this week.
I only just now saw the first reddit post about his winrate on Hotslogs and it was only posted a while ago. As expected, uncoordinated+Medivh=not great for win rates
The system isn't broken. Just because a lot of players are getting to diamond 3 has nothing to do with how broken / working the system is. It's capped at diamond 3, which should probably represent the top 6-7% of the playerbase or so. If you had very high mmr before, even after the soft reset and going 0-10 you'll still easily stay within the required range for Diamond 3 given how much higher you were before.
Of course there's going to be a lot of diamond 3 -placed players when almost every single Diamond 2 / Diamond 1 / Masters / GrandMaster player is going to get placed in there due to placement cap.
It would be ridiculous if it was a full reset and a gm-level player with thousands of games and a well-established level would get an unlucky streak and placed into Silver or something as a result. Especially as matchmaking even during placements still uses your MMR. Go 2-8 against best players of your realm and get placed in the lower leagues? That'd be a definition of stupidity.
I agree with Cephiro. I played 7 placement games yesterday (won 5) and I only encountered ranked Diamond 2 to 3 player or placement people like me. The system remembers us. I wonder how long it'll take to clear all the noobs who were top of ladder previously.
I just hope they soon implement some kind of player performance analysis to adjust the victory / loss points. I mean, the 10 death low damage Valla is probably the reason you lost, and the 100k heal no death Lili probably doesn't deserve to lose points here. I mean, in 90% of the case, having few death and a lot of takedowns is proof that you at least played fine.
Medivh's release kind of got the shaft.It was really hyped up, and then just kind of overshadowed by the tournament this week.
I only just now saw the first reddit post about his winrate on Hotslogs and it was only posted a while ago. As expected, uncoordinated+Medivh=not great for win rates
Is it only me, or is Mediv just a weaker tassadar? Low damage, low healing, decent vision, decent mobility.
On June 16 2016 02:25 NonY wrote: i broke the bigempct/rawrjar duo queue 8 game win streak with a chromie game! and they were thrall/anub xD it was my promotion game too. diamond 2!
beware being at 950+ points, needing to get another win to get promotion match, then starting at 250 points in new division no matter how many points "above" 1000 you were during your promotion. in other words, dont get your hopes up that points will carry over. ultimately, i had a win that was worth like 35 points
that's retarded. if they went for more sc2-esque ladder, why not carry over points? not exact amount, but % at least
On June 16 2016 18:58 Foxxan wrote: How is the system not broken if your placement matches dont matter is beyond me.
they don't matter to ppl with really high MMR. as someone said, if u were top of the server and u go 0-10, why WOULDNT u place diamond 3 at least?
streamer abathur was ranked diamond 4 cuz he didnt do placements very well. obviously he didnt have as high of MMR as some other rank 1s. but it proves preseason r1s cant ignore placement matches, as you imply.
im also rank1 preseason, but i expect to be placed in platinum for example. id test it today, but i want all the retards to play their placements first xD
On June 16 2016 18:58 Foxxan wrote: How is the system not broken if your placement matches dont matter is beyond me.
Of course they matter. Your MMR still gets adjusted with a higher leniency than in ordinary matches. But since they capped the original placement to Diamond 3, anyone with mmr higher than that will initially get placed there. The players who are ranked clearly higher, such as Master and Grandmaster will continously receive extra points as the system brings them closer to where they belong.
High rankers are more likely to play a bunch of games anyway, it's not like it's a chore to get where you belong. As has also been pointed out, it's only a soft reset, which is basically a scale squish combined with an uncertainty boost.
A lot of people are crying because they think it was (or should have been) a full reset, where only placement matches matter. Which would be absolutely retarded, if they understood anything about how the system works. Unfortunately, a lot of the vocal ones seem not to. Every single player in this game no matter how good or bad will be close to their true skill level as long as they keep playing more. There may be a few unlucky cases where it takes more than usual, but even so they won't be far off their real level. Anyone stuck in low ranks / leagues thinking they're pro and deserve better really don't.
One often used example is that of a "My main account is stuck in R20 but I made a smurf and got to R1 so I belong there" or something similar. Sure, if you try enough or get a lucky straight right away, a completely new account is easy to get into a relatively higher rank. What most people never come back to tell is how they eventually drop out from there, or the fact that they stopped playing after their first 30 matches and gaining the high rank, while if they had continued they would've dropped out of there sooner or later.
I have several friends that have thought they belong into R1 and have occasionally reached it, and those who aren't skillful enough have eventually dropped back down as they kept playing every single time.
Basing your league completely based on placement matches alone would be the stupidest thing ever. Yes, it might help a few specific persons to get close to their real level faster. But why would you ever want to ruin the matchmaking for pretty much every single person playing for weeks to come? When the problem would be solved by the unlucky person simply playing more.
There's a lot of data gathered during the pre-season which is not meaningless. It is used during placement matches, as the system already has a fair idea of where you belong. Due to the nature of placement matches combined with the soft reset, we're talking about differences which are most likely around +/-1 whole league (For example, a gold player could be placed anywhere between silver and platinum), instead of what would normally be around +/-2 divisions at most. (A gold 3 player would still get placed in gold no matter how his games went, just ranging from Div 5 to Div 1).
Placement matches are fine, system is not broken. Minority crying for attention should not be catered to while ruining the experience for everyone else. (Especially as most in the minority are sufferers of Dunning-Kruger, or haven't played enough.)
they don't matter to ppl with really high MMR. as someone said, if u were top of the server and u go 0-10, why WOULDNT u place diamond 3 at least?
If the higher ranks get diamond 3 no matter what stats in placement, then what is the point of placement in the first place? Let them start in diamond 3 from the beginning instead.
On June 15 2016 19:27 FeyFey wrote: great medivh comes to the nexus and again unleashes evil onto a world. (so the 2 characters i despise since warcraft 1 are coming to heroes back to back yay ... )
Was Gul'dan in WarCraft I? I thought he was introduced in Tides of Darkness.
Yeah Guldan was a necrolyte still at that time. I am not sure if he was playable but mentioned in the manual etc. During the fights in Warcraft 1 most caster classes took so many casualties, that they were mostly extinct when the war came to Lorderon in Tides of Darkness. (Well lore reasons to remove units) So humans trained Clerics in the art of war and made them Paladins. While Guldan replaced the Warlocks by Deathknights he created from the Knights of Azeroth and infused them with the fallen Necrolyte spirits, so they could use necromantic spells.
Later on Gul'dan tried to become a Warlock and summon demons, but while he summoned them he could not control them and got torn to pieces. Though this story was already changed in Warcraft 3. Confused me alot when the story segments for Gul'dans past appeared in Warcraft 3. But makes sense in the end when demons are suddenly the masters of the orcs and not just forcefully controlled beasts summoned by the orcs.
they don't matter to ppl with really high MMR. as someone said, if u were top of the server and u go 0-10, why WOULDNT u place diamond 3 at least?
If the higher ranks get diamond 3 no matter what stats in placement, then what is the point of placement in the first place? Let them start in diamond 3 from the beginning instead.
Just because it's capped at diamond 3 right now doesn't mean it will always be the case. Also it would require a fair bit of "pre-calculating" to assume what the MMR of all the diamond 3 or higher players would be if they lost all 10 placement matches in bad scenarios and so on. There's still a huge part of the playerbase for whom the placements are extremely relevant, and even for those that'll land to start at diamond 3, it can significantly change where they end up after a certain amount of games.
Like you're just complaining for the sake of complaining right now. You might as well say that "why aren't we just placed into a league right away since the MMR is already there", as you could still have a leniency period for the next 10 matches without calling them placement matches or whatever. Or maybe we should forever lock your account out of GM & bronze because you'll never make either.
Just sounds to me you want special snowflake -treatment in everything. As I mentioned in my post before, there's no reason to adjust a system that works completely fine for almost everyone to make it a little bit better for 1% while ruining it for the remainder. (Or do you perhaps want blizzard to make a personal HotS that fits their needs for everyone?)
they don't matter to ppl with really high MMR. as someone said, if u were top of the server and u go 0-10, why WOULDNT u place diamond 3 at least?
If the higher ranks get diamond 3 no matter what stats in placement, then what is the point of placement in the first place? Let them start in diamond 3 from the beginning instead.
I agree rank 1-2 could have skipped placement. I lost my 3 last games (so it ended 5-5) but I was duo queue so there was huge skill gaps and retarded drafts. Got Diamond 3, was rank 1 before (low hotslogs MMR though).
About Medivh, he seems a ton of fun to play, but why play him if you have 80% chances to lose ? I think he has the lowest winrate ever right now (master). And he probably requires too much coordination.
My name is Matt and I am a member of the balance team for HOTS.
I’ll be coming to the forums occasionally to highlight different areas of the game that we are currently examining. With this, I’ll be looking to get your feedback, but also provide the community with additional insight into why we are investigating something and what the goals we are trying to accomplish are.
While I won’t be able to respond to every question or comment, please know that our team is listening to your feedback!
So, without further ado, the first topic: Health sustain.
This includes all sources of healing available including passive Health Regeneration, collection of Regeneration Globes, using a Healing Fountain, and a wide range of sustain talents such as Regeneration Master or Laws of Hope. Of course let’s not forget those pesky Support characters who can quickly top you off, or even returning to your Hall of Storms for a full heal.
Why are we looking at sustain, and what are we trying to accomplish?
Well, here are a few things:
Poke heroes such as Chromie or Lunara can have much of their damage output invalidated by the constant uptick of health. This is partially why Chromie’s damage is tuned so insanely high, she essentially sits in burst territory.
High sustain limits the reward of outplaying an opponent in a small skirmish fight. Your skillshots and those ‘small wins’ you get don’t ultimately matter that much unless you can get a kill.
With the exception of a major lane bully like Zagara, it can be very difficult to decisively win a lane and force an opponent out. The reward for denying Regeneration Globes in lane also doesn’t end up meaning much.
In team fights, high sustain can create somewhat passive skirmishes. Unless you have the burst damage to immediately destroy an enemy, most of your damage isn’t meaningful. This is partially why Burst Damage & CC are so prominent.
While the above is an oversimplification of a large system in the game, hopefully this provides some food for thought for your discussion.
Ultimately, we’ve experimented and discussed this internally a lot. There often isn’t a ‘Silver Bullet’ in design, and this area is no exception. There isn’t even necessarily a consensus amongst the design group of if this is even a problem or what the right solve may be.
With that all in mind, here is where we are currently leaning:
Regeneration Globes: We’re actually looking to tune these up, while also cleaning up the math on these a bit. The hope is that denying opponents access to Regeneration Globes while securing your own ends up being a more meaningful event. The math on these in the live game is awkward right now, but it works out to be roughly 6.2% of your max health and 32 mana. We’ve been playtesting with a change that increases this to 12% of your max health and 8% of your max mana.
Healing Fountains: We wanted to make using your Healing Fountain a bigger moment. A crazy first idea we had was to increase the CD on these from 100s -> 300s (and buffed accordingly). With such a long CD, it would become a huge moment and extremely deliberate of when to use a Healing Fountain. After much testing we are leaning towards a smaller change though. We’ve been playing with increasing CD from 100 -> 120s which feels meaningful but familiar. There are additional moments where that added 20s is enough to force you back to the Hall of Storms. We’ve also increased the mana provided from 20% -> 30% but kept the health the same. This ends up being an overall reduction in the HPS that these can provide.
Passive Health Regeneration: While we’ve tested quite a few variations here, one interesting test we did was simply turning off Passive Health Regeneration and not allowing players to pick any sustain talents like Regeneration Master or First Aid. This change meant that taking damage from an Abathur Mine or a Tyrande Owl was now ‘permanent’. You had to take some sort of action to remove this lost health instead of getting it back for ‘free’ over time. This change was pretty heavily contested internally so it’s not something we’re currently planning on shipping but it’s potentially something we will explore more in the future. I’m really curious what you guys think about this idea.
Support Characters: While I think we can all agree that Support heroes are a huge part of sustain, I wanted to exclude them from this initial conversation as I feel that this will overpower the discussion. Know that we are looking at Supports though, and hopefully that can be a future thread.
Please share any thoughts you have on the content above! I look forward to reading your discussions!
Follow up comment Posted by BlizzCooper:
Passive Regeneration:
Just to be clear here, if we went extreme with this change we would likely need to make a ton of other changes as a result. I could see all damage in the game going down, warriors getting tankier, etc.
As some have suggested, it likely makes sense to do this on some characters and not others. A big part of what makes a Warrior tanky is their health regeneration. I could see Warrior’s, and maybe someone like Murky maintaining health regeneration. A character like Nova probably doesn’t need it though.
Agree with the concerns about no support QM games if we were to make this change. We’d likely need to explore something further here. Possibly Globes dropping from hero takedowns or something along those lines could help here.
Medivh's release kind of got the shaft.It was really hyped up, and then just kind of overshadowed by the tournament this week.
I only just now saw the first reddit post about his winrate on Hotslogs and it was only posted a while ago. As expected, uncoordinated+Medivh=not great for win rates
Is it only me, or is Mediv just a weaker tassadar? Low damage, low healing, decent vision, decent mobility.
I think he is too quirky to be the poor man's Tass, but I catch your meaning.
@Blizzard post I would very much like for health regeneration go down in extreme ways(as you put it). Because that would then reduce the burst of heroes such as chromie and others, i dont like that gameplay.
High sustain limits the reward of outplaying an opponent in a small skirmish fight. Your skillshots and those ‘small wins’ you get don’t ultimately matter that much unless you can get a kill.
I would really love if this limits gets removed. Things like these are what make good gameplay, when you need to make several decisions and executes throughout the game(even many in one teamfight to). That would probably also mean it would be more fun to watch this game since its not about one combo->dead its more about many combos throughout the game instead, would make it also much more unpredictable and imo more skillful.
I can picture it myself that Teamfights would become more fun to play and watch since they combo this guy down to 30%. What will this team do now? Retreat or continue? What will their tactic be if they continue fighting?
If you change the life regeneration effects in an extreme way, that would most likely mean supports gets changed to.. In a big way? if so, i think this would mean there would be more decisions for supports. Would mean again more fun to play as a support and also more fun to watch this game on stream.
On June 15 2016 19:27 FeyFey wrote: great medivh comes to the nexus and again unleashes evil onto a world. (so the 2 characters i despise since warcraft 1 are coming to heroes back to back yay ... )
Was Gul'dan in WarCraft I? I thought he was introduced in Tides of Darkness.
Yeah Guldan was a necrolyte still at that time. I am not sure if he was playable but mentioned in the manual etc. During the fights in Warcraft 1 most caster classes took so many casualties, that they were mostly extinct when the war came to Lorderon in Tides of Darkness. (Well lore reasons to remove units) So humans trained Clerics in the art of war and made them Paladins. While Guldan replaced the Warlocks by Deathknights he created from the Knights of Azeroth and infused them with the fallen Necrolyte spirits, so they could use necromantic spells.
Later on Gul'dan tried to become a Warlock and summon demons, but while he summoned them he could not control them and got torn to pieces. Though this story was already changed in Warcraft 3. Confused me alot when the story segments for Gul'dans past appeared in Warcraft 3. But makes sense in the end when demons are suddenly the masters of the orcs and not just forcefully controlled beasts summoned by the orcs.
Gul'dan was definitely a Warlock (and in fact, leader of the Warlocks ) in Tides of Darkness, and the Warlocks weren't replaced by Gul'dan, they were destroyed by Orgrim Doomhammer to solidify his control over the Horde. It's in Gul'dan's recounting of the history of the Orcs in the Tides of Darkness manual.
The biggest thing to worry about with sustain changes is accidentally making it optimal to have a malph who's just running between lanes healing people.
The thing I'm most excited about though is the idea about making regen globes more impactful. The main thing I miss from LoL is an impactful laning phase. Making a globes a small, mini-objective that can be denied during laning is a step towards increasing the skillcap of early laning, while also being an interesting tactical resource as the game goes longer.
Though the easiest way to make poke / sustained damage more impactful is just to increase the mana to healing ratio of all the healing spells - still makes clutch heals impactful, while making it more of a cost to heal poke / sustained damage.
...But judging by how everyone was bitching about Tyrael's mana costs, most people just like pressing buttons when they can and then getting angry when they run out of mana. So I'd expect any meaningful increase to the mana cost of healing spells to be met with a ton of resistance.
the new unranked mode will indeed be hell a few days. Tried it, got a draft dodge. Next draft sucked but I didn't want to dodge. So basically, you'll draft until the people who dodge all got their punishment games or are satisfied with the draft. :-(
On June 16 2016 23:52 Foxxan wrote: @Blizzard post I would very much like for health regeneration go down in extreme ways(as you put it). Because that would then reduce the burst of heroes such as chromie and others, i dont like that gameplay.
High sustain limits the reward of outplaying an opponent in a small skirmish fight. Your skillshots and those ‘small wins’ you get don’t ultimately matter that much unless you can get a kill.
I would really love if this limits gets removed. Things like these are what make good gameplay, when you need to make several decisions and executes throughout the game(even many in one teamfight to). That would probably also mean it would be more fun to watch this game since its not about one combo->dead its more about many combos throughout the game instead, would make it also much more unpredictable and imo more skillful.
I can picture it myself that Teamfights would become more fun to play and watch since they combo this guy down to 30%. What will this team do now? Retreat or continue? What will their tactic be if they continue fighting?
If you change the life regeneration effects in an extreme way, that would most likely mean supports gets changed to.. In a big way? if so, i think this would mean there would be more decisions for supports. Would mean again more fun to play as a support and also more fun to watch this game on stream.
Just my take on this.
There are so many unknown variables on what they would change on healers and how much damage would change to accurately theory craft for me. I don't really feel like that many heroes have high self sustain unless it is built into their traits or talents they take, in which case they are giving up something else and likely need it to be viable in the current meta. It seems to me that sustain damage heroes are much more effected by supports than passive healing options. If you play a quick match vs Lunara with no healers on either side most heroes aren't sustaining thru her poison damage for example. Likewise with no support you aren't ignoring that abathur mine damage, if you hit 2 as someone like Kael'thas you are likely arriving at the objective at half health. Most heroes already take a very long time to passively regen their health without a well or going back to base. If heroes like Thrall, Zagara, Illidan and Sonya lost their self sustain or had it significantly reduced would they even be playable? Without knowing more specifics it's hard to say.
The globe change is also interesting, though it makes me wonder if a lane bully is just going to become an even more dominant lane bully than they were before.
It's an interesting direction, but the re-balancing after such a huge change seems like a massive undertaking that is likely to create new unforseen balance problems.
On June 16 2016 23:52 Foxxan wrote: @Blizzard post I would very much like for health regeneration go down in extreme ways(as you put it). Because that would then reduce the burst of heroes such as chromie and others, i dont like that gameplay.
High sustain limits the reward of outplaying an opponent in a small skirmish fight. Your skillshots and those ‘small wins’ you get don’t ultimately matter that much unless you can get a kill.
I would really love if this limits gets removed. Things like these are what make good gameplay, when you need to make several decisions and executes throughout the game(even many in one teamfight to). That would probably also mean it would be more fun to watch this game since its not about one combo->dead its more about many combos throughout the game instead, would make it also much more unpredictable and imo more skillful.
I can picture it myself that Teamfights would become more fun to play and watch since they combo this guy down to 30%. What will this team do now? Retreat or continue? What will their tactic be if they continue fighting?
If you change the life regeneration effects in an extreme way, that would most likely mean supports gets changed to.. In a big way? if so, i think this would mean there would be more decisions for supports. Would mean again more fun to play as a support and also more fun to watch this game on stream.
Just my take on this.
There are so many unknown variables on what they would change on healers and how much damage would change to accurately theory craft for me. I don't really feel like that many heroes have high self sustain unless it is built into their traits or talents they take, in which case they are giving up something else and likely need it to be viable in the current meta. It seems to me that sustain damage heroes are much more effected by supports than passive healing options. If you play a quick match vs Lunara with no healers on either side most heroes aren't sustaining thru her poison damage for example. Likewise with no support you aren't ignoring that abathur mine damage, if you hit 2 as someone like Kael'thas you are likely arriving at the objective at half health. Most heroes already take a very long time to passively regen their health without a well or going back to base. If heroes like Thrall, Zagara, Illidan and Sonya lost their self sustain or had it significantly reduced would they even be playable? Without knowing more specifics it's hard to say.
The globe change is also interesting, though it makes me wonder if a lane bully is just going to become an even more dominant lane bully than they were before.
It's an interesting direction, but the re-balancing after such a huge change seems like a massive undertaking that is likely to create new unforseen balance problems.
Didnt really look at the passive regs, but more from the regenration globes and heals from supports. Wasnt very clear in my post, hopefully blizzard understands though if they read it.
On June 15 2016 19:27 FeyFey wrote: great medivh comes to the nexus and again unleashes evil onto a world. (so the 2 characters i despise since warcraft 1 are coming to heroes back to back yay ... )
Was Gul'dan in WarCraft I? I thought he was introduced in Tides of Darkness.
Yeah Guldan was a necrolyte still at that time. I am not sure if he was playable but mentioned in the manual etc. During the fights in Warcraft 1 most caster classes took so many casualties, that they were mostly extinct when the war came to Lorderon in Tides of Darkness. (Well lore reasons to remove units) So humans trained Clerics in the art of war and made them Paladins. While Guldan replaced the Warlocks by Deathknights he created from the Knights of Azeroth and infused them with the fallen Necrolyte spirits, so they could use necromantic spells.
Later on Gul'dan tried to become a Warlock and summon demons, but while he summoned them he could not control them and got torn to pieces. Though this story was already changed in Warcraft 3. Confused me alot when the story segments for Gul'dans past appeared in Warcraft 3. But makes sense in the end when demons are suddenly the masters of the orcs and not just forcefully controlled beasts summoned by the orcs.
Gul'dan was definitely a Warlock (and in fact, leader of the Warlocks ) in Tides of Darkness, and the Warlocks weren't replaced by Gul'dan, they were destroyed by Orgrim Doomhammer to solidify his control over the Horde. It's in Gul'dan's recounting of the history of the Orcs in the Tides of Darkness manual.
In history I like to go after the older texts ;P. But I already pointed out that Warcraft liked to change the story to fit with the new one better. I just said that Guldan created the Deathknights to fill the void the dead Warlocks created. And yes he posed as a Warlock in Warcraft 2 but ultimately failed at using their most powerful spell and payed with his life. Most glorious moment in Warcraft 2 for me.
On June 15 2016 19:27 FeyFey wrote: great medivh comes to the nexus and again unleashes evil onto a world. (so the 2 characters i despise since warcraft 1 are coming to heroes back to back yay ... )
Was Gul'dan in WarCraft I? I thought he was introduced in Tides of Darkness.
Yeah Guldan was a necrolyte still at that time. I am not sure if he was playable but mentioned in the manual etc. During the fights in Warcraft 1 most caster classes took so many casualties, that they were mostly extinct when the war came to Lorderon in Tides of Darkness. (Well lore reasons to remove units) So humans trained Clerics in the art of war and made them Paladins. While Guldan replaced the Warlocks by Deathknights he created from the Knights of Azeroth and infused them with the fallen Necrolyte spirits, so they could use necromantic spells.
Later on Gul'dan tried to become a Warlock and summon demons, but while he summoned them he could not control them and got torn to pieces. Though this story was already changed in Warcraft 3. Confused me alot when the story segments for Gul'dans past appeared in Warcraft 3. But makes sense in the end when demons are suddenly the masters of the orcs and not just forcefully controlled beasts summoned by the orcs.
Gul'dan was definitely a Warlock (and in fact, leader of the Warlocks ) in Tides of Darkness, and the Warlocks weren't replaced by Gul'dan, they were destroyed by Orgrim Doomhammer to solidify his control over the Horde. It's in Gul'dan's recounting of the history of the Orcs in the Tides of Darkness manual.
In history I like to go after the older texts ;P. But I already pointed out that Warcraft liked to change the story to fit with the new one better. I just said that Guldan created the Deathknights to fill the void the dead Warlocks created. And yes he posed as a Warlock in Warcraft 2 but ultimately failed at using their most powerful spell and payed with his life. Most glorious moment in Warcraft 2 for me.
Is it me or is the game in a really nice place right now ?
- HL seems good so far (duo queue's kinda random though). Very little toxicity since reset + muted people ban. Probably will get better when the people are placed at a rank matching their level.
- Unranked, despite the draft dodges, is a good place to try heroes.
On June 15 2016 19:27 FeyFey wrote: great medivh comes to the nexus and again unleashes evil onto a world. (so the 2 characters i despise since warcraft 1 are coming to heroes back to back yay ... )
Was Gul'dan in WarCraft I? I thought he was introduced in Tides of Darkness.
Yeah Guldan was a necrolyte still at that time. I am not sure if he was playable but mentioned in the manual etc. During the fights in Warcraft 1 most caster classes took so many casualties, that they were mostly extinct when the war came to Lorderon in Tides of Darkness. (Well lore reasons to remove units) So humans trained Clerics in the art of war and made them Paladins. While Guldan replaced the Warlocks by Deathknights he created from the Knights of Azeroth and infused them with the fallen Necrolyte spirits, so they could use necromantic spells.
Later on Gul'dan tried to become a Warlock and summon demons, but while he summoned them he could not control them and got torn to pieces. Though this story was already changed in Warcraft 3. Confused me alot when the story segments for Gul'dans past appeared in Warcraft 3. But makes sense in the end when demons are suddenly the masters of the orcs and not just forcefully controlled beasts summoned by the orcs.
Gul'dan was definitely a Warlock (and in fact, leader of the Warlocks ) in Tides of Darkness, and the Warlocks weren't replaced by Gul'dan, they were destroyed by Orgrim Doomhammer to solidify his control over the Horde. It's in Gul'dan's recounting of the history of the Orcs in the Tides of Darkness manual.
In history I like to go after the older texts ;P. But I already pointed out that Warcraft liked to change the story to fit with the new one better. I just said that Guldan created the Deathknights to fill the void the dead Warlocks created. And yes he posed as a Warlock in Warcraft 2 but ultimately failed at using their most powerful spell and payed with his life. Most glorious moment in Warcraft 2 for me.
On June 17 2016 22:22 Ej_ wrote: It's you, my HL is still filled with fucking morons and unranked is the place to go for muted.
Ok, for a total of 4 games played, 3 dodges. And a lot of toxicity on my last game (5th guy who said after draft he has no warrior)... You're right ^^ Fingers crossed for HL.
On June 15 2016 19:27 FeyFey wrote: great medivh comes to the nexus and again unleashes evil onto a world. (so the 2 characters i despise since warcraft 1 are coming to heroes back to back yay ... )
Was Gul'dan in WarCraft I? I thought he was introduced in Tides of Darkness.
Yeah Guldan was a necrolyte still at that time. I am not sure if he was playable but mentioned in the manual etc. During the fights in Warcraft 1 most caster classes took so many casualties, that they were mostly extinct when the war came to Lorderon in Tides of Darkness. (Well lore reasons to remove units) So humans trained Clerics in the art of war and made them Paladins. While Guldan replaced the Warlocks by Deathknights he created from the Knights of Azeroth and infused them with the fallen Necrolyte spirits, so they could use necromantic spells.
Later on Gul'dan tried to become a Warlock and summon demons, but while he summoned them he could not control them and got torn to pieces. Though this story was already changed in Warcraft 3. Confused me alot when the story segments for Gul'dans past appeared in Warcraft 3. But makes sense in the end when demons are suddenly the masters of the orcs and not just forcefully controlled beasts summoned by the orcs.
Gul'dan was definitely a Warlock (and in fact, leader of the Warlocks ) in Tides of Darkness, and the Warlocks weren't replaced by Gul'dan, they were destroyed by Orgrim Doomhammer to solidify his control over the Horde. It's in Gul'dan's recounting of the history of the Orcs in the Tides of Darkness manual.
In history I like to go after the older texts ;P. But I already pointed out that Warcraft liked to change the story to fit with the new one better. I just said that Guldan created the Deathknights to fill the void the dead Warlocks created. And yes he posed as a Warlock in Warcraft 2 but ultimately failed at using their most powerful spell and payed with his life. Most glorious moment in Warcraft 2 for me.
There's an older WarCraft II manual?
yeah its called the warcraft 1 manual ...
Can't find any reference to Gul'dan in those. Also, not sure why the events of WarCraft II would be in the WarCraft I manual.
He played a dozen of games and went 9-3 (6-2 duo Q with Bakery, 3-1 solo Q). Most of those games were around 3100-3300 mmr on average, which roughly corresponds to the old 3300-3700 mmr. He got matched with Darkmok, Nurok or KnowMe for example.
He was most of the time in top 4 dmg dealers. Overall he got a 56k average hero damage when, according to hotslogs, the sitewide average for Medivh is 25k. To give a comparison, 56k average is what Valla and Raynor have, and it's more than what Zagara (52k) or Sgt Hammer (53k) do.
His build :
Lvl 1 : Mana adept
Lvl 4 : Bird eye view
Lvl 7 : The Master's Touch
Lvl 10 : Situational
Lvl 13 : Astral projection
Lvl 16 : Reabsorption
Lvl 20 : Situational
I found that interesting as an example that you can carry with Medivh by dealing large amount of damage (even if it's not representative of anything). Unfortunately I didn't recognize a name that could have streamed one of those games.
Edit : I actually found a video ! But it's in Russian on Shtyr stream : https://www.twitch.tv/shtyr/v/72615124?t=5h40m50s I just watched for a bit but it's pretty crazy, I didn't know you could do that with Medivh... He's just harassing the enemy team non stop. Though most of the video is just Zagara point of view from Shtyr.
Dignitas Bakery's comments: Hopefully I can shed some light on why he was so impactful!
He pretty much used portal on cooldown to jump alone into the enemy team, sometimes just on the frontline and other times on backline - depending on the situation. His damage would spike hugely after he completed the level 7 talent, and he would change his playstyle to very similar to Moonfire Malfurion, poking on cooldown and looking for the opportunity to go in and finish off some people. He also started to look to use the portal in team oriented ways once he had the level 7, such as Malfurion silence or flanking.
He also really enjoys the Hero, so I think that helps! I hope you found this useful
There has been a ton of debate and theory crafting about our proposed changes, but also a ton of unique, fun and interesting suggestions and counterpoints. While I encourage you all to continue posting about this topic, I think we’ve got what we we’re looking for with this thread. We’ll continue to keep an eye out for more feedback.
Here is a rough summary of where the design team is at, after accounting all the feedback:
Regeneration Globes:
The majority of players liked the suggestion of making these more meaningful. Internally we have been enjoying our 12/8 testing on these and have just started experimenting with making these globes time out quicker. We’ll continue testing this but we hope to push out something in the future for you guys to play with.
We’re still discussing the numerous other ideas associated with Globes such as giving them an XP component, granting stats, or something else.
Healing Fountains:
It seems the general consensus is that these are working pretty well as is, but a small change here might be good. We will keep exploring our slight change that has increased the CD and mana return slightly. Overall, we’re pretty happy with this change, and we agree we don’t need to do anything too drastic here.
Passive Regeneration & Sustain Talents:
We will NOT be making changes to passive regeneration or regeneration talents as a whole. There was a ton of feedback here and overall we agree. This was mostly an experiment on our part, but it was great to see all of your reasons for and against these changes (mostly against).
Support Characters:
Agree there needs to be a discussion focused on Support characters at some point. I will sync up with the rest of the design team to gather our thoughts and see where we stand on supports. Expect a new thread about this in the future.
Quick Match:
Agree that we need to be conscious of how QM games play with these changes, especially those without supports. The 12/8 globes may help here though, as completing a map event (i.e. Immortals) will replenish some additional resources now.
Thank you for the responses! It’s great to see such passionate, well thought out, discussions from the community.
On an unrelated note, Korean pro JOKER is now up to #4 on the NA grandmaster list.
On June 17 2016 21:44 Leolio wrote: Is it me or is the game in a really nice place right now ?
- HL seems good so far (duo queue's kinda random though). Very little toxicity since reset + muted people ban. Probably will get better when the people are placed at a rank matching their level.
- Unranked, despite the draft dodges, is a good place to try heroes.
- QM, well, let's not talk about QM. ^^
Agreed. Dunno about toxicity, but since the reset im getting more even matches and less scrubs.
Ok I'm confused now. Just played my first HL placement match for Season 1. I was a bit afraid I'd end up with completely new players but whatever.
The draft starts for Battlefield of Eternity and pick #2 and #3 on my team instantly preselect Valla and Sylvanas. Sure, fine. Since it's BoE, I figure I'll play Stitches, since he has good sustain and cast last quite long in a fight and Immortal fights tend to drag out. Our Sylvanas (who gets to be our banner) says nothing and bans no-one (twice) so the enemy team gets ETC, Xul, Rehgar. At the same time, our first pick instantly selects Abathur and straight up says, I only play Abathur, don't get mad. Our last pick has Li-Ming selected. This leaves us with no healer if this selection goes through. Both Valla and Li-Ming state that the heroes they selected are their mains. I counter saying there are no mains in Hero League. The entire team (sans me) starts raging at each other for their picks, all of them raging about not having a support but not wanting to play support themselves (pot meet kettle?). I pick Stitches, try to calm it a bit and try try try to convince our last pick to pretty please go for a healer. Luckily, at the last second, he actually picks Li Li.
The team is still flaming and I'm almost 100% sure we're going to lose this game because my teammates will be more focused on flaming and typing than playing.
Instead? Not a single flame the entire game, good hero plays, decent teamwork and we dominate the enemy team and win the game. Even 'wp' are being thrown around all friendly like. Just...huh? What...? What this really the same team I just had a draft from hell with? Weird.
On June 15 2016 19:27 FeyFey wrote: great medivh comes to the nexus and again unleashes evil onto a world. (so the 2 characters i despise since warcraft 1 are coming to heroes back to back yay ... )
Was Gul'dan in WarCraft I? I thought he was introduced in Tides of Darkness.
Yeah Guldan was a necrolyte still at that time. I am not sure if he was playable but mentioned in the manual etc. During the fights in Warcraft 1 most caster classes took so many casualties, that they were mostly extinct when the war came to Lorderon in Tides of Darkness. (Well lore reasons to remove units) So humans trained Clerics in the art of war and made them Paladins. While Guldan replaced the Warlocks by Deathknights he created from the Knights of Azeroth and infused them with the fallen Necrolyte spirits, so they could use necromantic spells.
Later on Gul'dan tried to become a Warlock and summon demons, but while he summoned them he could not control them and got torn to pieces. Though this story was already changed in Warcraft 3. Confused me alot when the story segments for Gul'dans past appeared in Warcraft 3. But makes sense in the end when demons are suddenly the masters of the orcs and not just forcefully controlled beasts summoned by the orcs.
Gul'dan was definitely a Warlock (and in fact, leader of the Warlocks ) in Tides of Darkness, and the Warlocks weren't replaced by Gul'dan, they were destroyed by Orgrim Doomhammer to solidify his control over the Horde. It's in Gul'dan's recounting of the history of the Orcs in the Tides of Darkness manual.
In history I like to go after the older texts ;P. But I already pointed out that Warcraft liked to change the story to fit with the new one better. I just said that Guldan created the Deathknights to fill the void the dead Warlocks created. And yes he posed as a Warlock in Warcraft 2 but ultimately failed at using their most powerful spell and payed with his life. Most glorious moment in Warcraft 2 for me.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at.
Everything in the Warcraft lore has always said that Gul'Dan is a Warlock. He was never even mentioned in the WC1 manual and in the WC2 manual he was definitely a Warlock. The Shadow Council (i.e. all of the Warlocks that you could play with as the Orcs in WC1) were killed by Doomhammer, and Gul'Dan replaced them with the souls of the Necrolytes infused into the corpses of dead Azerothian (i.e. Stormwind) Knights. This is straight out of the WC2 manual.
I've dropped 2 ranks (and I'm about to regain 1) in HL after the placement matches. Placement were "ok'ish" (went 4-6), since then I've been paired with one idiot after the other. From the "my boss came so I had to close the game at minute 1 (who came back when all keeps were dead on Blackhearts)"-Muradin, to the "I'll try to solo-kill their Muradin in the middle of their 5-stack 4 times in a row to throw the level 20-18 lead we had"-Nova. Thanks to this I'm now receiving personal rank adjustment of -20 every time I win a game. Promotion as well as demotion games also seem to be code for "try and carry the biggest 4 idiots we could find on ladder".
EDIT: The above seems kinda QQ'ish, but what I tried to convey is that in reality the HL ladder is still far from sunshine and rainbows. I'll climb back up soon enough
Developer Comments: Kael’thas’ damage is a bit too high, so we’re nerfing his single-target Living Bomb damage by 10%. While we were successful at giving him some weaknesses by reducing his survivability and removing Bolt of the Storm, he is still able to put out more single-target damage than we’re comfortable with. We want to point him towards being more of an AoE mage, and this is the beginning of that process. Expect to see some tweaks in the future to continue pointing him in that direction.
Chromie
Basic Abilities
Time Trap (E)
Mana cost reduced from 50 to 25
Cast range increased by 50%.
Time Trap Base Health increased from 200 to 300.
Developer Comments: We want to play up the strategic positioning that Chromie uses to stay alive. As such, we are making Time Traps less of a Mana drain and increasing their range so Chromie players are encouraged to reposition the traps where it will offer the best benefit.We are also increasing the Health of the traps so that they don’t die as frequently to incidental damage. These buffs will make it easier for Chromie to protect herself from the enemies that she knows are coming…or will know were coming… time dragons are confusing.
Support Rehgar
Stats
Basic Attack damage increased from 95 to 99.
Basic Abilities
Chain Heal (Q)
Primary heal amount reduced from 372 to 334.
Secondary bounce heal amount reduced from 186 to 167.
Lightning Shield (W)
Damage increased from 60 damage per second to 64 damage per second.
Talents
Level 4
Stormcaller (W)
Mana return increased from 3 to 4 per Hero hit.
Maximum Mana returned increased from 30 to 40.
Developer Comments: Rehgar is still performing too well in competitive play. We agree with the majority of the community that we’d rather see him being a more aggressive support, so we’re offsetting some of the healing nerfs by increasing his damage potential. This should be an overall nerf to Rehgar, but he is almost universally regarded as one of the best supports at all levels of play and with all team compositions. These should bring him in line while also rewarding those behind-biting plays that everyone loves.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue causing the Hero League screen to fail to update with Placement Match results after a game completed.
The Profile Statistics page will now show the highest rank earned for current and previous seasons, instead of current rank.
The Profile Summary page will now show lifetime player and Hero stats instead of the current season’s stats.
You'll not see me complain about Chromie buffs, they took one of the best parts of her kit and made it better XD. Andorhal Anomaly just became undoubtedly Tip Top level 20 in my book.
Only way to really fix support is to deepen the pool. There are just too few supports.
Just in time for Free Chromie week. Of course all the Heroes will be playable for free between June 24th and June 27th.
Also Blzz Spyrian said:
We're actually not going to move forward with removing Tracer from draft/competitive game modes for now, as we're working to hotfix this bug as soon as we can. We're currently targeting a fix to roll out as early as tomorrow morning, and we'll keep you updated as we have more info.
On June 21 2016 19:54 Foxxan wrote: What does personal rank adjustment mean? Is that your mmr? If so, how can you get Minus after a win? :o
if you were losing a lot before your wins, system assumes you aren't good and takes away points from you if you were winning a lot before your losses, it does the opposite and takes away less points from you
On June 21 2016 19:37 Foxxan wrote: This ladder kinda proofs that there are so few people playing this game(?) Master division doesnt even exist right now.
It proves that there aren't a lot of people at Grand Master MMR, which has to fill up before there will be a Masters division. Most players will never be at that level. The top of the Grand Masters isn't the highest MMR players with this system. It's a system that values massive amounts of games over MMR as you see lower "ranked" grandmasters picking bans over those in the top 10. So lots of people just haven't played enough games to grind to where they "belong".
Ok. Thats bs but it is what it is. What does opponent favored adjustment mean then? If its +, it means they are favored? And minus, it means My team was is favored?
On June 21 2016 19:37 Foxxan wrote: This ladder kinda proofs that there are so few people playing this game(?) Master division doesnt even exist right now.
It proves that there aren't a lot of people at Grand Master MMR, which has to fill up before there will be a Masters division. Most players will never be at that level. The top of the Grand Masters isn't the highest MMR players with this system. It's a system that values massive amounts of games over MMR as you see lower "ranked" grandmasters picking bans over those in the top 10. So lots of people just haven't played enough games to grind to where they "belong".
But it says TOp500 Gets into Grandmaster while outside of that its masters. Right now only top 200 exists and if u start to lose while at #200 you will get demoted to diamond.
About Rehgar's nerf: He's been the best support since february. We kept whining how dominant he was, even recently. It's really a late nerf.
Nice to see Chromie buffed but she didn't have mana issues except very early. I keep playing her in unranked and it's huge fun, but I don't think I'll ever play her in ranked.
You need to pick her in the bottom of the draft (since Illidan, Tracer, Zera, Nova, Fals and Dehaka hard counter her so much), and there needs to be an assassin spot available in your team. Then I have no reason to not go Nova.
Tanky team ? Nova's slightly better vs them late game. Squishy opponents ? Nova's better. Nova's taken by the opponent ? She'll kill Chromie all game. Nova's on your team ? Too squishy, positioned too far from the team, they'll only have 3 bodies in fights. Nova's banned by the opponent ? Sure, but that won't happen very often.
In the end, Chromie is a cheese pick, Nova is a cheese pick, I'm a fucking cheeser.
On June 21 2016 21:46 Leolio wrote: About Rehgar's nerf: He's been the best support since february. We kept whining how dominant he was, even recently. It's really a late nerf.
rehgar is so dominant because the only other support that has both burst and sustain is monk and people can't play monk, he's not actually as powerful as the statistics make him out to be
On June 21 2016 21:46 Leolio wrote: About Rehgar's nerf: He's been the best support since february. We kept whining how dominant he was, even recently. It's really a late nerf.
rehgar is so dominant because the only other support that has both burst and sustain is monk and people can't play monk, he's not actually as powerful as the statistics make him out to be
Well they did turn him up to 11 completely out of the blue as well.
On June 21 2016 19:37 Foxxan wrote: This ladder kinda proofs that there are so few people playing this game(?) Master division doesnt even exist right now.
It proves that there aren't a lot of people at Grand Master MMR, which has to fill up before there will be a Masters division. Most players will never be at that level. The top of the Grand Masters isn't the highest MMR players with this system. It's a system that values massive amounts of games over MMR as you see lower "ranked" grandmasters picking bans over those in the top 10. So lots of people just haven't played enough games to grind to where they "belong".
But it says TOp500 Gets into Grandmaster while outside of that its masters. Right now only top 200 exists and if u start to lose while at #200 you will get demoted to diamond.
It's not just top 500 players over all, it's top 500 who have played and won enough games to make it to masters. Since Diamond 3 is the highest you can start off with, that is why there aren't 500 in Grandmasters yet.
On June 21 2016 21:46 Leolio wrote: About Rehgar's nerf: He's been the best support since february. We kept whining how dominant he was, even recently. It's really a late nerf.
rehgar is so dominant because the only other support that has both burst and sustain is monk and people can't play monk, he's not actually as powerful as the statistics make him out to be
Well they did turn him up to 11 completely out of the blue as well.
and then kept nerfing him every matchup without actually addressing the issue of other supports underperforming with stun nerfs (uther, tyrande) and rehgar being by far the easiest to play at casual level (besides medic who blizzard ignored because of her irrelevance in high mmr games)
Rehgar si so strong because the meta is all about dive. I mean, bruisers are at a good place, Illidan and Thrall are very strong, Xul is fucking good with a melee healer. And Rehgar si so easy to play at good level.
All of Reddit seems to think that reducing Kael Thas' single target damage on Living Bomb is actually "A HUGE NERF TO THE MOST OP FUCKING HERO IN THE GAME" because if you hit Mighty Gust and the bomb spreads with Master of Flames Kaelthas can 100-0 the entire enemy team!
Which is exactly the same case as it is now, and his single target damage is 10% lower (bad for his blowup), and any situation in which the enemy gets 5 man gusted usually ends in a wipe.
On June 22 2016 01:57 SC2Toastie wrote: All of Reddit seems to think that reducing Kael Thas' single target damage on Living Bomb is actually "A HUGE NERF TO THE MOST OP FUCKING HERO IN THE GAME" because if you hit Mighty Gust and the bomb spreads with Master of Flames Kaelthas can 100-0 the entire enemy team!
Which is exactly the same case as it is now, and his single target damage is 10% lower (bad for his blowup), and any situation in which the enemy gets 5 man gusted usually ends in a wipe.
this site man.
You clearly haven't heard that every change to meta heroes is either objectively the most OP change ever, or makes them literally unplayable.
unranked is such a shithole. Last game I had a 3 man party who decided to report me after I chose Murky which apparently didn't fit their "pick specialist" command after their Gold 5 league draft of diablo/monk/rehgar on BHB. Cuz you know Murky is a troll, but 2 supports and a tank going to gank and leaving 2 lanes unsoaked because of that is brilliant calculated play.
I'm starting to think that anything that isn't solo q is simply awful and makes you a report target. When meeting people in solo q in unranked everybody seems to have fun and do their best, but put any party and they start shifting blame onto the outsiders.
Lots of people having bad match making games still, especially in smaller regions where they get GM matched with Bronze and Silver players on occasion:
BlizzLoesby's (Software Engineer) response:
Hello everyone, We’re looking into these reports this morning. Thanks to those of you who’ve provided unedited screenshots of loading screens, that’s one of the easiest ways for us to find the specific match and look at our logs for it. While we evaluate ways we can make this kind of situation better as quickly as we can, I do want to call out that these types of matches are, on the whole, extremely unlikely. They’re a result of one of the ways we trade match requirements (like keeping all ranks in a game close) for wait time, and are very rarely necessary.
I have played around 150 games now, never happened to me so far. Iam happy about the matchmaking, it feels so much better than pre-patch. I mean, the MM feels decent now atleast, maybe even good imo.
Developer Comments: Kael’thas’ damage is a bit too high, so we’re nerfing his single-target Living Bomb damage by 10%. While we were successful at giving him some weaknesses by reducing his survivability and removing Bolt of the Storm, he is still able to put out more single-target damage than we’re comfortable with. We want to point him towards being more of an AoE mage, and this is the beginning of that process. Expect to see some tweaks in the future to continue pointing him in that direction.
Chromie
Basic Abilities
Time Trap (E)
Mana cost reduced from 50 to 25
Cast range increased by 50%.
Time Trap Base Health increased from 200 to 300.
Developer Comments: We want to play up the strategic positioning that Chromie uses to stay alive. As such, we are making Time Traps less of a Mana drain and increasing their range so Chromie players are encouraged to reposition the traps where it will offer the best benefit.We are also increasing the Health of the traps so that they don’t die as frequently to incidental damage. These buffs will make it easier for Chromie to protect herself from the enemies that she knows are coming…or will know were coming… time dragons are confusing.
Support Rehgar
Stats
Basic Attack damage increased from 95 to 99.
Basic Abilities
Chain Heal (Q)
Primary heal amount reduced from 372 to 334.
Secondary bounce heal amount reduced from 186 to 167.
Lightning Shield (W)
Damage increased from 60 damage per second to 64 damage per second.
Talents
Level 4
Stormcaller (W)
Mana return increased from 3 to 4 per Hero hit.
Maximum Mana returned increased from 30 to 40.
Developer Comments: Rehgar is still performing too well in competitive play. We agree with the majority of the community that we’d rather see him being a more aggressive support, so we’re offsetting some of the healing nerfs by increasing his damage potential. This should be an overall nerf to Rehgar, but he is almost universally regarded as one of the best supports at all levels of play and with all team compositions. These should bring him in line while also rewarding those behind-biting plays that everyone loves.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue causing the Hero League screen to fail to update with Placement Match results after a game completed.
Rehgar: The untalented Lightning Shield gained from the Lightning Bond talent will no longer increase the damage dealt by Rising Storm when both talents are taken
Tracer: Fixed an issue causing Pulse Bomb to deal unintended additional damage when certain talents were chosen.
The Profile Statistics page will now show the highest rank earned for current and previous seasons, instead of current rank.
The Profile Summary page will now show lifetime player and Hero stats instead of the current season’s stats.
KTs 16 talent seems to be nerfed to. I guess they kinda belong to each other, so its bigger than just 10% if you take the single target AA talent at 16. EDIT: or am i wrong? I think it did 300 damage before at 16? Maybe its wrong though.
Haven't played for about a month now, so I thought i give the new MM / Ranking a try. Wasn't too worried about not having Chromie/ Mediv cause they seem not to be in the meta (yet?)
All 4 placement games were really good/ close 2 were even the whole time until at lvl 20+ someone made a mistake which ended the game 2 were a bit one-sided until lvl 16+ when one team managed a comback.
No toxicity in games and just once in draft
So, Blizzard really got it down now huh? Just a year too late unfortunately
Tyrael getting more changes in the near future: Blizz Spyrian: Hey! I wanted to stop in this thread and let you guys know that the mana cost changes Tyrael received recently aren't the end of the road for him in terms of tweaks we have planned. It won't be a full rework, but we are looking to make a number of changes to some of Tyrael's talents with our next major patch.
Since Tracer, they have released a new hero every 4 weeks, which would put presumably Gul'dan coming July 12th. Good chance a PTR comes a week before that.
Haven't played for about a month now, so I thought i give the new MM / Ranking a try. Wasn't too worried about not having Chromie/ Mediv cause they seem not to be in the meta (yet?)
All 4 placement games were really good/ close 2 were even the whole time until at lvl 20+ someone made a mistake which ended the game 2 were a bit one-sided until lvl 16+ when one team managed a comback.
No toxicity in games and just once in draft
So, Blizzard really got it down now huh? Just a year too late unfortunately
Yup, my feeling too! The wait time is not even that long!
It is a bit weird, because they took a long time to develop the game, and was still faar to slow to take major shares from dota 2... What if they only realized the potential of the moba genre right away and made the one-and-only esport moba 10 years ago??
Saying it is ''too late" is hyperbole. The system should have been fixed ages ago, there is a lot that could have been done quicker that may have helped increase the player base sooner but whether it is too late I.e. the game will decline from here on out is still up in the air.
The most recent tournament seemed to be a big success, it was also well advertised in game and streamers are also getting exposure, I'm sure they have more in the pipeline. The game is fundamentally fun and has exposure through blizzards cross game advertising, I would suggest the success of overwatch may ultimately benefit hots too.
There are too many unknowns to write the game off and there is still hope, given good future direction, that it will gain traction.
On June 22 2016 17:47 SC2Toastie wrote: "OHMIGOD BUFF STRONGEST HERO MOT OP IN GAME OMFG BLIZZARD NO CLUE SUCH IDIOTS IF W LANDS ON 5 EVEN MORAR DAMAGE NOPW OM!KM!M!M<!" - Reddit
The reality is that it's easy to find someone stupid on Reddit to argue with, the question is whether it's worth your time to bother. That being said there are informative posts on HOTS reddit all the time.
Should have played more Zagara. Wanted to focus on Chromie but specialist quests kept piling on. Noticed that thanks to the battle momentum change you can solo early bosses now without taking damage. And still got people off guard, because they thought I just spreaded creep while everyone of them was visible. I know it was possible before as well, but it was really easy to take damage in between roach rounds and that made it risky. Now its really chill to take down the boss. having to avoid that the root hits any of your summons is still hard though.
Like the KT change alot. But others will probably like it less. Like the famous Rexxar player that didn't wanted to send his Misha away.
I've been having great success with the mm system now, at least in ranked. Definitely don't think I was put into the right rank once again, but I definitely am having way better partners than before. Also, I love when I get first ban, first pick, Ban Ili, pick Liming ezpz.
On June 23 2016 23:41 ShoCkeyy wrote: I've been having great success with the mm system now, at least in ranked. Definitely don't think I was put into the right rank once again, but I definitely am having way better partners than before. Also, I love when I get first ban, first pick, Ban Ili, pick Liming ezpz.
I played when the season first started and was pretty unsatisfied with the very random assortment of players I was getting. But today I went back at it and seemed to get all good teammates. Though out of 12 games, only two of the games were especially good. (The last two). Maybe it just took the first ten to get my mmr adjusted from the loss streak I had on the first day.
We will be releasing a new patch for Heroes of the Storm later this week in order to apply balance changes to Anub’arak, Leoric, and Medivh. Check out the detailed patch notes below.
Anub'arak
Stats
Base Health decreased from 2026 to 1926
Health Regen decreased from 4.22 to 4.01 per second
Leoric
Abilities
Drain Hope (W)
Damage has been increased from 20% to 25% of target's maximum Health
Healing has been increased from 20% to 25% of Leoric's maximum Health
Healing in Undying form increased from 10% to 12.5% of Leoric's maximum Health
Talents
Level 4
Willing Vessel (W)
Healing increased from 25% to 30% of Leoric's maximum Health
Healing in Undying form increased from 12.5% to 15% of Leoric's maximum Health
Medivh
Stats
Basic Attack damage increased from 65 to 80
Attacks per second increased from 1.0 to 1.11
Abilities
Raven Form (D)
Movement Speed bonus increased from 15% to 20%
Arcane Rift (Q)
Mana cost reduced from 60 to 50
Cast delay decreased from .15 to .06 seconds
Base Damage increased from 182 to 200
Mana refund from hitting a Hero increased from 30 to 50
Talents
Level 1
Mana Adept (Q)
Removed
Level 7
The Master's Touch (Q)
Number of Heroes hit required to complete the quest has been reduced from 35 to 30
Damage bonus upon quest completion decreased from 100 to 75
Level 13
Winds of Celerity (D)
Movement Speed bonus in Raven Form has been decreased from 100% to 50%
Developer Comments:While we are still excitedly waiting to see what competitive teams will be able to do with this unique Hero, we have gathered enough data to see that Medivh could benefit from some strategic buffs. We realize Medivh’s success is typically reliant on how much the rest of his team capitalizes on his abilities - so we have given him a bit more baseline power, which we hope will allow him to make a greater individual impact on a game’s outcome.
On June 28 2016 03:23 Valiver wrote: Rofl at them reverting some leoric nerfs.
Not even enough to help him, his kit just doesn't fit with the meta. I don't know why you'd ever pick a tank with no cc until 10 ever these days. Even Chen can just say excuse me and occupy space with his Q.
On June 28 2016 03:23 Valiver wrote: Rofl at them reverting some leoric nerfs.
Not even enough to help him, his kit just doesn't fit with the meta. I don't know why you'd ever pick a tank with no cc until 10 ever these days. Even Chen can just say excuse me and occupy space with his Q.
Tyrael obviously comes with other benefits.
he used to have good waveclear and lane sustain which was more than enough, now he's just a bad Sonya tho
On June 28 2016 03:23 Valiver wrote: Rofl at them reverting some leoric nerfs.
Not even enough to help him, his kit just doesn't fit with the meta. I don't know why you'd ever pick a tank with no cc until 10 ever these days. Even Chen can just say excuse me and occupy space with his Q.
Tyrael obviously comes with other benefits.
he used to have good waveclear and lane sustain which was more than enough, now he's just a bad Sonya tho
I'm waiting for someone to bait the leoric pick with a first ban Tychus feigning the Cho'Gall.
Anub nerf? Really? And on his health again? Wasn't that the one part about Anub that needed fixing? That he was so squishy? Tychus will have more health than Anub now. Even more so with Shrug it Off. I saw him picked decently in pro games, seemed like he was at a solid spot, not overpicked like KT or overbanned like Illidan.
Anub's winrate should be even higher if people picked Locust instead of Cocoon. If they don't want to touch Dampen to cement his anit-mage role, they should look at Locust instead. Locust + lvl 20 upgrade is way too good.
On June 28 2016 08:15 Larkin wrote: Anub is super strong. I don't think hp/regen nerf is the way to go - dampen magic is what was making him so powerful imo.
Nothing makes me laugh harder than seeing how little Li Ming's Orb takes out of his health while I play him.
On June 28 2016 08:15 Larkin wrote: Anub is super strong. I don't think hp/regen nerf is the way to go - dampen magic is what was making him so powerful imo.
Yes, and that's also what makes it awful when your teammates Anub' don't get Dampen Magic, but your opponent Anub' always get it. He needed a nerf, if only just to prevent idiots from insta locking him, thinking they'll do wonders with the new OP hero.
Wooh, got my Diamond 2. Not sure why but it feels way better than ranking up in the old system. Went 6-4 in placements, then 9-7. Master in another ~50 games would be nice. Does anyone know when the personal bonus points run out?
On June 29 2016 02:53 Pwere wrote: Wooh, got my Diamond 2. Not sure why but it feels way better than ranking up in the old system. Went 6-4 in placements, then 9-7. Master in another ~50 games would be nice. Does anyone know when the personal bonus points run out?
you get bonus points after win streaks and lose penalty points after loss streaks. thats the systems way of estimating how good you are
On June 28 2016 08:15 Larkin wrote: Anub is super strong. I don't think hp/regen nerf is the way to go - dampen magic is what was making him so powerful imo.
Nothing makes me laugh harder than seeing how little Li Ming's Orb takes out of his health while I play him.
Nothing quite beats Lunara's Greater Spell Shield taking on a Pyroblast (okay with BW helping out too):
On June 29 2016 02:53 Pwere wrote: Wooh, got my Diamond 2. Not sure why but it feels way better than ranking up in the old system. Went 6-4 in placements, then 9-7. Master in another ~50 games would be nice. Does anyone know when the personal bonus points run out?
you get bonus points after win streaks and lose penalty points after loss streaks. thats the systems way of estimating how good you are
Weird, I basically went 50/50 the entire way with the occasional double win here and there, but I had 18-26 bonus points every game, win or lose. I guess that's leftover above diamond 3 from pre-reset MMR, but I felt like I was barely rank 1 before...
Just had 3 teammates disconnect and i had some lags, we lost a game we were winning in like 6 minutes. I had 3 bots following me. Must be this. Fucking ddos kids cost us the game.
On June 28 2016 06:53 Hier wrote: The Anub nerf seems unnecessary. There is no way anybody can claim he was OP. What a damn shame.
He sits at 62% popularity, 60% WR at 'Hotslogs Master' level and is a really common pick at tournaments as well. This - or alternatively a nerf of his offensive capabilities - was needed.
A bit surprised they chose a change that narrowed his role further, as the three 'tanky tanks' are most likely the rarest breed again; with Chen, Stitches and Anub highly situational and Chen already unseen at pro tournaments level.
On June 29 2016 02:53 Pwere wrote: Wooh, got my Diamond 2. Not sure why but it feels way better than ranking up in the old system. Went 6-4 in placements, then 9-7. Master in another ~50 games would be nice. Does anyone know when the personal bonus points run out?
you get bonus points after win streaks and lose penalty points after loss streaks. thats the systems way of estimating how good you are
uhm no. The bonus points are correction for your MMR. If you should be masters based on MMR you get bonus points so you will eventually reach masters if you just grind it out. Occasinally the points are corrected too for favorable/unfavorable matches if the system couldn't find you an even match. Lastly there are some corrections for points lost/gained as the result of promotion/demotion matches (for example if you are at 950 points, then win a game and then lose your promotion game you are at 800 points which will be corrected for later).
On June 29 2016 02:53 Pwere wrote: Wooh, got my Diamond 2. Not sure why but it feels way better than ranking up in the old system. Went 6-4 in placements, then 9-7. Master in another ~50 games would be nice. Does anyone know when the personal bonus points run out?
you get bonus points after win streaks and lose penalty points after loss streaks. thats the systems way of estimating how good you are
uhm no. The bonus points are correction for your MMR. If you should be masters based on MMR you get bonus points so you will eventually reach masters if you just grind it out. Occasinally the points are corrected too for favorable/unfavorable matches if the system couldn't find you an even match. Lastly there are some corrections for points lost/gained as the result of promotion/demotion matches (for example if you are at 950 points, then win a game and then lose your promotion game you are at 800 points which will be corrected for later).
this is how it worked for me and at least one another guy I know, we kept getting bonus point after our decent placements and then started gaining less point following our loss streaks
Considering the consistent accuracy of the probable Blizz employee that this 4channer is (a quick look at the Chromie and Medivh accuracy is enough, really, let alone skins etc) - I'd say he's probably close to spot on with this one too. Cool concept, and glad he's going into the PTR first.
In case you missed our previous discussion, feel free to check out the thread here. In this thread I introduced myself and we had an in-depth discussion about health sustain in Heroes of the Storm.
Thanks to all your feedback, it was clear many players wished to have a discussion about Support characters. So, lets dive right into this next discussion topic: Supports.
We’ve heard feedback from the community that our Supports feel like heal-bots. Let’s briefly explore this:
-Healing is a big part of what makes Support characters feel powerful and fun to play in Heroes of the Storm. These are some of our favorite characters, and we are not looking to drastically change the way they play.
-Not all characters are going to fit your playstyle. It’s okay that Li Li is more straight forward to play, whereas Rehgar has an aggressive playstyle.
Additional depth and complexity can come in the form of talents. Uther’s base kit is quite simple. However, at a highly competitive level, ‘Piano-Uther’ is seen as the optimal way to play, adding another layer of depth.
All of this being said, we agree that there is room for improvement. If most of your power comes from standing in the backline and not paying attention to enemy heroes, then this is an area we definitely want to improve. We think we can tackle this through some base kit changes, and future talent redesigns. We will also keep this in mind when designing future support heroes.
We’ve also heard from the community that our Supports are not play-makers, so let’s discuss:
We agree that Support players should have the ability to make big plays, and this is likely an area we can improve. However, lets define what this means:
-Supports are not Assassins. We do not plan to push Supports in a direction that allows them to quickly mop up an enemy team or secure a bunch of kills.
-Supports bring a ton of value in ‘supporting’ their allies. This often occurs through healing, but could be through a movespeed buff, a well-timed CC, vision, etc.
-Many Heroic abilities including a well-timed Ancestral Heal, a perfectly placed Force Wall, or a clutch Divine Shield can all change the outcome of a team fight.
We think we can address this feedback with some simple base kit changes. With Lt. Morales, we’re currently exploring changing the way her Displacement Grenade functions; Instead of automatically detonating on the first enemy hero, we’ve changed it so the player chooses when the detonation occurs along its path, exploding automatically at maximum range. Simple changes like this could allow a skilled Lt. Morales player to choose if knocking away the enemy or pushing them toward your team is the correct call.
Other thoughts:
We want a flexible ‘meta’. We want the meta to vary over time and change based off the map. We like that the current meta allows for 1-2 Support characters per team - we feel this offers a lot of variety in team composition and play experience. We would occasionally like to see some 0 support team compositions, but very rarely. It is not off the table for us to retune the total healing output of Support characters. For example, we could decrease healing by 30% and increase health pools by 30%. A change like this likely means that a healer is more about mitigating immediate loss in a team fight, and less capable of constantly topping off their team. While this is a perfectly viable direction for us to explore, I don’t think it addresses either of the core concerns we’ve been hearing regarding making big plays or being considered heal bots.
The floor is now open, please add any thoughts you have below. I’d be really curious to hear where you think we’re currently succeeding with Supports, and where we should be looking to improve and focus our efforts. As always, thanks for your time and help.
" It’s okay that Li Li is more straight forward to play, whereas Rehgar has an aggressive playstyle."
I'm surprised to see this, considering Li Li is by far the most aggressive healer out there, and Rehgar can get a wolf attack here and there, but generally sits back and live the healbot life.
Also, that Morales change is pretty big. Adding safe ganking potential to her kit would make her viable on way more maps.
Please note: The following update to Team League Match Rewards is now live for the Americas region, and will arrive for all other regions around the world throughout the rest of the day.
It’s no secret that Heroes of the Storm is an absolute blast when you’re playing with friends, or that raiding the Team League queue as a five-player party only turns the fun up to eleven. However, we also know that it can take a little more effort to make sure everyone’s schedules line up when it comes time for a few Team League matches, and the games themselves involve quite a bit more coordination and communication than our other modes. In recognition of that extra effort, we’d like to try something new for those of you who assemble five-player squads in search of ranks, rewards, and glory in Team League.
More XP and Gold per Match
Starting today, and for the remainder of Ranked Season 1, we’re amping up the rewards you can earn simply by playing Team League:
Each Team League game you complete will now award 100% Bonus XP.
Team League Gold rewards have been increased to 50 per win, and 30 per defeat.
Better yet, Stimpack bonuses will stack additively with these new reward amounts, making Team League the best place to squeeze the most out of an active Stimpack per game.
These bonuses are ripe for the taking right now, and will remain in effect until Season 1 concludes during the week of August 23. Gather your closest allies, take another look at all of the epic loot you can unlock by ranking up, and hit that Ready button as hard as you can! If there are a few empty slots on your Team League roster, then be sure to check out the official Heroes forums, or the Heroes of the Storm Subreddit, to find other players who are looking to party up.
Hey, it's an amazing day in the Nexus: Chromie is at 50% winrate current build masters league! I think it's the 1st time since her release. And Gazlowe, the meta running-gag, is back at less than 40%. Now it feels like home. Hopefully, he gets nerfed again soon. :-D
I know that Browder said no D3-style monthlong event, but I suspect this is a coming of a WC-themed map and maybe a few more WC characters. I'm willing to bet that enough people at bliz are warcraft fans that a warcraft event would not be require onerous efforts.
edit-> Of course, as far as this spoiler goes it is not wc
Well after the initial surge of higher quality HL games, it's now back to the way it was. I'm guessing the evenings are a better time to play but I'm not available then. But the fact is I'm not even that high MMR, or that good of a player, but I get captain way more often than 20% of the time. And people who are 400+ MMR below me don't respect my calls. It seems like climbing the ladder is more about leading a draft and making calls (if the team will listen) than actually playing well personally. Probably 20% of games are straight up won or lost at draft. And like 50% of games are won or lost based on calls. The other 30% are decided by who plays better that game.
Spell breaker johanna looks amazing, I really like Auriel's design, though the abilities shown look like another damage dealer. Could be wrong, will just need to wait and see
Spell breaker johanna looks amazing, I really like Auriel's design, though the abilities shown look like another damage dealer. Could be wrong, will just need to wait and see
Auriel looks great, Demonic Auriel too. Gul'Dan will probably be a first day buy from me, haven't picked a hero since Dehaka and even though I wanted Xul, I figured that it would be better to have Gul'Dan instead.
Spell breaker johanna looks amazing, I really like Auriel's design, though the abilities shown look like another damage dealer. Could be wrong, will just need to wait and see
On July 02 2016 03:31 Foxxan wrote: what an ugly skin of li ming... plz dont ruin this game blizz.
I think it's pretty cute. When I first heard there was going to be a volleyball li-ming, I was worried it'd be a stereotypical beach volleyball kind of skin. The skin she ended up with is nicely done, IMO.
On July 02 2016 03:31 Foxxan wrote: what an ugly skin of li ming... plz dont ruin this game blizz.
yes volleyball skin is the nail in the coffin of this game
it's not the terrible engine, the terrible ranking system, the terrible servers, the forced competitive scene, the slow addition of new heroes or the support problem
On July 02 2016 03:31 Foxxan wrote: what an ugly skin of li ming... plz dont ruin this game blizz.
yes volleyball skin is the nail in the coffin of this game
it's not the terrible engine, the terrible ranking system, the terrible servers, the forced competitive scene, the slow addition of new heroes or the support problem
it's the Striker Li-Ming skin
Exactly. Soon we might have warriors that look like frogs. Since that removes the flavor, it has the potential to literally ruin this game.
On July 02 2016 03:31 Foxxan wrote: what an ugly skin of li ming... plz dont ruin this game blizz.
the slow addition of new heroes
Dyou really think they are slow? They kept up with the 1 new hero every 3-4 weeks for over a year... I think that's pretty decent. Surely if they released more faster it would just continuously disrupt the meta?
On July 02 2016 03:31 Foxxan wrote: what an ugly skin of li ming... plz dont ruin this game blizz.
the slow addition of new heroes
Dyou really think they are slow? They kept up with the 1 new hero every 3-4 weeks for over a year... I think that's pretty decent. Surely if they released more faster it would just continuously disrupt the meta?
Addition of new heroes is totally fine imo. Quicker releases would make the game too random because people wouldn't have time to learn playing (against) new heroes.
On July 02 2016 03:31 Foxxan wrote: what an ugly skin of li ming... plz dont ruin this game blizz.
the slow addition of new heroes
Dyou really think they are slow? They kept up with the 1 new hero every 3-4 weeks for over a year... I think that's pretty decent. Surely if they released more faster it would just continuously disrupt the meta?
I've seen both Chinese and Koreans complain about it
On July 02 2016 03:31 Foxxan wrote: what an ugly skin of li ming... plz dont ruin this game blizz.
the slow addition of new heroes
Dyou really think they are slow? They kept up with the 1 new hero every 3-4 weeks for over a year... I think that's pretty decent. Surely if they released more faster it would just continuously disrupt the meta?
I've seen both Chinese and Koreans complain about it
I know, but for me that doesn't mean I have to complain, too when I am actually happy with the amount of new hero releases.
On July 02 2016 03:31 Foxxan wrote: what an ugly skin of li ming... plz dont ruin this game blizz.
the slow addition of new heroes
Dyou really think they are slow? They kept up with the 1 new hero every 3-4 weeks for over a year... I think that's pretty decent. Surely if they released more faster it would just continuously disrupt the meta?
I've seen both Chinese and Koreans complain about it
People complain about everything, that doesn't make it slow. It is quite fast in my opinion and if we would get them faster there would just be an overwhelming number of heroes that are hard to balance correctly.
Blizzard has shown already that they are waiting for like 2 weeks of feedback before they release the patch that buffs/nerfs the new heroes, if the heroes are released every 2 weeks it would just create a chaotic clusterfuck.
Can't wait for Gul'Dan, especially after seeing him in the warcraft movie, made me want to play him 100% more. The whole thing with Chromie and Medivh, they're very situational. I feel like Chrome is a great counter to hammer - but very weak versus char that can be up in her face. Medivh is like good for melee chars, just for the portals.
Both have been buffed to more competitive levels since release, but when they first came out their win rates were absolutely terrible and they are still low. I think Medivh is really good in coordinated games, but for most players the games are not coordinated.
On July 02 2016 03:31 Foxxan wrote: what an ugly skin of li ming... plz dont ruin this game blizz.
the slow addition of new heroes
Dyou really think they are slow? They kept up with the 1 new hero every 3-4 weeks for over a year... I think that's pretty decent. Surely if they released more faster it would just continuously disrupt the meta?
I've seen both Chinese and Koreans complain about it
So have I, though that may have also referred to how new heroes on release aren't allowed in tournaments - but I was asking you/the thread if you really think the rate of release is too slow.
On July 02 2016 03:31 Foxxan wrote: what an ugly skin of li ming... plz dont ruin this game blizz.
the slow addition of new heroes
Dyou really think they are slow? They kept up with the 1 new hero every 3-4 weeks for over a year... I think that's pretty decent. Surely if they released more faster it would just continuously disrupt the meta?
I've seen both Chinese and Koreans complain about it
So have I, though that may have also referred to how new heroes on release aren't allowed in tournaments - but I was asking you/the thread if you really think the rate of release is too slow.
I think the release rate is fine at the moment. It gives us some time to actually play with the heroes and work out the best way to use them.
On July 02 2016 03:31 Foxxan wrote: what an ugly skin of li ming... plz dont ruin this game blizz.
the slow addition of new heroes
Dyou really think they are slow? They kept up with the 1 new hero every 3-4 weeks for over a year... I think that's pretty decent. Surely if they released more faster it would just continuously disrupt the meta?
I've seen both Chinese and Koreans complain about it
So have I, though that may have also referred to how new heroes on release aren't allowed in tournaments - but I was asking you/the thread if you really think the rate of release is too slow.
I think the hero pool is too small to begin with and a burst of new ones during off-season wouldn't hurt anyone
On July 02 2016 03:31 Foxxan wrote: what an ugly skin of li ming... plz dont ruin this game blizz.
the slow addition of new heroes
Dyou really think they are slow? They kept up with the 1 new hero every 3-4 weeks for over a year... I think that's pretty decent. Surely if they released more faster it would just continuously disrupt the meta?
I've seen both Chinese and Koreans complain about it
So have I, though that may have also referred to how new heroes on release aren't allowed in tournaments - but I was asking you/the thread if you really think the rate of release is too slow.
I think the hero pool is too small to begin with and a burst of new ones during off-season wouldn't hurt anyone
Mm, I suppose with the season system finally in place it could work. But it would likely create a state of imbalance by the time the season starts.
I would prefer maps that make underused heroes stronger, over more half baked new ones. But from a sports perspective I guess mixing up the 14 strongest heroes heavily makes more sense. But for me personally the reign of Muradin hasn't lasted long enough!
Karazax posted this video 2 pages ago, but thanks for taking the time to share. :-)
But anyway it gives me the oppportunity to say "OMG LI MING VOLLEYBALL I WANT THIS SKIN SO BAD". Too bad I can't play Ming at all. If we could gift skins, I'd gift it to my friend who plays her just so I can see her in games. ^^
Maybe we will get patch notes today, but with PTR tomorrow we should see the live release on July 12, and Auriel is likely to be live on August 9th if they keep the same schedule they have for the past several months, which is a new hero every 4th week.