Our 2016 Winter Veil celebration has arrived! Ring in the holiday season this year with a 25% XP bonus, a new event quest, and of course, quest rewards. + Show Spoiler +
25% XP Bonus The XP bonus begins at 10:00 a.m. PST on Wednesday, December 14, 2016 until 10:00 a.m. PST Tuesday, January 4, 2017. Winter Veil Event Quest Quest: Play 25 games in any matchmaking mode (Co-op vs. A.I., Quick Match, Unranked Draft, or Ranked) Rewards: Special Snowflake Portrait and Festive Treasure Goblin Mount. PTR Note: While elements of the Winter Veil event may appear on the Test Realm, players will not be able to make progress toward quests or rewards until the patch is released to the live version of Heroes of the Storm next week.
Party Sizes in Ranked Play The following party size adjustments for Hero and Team League have been made as a one-season experiment for Ranked Season 3. Hero League Players can no longer queue for Hero League games in parties. Team League 2, 3, and 5-player parties can now queue for Team League. 2 and 3-player parties can only queue for Team League if all members are ranked within one league of one another. 5-player parties can queue with any mixture of league rankings. While players will need to have access to at least 14 Heroes in order to play Team League, there are still no minimum Hero level requirements in order to queue for Team League matches. Team League will still utilize First Come, First Serve (FCFS) during Draft Mode, which means that parties of two and three players will need to coordinate effectively when drafting their Heroes. Silenced players can no longer queue for Team League for the duration of their Silence Penalty.
Those who finished their placement matches during Ranked Season 2 will receive their rewards upon logging in after downloading today’s patch. Matchmaking The matchmaking system’s certainty level in all players’ skill ratings has once again been loosened in order to help ease movement up or down through the rankings. Ranked League Adjustments Silver and Gold league population sizes have been adjusted, and will now contain similar amounts of players. Diamond league will now contain about half the number of players than the previous season.
New Hero: Ragnaros As the lord of Azeroth’s fire elementals, Ragnaros desires nothing more than to burn the world to ash. Banished to the Firelands eons ago, the Firelord now turns his rag toward the Nexus, intent on incinerating everything and everyone within it. + Show Spoiler +
Trait
Molten Core (D) Channel on an Allied or destroyed Fort or Keep to replace it with Ragnaros’ Ultimate Form, temporarily gaining new Abilities, and a significant amount of Health that burns away over 18 seconds. Ragnaros returns to his normal form upon losing all Health during Molten Core.
Basic Abilities
Empower Sulfuras (Q) Ragnaros’ next Basic Attack is instant, dealing Ability Damage in an area around the target, and Healing Ragnaros for 20% of the damage dealt. Healing is doubled for damage dealt to Heroes.
Living Meteor (W) Summon a meteor at the target point that deals damage on impact, and then rolls in the target direction and deals additional damage every second for 1.75 seconds.
Blast Wave (E) Ignite Ragnaros or target Ally, granting 25% bonus Movement Speed for 1.5 seconds before exploding, dealing damage to nearby enemies.
Molten Core Form Abilities
Molten Swing (Q) Swing Sulfuras in a wide arc, dealing damage and stunning enemies for 1 second. Damage increased by 25% versus Minions and Mercenaries.
Meteor Shower (W) Summon 3 meteors at the target point that fall in the target direction. Each meteor deals damage and slows enemies by 25% for 2 seconds. Damage increased by 25% versus Minions and Mercenaries.
Explosive Rune (E) Create a rune that explodes after 1.5 seconds, dealing damage to non-Structure enemies in a circular area. Damage increased by 25% versus Minions and Mercenaries.
Heroic Abilities
Sulfuras Smash (R) Hurl Sulfuras at the target area, landing after 0.75 seconds and dealing damage to enemies hit. Enemies caught in the center of the impact area take triple damage and are Stunned for 0.5 seconds.
Lava Wave (R) Release a wave of lava from the allied Core that travels down the target lane, dealing massive damage every second to non-Structure enemies and instantly killing enemy Minions in its path. Damage doubled versus enemy Heroes.
Battleground Rework: Haunted Mines
After driving the Raven Lord out of the Haunted Mines and doing a little. . . redecorating. . . the Grave Keeper has re-opened the Mines to all who wish to summon powerful and destructive Grave Golems. + Show Spoiler +
Haunted Mines Basics
Venture Underground The Haunted Mines will periodically open with an Undead Army underneath. Collect the Skulls Destroy the Undead and collect their Skulls to summon a powerful Golem. The more Skulls each team collects, the stronger their Golems become. Unleash the Golems After the Undead have been defeated, a Golem will rise for each team and travel down lane in search of Structures to destroy.
Haunted Mines Updates
Grave Golems now spawn in fixed positions in each lane, and switch lanes each time they are summoned. The layout of the Underground Mines has been reworked, and the Neutral Grave Golem can now be found at its center. The upper level’s center area has been reworked. Additional Mine Entrances have been placed to the East and West of the Battleground’s center area, for a total of 4. A Mercenary Camp has been placed near each Mine Entrance, featuring Siege Giants at the East and West Entrances, and Sappers in the North and South.
The battle for the High Heavens continues with Silver City: A new, Diablo-themed, single-lane Battleground that can be found in Custom Games.
Much like Lost Cavern before it, Silver City features just one Objective: Destroy the Enemy Core! Play strategically, because Hearthstones and Starting Area Heals have been disabled, making Health on Silver City quite precious. Three neutral Regeneration Globes will spawn along the northern edge of Silver City, and unlike Lost Cavern, two Siege Camps featuring Khazra Demons can be found toward the South.
The following Heroes have received updated visual effects and talent icon color tints to coincide with their reworks: Artanis Dehaka Diablo The following Hero Abilities have received slight animation changes to coincide with timing changes: Kael’thas: Pyroblast Zarya: Particle Grenade
Shop
The following changes will take place in the Shop once the Public Test Realm is brought offline and the patch is officially released to the live version of Heroes of the Storm next week. + Show Spoiler +
Bundles
New Bundles Lil’Ragnaros Bundle – Available until January 4, 2017 Removed Bundles Druid of the Flame Malfurion Bundle
New Hero
Ragnaros has been added to the in-game Shop.
Mounts
New Mounts 2016 Fall Champion’s Mount Returning Mounts Eye Pad Removed Mounts 2016 Summer Champion’s Mount Blackheart’s Doubloon
Skins
Lil’ Ragnaros Master Ragnaros
Price Reductions
Sylvanas’ prices reduced to $8.49 USD and 7,000 Gold.
Click the Grand Master Leaderboards and Ranked Play Guide buttons on the Ranked Play screen to view these pages within the Heroes of the Storm game client.
Press SHIFT and click a Hero portrait or Hero Role icon during Hero Select or in a Draft Lobby to add a link to that Hero or Role in the chat. Clicking a Hero or Role link in chat will automatically filter players’ Hero lists accordingly. Alternatively, type a Hero name or Role in square brackets to create chat links. For example: Typing “[Jaina]” into the chat box will create a link to Jaina in Hero Select. However, the spelling must be exact or the link will not work. These Hero and Role links can be used to suggest picks and bans in Draft Lobbies. Clicking a Hero or Role chat link while viewing the Shop will also filter the list of items accordingly.
Much like Hero League, players who repeatedly leave Unranked Draft and Team League games or draft lobbies will now be flagged to receive leaver penalties. Players with active penalties for leaving games can no longer queue for Unranked Draft or Team League games.
Press TAB at any point during the MVP and Commendations sequence to view the in-game Score Screen for that match. A Skip button has replaced the Exit button on the MVP screen. Clicking Skip will immediately take the player to the Commendations screen. Players can still leave the Commendations screen normally by pressing the Exit button.
For periods of time when a hero is considered unrevealable, they will no longer show a shimmer like other stealthed heroes. After the unrevealable period ends, they will show a shimmer again.
Healing Fountains Healing Fountains will now be Invulnerable when these Brawls next return to the Nexus
Braxis Holdout
Zerg Rush Initial Zergling spawn increased from 3 to 6 Zerglings
Warhead Junction
Warheads Base damage reduced from 2750 to 2300. Warhead damage now scales by a flat 70 every minute, and no longer has a large jump at 18 minutes. Inner Warhead damage is still a 50% bonus.
Developer Comments: We didn’t like the gameplay of holding off on using a Warhead for a sudden unintuitive damage spike, so we’ve smoothed out their damage curve over a longer period. This should end up playing mostly the same across the game, with only about 10% differences in damage at various points in the match.
Please Note: Several additional balance changes that are coming to the live version of Heroes with our next balance update are present on the Public Test Realm, but are not listed below. Chromie + Show Spoiler +
Abilities
Timewalker (Trait) Increased the level reduction for getting Talents from 1 to 2 levels
Talents
Level 1 Timewalker’s Pursuit (Active) Added Functionality: You can now also activate this Talent to reveal an area for 2 seconds. Enemies seen are revealed for 4 seconds. Peer Into the Future (Active) Removed
Developer Comments: We’re looking to add more power to Chromie that fits the flavor of the character, without increasing her burst potential across the entirety of the game. We’re also combining the effects of Timewalker’s Pursuit and Peer Into the Future to create an enticing option at Level 1.
Abilities Pyroblast (R) Cast time reduced from 2 to 1.5 seconds Cast range increased by roughly 30%
Developer Comments: Pyroblast has been underperforming compared to Phoenix. We like where its damage is at, and that a lot of Heroes have ways to negate or mitigate it. Instead, we’re buffing the consistency of the Heroic to make it more competitive.
Lightning Shield (W) Increased damage from 64 to 70 per second Bloodlust (R) Added functionality: All affected allies now heal for 30% of Basic Attack damage dealt during Bloodlust
Talents
Level 4 Stormcaller (W) Now returns Mana from hitting all enemies, not just Heroes Level 7 Totemic Projection (E) Added Functionality: Now also increases the duration of Earthbind Totem from 8 to 12 seconds Level 20 Farseer's Blessing (R) Secondary healing effect increased from 25% to 50% of Ancestral Healing’s full amount Gladiator's War Shout (R) Now increases Bloodlust healing from 30% to 60% of Basic Attack damage
Developer Comments: It’s been a while since Rehgar was a major dominant force, and his performance is now low enough that we can safely increase the rewards for his aggressive playstyle without pushing his winrate too high. For Bloodlust, we wanted to reduce the loss of healing for picking the Heroic, but only for Basic Attack teams that really benefit from it.
Blade Dash (Q) Added functionality: Now reduces the cooldown of Shield Overload by 1 second per enemy hit, and 2 seconds per Hero hit.
Twin Blades (W) Charge range is now checked against the edge of target units, instead of their center. This increases the effective range of Twin Blades and should generally create more consistent behavior.
Phase Prism (E) Added functionality: You can now cast Phase Prism during Blade Dash Cooldown increased from 14 to 16 seconds
Shield Overload (Trait) Cooldown increased from 20 to 24 seconds Activation threshold increased from 50 to 75% Health Shield value reduced from 449 to 360
Talents
Level 4
Shield Surge (Trait) Moved from Level 16 New functionality: Shield Overload's shield amount is increased by 80% while you are below 25% Health
Lethal Alacrity (Q) Removed
Shield Battery (Trait) Redesigned: Shield Overload's cooldown recharges 50% faster while its shield is active, and increases the duration of Shield Overload from 5 to 6 seconds
Psionic Synergy (Q) Moved from Level 7 Now increases the cooldown reduction of hitting Heroes with Blade Dash from 2 to 4 seconds
Level 7
Chrono Surge (E) Moved from Level 4 Attack Speed bonus increased from 40 to 50%
Level 13
Templar's Zeal (Q) Moved from Level 4
Phase Bulwark (Trait) Ability damage mitigation reduced from 50 to 40%
Level 16
Burning Rage (Passive) Moved from Level 13
Replaced with Plasma Burn (Trait): While your Shield is active, you deal 50 damage a second to nearby enemies
Developer Comments: The goals with this Artanis update were twofold: Increase his playmaking (swapping enemies during Blade Dash), and increase his solo lane capabilities (Blade Dash reduces Shield Overload cooldown, Shield Overload triggers at higher Health). We think that with these changes, Artanis will be a strong choice on a lot more Battlegrounds and with more team compositions.
Brushstalker (Trait) Cooldown increased from 40 to 50 seconds Functionality added: Dehaka gains 15% Movement Speed while in a Bush and for 1 second after exiting a Bush
Burrow (E) Functionality added: Burrow can now be cancelled early by pressing the hotkey again
Adaptation (R) Heal amount increased from 60 to 100% of incoming damage
Talents
Level 1
Enduring Swarm (W) New functionality: Dehaka takes 40% less damage from Abilities while Dark Swarm is active
Enhanced Agility (Trait) New functionality: Quest: For every 50 Essence you collect, increase your Brushstalker Movement Speed bonus by 1%. This can stack 10 times.
Level 4
Lurker Strain (E) Functionality added: Emerging from Burrow knocks away enemies and slows their Movement Speed by 30% for 2 seconds
Numbing Eruption (E) Removed
Hero Stalker (Trait) Bonus Essence gained from takedowns reduced from 150 to 100%
Level 13
Swift Pursuit (Z) New Functionality: Brushstalker’s Movement Speed duration after leaving a Bush is increased from 1 to 3 seconds
Ferocious Stalker (Z) New Functionality: After using Brushstalker, increase all damage Dehaka deals by 25% for 10 seconds
Whirling Dervish (W) Removed
New Talent: Primal Swarm (E) Enemies affected by Dark Swarm take 15% increased damage from all sources
Level 16
Rapid Regeneration (E) Removed
New Talent: Tunneling Claws (E) Dehaka can now move while Burrowed
Level 20
Change is Survival (R) Heal amount increased from 125 to 200% of incoming damage
Hardened Shield (Active) Removed
New Talent: Essence Claws (Passive) Basic Attacks slow enemies by 20% for 1 second Basic Attacks against enemy Heroes grant Dehaka 5 Essence
Developer Comments: We started doing some small changes to Dehaka’s talent tree in order to increase diversity and fix some talent pick issues. As is par for the course, this opened a rabbit-hole of design opportunities that we ended up falling into. While Dehaka’s changes were mostly complete before the BlizzCon Finals, his resurgence as a dark horse of competitive play helped us narrow down and finalize the rework. Base movement speed on Brushstalker helps meld his design while some brand new talents should open up some fun new ways to hunt your prey.
Shadow Charge (Q) Base damage from 94 to 75 New Functionality: Diablo gains 25% resistance for 2 seconds after charging If Diablo’s target collides with terrain they take an additional 150 damage
Fire Stomp (W) Base damage from 106 to 60 Added Functionality: Fire Stomp fireballs return to Diablo, dealing 90 damage
Black Soulstone (Trait) Bonus max Health per Soulstone stack from .2 to .4%
Talents
Level 1
Block (Passive) Removed
Devil’s Due (Passive) New functionality: Regeneration Globes and Healing Fountains are 2% more effective for every stack of Black Soulstone
Overwhelming Force (Q) Removed
New Talent: Bulwark (Q) Increase the duration of Shadow Charge’s Resistance effect from 2 to 5 seconds
Life Leech (Passive) Moved from Level 13
Level 4
Demonic Strength (E) Slow duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds Slow amount increased from 25 to 30%
Soul Catcher (Passive) Removed
Essence of the Slain (Passive) Removed
New Talent: Speed Demon (Passive) Diablo gains 30% Movement Speed for 5 seconds after being Stunned or Rooted
From the Shadows (Q) Moved from Level 7 Functionality added: Also increases Shadow Charge range by 33%
Level 7
Diabolical Momentum (Q) Functionality changed: Basic Attacks lower the cooldown of Shadow Charge and Overpower by 1.5 seconds
Soul Steal (Passive) Removed
Devastating Charge (Q) Moved from Level 7 to Level 13 Functionality changed: Shadow Charging an enemy into unpathable terrain deals an additional 5% of that targets max Health in damage Quest: Every time you charge an enemy into unpathable terrain, increase the bonus damage by 2%, stacking up to a 10% bonus (15% max health possible)
New Talent: Soul Shield (Trait) Each Black Soulstone stack Diablo has grants him 0.35% Resistance to enemy Abilities Soul Feast (Passive) Moved from Level 1 New functionality: Each Soulstone stack grants 0.4 Health Regeneration per second
Level 13
Firestorm (W) Removed
Spell Shield (Passive) Removed
Siphon the Dead (Active) Removed
Hellfire (W) Each enemy Hero hit by Fire Stomp increases the damage of the next Fire Stomp by 10%, stacking up to 100%.
Fire Devil (W) Moved from Level 4 Aura damage increased from 17 to 22 Added functionality: Also increases Diablo’s Basic Attack damage by 25% for 6 seconds
Level 16
Rampage (W) Removed
Continuous Overpower (E) Removed
Domination (E) New Functionality: Lower the Cooldown of Overpower by 4 seconds Using Overpower refreshes the Cooldown of Shadow Charge
Imposing Presence (Passive) Removed
New Talent: Fearful Presence (Passive/Active) Passive: Heroes and Summons that attack Diablo have their Attack Speed slowed by 20% for 2.5 seconds Active: Activate to reduce the damage dealt by nearby Heroes by 30% for 3 seconds
Level 20
Bolt of the Storm (Active) Removed
New Talent: Hellgate (Active) Activate to teleport a short distance and place a Demonic Rune at that location. After 1.75 seconds the rune explodes dealing 137 damage and stuns enemies for 1.75 seconds
Developer Comments:The Lord of Terror has been under the knife for a couple months and has finally collected enough souls to resurrect himself. He reenters the Nexus with an updated talent tree focusing on maintaining and amplifying his identity. He should still excel as a gank-oriented Warrior, punishing out-of-position enemies, but also brings along some new survivability options. While we had to lower his damage slightly, the baseline addition of Firestorm and larger payoff for Shadow Charging enemies into collision should heavily reward opportunistic Diablo players.
Particle Grenade (Q) This ability has received improvements to its cast animation The time between casting Particle Grenade and performing another action has been reduced by .25 seconds
Developer Comments:Casting Zarya’s Particle Grenade would force her to be locked in place for a short period of time. We don’t do this on other Heroes, and we felt like this exception broke the fluidity of the character.
Braxis Holdout: XP awarded for destroying the Archangel now correctly scales over the course of the game.
Heroes, Abilities, and Talents
Chen: Fixed an issue that prevented Chen from regenerating Health while using Wandering Keg. Illidan: Quest progress icons will no longer continue to appear after completing the Unbound Talent quest. Leoric: The Camera will now properly follow Leoric’s Wraith form during Wraith Walk while Camera Follow is enabled. Lt. Morales: Fixed a rare issue that could cause Lt. Morales players to lose control of the Hero. Nazeebo: The Camera will now properly follow Ravenous Spirit while Camera Follow is enabled. Samuro: The tooltip for Mirror Image now properly mentions that activating the Ability will remove certain negative status effects. Thrall: Earthquake now correctly slows enemy Minions and Mercenaries in addition to Heroes. Zagara: Infest will now properly grant bonus Attack Damage to Minions for Siege Damage dealt.
User Interface
In-Game: Fixed an issue which caused certain Heroes’ Trait UI to block players from clicking to view Talent Tiers 10 through 20.
Flight (Z) Cooldown increased from 45 to 55 seconds
Talents
Level 20
Epic Mount (Z) Now reduces Flight cooldown to 30 seconds
Developer Comments: We are looking at bringing down the power of global talents. We like what they bring to the game and their draft implications per map but feel that they are currently available a bit too often.
Calamity (E) Now only deals damage to Heroic targets
Developer Comments: Li-Ming’s Calamity is being used just as much as a minion-clearing tool as a Hero-killing tool, which was never the intention in her original design. By limiting this to Heroes only, it helps highlight one of her intended weaknesses which was low wave-clear potential.
Wind Walk (E) Cooldown increased from 12 to 13 seconds
Bladestorm (R) Damage per second reduced from 250 to 235
Talents
Level 1
Way of the Blade (W) Critical Strike bonus damage reduced from 25 to 20%
Level 4
Mirage (Q) Spell Block mitigation amount reduced from 50 to 40% per charge
Developer Comments: Samuro has fallen into a much better spot since our last changes but still has a handful of over-performing talents. We feel that these changes are much lighter than the last round of nerfs and should bring Samuro even closer to the coveted 50% win-rate.
Shadow Hunter (E) Cooldown reduction upon quest completion increased from .75 to 1 second
Level 4
Grim Task (Passive) Ability Power stack bonus increased from 4 to 5% Maximum Ability Power bonus increased from 40 to 50%
Level 13
Mending Strikes (Passive) Healing reduced from 40 to 35%
Level 16
Void Slash (Q) Damage bonus increased from 40 to 50%
Developer Comments: We’re happy overall with how Zeratul came out with his talent revamp, and are making some adjustments to make his talent pick and win rates more competitive.
Lion's Fang (Q) Mana cost reduced from 60 to 50 Slow amount increased from 30 to 35%
Parry (W) Cooldown reduced from 10 to 8 seconds
Heroic Strike (Trait) Bonus damage changed from Physical to Spell No longer heals from Second Wind, and now benefits from Ability Power
Taunt (R) Health bonus increased from 50 to 60% Mana cost reduced from 40 to 20 No longer reduces Varian's Basic Attack Speed
Talents
Level 1
Lion's Maw (Q) Slow increased from 40 to 50%
Level 4
Warbringer (E) Cooldown reduction decreased from 10 to 8 seconds
Level 7
Live by the Sword (W) Duration bonus increased from 20 to 40% Cooldown reduction decreased from 3 to 2 seconds
Level 20
Vigilance (R) Cooldown reduction increased from .75 to 1 second per Heroic Basic Attack
Developer Comments: Varian has had a solid release into the Nexus. We think one of the most important things about our first multi-class character is that all 6 "builds" are close in power level, and right now Twin Blades and Warbringer are a little higher than the rest. These changes are designed to nerf Warbringer's point and click stun frequency, increase the power of Shield Wall by reducing the cooldown of Parry, greatly increase the statistical bonuses of Taunt, and reduce some of the synergy between Second Wind and Twin Blades of Fury that was creating so many problems for teams without a good counter to Basic Attacks. We've done a mix of baseline buffs and Talent nerfs to hopefully keep Varian's overall balance close to where we intended.
Corpse Spiders (Q) Missile speed increased by roughly 20%
Talents
Level 7
Toads of Hugeness (E) Bonus per hop increased from 15 to 20% Maximum bonus increased from 60 to 80%
Level 16
Soul Harvest (Active) Ability Power and Health bonus increased from 4 to 5% for each enemy hit Maximum bonus increased from 20 to 25%
Developer Comments: These changes are designed to increase the accuracy of Corpse Spiders, since landing it precisely on isolated targets is so important. We’re also increasing the effectiveness of Toads of Hugeness and Soul Harvest, as the Talents weren’t competitive enough against the other options. Together, these changes should make the Spider and Toad builds more enticing.
Developer Comments: We are looking at bringing down the power of global talents. We like what they bring to the game and their draft implications per map but feel that they are currently available a bit too often.
Breath of Heaven (W) Increased the Movement Speed bonus from 10 to 15%
Talents
Level 1
Iron Fists (Trait) Damage bonus reduced from 125 to 110%
Level 4
Earth Ally (Active) Cooldown increased from 30 to 45 seconds
Level 7
Heavenly Zeal (W) Movement Speed bonus increased from 25 to 30%
Developer Comments: We're glad to see that Iron Fists Kharazim is a very viable melee Assassin/Support hybrid! We think that we can reduce the damage slightly on it, since Kharazim was able to throughput strong damage and healing with the Talent. While the damage potential of that build is stronger than we want, overall Kharazim is close to balanced, so we've provided a small Movement Speed increase to Breath of Heaven to offset the loss.
Base Health increased from 2120 to 2226 Health Regeneration increased from 4.4 to 4.6 per second
Developer Comments: Anub’arak has taken a bit of a hit since we removed his Invulnerability from Burrow Charge. This additional Health buff is to help compensate him so that he can be a better front-line Warrior.
Sanctification (R) Cooldown increased from 80 to 100 seconds
Developer Comments: Tyrael’s Sanctification has been a dominating force in professional play for a long time. While we like the huge playmaking aspect that it provides, it currently has a shorter cooldown than many other Heroics that it can negate. This cooldown increase puts it on par with other Heroics that have a similar impact on the outcome of a teamfight.
On December 06 2016 06:08 MotherFox wrote: Yet another patch nerfing a bunch of heroes who aren't really that good right now.
Not sure who you refer to except maybe Ming and honestly that change seems ok. Globals needed addressing. Artanis should be good now and nice to have a very high skill cap combo. Diablo sounds very interesting that overpower resetting shadow charge wow...
Varian Live by the Sword is a lot better, I personally found it already very strong vs. fast attackers like Tychus/Tracer/Zarya. Still doesn't fix how shitty baseline charge is.
Can't wait to play the new Diablo, looks like he got a lot of new interesting talents and on the first glance it seems like he has quite a few choices.
Ragnaros is going to be so much fun. Tons of AoE damage, can provide a speed boost to himself or an ally and can save a fort/keep by hopping on top of it or using the lane ultimate to save it from minions/mercs. With either a Q build or an E build you can have decent amount of self-sustain to boot.
New Diablo is much more survivable which is good. He did lose a good chunk of damage though and going for the Shadow Charge into Overpower into Shadow Charge eats a huge amount of mana. I had mana issues with Diablo in Try Mode though I might have been spamming a bit.
Dehaka is a bit more mobile now out of bushes but I think the main issue remains that while he can regenerate like mad (especially if you take the regen ult), he can just get blown up before it kicks in. Unlike say Diablo who has a high health pool so that can he buffer for his regeneration (if you take it at 7) or Muradin who can jump away to give his regen a chance to kick in, when Dehaka needs his regeneration he can still get blown up before it saves him. Maybe his trait should flat heal him for 50% and regen the other 50%. Moveable Burrow at 16 will likely be mandatory. Note that you cannot ignore terrain or collision with it. (e.g. you can't Burrow underneath/through a gate/tower)
Artanis swapping people with Q then E (you can't do E then Q) is going to be a thing but you have to be very fast. His shield at 75% now also means his odds of getting blown up at 50% are a lot lower. He does struggle a bit more keeping his shield up though. I think the 80% shield on 4 is going to be mandatory. He can tank silly amounts with that if not CCed.
Being able to cancel burrow manually was one of my wishes when Dehaka was released. And the option to move while burrowed combined with stealth/knockback gives a pretty nice escape or initiate option. Also AoE vulnerability from Dark Swarm at 13 sounds incredible.
Also if you time your phase prism swap on Artanis when you are on your way back from your blade dash you can send an enemy target deep into the middle of your team pretty easy.
I've played a few games on PTR with Artanis. Here's the build that I like:
1: Reactive Parry. Amateur Opponent is a decent replacement on certain maps and against certain heroes.
4: Shield Surge. I think this is mandatory at this level like Thezzy says.
7: Warp Sickness. This makes your Q=>E initiation all the more dangerous and lets you peel better for squishies. Chrono Surge still blows. Solarite Reaper isn't quite good enough at providing wave clear.
10: Purifier Beam. Combos too well with Warp Sickness.
13: Graviton Vortex. You can talk me into Phase Bulwark against the right comp, but the value here is too good, particularly if you need to peel. Templar's Zeal feels a little redundant.
16: Psionic Wound. Combos with Purifier Beam and Warp Sickness. I tried Plasma Burn a couple of times, and didn't feel like I got any value out of it. Frankly, none of the talents here gives a lot of value given the buffs to the base kit.
20: Target Purified. As always, this shit wins games.
Looks like Artanis will be broken as fuck. Under the right circumstances he was a pain. Now the shield procs at 75% life ? That's ridiculous. Can't wait to play him.
His shield takes one more AA before it comes off cooldown though and the shield amount is reduced. Anything that killed him before still kinda kills him, he'll just be at 75% when it happens rather than 50%. The 80% bonus to shield amount at 25% life or less is going to be a major thing though.
I really hope at one point they'll realize that over the entirety of Heroes of the Storm's existence, they slowly but steadily killed Teamleague and with this patch, Teamleague is pretty much cut from the game.
PLEASE Blizzard change this shit... Make Hero League for 1/2/3-man groups and match them accordingly (solo-queuers with other solo queuers, 2-3man groups with other 2-3man groups) and bring back team creation with team-based MMR and not Player-based MMR (Team creation costs gold, every team has some substitutes and some rules on how often you can switch a team per season). Since they cut Team creation, Teamleague was the same as Hero League - and now it's getting toned down again.
Couldn't disagree more. Team league is a blast i have over 100 games this season and queue times have been getting better. This will give more encouragement to play it and with a higher population will go from strength to strength. The two and tthree stacks will be encouraged to find more as five stack is def the way to go if possible.
his abilities feel much quicker so it took awhile to get used to the combo, but man it feels so good with the other changes he received
Here is my current build that I almost always go with. I'll explain talents as I get to them, and an overall explanation at the end of why I like this build 9 out of 10 times (in a hero league setting)
1: Ama/Seasoned: Ama is my usual default, but since I can't grab chrono surge at 4 anymore I'm liking seasoned
4: Shield Surge: The almost double shield when you're low with the changes to his passive and Q passively resetting shield makes this happen alot and allows you to survive to a really long time if you survive the initial CC/burst. Not to mention it combos really well with the later 16 talent
7: Warp Sickness: A huge problem artanis always has is being able to stick to a target to auto attack. This gives him multiple things he lacks: he has 0 CC, it's hard to stick to targets which makes it difficult to do damage and build more shields. This talent gives you CC, more damage since you can auto, and more survivability since you can auto. This also pairs really well with my preferred 10/13 choices
10: Laser: If you pre laser then swap the slow allows the laser to stick on the target while you attack them. If you swap a backline this usually ends their career, or at the least chunks them and forces them to use their escape move then sit there and kite the laser. This also does damage in an AoE around it so often time it can get value if they are forced to run through their team | edit*** obviously blind has its games, but if i take blind i usually aim for a different build altogether
13: Vortex/Phase: Vortex is default. It slows both swap targets and stacks them on top of eachother which means the laser will damage both targets until they split which is difficult when you're slowed by 35 percent and are probably getting CCed by other heroes. The swap slow/laser combo works without vortex though, so if you need survivability phase is default. Need to play around with zeal now that it's on the 13 talent tier and Q has passive resets
16: Plasma Burn: I love this talent. It's the strength over a little over double burning rage (rage is 23 dps, this is 50, at 16 when you get this talent it does a littler over 100DPS a second). Since they made charge on the end of models instead of center and you can swap during Q, charge doesn't feel as needed anymore and I prefer the damage on this over vulnerability.
20: Nexus/Force: Nexus is still my default, having slow on autos and the bonus damage is very nice (again, sticking to targets is very important for this hero). With shield on a 24 CD now Force might be better now, still playing around with it.
Why I build this way:
Artanis shines only as a bruiser in my opinion, not a solo tank. He doesn't have crowd control like ETC/Mura and he gets shut down a bit harder from CC than others due to his passive and no hard escape. Once you go in you're in and you often die. The goal is to do as much damage and live for as long as possible while securing kills before this happens. The ability to initiate fights with new swap, and the damage output he can bring with swap + laser combo is good. He feels tanky enough by default with all of the changes (not to mention you take shield surge at 4), so my focus is CC + damage to turn him into a bruiser that now has VERY hard initiation.
I'll try out some other builds in the future (Q build felt okay), but this build is basically like the swap build I currently use on live but MUCH better because of these changes that just made him tankier by default. The only negative thing that happened with these changes is that I lost the attack speed on swap at 4, but shield surge isn't a bad replacement.
On December 06 2016 19:11 Thezzy wrote: His shield takes one more AA before it comes off cooldown though and the shield amount is reduced. Anything that killed him before still kinda kills him, he'll just be at 75% when it happens rather than 50%. The 80% bonus to shield amount at 25% life or less is going to be a major thing though.
After playing several games with him, the biggest thing that I noticed is that his power curve is much flatter than it used to be. His early game is much stronger with the buffed skills and revised talents (shield surge at 4 is a big deal). However, he isn't the late game beast that he used to be. While his damage is roughly the same, his survivability is not as good.
EDIT: But yes, the playmaking potential of Q=>E is very impressive.
On December 06 2016 22:33 Swisslink wrote: I really hope at one point they'll realize that over the entirety of Heroes of the Storm's existence, they slowly but steadily killed Teamleague and with this patch, Teamleague is pretty much cut from the game.
PLEASE Blizzard change this shit... Make Hero League for 1/2/3-man groups and match them accordingly (solo-queuers with other solo queuers, 2-3man groups with other 2-3man groups) and bring back team creation with team-based MMR and not Player-based MMR (Team creation costs gold, every team has some substitutes and some rules on how often you can switch a team per season). Since they cut Team creation, Teamleague was the same as Hero League - and now it's getting toned down again.
This idea would completely kill teamleague. Most people I know who play in TL wouldn't bother playing with the same group of people all the time: team league is currently an impromptu "who can find a 5th player on their friendslist" format. If you require formalized teams with a gold cost, close to no one would ever get to queue b/c organizing teams is hard. (and if you could organize a team like that, you'd probably just join an amateur tournament league anyway.)
Also Taunt for Varian no longer reduces Varian's Basic Attack Speed
Kind of a disappointing ama. I went through before they started answering thumbing up anything I was remotely interested in, and they ignored most of those questions. [opting instead to give vague answers on murky and future reworks]
The current plan is not to make Murky a back-door siege hero like the old days though.
Since hes still a few months off, I think it might be too early to discuss stuff we're looking at on him, as it's likely to change several times before PTR.
Globe collection quests: Overall I think the changes have been good for the game - they feel more rewarding to collect and a little easier to deny in a lane.
We are looking at some of the globe quest talents and seeing if we should make changes for them. One example being Regeneration Master:
-We've gotten feedback (internally and externally) that it feels really hard to gather 30 globes
-I like that it is really hard. If you can roam on a map between two lanes, that should go into your decision making when choosing this talent. Maybe don't pick it on Battlefield.
-We might try something where we split the final reward into 2 lesser rewards. Maybe Regeneration Master becomes gather 20 globes for the first reward, and 40 for the second? Still exploring this but it seems like a reasonable solve.
-I personally love 'uncapped' talents. Examples being Taste for Blood (you rarely cap), or Perfect Storm. Regeneration Master lost a bit of that when we capped it at 30, but most of the time you don't hit 30 so that is another reason I don't want to simply lower the cap to 20 or 25.
question about Thrall and Worldbreaker buffs or changes: Thrall scheduled for more build diversity in update middle of next year or so.
Regarding Shield Wall vs Warbringer:
Internally, for a long time, Warbringer was viewed as the "weaker" Talent choice. From our viewpoint, how could you give up Shield Wall, which provides complete immunity to damage? We kept tuning up Warbringer, because our fear was that if Shield Wall came out as the stronger Talent option at that tier, we'd have a long uphill battle to ever get people to take something else.
We overdid it slightly. But actually, we think that'll be better for Varian's Talent diversity in the long run, as we can slowly buff Shield Wall and/or nerf Warbringer as needed to narrow the gap.
The most recent change was to nerf Warbringer slightly, because it's too strong. We know there have been lots of comments suggesting reducing Charge's cooldown somewhat, and we may still consider making those changes. But we're still wary of overdoing it, because man, Shield Wall is actually really strong too.
Uther is a hero we will be looking at in the next few months. We think he is in a decent spot currently but would like to further emphasis his role as more of a Tanky Support character. I think Ideally you could run a team with Uther and some bruisers and maybe forgo the Warrior role.
As others have mentioned on this thread, Uther under-performs in sustained output, which is correct, because he is designed to be a bursty healer. He isn't currently being worked on. Likely sometime in Q2. We have ideas to push him towards a really tanky support, something you could run with a bruiser or two in certain comps. Utility/Healing isn't our only thought at the moment!
I know the team has talked about trying a 4-lane map. A long time ago (Blizzard All-Stars days) we tested a 4-lane map that weaved in and out and the lanes converged into two lanes occasionally, it was certainly interesting, but the game is a lot different now. Might be cool to test in a Brawl before we try a live map with it. =P
In terms of map design, we don't design maps specific to heroes. We aim to create a fun, engaging battleground first with a strong theme, and naturally based on that design and those ideas some heroes will be better than others. For example, when we made Braxis Holdout, we didn't create it for a hero like Rexxar, his kit just naturally feeds into point control, and we like when that happens.
Greymane-
In general, Greymane is an interesting Hero in terms of balance. He's effective and sees play in the competitive scene, and he still has a niche on certain maps. He isn't all that common in Hero League anymore, and his winrate is a little lower than we'd like.
We know it's been a turbulent experience for Greymane players since he came out, and we're sorry for that. We genuinely think that his overall design has improved, but obviously there's still room to go. If he were one of the most powerful Heroes in the game again, we think the complaints about how he feels to play would go down.
That being said, there are a few changes coming for Greymane. We're throwing around some ideas to drastically change Marked for the Kill to solidify it as a Heroic you use at the start of a fight (while Go For the Throat is the finisher). We're also planning on adding Armor to Greymane while he is in Worgen form.
There are a lot of really good Basic Attack Heroes at the top of the meta right now, like Tychus, Valla, or Falstad, and we don't want Greymane to just replace one of them. If we do it right, there would be reasons to take him on battlegrounds like Battlefield of Eternity, when you otherwise wouldn't take the others (in fact I still do see him there when I play Hero League).
State of drafts in hero league: We're pretty satisfied with how drafts usually go in Hero League. One of our bigger wins over the last year is that we've both reworked and released heroes that have unique identities on a team, which has helped our diversity compared to before. A year ago we were running into a fairly large problem where a lot of our heroes did just about everything very well, which made many heroes obsolete if there was another similar one that did their job better (Valla vs. old Tychus is an example).
Ideally we would like for players to look for situational picks pretty often, and whenever they see a particular enemy hero they can quickly think of a few heroes that they can choose that will be effective against them.
Warriors are a tougher issue that we've recently had some conversations about. They often go in and out of style, and the temptation is strong to say that a particular kit is just better than the rest, and so they all need to offer CC/Mobility/Initiation to be viable. However, a counter-point to this argument is that there have been times when just about every Warrior has dominated the Meta, even those like Arthas, Stitches, and Leoric, which all don't offer the same CC/Mobility/Initiation that the current popular Warriors do. So is it just a tuning issue, a popularity issue, or is there something more going on? I would hesitate to say that it's a base kit issue, as history doesn't show that, and if it is then we would be really limited on our future Warrior hero designs.
Hinderlands Blast: We're thrown around a few ideas, and we agree it could be more interesting.
More role classifications like brusier: We've discussed this internally, it is something we'd like to pursue, but there are a lot of bigger things in front of it right now. I think we'll get to it eventually, but requires a lot of updates to the UI, Battle.net screens, etc, and those are pretty impacted teams at the moment.
balance changes vs the meta: We do consider the meta, but we are really interested in seeing where pick rates currently are on a specific hero. Having multiple heroics is something unique to our game, and something we take pride in, so when we notice one heroic is picked substantially less, we make it a point to work on it.
In the case of Thrall, we don't think Earthquake was a bad pick, and the win rate was comparable to that of Sundering, but the pick rate discrepancy was like 98% to 2%. We also had a very low sample size though, so it is hard to accurately say. What we did know is we wanted to see those pick rates even out more, so we made a change. If we need to we can tune something down after it goes live, but getting people to notice it sometimes requires a bit of a bump.
Hard counters like li Ming vs Vikings or Tychus vs Cho'gall: There are definitely many counters now in our game, and some are arguably too strong. This is something that has come up recently in our discussions.
Over the last year or so we've worked hard to make more counters in our game so that people can feel like they're making smart choices, both on the draft screen and in their talent choices. It's hard to say what's just far enough and when we've crossed the line, and i'm sure we'll be revisiting this from time to time.
As an example, I personally like the Li Ming vs. Vikings and Murky interactions. They are both heroes who thrive on not prioritizing their own lives as much as their enemies, so of course Li Ming can take advantage of that. However, Murky has Octo-Grab to threaten Li-Ming and a low cooldown Invulnerability, so he has options to do something about her killing him. Similarly, the Lost Vikings are often spread out across the map, and they have Longboat Raid to try to contribute to team fights if Li-Ming is there. While Li-Ming is definitely strong against them, it's by no means a shut-out where they are helpless if she's on the other team.
I am less a fan of some other concessions we've made in the name of "counters are great for the game", like Murky's Pufferfish vs. Tracer. There's very little that he can do about always stopping her auto-attacks, and her existence on the other team basically means that his fun is greatly negated due to essentially losing a button.
At the end of the day it's a question of how far is too far, and we have to be vigilant about making sure that even in the case of some of our harder counters, that both players feel like they have some ability to outplay their opponents.
Enhanced Agility on Dehaka seems too weak now: This decision was part of the rabbit-hole that I mentioned on the patch notes. At the end of the day (errr, rework) we felt that giving him move speed in brush baseline fulfilled his stalking fantasy much better then having to take a talent and farm all game. Since this is now a baseline part of his power-pie, players can opt-into going wave clear and forego the extra move speed on Enhanced Agility. That being said, there are four talents on tier 1 and we would like all of them to have a place somewhere. Enhanced Agility may fall off as a top-pick on the tier but I believe the change overall was a decent buff to Dehaka.
Overall, we like the change to Dehaka that gives him some move speed baseline in brush - this plays into his global power and his stalking nature. While this talent might be undertuned now, we think overall the change was positive towards Dehaka's design/playstyle.
This talent is on our agenda to discuss in todays balance meeting though.
Attack queuing and the bugs that have been causing abilities not to go off while right clicking? (ex, Kerrigan combo not going off)? Kerrigan's combo should actually be significantly improved now on PTR so you can go and play around with it to see if she's back to her normal player killing self. We also try to make targeted quality of life changes to specific Heroes in every patch, such as Diablo's Attack Animations which was changed in today's balance update, to help with these types of issues.
Speed of buffs or nerfs to new heroes like Zarya vs Samuro? For Zarya specifically, we had a limited amount of data and time to decide if we wanted to do a quick update. I pushed for the team to do it, and unfortunately we overshot the mark and quickly did another update to course correct.
Since then, we're still trying to determine if our quick action on Zarya was good for that character/the game, or if it was negative. I think we will likely go back to our more traditional patching of 2 weeks post release, but we can be quicker in some edge cases.
I guess it changes per Hero, but I think for the most part hitting a Hero with a few small changes 2 weeks after their release, and then again with bigger changes with more data and games under our belt a few weeks after that.
Zarya's changes happened a lot faster and more frequent than we'd like for most Heroes, but we were trying to have her in a good balanced state for the Blizzcon finals. I don't think we'll ever likely put everyone through that roller coaster again.
Samuro specifically was impacted because of BlizzCon.
Azmodan: Ya he's a really interesting character for us to update because so much of his power is through talents. Overall I think we like this. We've discussed changing this but I think its kind of unique for him. Probably the biggest downside of this is that his Laser feels pretty lackluster unless you fully invest into it.
We're looking at a mini-update (mostly tuning) to Azmodan in the nearish future (next month or two) and one aspect of that is allowing some movement baseline to his Laser. Overall his kit plays mostly the same but his Laser feels a little better both talented and untalented.
Pressure to buff heroes who aren't in the meta or nerf heroes who are too strong? I personally don't stress over it too much until a character is sitting around 60% or is a top tier pick an entire tournament. There are always going to be heroes and talents that are not part of the meta or who are rarely seen. In some sense, this is a revolving door (as we buff up one character, it ends up bringing other characters down), but we try and keep this in mind and be smart about the buffs and nerfs we do.
All of this being said, our job is to try and make as many talents and heroes viable to the game at all levels of play. Over the course of the last many months I think we've definitely been heading in the right direction.
For Murky and Uther - we are looking at them. We often have a lot of characters in flux though so at some point it becomes a priority list. Uther's kit is not necessarily favorable to the current Meta where high sustain seems to be king.
Nova: Her win rate is right around 50% currently, so we're not planning any changes for her.
Anub'arak's beetles and percieved weakness of beetle talents: Anub'arak is one of our older characters and to some extent the Beetles are there for fun, but to also help with his survivability - as a Warrior, that is going to be key for you. While trying to make unique talents/playstyles, one way to make Anub'arak more tanky is by making his Beetles do more to keep him alive (life leech, blocking abilities, etc.) It's possible these talents are just a bit on the older side and don't match his current playstyle as well anymore.
Looking back many years to early development on Anub'arak: There was a time where he could be played much like a Siege hero with his Beetles pushing down lanes and even split pushing. Obviously thats not who Anub'arak is anymore though.
In recent times, we have positioned Anub'arak to be a tank who counters mage characters pretty well (he has strong dive and can reduce damage from abilities). In this regard, the Beetles still work out nicely, as they can block skillshots as you dive those pesky Mages.
Reason for Calamity nerf when Li-Ming's win rate is below 48% on hotslogs? A lot of factors are taken into account when making any balance change. Her popularity and win rate are in a very good spot overall, but we are prepared to give her buffs in other ways if needed.
Alarak and Gul'dan talent diversity? While we don't technically have a mass rework planned, we do have tentative plans to do a slight shift of where their power currently lies. However, this is not a simple task and we feel it requires some other game/system changes before we start testing. You should know we are busy working on it, but don't have anything concrete to share quite yet.
Balance of heroes in hero league vs professional play: This is a tricky one. We want to see just about all of our heroes in some capacity in competitive, but we don't mind if the simpler ones are picked less often compared to their more complex counterparts (Raynor vs. Greymane for example).
I think we're ok with Kerrigan's use case, where she's largely picked in competitive on Infernal Shrines, and not so much on other maps. It makes the drafting for that map more interesting, and it gives her a place to shine without being too overbearing (which Kerrigan can definitely be).
I wish we saw more Butcher in competitive. We tried to give him a huge late-game power spike that in my mind would have made a great narrative for commentators to talk about throughout the course of the game. We had hoped that his huge power spike would be enough to make him a strong pick on more minion-based maps, but it just hasn't seemed to stick so far.
All and all we're happy with the diversity we have, but there are those heroes that pros just won't want to pick. It can be sad sometimes because those heroes can perform very well in everything up to and including Grand Master Hero League, but our hands are a bit tied at that point to buff them any more in the name of being a Pro pick without creating a lot more problems for everyone else.
In these cases we could rework them, but is it worth spending that much time on changing a hero's kit who is working for 99% of players? Maybe sometimes, but I don't think we would want to too often in the name of pro play viability.
Sanctification nerf: The goal with the Sanctification change was to allow for wombo combos to still be successfully executed and not be negated by Sanctification while also having a lower cooldown.
If you recall long ago, Judgement was the more favored heroic (by far!) so we lowered the cooldown of Sanctification substantially to entice people into picking it. We're now going back on some of that buff, and Judgement is still over a 50% win rate, so we didn't feel we needed to buff it in this case. We'll keep an eye on this though!
How long does it take to go from noticing a problem with a hero to where players are testing changes on the PTR? This really depends on the scope of our changes. If it is a big talent update, it can be several months or longer (especially if we're asking for new models/art/fx). Usually things that end up in PTR are part of larger patches, and have taken a while for us to develop. Otherwise, we will deploy the changes in our interim balance patches, which take us about a week or two to finalize (implement the small number tweaks, test for X days, prepare the patch and deploy to live).
Hard counters like li Ming vs Vikings or Tychus vs Cho'gall: There are definitely many counters now in our game, and some are arguably too strong. This is something that has come up recently in our discussions.
On December 07 2016 19:02 Ej_ wrote: Hard counters like li Ming vs Vikings or Tychus vs Cho'gall: There are definitely many counters now in our game, and some are arguably too strong. This is something that has come up recently in our discussions.
HARD COUNTERS
LI MING VS VIKINGS
they dont play this game, do they
Li Ming vs Vikings was the example given by the person asking the question about their thoughts on hard counters, I greatly abbreviated and paraphrased all the questions.
On December 07 2016 16:35 Ramiz1989 wrote: So anyone who has played PTR knows what does the Diablo level 16 talent Debilitating Flames do? They forgot to mention it in the patch notes.
I'm guessing because I'm at work but adds a slow to his stomp?
On December 07 2016 16:35 Ramiz1989 wrote: So anyone who has played PTR knows what does the Diablo level 16 talent Debilitating Flames do? They forgot to mention it in the patch notes.
Adds a 15% slow for each hit to a maximum of 30% slow.
On December 07 2016 19:02 Ej_ wrote: Hard counters like li Ming vs Vikings or Tychus vs Cho'gall: There are definitely many counters now in our game, and some are arguably too strong. This is something that has come up recently in our discussions.
HARD COUNTERS
LI MING VS VIKINGS
they dont play this game, do they
Li Ming vs Vikings was the example given by the person asking the question about their thoughts on hard counters, I greatly abbreviated and paraphrased all the questions.
It's laughable that they think vikings and murky can play around ming. Their suggestions are to crosspush away from ming, or use relatively high CD abilities against ming's constantly up burst damage.
This is similar to their statement that abolish magic on lunara is a "niche" choice. When I asked what the niche use is, of course there was no answer.
On December 07 2016 19:02 Ej_ wrote: Hard counters like li Ming vs Vikings or Tychus vs Cho'gall: There are definitely many counters now in our game, and some are arguably too strong. This is something that has come up recently in our discussions.
HARD COUNTERS
LI MING VS VIKINGS
they dont play this game, do they
Li Ming vs Vikings was the example given by the person asking the question about their thoughts on hard counters, I greatly abbreviated and paraphrased all the questions.
It's laughable that they think vikings and murky can play around ming. Their suggestions are to crosspush away from ming, or use relatively high CD abilities against ming's constantly up burst damage.
This is similar to their statement that abolish magic on lunara is a "niche" choice. When I asked what the niche use is, of course there was no answer.
vikings don't play around ming, they play again behind her in a bush and she gets roflstomped
Hm talking Vikings, I would love if their skills could be used per Viking. Would probably make them to strong vs teams that don't have a direct counter to them though,
On December 07 2016 16:35 Ramiz1989 wrote: So anyone who has played PTR knows what does the Diablo level 16 talent Debilitating Flames do? They forgot to mention it in the patch notes.
I'm guessing because I'm at work but adds a slow to his stomp?
On December 07 2016 16:35 Ramiz1989 wrote: So anyone who has played PTR knows what does the Diablo level 16 talent Debilitating Flames do? They forgot to mention it in the patch notes.
Adds a 15% slow for each hit to a maximum of 30% slow.
Thanks. That's quite interesting talent, it might be overshadowed by Domination and Fearful Presence on level 16, but that continuous 30% slow in quite large area is still good for area control and it might make Apocalypse hard to dodge.
On December 07 2016 16:35 Ramiz1989 wrote: So anyone who has played PTR knows what does the Diablo level 16 talent Debilitating Flames do? They forgot to mention it in the patch notes.
I'm guessing because I'm at work but adds a slow to his stomp?
On December 07 2016 16:35 Ramiz1989 wrote: So anyone who has played PTR knows what does the Diablo level 16 talent Debilitating Flames do? They forgot to mention it in the patch notes.
Adds a 15% slow for each hit to a maximum of 30% slow.
Thanks. That's quite interesting talent, it might be overshadowed by Domination and Fearful Presence on level 16, but that continuous 30% slow in quite large area is still good for area control and it might make Apocalypse hard to dodge.
Could definitely be interesting, I'm hopeful for an uptick in Diablo play in closer quarters maps like tomb, and maybe towers with the change.
edit: Interview with new Game director reveals tournament draft mode, draft observer, and hero swap options coming in 2017. The team is continuing to look at in-game match spectating for esports matches, a long-held community request that the developer has not yet been able to deliver. He said the team has “a strong desire” to get this feature working and “some cool ideas” on how they might do so.
On December 07 2016 16:35 Ramiz1989 wrote: So anyone who has played PTR knows what does the Diablo level 16 talent Debilitating Flames do? They forgot to mention it in the patch notes.
I'm guessing because I'm at work but adds a slow to his stomp?
On December 08 2016 01:49 Thezzy wrote:
On December 07 2016 16:35 Ramiz1989 wrote: So anyone who has played PTR knows what does the Diablo level 16 talent Debilitating Flames do? They forgot to mention it in the patch notes.
Adds a 15% slow for each hit to a maximum of 30% slow.
Thanks. That's quite interesting talent, it might be overshadowed by Domination and Fearful Presence on level 16, but that continuous 30% slow in quite large area is still good for area control and it might make Apocalypse hard to dodge.
Could definitely be interesting, I'm hopeful for an uptick in Diablo play in closer quarters maps like tomb, and maybe towers with the change.
Infernal Shrines is like his best map so I'm guessing that he will be a top pick/ban there after the patch. At least I'm gonna abuse the crap out of him until people figure out that he is really good.
And yeah, Tomb and Towers are his great maps as well, BoE is quite good too.
Lol, Diablo is completely over the top now, every game he completely wrecks face cranking out hero damage that rivals Li Ming by the end of the match. Dehaka is as well, Dark Swarm is so absurdly powerful, I understand that both of these guys needed a little love but I don't think they needed to make them broken haha
Hoping into TL with my buddy at noon. We hope to play the Thrall + Diablo combo (Earthquake into impossible to dodge Apocalypse is very powerful). I mean, before, with a weak Diablo it was strong. Now with an OP Diablo it's the icing on the cake !
- First game: 1000 seconds queue. Ended as 2 diamond (HL season 2 me and my buddy) with 1 silver, 1 bronze, 1 unranked. Draft was a mess. Game was a mess. We got stomped (yeah right, bronze league team mate, what did you expect ?).
- Second game: 600 seconds queue. 1 silver 2 unranked mates. Same story, with more toxicity.
I can understand that when TL was 5 v 5, you needed to rely on TL ranks. But for 2+3v2+3 you need to use HL rankings.
Stopped playing TL. Stopped playing HotS at all. Will wait for Blizzard to fix the game.
edit: Diablo Thrall combo worked well though, but strangely being 2 levels behind makes the game harder.
On December 15 2016 23:30 Leolio wrote: TL duo queue debrief:
- First game: 1000 seconds queue. Ended as 2 diamond (HL season 2 me and my buddy) with 1 silver, 1 bronze, 1 unranked. Draft was a mess. Game was a mess. We got stomped (yeah right, bronze league team mate, what did you expect ?).
- Second game: 600 seconds queue. 1 silver 2 unranked mates. Same story, with more toxicity.
I can understand that when TL was 5 v 5, you needed to rely on TL ranks. But for 2+3v2+3 you need to use HL rankings.
Stopped playing TL. Stopped playing HotS at all. Will wait for Blizzard to fix the game.
edit: Diablo Thrall combo worked well though, but strangely being 2 levels behind makes the game harder.
As I already said when the change was announced: Imo it is a huge mistake to get rid of a real TeamLeague environment. I'm not saying a 2+3-manQ is a bad idea - it absolutely isn't - but it should be part of HL, not TL and you already mentioned why. And i don't know why they decided to make it part of TL, tbh, it makes so little sense. My suggestions remain the same as a few weeks ago:
1. Make the 2+3-manQ part of HL. Use the HL ranks, the HL MMR and so on and so forth. Only one restriction: Only allow groups to be matched with other groups and Solo Players to be matched with other Solo Players. This way you'd have the same queue as before, just in the league it is supposed to be.
2. Make TeamLeague only with fixed teams. Other games have it, why should HotS not have it? Reintroduce team creation at the cost of 1000 gold, allow teams to have substitutes, allow players to switch teams X-times during one season, allow players to have multiple teams and I don't think there's any real reason to not have it that way. -> If someone wants to grind the TL-placement matches he can still do it at a one-time investment of 1000 gold (or for free if someone already got a team for this reason).
I don't think the Q-times would be much higher in any of those leagues, tbh. Maybe slightly, but not too much. And the idiocy that TL is right now would be gone. With a 2-man/3-man queue Blizzard gets the chance to introduce a real teamleague. They just have to put the 2-man/3-man queue into the right ladder first. (Plus: Even if the Q-times would be higher. Does someone really like playing as a 2+3 lineup against a full premade team? I think that's just about as stupid as it gets in this game)
And if you want to lower the queue times: Give solo queuers the option of being a filler for 2+2 vs. 2+2 games (not force them to, but let them decide if they want to), if the 2-man groups are overrepresented at any given time.
On December 15 2016 23:30 Leolio wrote: TL duo queue debrief:
- First game: 1000 seconds queue. Ended as 2 diamond (HL season 2 me and my buddy) with 1 silver, 1 bronze, 1 unranked. Draft was a mess. Game was a mess. We got stomped (yeah right, bronze league team mate, what did you expect ?).
- Second game: 600 seconds queue. 1 silver 2 unranked mates. Same story, with more toxicity.
I can understand that when TL was 5 v 5, you needed to rely on TL ranks. But for 2+3v2+3 you need to use HL rankings.
Stopped playing TL. Stopped playing HotS at all. Will wait for Blizzard to fix the game.
edit: Diablo Thrall combo worked well though, but strangely being 2 levels behind makes the game harder.
On December 15 2016 23:41 Harris1st wrote: First impression Ragnaros: On 2 lane maps ridiculously OP
He seems pretty good on 3 lane maps too. Lava waving on cooldown far lanes forces teams to split without sacrificing too much teamfight potential. (personally I only hold lava wave if there is a pending objective we can push with (like boss) or if all our lanes are pushed over half way into the enemy side of the map.
On December 15 2016 23:30 Leolio wrote: TL duo queue debrief:
- First game: 1000 seconds queue. Ended as 2 diamond (HL season 2 me and my buddy) with 1 silver, 1 bronze, 1 unranked. Draft was a mess. Game was a mess. We got stomped (yeah right, bronze league team mate, what did you expect ?).
- Second game: 600 seconds queue. 1 silver 2 unranked mates. Same story, with more toxicity.
I can understand that when TL was 5 v 5, you needed to rely on TL ranks. But for 2+3v2+3 you need to use HL rankings.
Stopped playing TL. Stopped playing HotS at all. Will wait for Blizzard to fix the game.
edit: Diablo Thrall combo worked well though, but strangely being 2 levels behind makes the game harder.
It's the start if a new season. Of course the skill deviation within a team will be bigger than usual. Give it a week and play more than only two games before drawing any conclusions.
And just in case you are not actually planning to not play the game anymore because of two bad games in a row, may I remind you of the QQ-Thread? :-)
Motherfox > yes, they have like 1 minute queue, or less. The problem is a lot of duo went to TL at once, and not that much trio. And every 2man need to find its 3man. : /
On December 15 2016 23:30 Leolio wrote: TL duo queue debrief:
- First game: 1000 seconds queue. Ended as 2 diamond (HL season 2 me and my buddy) with 1 silver, 1 bronze, 1 unranked. Draft was a mess. Game was a mess. We got stomped (yeah right, bronze league team mate, what did you expect ?).
- Second game: 600 seconds queue. 1 silver 2 unranked mates. Same story, with more toxicity.
I can understand that when TL was 5 v 5, you needed to rely on TL ranks. But for 2+3v2+3 you need to use HL rankings.
Stopped playing TL. Stopped playing HotS at all. Will wait for Blizzard to fix the game.
edit: Diablo Thrall combo worked well though, but strangely being 2 levels behind makes the game harder.
As I already said when the change was announced: Imo it is a huge mistake to get rid of a real TeamLeague environment. I'm not saying a 2+3-manQ is a bad idea - it absolutely isn't - but it should be part of HL, not TL and you already mentioned why. And i don't know why they decided to make it part of TL, tbh, it makes so little sense. My suggestions remain the same as a few weeks ago:
1. Make the 2+3-manQ part of HL. Use the HL ranks, the HL MMR and so on and so forth. Only one restriction: Only allow groups to be matched with other groups and Solo Players to be matched with other Solo Players. This way you'd have the same queue as before, just in the league it is supposed to be.
2. Make TeamLeague only with fixed teams. Other games have it, why should HotS not have it? Reintroduce team creation at the cost of 1000 gold, allow teams to have substitutes, allow players to switch teams X-times during one season, allow players to have multiple teams and I don't think there's any real reason to not have it that way. -> If someone wants to grind the TL-placement matches he can still do it at a one-time investment of 1000 gold (or for free if someone already got a team for this reason).
I don't think the Q-times would be much higher in any of those leagues, tbh. Maybe slightly, but not too much. And the idiocy that TL is right now would be gone. With a 2-man/3-man queue Blizzard gets the chance to introduce a real teamleague. They just have to put the 2-man/3-man queue into the right ladder first. (Plus: Even if the Q-times would be higher. Does someone really like playing as a 2+3 lineup against a full premade team? I think that's just about as stupid as it gets in this game)
And if you want to lower the queue times: Give solo queuers the option of being a filler for 2+2 vs. 2+2 games (not force them to, but let them decide if they want to), if the 2-man groups are overrepresented at any given time.
Yeah I agree. The real competitive mode has to be TL. TL was forsaken. Now TL is crowded, but crappy. I also agree HL can bear with 2, 3 man groups. In fact I agree with everything you said.
I also suggested (on reddit) that solo queuers should be allowed to TL, which is absurd but would help A LOT. Of course it's reddit, so I'm probably an idiot for even trying.
On December 16 2016 01:21 Leolio wrote: Motherfox > yes, they have like 1 minute queue, or less. The problem is a lot of duo went to TL at once, and not that much trio. And every 2man need to find its 3man. : /
I suspect that the matchmaking would be better too. After a certain time the matchmaker says "I give up, here take whoever we can find"--- which is probably why the mmr difference happened.
I'm 4 games into placement, but the player variance in Hero League seems higher than it used to be. Probably a function of the lower player population.
On December 15 2016 23:30 Leolio wrote: TL duo queue debrief:
- First game: 1000 seconds queue. Ended as 2 diamond (HL season 2 me and my buddy) with 1 silver, 1 bronze, 1 unranked. Draft was a mess. Game was a mess. We got stomped (yeah right, bronze league team mate, what did you expect ?).
- Second game: 600 seconds queue. 1 silver 2 unranked mates. Same story, with more toxicity.
I can understand that when TL was 5 v 5, you needed to rely on TL ranks. But for 2+3v2+3 you need to use HL rankings.
Stopped playing TL. Stopped playing HotS at all. Will wait for Blizzard to fix the game.
edit: Diablo Thrall combo worked well though, but strangely being 2 levels behind makes the game harder.
It's the start if a new season. Of course the skill deviation within a team will be bigger than usual. Give it a week and play more than only two games before drawing any conclusions.
And just in case you are not actually planning to not play the game anymore because of two bad games in a row, may I remind you of the QQ-Thread? :-)
Yes, but it's related to the patch. I wish I knew today before queuing. I know I sound like a whiny kid. But I don't think it'll get better for duos.
You guys are braver than I am. I'm planning on avoiding ranked for a few weeks until the balance issues and MMR widening dies down. Last season I lost so many games right out of the gate because I didn't wait.
On December 16 2016 02:37 xDaunt wrote: I'm 4 games into placement, but the player variance in Hero League seems higher than it used to be. Probably a function of the lower player population.
At start of season the system's MMR confidence is loosened by blizzard so players can switch leagues very rapidly. Personally I think this is a huge disaster, because it means that about a week or two out of every season has terrible matchmaking just for the sake of proving MMR hell doesn't exist.
On December 16 2016 03:45 MotherFox wrote: You guys are braver than I am. I'm planning on avoiding ranked for a few weeks until the balance issues and MMR widening dies down. Last season I lost so many games right out of the gate because I didn't wait.
I just played 2 diablo games in a row. At level 20 with full trait stacks Diablo has 8k hp and 5 second resistant and a talent to reduce incoming spell damage. Oh btw... He deals a lot of damage!
I manage to die once while trying 2v4. Diablo is THE only solo tank now! That big badass red demon can peel, can stun, can stun again, can stun once more, can stun whole enemy team, best at bodyblocking, refuses to die, even if he die come backs in 5 second!
On December 16 2016 03:45 MotherFox wrote: You guys are braver than I am. I'm planning on avoiding ranked for a few weeks until the balance issues and MMR widening dies down. Last season I lost so many games right out of the gate because I didn't wait.
On December 16 2016 03:45 MotherFox wrote: You guys are braver than I am. I'm planning on avoiding ranked for a few weeks until the balance issues and MMR widening dies down. Last season I lost so many games right out of the gate because I didn't wait.
I'm busy ambushing people with yolo Artanis play.
What are you taking at 13 they all feel quite bad
Graviton Vortex is hands down the best talent there. Your build should be Amateur Opponent, Shield Surge, Warp Sickness, Purifier Beam, Graviton Vortex, Psionic Wound, and Target Purified. Initiating by pulling and slowing two targets is brutally strong. The lower cooldown on E is also very important.
Had some fun with Ragnaros. He can do quite a bit of damage in the moment, some of which is AoE. Low health targets can be focused down with an AA and then a Q + W.
Tried both ultimates. Sulfuras is the straight up teamfight ultimate. Strong and with a stun. If you go for the lvl 20 trait talent, the 50% damage bonus whilst you're on a fort also works on Sulfuras. It gives you a 2k AoE snipe that has twice the range of your screen.
Lava wave is still the stronger overall ultimate though. Any objective that happens in lane such as Infernal Shrines or Haunted Mines can be aided with a lava wave. It clears everything out save for buildings/mercs and players have yet to be on the alert for an incoming Lava wave. I got more than a few kills with it though I am expecting that is more due to Ragnaros being new than the Lava wave being a hero killer.
Ragnaros does die quite easily to a gank though. He has no strong escape and his E speed boost only lasts 1.5 seconds. Against ranged damage such as Jaina, Li-Ming, Chromie or Nova he will struggle quite a bit.
I think Lava Wave will eventually go down in effectiveness as people learn to spot it coming and move, but it is really strong at the moment. Haven't been able to play much this week though, so hopefully this weekend.
Rough summary of the most interesting points from the interview:
more crosspromotions in the future
progression 2.0 -> 1 level = 1 reward, new cosmetic items coming, new xp curve (1 level every 3 hours of play with a hero on average), retroactive (hero level 20 will become ~50)
map rotations: they are considering 6/7 maps for ranked, change every month (no timeframe)
they are exploring MMR individual adjustement for a player who perfoms better than the rest of the team
unless shit happens, the "2 weeks for adjustment" is the rule for new heroes, it's not only a matter of win rate, but there might be other "Zarya treatment" in the future if necessary
they are happy with the changes on ranked so far, during season 3 they will check data and decide for the future
in game stat screen will be updated with more stats soonTM
voice chat integration is high priority, asap (no timeline)
automated tournament: longer term but they like the idea
blizzard is open to share data with community, api might be coming relatively soon (still talking internally)
On December 16 2016 03:45 MotherFox wrote: You guys are braver than I am. I'm planning on avoiding ranked for a few weeks until the balance issues and MMR widening dies down. Last season I lost so many games right out of the gate because I didn't wait.
I'm busy ambushing people with yolo Artanis play.
What are you taking at 13 they all feel quite bad
Graviton Vortex is hands down the best talent there. Your build should be Amateur Opponent, Shield Surge, Warp Sickness, Purifier Beam, Graviton Vortex, Psionic Wound, and Target Purified. Initiating by pulling and slowing two targets is brutally strong. The lower cooldown on E is also very important.
What's the rational behind amateur opponent vs seasoned marksman vs reactive parry? Reactive parry seems pretty bad, but as a bruiser'ish I would think seasoned marksman has its place on e.g. towers of doom?
On December 16 2016 03:45 MotherFox wrote: You guys are braver than I am. I'm planning on avoiding ranked for a few weeks until the balance issues and MMR widening dies down. Last season I lost so many games right out of the gate because I didn't wait.
I'm busy ambushing people with yolo Artanis play.
What are you taking at 13 they all feel quite bad
Graviton Vortex is hands down the best talent there. Your build should be Amateur Opponent, Shield Surge, Warp Sickness, Purifier Beam, Graviton Vortex, Psionic Wound, and Target Purified. Initiating by pulling and slowing two targets is brutally strong. The lower cooldown on E is also very important.
What's the rational behind amateur opponent vs seasoned marksman vs reactive parry? Reactive parry seems pretty bad, but as a bruiser'ish I would think seasoned marksman has its place on e.g. towers of doom?
Reactive Parry has its place if you're playing against a bunch of heroes with heavy hitting autoattacks, but I almost always take Amateur Opponent now. I prefer AO to Seasoned Marksman because 1) you get its full impact instantly, and 2) it gives you a ton of utility in terms of being able to destroy towers/forts, map objectives, mercs, enemy summons, and waves in general. Being able to instantly pressure enemy towers and forts is particularly huge.
On December 16 2016 06:08 Aceace wrote: Diablo is THE only solo tank now!
Diablo is really good now but only in the right comps. Solo tank for sure, but not a general tank like the good old trio. When he charges in, it can be difficult for the rest of your team to follow up since he moves forward quite a bit and quickly, and he still has the same issue of no escape. Pretty bad wave clear as well until 13. I think he will be much more contested in competitive play than he is currently in HL since he shines in Void Prison/Devouring Maw comps with Apocalypse and the new Hellgate on 20 is pretty much a guaranteed win if the game goes on for that long.
I'm really liking this patch and the changes though. I feel like there's never been this many viable first picks depending on each map which means you can personalize your pick more than in the usual cases where both teams just try to get the same hero.
Rough summary of the most interesting points from the interview:
more crosspromotions in the future
progression 2.0 -> 1 level = 1 reward, new cosmetic items coming, new xp curve (1 level every 3 hours of play with a hero on average), retroactive (hero level 20 will become ~50)
map rotations: they are considering 6/7 maps for ranked, change every month (no timeframe)
they are exploring MMR individual adjustement for a player who perfoms better than the rest of the team
unless shit happens, the "2 weeks for adjustment" is the rule for new heroes, it's not only a matter of win rate, but there might be other "Zarya treatment" in the future if necessary
they are happy with the changes on ranked so far, during season 3 they will check data and decide for the future
in game stat screen will be updated with more stats soonTM
voice chat integration is high priority, asap (no timeline)
automated tournament: longer term but they like the idea
blizzard is open to share data with community, api might be coming relatively soon (still talking internally)
They should really implement this really fast, imo. With this new progression system, there's finally a real reason to keep playing the game for people that like rewards for every kind of stuff. And I don't know why it takes them so long to implement this...
I just can't believe new diablo doesn't have %65-70 winrate.
Seriously. Its mind blowing. He is literally a monster now. But still. He has only %55 winrate. If you ignore lava wave, Diablo is much better then Ragnaros.(100 sec cd, 2x lane clear with possible kills OP)
They went way overboard with the health increase of Diablo. Sure a tank is a tank but that doesn't mean he should be able to walk into a full team without really getting punished. Kind of same problem with Muradin except he needs to ulti and actually use his w to stay alive, which makes him much weaker to cc than Diablo is. I'm guessing both will have their health lowered in the next patch since blizz said they're going to nerf Avatar a while ago. It's pretty awkward to play as Illidan/Tracer vs Diablo right now because if you go for the backline, then either Diablo will 1v4 the rest of your team and he's going to survive longer, or he just charges you and you're most likely dead.
I'm loving the new Rehgar, going full Lightning Shield with Bloodlust is so much fun. Reminds me of old Rehgar although he's a pretty mediocre healer with that build compared to when he was at his peak. Still a bit too strong so expecting nerfs soon as well, but he's a strong first pick for me right now.
Think is Bulwark at 1 means he takes 25% less damage always, which means he's pretty resilient even to %HP damage. Plus tychus and valla are short enough range Diablo will just combo on them and wreck them
On December 19 2016 17:22 ChaosOS wrote: Think is Bulwark at 1 means he takes 25% less damage always, which means he's pretty resilient even to %HP damage. Plus tychus and valla are short enough range Diablo will just combo on them and wreck them
Agreed, I have not looked at Diablo:s new talent tree but he used to be my main so I guess I'm happy at the changes.
Yes, when you require a hero to misplay to even have a chance to kill them they tend to be OP.
The reason why Diablo doesn't have much higher win rate is probably because Tychus and Leoric counter him even harder now with him having 20% more HP with full stacked trait, and they are quite popular picks at the moment. Damage that is percentage of max HP doesn't get reduced by damage mitigation talents, so Resistant and Soul Shield doesn't work against Tychus' Minigun and Leoric's Drain Hope, while Diablo doesn't have escape before 16 and he will just melt the moment he jumps into enemy team.
On December 19 2016 18:58 Ramiz1989 wrote: The reason why Diablo doesn't have much higher win rate is probably because Tychus and Leoric counter him even harder now with him having 20% more HP with full stacked trait, and they are quite popular picks at the moment. Damage that is percentage of max HP doesn't get reduced by damage mitigation talents, so Resistant and Soul Shield doesn't work against Tychus' Minigun and Leoric's Drain Hope, while Diablo doesn't have escape before 16 and he will just melt the moment he jumps into enemy team.
This makes perfect sense, it also makes Diablo a great last pick tank if you can get away with it.
I played against a diablo as a kt and I could barely touch him. At one point he was down to a sliver of health, so I pyroblasted him at even levels: the pyroblast barely moved his healthbar after accounting for a just-in-time earth shield from rehgar and diablo's spell shield. I don't feel like a spell block, which can be up all the time as long as diablo plays safe, is a good mechanic--- at least other forms of spell block are periodic, so mages can have some counterplay.
edit-> someone on reddit pointed out that diablo's hp are more than cho'gall's when diablo has 100 soulstones. Math checks out using numbers on heroesfire's calculator: cho has a base of 3,686, diablo has a base of 2,752. With a 40% boost from 100 soulstones, diablo's numbers increase to 3,854. AND diablo has resistant on charge//a 35% permanent spellshield.
Also I have noticed three or four times over the weekend abilities which land and do no damage on a variety of characters. I suspect there is some kind of bug with certain types of skillshots, but I am not sure.
Played diablo with a muradin friend. We destroyed the enemy team. Any focus on us was almost pointless due to our tankiness. Our CC pretty much meant anything grabbed by either of us ended up dead.
The 5 second fortified on level 1 talent is so strong with the amount of health diablo has. I think only Tychus would scare me.
On December 19 2016 18:58 Ramiz1989 wrote: The reason why Diablo doesn't have much higher win rate is probably because Tychus and Leoric counter him even harder now with him having 20% more HP with full stacked trait, and they are quite popular picks at the moment. Damage that is percentage of max HP doesn't get reduced by damage mitigation talents, so Resistant and Soul Shield doesn't work against Tychus' Minigun and Leoric's Drain Hope, while Diablo doesn't have escape before 16 and he will just melt the moment he jumps into enemy team.
I'm going to take a risk and say "Who cares about Tychus?"
Yes. To be honest when i play Diablo I don't feel i am that threatened by Tychus. Yes he deals absurd amounts of damage due to extremely high hp but at least i have an option to run away or stunlock him to death.
But... That damn Matt Horner and Rory Swann causes so much trouble. A stupid Battlecruiser armed with SM stacking, executioner triggering and damn Giant Killer fireing lasers... You can't hit it!!! You can't protect your teammates from it. Hyperion is tooo strong now.
I don't know. Damn Raynor causes so much trouble to me when im playing Diablo. At least i manage to find solution. I get Jimmy Raynor when i see 2 tanks in opponent team.
On December 19 2016 18:58 Ramiz1989 wrote: The reason why Diablo doesn't have much higher win rate is probably because Tychus and Leoric counter him even harder now with him having 20% more HP with full stacked trait, and they are quite popular picks at the moment. Damage that is percentage of max HP doesn't get reduced by damage mitigation talents, so Resistant and Soul Shield doesn't work against Tychus' Minigun and Leoric's Drain Hope, while Diablo doesn't have escape before 16 and he will just melt the moment he jumps into enemy team.
I'm going to take a risk and say "Who cares about Tychus?"
Yes. To be honest when i play Diablo I don't feel i am that threatened by Tychus. Yes he deals absurd amounts of damage due to extremely high hp but at least i have an option to run away or stunlock him to death.
But... That damn Matt Horner and Rory Swann causes so much trouble. A stupid Battlecruiser armed with SM stacking, executioner triggering and damn Giant Killer fireing lasers... You can't hit it!!! You can't protect your teammates from it. Hyperion is tooo strong now.
I don't know. Damn Raynor causes so much trouble to me when im playing Diablo. At least i manage to find solution. I get Jimmy Raynor when i see 2 tanks in opponent team.
Yeah I heard about that bug in-game just now. Apparently, Hyperion benefits from Seasoned Marksman stacks and Giant Killer.
Raynor might not hard-counter Diablo but he is a big threat to him. His attack range and Giant Killer damage can make life difficult for Diablo. Still, in a teamfight Diablo should be able to close the gap with Shadow Charge.
Ah, i was curious about it. Saw a bunch of Raynors recently. As i see it, either those players are bad or the bug is not enough to make him a priority over Tychus.
Empower Sulfuras (Q) Damage reduced from 222 to 211
Living Meteor (W) Damage reduced from 75 to 72
Molten Core (Trait) Cooldown increased from 100 to 120 seconds
Molten Swing damage reduced from 169 to 161
Meteor Shower damage reduced from 159 to 151
Explosive Rune damage reduced from 300 to 285
Lava Wave (R) Cooldown increased from 100 to 120 seconds Damage reduced from 86 to 60
Developer Comments: The addition of Ragnaros to the Nexus has once again unmistakably proven how painful it is to stand in fire. Lava Wave and Molten Core seem to be the leading power-houses of the newly released Raid Boss, so we are targeting the majority of the changes at them. We are also carefully monitoring his interaction with the Battlegrounds and are prepared to make adjustments as needed.
Zeratul
Talents
Level 7
Wormhole (E) Now has a short delay before it can be re-activated to avoid accidental activation. This was always the case prior to his recent rework but was an unintended change made during the rework process.
Artanis
Abilities
Shield Overload (Trait) Increased Shield Value from 360 to 375
Developer Comments: We feel we’ve slightly over-nerfed Artanis’ survivability for his added playmaking potential by being able to cast Phase Prism during Blade Dash. We don’t think he needs much, but this small change should make Artanis feel a little more like the bruiser that he is meant to be.
Diablo
Stats
Base Maximum Health reduced from 2647 to 2567
Health Regen reduced from 5.52 to 5.35
Talents
Level 1
Bulwark (Q) Duration increase on Shadow Charge's Resistance decreased from 3 to 2 seconds
Level 7
Soul Shield (Passive) Ability damage reduction per Soul reduced from .35 to .25%
Level 20
Hellgate (Active) Cooldown increased from 70 to 90 seconds
Developer Comments: It's been nice to see the positive reactions to the Lord of Terror's recent changes. That said, the latest rework gave him some new survivability talents that are slightly over-performing. The new stacking Resistant system is making the interaction between Shadow Charge, Bulwark and Soul Shield a bit too strong, so we are making some adjustments to compensate.
Dehaka
Talents
Level 1
Enhanced Agility (Trait) Increased Quest reward per 50 Essence Stacks from 1 to 1.5% Movement Speed
Developer Comments: We couldn't be happier with the state that Dehaka is in, but we have heard the feedback on Enhanced Agility. While we feel it is still a bit too early to make any large changes to the talent, we are happy to bring the numbers up in order to give him Mounted Move Speed when this is fully unlocked.
Bug Fixes
Battlegrounds
Cursed Hollow: Attempting to gather a Tribute using a cloned Hero, such as Mirror Image or Ultimate Evolution, will no longer prevent players from gathering that Tribute.
Heroes, Abilities, and Talents
Artanis: The Talent tooltip for Templar's Zeal now correctly states that the cooldown for Blade Dash recharges 100% faster, rather than 150% faster, while Artanis is below 50% Health.
Ragnaros: Pressing ALT + R will now properly self-cast Sulfuras Smash.
Dehaka: The Talent tooltip for Lurker Strain's now correctly states that Stealth is granted upon emerging from Burrow.
Dehaka: The Essence Collection Ability tooltip now correctly lists a 5 second cooldown.
User Interface
Menus: Clicking the Grand Master Leaderboard and Ranked Play Guide buttons in the Chinese game client no longer causes blank pages to display.
Well those are some hefty Rag and Diablo nerfs that I honestly wasn't expecting until after the holidays. I guess we'll have to see where we go from there. I don't think the artanis buff is significant, as it's only 4% on the much smaller shield, and I think that Dehaka enhanced agility is still worse than either W choices
Wormhole (E) - Now has a short delay before it can be re-activated to avoid accidental activation. This was always the case prior to his recent rework but was an unintended change made during the rework process.
They reallllllyyy need to say the exact amount of time here or rip lots of zeratuls.
Thank God for these nerfs, Diablo was totally broken on certain maps and just overbearing on every other map while Ragnaros, I'm sorry, is probably about as OP as vanilla Li Ming/Leoric. Watching him get 25K more hero damage then heroes like Valla/Ming and 10K more then Gul who is also pretty strong at the moment is just sad, Lava Wave was owning in team fights.
These nerfs are 100% justified, I'm shocked they are buffing Dehaka a bit more, he didn't seem "OP" but he feels very strong for an off tank at the moment, guess I didn't realize how slow he was maybe?
Good on them for tuning up Artanis shields, he does more damage now without a doubt but he went from a primary holy shit damage sponge to less tanky then even Varian imo, this buff probably isn't enough even they might have wanted to lay on a 10% increase because it was very drastically nerfed. At the very least they have their eyes on him, this game needs more warriors honestly, so many damn assassins in the meta atm
The Dehaka buff is on a talent nobody is likely to take even after the buff, because it only effects movement speed in bushes and for one second after leaving bushes. I don't know that many people would take it even if you got the full effects without having to do a quest first.
On December 21 2016 05:38 Valiver wrote: Wormhole (E) - Now has a short delay before it can be re-activated to avoid accidental activation. This was always the case prior to his recent rework but was an unintended change made during the rework process.
They reallllllyyy need to say the exact amount of time here or rip lots of zeratuls.
I think that they just reverted it back to where it was, which is a good thing. I was having trouble controlling my wormhole with this patch. I thought I was just being sloppy at the time, but I'm glad to see that this wasn't the case.
On December 21 2016 07:10 Beelzebub1 wrote: Good on them for tuning up Artanis shields, he does more damage now without a doubt but he went from a primary holy shit damage sponge to less tanky then even Varian imo, this buff probably isn't enough even they might have wanted to lay on a 10% increase because it was very drastically nerfed. At the very least they have their eyes on him, this game needs more warriors honestly, so many damn assassins in the meta atm
I think that Artanis is a lot tankier than Varian. Varian gets blown up so damned easily. But yeah, Artanis is in a really good place right now. I think that he's the best bruiser in the game. He can carry really hard with good Q>E swaps.
From Blizzard Forums: With today’s patch we’ve loosened the Team League party restrictions and will now allow placement players to group with those who have already received a rank. We’ve also removed the tier restrictions on parties of 2 and 3 players so that groups can be formed regardless of each players’ current rank. While we may re-implement this restriction later, we wanted to test out how this change affects Team League queues and match quality.
I really love the Nazeebo skin though. Too bad he's just not that interesting to play.
About the TL patch, it's not getting better. Still insane queues for duos, probably for 5 too since they weren't affected. Played 3 games today (as 3), waited less than 15 secs to find a game. All 3 were stomps. 2 of these games our allies didn't talk at all, or flamed, in draft. One of these games had huge toxicity in play.
This cannot last long. People will stop playing the game.
I played four games as three today and it was mostly good. Short to average queues and games were even except first one which we got -90 favored points so the skill difference was huge there.
Hello, I just downloaded Heroes of the Storm. I have no experience playing MOBAs so I was wondering if someone could recommend me a few heroes in every role that might be good in the current patch. I would be most thankful...
On December 22 2016 04:22 Sakat wrote: Hello, I just downloaded Heroes of the Storm. I have no experience playing MOBAs so I was wondering if someone could recommend me a few heroes in every role that might be good in the current patch. I would be most thankful...
Hi there! Welcome to heroes I'm going to provide a list of hero recommendations, then a few tips/resources after that.
Characters to try This list is constructed with the following in mind:
* Ease of initial play * Cheapness gold-wise * Powerful characters in current meta
Note that in HOTS, heroes tend to cost gold relative to how long they have been out and how unique their playstyle is, not how powerful they are. There has not been significant power creep in the game since Blizzard is in the habit of going back and "re-working" old characters very regularly. As such, many of the 2k and 4k-cost heroes are actually top-tier picks or counterpicks.
Supports: Rehgar Malfurion
Warrior/Tank: Diablo E.T.C. Johanna Muradin
Assassins: Tychus Valla Jaina
(I'm leaving specialists out since they vary widely in playstyle and frequently have very specific things they want to do in any given game--- but feel free to experiment with them.)
How do I build a hero? For builds you can use the website hotslogs.com to find pretty up to date builds. From the front page, click on the hero you are interested in, then scroll to the very bottom of the page you find yourself on. There will be a section called "popular talent builds" which shows the most-picked builds for the hero you selected.
Approach to the game
When you start out you won't own many heroes, and gold scarcity will probably be a concern. Heroes rewards you for both leveling up your player account(until you hit level 40), and also for leveling up each individual hero. You get 500 gold for bringing a hero to level 5, so starting off by leveling many heroes to level 5 can be a nice way to get used to the game. If you find a hero you like, level them up to level 9--- you'll get an addition 1,000 gold for doing this. When I first started playing the game, I made a goal of getting every free-week hero to level 5, and that got me enough gold to buy what I needed.
[Trait] Berserker Zul’jin gains 1% Attack Speed per 1% of missing Health. Zul’jin can activate Berserker to increase the damage of his Basic Attacks by 25% at the cost of 2% of his maximum Health per attack.
[Q] Grievous Throw Zul’jin throws an axe forward, dealing damage to the first 2 enemies hit and marking them for 8 seconds. Marked enemies take 50% bonus damage from Zul’jin’s next 3 Basic Attacks against them.
[W] Twin Cleave Throw 2 axes in a large circular arc, dealing damage and slowing affected enemies by 15% per axe for 2 seconds.
[E] Regeneration Zul’jin channels to regenerate 25% of his maximum Health over 4 seconds. Moving or taking damage while channeling will interrupt this effect.
[R1] Taz’dingo Zul’jin is Unkillable for the next 4 seconds, and cannot be reduced to less than 1 Health. Taz’dingo!
[R2] Guillotine Zul’jin throws a massive guillotine into the sky that crashes down on enemies in the targeted area. The lower Zul’jin’s Health, the more damage it deals.
Level 1
[Q] Boneslicer
Grievous Throw now pierces through enemies. Bonus damage increased by 15%.
[Passive] Arcanite Axes
Twin Cleave cooldown reduced by 0.5 seconds for every Hero hit. Ability Power is increased by 25% while below 50% Health.
[Passive] You Want Axe?
Every 5 Basic Attacks used against Heroes increases your Basic Attack damage by 1.5. Upon reaching 24 Stacks, permanently gain 20% Range.
Level 4
[E] Troll's Blood
Increases Regeneration healing by 75%.
[Passive] Let the Killing Begin
Enemies killed by you increase your attack speed by 6% for 10 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. Attacks refresh duration.
[Passive] Headhunter
[!] Quest: Kill all unique enemy Heroes. Reward: Activate to reveal all enemy Heroes for 4 seconds.
Level 7
[Q] Vicious Assault
Increases the number of charges to 6. Basic Attacks against afflicted Heroes reduces cooldown by 2 seconds.
[W] Wrong Place Wrong Time
If an enemy is hit by both axes at the same time, deal bonus damage.
[Trait] Recklessness
While below 50% health, gain 25% bonus Attack Damage.
Heroic Talents
[R1] Taz'dingo!
Cannot be reduced to less than 1 Health for the next 4 seconds.
[R2] Guillotine
Throw a massive axe into the air that crashes down on enemies, dealing damage based on how much Health you are missing.
Level 13
[Q] Eye of Zul'jin
Hitting an enemy Hero with Grievous Throw increases Movement Speed by 25% for 2 seconds.
[E] Forest Medicine
Regeneration no longer has to be channeled. Damage still breaks the heal.
[Active] Voodoo Shuffle
Activate to remove all Slow and Root effects.
Level 16
[W] Swirling Death
Axes cycle twice and can hit enemies on each revolution but cooldown is increased by 4 seconds.
[W] Lacerate
Increases Slow amount of each axe by 15%.
[Trait] Ferocity
Increases the Attack Speed bonus of Berserker by 40%.
Level 20
[R1] Amani Resilience
Restore Health equal to 50% of the damage you dealt while using Taz'dingo.
[R2] Buzzsaw
After impact, the Guillotine continues rapidly forward, dealing damage to enemies in the line.
Zul'jin maximum hype, my big question is will he go "TAZ'DINGO, YE HE HAA" with his Taz'dingo alt, and if so, what they will do to counteract this 99% Taz'dingo heroic pick rate.
Too bad I think hes going to be terrible, his health-low-power-high mechanic is going to be tricky to work with if hes like Zarya at low energy and pretty piss poor at full health. His kit seems like some solid relatively basic stuff so I'm gonna enjoy him anyways, but I definitely worry about him being hard to really work with. Healing counteracting his trait is going to cause a lot of piss-offs in QM. "WHY DID YOU HEAL I WAS GONNA KILL HIM!" "You were gonna die, thats why" "I wasnt gonna die god dammit!" "yes you fuckin were idiot" etc. etc.
Hopefully I'm wrong though and he comes out a bastion of balance and community-uniting love. ;D
EDIT: Wait, is Zul'jin melee? I thought I saw a gif of his abilities and the like and he seemed to have a ranged auto attack? Did I miss something obvious thats gonna deflate my hype?
EDIT: Wait, is Zul'jin melee? I thought I saw a gif of his abilities and the like and he seemed to have a ranged auto attack? Did I miss something obvious thats gonna deflate my hype?
his talents say he throws an axe at some point (maybe skillshot?)
Check the Heroes Facebook page, they have the images of his ability animations, shows his basic abilities, heroics, and D, and since I figure D should be his trait that doesnt really seem to be active I thiiiink hes ranged, but I dunno maybe its just not well shown or Im missing something painfully obvious
Eh, a wee bit disappointed it's another ranged damage dealer, there is already so many of those. I guess at the very least the Warcraft universe doesn't have too too many ranged assassins atm
I'm still praying for a Fenix in Dragoon suit hero that's a specialist, would be so sick.
Oh right for some reason I thought he was melee by looking at his trait... well that sucks even more. He reminds me of an AA Gul'dan and seems to synergize best with slow heal ie malf.
Interesting, but this means he is only useful in the one scenario an assassin doesn't want to be in which is low health. As soon as his damage starts to rise, he can just get blown up. Regeneration is nice but given that it is so easy to interrupt it isn't usable in a fight. Malfurion just spamming Moonfire would deny him any use of his E.
Unlike Mages who are more dictated by the range of their spells, Zul'jin is dictated by the range of his AA and will have to stay there. He is at much more risk of getting dived, with no escape to save him and his E being useless in that scenario.
At least Raynor has extra range, a knockback and an E that cannot be cancelled.
On December 22 2016 13:17 Zambrah wrote: I feel like Fenix is more or less a guarantee. Sooner or later anyways. How much of the SC2 cast have we gone through so far?
Characters get added from hero ideas more than lore importance though, which is why we have Hammer and Morales instead of, say, Arcturus Mengsk.
Still, I'd say they've got most of the important ones in there already. Aside from Mengsk himself, I'd say the other notable SC2 characters missing are supporting characters. I really hope we get Aldaris from SC1 one day though.
On December 22 2016 14:15 MotherFox wrote: still waiting for black hero who doesn't have his face obscured by default. [nazeebo, tyrael]
I'm not very familiar with WarCraft lore, but they've got like 5 colours of orcs and elves. Surely they've got some variety of humans? Otherwise Samir Duran or the Diablo II Paladin might be your best bet.
On December 22 2016 14:15 MotherFox wrote: still waiting for black hero who doesn't have his face obscured by default. [nazeebo, tyrael]
I'm not very familiar with WarCraft lore, but they've got like 5 colours of orcs and elves. Surely they've got some variety of humans? Otherwise Samir Duran or the Diablo II Paladin might be your best bet.
Yeah. I'm not naive and realize that corporate-level racism is still a major thing, but it just astounds me how non-inclusive blizzard games are. Race is frequently used to reinforce theme through a stereotype or as a character/personality trait[Tyreal is an exception to this, so is Samir], with white being the "neutral, we don't want race to play into this character's personality" choice.
Overwatch has done a fairly good job with this [symmetra, lucio], though I still think it's funny that many character names appropriate race as theme [pharah, sombra, hanzo, and on some level zenyatta/genji even though I think they might be robots.
The point being, even with lucio and symmetra being cool and all, Blizzard still mistakes ethnicity for an origin story a lot. Whereas when characters' ethnicity are not as important (reaper, soldier 76, mei, tracer, mercy] the default is typically to go to white. [well, or what I'll deem a "Whatever", like widowmaker and junkrat]
^ Really? Lol like I understand what your saying but come on man it's a damn video game, this is like when everyone lost their shit on Reddit and FB when Blizzard announced that Tracer way gay, it's really just not a big deal.
I take that back, it's about as big of a deal as you make of it. I don't even remember anyone being black in SC except for Duran.
On December 23 2016 02:18 Beelzebub1 wrote: ^ Really? Lol like I understand what your saying but come on man it's a damn video game, this is like when everyone lost their shit on Reddit and FB when Blizzard announced that Tracer way gay, it's really just not a big deal.
I take that back, it's about as big of a deal as you make of it. I don't even remember anyone being black in SC except for Duran.
I'm saying I'm surprised they aren't more inclusive and and then pointing out specificly how they use race as a personality trait. I'm not calling for a boycott or anything. Seems like you are the one overreacting.
idk man, they both look white to me. (well, European based at least--- reaper looks hispanic to me) I'm going off the way the art looks rather than what blizzard is claiming as backstory, though. If they decided to say McCree was Polynesian that wouldn't change my opinion that he's clearly white.
edit->
Though if reaper is black, I guess that would further reinforce the "blizzard makes black people wear masks" thing. -_-
Dude you need to see more asian people because they can get preeeeetty pale. What you're saying is also weird because you're saying you need to be a certain skintone to really be asian.
You cant seriously say "Well, Mei looks white to me, doesnt matter that shes 100% totally and undeniably chinese, her skin is light so shes clearly white" I mean really, come on now.
And what do you mean "claiming as backstory," are you implying that just because these characters that were developed and created by Blizzard have the backstory from their developer and creator, Blizzard, that this back story is somehow not the canon actual factual truth behind these fictional characters developed by Blizzard for Blizzard's fictional world of Overwatch?
I worded that terribly, but to reiterate, there is no "claiming" as backstory, Mei is Chinese, she is a climatologist, Mei doesn't exist in the tangible world, if Blizzard said she was a sex-changing fart dragon then Mei would be a chinese climatologist sex-changing fart dragon.
EDIT: And for what its worth about Reaper, he could certainly be hispanic, in fact I googled a bit and it might actually be LIKELY that he's hispanic, nothing conclusive as to why, but some quick googling seems to indicate that his last name "Reyes" could very well have spanish origins.
Sometimes the draft feels like the opposite of what the game is going to end up as. We get Sky Temple. Half my team is silent and just picks heroes. Oh boy.
No-one wants to play tank OR healer but since I can't do both I go for healer and hope someone else can tank. The timer is running out however discussing this and I end up fast picking Malfurion (later wishing Brightwing due to the power of globals on Sky Temple). We end up getting Li-Ming, Malfurion, Samuro, Thrall and Arthas.
They get Dehaka, Sonya, Falstad, Li Li and Jaina. As far as I'm concerned they've won the draft handily. They have AA damage, spell damage, two globals and a healer that can blind our Thrall and Samuro.
And yet, we somehow just have way better teamwork than they do. We stick together, do the temples together and follow-up without overextending constantly. Their Sonya often whirlwinds straight into our team to get triple rooted and destroyed, their Jaina goes to far forward and gets dived on and dies. I never heard Dehaka burrowing into a fight or ambush once the entire game. Their Falstad is constantly forced to use Gust just to save his team or himself.
We often combine our ultimates with Earthquake and Sindragosa completely slowing them to a standstill. As soon as we get a kill with that, Li-Ming resets and we destroy them.
I still go Tranquility since they don't have any focus to kill someone fast and with Tranquility healing everyone we rarely lose a hero. We win the game by a wide margin. A good thing and I'm happy about it but shouldn't we have lost that game?
We had no stun to cancel Li Li's ult and they had much more reliable damage as well as two globals versus none and yet somehow they lost every teamfight big time and lost most of the temples. So strange.
Still, it ended up placing me Rank 1 with a grand total of 9 points to go so two more wins and I'm in Platinum where hopefully the above randomness gets reduced a bit.
So, short question regarding the reworked Haunted Mines. I think pretty much everyone agrees that the Golems are really weak currently. Is it even worth entering the mine in the first place? I'm quite certain that sending in 5 people is really not an option atm, but I don't know how many people should actually enter to grab some seeds... just... well... because you don't need 5 people on the map neither (normally) and the Golem at least tanks some dmg.
On December 24 2016 07:24 Swisslink wrote: So, short question regarding the reworked Haunted Mines. I think pretty much everyone agrees that the Golems are really weak currently. Is it even worth entering the mine in the first place? I'm quite certain that sending in 5 people is really not an option atm, but I don't know how many people should actually enter to grab some seeds... just... well... because you don't need 5 people on the map neither (normally) and the Golem at least tanks some dmg.
Specialists are really strong on mines. Sylvanas, Azmodan, Hammer, probably even Gazlowe. They have buffed the damage of the golems now, but before that there was about zero reason to go the mines, if enemy went there for first golem you could easily get both forts and then defend as five to only lose two towers. The golems did almost no damage at all but had a load of health. I've won games with Azmodan without ever going into the mines. I'm not sure how it works after the damage buffs though, the few games I've played my team definitely got more value getting a strong golem, but ignoring objective is surely still a thing. As long as you don't get stuck in the mines while your enemy pushes it's probably better to go for objective now, just be quick in heading back up and defend if enemy tries to push.
No idea why Ragnaros isn't a specialist. He doesn't really do reliable damage, and he's fairly vulnerable. His wave is overpowered not because it deals damage to anything, but because it harvests crazy experience for free.
Molten Power appears to be bugged, either the mechanic of the indicator. It just randomly increases, decreases.
On December 24 2016 07:24 Swisslink wrote: So, short question regarding the reworked Haunted Mines. I think pretty much everyone agrees that the Golems are really weak currently. Is it even worth entering the mine in the first place? I'm quite certain that sending in 5 people is really not an option atm, but I don't know how many people should actually enter to grab some seeds... just... well... because you don't need 5 people on the map neither (normally) and the Golem at least tanks some dmg.
I think you could draft in such a way to play like this, but maybe not for every game. I think Syvanas would be a must have to forgo the mines all together.
Random thought I'm having whilst away from home, how high could you get the alpha damage on hammer if you go for stealth on 1 (100% AA buff on next attack) then focused attack on 4, regular BFG on 10, first strike on 13 and fury on 20?
Hammer does almost 300 AA damage on 20 so times two from stealth makes 600. 60% from focused attack makes it over 900. Add 25% from first strike and 200 from fury on 20 and you should go over 1000 on every first stealth AA. You can stay mobile and stealthed with hover siege. With BFG you could get a 2k alpha burst from stealth.
Could be completely terrible but I can't test it right now :D
On December 27 2016 23:03 Thezzy wrote: Random thought I'm having whilst away from home, how high could you get the alpha damage on hammer if you go for stealth on 1 (100% AA buff on next attack) then focused attack on 4, regular BFG on 10, first strike on 13 and fury on 20?
Hammer does almost 300 AA damage on 20 so times two from stealth makes 600. 60% from focused attack makes it over 900. Add 25% from first strike and 200 from fury on 20 and you should go over 1000 on every first stealth AA. You can stay mobile and stealthed with hover siege. With BFG you could get a 2k alpha burst from stealth.
Could be completely terrible but I can't test it right now :D
Do multipliers stack? I thought they just applied to the base damage.
I think Zul'jin looks like really good fun and not a generic ranged assassin which is cool. Very much like his Ember Skin too I think I know where my £15 HoTS voucher for Christmas is going :D. Khara skin looks badass too just don't play him much!
On December 24 2016 11:02 Hier wrote: No idea why Ragnaros isn't a specialist. He doesn't really do reliable damage, and he's fairly vulnerable. His wave is overpowered not because it deals damage to anything, but because it harvests crazy experience for free.
Molten Power appears to be bugged, either the mechanic of the indicator. It just randomly increases, decreases.
Kidding right? Every game I play against/with a Ragnaros he is always top damage unless said team had a very competent Li Ming, I've also rarely seen KT, Valla, and Nazeebo edge him out in damage but he is always right up there. Lava Wave has to be one of the most poorly designed ults in the game as well.
On December 24 2016 11:02 Hier wrote: No idea why Ragnaros isn't a specialist. He doesn't really do reliable damage, and he's fairly vulnerable. His wave is overpowered not because it deals damage to anything, but because it harvests crazy experience for free.
Molten Power appears to be bugged, either the mechanic of the indicator. It just randomly increases, decreases.
Kidding right? Every game I play against/with a Ragnaros he is always top damage unless said team had a very competent Li Ming, I've also rarely seen KT, Valla, and Nazeebo edge him out in damage but he is always right up there. Lava Wave has to be one of the most poorly designed ults in the game as well.
He has the only ultimate in the game who allows you to soak a whole lane. I think it's the only split soaking ultimate ? (dunno if Monstrosity soaks) He can become a building with his trait.
That may not be enough to make him a specialist, but then Medivh is not a specialist either. Or Sylvanas. Sylvanas only has her trait making her a spec. While it defines her whole way of playing, Ragna has his trait and his ultimate.
This is for the sake of the discussion, because I really believe the roles are not THAT important. Medivh is a support maybe, Ragna is a spec / assassin hybrid. Zarya is not a warrior. Or she is.
Because of the superb waveclear, trait and the fun ult, people could come to that conclusion. But Imo he is a melee mage. That makes him special, but it doesn't mean he is a specialist. Specialists in HotS is more a name for sustained damage dealers. Or for matchmaking sake, heroes that don't fit into a role.
Zarya is an Overwatch Character, those tend to be hybrids of two or more classic roles in Overwatch. So they have to transfer that. Medivh is a specialst, because matchmaking reasons.
And every player skill that kills a minion will grant exp from anywhere. if you want constant lane exp, Hammer with BFG is your gal. Thats why I love Hydra and Gazlow Turrets. They have good chances to get the exp even if you leave lane for a moment.
The "What is a Specialist" discussion is kind of interesting,
Abathur Azmodan Gazlowe Murky Medivh Nazeebo Sgt. Hammer Sylvanas The Lost Vikings Xul Zagara
Gonna off the top of my head some potential ways to label the sects of specialists,
Spawners Nazeebo, Zagara, Xul, Azmodan, Gazlowe
Gimmick Abathur, TLV, Murky
Fort/Keep Direct Destruction Sgt. Hammer, Sylvanas
"Other" designation Medivh
The one real thread that I can see that unites these characters is a strength against non-Heroic enemies, either by outranging structures, disabling structures, or overwhelming structures (I'm loosely lumping Murky here since he has the death-gimmick.)
I think what makes Rag feel so much like a specialist is his very crazy Trait that goes into Specialist territory since it focuses on structures and feels like a gimmick (a really cool gimmick, I love it, I'm not shit talking it) while this feels really Specialist-y, the trait seems to be really more focused on fending off heroes more than anything else, you won't be pushing forts down with Rag's trait so much as defending your own from heroes and trying to use it to sway teamfights (or I'm nuts and am missing the point of it which is definitely possible!) his Lava Wave destroys minions and travels in a lane in a relatively Specialist way, I mean in theory no heroes should be easily hit by Lava Wave, it doesnt seem like the intent is particularly to punish heroes since it travels conforming to the contour of a particular lane.
Rag could be a Specialist, hes kind of in that weird Medivh area though where its probably better that hes not just because it broadens the role of a specialist.
On December 30 2016 13:21 Zambrah wrote: The "What is a Specialist" discussion is kind of interesting,
Abathur Azmodan Gazlowe Murky Medivh Nazeebo Sgt. Hammer Sylvanas The Lost Vikings Xul Zagara
Gonna off the top of my head some potential ways to label the sects of specialists,
Spawners Nazeebo, Zagara, Xul, Azmodan, Gazlowe
Gimmick Abathur, TLV, Murky
Fort/Keep Direct Destruction Sgt. Hammer, Sylvanas
"Other" designation Medivh
The one real thread that I can see that unites these characters is a strength against non-Heroic enemies, either by outranging structures, disabling structures, or overwhelming structures (I'm loosely lumping Murky here since he has the death-gimmick.)
I think what makes Rag feel so much like a specialist is his very crazy Trait that goes into Specialist territory since it focuses on structures and feels like a gimmick (a really cool gimmick, I love it, I'm not shit talking it) while this feels really Specialist-y, the trait seems to be really more focused on fending off heroes more than anything else, you won't be pushing forts down with Rag's trait so much as defending your own from heroes and trying to use it to sway teamfights (or I'm nuts and am missing the point of it which is definitely possible!) his Lava Wave destroys minions and travels in a lane in a relatively Specialist way, I mean in theory no heroes should be easily hit by Lava Wave, it doesnt seem like the intent is particularly to punish heroes since it travels conforming to the contour of a particular lane.
Rag could be a Specialist, hes kind of in that weird Medivh area though where its probably better that hes not just because it broadens the role of a specialist.
Well thats my inane thoughts for the night.
I tend to group them a bit differently in my head, and I don't believe they all need to be categorized as just one single thing.
Pushers Zagara, Xul, Azmodan
Split pushers Abathur, TLV, Murky, Zagara
Utility Abathur, Sylvanas, Medivh
Damage Hammer, Sylvanas, Nazeebo
In any case, I think people struggle with this designation way more than they should. Specialist is a pretty non-descriptive term, but it generally works as a classification for "other". Specialists are rarely defined by their damage, tankiness, or healing/shielding capabilities, so they are just...other (which often times happens to be their split pushing power). The only one that I think probably deserves a re-classification is Hammer, who is 90% about big damage from a long range (assassin).
I believe Ragnaros could very clearly find himself in the specialist category since it's his trait that generally defines him, but since Blizzard classified him as an assassin, I think it's clear that their goal is to make his damage output a defining characteristic. His trait might be a little overtuned right now.
I find Azmodan more of a split pusher. Not that you have to split push with him though, you're better defending the weakest lane. Sending your generals wreck top lane when you and your team delay bottom tribute forever is his biggest strenght to me.
Does Sylvanas not also generally fit the category of an assassin though? If Hammer is an assassin then Sylvanas would certainly count considering they both have an ignore-the-fort ability baked in and are otherwise rather typical of assassin characters (and Hammer's range is a rather "other" aspect of an assassin, look at Li Ming ,she was effectively doing the Hammer thing but they didnt really want her doing the Hammer thing as well as she was). Nazeebo doubly so, he would most easily slot into the assassin role since his abilities are relatively non descript. Ragnaros is also in this camp, but really I think this is mostly an issue of Blizzard not really having that strong a concept of what a "Specialist" is leading to it being the "Other" category (which we seem to agree on.) I think during the inception of the game the intention was to have them be PvE-focused characters that pushed really hard.
And those are my inane morning thoughts of the morning!
On December 30 2016 23:48 Zambrah wrote: Does Sylvanas not also generally fit the category of an assassin though? If Hammer is an assassin then Sylvanas would certainly count considering they both have an ignore-the-fort ability baked in and are otherwise rather typical of assassin characters (and Hammer's range is a rather "other" aspect of an assassin, look at Li Ming ,she was effectively doing the Hammer thing but they didnt really want her doing the Hammer thing as well as she was). Nazeebo doubly so, he would most easily slot into the assassin role since his abilities are relatively non descript. Ragnaros is also in this camp, but really I think this is mostly an issue of Blizzard not really having that strong a concept of what a "Specialist" is leading to it being the "Other" category (which we seem to agree on.) I think during the inception of the game the intention was to have them be PvE-focused characters that pushed really hard.
And those are my inane morning thoughts of the morning!
Nah. No one picks Sylvanas because she does insane amounts of damage. They pick her because her trait is OPOP and allows them to get a lot out of objectives/advantages...it just so happens that she has decent damage and one of the best teamfighting ults in the game.
I have no idea what the hell Nazeebo brings to the table, but it's not much. They might have to do a full redesign on him at some point.
On December 30 2016 18:47 Leolio wrote: I find Azmodan more of a split pusher. Not that you have to split push with him though, you're better defending the weakest lane. Sending your generals wreck top lane when you and your team delay bottom tribute forever is his biggest strenght to me.
I think of Azmodan as providing pressure on lanes but not necessarily going YOLO afk and pushing down side lanes by himself (except for snoozers in QM). In any sort of..."good"?...play, he's taken for his ability to push/de-push the lanes and provide some big poke damage during fights. I guess what I'm trying to say is that his main strength isn't split pushing, but his pushing power can be used for that purpose.
I dunno, I could just be thinking about it wrong. That's just how I see him.
I count azmo as a split pusher, not for his potential to yolo one lane, usually bad play, but with his general of hell and later long distance wave clear with globes. Azmo brings light but constant lane pressure and xp soak. When he does siege structures himself, he does a good job with lazer. So i think he counts as pusher too. Much like Zagara but not as powerful as (nydus) Zagara.
Its indeed confusing. Sylvanas, much like Ragnaros, is a strong damage dealer that has a strong extra advantage on top of it, and yet, different roles.
Azmodan could use a small buff to his weirdness and Nazeebo too, if he is supposed to do something not teamfight related. I think Naz is better off as an assassin, but i don't mind if the tag is not changed.
On December 30 2016 23:48 Zambrah wrote: Does Sylvanas not also generally fit the category of an assassin though? If Hammer is an assassin then Sylvanas would certainly count considering they both have an ignore-the-fort ability baked in and are otherwise rather typical of assassin characters (and Hammer's range is a rather "other" aspect of an assassin, look at Li Ming ,she was effectively doing the Hammer thing but they didnt really want her doing the Hammer thing as well as she was). Nazeebo doubly so, he would most easily slot into the assassin role since his abilities are relatively non descript. Ragnaros is also in this camp, but really I think this is mostly an issue of Blizzard not really having that strong a concept of what a "Specialist" is leading to it being the "Other" category (which we seem to agree on.) I think during the inception of the game the intention was to have them be PvE-focused characters that pushed really hard.
And those are my inane morning thoughts of the morning!
Nah. No one picks Sylvanas because she does insane amounts of damage. They pick her because her trait is OPOP and allows them to get a lot out of objectives/advantages...it just so happens that she has decent damage and one of the best teamfighting ults in the game.
I have no idea what the hell Nazeebo brings to the table, but it's not much. They might have to do a full redesign on him at some point.
On December 30 2016 18:47 Leolio wrote: I find Azmodan more of a split pusher. Not that you have to split push with him though, you're better defending the weakest lane. Sending your generals wreck top lane when you and your team delay bottom tribute forever is his biggest strenght to me.
I think of Azmodan as providing pressure on lanes but not necessarily going YOLO afk and pushing down side lanes by himself (except for snoozers in QM). In any sort of..."good"?...play, he's taken for his ability to push/de-push the lanes and provide some big poke damage during fights. I guess what I'm trying to say is that his main strength isn't split pushing, but his pushing power can be used for that purpose.
I dunno, I could just be thinking about it wrong. That's just how I see him.
I'm not talking about viability though, I'm just talking about their kits if we set aside their fort-ignoring speciality, would Sylvanas not operate pretty much like an assassin? I'm not denying that her definitive characteristics are her trait, but if we set that aside shes pretty much an assassin right? Its semi-hard to compare it to Hammer since her Siege Mode isn't necessarily a trait (though I think its easily in the spirit of a trait since its her defining characteristic)
I'm not saying Sylvanas or Hammer don't belong in the Specialist camp either, but I'm trying to figure out some area of commonality we can discern about Specialists, right now I have to lean towards a PvE strength although thats obviously a hyper broad term that many assassins could technically fill themselves.
Nazeebo does need a serious rehaul though, lord has he not been remotely relevant in forever.
Sylv does sustained damaged, which usually is associated with Specialists. Assassins are usually burst, outside of autoattackers.
While Sylv build feels assassin like, she lacks damage and sustain, to combat any assassin. She is capable at fighting specialists rather well though, because of her trait she can even defend lanes against most specialists. But for matchmaking purposes, she would do badly as an assassin.
Hammer is an Autoattacker, but because she gets a huge boost from being stationary, it would be a bad idea to label her assassin. Because 50% of assassins can just explode her when she does it.
So one big reason is iMo protect the noobs.
They also both cannot be ignored when in lane, which is also a specialist thing.
I mean would you classify Valla as a burst damage dealer? Her trait more or less requires some degree of build up, really any AA hero can't really be classified as a burst damage dealer right, I mean Raynor isn't exactly comboing all of his abilities off to destroy people quickly. I've always thought that there was already a sustained vs. burst damage line in the Assassin field via AA vs. Mage
On December 31 2016 21:35 FeyFey wrote: Hammer is an Autoattacker, but because she gets a huge boost from being stationary, it would be a bad idea to label her assassin. Because 50% of assassins can just explode her when she does it.
Have you ever played a ranged assassin like Valla or Greymane into Hammer? It feels awful, Hammer wrecks them.
On December 30 2016 23:48 Zambrah wrote: Does Sylvanas not also generally fit the category of an assassin though? If Hammer is an assassin then Sylvanas would certainly count considering they both have an ignore-the-fort ability baked in and are otherwise rather typical of assassin characters (and Hammer's range is a rather "other" aspect of an assassin, look at Li Ming ,she was effectively doing the Hammer thing but they didnt really want her doing the Hammer thing as well as she was). Nazeebo doubly so, he would most easily slot into the assassin role since his abilities are relatively non descript. Ragnaros is also in this camp, but really I think this is mostly an issue of Blizzard not really having that strong a concept of what a "Specialist" is leading to it being the "Other" category (which we seem to agree on.) I think during the inception of the game the intention was to have them be PvE-focused characters that pushed really hard.
And those are my inane morning thoughts of the morning!
Nah. No one picks Sylvanas because she does insane amounts of damage. They pick her because her trait is OPOP and allows them to get a lot out of objectives/advantages...it just so happens that she has decent damage and one of the best teamfighting ults in the game.
I have no idea what the hell Nazeebo brings to the table, but it's not much. They might have to do a full redesign on him at some point.
On December 30 2016 18:47 Leolio wrote: I find Azmodan more of a split pusher. Not that you have to split push with him though, you're better defending the weakest lane. Sending your generals wreck top lane when you and your team delay bottom tribute forever is his biggest strenght to me.
I think of Azmodan as providing pressure on lanes but not necessarily going YOLO afk and pushing down side lanes by himself (except for snoozers in QM). In any sort of..."good"?...play, he's taken for his ability to push/de-push the lanes and provide some big poke damage during fights. I guess what I'm trying to say is that his main strength isn't split pushing, but his pushing power can be used for that purpose.
I dunno, I could just be thinking about it wrong. That's just how I see him.
I almost agree, but Blizzard is clarely exploring the boundries between the classes now, so that everything gets blurry.
Ragnaros is right between assasin and specialist. I think the reason for him being an assasin is that his kit, other than one ult and trait, is not very specialist-like, as not focussing on wave-clear, pushing or just very weird ways of combat.
Rexxar, Rainor, Thrall and Chen are other strong solo-laners which could technically also be specialists, but their overall kit and playstyle make them something else. Sindragosa is also a "specialist" ultimate, but that does not change the role of Arthas in any way.
On December 31 2016 21:35 FeyFey wrote: Hammer is an Autoattacker, but because she gets a huge boost from being stationary, it would be a bad idea to label her assassin. Because 50% of assassins can just explode her when she does it.
Have you ever played a ranged assassin like Valla or Greymane into Hammer? It feels awful, Hammer wrecks them.
I don't think I've seen a greymane even once all season in ranked.
On December 31 2016 21:35 FeyFey wrote: Hammer is an Autoattacker, but because she gets a huge boost from being stationary, it would be a bad idea to label her assassin. Because 50% of assassins can just explode her when she does it.
Have you ever played a ranged assassin like Valla or Greymane into Hammer? It feels awful, Hammer wrecks them.
I don't think I've seen a greymane even once all season in ranked.
He's still decent on BoE if you can't have Valla. Other than that...yeah, he's not that useful.
On December 31 2016 21:35 FeyFey wrote: Hammer is an Autoattacker, but because she gets a huge boost from being stationary, it would be a bad idea to label her assassin. Because 50% of assassins can just explode her when she does it.
Have you ever played a ranged assassin like Valla or Greymane into Hammer? It feels awful, Hammer wrecks them.
I don't think I've seen a greymane even once all season in ranked.
He's still decent on BoE if you can't have Valla. Other than that...yeah, he's not that useful.
I mean, I saw varian in almost every single game I played today---- so clearly being useful isn't the rubric used for picking heroes in heroleague. I guess greymane just isn't fun to play since bliz took away the ease of cocktailing and tried to "encourage" wolf form. [changes which in reality "encouraged" people to go play something else]
If you guys look at naz's win by game time it might give you some idea of why he's bad for pros and...well, not good....but more than 50% winrate in hl. The later the game goes the more likely naz will just win. Probably b/c many of his level 20 talents are insane. (vile infection makes a single cast of spiders 3/4 just about any ranged assassin in the game.)
Polish CM said he will hit EU server Thursday night, delayed one day because of holidays, which means it should go live in the US on Wednesday if this is accurate.
Yeah I don't think any new heroes have been changed balance wise based on how they do on the PTR. Every new hero looks OP when grand master players are matched with silver and bronze opponents, and every PTR quickmatch has a copy of the new hero on both sides. Still it has been a while since they released a new hero without a PTR. The other change from recent history is that they normally announce 2 heroes at a time, but this time we just got the Zul'jin reveal.
decided to play nazeebo to see what he's all about. wow he's a beast against mages. after level 13 they largely can't touch him and he can zone them out pretty hard since spiders wreck them. I think this means he is a beast in quickmatch---- I won 8/10 games I played as a warmup. Only times we lost was one game against a tracer where we had chromie/ming/gazlowe/naz/valla (nothing to touch tracer) and another game where the enemy had double stealth and my allies couldn't stop getting ganked.
just had a heroleague game on tomb where the enemy team drafted xul/sylv/jaina/anub/morales. Setting aside for a moment that this isn't an ideal comp..... by my turn in the draft I saw everything but medic I figured why not play naz. it was impressive how they could not kill me once I took superstition at 13.
I also discovered in one of the QM games that if you take the extended range on naz's ablities he can out-range towers with all of his abilities. On that game I sat in bot lane on sun temple while allies poked 4v5 over the watchtower and managed to kill an entire tower before the enemy team wised up and stopped showing 5 on the top of the map.
All this is to say, I don't think I would draft naz until the possibility of a strong ranged autoattacker was gone. But if the enemy has already drafted jaina and kt (or something similar), why not? Naz can boost his healthpool quite high, and since mages have no autoattack he literally just takes 50% reduced damage after level 13. In one game I 1v2'd a xul/jaina at even level simply because they were unable to kill me. (when I was rooted I walled myself in which kept most of xul's damage away, jaina just couldn't touch me. They were confident since it was 2v1, but my spiders killed them both in the end.)
That last bit brings up an important point--- characters which are generally good at things tend to excel in heroleague. With the right draft naz can 1v1 anyone (unless they run away), do merc camps, clear waves, and contribute to teamfights. With the spiders-return mana talent he also has a lot of sustain, which probably explains the winrate.