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Heroes of the Storm: We Lich Kings of Frozen Throne

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    Undead MonkeyUndead Monkey Anchorage, AKRegistered User regular
    When Jaina comes out, I'll probably be speccing into the talents that give reduction against CC effects quite a bit more.

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    PMAversPMAvers Registered User regular
    Yeah, Jaina's supposed to be coming sooner than later, and then Thrall in the Closed Beta patch.

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    LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    They did announce which patch Jaina is in. They said she is coming in "Patch 7." However, they gave no indication of what or when that is.

    And yes, they showed off Sylvanas quite extensively at this year's Blizzcon, including going into the design and iteration process behind her.

    Her trait, by the way, will be a very significant game-changer. Her trait is called "Black Arrow" and it causes a 0.5 second stun on NPCs through her auto-attack. It does not work on player character or elite monsters (like the grave golem on Haunted Mines). But it *does* work on Towers. She can effectively remove a tower or mercenary/minion from combat as long as she continues to auto-attack it. She is tagged as a Specialist Hero, due to her siege and mercenary control options, but Blizzard also made it very clear that she is a specialist with a lot of offensive capability.

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    Knight_Knight_ Dead Dead Dead Registered User regular
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    They did announce which patch Jaina is in. They said she is coming in "Patch 7." However, they gave no indication of what or when that is.

    And yes, they showed off Sylvanas quite extensively at this year's Blizzcon, including going into the design and iteration process behind her.

    Her trait, by the way, will be a very significant game-changer. Her trait is called "Black Arrow" and it causes a 0.5 second stun on NPCs through her auto-attack. It does not work on player character or elite monsters (like the grave golem on Haunted Mines). But it *does* work on Towers. She can effectively remove a tower or mercenary/minion from combat as long as she continues to auto-attack it. She is tagged as a Specialist Hero, due to her siege and mercenary control options, but Blizzard also made it very clear that she is a specialist with a lot of offensive capability.

    She seems to be in the Hammer and Nazeebo half of specialists that play much more like assassins with some unique mechanics. Which is a smart direction to point her I think.

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    UrQuanLord88UrQuanLord88 Registered User regular
    I'm just content that they understand that all their archer heroes should be different

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    MMMigMMMig Registered User regular
    Whooooooooooooooo wants to ruuuuuuuuuuuuuumbleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee??????

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    wra
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    I needed anime to post.I needed anime to post. boom Registered User regular
    no rumble is a character in league

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    WingedWeaselWingedWeasel Registered User regular
    i thought it was weird that they claimed they wanted to go back to the WC3 roots of sylvanas as a dark ranger by removing her silence and making her trait (black arrow) stun creeps/structures. the only thing that really says "wc3 dark ranger" to me about her is the mention of some sort of mind control mechanic for minions/mercs. otherwise they intentionally ditched one of her abilities, completely changed another, and ignored the third of the

    ignoring all that i am curious how her trait will shake out since we have no idea what her attack speed is. plus it is great and all to lock down a tower but for the most part....who cares? early on i am unsure how much opportunity there will be to burn a tower down (let alone capability even with it being locked down) and later on most heroes can quite easily tank and take down a tower/fort. maybe for pushing keeps it will be relevant.

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    38thDoe38thDoe lets never be stupid again wait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered User regular
    She did have dark arrow in WC3. From what I remember.

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    Lord_AsmodeusLord_Asmodeus goeticSobriquet: Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered User regular
    Yeah but in WC3 Dark Arrow was a damage buff (IIRC) and it converted units that had been hit by it shortly before dying into skeleton soldiers for you

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    Steel AngelSteel Angel Registered User regular
    i thought it was weird that they claimed they wanted to go back to the WC3 roots of sylvanas as a dark ranger by removing her silence and making her trait (black arrow) stun creeps/structures. the only thing that really says "wc3 dark ranger" to me about her is the mention of some sort of mind control mechanic for minions/mercs. otherwise they intentionally ditched one of her abilities, completely changed another, and ignored the third of the

    ignoring all that i am curious how her trait will shake out since we have no idea what her attack speed is. plus it is great and all to lock down a tower but for the most part....who cares? early on i am unsure how much opportunity there will be to burn a tower down (let alone capability even with it being locked down) and later on most heroes can quite easily tank and take down a tower/fort. maybe for pushing keeps it will be relevant.

    Do we actually know her skills yet? Her original FT kit would be kind of tough to throw into the game. Silence isn't something lightly thrown around here and life drain would feel a little lackluster given how many heroes can have vampiric assault and Blood for Blood.

    Big Dookie wrote: »
    I found that tilting it doesn't work very well, and once I started jerking it, I got much better results.

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    Knight_Knight_ Dead Dead Dead Registered User regular
    edited November 2014
    You know, I really hope they kneecap nova next patch. While I have her at 9.5 and she used to be my favorite assassin, I miss having to actually think to play the character instead of hur 2 q w 1 q killed every single hero in the game.

    Also makes being an assassin/support and not glued to your team the scariest proposition. She warps games really hard right now.

    Knight_ on
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    milskimilski Poyo! Registered User regular
    In a game where there are very limited options to flexibly build towards durability, escape, or detection and limited "ramping" of power with time, a permanently invisible character that deals massive damage may be a poor design concept.

    I ate an engineer
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    Maledict66Maledict66 Registered User regular
    She warps games where you can't counterpick her, or against pick up groups. Against teams and players who know what they are doing she isn't at all that bad - you can very effectively stop her one shouting you with correct placement, and a whole host of characters have tools to shut her down.

    Problem is, against ransoms unless they know what they are doing she is just going to *murder* them. Horribly, painfully, constantly.

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    WingedWeaselWingedWeasel Registered User regular
    Yeah but in WC3 Dark Arrow was a damage buff (IIRC) and it converted units that had been hit by it shortly before dying into skeleton soldiers for you

    exactly. granted there may already be an issue with heroes making a bazillion summonable units (especially with towers having ammunition) but i think this would've been cool.

    @Steel Angel‌ i remember here being an interview where they indicated that they didn't want her to have silence and wanted to get back to WC3 sylvanas which made me raise an eyebrow. i understand changing her kit to suit this sort of game vs WC3 (or even WoW), but it seemed so odd how they said no silence but simultaneously wanted to get back to her roots.

    re nova: i like that nova warps games, or that certain heroes warp the game in general. obviously there can be too much of a good thing. blizzard already stated they are going to nerf her and allegedly at blizzcon the build there had hot shots at 300% instead of 330% and rewind wasn't there.

    the biggest issue with nova i think is less about what she actually does but how it feels to play against her. you really can be made to feel helpless sometimes. however i like that when i join a game i immediately tab to see the enemy composition and if nova, zeratul, stitches, hammer, gazlowe maybe 1 or 2 other heroes are present it implies the game needs to be played a different way.

    it was never mentioned, but maybe adding an additional penalty to certain talents. for example hot shots in addition to the longer "cooldown" on autoattacks now also causing cloak to take 1s longer to activate or puts decoys on cooldown/reveals which are fake for 5s. this is more a play on the flavor of someone being a "hot shot" as in arrogant as opposed to any other meaning.

    i also wouldn't be surprised to eventually see her get the normal ghost treatment of a cloak that drains energy rather than a permanent cloak.

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    EnclaveofGnomesEnclaveofGnomes Registered User regular
    zeratul and nova being invisible designed around burst characters seemed like a horrible idea from the first to me.

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    LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    Re: Sylvanas -- I don't think they have disclosed her full kit yet, but just from watching the teaser clips at Blizzcon, we have seen a few of them in action. She's got a piercing arrow shot, which is likely her Q. In the video they showed her shooting it through multiple targets. We also saw her trait in action. They showed her locking out both a tower and a siege giant. We also know that one of her Ult choices is a mind control that lets her dominate an enemy merc.

    Re: Nova -- I think she's fine. Yes, in pickup games she can be quite strong. But just because a character is strong in pickup play does not make them broken or imbalanced. If you watch the Pro exhibition matches from Blizzcon, she showed up in a couple matches, and she wasn't nearly as powerful. Teams with coordination are capable of shutting her down, locking her out, and neutralizing her. Of course, all of those Pro teams were stacking Oracle, Clairvoyance, and any other vision abilities. They were basically casting Vision on cooldown, which goes a long way towards neutralizing stealthers. In pickup games, most people do not take vision. Heck, even most pickup Tassadar players forget to use Oracle.

    Re: Zeratul -- He is balanced as well. He's my highest character in this current build of the game. As someone who has put a lot of time into him, I can tell you that almost anyone can beat him 1v1. He is intended to be played as a predator and to attack targets of opportunity. Even moreso than Nova. Nova has the protection of range and misdirection (decoy) to keep her alive. Zeratul's one and only defense is his Blink, and situation dependent, Blink isn't always available. Sometimes you have to use it offensively for kill-shot positioning, rather than as an escape too. Zeratul being perma-stealth is most certainly balanced.

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    Knight_Knight_ Dead Dead Dead Registered User regular
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    Re: Sylvanas -- I don't think they have disclosed her full kit yet, but just from watching the teaser clips at Blizzcon, we have seen a few of them in action. She's got a piercing arrow shot, which is likely her Q. In the video they showed her shooting it through multiple targets. We also saw her trait in action. They showed her locking out both a tower and a siege giant. We also know that one of her Ult choices is a mind control that lets her dominate an enemy merc.

    Re: Nova -- I think she's fine. Yes, in pickup games she can be quite strong. But just because a character is strong in pickup play does not make them broken or imbalanced. If you watch the Pro exhibition matches from Blizzcon, she showed up in a couple matches, and she wasn't nearly as powerful. Teams with coordination are capable of shutting her down, locking her out, and neutralizing her. Of course, all of those Pro teams were stacking Oracle, Clairvoyance, and any other vision abilities. They were basically casting Vision on cooldown, which goes a long way towards neutralizing stealthers. In pickup games, most people do not take vision. Heck, even most pickup Tassadar players forget to use Oracle.

    Re: Zeratul -- He is balanced as well. He's my highest character in this current build of the game. As someone who has put a lot of time into him, I can tell you that almost anyone can beat him 1v1. He is intended to be played as a predator and to attack targets of opportunity. Even moreso than Nova. Nova has the protection of range and misdirection (decoy) to keep her alive. Zeratul's one and only defense is his Blink, and situation dependent, Blink isn't always available. Sometimes you have to use it offensively for kill-shot positioning, rather than as an escape too. Zeratul being perma-stealth is most certainly balanced.

    Sure, you can almost hard counter Nova with Tassadar. But that's because Tassadar is bonkers crazy good. When played above average he is probably the scariest hero in the game imo. They could both probably stand to be looked at.

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    LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    What I was saying is, Tassadar isn't the only counter to Nova. Any character with a vision ability is. That includes almost every support, plus I think a couple specialists as well.

    Plus good teamwork in general is a counter to Nova. The only place she's "OP" is in public games. I regularly play 4man premades with some real life buddies (yes, it sucks not having a 5th). But being on voice chat and calling out her shimmers, calling stuns, etc goes a long way to shutting her down. Not to mention being able to take a bullet for a buddy. This doesn't happen much in public games. But let's say Nova puts a triple tap on your team's Valla during a team fight. The counter to this is to have your tank (or another healthy character) step into the laser sight and take a bullet or two for the Valla. Or you can put a stun on her to interrupt it.

    Nova is not broken. She's only "broken" when you have an uncoordinated pickup team, with selfish players who ignore valuable talents and don't assist one another. And that's just the nature of pickup games in general.

    Nova is a mage in sci-fi sniper clothing. All the rules that apply to mages apply to her. She is a glass canon. She is all about burst and has very little sustain.

    Yes, she's going to kill you if she catches you walking through the woods and you're only at 40%. But that doesn't mean she's broken. If you get picked off by Nova, that means 3 things:
    1) She's being played properly and she is attacking targets of opportunity
    2) Don't walk through the woods at low health
    3) Don't go anywhere solo, especially in games with heroes who roam, specifically looking for targets of opportunity.

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    WingedWeaselWingedWeasel Registered User regular
    edited November 2014
    @Lucascraft‌ said pretty much what I am thinking, although precision strike is the better ult. That being said, there is room to tweak nova so she cant liquefy people quite as easily (obviously blizzard is already taking action). In general I think she is going to be fine and it is just a matter of tuning rather than overhaul.

    It is a given though that she will cause immeasurable amounts of rage in pug games

    WingedWeasel on
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    LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    I mean, I play a whole lot of solo queue, because I play a lot more than the other guys in my 4man. And I will admit that I always groan when I see a Nova on the enemy team in the solo queue. It's even worse when there's a Zeratul too. Double stealth in the solo queue is the worst.

    However, double stealth when you're in a premade is tons of fun. I've been playing a lot of Zeratul lately, as I mentioned earlier. And one of my buddies in my premade mains Nova. And if both of us go stealth in the same game, we can coordinate all sorts of insta-ganks. We regularly patrol the jungle and look for people going after mercs, or trying to claim a watchtower.

    Or we'll both pounce a lane at around level 4 and just destroy someone before they can take 2 steps towards their gate.

    That doesn't mean stealth is broken. That just means we're assholes.

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    UrQuanLord88UrQuanLord88 Registered User regular
    edited November 2014
    Stealth in this game is handled waaaaaaay better than stealth in other games of the same genre. But the problem with Nova isn't exactly with stealth but the amount of frontloaded damage that she is capable of.

    Noone likes to play against a character that 100 to 0 your character in an instant, with or without stealth. She definitely needs a little tuning so that the window of opportunity to react is a little larger

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    MMMigMMMig Registered User regular
    edited November 2014
    I played Tassadar last night for the first time since before Artifacts.
    Holy crap, it feels as if he's even stronger now.


    Then again, I was playing co-op because talent gating sucks but he still felt so so strong.
    When a single storm can clear a lane of minions you know it's crazy good.


    ed: He used to be my main but and he just might be it again soon.
    And yes, I usually forget he has Oracle. -_-'

    MMMig on
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    EchoEcho ski-bap ba-dapModerator mod
    My only gripe with how HotS does stealth is that more often than not it's impossible to see the shimmer of a stealthed hero when watching a Twitch stream.

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    WingedWeaselWingedWeasel Registered User regular
    Stealth in this game is handled waaaaaaay better than stealth in other games of the same genre. But the problem with Nova isn't exactly with stealth but the amount of frontloaded damage that she is capable of.

    Noone likes to play against a character that 100 to 0 your character in an instant, with or without stealth. She definitely needs a little tuning so that the window of opportunity to react is a little larger

    I agree and disagree at the same time. Aside from the usual anti nova tactics, there's simply keeping yourself in the middle of a creep wave. I feel as though there are plenty of ways to avoid her damage and if she catches you it should make a difference.

    Then again maybe she should just flat out do less damage and her vulnerability with no escapes should be emphasized even more. Initially my reaction is if she does less burst damage...why is anyone going to play her? She needs to be able to eliminate squishy targets because she barely scratches anything else. I dunno. I am anxious to see how the change to hot shots goes.

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    Knight_Knight_ Dead Dead Dead Registered User regular
    Stealth in this game is handled waaaaaaay better than stealth in other games of the same genre. But the problem with Nova isn't exactly with stealth but the amount of frontloaded damage that she is capable of.

    Noone likes to play against a character that 100 to 0 your character in an instant, with or without stealth. She definitely needs a little tuning so that the window of opportunity to react is a little larger

    I agree and disagree at the same time. Aside from the usual anti nova tactics, there's simply keeping yourself in the middle of a creep wave. I feel as though there are plenty of ways to avoid her damage and if she catches you it should make a difference.

    Then again maybe she should just flat out do less damage and her vulnerability with no escapes should be emphasized even more. Initially my reaction is if she does less burst damage...why is anyone going to play her? She needs to be able to eliminate squishy targets because she barely scratches anything else. I dunno. I am anxious to see how the change to hot shots goes.

    Heh, right now she can solo arthas level tanks instantly post-16. I killed an equal level arthas in about 2 seconds from near full hp last night.

    She frontloads too much damage in her current incarnation in a game balanced like HotS is. Old nova used to be squishies or bust, I hated whenever I saw multiple warriors and a tankier support with old nova, but it's just not super ezmode for new nova. The creep wave thing is a nice idea but so much of HotS is spent roaming between lanes accomplishing objectives that I think that's mostly a pipe dream for non-specialist characters.

    I wouldn't be surprised to see rewind go away for her next patch.

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    WingedWeaselWingedWeasel Registered User regular
    @knight_ i have never actually looked at the numbers so that may be possible. i have never been killed by nova and felt that it was due to anything but my own mistakes.

    supposedly rewind is getting the axe but we will see what actually happens.

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    MMMigMMMig Registered User regular
    Who wants to jump on for a bit?

    I got ~3 hours!

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    wra
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    38thDoe38thDoe lets never be stupid again wait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered User regular
    @MMMig give me half hour or so to get my daughter to bed.

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    Chubby BunnyChubby Bunny Regal Pocket Monster Boston, MARegistered User regular
    Hey all! I'm just getting back into HotS, would love to have a ton of awesome people to play with. Loki#1239 (ignore the account in my sig; letting a friend use that one)

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    MMMigMMMig Registered User regular
    I SHALL AWAIT IN CO OP TECHING MY TASSY!

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    wra
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    Knight_Knight_ Dead Dead Dead Registered User regular
    Haven't played Tyreal in a while and man I forgot how fun he is.

    So fun. Cast Aside is super useful and he can initiate and cover escapes so well.

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    Maledict66Maledict66 Registered User regular
    Plus he does with a free 'Auto kill Valla by looking at her button'! A well played Tyrael is one of the hardest counters in the game to her I find, to the point it's almost depressing.

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    MMMigMMMig Registered User regular
    I'm jumping on for quite a bit.

    JOIN THE RESISTANCE!
    It is futile.

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    wra
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    MrBodyMrBody Registered User regular
    edited November 2014
    I'm getting a little tired of the xp catch up mechanic.

    I can understand having a little so that the game isn't effectively over by snowball inside the first 10 minutes, but it feels a little ridiculous right now. Our team was 5-0 for forts (5/6 of theirs dead, none of ours), 20 hero kills compared to their 11, yet we were equal in level. That's crazy. It feels like too often nothing matters except that one deciding team fight at level 20ish.

    They really need to come out with a new tutorial. Ditch all the obvious RIGHT CLICK TO MOVE stuff and tell people how a game should flow. At least one person in every lane until the first map objective. Objectives > mercs > ganks > laning minions. Mount a major push when you come out ahead in a decisive team fight, don't retreat halfway back the map to get some mercs. Force engagements and push to win when you have a 2-4 level advantage, don't sit back waiting for them to catch up. This isn't LoL, there are no carries, you are not going to become an invincible monster for ignoring team fights to last hits minions all game.

    And for the love of god, don't rush the vision tower on Blackheart Bay

    MrBody on
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    LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    I experienced one of the worst ever games of my entire career earlier. So frustrating. Games like that make me wish there was a surrender option.

    Generally speaking, I am against a surrender option, because it easily leads to defeatist attitudes, especially in this genre. MOBA players are so ready to surrender after 1 lost team fight. So in general, I'm against it.

    But man. Games like the one I just played. Our Valla had less than 5K hero damage by the 15 minute mark when the game finally mercifully ended. Our Valla took the bad ult. Our Valla ignored every map mechanic (tributes) and solo'd top lane the entire time. She repeatedly got ganked in what was a very obvious and repeatable cycle. Enemy team would murder us 4v5 at the tribute, then they would send like 3 dudes up and destroy our non-helpful Valla. Every. Time.

    To make matters worse, their team had a healer, mine did not. Their team had a tank. Mine did not.


    I simply cannot fathom how the matchmaker allows games like these to happen. I would rather sit in queue for 15 minutes waiting for a balanced team comp than wait in a 3 minute queue and go through agony and frustration because the opposing team won the matchmaking RNG and mine did not.

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    MrBodyMrBody Registered User regular
    Does ranking come into consideration AT ALL during matchmaking? I refuse to believe I'm the same ELO as people who are worse than bots.

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    WingedWeaselWingedWeasel Registered User regular
    MrBody wrote: »
    I'm getting a little tired of the xp catch up mechanic.

    I can understand having a little so that the game isn't effectively over by snowball inside the first 10 minutes, but it feels a little ridiculous right now. Our team was 5-0 for forts (5/6 of theirs dead, none of ours), 20 hero kills compared to their 11, yet we were equal in level. That's crazy. It feels like too often nothing matters except that one deciding team fight at level 20ish.

    To my knowledge the only catchup mechanic in place currently is completely based on the lower level team taking down the higher level one. were all 11 of those kills later in the game?

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    milskimilski Poyo! Registered User regular
    Honestly the Wiki and official information is so poor that I don't know how EXP catchup works.

    I will say that at the point both teams are past 20, anything but the main map objective and maybe merc camps seems irrelevant.

    I ate an engineer
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    Steel AngelSteel Angel Registered User regular
    MrBody wrote: »
    Does ranking come into consideration AT ALL during matchmaking? I refuse to believe I'm the same ELO as people who are worse than bots.

    It does but then quickly finds no players of suitable level queued due to the small player base and throws you into a sitcom cast worth of diverse skill levels instead.

    Big Dookie wrote: »
    I found that tilting it doesn't work very well, and once I started jerking it, I got much better results.

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