Yeah, it's utterly impossible in a game like this. But that's part of the fun - you need some heroes to be weak against other heroes, and some heroes to stomp certain tactics. That's why ranked games have picks & bans, and why when you start a game and realise you've put muradin in a lane solo against Tassadar and Zagara you need to change tactics and not just keep on trucking.
Perfect balance is a trap blizzard need to avoid. It's impossible, and the small roster of heroes and incredibly slow content release will do far more to hurt the game than a few unbalanced heroes. Heck, they've left Hammer in for months now and I still think a team composed around her is until able apart from a specialist build team.
Nothing is impossible, anything can happen, as in Mary said Tom would never call her again, but I told her, "Never say never."
they haven't perfectly balanced starcraft 2 so i don't know why you think they'll do it to hots
e: and to clarify i don't even want the game to be perfectly balanced, because imbalance is the price you pay for diversity
Blizzard has an almost psychotic dedication to chasing after the concept of balance even as they go years without coming close - WoW is a poster child for this behavior, and it's also the reason why(and they've stated this) WoW has gone expansions without getting a single additional class before. A "sometimes it's okay" design philosophy is like an alien language to them, and is amazing to see how much it conflicts with their design philosophies because you can't really take a balance-paranoid approach to a MOBA, also have the size of roster that MOBAs have(need), and have a patch cycle so slow that multi-celled animals adapt to changes more quickly.
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darklite_xI'm not an r-tard...Registered Userregular
I would agree that the game doesn't quite need as many heroes as LoL or DotA2, but I would say they should probably have around 40-50 on release. Seeing as how release could be god knows how long from now, I don't see why they couldn't hit that number, but I have a feeling that their 4-6 week release schedule is going to consistently end up as a 6 week schedule. I think at the moment I'd rather see some variation in the franchises. Seems like we're overloaded on Warcraft (which makes sense considering the size of their character stable). Would really love to see them reach back to their classics i.e. Warcraft 1, Diablo 1, SC 1. Think we'll see a Blackthorne in hots?
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I wasn't saying perfect balance, but I also don't like the idea of too many new heroes constantly being released. The would make the scene so unstable that the meta would always be shifting to where you can't really truly appreciate proper gameplay skill or even know what's going on.
Dota doesn't release new heroes anywhere near as fast as League did, unless you're referring to adding them to dota 2, which really isn't comparable. And I wouldn't say it worked very well for League since they've massively dialed back their new releases and are reworking a lot of their old heroes.
Dota doesn't release new heroes anywhere near as fast as League did, unless you're referring to adding them to dota 2, which really isn't comparable. And I wouldn't say it worked very well for League since they've massively dialed back their new releases and are reworking a lot of their old heroes.
worked well all the way to the bank
+1
darklite_xI'm not an r-tard...Registered Userregular
I don't know what I hate more: a) when you roll into an area as a team so you head towards the enemies, and then get killed because nobody followed or b) when your team blames you for 'running off alone' and losing the fight for them.
It's to the point that I feel like I should now be the last person in a team fight regardless of role, because I can no longer count the number of times I've had an entire team together, so I go to initiate, and then end up dead because my entire team ran away.
Steam ID: darklite_x Xbox Gamertag: Darklite 37 PSN:Rage_Kage_37 Battle.Net:darklite#2197
I wasn't saying perfect balance, but I also don't like the idea of too many new heroes constantly being released. The would make the scene so unstable that the meta would always be shifting to where you can't really truly appreciate proper gameplay skill or even know what's going on.
That's the point though. The more heroes there are the harder it is to 'solve' the game. It's a bit like Magic in that respect - lots of heroes gives you a huge play space and a meta-game that shifts. Right now I do to think the game has that, and I'm fairly sure there's a 'best of' team out there.
Also, skill comes down to play on the field and when drafting teams - dota and lol have huge amounts of skill with their massive hero rosters, and they seem to be far more popular games to watch than anything else out there.
Dota doesn't release new heroes anywhere near as fast as League did, unless you're referring to adding them to dota 2, which really isn't comparable. And I wouldn't say it worked very well for League since they've massively dialed back their new releases and are reworking a lot of their old heroes.
worked well all the way to the bank
I assumed the conversation was about balance, not financial success.
so let's say blizzard does manage to meet the self-imposed 4-6 week patch cycle pattern. would people care if it was 1 map released per cycle OR one hero per cycle?
I wasn't saying perfect balance, but I also don't like the idea of too many new heroes constantly being released. The would make the scene so unstable that the meta would always be shifting to where you can't really truly appreciate proper gameplay skill or even know what's going on.
That's the point though. The more heroes there are the harder it is to 'solve' the game. It's a bit like Magic in that respect - lots of heroes gives you a huge play space and a meta-game that shifts. Right now I do to think the game has that, and I'm fairly sure there's a 'best of' team out there.
Also, skill comes down to play on the field and when drafting teams - dota and lol have huge amounts of skill with their massive hero rosters, and they seem to be far more popular games to watch than anything else out there.
Dota doesn't release new heroes anywhere near as fast as League did, unless you're referring to adding them to dota 2, which really isn't comparable. And I wouldn't say it worked very well for League since they've massively dialed back their new releases and are reworking a lot of their old heroes.
worked well all the way to the bank
I assumed the conversation was about balance, not financial success.
Yeah. If the goal is to do what LoL did because "lols it worked for them!" Then HotS is gonna fail anyways, both as a good game and financially
Well, they've said they want to top out at 10 maps, which seems a large and wide selection. I would definitely like to see some starcraft and diablo themed maps however...
i think there's already too much overlap in existing heroes anyway
look at brightwing and lili, they both do basically the same thing, and one of them is always going to be better than the other at it
That's not really how these games work. Again, like Magic their are cards which may be stronger a lot of the time, but under certain circumstances other cards are better. Same should apply with heroes - if one hero completely and utterly overshadows another hero then they've built something wrong, but that really shouldnt be happening given we only have 25 and dota / loL have over 100 each without that same thing happening. Lili does do things different to brightwing, it may just be that after they nerfed her so hard in the last round they need to bump her up again a bit.
Variety brings balance, not uniformity. These games have such a massive design space for their heroes and how they interact with each, it's a huge part of why they are fun. Someone is always finding out something new or trying out a new combo.
If they're going to release maps, they're going to need to do better than "lanes + big fucking supermob objective". So far the only thing remotely original is the Raven map - the rest only really vary in exactly how you go about activating the supermob.
Like I mentioned at one point in the past, one thing they could do for example is take that map from StarCraft 2 where you had to occasionally escape the lava flow by evacuating onto the raised ground. Or a futuristic map where you're on a space platform of some kind near a star that's going to explode because reasons and you have to race to steal resources from various points in the map(mostly mid-lanes) to be the first one to power your ship to evacuate.
I'm talking core mechanics - so no not really original enough. It's just another "get the supermob" objective with a smaller map. (well not really smaller, it's about the same size factoring the mine)
Matter of fact most of them outside of raven you don't need to bum rush early game either.
Dragon Knight curves so fucking badly that you can literally lose the first three and as long as you get one or two of the late game ones you basically win.
Another totally valid strategy for BlackHeart's bay is to turn nothing in and push lanes on your own for a while, and then finish the job while you still have super low coin requirements. (it's actually a bit more nuanced than this but that's the basic idea)
Matter of fact unless you're totally fucklosing, the "best" strategy for garden is to bank any seeds you get until everyone's res timers are close to 60, and then terror rush them whenever you win a teamfight.
Lili doesn't do different things than brightwing, Lili does the same things differently. Every other support has unique strengths and attributes but those two are both focused on damage mitigation. But brightwings heal is better, polymorph is better than blind, and brightwing is more mobile. There are no strategies or lane comps that would prefer Lili. Lili's a 2/2 bear, brightwing's a 2/2 with keywords.
Basically, Lili has the same problem Muradin has, where she's been intentionally designed as a very simple character that is easy to play. But the result of being a simple character that is easy to play is that you live or die by your numbers and if someone has Better Numbers you're trash.
Another totally valid strategy for BlackHeart's bay is to turn nothing in and push lanes on your own for a while, and then finish the job while you still have super low coin requirements. (it's actually a bit more nuanced than this but that's the basic idea)
i have thought about this before, but i have never even seen anyone attempt it, let alone witness it work.
I came up with a pretty crazy idea regarding Sgt Hammer today. What if Napalm Strike was her E and Siege Mode was one of her Ults? WHOA HOLD ON THAT'S CRAZY, I hear you saying. But bear with me.
Currently Sgt Hammer's problem is that Graduating Range and Hover Mode are mandatory, and also nuts-to-butts crazy strong. Moreover, Graduating Range itself makes Hover Mode mandatory, because prior to the Graduating Range patch Hover Mode was entirely optional. Regardless, the GR patch pushed Hammer into an entirely Siege-centric playstyle. Oh, you wanted to pick up shorter cooldown on your Z? Too bad, Hover Mode. What's that, you wanted to mess around with extra mines or increased mine slow? Nope, you're taking Graduating Range. So on and so forth. There isn't room to pick up these other talents, which are objectively good talents, because GR exists.
So my idea behind swapping Napalm and Siege Mode means you have a lot of design space freed up and, theoretically, a lot more choice in the talent system itself. The base level 10 Siege Mode Ult would come with the effects of Hover Mode baked in, and the level 20 upgrade would be Graduating Range. Obviously numbers would need to be adjusted. You could even remove the bonus siege damage from Siege Mode and instead just have flat extra auto attack damage if need be. If Hammer's pushing power ended up being affected by this change, you could just put in a talent somewhere that's like "All non-heroic damage is increased by 30%". You could even tie that talent only to Napalm Strike, if needed.
Hammer's early game wouldn't really be affected too much by the loss of Siege Mode (because you have Napalm Strike now). And if needed, the damage/cooldown/range of Napalm could be adjusted. Her late game would still be fine. Moreover, this change affects her mid/mid-late game, where she normally becomes ridiculously OP because of Graduating Range.
Other changes would probably include making Siege Mode not affected by attack range talents (Maelstrom Shells, Crucio Cannon). And again, this would free up a lot of design space and open more choices. You'd be able to take all the Mine talents and not feel like a detriment to your team! Bullhead Mines + Mine Field/Slowing Mines is hilariously effective, but you can't ever take it the way things are right now.
It'll probably never ever happen, but I kind of feel like it'd help a lot? Maybe the answer instead is just removing Graduating Range. I just really miss the old Battle-Tank playstyle.
Hammer has perfectly captured the essence of the siege tank in Starcraft. She punishes people for a frontal assault. You enter her range, and you're gonna feel some pain. That's what siege tanks do in Starcraft. They punish ground assaults.
However, there's one major flaw in Heroes. In Starcraft, siege tanks cannot hit air, so the way to counter them is a strong air assault. There's no differentiation between land and air, so Hammer hits everybody at extreme range with maximum impunity. They need to put some limitations to her max range to give her some vulnerabilities.
One possibility would be to decrease her radius. Do not give her full 360 radius. Give her 280 degree radius, and give her a back-facing blind spot.
Or, another possibility would be to disable her shotgun blast while in siege mode. That would open her up to melee assault and make her choose if she wants to risk staying in siege mode or drop siege to blast the target away. If this is too broken as an extreme, there is a compromise they could use. Using the shotgun immediately removes her from siege. This compromise would let her knock away her melee attacker, but it also puts siege mode on cooldown and takes away her maximum range.
By not allowing the siege to hit melee range and just buff her escapabability so it's not an auto-death since having to unsiege can take a good bit of time. That'd be more true to heart.
That way the trick would be to get up close, even for ranged units like Valla and Malf / Zag.
By not allowing the siege to hit melee range and just buff her escapabability so it's not an auto-death since having to unsiege can take a good bit of time. That'd be more true to heart.
That way the trick would be to get up close, even for ranged units like Valla and Malf / Zag.
Making her weaker in melee range is well and good but not letting her hit anything that close is probably going too far. It would making dealing with minions too much of a pain in siege mode and the buffs they gave siege mode were at least partially to make that ability not the pain in the butt it used to be.
Given the mechanics of the game, I'm not sure if a blind spot in her attack range could be actually done but I wonder if they could have graduating range extend attack range but not her sight radius so sneaking up from behind could still be done.
Her combat trait is stupid as hell and just further punishes people trying to get close or escape.
Hover mode should be her combat trait. Press the button and you get hover mode for x seconds. Make it a bit faster so it has more impact, but yeah she doesn't need bonus damage for having huge range.
dudes, when I get a full-range hook on a unit that's already running away (and out of screen) and already cloaked, it's like the greatest feeling in the world
ed:My mind suddenly does this on screen and when the stars align... FIRE!!!
got a Zeratul a couple of times last night
hookin' should be ilegal
I don't know why myself and my friends have such a hard time with the name Stitches, but we do. We all call him Pudge. Or Patchwerk. Or Meathook. But very rarely does he get called by the correct name.
I don't know why myself and my friends have such a hard time with the name Stitches, but we do. We all call him Pudge. Or Patchwerk. Or Meathook. But very rarely does he get called by the correct name.
Part of it is that post Naxxaramas, he was hardly the most iconic abomination in WoW. That went to Patchwerk who was seen by both Horde and Alliance. Depending on what zones you hit leveling up and when you were in Duskwood even if you were there you might not even see him as an Alliance character.
But for the players that did bump into him, he was certainly memorable.
Holy crap did I run into the mother of all bugs tonight. Matchmaker was acting up, my portrait was wiped to blank, all menus were blank, and the daily quest screen said I need to reach hero level 4,267,467,875 to unlock it O_O
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they haven't perfectly balanced starcraft 2 so i don't know why you think they'll do it to hots
e: and to clarify i don't even want the game to be perfectly balanced, because imbalance is the price you pay for diversity
Perfect balance is a trap blizzard need to avoid. It's impossible, and the small roster of heroes and incredibly slow content release will do far more to hurt the game than a few unbalanced heroes. Heck, they've left Hammer in for months now and I still think a team composed around her is until able apart from a specialist build team.
Blizzard has an almost psychotic dedication to chasing after the concept of balance even as they go years without coming close - WoW is a poster child for this behavior, and it's also the reason why(and they've stated this) WoW has gone expansions without getting a single additional class before. A "sometimes it's okay" design philosophy is like an alien language to them, and is amazing to see how much it conflicts with their design philosophies because you can't really take a balance-paranoid approach to a MOBA, also have the size of roster that MOBAs have(need), and have a patch cycle so slow that multi-celled animals adapt to changes more quickly.
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
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Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
worked well all the way to the bank
It's to the point that I feel like I should now be the last person in a team fight regardless of role, because I can no longer count the number of times I've had an entire team together, so I go to initiate, and then end up dead because my entire team ran away.
That's the point though. The more heroes there are the harder it is to 'solve' the game. It's a bit like Magic in that respect - lots of heroes gives you a huge play space and a meta-game that shifts. Right now I do to think the game has that, and I'm fairly sure there's a 'best of' team out there.
Also, skill comes down to play on the field and when drafting teams - dota and lol have huge amounts of skill with their massive hero rosters, and they seem to be far more popular games to watch than anything else out there.
look at brightwing and lili, they both do basically the same thing, and one of them is always going to be better than the other at it
I assumed the conversation was about balance, not financial success.
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That's an interesting and good point
Yeah. If the goal is to do what LoL did because "lols it worked for them!" Then HotS is gonna fail anyways, both as a good game and financially
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That's not really how these games work. Again, like Magic their are cards which may be stronger a lot of the time, but under certain circumstances other cards are better. Same should apply with heroes - if one hero completely and utterly overshadows another hero then they've built something wrong, but that really shouldnt be happening given we only have 25 and dota / loL have over 100 each without that same thing happening. Lili does do things different to brightwing, it may just be that after they nerfed her so hard in the last round they need to bump her up again a bit.
Variety brings balance, not uniformity. These games have such a massive design space for their heroes and how they interact with each, it's a huge part of why they are fun. Someone is always finding out something new or trying out a new combo.
Like I mentioned at one point in the past, one thing they could do for example is take that map from StarCraft 2 where you had to occasionally escape the lava flow by evacuating onto the raised ground. Or a futuristic map where you're on a space platform of some kind near a star that's going to explode because reasons and you have to race to steal resources from various points in the map(mostly mid-lanes) to be the first one to power your ship to evacuate.
Matter of fact most of them outside of raven you don't need to bum rush early game either.
Dragon Knight curves so fucking badly that you can literally lose the first three and as long as you get one or two of the late game ones you basically win.
Another totally valid strategy for BlackHeart's bay is to turn nothing in and push lanes on your own for a while, and then finish the job while you still have super low coin requirements. (it's actually a bit more nuanced than this but that's the basic idea)
Matter of fact unless you're totally fucklosing, the "best" strategy for garden is to bank any seeds you get until everyone's res timers are close to 60, and then terror rush them whenever you win a teamfight.
Basically, Lili has the same problem Muradin has, where she's been intentionally designed as a very simple character that is easy to play. But the result of being a simple character that is easy to play is that you live or die by your numbers and if someone has Better Numbers you're trash.
i have thought about this before, but i have never even seen anyone attempt it, let alone witness it work.
WoWtcg and general gaming podcast
WoWtcg and gaming website
I'm quite surprised that the internet has failed me here, no talent lists or skills or anything...
Everyone who saw it is probably down with a case of the con crud.
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Currently Sgt Hammer's problem is that Graduating Range and Hover Mode are mandatory, and also nuts-to-butts crazy strong. Moreover, Graduating Range itself makes Hover Mode mandatory, because prior to the Graduating Range patch Hover Mode was entirely optional. Regardless, the GR patch pushed Hammer into an entirely Siege-centric playstyle. Oh, you wanted to pick up shorter cooldown on your Z? Too bad, Hover Mode. What's that, you wanted to mess around with extra mines or increased mine slow? Nope, you're taking Graduating Range. So on and so forth. There isn't room to pick up these other talents, which are objectively good talents, because GR exists.
So my idea behind swapping Napalm and Siege Mode means you have a lot of design space freed up and, theoretically, a lot more choice in the talent system itself. The base level 10 Siege Mode Ult would come with the effects of Hover Mode baked in, and the level 20 upgrade would be Graduating Range. Obviously numbers would need to be adjusted. You could even remove the bonus siege damage from Siege Mode and instead just have flat extra auto attack damage if need be. If Hammer's pushing power ended up being affected by this change, you could just put in a talent somewhere that's like "All non-heroic damage is increased by 30%". You could even tie that talent only to Napalm Strike, if needed.
Hammer's early game wouldn't really be affected too much by the loss of Siege Mode (because you have Napalm Strike now). And if needed, the damage/cooldown/range of Napalm could be adjusted. Her late game would still be fine. Moreover, this change affects her mid/mid-late game, where she normally becomes ridiculously OP because of Graduating Range.
Other changes would probably include making Siege Mode not affected by attack range talents (Maelstrom Shells, Crucio Cannon). And again, this would free up a lot of design space and open more choices. You'd be able to take all the Mine talents and not feel like a detriment to your team! Bullhead Mines + Mine Field/Slowing Mines is hilariously effective, but you can't ever take it the way things are right now.
It'll probably never ever happen, but I kind of feel like it'd help a lot? Maybe the answer instead is just removing Graduating Range. I just really miss the old Battle-Tank playstyle.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
However, there's one major flaw in Heroes. In Starcraft, siege tanks cannot hit air, so the way to counter them is a strong air assault. There's no differentiation between land and air, so Hammer hits everybody at extreme range with maximum impunity. They need to put some limitations to her max range to give her some vulnerabilities.
One possibility would be to decrease her radius. Do not give her full 360 radius. Give her 280 degree radius, and give her a back-facing blind spot.
Or, another possibility would be to disable her shotgun blast while in siege mode. That would open her up to melee assault and make her choose if she wants to risk staying in siege mode or drop siege to blast the target away. If this is too broken as an extreme, there is a compromise they could use. Using the shotgun immediately removes her from siege. This compromise would let her knock away her melee attacker, but it also puts siege mode on cooldown and takes away her maximum range.
I have no idea if this would work or how balanced it would be, but I like that idea.
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I like that a lot!
By not allowing the siege to hit melee range and just buff her escapabability so it's not an auto-death since having to unsiege can take a good bit of time. That'd be more true to heart.
That way the trick would be to get up close, even for ranged units like Valla and Malf / Zag.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
Making her weaker in melee range is well and good but not letting her hit anything that close is probably going too far. It would making dealing with minions too much of a pain in siege mode and the buffs they gave siege mode were at least partially to make that ability not the pain in the butt it used to be.
Given the mechanics of the game, I'm not sure if a blind spot in her attack range could be actually done but I wonder if they could have graduating range extend attack range but not her sight radius so sneaking up from behind could still be done.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Hover mode should be her combat trait. Press the button and you get hover mode for x seconds. Make it a bit faster so it has more impact, but yeah she doesn't need bonus damage for having huge range.
dudes, when I get a full-range hook on a unit that's already running away (and out of screen) and already cloaked, it's like the greatest feeling in the world
ed:My mind suddenly does this on screen and when the stars align... FIRE!!!
got a Zeratul a couple of times last night
hookin' should be ilegal
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
Part of it is that post Naxxaramas, he was hardly the most iconic abomination in WoW. That went to Patchwerk who was seen by both Horde and Alliance. Depending on what zones you hit leveling up and when you were in Duskwood even if you were there you might not even see him as an Alliance character.
But for the players that did bump into him, he was certainly memorable.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772